Both franchises led the NBA’s international expansion, and to stand out in the hockey-crazed country, the teams would need impressive logos and colorways to break through, but no one expected a red raptor or a grizzly bear outlined in Haida trim.

Why do people — mostly men — want to throw axes and dress like lumberjacks?

Aimee Trepanier was proud to showcase the pose that started her 1993 gymnastics floor routine in a billboard ad off I-15 in Salt Lake City. But when Utahns looked up, that’s not what they saw.

Longreads editors discuss stories in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Kotaku, and The Globe and Mail.

Billie Jean King once tried to find a sustainable business model for feminist sports coverage. Then women’s fitness tried to revive the swimsuit model.

Somehow, implausibly, against all the odds, I became the youngest person and first woman ever to win the Mongol Derby. What made me so sure I was ready, when I was totally unprepared?

An obscure character was a stand-in for the creator of Peanuts when he fell in love with tennis during the sport’s boom in the 1970s.

Three decades ago, Becky Smith wanted to become jai alai’s first woman pro. Now the sport can’t make a comeback without her.

Dan Stoddard believes there is room in the NBA for a 42-year-old rookie.

She bounded up a mountain humans can only slog up, and she’s the second-best dog in the world (after your dog, obv).

Swimmer Morgan Stickney opted to amputate her leg below the knee to get off of opioids and get back in the pool after a seemingly innocuous foot injury and the ensuing complications left her in pain.

Jacqueline Alnes shares 10 pieces that examine sports and mental health.

As a child, Tom Junod was his dad’s tout. He studied the gambling tip sheets for the only acceptable offering he could give his father: a line on a win.

How the Toledo Troopers, the most dominant female football team of all time, met their match.

Thessaly La Force hangs out with the lonesome, racquet-smashing Frenchman.

Inside the Rise and Fall of the Pillow Fight League

“You see that you can never go back. And with this knowledge a peculiar grief descends.”

For author Jaclyn Gilbert, revising her writing is much like doing the same running loops over and over, to the point where she doesn’t have to think about where she’s going anymore.

What will it take to get women’s baseball the recognition it deserves?

Nine stories examining the lack of and dire need for more women coaches in sport.

Much is being written about the contentious U.S. Open women’s final match, but this moment belongs to Naomi Osaka.

Dining out with courtsiders, a rogue, impish species in the tennis ecosystem.

From his earliest days in California, Arnold was a polarizing, impossible-to-ignore figure.

“When I started asking myself questions about my own notions of masculinity. I just felt so limited, so suddenly afraid of becoming the kind of man I’d grown up in fear of.”

The basketball court is a place where young black men feel comfortable mourning death, but are there crucial elements missing from their grieving practices?

An MRI sparked gymnast Selena Brennan’s interest in sports medicine, and Larry Nassar isn’t going to take that away from her.

Don McIntyre is not a man who shies away from a challenge — an understatement if there ever was one.

German tennis player Andrea Petkovic meets the band.

Uruguay, a small nation with a deep-seated passion for soccer, is the inspiration for any underdog vying to win a World Cup.

How the newly evolved bicycle helped liberate women and modernize America’s concept of fitness.