Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderJun 28, 20183:12 pm

UNASSUMING INDIANA BASKETBALL PHENOM ROMEO LANGFORD JUST WANTS TO PLAY BALL

Romeo Langford is clanking step-back after step-back at the elbow with his trainer, Dion Lee, here at Central High School in Louisville. Langford’s poker face doesn’t break. But Jonathan Jeanty, a family friend looking on, knows Langford is pissed. “He expects to make every shot,” Jeanty says. “He’s kind of a perfectionist.” He’s not flicking his wrist hard enough. It’s been sore since landing awkwardly in a January game. The follow through was one of the first things Tim taught his son. “Romeo, you got to feel it,” he’d say to his young son. “What do you mean, Dad?” “You got to feel it. You got to know it’s going in. It’s a feel thing.”

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderJun 20, 201812:25 pm

PUT SOME RESPECT ON CANDACE PARKER’S NAME

Up, down, up, down. It’s a rhythm all basketball players know and try to control. But the older you get, the more you realize how little control you have. You can do everything right and lose. You can do everything wrong and win. You train your body beyond its limits, but it fails you. “Why can’t I be healthy? Why can’t I catch a break?” Parker has questioned. She has felt disappointed about not yet capturing the six rings she set out to win to match Michael Jordan. But the black-and-white lens in which a young Parker once viewed success has grayed. She’s learned to live with outcomes, not as she wants them to be but exactly as they are, in all their glory and agony.

The Ringer by Mirin FaderMay 19, 20187:37 am

INDIA’S NEWEST NBA HOPEFUL IS A WINDOW INTO THE COUNTRY’S BASKETBALL FUTURE

Half the Indian village of Dera Baba Nanak had gathered in the Singh family home. It was late July 2020, and relatives, friends, neighbors, kids, reporters, and even local politicians had poured into the modest four-room space, filling the house with the sugary aroma of pinni, a traditional Punjabi sweet that’s stuffed with almonds, pistachios, and raisins. People had come to celebrate the then-19-year-old Princepal Singh, who had just been selected to the NBA G League’s select Ignite team. Standing at 6-foot-9 and 221 pounds, Singh is the tallest person in Dera Baba Nanak, a small farming community of just over 6,000 in the Gurdaspur district of Punjab, India. It’s a village where everyone knows everyone else. And everyone knows Princepal, whose nickname is “Prince.” He is the village’s star, hope, and portal to possibility: that someone from here could become something beyond here.

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderFeb 7, 201812:00 am

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ASIA DURR

Asia Durr isn’t blinking. Her No. 9 Louisville Cardinals are facing No. 5 Ohio State. Durr’s brown eyes are frozen, teeth clenched. She doesn’t see anyone. Doesn’t hear anything. In this moment, on this hardwood at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, someone is going to suffer. Durr jabs hard to the left, then crosses to the right—too quick, too slick—and her defender inevitably bites. Durr pops a step-back three, leaning like she knows it’s good. Of course it is. It’s only the first quarter, but she’s got that look in her eye. Terry Durr, Asia’s father, who is seated directly across from the Louisville bench, recognizes that look immediately. “She’s ready to destroy someone,” Terry says of his daughter.

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderFeb 5, 20184:09 pm

COLLEGE BASKETBALL’S BREAKOUT STAR: MIKAL BRIDGES, THE KAWHI LEONARD CLONE

They used to call him Noodles. Inspector Go Go Gadget. String Bean. Brittle (short for Brittle Bones). Praying Mantis. Mikal Bridges was so skinny and lanky and his arms were so long—”freakishly long,” Bridges tells me—that his Villanova teammates roasted him with a range of nicknames. The 6’7” swingman was an easy target then: a freshman. A young freshman (17 years old). About 185 pounds. Gangly shoulders, little head (they called him “Pea-head,” too).

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderJan 28, 20183:01 pm

TOP QB RECRUIT JUSTIN FIELDS CAN’T WAIT TO COMPETE WITH JAKE FROMM

Outside his home, outside Kennesaw, few can understand why the 6’3″, 225-pound quarterback with the size, athleticism, arm strength, lights-out quickness and razor-sharp IQ (he also has a 3.9 GPA) would choose Georgia. The program already has a true freshman in Jake Fromm, who led the Bulldogs to the SEC championship and national championship game. “It’s shocking,” says Barton Simmons, director of scouting for 247Sports. Maybe to outsiders. But to Fields? The decision was as natural as a trip to the Waffle House (he goes after every game and orders a chocolate-chip waffle). It just felt right.

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderDec 15, 201711:48 am

HOW MO’NE DAVIS MADE HER HOOP DREAMS COME TRUE: INSIDE LIFE AFTER LITTLE LEAGUE

Mo’ne Davis calls for the ball. She drains a three, holding her follow-through for a second longer as she and a teammate battle two others for most threes made during a drill. “BOOM!” the boys on the sideline shout. Davis, wearing white and chrome Nike Kobe A.D.s, scurries around the perimeter, releasing shot after shot. “They cheatin’!” Davis hollers, waving her arms and hip-checking one of her opponents. She pops three more in a row. “Oh yeaaaaahhhh,” she says, bouncing up and down, sensing victory. Davis has been knocking down shots at Philadelphia’s Marian Anderson Recreation Center with these same boys—her teammates on the Anderson Monarchs, a youth recreational team—for the past eight years. The center’s gym, with its four rows of brown bleachers, its cream-colored wall tile and its green and white scoreboard, has long been home to the 15-year-old.

Bleacher Report by Mirin FaderDec 12, 201712:03 pm

SO YOU THINK YOU KNOW LONZO BALL…

Reporters box each other out, jockeying for position, their arms outstretched with recorders, their bodies shoulder to shoulder. One woman complains that a man, over six feet tall, is blocking her view. He turns around, angrily, and refuses to budge. Members of the antsy crowd need the best view of Ball, the one who throws bullet passes 94 feet; the one who weaves through traffic with be-quick-but-don’t-hurry speed; the one who has been anointed savior of the NBA‘s most storied franchise. It’s Lakers media day, in late September, but it could have been called “Lonzo Day.” He’s here. The 19-year-old is wearing his black ZO2 Prime Remix sneakers below a grape-colored sleeve over his knee and calf. “My swag pad,” he says, smiling with all of his teeth, calm in a way only he can be: reserved, yet warm; cold-blooded competitive, yet composed.

espnW by Mirin FaderJun 20, 201711:47 am

LACROSSE CLEARS PATH TO GREENER–AND SHORTER–PASTURES FOR TWO STRAWBERRY MANSION TEENS

Going one-on-one, McRae slips, her legs nearly scissoring into splits, but recovers to score. She dances in front of the net while El-Amin Gateward snaps each pose with an imaginary camera. “Give ’em face, Sis!” El-Amin Gateward screams in delight. “Give ’em face!” That two black girls are celebrating their lacrosse skills — honed enough to take them to college — is something of a rarity. Lacrosse is played in predominantly white, affluent areas. At the NCAA level, 86.4 percent of Division I women’s lacrosse players in 2015-16 were white, while just 2.8 percent were black.