March Madness is once again upon us; excitement abounds. We’re not wise enough to offer any bracket advice— and why bother consuming such punditry, when odds are your picks will be a mess by this weekend anyway? We can, however, share our enthusiasm over these six storylines, which serve as a justifiable excuse to drain your productivity this week. An Underhanded Maneuver By early February, the free-throw woes of Wofford College big man Kyler Filewich were becoming too much to bear: he had at one point missed 14 straight foul shots in conference play. So the Terriers coaching staff approached him with a radical idea: why not try shooting them underhanded? Such a “granny-style” approach to foul shooting has never really taken off, despite NBA Hall of Famer Rick Barry hitting nearly 90% of his attempts as a professional underhanded. Filewich, however, was ready to try anything. After an extended tutoring session with Barry himself, Filewich hit his first underhanded attempt on Feb. 5, on national TV against University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, and has attracted attention ever since due to his unorthodox style. Filewich hasn’t exactly put up Barry-esque numbers at the charity stripe: he was, for example, 5 for 17 in the recent Southern Conference tournament. But that’s better than 0 for 14, and the Winnipeg native won SoCon Tournament MVP honors in leading Wofford to the dance, where the 15-seeded Terriers will play Tennessee, in Lexington, Ky., on Thursday. California Dreaming The Southern California sports powers haven’t won a women’s basketball title since Police Academy—the very first one—was killing at the box office. UCLA, which owns a record 11 men’s titles, has never won a national championship on the women’s side. USC last won the women’s championship 41 years ago, when the legendary Cheryl Miller was playing for the Trojans. That could change this year, as UCLA, playing its first year in the Big Ten conference, finished with a 30-2 record, which included a 77-62 victory over the defending champion South Carolina in December. The Bruins, who play in the first round on Friday, earned the tournament’s top overall seed; South Carolina finished second. USC, however, handed UCLA its only two losses, and also earned one of the four top seeds. The Trojans are led by sophomore sensation JuJu Watkins, who averaged 24.6 points per game this season, good for second-best in the nation. Advertisement Red Storm Rising St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has more than proven his worth as a turnaround artist: in each of his six stops as a college head coach (Boston University, Providence College, Kentucky, Louisville, Iona, and St. John’s), he’s led teams with a losing or mediocre record at the time of his hiring to 20-plus victories by the end of his second year in charge. For the first time since 1986, St. John’s won both the Big East regular and conference tournament championships; the Red Storm packed Madison Square Garden all season and brought pizazz back to a New York City college basketball scene that felt languid for decades. St. John’s begins its quest to make its first Final Four in 40 years on Thursday night in Providence, against Omaha. If they advance to the second round to face Arkansas, who plays Kansas in the first round, Pitino will square off against Razorbacks coach John Calipari. Pitino reportedly helped Calipari get his head-coaching start, at Pitino’s alma mater, UMass, back in the late 1980s. Since then, the two alpha Hall of Famers have become, in the words of Sports Illustrated, “The Very Best of Enemies.” Advertisement The tournament selection committee clearly screwed up by putting underqualified North Carolina in March Madness. That UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham chaired the committee provided terrible optics for the NCAA. But a potential Pitino-Calipari duel in Round 2? That’s some quality work. Ivy, for Three The women’s selection committee also got it right when it broke convention to award a mid-major conference like the Ivy League not only one at-large bid to the tournament—a victory in itself—but a second as well, giving the Ivies three women’s NCAA tournament teams for the first time in history. All three teams made their case. Harvard was the automatic qualifier by beating Columbia in the Ivy League title game last Saturday: senior guard Harmoni Turner went out and dropped 44 points on Princeton in the semis of the Ivy tournament, before adding another 24-point outing against the Lions in the championship, to clinch Harvard’s first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007. The Crimson, seeded 10th, face No. 7 Michigan State in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday. Advertisement Columbia finished the regular season atop the Ivy League at 13-1; the Lions earned a second straight at-large bid to the NCAAs. Leading scorer Riley Weiss, a sophomore guard from Long Island, struggled from the field in the Ivy Tournament, shooting just 6-22 over two games; she’ll need to find her groove for the Lions to win their First Four game against Washington in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Thursday; the winner plays West Virginia in the first round on Saturday. Princeton finished second in the league at 12-2, and squares off against Iowa State’s dominant center Audi Crooks in a First Four game on Wednesday in South Bend, Ind. Princeton beat North Carolina State in the first round two years ago and knocked off Kentucky in 2022. Tiger coach Carla Berube, a member of Geno Auriemma’s first UConn national championship team in 1995, owns an impressive 121-24 record in her six years as Princeton’s coach. Auriemma can’t coach forever. Check out his potential successor this week. Advertisement McNeese Management Student managers of basketball teams get the spotlight: they’re too busy doing the behind-the-scenes grunt work, everything from dishing out towels to players to helping arrange travel to rebounding at shootarounds. McNeese State senior Amir Khan, however, has gone viral for leading the team’s tunnel walkouts, with a boom box, before games. Nicknamed “Aura” by his teammates, the hype man has become so popular, he’s signed Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals with Buffalo Wild Wings, TickPick, and Insomnia Cookies; according to On3.com, Khan is the first manager to ever sign a NIL agreement. "If they kept manager stats for rebounding and wiping up wet spots on the court,” Khan says in his official McNeese State bio, “I'd put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers." Khan’s hype game will be in full force on Thursday, when the No. 12 Cowboys face Clemson in Providence. Advertisement One More Paige for the Record Books Two years ago, UConn’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Campus, came up with a list of the top 10 women’s basketball players in the school's history. No easy task, given all the greats that have come through Storrs during the Auriemma era, but the student journalists did a fine job: Breanna Stewart, Maya Moore, and Diana Taurasi topped the rankings. Paige Bueckers would surely be on such a list of it were done today. But unlike those 10 greats recognized a couple of years back, she’s never won a championship. By any measure, the senior standout is an all-time UConn great: in 2021, she became the first freshman in history to win National Player of the Year honors, and this season “Paige Buckets” reached the 2,000-point milestone faster than any other player in UConn’s storied history. But the lack of a title, at a school that produces them with regularity, is a frustrating hole in her otherwise stellar resume. Bueckers plans to forgo her extra year of college eligibility to enter the WNBA, where she’ll most likely be the top overall pick in April’s draft. Her last championship campaign starts Saturday, in the first round against Arkansas State.

