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Springfield, Massachusetts welcomed basketball royalty over the weekend as the city and the Hall of Fame further commemorated the sport’s birthplace on “World Basketball Day.”

It was a bit of a political footnote, especially in the otherwise political swamp that is the state of Florida, but of the long list of donors that contributed to the political super PAC Never Back Down, which supports presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, one in particular stood out. That one was the Orlando Magic, one of two NBA franchises in the sunshine state and the only one along the bellwether I-4 corridor, although perhaps not so much anymore. The donation was for $50,000, far more than you could give directly to a candidate themselves. But the amount wasn’t the story. It’s the donor – an NBA franchise, a privately owned organization that otherwise operates very much in the public domain. And one whose employees may hold a vastly different view of presidential politics than its owner.

If there is a lesson from the short and unfulfilling coaching tenure of Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash, it’s perhaps that experience does matter. That was the question from the onset of Nash's tenure with the team, a former player of the year point guard with basically no NBA coaching experience taking on one of the League’s premier positions, laden with all-star talent and championship ambitions.

An old joke for longtime Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans went something like this: what do Vinnie Testaverde and Billy Graham have in common? They’re the only two people than can make 75,000 people in Tampa Stadium stand up and yell Jesus Christ. That, of course, referred both to Testaverde’s inclination to throw interceptions and Billy Graham’s magnetic hold over his faithful. It also inferred the near religious attachment of large numbers of sports fans to the ritual of game play, making Sunday as owned by the NFL as it is by the Lord. In other words, for much of America, Sundays in the fall are for football.

Rachel Balkovec has been introduced as manager of the Yankees’ Low A affiliate in the Florida State League. In taking over the Tampa Tarpons, Balkovec will become the first female manager in the history of affiliated baseball, an appointment 10 years in the making for the former college softball player.

They say that football is a game of inches. Turns out, same goes for basketball. It certainly did Saturday night, when the Brooklyn Nets lost game seven…

If you’re an NBA team, especially one that’s not in the upper echelon of the league, you know that making the playoffs can be something of a double-edged…

Jared Dudley has played some 900 games in the NBA since 2007 — for Charlotte, Phoenix, the LA Clippers, Bucks, Wizards, Nets and LA Lakers. But he’s never…

In one of the more unusual but telling statements of the current NBA landscape, the Houston Rockets front office just said that they are willing to get…

Sports have returned.But fans haven’t, at least not in the same numbers and with the same enthusiasm.Ratings for live sports are down across the board,…