Giri Nathan

Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were arrested Thursday morning as part of an ongoing federal investigation into two separate gambling schemes. In a press conference afterward, officials from multiple enforcement agencies detailed those alleged schemes. One involved prop bets and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent…

I am more likely to laugh at a movie than a book. I’m sure this is true of many people, and I’m sure there are a host of social-emotional reasons for this disparity, but I can think of at least one craft-based reason, too. In a movie, the moment of comic release comes and goes…

All the magic is happening at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in the Saudi capital’s Boulevard City, a 220-acre retail and entertainment zone that contains a replica of Times Square and “500 electronic games for children.” Since we last checked in, a couple of new names have been added to the festival lineup; the Whose Line…

E.Y. Zhao’s Underspin is a novel about a table tennis prodigy, Ryan Lo. The book opens with his funeral. From there, it’s a beautiful story, told obliquely through the perspectives of people who knew Ryan at different phases of his brief life. He is the charismatic void at its center, and we slowly piece together…

Arizona-based outlet PHNX Sports has fired its lead Phoenix Suns reporter Gerald Bourguet after he posted tweets critical of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, in the aftermath of Kirk’s fatal shooting on Wednesday. PHNX Sports released a statement on Thursday, but did not specifically name Bourguet: The opinions expressed by our employees do not represent…

Financier Bill Ackman has been widely shamed for his appearance in a professional tennis tournament last week. Since shame is no longer operative in American culture, he’s continued to explain every painstaking detail of the experience in his tweets, which read like a transcript of a front-facing video filmed in a car. In the course […]

On a point-by-point basis, I will remember nothing about the women’s final at Wimbledon. Iga Swiatek’s 6-0, 6-0 win over Amanda Anisimova on Saturday, which lasted just 57 minutes, was the least competitive major final in recent memory. Swiatek had played for five major finals in the past and won all of them easily. Anisimova, […]

Might as well get it out of the way: Bill Ackman’s tennis game is not humiliating in itself. If it’s Ackman’s humiliation you seek, might I direct you to: his hammy and conspiratorial screeds on Twitter; his use of antisemitism as a cheap cudgel against college administrators and students while somehow defending Elon Musk from […]

Aryna Sabalenka eked out an ugly win in her Wimbledon quarterfinal Tuesday, 4-6, 6-2, 6-4. The top player on the WTA was taken to her limit by an unlikely figure: Laura Siegemund, the 37-year-old veteran known for a confounding style of play that proceeds at a lumbering pace. You might recall Siegemund from a memorable […]

NBA free agent Malik Beasley is currently the subject of a federal investigation into gambling, prop bets, and wire fraud. As a result, the Detroit Pistons have reportedly withdrawn a three-year, $42 million contract offer to their top three-point shooter. Beasley could have really used the money, judging by the grim financial picture painted by […]