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How Copeland went from European basketball unknown to 29-year-old rookie for the New York Knicks: “You are never fully at ease, but you begin to transition. Maybe you date a local girl, or even marry her. You begin to buy tighter jeans, learn some of the language and before you can blink, you are in […]

The former basketball star, at 50 and not ready to retire: “Once, the whole world watched him compete and win — Game 6, the Delta Center — and now it’s a small group of friends in a hotel room playing a silly kid’s game. The desire remains the same, but the venues, and the stakes, […]

The evolution of a Spanish basketball star turned NBA player, from the perspective of a fellow player: “I was playing in Spain at the time, and was there as the nation slipped into inescapable Rubio-mania. In the grocery store people wanted to talk about him; in our locker room we laughed about the boy who […]

(Subscribe to Longreads to receive this and other weekly exclusives.) A look at the giant sturgeon in the Pacific Northwest—one, named Herman, weighs nearly 500 pounds—and about our relationship with them. Doyle is editor of Portland Magazine and writes frequently for Orion‘s print edition and blog. His piece won the John Burroughs Award and was […]

Lewis follows the president for six months—joining him for basketball pickup games, a trip on Air Force One, and inside a decision on how to handle Libya: “Before big meetings the president is given a kind of road map, a list of who will be at the meeting and what they might be called on […]

A high school basketball star’s career derailed by drugs and bad decisions. Jonathan Hargett also says he was offered $20,000 to attend West Virginia (a claim university officials deny): “Hargett wanted to go to Arizona. The Wildcats won the national title in 1997 and had recently had a string of star guards like Miles Simon, […]

What are your career options when you are seven feet tall? A tall writer meets a tall wrestler: “Paul Wight, bless him, seems to think of his massive size as a gift from God, not a devil’s bargain. There was a moment earlier this year when Wight was rumored to be fighting Shaq at this […]

Twenty years later, how Michael, Magic and the NBA’s best players sought to regain U.S. dominance in Olympic basketball: Nathaniel Butler (official NBA photographer): We were sitting on the baseline. Magic is backing a guy down, and the guy on defense is yelling at his bench, “Now! Now!” And on the bench, one guy’s pulling […]