This weekend was like a touching closing of a monumental chapter in women’s basketball.

Maya Moore-Irons was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday. On Sunday, Candace Parker announced she was leaving the WNBA. Parker, who signed a one-year contract with the Las Vegas Aces in February, is leaving the sport a yr after Moore announced she would officially retire from basketball in 2023 after a four-year hiatus from the WNBA.

When you ask modern players, whether college or WNBA, who they emulated and idolized as kids, they almost all the time answer: Parker or Moore. Both are probably your current favorite player’s favorite (if it wasn’t still Parker as of Sunday).

With the departure of Moore and Parker, the WNBA is without two of its most influential and impactful superstars. It’s a reality that is hard for a lot of women’s basketball fans to swallow, especially since excitement for a game that Parker and Moore helped create has never been higher.

With Parker’s departure comes a pervasive void, very like Moore’s, of not with the ability to properly rejoice the tip of two transformative talents. And while we’ll never see Moore or Parker dazzle on the basketball court again, their mark on the sport and the present generation able to catapult women’s basketball into the following chapter are all over the place.

On the sphere, Parker was unlike any player we had ever seen.

After a legendary profession at Tennessee, where she won two national championships and was named national player of the yr twice, Parker began her WNBA profession in 2008 as the primary player to win Rookie of the Year and MVP in the identical season. Parker’s momentous rookie season heralded a legendary profession that included three championships, two MVP awards, seven All-Star nominations, Finals MVP and Defensive Player of the Year. After becoming the primary woman to dunk in an NCAA tournament game, Parker was also the primary to dunk multiple times in a WNBA season.

In Parker style, she ended her 16-year profession just because it began – in a historic moment. Her third championship, won with the Aces last season, made her the primary player in league history to win championships with three different franchises.

Parker, who also won two Olympic gold medals and countless championships overseas, is the one player in WNBA history to rank in the highest 10 in points, rebounds, assists and blocks. Her versatility and dominance at 6’1″ helped usher in a brand new era in women’s basketball and not using a game-changing position.

At age 29, Moore has already won 4 WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx, was Finals MVP, league MVP and was a six-time All-Star. This was preceded by a dominant collegiate profession in which she won two national titles and was named national player of the yr twice.

Moore, who also won two Olympic gold medals, two FIBA ​​World Championship gold medals and two EuroLeague titles, was a unprecedented talent on the court. Her playing was graceful and dominant, creative and fierce. Her jump shot was clean and her ability to get a bucket was unmatched. Moore was the primary women’s basketball player to sign a contract with Jordan Brand. When the brand launched a billboard campaign in 2018 in which Moore recreated Jordan’s 1989 “Wings” poster, it appeared like a fitting stamp for the face of women’s basketball. The following season, Moore announced that she wouldn’t play in the 2019 season. Even though Moore’s profession had been decorated as much as that time, it still felt prefer it was just getting began.

The play of each Parker and Moore has energized women’s basketball fans and attracted latest fans. However, their influence begins only on the pitch.

Parker’s influence is wide-ranging. Parker, who had her daughter Lailaa after her rookie season, has all the time advocated for moms who’re skilled athletes, demonstrating the power to thrive in each.

In 2010, Parker became the ninth WNBA player to have her own signature shoes. Since then, she has grow to be the one Black woman to wear the signature shoe in the WNBA.

As an analyst and commentator at TNT, where she has been working since 2018, she became the primary woman to function a game analyst in the course of the NBA All-Star Game in 2023. In 2021, she was the primary woman on the duvet of NBA 2K, and she also co-owns the NWSL team Angel City FC together with her daughter.

Moore’s off-court influence centers on her social activism. In 2016, she took part in an illustration organized by the captains of the Minnesota Lynx team, who wore T-shirts with the words “Change starts with us” in the course of the pre-game press conference after the police shooting of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. Justice and Accountability” and “Black Lives Matter” on the back together with the names Sterling and Castile.

“If we take this time to see that this is a human issue and speak up together, we can significantly reduce fear and create change,” Moore said in 2016.

In 2019, two years after winning her fourth WNBA championship, Moore left the WNBA to advocate for the discharge of Jonathan Irons, who was sentenced to 50 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary after being convicted of burglary and assault on the age of 16. His conviction was overturned in July 2020. Moore’s sacrifice to assist ultimately free Irons, made at a time when she was widely considered the face of women’s basketball, made her a pioneer in athlete activism and drew significant attention to the failings of the U.S. criminal justice system criminal system and the necessity for reforms.

Parker and Moore left a mark on the game that may likely not be fully realized for years. It’s a shame they will not give you the option to be a part of the momentous wave the game is currently experiencing. However, much of their legacy is reflected directly in the sport’s latest generation of stars, lots of whom have been inspired by Moore and Parker.

Ace forward A’ja Wilson, the reigning WNBA Finals MVP, and Indiana Fever center Aliyah Boston, the league’s 2023 Rookie of the Year, called Parker their GOAT. Caitlin Clark, who’s entering her highly anticipated debut season in the WNBA after retiring from her college profession because the all-time leading scorer in NCAA basketball history, reiterates that Moore was her childhood basketball hero.