Duke University’s men’s basketball success over the years—the national championships, the Final Four appearances, all the NBA players who’ve honed their craft down in Durham—has created a blue-chip brand. It’s also spawned that most uniquely American sports specimen: the Dukie everyone loves to hate. Christian Laettner, the 6-ft. 11-in. sharpshooter with the matinee hair and icy stare, won back-to-back March Madness titles with Duke in 1991 and 1992, but once stomped his foot on a Kentucky player during an Elite Eight game, and was the subject of a documentary called, fittingly, I Hate Christian Laettner. Shooting guard Grayson Allen, now a member of the Phoenix Suns, gained a reputation for tripping people; big man Kyle Filipowski, a rookie for the Utah Jazz, caught flak for the same last season, when he tripped a player from Duke archrival North Carolina, though he said the incident was unintentional. JJ Reddick, the current head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, got under the skin of opponents and fans alike as a Duke All-American in the mid-aughts. Nineties point guard Steve Wojciechowski’s signature move was slapping the floor when getting ready to guard an opponent, to show the world he was rarin’ to go. But as the NCAA men’s tournament tips off on March 18 with the “First Four” play-in games, and the round-of-64 bracket gets going on March 20, basketball fans will have a new Duke star to watch–one they might actually like. Hoping to lead the powerhouse to its first national title in a decade is freshman Cooper Flagg, the 18-year-old Duke phenom who’s the most exciting do-it-all player to compete in college basketball since Kevin Durant spent his freshman year at Texas nearly two decades ago. And unlike some of his predecessors, Flagg, the likely national college player of the year who’s also the consensus top pick in the 2025 NBA Draft—in the very likely case he decides to go pro—seems more inclined to let his talent do the talking. Just take a peek at his March 5 performance against Wake Forest, in what was likely his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke’s iconic home gym: in Duke’s 93-60 victory, the 6-ft. 9-in. Flagg scored 28 points to go along with 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks, and a couple of steals. He displayed his full arsenal: driving in the lane and finishing with his left—or weak—hand, a one-legged mid-range step-back jump-shot, a three-pointer dribbling to his left, a three-pointer moving to his right, spinning and dishing to the open man, a crossover dribble and two-handed slam on a fast break, and more. Flagg had every right to flaunt his superior ability, and taunt his opponent, in one instance earlier this year, when he absolutely posterized Guillermo Diaz Graham, a 7-ft. junior from Pittsburgh, with a one-handed jam at Cameron. He did come face-to-face with Diaz Graham for a brief tick after the dunk—a perfectly human reaction, especially since Diaz Graham also fouled him on the play–but that was more because Diaz Graham was standing in Flagg’s way while he moved toward the adoring crowd. “What I would say about Cooper Flagg is that he has an appropriate ego,” says USA men’s basketball national team director Sean Ford, who watched Flagg dominate a scrimmage against the 2024 U.S. Olympic team in Las Vegas last summer. Flagg hadn’t even turned 18 when he hit a three-pointer in Anthony Davis’ face. “He knows how good he is. But he also doesn’t try to be flamboyant about it,” says Ford. “He plays as hard as he can. He brings everything he has. That’s what makes you want to root for him.” A Duke Blue Devil to cheer for? My word. Flagg’s unlikely trajectory also makes him appealing. He’s from Maine, the only contiguous state to never have a school in the men’s Division 1 NCAA tournament. The last Maine native selected in the NBA Draft was Jeff Turner, 41 years ago, by the New Jersey Nets–and he grew up in Florida. Flagg and his twin brother Ace—a high school senior who has committed to play at the University of Maine next year—were born and raised in Pine Tree State. Their parents, Kelly and Ralph, both played collegiately in Maine: Kelly at the University of Maine, Ralph at Eastern Maine Community College. (Kelly, who had some choice words for North Carolina fans after Duke's 82-69 win over the Tar Heels on March 8, may be the trash-talker of the family.) On the high school travel circuit, Cooper Flagg eschewed the more nationally dominant club teams to suit up, along with his brother and their buddies, for Maine United. The team thrived in front of college coaches during summer showcase tournaments. “There were a lot of doubters, because Maine doesn't have that history of producing NBA players,” says Matt MacKenzie, Flagg’s Maine-based basketball trainer. “It took some time for people to really believe in the hype. Any time that we put an expectation on him, he just continued to blow it out of the water.” Advertisement At Duke, he’s filled the stat sheet all season, averaging 19.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game. On the defensive side of the ball, he’s also averaged 1.5 steals per game, with 1.3 blocks. Duke is 28-3, and finished 19-1 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. “He’s going to be a coach’s dream in the league,” says Chris Brickley, a basketball trainer who’s worked out Flagg as well as many prominent NBA stars, such as Durant, LeBron James, Jimmy Butler, Donovan Mitchell, and Carmelo Anthony. That league, of course, is the NBA, which Flagg will almost certainly join this summer. As Flagg was subbed out of the last home game of Duke’s season, the Cameron faithful serenated him with cheers of “One more year! One more year!” Flagg responded by yelling to the crowd, “Run it back!” Flagg has expressed a desire to return to Duke—by all accounts, he’s enjoying the college experience. And now that college athletes can earn lucrative Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) deals—Flagg has sponsorship agreements with New Balance, Gatorade, and Fanatics, among others, and reportedly makes a healthy seven figures—a sophomore season at Duke could pay dividends. But he’s bound to make much more in the NBA—his second contract in the league could be worth close to $400 million. Why risk that windfall by returning to college another year and possibly getting hurt? Advertisement “I think he’s going to go and enter the NBA draft,” says MacKenzie, who has continued to work with Flagg during his freshman year at Duke. “Right now his goal is to make a Final Four and win an NCAA championship. He just doesn't want to look too far beyond that.” Flagg sprained his left ankle in the ACC tournament quarterfinal against Georgia Tech on March 13. He missed the next two games, which Duke won. Duke confirmed, however, that he would be ready to play in the first round against Mount St. Mary's on Friday. Hoops is a star-driven sport, and one of the most highly touted NBA prospects ever going on a deep run, for a team like Duke—a draw for both supporters and haters—is sure to brighten up March. Duke’s third-year coach Jon Scheyer, who’s been tasked with the difficult job of succeeding the all-time winningest coach in men’s college basketball history, Mike Krzyzewski, is forging his own path with the likable Flagg.

On Valentine’s Day, Lewis Hamilton enters a sprawling studio space in northwest London and intently stares at the magnificent creature standing off in the distance. “Sh-t,” says Hamilton to no one in particular. “I’m nervous.” Soon enough, however, the seven-time Formula One world champion overcomes his anxiety and is standing face-to-face with a shiny black stallion named Aroma. He pets his nose, massages his neck, generally spreads his hands all over Aroma’s thick coat. He is doing his allergies, the source of his initial fear, no favors. But Hamilton, a literal knight, is enamored, peppering the horse master with questions. Where’s Aroma from? (Portugal.) Can he sleep lying down? (Yes.) How much does he weigh? (About 1,300 lb. Only a few hundred less than Hamilton’s race car.) He’s throwing health caution to the wind in order to commemorate his much ballyhooed move from Mercedes, where he won six of his seven F1 driver titles, to the venerated Scuderia Ferrari HP race team: a photo of himself positioned in front of an actual black horse standing on his hind legs, mimicking the Italian automaker’s famous logo. Like Hamilton, Aroma—who is retired but still does the occasional photo shoot—has an impressive resume, including appearances in Robin Hood and Maleficent, ads for Hermès and Burberry, and a Dua Lipa video; he is joined by Theo, a stunt horse you might recognize from Bridgerton, among other things. “This is going to be such an iconic picture,” says Hamilton while trying on outfits for the shoot. “Super timeless.” That depends, of course, on what comes after. At 40, Hamilton is aiming to not only win a record eighth F1 driver title—cementing his status as the greatest F1 driver to ever live and ending the longest-ever championship drought for the most storied race team on the planet—but also fulfill a lifelong dream. His move to Ferrari, announced before the 2024 season, was shocking worldwide front-page news: he had suited up for Mercedes for more than a decade, helped build a more diverse workforce there, and hoped to someday acquire an ownership stake in the team. It seemed he would ride into the sunset with the Silver Arrows. Hamilton had other ideas. “You can’t stand still for too long,” Hamilton tells TIME, in his first in-depth interview about his decision to leave Mercedes for Ferrari. “I needed to throw myself into something uncomfortable again. Honestly, I thought all my firsts were done. Your first car, your first crash, your first date, first day of school. The excitement I got by the idea of, ‘This is my first time in the red suit, the first time in the Ferrari.’ Wow. Honestly, I’ve never been so excited.” During the 2024 F1 season, Hamilton, out of respect for Mercedes—with whom he was still under contract and racing—didn’t talk much about the switch. The situation was awkward and unprecedented. (Picture LeBron James suiting up for the Los Angeles Lakers knowing he’d be playing the following year for a rival, like the Boston Celtics. Exactly. It would never happen.) All sides appear to have handled it as professionally as possible: Hamilton ended a 945-day losing streak by winning his hometown race, at Silverstone in Britain, in July before winning again in Belgium three weeks later. Meanwhile Carlos Sainz, the Ferrari driver whom Hamilton is replacing this year, helped Scuderia finish second in the constructor, or team, standings, just a few points behind 2024 champion McLaren. Hamilton’s road to the title record won’t be easy. Some critics have questioned Ferrari’s strategy of signing an aging driver, whose best days could very well be in the rearview. They’ve wondered whether Ferrari’s more interested in marketing than winning—Hamilton is still F1’s most popular driver, by a mile, as well as an internationally known cultural figure with a hand in fashion, film, and business. (He’s co-chairing the Met Gala in May alongside Colman Domingo, Pharrell Williams, A$AP Rocky, and Anna Wintour; LeBron James is honorary chair.) Plus, a slew of younger drivers like reigning four-time champion Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, 27; McLaren’s Lando Norris, 25; and Hamilton’s new Ferrari teammate, Charles LeClerc, 27, could keep him off the top of the podium. “The old man is a state of mind,” says Hamilton. “Of course your body ages. But I’m never going to be an old man.” The 2025 F1 campaign, which kicks off in Australia on March 16, comes laced with intrigue. Hamilton sits at the epicenter. Ferrari is religion in Italy; when the team wins an F1 race, the bells of the Church of St. Blaise in Maranello, the small city near Bologna that houses Ferrari headquarters, ring in celebration. So Hamilton’s quest to end Ferrari’s agony, while breaking the individual title record set by Michael Schumacher—who won five straight titles with Ferrari from 2000 to 2004—will be appointment theater. Meanwhile, Hamilton is co-producing, along with Jerry Bruckheimer and others, an F1 movie, aptly called F1, that is almost literally a Brad Pitt vehicle. The film, which comes out in June, plus a competitive race for the championship, could deliver a jolt to the sport’s popularity, especially in the U.S., where F1 has boomed but flattened out a bit, given Verstappen’s predictable dominance. A Hamilton championship in red, in the twilight of his racing life, would be nothing less than one of the greatest mic-drop moments in sports history. “I don’t know if I can find an adjective to describe that,” says American racing legend Mario Andretti, the 1978 F1 champion who raced for Ferrari in the early ’70s. “Nothing is missing in his career. But oh man, how better can you describe your career after that? Oh my God, he’d be the king of all kings.” Two weeks before the stallion photo shoot, Hamilton is striking golf balls into a simulator at an indoor club on the banks of the Thames. (He has a pronounced slice.) He doesn’t golf much these days, but Hamilton being Hamilton—a man who has taken full advantage of this sport’s jet-setting ways to become one of the world’s most prominent collectors of influential people—he last played a round with actor Tom Holland, a.k.a. Spider-Man. His other golf partners have included Samuel L. Jackson and Kelly Slater, the surfing GOAT. He was once supposed to play with another GOAT, Michael Jordan, but when Hamilton got to the course, he says, Jordan “didn’t end up being there.” As we’re taking swings, I ask Hamilton if he’s checked out TGL, the indoor golf competition founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy that just launched its first season in the U.S. He hasn’t. I explain some of the particulars—it’s a team league, ESPN is showing it on weeknights—before it sounds familiar. But Hamilton is involved with so many projects—movies, art, fashion lines, the Denver Broncos, a pet-food company, a plant-based burger chain with Leonardo DiCaprio—that he can’t quite remember whether he poured some money into this new outfit. “I might have,” he says, with a laugh. (He did.) Hamilton takes a break from golf, reclines on a couch, and orders a latte before sharing the story of how he arrived at this moment. It began a long time ago, when he was a kid growing up in public housing north of London. His first Ferrari memories have stuck with him. He would drive Schumacher’s car in racing video games. The Ferrari replica featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—the 1961 250 GT California Spyder—is still, to this day, Hamilton’s favorite. “That’s the ultimate retirement car,” he says. “I can just see myself with Roscoe, him with a scarf and goggles in the seat next to me, driving down the PCH.” (Roscoe, Hamilton’s pet bulldog—who, like his owner, is vegan—has an Instagram account with 1.1 million followers.) McLaren signed Hamilton to a driver’s deal in 1998, when he was 13. In 2006, Hamilton won the championship in what is now known as Formula Two. “I did have the bit of red on my helmet,” he says. During that F2 season, and the one prior in F3, Hamilton raced for team principal Frédéric Vasseur, whose management style and ability to recruit top engineering talent to his lower-level operation impressed the young driver. Hamilton figured Vasseur would be a F1 leader one day. Hamilton won his first F1 championship in 2008, his second season with McLaren. He competed there for four more seasons before jumping, in 2013, to Mercedes, a middling team that Hamilton lifted to championship heights. Through it all, Hamilton maintained cordial relations with Ferrari leadership. He’d walk past the Ferrari garage at races, say “ciao” to the mechanics, and hear them say “vieni Ferrari” (come to Ferrari). Around 2018, Hamilton met with Ferrari chairman John Elkann. Both sides expressed a desire to see Hamilton in red. But by the end of the 2020 season, Hamilton had four straight championships with Mercedes. He had no reason to jump ship. “If I’m really honest, I had accepted the fact that I’m probably not going to drive for Ferrari,” says Hamilton. “I was OK with that.” After the 2021 season, Hamilton nearly walked away from racing. He—and millions of his fans—felt his record eighth driver title was stolen from him, when during the final race of the year, in Abu Dhabi, an official’s controversial decision allowed Verstappen to overtake Hamilton in the last lap and clinch his first title. Hamilton ultimately refused to quit without a fight, but he failed to win a single race as Verstappen cruised to another pair of championships. Hamilton signed a two-year extension with Mercedes in the summer of 2023, but the deal allowed him an option to leave after one year. Meanwhile, true to Hamilton’s prediction, his de facto coach in the minors, Vasseur, took over an F1 team in 2016. Before the 2023 season, he was hired for a new team-principal gig—at Ferrari. Vasseur got wind of the loophole in Hamilton’s new deal—“He told me at one stage,” says Vasseur. “Good news”—and aimed to sign an agreement with Hamilton before the 2024 season. He wanted his drivers under contract last year, LeClerc and Sainz, to be free of whispers regarding their status. So while Hamilton was at his home in Colorado in December 2023, he got a call from Vasseur asking him to join Ferrari starting in 2025. “I remember getting off the phone and, like, almost shaking,” says Hamilton, who’s now almost shaking while recalling the moment. “I was like, Oh God!” He told a friend who was with him about the call; they both sat in silence on a bathroom floor in shock. “I was like, Holy sh-t,” says Hamilton. “I literally just signed with Mercedes.” Breaking up with a team that felt like family was far from a no-brainer. And he didn’t have much time to decide. “It was a lot to take in, and my emotions were really high,” says Hamilton. “So I honestly had to go for a walk.” He left the house for an hour to decompress. Hamilton then spent a few days meditating. He was leaning toward Ferrari. “My eyes felt really calm and present,” he says. “This is the right thing for me.” When he’d switched from McLaren to Mercedes all those years ago, he solicited too much advice. Here, he confided in just a few family members and trusted friends. “One cannot discount the Ferrari influence on the sport, especially through the eyes of a child,” says Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the former chair of the Starbucks board, who’s very close to Hamilton. During negotiations, after every phone call with Ferrari, he’d jump around like a little kid. “We’re in a time of reimagining the future, reimagining what really dreaming is about,” says Hamilton. “I’m going to Ferrari, man, and that’s the biggest dream.” Not everyone is so thrilled. The day after he informed Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff of his decision was Hamilton’s annual paintball outing with his race-team mechanics. When he arrived, he was too nervous to get out of his car. “These are guys I’ve been with so many years,” says Hamilton. He eventually stood on top of a table to address his decision. His squad appeared understanding and supportive. But they let him have it in paintball. “They lit me up, hard,” says Hamilton. “It was so painful.” At one point, he was hiding behind a barrel shooting at the other team when he was struck from behind. A member of his own squadron had nailed him. “Freaking guy,” says Hamilton. They laughed about it afterward and managed to get through the season. “There is no bad blood,” says Hamilton. “Absolutely not. We won so many championships.” (Mercedes declined to comment for this story.) Andrea Kimi Antonelli, an 18-year-old from Bologna, will take Hamilton’s place in the Mercedes lineup. “They have all the ingredients to win world championships, and they will win more world championships,” says Hamilton of Mercedes. “I have no doubt.” In a book published in November—Inside Mercedes F1: Life in the Fast Lane—Wolff says Hamilton’s move “helps us because it avoids the moment where we need to tell the sport’s most iconic driver that we want to stop ... We’re in a sport where cognitive sharpness is extremely important, and I believe everyone has a shelf life.” The comments caused a stir, and Wolff clarified that Hamilton is still “very sharp.” Hamilton insists Wolff’s remark doesn’t bother him. He points to athletes like Tom Brady and LeBron James who’ve achieved success into their 40s. “Don’t ever compare me to anybody else,” says Hamilton. “I’m the first and only Black driver that’s ever been in this sport. I’m built different. I’ve been through a lot. I’ve had my own journey. You can’t compare me to another 40-year-old, past or present, Formula One driver in history. Because they are nothing like me. I’m hungry, driven, don’t have a wife and kids. I’m focused on one thing, and that’s winning. That’s my No. 1 priority.” He also dismisses criticism from the broader racing community. Former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan said in a December podcast that it was “absolutely suicidal” for Ferrari to drop Sainz from its roster, given the strong working relationship between him and LeClerc. (Sainz will now race for Williams.) “I’ve always welcomed the negativity,” says Hamilton. “I never, ever reply to any of the older, ultimately, white men who have commented on my career and what they think I should be doing. How you show up, how you present yourself, how you perform slowly dispels that.” Others, including former Ferrari driver Jacky Ickx, have suggested that Ferrari has signed Hamilton primarily for his commercial value. “I think it’s really unfair to Lewis, some of the comments saying, ‘This is a marketing operation,’” says Elkann, the Ferrari chairman. “Truth said, Lewis doesn’t need that. Ferrari doesn’t need that. What we need to do is win championships and do great things on the track. If that happens, what we can do outside of the track, in some ways, takes care of itself. There’s unlimited possibilities.” The pressure, internal and external, Hamilton faces is immense. No F1 team owns more constructor titles than Ferrari, but they last won in 2008. Ferrari also owns the driver record, with 15, but the last Ferrari driver to win an individual crown was Kimi Raikkonen, in 2007. Ferrari fans are so passionate that they go by their own name, the tifosi. At the Ferrari museum, not far from the team’s 9.3 million-sq.