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Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter is the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging multiple insurance companies he owns hid an ongoing federal investigation from customers while funneling those customers’ money into Walter’s other companies. The insurance firms Delaware Life Insurance Company, Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Guggenheim Partners are named as defendants in the fraud suit, alongside Walter himself.
Nikola Jokić, Aaron Gordon and Jamal Murray all called him before he signed with the team, which meant a lot to DeRozan. That played a part in him wanting to sign with the Nuggets. These new teammates, like him, understand what it means to be a veteran — to be conscious of the window getting smaller. “When I came in the league, I never would have imagined or thought I’d be playing that long,” says DeRozan, 37. “And when you get in, you don’t realize how fast and how much time goes by. … It’s a blessing to be able to play this long.”
Sometimes, when he’s alone, taking a beat from the demands of the day, DeMar DeRozan repeats that phrase again and again: It’s almost over. It’s almost over. The phrase reminds him to play with urgency, to cherish this upcoming season, because he is acutely aware he has more time on an NBA court behind him than he does in front of him. “It’s not a negative thing,” DeRozan says. “It’s a beautiful thing. You can’t do this forever, but while you’re in it, give it all you got, so when it’s time to walk away, you’re at ease with everything.”
A college student recently came up to him while he was working out, telling him how much DeRozan’s words made him feel seen. In another instance, a young man came up to him and told him, “You saved my life.” DeRozan’s mind returns to the image of a father. He came up to DeRozan: “My son was suicidal until he heard your story.” “That means the world to me because a lot of times, it’s just me speaking honestly about things I’m going through, things that I may feel,” DeRozan says. “For people to come up to me and acknowledge that means I’m doing the right thing by being vulnerable and putting myself out there to have these conversations because it’s helping somebody. Even if it’s just one person, it’s helpful.”
Nationally, men account for nearly 80 percent of suicide deaths. Young Black men are dying by suicide at higher rates than their White peers for the first time. “We carry so much weight on our shoulders. We sweep so much stuff under the rug, so you don’t even realize how much until you uncover it,” DeRozan says, “and you realize how much hurt, how much pain, how much stuff you compartmentalize. You never know when that breaking point may hit. “The approach I try to take is being vulnerable and letting people know you’re not alone.”
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Actor and entrepreneur Rob Gough stunned the sports card and memorabilia hobby for the first time in January 2021 when he purchased a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle in a PSA 9 (Mint) grade for $5.2 million. It was the most expensive known transaction for a sports card at the time and remains among the top 10 in 2026. Today, industry experts, as well as card pricing tool Card Ladder, place the card’s value between $20-$30 million. “When I announced my Mickey Mantle purchase, it went viral because everybody thought I was absolutely out of my mind,” Gough told The Athletic in August. “Who’s this insane guy spending $5.2 million on this baseball card? Is this guy crazy? That’s the reason why it was in the news. Everyone thought I was absolutely out of my mind.” He wasn’t crazy. Just early.
Gough shook the hobby again last month when he consigned a Michael Jordan “Last Dance” jersey worn during Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals to auction house Joopiter. Among the most important pieces of Jordan memorabilia to surface publicly, the jersey has a pre-sale estimate between $10-$15 million. A $10 million bid (more than $12 million, including Joopiter’s buyer’s premium) on Tuesday has ensured the Jordan shirt will top the public record of $10.1 million for a basketball jersey when the auction closes on Sept. 29. The previous record sum was spent on the jersey worn by Jordan in Game 1 of the 1998 Finals — a 88-85 Utah Jazz win over Jordan’s Chicago Bulls — at Sotheby’s in 2022. Gough’s Game 3 jersey was worn for a record-setting 96-54 Bulls win, which gave Chicago a 2-1 series edge, behind 24 points from Jordan. Chicago would go on to win Game 4 and Game 6 to secure the team’s second three-peat and sixth title in eight years. Neither of those jerseys have surfaced at public auction.
Gough’s Jordan jersey once sold for $104,281 in 2015 with a letter of authenticity from memorabilia evaluation service MEARS. It was later photo-matched to Game 3 specifically by third-party authenticator MeiGray to give the jersey a direct link to a key moment in time. “For me, it has to be a winner,” Gough said of the jersey. “And I love things that change the momentum of something. That, to me, was so important. This jersey was from the most important game and was the most important jersey to own.”
The auction for Jordan’s Game 3 jersey arrives alongside a surging market for sports memorabilia and trading cards in particular. According to price tracker Card Ladder’s records, there have already been 53 known sales of $1 million or more so far in 2026, which is the highest total recorded in a single year. Many of the highest card sales in recent years have included game-worn pieces of memorabilia from the players featured, and Gough believes that trend has helped drive the market for memorabilia.
“I think the growth of the high-end card market has been very positive for game-used memorabilia,” Gough said. “Cards helped turn sports collectibles into a much more established alternative asset category. They brought in new collectors, created better price discovery, professionalized authentication and grading, and demonstrated that historically important sports objects could command eight-figure prices. “I think we’re now seeing some of that sophistication migrate into game-used memorabilia, particularly as photo-matching and provenance have improved. The markets are connected, but game-used memorabilia is fundamentally different. A card is a representation of an athlete or moment. A jersey worn during an important game is an artifact from the moment itself.”
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It was only a moment, a random encounter on an ordinary day, but Sam Presti never forgot it. A 17-year-old high school gym rat on his way to play Division III basketball, Presti was at the Lexington Club, a fitness center in suburban Boston, one day in the 1990s when he saw a man across the gym. The man did not look like much. A shade above 6 feet. Medium build. Probably in his 30s with an office job. So, when he walked over to Presti and asked to play one-on-one, Presti thought, All right, I’ll give it to this guy. Then the game began. And the man kicked his ass. Completely humiliated him in an empty gym. Presti soon learned why: The man was not just a desk jockey at a local real estate firm. He was Jim McCaffrey, a former star guard at Holy Cross who the Phoenix Suns had drafted a decade earlier.
It was what happened next that lodged in Presti’s memory as he rose through the NBA to become one of the most celebrated executives in sports. When it was over, McCaffrey didn’t leave. He offered Presti tips, showing him how to position his feet better on defense and breaking down the moves he’d made on offense. He encouraged him to keep working. Made him feel like a peer. “He really coached me,” Presti said.
Presti finished high school, played Division III basketball at Emerson College and dedicated his life to the sport, first as a whiz-kid front-office staffer for the San Antonio Spurs, then as the mastermind general manager behind the Oklahoma City Thunder. Then one day in 2023, he reread a book called “Values of the Game” by Bill Bradley, the former New York Knicks forward and United States senator. It was about the through lines that exist in sports, the pieces of shared wisdom that shape our lives, the ideals that get passed down. “Leadership,” Bradley wrote, “means getting people to think, believe, see and do what they might not have without you.”
McCaffrey eventually transferred to Holy Cross and became an executive at Eastdil Secured in London. Van Gundy had a long career as a college and NBA head coach, leading the Orlando Magic to the NBA Finals in 2009. In both their lives, it was a mere blip, but 45 years later, McCaffrey could still remember the exact words Van Gundy used during those workouts. Respect yourself, respect the game and get better every day. “Stan Van Gundy,” McCaffrey said, “taught me how to be a basketball player.” Decades later, Van Gundy was surprised to hear about his impact. He didn’t feel like he meant that much. He was just a young coach working out a player. But it did remind him of those people who had done something similar for him. In fact, there was one that almost nobody knew about.