A reporter heads to Istanbul, where Iverson is playing minor league hoops in a 3,200-seat arena and hanging out at T.G.I. Friday’s.

A profile of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, written at the midpoint of his career.

A profile of Yao Ming published during his second season in the NBA.

Brian Windhorst was one of the first reporters to cover LeBron James. He was there in high school. There at the draft. There in Cleveland. And now he’s there in Miami, though the relationship is far from what it used to be.

A profile of Auburn quarterback Cameron Newton, junior college transfer and Heisman Trophy frontrunner.

A profile of Ernie Adams, Bill Belichick’s mysterious right hand man.

The story of one of the great final acts in sports history.

The story of a young man killed in Juarez.

Pitching a no-hitter in the middle of a multi-day acid bender was only one of Dock Ellis’ many amazing exploits.

Or, the perils of promoting a middle schooler’s basketball skills. An excerpt from Play Their Hearts Out.

Ten years ago, a pair of legendary TV executives decided it was time to change the formula for football broadcasting. One bet on Dennis Miller. The other bankrolled Vince McMahon and the XFL.

Long before he lied about taking steroids and was indicted for perjury, Clemens was just a good ol’ boy from Texas with a world-class workout regimen.

An interview with Sandy Koufax on “the management of excellence.”

How Madden NFL went from a programmer’s childhood dream to a $3 billion business.

Kevin Hart wanted a scholarship to play Division I college football. It didn’t come. So he made one up–and called a press conference.

Why all soccer fans should root for Holland to lose to Spain.

Ty Cobb, who would go on to be the greatest baseball player of his time, was a 17-year-old minor league prospect when his mother shot and killed his father at home in Georgia.

Argentina’s Lio Messi, the best soccer player on the planet, stands all of 5’7” and needed growth-hormone injections to get there.

Lance Stephenson, the latest in a long line of Coney Island basketball prodigies, carries a burden none of his predecessors did: restoring New York City’s reputation as the hoops capital of the world.

Over a scotch a few months after his underdog Jets won Super Bowl III, a 26-year-old Joe Namath told Jimmy Breslin what he’d done the night before the game: “I went out and got a bottle and grabbed this girl.”

On the day of the earthquake, two men went into Haiti’s Soccer Federation headquarters. Only one came out.

In the wake of a brazen but mysterious Philadelphia gunfight, Marvin Harrison, the man who holds the NFL record for receptions in a season, may find himself with a permanent record of a different sort.

Sixty years ago, the U.S. upset England in the World Cup on a goal from Joe Gaetjens. In most countries he would have been idolized. Instead, he was ignored in America and marked for death in his native Haiti.

The latest frontier of statistical research in baseball—and the newest front in the Yanks/Red Sox arms race—is defense. And it’s yielding some surprising insights about who is actually worth his salary.