-ft. campus in Maranello, Italy, pilgrims often start crying, or propose marriage, in the Hall of Victories, which showcases the team’s championship cars and more than 100 trophies. One night in early February, at the Ristorante Montana, which displays a trove of Ferrari memorabilia in its dining room, Andrea Puttini, a seller of building materials from Naples, is outside enjoying a smoke. “In Italy, we say it’s not important if you speak bad or speak good about something,” says Puttini. “The importance is that you are talking about this. And Hamilton, just for being here, he lets us talk all over the world about Ferrari.” Hamilton connected with as many of his new co-workers as possible during his first visit to Maranello in January, shaking hands until his arm was pulsating. “The amount of ciaos and grazies and piaceres I was saying, aye aye aye,” he says. After his first test run, he went out to greet the supporters lining a bridge that overlooks Ferrari’s private racetrack. A few weeks later, a fan decked out in a red Ferrari shirt and cowboy hat cut down a tree to allow the tifosi a better look at a Hamilton practice. Hamilton first spotted himself in a Ferrari suit while in, of all places, the loo; he was washing his hands and looked up into the mirror. “I’m in red, I’m like, Whoa!” he says. He paused for a moment to take in the reflection. He liked what he saw. “The suit looked so good on me,” says Hamilton, laughing. “I’m like, Damn.” When seated in a Ferrari race car for the first time, he closed his eyes when the engine started and smiled. “The vibrations are different,” he says. He let them course through his body. “You just wonder how that feels,” Hamilton says. Now he knows. “It’s a really, really special moment.” Still, Hamilton is well aware that Italian sports fans have not always been so welcoming of Black athletes like himself. He competed in karting races there in his younger days, starting at around 12, and experienced racist abuse, just as he had in England. He prefers not to go into details. “I don’t want to dwell,” he says. But he’s heard the racist chants directed at Black soccer players in particular. “I’m not going to lie, it definitely crossed my mind when I was thinking about my decision,” he says. “Like in so many things, it’s often such a small group of people that set that trend for many. I don’t think that it’s going to be a problem.” Ferrari’s diversity—or lack thereof—was Hamilton’s more pressing concern. In the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, as part of the worldwide sports protest movement against racial injustice, Hamilton started the Hamilton Commission to offer recommendations for more Black representation in U.K. motorsports. Mercedes launched its own diversity initiative in the months that followed and began hiring personnel from underrepresented groups, including Black engineers. “I did think, Oh my God, I’ve finally got a more diverse working environment that we’ve built over time,” says Hamilton. “And now I’m going back to the beginning of my time with Mercedes, where it wasn’t diverse.” Along with every other F1 team, Ferrari signed a Diversity and Inclusion charter in November. While the new Trump Administration has made a point of attacking diversity—the President has signed a series of executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—Hamilton, for one, remains locked in. “I’m not going to change what he does, or the government does. All I can do is try to make sure that in my space, in my environment, I’m trying to elevate people,” he says. “There’s going to be forces along the way that don’t want that, for whatever reason I can’t fathom. That doesn’t stop me. It is a fight that we’ll just keep fighting.” Hamilton is confident that Ferrari is committed to inclusion. Vasseur, Hamilton’s new boss, agrees that it’s important, though as he fiddles with a binder clip in an office at Ferrari headquarters, where trade secrets are so closely guarded visitors must place stickers over their mobile-phone cameras (red ones, of course), he suggests that it may not be his top goal. “It’s not politically correct, but first is performance,” he says. “I’m keen to go into the direction of diversity and so on. We are doing our best effort. We are trying to push in this direction, but I want to build up the best team.” I show Vasseur, who hails from France, a photo I found online: it’s him and Hamilton some 20 years ago, celebrating a win. He shows me some photos on his own phone, of his children, who are now grown, with Hamilton. He’s enjoying the walk down memory lane. But, he says, “We can’t be sentimental.” Switching teams is difficult for any driver. The steering wheel, the cockpit, the terminology, they’re all different. “I’m literally learning a completely new book,” says Hamilton. F1 regulations allow limited practice time in the new car. He’s made strides in his Italian, thanks to lessons, but he’s by no means fluent. It took Hamilton more than four months to win a race in his first season with Mercedes. What gives Vasseur confidence that Hamilton will accelerate that learning curve? “I could reply like a book and give you something that you want to write,” Vasseur replies. “But at the end of the day, at this part of the season, the feeling, the first time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, will be nothing compared to race one in Australia. You will forget about everything that happened before. It’s all about pure performance.” While Hamilton swears his devotion to Ferrari, his schedule has remained plenty full. A Fashion Week and red-carpet regular, he has his own production company, a Dior line, and other enterprises. He says he’s in the preliminary stages of developing scripts for a comedy—it doesn’t involve racing—and a film pertaining to pets. (That’s all he’ll offer.) But the biggest thing on the horizon, besides of course the 24 Grand Prix races in the season, is the upcoming F1 movie. Tom Cruise had first connected Hamilton with director Joseph Kosinski because Hamilton was interested in an acting role in Top Gun: Maverick. Kosinski was ready to bring him on board, but Hamilton was still fighting for championships with Mercedes and couldn’t afford the time commitment. Cruise screened the movie, which grossed $1.5 billion worldwide upon its 2022 release, for Hamilton in London. “I was crying a bit inside,” Hamilton says. “Ah, that could have been me!” So when Kosinski called Hamilton about his F1 project, Hamilton jumped at the chance to be a producer. Early in the process, he took Pitt, who plays a veteran F1 driver in the film, for a drive around a track near Los Angeles. “He gave Brad the scare of a lifetime in a lap,” says Kosinski. “Brad was clawing at the windows, begging to get out.” Hamilton was also part of the casting process and offered instructive feedback. “The notes are so detailed,” says Bruckheimer. “‘When you’re going into that next turn, you have the car in second gear, it should be in third. I can hear it. I can hear the sound of it.’” He pushed for Hans Zimmer, composer of The Lion King, Gladiator, Dune, and other hits, to score it. His close relationship with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali, a former Ferrari team principal, helped the filmmakers gain access to F1 tracks and races to shoot scenes. “He opened all those doors for us into that world,” says Kosinski. “We would not have been able to do this without him.” Hamilton is predicting box-office success. “It’s going to blow away anything that’s ever been done in Formula One before,” Hamilton says. The Netflix behind-the-scenes docuseries, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, has been properly credited for expanding F1’s popularity, especially in the U.S. Hamilton believes this movie will compel viewers from all different backgrounds to become fans, or even pursue a career in F1. “Netflix has been huge,” he says. “This is going to be even bigger, on more of a global scale.” While F1 might not count as art-house fare—“I don’t think we set out for it to be, like, an Oscar-winning movie,” says Hamilton—he’s promising a memorable experience. “The goal is to make people feel good, to bring people in, to inspire people,” he says. “We want you to leave the cinema and be like, ‘Wow, that was freaking wicked.’” But even with his creative juices flowing, he’s as energized as ever to drive. In other words, unlike Aroma, whose presence does not seem to have triggered Hamilton’s allergies at all, he has no plans to slow down. “What I can tell you is, retirement is nowhere on my radar,” says Hamilton. “I could be here until I’m 50, who knows.” Hamilton believes that he and LeClerc are the strongest team pairing in the sport and that Verstappen is “absolutely” beatable. “I know exactly where the North Star is,” says Hamilton. “I know where I need to go. I know how to get there. It’s far, and it’s going to be tough to get there, but I know I’ve got all the ingredients, all the people, an amazing team around me. So it’s how much you want it. And I can’t express to you how much I want it.”

