Bruce Brown Jr., Damian Lillard and Chris Paul each returned home for different reasons, but there is a through line with them each.

LeBron James is finally stuck where basically every other player is: taking what he gets, without the power to make his franchise do whatever he wants it to.

Men’s tennis’ next great rivalry is overshadowing the rest of the sport.

Every NBA offseason is now a great realignment event. Long-time contenders topple, or foreshadow their near demise with sweaty over-investment while new insurgents take their ground.

The new emphasis, for prolonged contention, is on constant renewal. Continuity is almost impossible and we're to care more about the NBA's managerial dances.

Physically, financially, and otherwise, the Thunder could never be in this position again. This is not to say that they can't, or won't, win another title- it's certainly possible. Just that the...

It's not all explosive comebacks and hothouse conquests. The Pacers can win normal games, too, even against a 68-win team.

The Thunder play a uniquely suffocating defense that has stifled every opponent, but the Pacers might be the one team that can crack it.

It's because of how Tyrese Haliburton sees and enacts the game that his team is more a weather system than a collection of men.

Dynasties, they say, are over. The goal for Denver, potentially impossible, is to buck everything that the NBA has set in motion. 

The Mavericks winning the Cooper Flagg lottery months after trading Luka Doncic has the conspiracy theory machine on tilt. But there are no outcomes that would prevent fans and media from such...

Tyrese Haliburton is a System Player in that the system flows from him. It is his vision of basketball that defines how his team plays.

Collectively, the Thunder are a superior basketball species- meaner, faster, deeper, and more streamlined than anyone they face.

Five years after their bubble series, the Nuggets are no longer rising talents, but beleaguered champions, potentially on the verge of more change; the Clippers are no longer a microwaved super-con...

As the Pistons rise and the Bucks fall, notions of NBA hope and doom clarify. The Pistons, built through the draft and shrewd free agency bargains, will experience the same complex and limiting...

Until the Zach LaVine trade, the Bulls looked very much like a team between identities. Now, they're playing a faster style built around Josh Giddey and Coby White.