Sports

The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to prohibit transgender athletes from competing in women's sports and strip the record of former swimmer Lia Thomas as part of an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education.

Penn entered the resolution agreement Tuesday, July 1 to comply with Title IX, the DOE announced, as the university had been under investigation surrounding the case of Thomas, who became the first openly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I title.

Under the agreement, Penn will restore the swimming records and titles of its female athletes that were broken by Thomas. The university will also not allow transgender athletes to compete in female athletic programs, and it has to send personal apology letters to impacted swimmers.

Like the NBA, the WNBA chooses its All-Star Game starters through a combination of the fan vote, media vote and player vote. The process resulted in Fever star Caitlin Clark being named a starter on Monday, but the results didn't come without controversy.

Clark was ranked curiously low among the player vote, compared to stronger showings in the fan and media votes. That raised eyebrows and left some wondering whether the result was more than just a difference in opinion.

The WNBA has had to deal with the perception that some of its players resent Clark for the attention she's gotten since entering the league, with a handful of on-court incidents contributing to a narrative that the players are out to get her. Whether or not that's accurate, the vote confirmed there does exist at least a bit of a gap between how fans view the former Iowa star and how her colleagues do.

Here's a closer look at Clark's voting results for the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game.

Here is where Clark ranked among guards in each of the three All-Star voting categories:

• Fan vote: 1st
• Media vote: 3rd
• Player vote: 9th

Clark broke a WNBA record for most fan votes with more than 1.2 million, and that actually erased all doubt regarding her All-Star status before the reveal was made on Monday. As one of the top-two vote-getters from fans, Clark was named an All-Star captain on Sunday.

For all the talk about how much money Caitlin Clark makes for the WNBA, her Indiana Fever teammates made some cash for themselves on Tuesday.

The Fever defeated the favored Minnesota Lynx 74-59 in the championship game of the WNBA Commissioner's Cup, earning a $500,000 prize pool plus a smaller cryptocurrency sum for each player. They did it despite missing Clark for a third-straight game due to a groin injury.

Veteran forward Natasha Howard, who had 16 points, 12 rebounds and four assists, was unanimously voted the Commissioner's Cup MVP.

Without their offensive leader, the Fever won by shutting down a Lynx team that entered the game leading the WNBA in offensive rating. Minnesota opened up an early double-digit lead, but an 18-0 run to finish the first half gave Indiana a lead it never came particularly close to relinquishing, despite the hopes of many fans at the Target Center.

Five different Fever players reached double digits in scoring, led by Howard. Aliyah Boston also had a good night with 12 points, 11 rebounds and six assists, while Aari McDonald came up big at point guard in Clark's absence with 12 points.

In a league where salaries can still run in the five figures, half a million dollars is a significant bounty. Even Clark, who had been cheering her teammates — and heckling refs — from the sideline was amped up after the game.

Alanna Smith led the Lynx with 15 points. As a team, they shot 22-of-63 with 16 turnovers.

It was an especially tough night for those in the home crowd who were looking forward to seeing Red Panda, the halftime show legend who exited the court in a wheelchair after falling during her performance.

The Milwaukee Bucks stunned the NBA universe Tuesday morning when they agreed to a four-year, $107 million contract with former Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner, the top free agent on the market, sources told ESPN's Shams Charania.

Milwaukee wasn't a team with cap space, yet it created the necessary room by waiving future Hall of Famer Damian Lillard, an All-Star in his two seasons in Milwaukee who was owed more than $110 million over the final two years of his contract.

The Pacers, meanwhile, lost their longest-tenured player after the franchise reached its first NBA Finals in 25 years. With Turner in the lineup, the Pacers knocked the Bucks from the playoffs in the first round during each of the past two seasons.

Before Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Indiana looked as if it would head into next season as the likely favorite from the Eastern Conference. Tyrese Haliburton's torn Achilles injury and now Turner's departure have fundamentally changed where the Pacers sit in a wide-open East race that is led by the Cleveland Cavaliers and the New York Knicks and has become much more intriguing after a flurry of moves from the Atlanta Hawks and the Orlando Magic.

With Turner, the Bucks believe they are in that mix too, once again swinging a risky deal to maximize superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo's prime. Here's a look at the ramifications of Milwaukee's shocking maneuver -- one that will have ripple effects across the NBA -- and how league insiders are reacting.

What does this mean for the Bucks?

With Antetokounmpo on the roster, the Bucks are always under pressure to win. And after losing in the first round of the playoffs in three consecutive seasons, including a five-game rout to the Pacers this spring, that pressure only intensified.

During that series, Lillard went down with an Achilles tear, leaving Milwaukee with a $54 million hole on its roster this season and limited draft assets to fill it. Antetokounmpo has made public his desire to win multiple championships, and ESPN's Shams Charania reported earlier this summer that Antetokounmpo was planning to monitor the team's moves while considering whether Milwaukee remained his best path to title contention.