Diana Taurasi, the all-time leading scorer in WNBA history and a six-time Olympic gold medalist, usually starts preparing for her upcoming season on January 1. She gives herself four months to work on all facets of her game before training camp with the Phoenix Mercury begins. This New Year’s Day, however, hit different. “I just didn’t have it in me,” Taurasi, 42, tells TIME from her home in Phoenix. “That was pretty much when I knew it was time to walk away.” In an exclusive conversation with TIME, Taurasi reveals publicly for the first time that she’s retiring from basketball. “Mentally and physically, I’m just full,” says Taurasi, who played all 20 of her WNBA seasons for the Mercury. “That’s probably the best way I can describe it. I’m full and I’m happy.” Taurasi leaves the WNBA with a strong claim to the title of women’s-basketball GOAT. “I have a resume,” says Taurasi. “It’s not up to me to grade it.” Besides her record number of points (10,646 in the regular season, nearly 3,000 clear of the runner-up, Tina Charles), Taurasi hit more three-pointers than anyone in WNBA history and is fourth all-time in assists. She won a trio of WNBA championships (in 2007, 2009, and 2014), three in the NCAA, six Euroleague titles during her 12-year overseas career in Russia and Turkey, and the six Olympic golds, an all-time record for a basketball player. She was the 2009 WNBA MVP, a two-time WNBA Finals MVP, a three-time Euroleague MVP, and a three-time Russian League Player of the Year. “Until someone comes along and eclipses what she’s done, then yes, she is” the GOAT, says Geno Auriemma, who coached Taurasi in college and at the Olympics in 2012 and 2016. “My scoring record, or the six gold medals, someone’s going to come around that has the same hunger, the same addiction to basketball, and put those records in a different way, a different name,” says Taurasi. “That’s what sports is all about. That’s going to be fun to watch. Hopefully not soon.” She leaves a WNBA on stronger ground than when she entered. Her excellence played a key role in the league’s survival and success. “You can’t tell the story of the WNBA without Diana,” says NBA commissioner Adam Silver. “She helped build the league into what it is today and inspired generations of fans and players, including many who have gone on to play in the WNBA. Diana had an outsized role in the growth of women’s basketball.” During Taurasi’s peak years on the court, you couldn’t keep your eyes off her. She played the game with a confidence and fluidity that appeared unmatched in the women’s game. Every time she touched the ball, you expected her to make something happen: perhaps a no-look pass over a smaller guard whom the 6-ft.Taurasi towered over, or a spin move around a taller player who couldn’t keep up with her, or a three-pointer going to her left, to her right, off the dribble, standing still. “It’s just the full package,” says Sue Bird, the WNBA’s all-time assists leader and Taurasi’s teammate in college, on five Olympic teams, and for seven seasons in Russia. “You add on some swag to that, some sh-t talking to that–the more you piss her off, the better she plays, people are entertained by that.” “Just seeing her transcend the game, watching little girls want to play like her, her style, her flair, her bravado, you know, her swagger, it's been an unbelievable treat,” says the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, LeBron James. “She's one of the all-time greatest, and she will leave her mark on the game of basketball the moment she ties those shoes up and throws them over the pole line. It’s been an honor. All love.” Taurasi carried a cool quotient that the WNBA needed in its formative years. “Dee is the one that did have street cred,” says Bird. “You walk around airports, you’re in different cities, you’re over here, there, people knew Dee everywhere you go.” Bird has her biases in the whole GOAT discussion, but when she makes her best effort to disassociate her close relationship with Taurasi in the debate, she still lands on her friend. “There are players that have full games,” says Bird. “You can talk about Maya Moore in this conversation, Candace Parker, Lisa Leslie. You could talk about all these great names. The difference is the way she makes her teammates feel. The way she raises the level of her teams. That, to me, is the separator.” Taurasi’s boisterous personality was clear from her earliest days, growing up in Los Angeles and in Chino, Calif., where she moved when she was 8. The daughter of immigrants—her mother Liliana is from Argentina, and her father Mario was born in Italy and raised in Argentina—Taurasi hung up bullhorns in her house that her parents brought back from their home country. She used the open end as an indoor hoop. “I don't know how many times my mom was like, ‘Go outside, stop bouncing the ball,’” she says. “As a little kid, being a kid of immigrants coming to this country, basketball always made me feel a part of something,” says Taurasi. “It always made me feel comfortable. It brought me to a place where, you know, I could love others. I could love myself. It really is, to me, the one thing that always loved me back.” Her parents sacrificed for her pursuit of basketball, once skipping out on the light bill when she was in eighth grade to buy her a new pair of Nikes she so badly wanted. College hoops power UConn offered Taurasi, who starred for Chino’s Don Lugo High School, where she graduated in 2000, a scholarship. Before Taurasi’s recruiting visit, the UConn coaching staff gave players a scouting report. “The message that came through was, ‘This kid likes to have fun,’” says Bird, who is two years older than Taurasi and won a pair of championships as UConn’s point guard. “So make sure she has a good time. Wink wink.” Bird found Taurasi charismatic, and someone you felt like was already part of the team. The players took her to Huskies, a UConn bar. “She was a baby, but we got her in and she was in the middle of the dance floor doing all kinds of West Coast dance moves,” says Bird. “She had some sort of, like, robot situation happening.” Auriemma pushed Taurasi, and the two stubborn competitors could clash. Taurasi was loath to draw offensive fouls, so in one practice, Auriemma told Taurasi to stand in the lane: he ordered each player to dribble down from half-court and run into her, and for Taurasi to take the hit and fall to the floor and take a proper charge. “I didn’t fall once,” says Taurasi. “I was like, ‘Nah, I’m good.’” Auriemma tossed her out of practice. She told Auriemma she wanted to wear No. 0 at UConn. Auriemma objected; he didn’t like the negative implications of that number attached to a player of Taurasi’s caliber. “She goes, ‘OK, I’ll wear double zero,’” says Auriemma. “So that’s what we’re dealing with.” He called her a double dumbass for the wisecrack and pushed her to wear No. 3., because Auriemma believed she could be the Babe Ruth of women’s basketball. She wore that number throughout her college and pro careers, and delivered three straight national titles to UConn, from 2002 through 2004, while also winning back-to-back Naismith College Player of the Year awards and Final Four Most Outstanding Player honors. “I wish I had $1 for every time I heard a guy say, ‘She's the only reason I would ever watch a women's basketball game,’” says Auriemma. “And this was 25 years ago, right? Obviously, we've evolved as men. But she had the ability to bring people to the game that otherwise would not think about watching a women's basketball game.” And many of them stuck with it, giving some new thunderbolt—like, say, a Caitlin Clark—a solid base to expand. “If I had an opportunity to play basketball and compete, that's what I was doing,” says Taurasi. “At the end of the day, the work and being able to compete, those are the things that I love the most out of anything. Those are the only things that resonate with me. Even now when I watch sports, ‘Are you competitive? Are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to evolve?’ Those are all the things that the game of basketball gave me.” The Mercury selected Taurasi with the top overall pick in the 2004 WNBA draft. She more than met the sky-high expectations for her pro career. That same year, she also began her storied Olympic odyssey, helping the U.S. win gold in Athens by providing punch off the bench. “She rolls up to the first game, we get ready, we're putting our stuff on to go warm up, and she brought two left shoes,” says Bird, who shared a Team USA backcourt with Taurasi in Athens, Beijing (‘08), London (‘12), Rio (‘16), and Tokyo (‘21). The team was staying on a cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2. “Somebody had to haul ass back to the boat and get her other shoes so she could play,” says Bird. “Just like, dumb sh-t. She did that a lot.” Taurasi won a lot too: she’s 42-0 in Olympic basketball games. “She can't wait for the big game,” says Bird. “Can't wait for the big moment. When you look next to you and see someone giving off that vibe, that aura, for a lot of people, it calms them. Because you’re like, ‘Oh, she’s going to play great.’” At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Taurasi spotted her hero, Argentine soccer icon Diego Maradona, in the stands at a men’s basketball game and asked Silver, then the NBA’s deputy commissioner, if he could help arrange an introduction. Someone escorted her to Maradona’s seat at halftime. “I think Diana was probably a little nervous,” says Silver. “But she would never let you know it, just like she never shied away from a big moment on the court.” She gave Maradona two kisses and a hug, told her she loved him, and snapped a photo with him. “That was the only person I've ever asked to get a picture with,” she says. During the 2016 Rio Olympics, the women’s and men’s U.S. basketball teams again stayed on a cruise ship. Players from both teams, a group of NBA and WNBA stars, were sitting around one night, having a few laughs, a few drinks, and talking some serious smack, as is the habit of super competitive and successful athletes. Draymond Green, a noted NBA rabble-rouser known more for his defensive instincts, physicality, passing skills, and penchant for drawing technical fouls and suspensions than his shooting and scoring ability, was going on about something. Taurasi said, “Hey, Draymond, how does it feel to be