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Belfast basketball player CJ Fulton has been invited to a pre-draft workout camp with NBA side Minnesota Timberwolves. The 22-year-old guard becomes the third Irish-born player to earn the chance to compete at the highest level in the United States after Pat Burke and Susan Moran.
Stephen Curry climbs to No. 2 on Forbes' list of best-paid athletes
Cristiano Ronaldo has topped the Forbes list of highest-paid athletes for the third consecutive year, while NBA star Stephen Curry has moved up to second. The business magazine says Ronaldo, who has topped the list fives times during his career, has increased his estimated total earnings by $15m to $275m
A pair of sneakers once worn by basketball superstar Michael Jordan has sold for $2.2 million at an auction, according to a BBC report. This is the priciest shoes ever sold. The auction was held by Sotheby's, which had estimated that the signed trainers would fetch $2-$4 million. The basketball great wore the "Bred" Air Jordan 13s during Game 2 of the 1998 NBA Finals on the way to his sixth and last NBA championship title. The latest auction comes a year after his 1998 NBA jersey was sold for $10.1 million, according to the BBC.
With the arrival of a French superstar on the horizon, the NBA is growing its media presence in Europe. The league inked a U.K. broadcast deal with the BBC covering nine games this season, beginning with Thursday’s tilt in Paris between the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons — the first regular-season game in France since 2020. The BBC will show an additional three regular-season games, two pre-conference final playoff games, one conference title game, and one NBA Finals game.
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Former Pelicans coach began by retweeting a BBC report arguing that Women having rights under Islamic Law seems “oxymoronic”. Kanter weighed in, labeling Van Gundy’s opinion as an “ignorant thing to say”, adding that also the idea of him coaching a basketball team seems “oxymoronic” and ending by inviting the former Magic and Pistons coach to educate himself. Van Gundy later deleted the original tweet.
South Sudan's first ever women's basketball coach Lindsey Harding already has an impressive CV but she still has plenty she wants to achieve both on and off the court. The 36-year-old is set to combine her job with South Sudan with her role as an assistant and player development coach with men's NBA team the Sacramento Kings.
Someone who has known Harding since their college days together at Duke is the former NBA star and now president of the South Sudan Basketball Federation, Luol Deng. "I can sincerely say that more than her basketball pedigree, it's who she is as a person that is our biggest win here," the ex-Great Britain player said. "She's consistently expressed an interest in helping grow the game of basketball in South Sudan, and I'm genuinely grateful to know our women will have an amazing person leading their development and journey onto the world stage."
Last month, John Amaechi, the psychologist and former National Basketball Association (NBA) player, made a short video for the BBC’s homework site Bitesize. Stylish, bespectacled, and with a scholarly white beard, Amaechi explains the concept of white privilege simply enough for his presumed audience of school-aged children to understand. “White privilege doesn’t mean you haven’t worked hard or you don’t deserve the success you’ve had,” he points out reassuringly. “It doesn’t mean that your life isn’t hard or that you’ve never suffered. It simply means that your skin colour has not been the cause of your hardship or suffering.”
Mbenga, who played for the Dallas Mavericks, the Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Hornets, is hoping for a new era in the league for African players. "I want the experts to talk about Joel Embiid (of Philadelphia Sixers) as the best ‘Big Man in the league’ and ‘Best Defender’, I want him to dominate. I didn’t see the anger yet on his face," he said. "Now is the best opportunity to show up for Africans and to show that Africa not only have talents but players who can make history also just like Hakeem, Mutombo or me. I want us to be more respected in the league as African players and they only way they will respect us it’s with the results. It’s time now for African players to step up and say that.”
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Al Farouq-Aminu: "We've seen guys be very vocal about the matters. I think what a lot of people forget is that we had a black president, we had a black Attorney General and we had let's say many of the best basketball players in the world are black. All those different things happened after the Black Lives first happened and the movement first started. So I don't believe that these gestures are 100% the remedy, obviously it is nice to bring awareness to different things like that but after a while you have to get the job done."
At first glance, County Tyrone seems like an unlikely stage for a basketball player who is widely regarded as one of the greatest point guards of all time. But in the spring of 1988 NBA star John Stockton showed up to coach at a basketball camp in the mid-Ulster town of Dungannon.
Speaking to BBC News NI the 58-year-old smiles as he recalls: "I have fond memories of Dungannon. I took a trip to Ireland with my wife, my son who was six months old at the time and my parents. I'm Irish on my dad's side, so we wanted to trace his roots and while I was there I was asked would I make a stop at the camp."
For many American college players who just missed the cut for the NBA, a career in Europe was a viable alternative. It's something Stockton says he was considering too, as after college he didn't believe he would be picked to play in the NBA. "I was fully planning on going to Europe. As early as a month before the NBA draft I wasn't anticipating being picked and all of a sudden I'm picked up by Utah and the rest for me is history. But if that hadn't have worked out, I was fully planning on going overseas to play basketball but I hadn't selected where."
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