So, rather than just re-signing most of their players -- outside of center Brook Lopez, who agreed to a deal with the LA Clippers on Monday night -- the Bucks sprung the most surprising move of the offseason and found a younger version of Lopez, to boot.

But Tuesday morning's move was shocking on multiple levels -- both for what the Bucks did (landing Turner) and how they did it (waiving and stretching Lillard's remaining $112 million on his contract).

Though Turner is a quality player, stretching such a staggering amount of money to create the salary cap space to sign him wasn't seen favorably by rival executives.

"Reckless," one executive said.

"That's a move you talk yourself into in the boardroom in July when you have nowhere else to go," another executive said, "and you turn a bad situation into a worse one. They're going to look at this in two years and say, 'What did we do?'"

Turner played a huge role in Indiana's run to the Finals, giving the Pacers the coveted combination of rim protection and 3-point shooting from a 7-footer. But Lopez did the same thing for Milwaukee over the past several years, which is why he was such a perfect fit to play alongside Antetokounmpo in the Bucks' frontcourt.

Many fans and fighters alike later questioned the authenticity of Bellato’s reaction, accusing the Brazilian of bluffing. Bellato addressed the accusations, detailing what exactly transpired in those final seconds. Bellato claims that while he initially recognized the illegal kick and protested, he started losing consciousness immediately afterwards. Bellato also notes that this was the second time he made weight after the outing was postponed from May, and it made no sense to knowingly bail out in the first round. The 29-year-old also thinks he would have won the first stanza on the scorecards.

“God knows about all things! To everyone cheering for me, I'm in good health and will be back soon, thank you so much!” Bellato wrote on Instagram (via translte). “And I saw some things on the internet, saying I was an actor there and stuff. The moment I was on the ground, I didn't expect to get kicked in the face (illegally). It was a strong kick, when I looked at the judge to complain, my whole body began to tingle and my vision disappeared. After that i dont remember anything.

“Anyone who's known me the longest knows I would NEVER do this. I've never run from war. I hit [weight twice] in less than 30 days, [two] trips in a row. Why would I fake something after all I been through and on top of that winning the first round? In the end ... I thank all the real ones for the positive messages. God is in charge.”

Craig also heard the rumors of Bellato faking the knockout, but he said wants to give the Brazilian the benefit of the doubt.

"It's my fault as much as it is his fault," Craig said at a post-fight media scrum. "We shouldn't be looking to persecute him if he's taking the knee. It was an illegal move."

Caitlin Clark scored a season-high 32 points and equaled a career-high seven three-pointers on her return from injury as the Indiana Fever defeated the New York Liberty 102-88 on Saturday.

It was the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year’s first appearance in three weeks having missed the last five games with a left quad injury, but Clark wasted no time picking up where she left off, scoring 25 points in the first half.

Her eventual 32 points are the second most she has put up in a WNBA game, three fewer than the 35 she managed against the Dallas Wings in September last year. Her seven threes tied her career best, which she set against the Washington Mystics in June 2024.

“My most I’ve ever made in a game was 12, that was in high school!” she said of her three-point efforts after Saturday’s game. “That’s what they gave up tonight, is they were going to let us shoot threes.”

“We made 17 of them, so I think we really took advantage of what they were giving us, and that’s what you have to do when you play really good teams,” added Clark, who also put up eight rebounds and nine assists against New York.

Indiana, which went 2-3 without Clark and is now 5-5 overall, made a franchise-record 17 threes in 35 attempts (48.6%), with Kelsey Mitchell scoring 22 points and Lexie Hull, Aliyah Boston and Sydney Colson all also scoring double figures.

Simone Biles apologized to Riley Gaines on Tuesday for their online spat over trans-identifying males in women’s sports, the Olympic gymnast adding that she believes the current women’s sports system is “flawed.”

The two athletes clashed on Friday when Biles attacked Gaines seemingly out of the blue, calling the former University of Kentucky swimmer a “sore loser” and telling her to “bully someone your own size, which would ironically be a male.”

“I wanted to follow up from my last tweets,” Biles posted Tuesday on X. “I’ve always believed competitive equity & inclusivity are both essential in sport. The current system doesn’t adequately balance these important principles, which often leads to frustration and heated exchanges, and it didn’t help for me to get personal with Riley, which I apologize for.”

It's unclear what Metellus said to get the warning, but he captioned his post with "energy is a hell of a drug." The post also revealed what appears to be the laminated warning card issued to him, presumably by Target Center security.

Damian Lillard has a torn left Achilles tendon, confirming the Milwaukee Bucks' worst fears after the seven-time all-NBA guard was helped off the court Sunday night.

The Bucks announced the severity of Lillard's injury following an MRI on Monday.

The injury knocks Lillard out for the rest of the post-season and could put his status for next season in doubt as well. When Kevin Durant tore his Achilles tendon in the 2019 NBA Finals, he ended up missing the entire 2019-20 season.

The Bucks had been bracing for this outcome after Milwaukee's 129-103 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game 4. Milwaukee trails the Indiana Pacers 3-1 in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference first-round series. Game 5 is Tuesday at Indianapolis.