the only person in this room who’s never been double-teamed?” James and Taurasi spent time together at four Olympics, starting in Athens in 2004, the first for both of them. They’ve become good friends. “She’s just super-duper, down-to-earth, supercool, super witty, talks her sh-t too,” says James. “It's always fun being around her. She keeps you on your toes. She's just a super competitor. No matter men or women, she's one of the fiercest competitors that I've ever spent time with. She's a champion. She's a warrior.” Taurasi also won three World Cups, in 2010, 2014 and 2018. In the 2010 World Cup final in the Czech Republic, the U.S. faced the home team in the gold-medal game, and the Americans couldn’t quite shake off the Czechs. At one point Auriemma, the national coach for that tournament, ordered the team to switch from man-to-man into a 2-3 zone. A Czech player hit a shot from the corner. “We inbound the ball, we go down there, Diana stops like 32 feet from the basket and drains a three,” says Auriemma. “She turns around, runs all the way across the court to go past our bench, to look me in the face, in front of the entire Olympic team, and go, ‘Get the f-ck out of this zone.’” Auriemma started screaming “man, man.” The U.S. won by 20. “And the rest of the guys on the team, the look on their faces,” says Auriemma. “I had to go, ‘Yo, guys, don't get any ideas.’” Taurasi calls herself a “kind asshole,” a descriptor Bird insists fits. “In certain scenarios, especially on the court, that's really where it comes out,” says Bird. “She can be an asshole. She can poke fun at people and this and that.” She’ll also often make sure that there are no hard feelings afterward. “The kindness, it oozes,” says Bird. “You go to dinner and it's a big group, guaranteed she's gonna pay the check. There are just these ways in which she's incredibly generous and kind.” When Taurasi first went to play in Russia, she noticed right away that people there didn’t smile much. “Once you're in with them, you're in for life,” says Bird. "But they can give you a little cold shoulder at first.” Taurasi announced a goal—make a Russian smile every day. She’d give people nicknames or say silly stuff. “Spasibo,” pronounced “spa-see-ba,” means “thank you” in Russian. Taurasi would say “spa-see-ba deeba.” “Deeba is not a word,” says Bird. But Taurasi would "spa-see-ba deeba" to her teammates, the workers in the grocery store they shopped in almost every day, anyone she could. And they’d laugh. Mission accomplished. “It’s so stupid,” says Bird. Taurasi relished her time in Russia. These days, WNBA players have been afforded opportunities to make more money in the offseason, so they’re less likely to have to leave home to play professionally in far-flung places like Russia, Turkey, and China. For example, Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 league launched by New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and the Minnesota Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, whose inaugural season began in January, offers an average salary of $222,222. (The WNBA average salary clocked in at $119,590 last season.) “If you asked the 22-year-old me, ‘Would you rather play in Moscow or Miami?’ I think I would have picked Miami,” says Taurasi. “But you asked the 42-year-old me, and those 12 years I spent overseas, especially the 10 I spent in Russia, I learned lessons that you can't learn anywhere else. It made me know I can live anywhere in the world with anyone, get along with any type of person, whether there was a language barrier, a mindset barrier, a political barrier, you name it, you had to make it work. I'm really grateful I got to do that.” (This, of course, was before the arrest and incarceration of WNBA star Brittney Griner, with whom Taurasi played on both the Mercury and Russia’s UMMC Ekaterinburg—not to mention the last three Olympic teams—and the current political situation in Russia.) Taurasi even sat out the 2015 WNBA season, at the request of her Russian team, to rest. The team was paying her some $1.5 million; she was making $107,000, the league maximum at the time, in the WNBA. (The WNBA maximum was $241,984 in 2024.) “Russia was the place where I really dug in and changed where my career was going,” she says. “Not only did I want to be the best player in the world, I wanted to be the highest-paid player in the world. You can only do that in a free market. And that's what overseas gives us.” She’d sometimes, however, forget to bring her jersey to games. “One time I wasn't playing in the game, I had to f-cking go back to her apartment to get it,” says Bird. “You're like, What happened to your brain?’’ Taurasi had no use for a victory tour–you know, the thing where athletes go into a season announcing it will be their last and are honored and showered with gifts at their final games in arenas or stadiums. “I felt like 20 years of opposing arenas was enough,” says Taurasi. “All I need is another pair of sneakers.” So what’s next? “That’s the question that I still don't have an answer for,” says Taurasi. “I really enjoy taking my kids to school, being home when they're home, not leaving for a week at a time.” Taurasi and her wife Penny Taylor, a former teammate with the Mercury who played internationally for Australia and is member of the international basketball federation (FIBA) Hall of Fame, have two children, Leo, who turns 7 on March 1, and Isla, 3. Leo has started playing hoops. Penny coaches his team. “I’m the disgruntled assistant mom coach,” says Taurasi. She says she just needs a “sabbatical.” But when I point out that people return to their jobs after one of those, she clarifies. She’s not going to pull a Tom Brady. “I’m definitely retired,” Taurasi says. The game and all its fans will miss her. And vice versa. “I’m going to miss the competition,” says Taurasi. “I'm going to miss trying to get better every single offseason. I'm going to miss the bus rides, shootarounds. I'm going to miss the inside jokes. I'm going to miss the locker room, the things that come with being on a basketball team. All those things, I'll deeply miss.”

Connor McDavid broke America’s heart. The Canadian hockey superstar, a three-time NHL MVP who also won the NHL playoff MVP last season even though he played for the losing Edmonton Oilers in the Stanley Cup Finals, took a centering pass and beat American goaltender Connor Hellebuyck with a laser shot to give Canada a thrilling 3-2 overtime victory over the U.S. in the final of the inaugural—and highly successful—4 Nations Face-Off. The tournament—which pitted teams from the U.S., Canada, Finland, and Sweden against each other as a replacement for the NHL’s usually low-wattage All-Star festivities—drew record viewership, in large part due to a burgeoning U.S.-Canada geopolitical rivalry that spilled out onto the ice. The last time the U.S. and Canada met in a best-in-class world final that required an overtime session was the gold medal game of the 2010 Olympics, when Sidney Crosby scored an overtime goal in Vancouver that sent the home nation into hysterics. McDavid, just like Crosby 15 years ago, shows that Canadian hockey icons know how to deliver in the biggest moments on the biggest of stages. It was an edge-of-your-seat match for viewers. The teams traded goals in the first period; Nathan McKinnon of Canada struck first, before American Brady Tkachuck evened things up with a little more than three minutes left in the period, after an Austin Matthews wraparound instigated the action. The U.S. started to sense victory potential in the second, when Jake Sanderson gave the Americans a 2-1 advantage. But a Sam Bennett goal equalized the affair, before a scoreless third period sent the game into sudden-death. The politically-tinged tension of this championship game was unmistakable. Canada has taken exception to U.S. President Donald Trump’s pronouncement that the country could soon be America’s 51st state: during previous games in the tournament that took place in Montreal, fans booed the “Star Spangled Banner.” The atmosphere felt much different Thursday night, in Boston: red “Make America Great Again” hats dotted the crowd. “USA! USA!” chants were particularly fervent. Last Saturday’s meeting between the neighbors, in round-robin play, saw three fights between the teams in nine seconds. Team USA won that round, and the rivalry matchup drew 10.1 million North American viewers, the highest number recorded outside the Stanley Cup Final since 2014, according to the NHL. Trump has adopted the U.S. team as his own. He posted on Truth Social Thursday that, although he wouldn’t be able to attend the game because of a prior commitment, he wanted to “to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.” He’s taken to calling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor”—and relished another chance to get under his skin. Trump wrote that “he’d be watching and that if Governor Trudeau would like to join us, he would be most welcome.” Later, the President shared a video showing that he indeed called the U.S. team before the game. “I just want to wish you a lot of luck. You really are a skilled group of people. It’s an honor to talk to you,” he said over a phone held by U.S. coach Mike Sullivan. “There’s no pressure whatsoever.” The players in the locker room laughed. “I can tell you honestly, every person in here—players, staff, management, coaches—we are all proud Americans and we want to represent the country the best way we can,” Sullivan responded. “Just go out and have a good time,” Trump said. “You’re going to win, and we love America, we love you guys. We’ll be watching tonight, bring it home.” The U.S. failed to do so this time around, giving Canada some well-deserved gratification. “You can’t take our country,” Trudeau gloated on X. “And you can’t take our game.” But Trump may take some satisfaction: While U.S. national teams competing on the world stage tended to distance themselves from him in his first term—the U.S. women’s soccer team in 2019 relished trolling him—this hockey team seemed to embrace the attention Trump lavished upon them. A victory could have given Trump and his supporters a sort of first MAGA world title. There will be other chances. These teams can meet again in the upcoming Winter Olympics, next year in Milan. Sports fans around the world will be watching. The President very much among them.

