Sports
Griffin, Parker, Pearl among new HOF candidates
Blake Griffin, Candace Parker, Jamal Crawford, the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team, Bruce Pearl and Kelvin Sampson were among the first-time nominees announced Friday to be considered for enshrinement into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame next year.
Also among the notable first-time nominees: Elena Delle Donne and Joe Johnson as players and Mike D’Antoni as a contributor.
Nearly 200 players and teams were on the list unveiled by the Hall on ESPN’s “NBA Today,” including some finalists who fell short of enshrinement in the 2025 class, including Jennifer Azzi, who was a member of that 1996 U.S. women’s team that won gold at the Atlanta Games. Azzi is a nominee again as an individual.
“The candidates for the class of 2026 have each left an indelible impact on the game of basketball,” said John L. Doleva, president and CEO of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. “Through defining performances, influential leadership and achievements that helped elevate the sport on the national and international stage, this year’s ballot recognizes those whose legacy continues to shape how the game is played, coached, and celebrated.”
Finalists are typically announced at NBA All-Star Weekend in February. The 2026 class will be unveiled April 4 at the NCAA Final Four, with enshrinement weekend Aug. 14 and 15 at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, and at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Other finalists a year ago who are back on the ballot include Gonzaga coach Mark Few; NBA legends Marques Johnson and Buck Williams; and Jerry Welsh, who coached Potsdam in upstate New York to NCAA Division III titles in 1981 and 1986.
Molly Bolin, the first player signed by the Women’s Professional Basketball League, is back as well, as is former Serbian professional player and longtime coach Dusan Ivkovic, who is already a FIBA Hall of Famer.
Doc Rivers, the only NBA coach with more than 1,000 wins who isn’t yet in the Hall of Fame, is a nominee again, as are Amar’e Stoudemire and legendary broadcaster Marv Albert.
Some teams that will be considered include the 1936, 1972 and 1976 U.S. Olympic men’s teams; the 1982 Cheyney State team coached by C. Vivian Stringer that lost to Louisiana Tech in the inaugural NCAA Division I women’s national championship game; the Kentucky Wesleyan men’s teams that won three Division II national titles in a four-year span of the late 1960s; and the 1963 Loyola Chicago men’s team that won the NCAA title and broke racial barriers in the sport by using as many as four Black starters.
Sports
Ice dance will incorporate queer culture unlike in any other Olympics
Officials asked teams to open their millennial playlists and skate their first program to music from the ’90s.
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Sports
Scotland became the first team to score the most runs in the World Cup 2026 – SUCH TV
Scotland scored 207 runs against Italy in the seventh match of the ICC T20 World Cup
Scotland has set a target of 208 runs for Italy to win, Scotland has become the first team to score more than 200 runs in the T20 World Cup.
George Munsey stood out for Scotland by scoring 84 runs, George Munsey’s innings included 13 fours and 2 sixes.
Brendan McMullen scored 41 runs off 19 balls with the help of 4 sixes, Thomas, JJ Smits, Grant Stewart and Hasan took one wicket each for Italy.
Scotland scored 207 runs for the loss of four wickets in the stipulated twenty overs and gave Italy a target of 208 runs.
Sports
Lindsey Vonn crashes at Olympics, has surgery on broken leg
Lindsey Vonn‘s defiant bid to win the Winter Olympic downhill at the age of 41, on a rebuilt right knee and a badly injured left knee, ended Sunday in a frightening crash that left her with a broken leg and saw her taken to safety by a rescue helicopter for the second time in nine days.
Vonn lost control within seconds of leaving the start house, clipping a gate with her right shoulder and pinwheeling down the slope before ending up awkwardly on her back, her skis crisscrossed below her and her screams ringing out soon after medical personnel arrived.
She was treated for long, anguished minutes as a hush fell over the crowd waiting far below at the finish line. Vonn was strapped to a gurney and flown away, possibly ending the skier’s storied career. As medical staff attended to Vonn, she could be heard crying out.
Vonn was taken to a clinic in Cortina then transferred to a larger hospital in Treviso, a two-hour drive to the south. She was being “treated by a multidisciplinary team” and “underwent an orthopedic operation to stabilize a fracture reported in her left leg,” the Ca’ Foncello hospital said in a statement.
