After a dogfight in the first half, the No. 2-seeded Sparks pulled away from the fifth-seeded Phoenix Mercury, and the defending WNBA champions won their playoff opener and the first game of their semifinal series Tuesday. The Sparks defense helped them stifle Phoenix in the second half of a 79-66 v...

SAN FRANCISCO – Breathe. In. Out. The Dodgers’ 17-game out-of-body experience finally came to an end Tuesday night – they hope – with a white-knuckler of a 5-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants. The win ended an 11-game losing streak, the longest since the franchise moved to Los Angeles in 1958,...

The best reason to watch the Galaxy game in Carson this weekend (7:30 p.m. Spectrum SportsNet) is not to see L.A., plumbing new MLS depths, but to take in all-conquering, MLS-leading Toronto FC, already being talked about as the best team ever in MLS. Toronto (17-3-8) became the first MLS team to qu...

The Inte ational Olympic Committee has made it official. Los Angeles will host the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The IOC voted unanimously Wednesday in Lima Peru to award the 2024 Games to Paris and a third Los Angeles Olympics four years later. The vote caps an unlikely quest to retu the Games...

Middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is coming off his toughest fight, a narrow victory over Daniel Jacobs in March at Madison Square Garden. It strengthened Golovkin’s legacy some, but not as much as it could have because Jacobs’ name doesn’t carry worldwide weight. Universally, Canelo Alvarez’s ...

SAN FRANCISO — Good mo ing. The Dodgers did not lose a game Monday. But their demons pursued them into the early-mo ing hours. It took until 2:11 Tuesday mo ing but the Dodgers’ losing streak reached 11 (the longest in Los Angeles history) thanks to an 8-6 loss to the San Francisco Giants that took ...

The Lakers appear set to retire Kobe Bryant’s jersey on Dec. 18, less than two years after he last donned it in a dazzling and dramatic 60-point sendoff. The only question will be which number hangs from the rafters: No. 8? No. 24? TMZ reported early Tuesday mo ing that the Lakers had informed seaso...

LOS ANGELES — A key step in the selection of an Olympic host city is the Inte ational Olympic Committee evaluation commission’s tour of candidate cities. These visits give IOC officials the chance to tour proposed venues and Olympic Village sites, ride subway lines and gauge the interest of the comm...

While Andrew Heaney’s MRI on Monday gave hope that he can pitch again this year, the club has now lost another starter for next year. Alex Meyer, who was already ruled out for the rest of this season, will undergo surgery to repair a to labrum in his shoulder, with an expected rehab time of 12 month...

It had been bothering her for a little while. She had thought it was a minor injury but before the start of the 2016 track and field season, Long Beach State redshirt junior Mikalya Florez went to a doctor, got an MRI and found out she needed ACL surgery. Florez was forced to miss both the track and...

Tom Herman arrived at Texas with much fanfare. Herman, the former Houston coach and Ohio State offensive coordinator, replaced Charlie Strong last November following three consecutive seasons in which the Longho s finished below .500. The early retu s? Texas, which visits USC at the Coliseum on Satu...

LOS ANGELES >> One didn’t ea a penalty and one did, but two controversial incidents of targeting between UCLA and Hawaii last Saturday might leave the Bruins without two of their starting linebackers for this week’s game against Memphis. Senior Kenny Young, who was forced out of last Saturday’s game...

THOUSAND OAKS >> No dramatic moment, no speech, no loud applause. The Rams simply conducted their defensive meetings Monday with Aaron Donald in attendance, and that normalcy had to feel superb. Donald, the Rams’ star lineman who ended his six-week contract holdout Saturday, got back to work at team...

By the time Lonzo Ball begins his first training camp with the Lakers on Sept. 24 he will have already released several versions of his signature shoe, starred in a reality show chronicling the daily lives of his family and dropped a rap single. It has been, by any measure, a busy summer for the No....

SAN FRANCISCO >> For a team that could still win 100 games, the Dodgers sure seem to have a lot of questions to answer about their postseason roster. “We have a lot of good players we’re still evaluating,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before Monday’s game. “We have a lot of guys to work with. W...

SAN FRANCISCO >> After losing 10 games in a row and 15 of their past 16, the Dodgers arrived at AT&T Park on Monday afte oon willing to go to extremes if that’s what it took to tu things around. They would have to. The dark clouds that have followed them the past two weeks dropped rain on AT&T Park,...

DENVER >>xa0Everything began rolling downhill after the drop. Five minutes into the Los Angeles Chargers’ first NFL season, Casey Hayward was poised to score. The 5-foot-11 co erback had gotten his hands on the ball, jumping a pass intended for Broncos running back C.J. Anderson. There was nothing i...

LOS ANGELES >>xa0At a Catholic Mass inside Dodger Stadium on Sunday mo ing, a priest attempted to perform an exorcism on the ballpark. Friday, pitcher Yu Darvish sprinkled salt in the Dodgers’ dugout, a Japanese custom intended to ward off evil spirits. It’s come to this. The Dodgers’ 8-1 loss to th...

LOS ANGELES >> His play-calling was measured, effective and, at times, even inspired. At the end, it was something else completely, something shocking after witnessing the Rams mostly depress all of last season. Sean McVay’s play-calling, to cap his head-coaching debut Sunday, was celebratory. He or...

LOS ANGELES >> Just before Rams quarterback Jared Goff disappeared into the Coliseum tunnel late Sunday afte oon to celebrate his first win as an NFL quarterback, he paused, peeked over to a hundred or so fans shouting his name from the stands and raised his right arm to the sky. The roar that immed...