Geopolitics has found a new battleground: on ice. The U.S. and Canada men’s ice hockey teams, set to play in the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament final on Thursday night, have come to represent more than just their athletic skill. On both sides of the border, the rivalry in the rink has been seen by some as an extension of the political tensions between the once-friendly allies. As President Donald Trump has incensed Canadians with tariff threats and talk of the nation becoming the “51st” U.S. state, fans at a previous game between the neighbors on Saturday in Montreal booed during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, which has become an emerging trend. “We’re not booing your hockey players. We’re not booing your country. We’re not even booing you,” a Canadian fan posted on X. “We’re booing [Trump] who keeps threatening our sovereignty for zero reason. Once he leaves us alone it’ll stop.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was in attendance, also posted a clip of the crowd standing and boisterously singing the Canadian national anthem, captioning the post, which some saw as a dig at his American counterpart, with the anthem’s closing words, “We stand on guard for thee.” The antagonism wasn’t kept to just the stands: players scuffled three times within the first nine seconds of playing time in the game, which ended in a 3-1 victory for the U.S. The U.S. players involved in the brawls said they simply wanted to send a message—“It’s our time”—to their sporting rivals. But both the violence and triumph were celebrated by Trump supporters online. “AMERICA IS BACK,” proclaimed pro-Trump social media influencer Philip Anderson. “Mr. President, we are still not sick and tired of winning!” posted author Nick Adams. Bill Guerin, general manager of the U.S. team, said Tuesday on Fox News about the Saturday game: “I think there was a little bit of a political flare to it. It’s just the time that we’re in. I think our guys used that as inspiration.” He added that he would welcome Trump to attend the championship game on Thursday. “We’re just trying to represent our country the best way we can,” Guerin said. Trump responded on Truth Social on Thursday, saying he wouldn’t be able to make it to the game but that he’d call the U.S. team “to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.” Saturday’s game was the most-viewed non-Stanley Cup final telecast since 2019, ESPN said, and Thursday’s final is certain to crank up the intensity. The 4 Nations Face-Off is a new best-on-best tournament—featuring top National Hockey League players representing the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Finland—replacing this year’s NHL annual All-Star game. Historically, Canada has won the past three—and nine of all 13—best-on-best tournaments, according to the NHL, while the U.S. has won once by defeating Canada at the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. The tournament’s round-robin games, which began on Feb. 12, have been played in Montreal and Boston. Canada and the U.S., who each won twice and lost once, will go head-to-head again, this time in Boston, for the final on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, airing on ESPN and streaming on Disney+.

Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show was filled with symbolism—from Uncle Sam(uel L. Jackson) to a crip walking Serena Williams—but perhaps the most powerful symbol on stage was not even planned, according to the producers of the performance. Standing on the hood of a Buick Grand National GNX (after which Lamar named his most recent album, “GNX”), in a sea of dancers, a man clad in black sweats unfurled the Palestinian and Sudanese flags. He then jumped down from the car and ran along the perimeter of the stage, waving the flags, which had the words “Sudan” and “Gaza” written on them with a heart and a solidarity fist, before being tackled by security staff. The NFL said the protester, who was detained by security, was part of the 400-member field cast for the show but said that he had hidden the flags on him. “No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent,” the league said in a statement. Roc Nation, the entertainment company behind the halftime show, said that the act was “neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.” The man, who later identified himself as Zül-Qarnain Nantambu, will not face charges, New Orleans police said on Monday. He has been banned from future NFL events, according to the league and the New Orleans Police Department. The game, attended by President Donald Trump, took place amid a weekslong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, pausing the war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians. Meanwhile, the Sudanese civil war between the paramilitary group RSF and the Sudanese military rages on, having killed more than 28,000 people and displacing millions more since April 2023. The moment has gained significant attention on social media. Critics labeled the protester a “Hamas supporter” and “terror supporter,” but many more were supportive of the act. One X user wrote: “Do you understand how wild it is that people are breaking down the symbolism in Kendrick’s performance while a Black man literally got arrested for unfurling Palestine’s and Sudan’s flag during it?! The display of solidarity was clearly the more powerful piece of art!” Some Lamar fans, despite clarification from the NFL and Roc Nation, assumed the artist endorsed the move by one of his performers. “KENDRICK WENT ON THE BIGGEST STAGE ARGUABLY IN WESTERN MUSIC AND PUT UP THE PALESTINE FLAG WHILE SOMEONE ELSE IS IN THE BUILDING AND THATS HOW I KNOW WE MADE THE RIGHT ONE FAMOUS,” one X user said. “I know the NFL will rake him over the coals for this but I really appreciate the gesture. Thank you Kendrick Lamar,” another wrote. Others, however, noted that Lamar has not publicly spoken about the wars in Gaza and Sudan. “This should have been part of Kendrick’s performance but he’s not brave enough. His silence on Palestine/Sudan makes his ‘conscious about issues on the world’ music lose a lot of value,” sports journalist Leyla Hamed posted. But whether or not Lamar was on board, many celebrated the protest for bringing attention to the humanitarian crises in Palestine and Sudan. One wrote: “either way if someone snuck in during the performance and held the sudan and palestine flag up, or it was planned by Kendrick and his backup dancers they were incredibly brave for this and its a reminder to not be distracted from the genocides taking place.”

Forgive any football fan who’s wondering—what was that? The Philadelphia Eagles really obliterated the Kansas City Chiefs, the two-time defending champs and the slight betting favorite, in Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans on Sunday night? The Chiefs, the team chasing much publicized history in trying to become the first three-peat Super Bowl champ, played like they forgot to show up? Philadelphia’s 40-22 triumph over Kansas City—the Chiefs tacked on two late touchdowns to make the point difference barely respectable—was a stunning display of offensive firepower and defensive ferocity. The victory gave Philadelphia its second Super Bowl title in franchise history: Kansas City trailed 24-0 at halftime, and 34-0 late in the third quarter. Star Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes had never faced such a deficit in his career, and while he engineered a pair of Super Bowl comebacks the last two seasons, this spread was just too much. Philadelphia made off-season moves, coming into the 2024 campaign, that were just too good. The Eagles left no question that they’re deserving champions. The most important maneuver was signing running back Saquon Barkley, formerly of the New York Giants, to a free agent contract. In this Super Bowl, Barkley broke the NFL record for most rushing yards in a regular season and postseason. But the Eagles needed no eye-popping performance from their best player on Sunday: he finished the game with just 57 yards, on 25 carries. Kansas City’s gameplan was clear: we’ll load up to stop Saquon, and dare Philadelphia quarterback Jalen Hurts to beat us. That was a mistake. On Philadelphia’s first possession, the Eagles went for it on a 4th and 2 from midfield. Philly took a gamble, and sent a message: rather than give the ball to Barkley, Hurts fired a deep pass downfield to A.J. Brown, who corralled it for a 32-yard gain. A ticky-tack offensive pass interference flag nullified the play; the Eagles punted. But Hurts didn’t stop airing it out: he hit Brown with a 12-yard touchdown pass late in the first half, off of Mahomes’ second interception of the game, to give Philly that 24-0 edge going into halftime. In the third quarter, Hurts hit DeVonta Smith with a 46-yard touchdown strike up the middle to increase the lead to an insurmountable 34-0 advantage. He finished the game completing 17 of 22 passes, for 221 yards and a pair of TDs. Hurts was also Philadelphia’s leading rusher, as he finished with 72 yards on 11 carries, including a one-yard first quarter TD via Philadelphia’s signature “brotherly shove,” or “tush-push,” that gave the Eagles their first points of the game. Hurts completed passes of 20 and 27 yards in that masterclass possession. He was rightfully named Super Bowl MVP. After a 2023 season in which he threw a career high 15 interceptions, Hurts attempted 25% fewer passes per game this season, as Barkley put together one of the best running seasons of all-time. But in this Super Bowl, Hurts more than delivered on his early promise: he nearly led the Eagles to a title over the Chiefs two seasons ago, but fell just short in a 38-35 Super Bowl defeat. He then put a picture of himself, dejected while walking off the field that night in Arizona, confetti at his feet, as his cell phone lock screen, to remind him of what he still had to accomplish. Time for an update. Philadelphia’s defense also deserves its flowers. This off-season, the Eagles hired veteran defensive coordinator Vic Fangio to upgrade Philly’s effort on that side of the ball. The team had drafted a slew of strong, young defensive talent in the last few years, and added a pair of rookies—defensive backs Cooper DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell—this year who played key roles flummoxing Mahomes on Sunday. DeJean, who was also celebrating his 22nd birthday on Sunday, intercepted a Mahomes first-half pass and returned it 38 yards for a score. Philadelphia’s defense sacked Mahomes a half-dozen times, and held KC to a single first-half first down. The pressure on Mahomes was relentless. Travis Kelce did not catch a single pass until after Kendrick Lamar performed at halftime, when the game, for all intents and purposes, was already out of reach. So the Lombardi Trophy returns to the City of Brotherly Love, where Eagles coach Nick Sirianni jawed with the city’s notoriously surly and demanding fans earlier this season. Sirianni silenced any doubters. Hurts is still just 26. The Eagles defense should remain loaded. If Barkley can stay healthy, the NFL’s narrative for these next few years has a strong chance to be rewritten. The league’s next dynasty may reside in Philadelphia.