The U.S. ski team said in an earlier statement that Vonn was “in stable condition and in good hands with a team of American and Italian physicians.”
“She’ll be OK, but it’s going to be a bit of a process,” said Anouk Patty, chief of sport for U.S. Ski and Snowboard. “This sport’s brutal, and people need to remember when they’re watching [that] these athletes are throwing themselves down a mountain and going really, really fast.”
Breezy Johnson, Vonn’s teammate, became only the second American woman to win the Olympic downhill after Vonn did it 16 years ago. The 30-year-old Johnson held off Emma Aicher of Germany and Italy’s Sofia Goggia on a bittersweet day for the team.
“I don’t claim to know what she’s going through, but I do know what it is to be here, to be fighting for the Olympics and to have this course burn you and to watch those dreams die,” said Johnson, whose own injury in Cortina in 2022 ruined her hopes of skiing in the Beijing Olympics. “I can’t imagine the pain that she’s going through, and it’s not the physical pain — we can deal with physical pain — but the emotional pain is something else.”
Johnson added that Vonn’s coach told her: “Lindsey was cheering for me from the helicopter.”
Vonn’s crash was “tragic, but it’s ski racing,” said Johan Eliasch, president of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation.
“I can only say thank you for what she has done for our sport,” he said, “because this race has been the talk of the Games and it’s put our sport in the best possible light.”
Vonn had family in the stands, including her father, Alan Kildow, who stared down at the ground while his daughter was being treated after just 13 seconds on the course where she holds a record 12 World Cup titles.
Others in the crowd, including rapper Snoop Dogg, watched quietly as the star skier was finally taken off the course. Fellow American star Mikaela Shiffrin posted a broken heart emoji on social media.
“It’s like the man in the arena, she dared greatly,” Vonn’s sister, Karin Kildow, told NBC. “She put it all out there. She always goes 110 percent, there’s never anything less, so I know she put her whole heart into it. Sometimes things happen. It’s a very dangerous sport.”
All eyes had been on Vonn, the feel-good story heading into the Olympics. She had returned to elite ski racing last season after nearly six years, a remarkable decision given her age, but she also had a partial titanium knee replacement in her right knee. Many wondered how she would fare as she sought a gold medal to join the one she won in the downhill at the 2010 Vancouver Games.
The four-time overall World Cup champion stunned everyone by being a contender almost immediately. She came to the Olympics as the leader in the World Cup downhill standings and was a gold medal favorite before her crash in Switzerland nine days ago, when she suffered her latest knee injury. In addition to a ruptured ACL, she had a bone bruise and meniscus damage.
Still, no one counted her out even then. She has skied through injuries for three decades at the top of the sport. In 2006, ahead of the Turin Olympics, Vonn took a bad fall during downhill training and went to the hospital. She competed less than 48 hours later, racing in all four events she had planned, with a top result of seventh in the super-G.
Cortina has had many treasured memories for Vonn beyond the record wins. She is called the queen of Cortina, and the Olympia delle Tofane course had always suited Vonn. She tested out the knee twice in downhill training runs over the past three days before the awful crash on Sunday in clear, sunny conditions.
“This would be the best comeback I’ve done so far,” Vonn said before the race. “Definitely the most dramatic.”
The drama was of a different sort this time. Not since perhaps Hermann Maier‘s cartwheeling crash at the 1998 Nagano Games had there been such a high-profile and spectacular fall in Alpine skiing at the Olympics.
“Dear Lindsey, we’re all thinking of you. You are an incredible inspiration, and will always be an Olympic champion,” International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry said.
News of the crash spread quickly, including to the fan zone down the mountain in Cortina.
“It’s such a huge loss and bummer,” Megan Gunyou of the U.S. said. “I feel like hearing her story and just like the redemption of her first fall and like fighting to come back to the Olympics this year, I mean, I feel so sad for her.”
Dan Wilton of Vancouver, Canada, watched the race from the stands.
“It was frightening,” he said. “Really, your heart goes out for such a champion who is coming to the end of her career. Everyone wanted a successful finish.”
ESPN’s Alyssa Roenigk and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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