This is the life cycle of the sports avant-garde. While we may never give you the option to observe them ceaselessly or resolve when their on-court careers will end, we will still enjoy watching their legacy live.

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) – The Miami Dolphins have agreed to a one-year contract with wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr., a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Friday.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized.

NFL Network was the first to report the deal, which is value up to $8.25 million.

BeckhamThe 31-year-old will join his fifth team after previously playing for the Los Angeles Rams, Baltimore, Cleveland and New York Giants, who drafted him twelfth overall in 2014. He won a Super Bowl with the Rams in the 2021-22 season.

Beckham joins the Dolphins group together with last yr’s yards leader Tyreek Hill and his rushing counterpart Jaylen Waddle. Hill and Waddle combined for more receiving yards (2,813) than another wide receiver duo in the NFL in 2023, but Miami had concerns about its wide receiver depth beyond those two.

Beckham, who had 35 receptions for 565 yards and three touchdowns last season in Baltimore, was cut by the Ravens in March. He visited the Dolphins earlier in the offseason and received a proposal, but the two sides have yet to reach an agreement.

“Everything was going great with him,” Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said in March. “We made him a proposal and business takes time, especially with a player like Odell, who has had a phenomenal profession and still has some really good football ahead of him and has a lot of options. I’m definitely willing to coach him if we are able to come to an agreement, and I believe each side are trying to work on that. We’ll see what happens.”

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Beckham established himself as considered one of the most talented receivers in the league in his first three seasons with the Giants. He had three straight seasons of over 1,300 yards after New York drafted him out of LSU and caught considered one of the most memorable touchdowns in NFL history when he straightened his body, jumped back and reached so far as he could with one hand to haul the ball in. A 43-yard pass from Eli Manning in his rookie season.

Beckham was traded to the Browns in 2019 and spent two seasons there before joining the Rams, where he caught a touchdown pass in Super Bowl LVI before suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury that sidelined him through the 2022 season.

Larry Demeritte has trained horses most of his life, but on May 4 he’ll go down in history as… the first Caribbean American to compete in the Kentucky Derby and third black coach in the modern era. The Kentucky Derby was filled with black riders, rescuers and trainers. Black jockeys won 15 of the first 28 rounds of the Kentucky Derby, but since 1951 there have been only three black horse trainers.

Demeritte is reported to be hopeful that regardless that the Derby was effectively closed to blacks resulting from Jim Crow segregation, the sport could be more inclusive. He said he believes a part of the problem is financial. “We need to market our sport better than we are doing… We need to create more syndicates because owning a racehorse is becoming quite expensive these days. It’s like any other sport… motor racing and they all have syndicates… i.e. (many) sponsors. I feel this is what we need to do to let the middle class in America know that this is not the sport of kings. Anyone can play it and the reward if you succeed is huge.”

74-year-old Demeritte, who he was diagnosed with cancer and a rare heart disease, is not a person who gives up easily and, as his profile by Dana O’Neil shows, is a person of boundless hope and optimism, even when his cancer treatment is painful. He is also aware that being a black coach in Derby brings with it an enormous opportunity, as he said: “I all the time say that if I could be related to the negative side of my race, why would not I need to associate someone with the positive side of my race? side? This is not about me. The idea is to take all members of my race with me in order that they’ll feel proud.”

Demeritte also hired a black assistant coach, Donte Lowery, whom he met at Thoroughbred Training Center in Lexington and hired in 2015. Demeritte identified to the outlet that Lowery is the predominant reason he wants horse racing’s doors to open to anyone who wants to return. “That’s why I do what I do,” Demeritte said. “I don’t want Donte or any of my other (assistant assistants) in the barn to have to wait that long to go to the Derby as a trainer.” Demeritte was also blessed with a present for estimating horses and a penchant for turning horses purchased for inexpensive amounts right into a 100-fold return on investment.

“I always say, ‘I have champagne flavors on a beer budget,’ so I buy good horses cheap, but that doesn’t mean I buy cheap horses,” Demeritte said. “I can’t afford horses that have newspapers, so I’m trying to buy a horse that can print a newspaper.”

Lowery said it positive attitude of your boss makes it easier to work with, even when Demeritte is battling his body. “For me, watching him go through all this stuff, it’s a little difficult, but at the same time it makes him feel better,” Demeritte assistant coach Donte Lowery said. “He’s always in a happy mood or tries to be like that all the time, which makes everyone in the barn smile and that keeps his spirits up.”

Demeritte, for his part, stays grateful for the trip, telling the website: “Sometimes my boys have to give me a ride home, I’m very sick,” he said. “But I come because what’s the point of sitting at home and feeling sorry for yourself if the horse will put a smile on your face?” Demeritte continued: “I consider in my faith and I consider in destiny. I all the time tell my friends – I lose many to cancer – and I say, “If God isn’t done with you yet, you’ll still be here.”