Super Bowl LIX saw the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 for the ultimate trophy win. But those teams weren't the only adversaries present at New Orleans’ Caesars Superdome. President Donald Trump and musician Taylor Swift were also in attendance, as was expected. Trump, the 2024 TIME Person of the Year, and Swift, who received TIME’s Person of the Year title in 2023, have a complicated past. Both parties have called one another out over opposing political views and actions. After staying away from publicly commenting on politics during the beginning of her career, Swift endorsed a Democratic candidate in the U.S. Senate election in Tennessee in 2018. Trump publicly responded to Swift’s endorsement, and various comments have been made by both sides since. Indeed, this tense relationship became a focus of the night, as a moment when Swift appeared to be booed—perhaps by Eagles fans opposing her boyfriend Travis Kelce's Chiefs—was widely shared by Trump supporters online, and even by Trump himself on his social media platform Truth Social. In light of both Trump and Swift attending the Super Bowl, here’s a look back at their tense history. October 2018: Trump responds to Swift’s endorsement of Democratic candidate Though Swift had, prior to this, stayed away from political endorsements, she decided in 2018 to voice her support for Democratic senatorial candidate Phil Bredesen over Republican candidate Blackburn. Swift said Blackburn's voting record in Congress “appalls and terrifies" her. At the White House a few days later, Trump was asked about the endorsement by reporters. “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about [Blackburn],” Trump said, adding, “I like Taylor’s music about 25% less now, OK?” August 2019: Swift says Trump thinks he’s in an “autocracy” In an interview with the Guardian, Swift publicly criticized Trump after not endorsing a candidate during the 2016 election. When asked about the Trump Administration by the publication, she said: “We’re a democracy—at least, we’re supposed to be—where you’re allowed to disagree, dissent, debate. I really think that he thinks this is an autocracy." She also told the outlet that she felt “really remorseful for not saying anything” during the 2016 election between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. January 2020: Swift reveals more in her Miss Americana documentary In her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Swift took fans behind the scenes of her decision to endorse Tennessee Democratic candidate Bredesen in his Senate race against Republican candidate Blackburn, which was ultimately won by Blackburn. In the documentary, Swift refers to Blackburn as “Trump in a wig.” May 29, 2020: Swift tells Trump “we will vote you out” Swift took a strong stand against the President in the midst of the protests after the killing of George Floyd. Trump posted on X (formerly Twitter), warning protesters in Minnesota that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump’s post was then flagged by Twitter—two years before the platform was bought by Trump supporter and DOGE leader Elon Musk—for “glorifying violence.” Swift then took to the same social media platform to address Trump directly. “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she wrote. “‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump.” August 2020: Swift calls out Trump for actions towards the USPS In August 2020, Trump admitted that he opposed additional funding for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in order to make it more difficult to deliver mail-in ballots. On X, Swift called out the President over his actions. “Trump’s calculated dismantling of USPS proves one thing clearly: He is WELL AWARE that we do not want him as our President,” she wrote. “He’s chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power.” October 2020: Swift endorses Biden over Trump In her first presidential endorsement, Swift decided to officially support President Joe Biden over Trump in the latter’s first re-election campaign. In a fall 2020 issue of V Magazine, Swift told the outlet that “the change we need most is to elect a President who recognizes that people of color deserve to feel safe and represented, that women deserve the right to choose what happens to their bodies, and that the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be acknowledged and included.” When the issue came out, Swift shared the interview on social media, joking that it was “so apt that it [came] out on the night of the VP debate.” The singer added that she would be “watching and supporting” then-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris “by yelling at the TV a lot.” November 2023: Trump says his song “beat Taylor Swift” In 2023, Trump embraced a song sung by a group of defendants incarcerated over their alleged roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The song, “Justice for All,” was played by Trump during several rallies throughout 2023, and briefly jumped to Number 1 on iTunes, according to the Associated Press. In a rally later in 2023, Trump referenced the song, telling a crowd in Houston, Texas, “It beat Taylor Swift, it beat Miley Cyrus, who was number one and two.” He continued: “They were number one and two, we knocked them off for a long time.” February 2024: Trump says he’s made Swift “so much money” When the presidential race was raging on between Biden and Trump, prior to Harris taking over as the Democratic candidate, Trump released a statement on Truth Social, claiming credit for the 2018 Music Modernization Act and stating that Swift would not endorse Biden’s re-election bid. “I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will,” he wrote. “There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money.” June 13 2024: Trump reportedly questions why Swift would endorse Biden CNN Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona posted on X that Trump questioned Swift’s support of then-opponent President Biden in a meeting with House Republicans. “Why would she endorse this dope?” Trump said, according to Zanona’s reporting. “He doesn’t know how to get off a stage.” June 18, 2024: Trump is quoted calling Swift “unusually beautiful” but “liberal” The topic of Trump and Swift became a talking point once again amid the June 18 release of a book titled Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, written by Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh. The author shares comments Trump reportedly made about Swift during a conversation in November 2023. “I think she’s beautiful—very beautiful! I think she’s liberal” Trump is quoted as saying in the conversation. “She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful actually—unusually beautiful.” August 2024: Trump posts AI-generated images of Swift and her fans endorsing him In mid-August 2024, Trump posted a series of images on Truth Social seemingly showing Taylor Swift fans wearing T-shirts that read “Swifties for Trump.” But the images had been created using AI. “I accept!” the caption to the post read, signalling Trump’s acceptance of an endorsement that was AI-generated and not real. Sept. 10, 2024: Swift’s endorsement of Harris Soon after Trump’s debate with Harris ended, Swift took to social media and officially endorsed the former Vice President. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” Swift wrote in an Instagram post on Sept. 10 to her over 200 million followers. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them." She signed the post with her name, followed by “Childless Cat Lady”—a reference to Vice President J.D. Vance’s controversial comments about his Democratic opponents and women who choose not to give birth, calling them “childless cat ladies.” Swift also said in the post that she was “made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” and that this spurred her to clear up the confusion around her political views. Sept. 11, 2024: Trump disparages Swift in an interview On the TV show Fox & Friends, Trump was asked about Swift’s endorsement of his opponent, Harris. In response, Trump said that he liked “Mrs. Mahomes”—referencing Brittany Mahomes, the wife of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes— better than Swift. Swift is currently dating the Chiefs' tight end Travis Kelce. “She's a very liberal person,” Trump said of the pop star. “She seems to always endorse a Democrat and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.” Sept. 15, 2024: Trump says he “hates” Swift Five days after Swift endorsed Harris for President, Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” on his social media app, Truth Social. Feb. 9, 2025: Trump reposts Swift being booed While there were no reports that Trump and Swift interacted directly at the Super Bowl, their relationship was front and center, particularly when it came to supporters of each online. People on social media capitalized on footage of the President appearing to be largely cheered, and Swift appearing to be booed, making claims about how that reflected their relative social currency. Taking to Truth Social, Trump juxtaposed a clip of him and Ivanka receiving a relatively warm welcome with footage of Swift on the large screen reacting to jeers. Later, Trump shared another post, this time mentioning Swift by name. "The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got BOOED out of the Stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving!" the President wrote.

Karma is the guy on the Chiefs. At least, that's the vibe Taylor Swift was hoping for at Super Bowl 59. The Eras superstar showed up to Sunday's big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles ready to cheer on her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, as he vied for a third straight NFL championship—though the Eagles ultimately dominated, besting the Chiefs with a final score of 40-22. Swift arrived at New Orleans' Caesars Superdome ahead of kickoff accompanied by Ice Spice, whom she sat next to in the stadium. Early in the action, the cameras panned to Swift and the crowd appeared to boo at the pop star's appearance on the jumbotron, capturing her apparently baffled reaction. While cameras didn't show the star too much during the game, another image of her during the second quarter summed up how Chiefs fans were feeling. What she wore Photos of Swift arriving at the Super Bowl showed her in an off-white blazer, sparkly silver shorts, and over-the-knee boots. She was also wearing a red T charm around her neck that looked a lot like the one she wore to the Grammys earlier this month. Who she brought Ice Spice joined Swift for the second year in a row and the pop star was also spotted with all three members of Haim and her friend Ashley Avignone. Travis Kelce's parents and BFF Ross Travis were also watching the game in Swift's orbit. A round of "boos" At one point early in the game, Swift was shown on the jumbotron as members of the crowd emitted a loud round of boos, presumably led by Eagles fans. She responded with a side eye and a laugh. Later, President Donald Trump, who attended the Super Bowl, shared a video of Swift getting booed alongside a video of him and his daughter, Ivanka, at the Super Bowl. Friends and fans, of course, came to her defense, including Serena Williams, who advised her to shake it off. A disappointing outcome While the cameras found Swift more often during the first half, she was barely seen after (or during) Kendrick Lamar's halftime show. In many ways, she was spared, as her section was likely filled with increasingly dashed hopes as the night wore on and the Eagles' relentless trouncing of the Chiefs never let up. Whereas last year, millions watched her on the field as Kelce and his teammates celebrated in the confetti-fueled post-game euphoria, this year saw a much quieter end to Swift's attendance at football's biggest night of the year.