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Portal:Sports

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The Sports Portal

Sport in childhood. Association football, shown above, is a team sport which also provides opportunities to nurture physical fitness and social interaction skills.

Sport is a form of physical activity or game. Often competitive and organized, sports use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills. They also provide enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Many sports exist, with different participant numbers, some are done by a single person with others being done by hundreds. Most sports take place either in teams or competing as individuals. Some sports allow a "tie" or "draw", in which there is no single winner; others provide tie-breaking methods to ensure one winner. A number of contests may be arranged in a tournament format, producing a champion. Many sports leagues make an annual champion by arranging games in a regular sports season, followed in some cases by playoffs.

Sport is generally recognised as system of activities based in physical athleticism or physical dexterity, with major competitions admitting only sports meeting this definition. Some organisations, such as the Council of Europe, preclude activities without any physical element from classification as sports. However, a number of competitive, but non-physical, activities claim recognition as mind sports. The International Olympic Committee who oversee the Olympic Games recognises both chess and bridge as sports. SportAccord, the international sports federation association, recognises five non-physical sports: chess, bridge, draughts, Go and xiangqi. However, they limit the number of mind games which can be admitted as sports. Sport is usually governed by a set of rules or customs, which serve to ensure fair competition. Winning can be determined by physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first. It can also be determined by judges who are scoring elements of the sporting performance, including objective or subjective measures such as technical performance or artistic impression. (Full article...)

Selected articles

Selected pictures

Did you know...

A flèche during the qarter-finals of the Masters à l'épée 2012

Selected quote

Tom Crean in 2008
The game of basketball is one of the greatest teachers of life there is. It teaches you first and foremost to believe in yourself. You must develop physical and mental toughness in order to succeed because there's going to be many disappointments and setbacks along the way. You learn quickly that basketball is a team game. You must be unselfish and accept the role that helps the team the most. Basketball teaches you the importance of setting high standards and never accepting anything other than your best effort.     

Selected athlete

Otto Graham holding a football
Otto Graham holding a football
Otto Everett Graham, Jr. (December 6, 1921December 17, 2003) was an American football quarterback who played for the Cleveland Browns in the All-America Football Conference and National Football League. Graham is regarded by critics as one of the most dominant players of his era, having taken the Browns to league championship games every year between 1946 and 1955, winning seven of them. With Graham at quarterback, the Browns posted a record of 114 wins, 20 losses and four ties, including a 9–3 win–loss record in the playoffs. While most of Graham's statistical records have been surpassed in the modern era, he still holds the NFL record for career average yards gained per pass attempt, with nine. Long-time New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, a friend of Graham's, once called him "as great of a quarterback as there ever was."

Graham grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of music teachers. He entered Northwestern University in 1940 on a basketball scholarship, but football soon became his main sport. After a brief stint in the military at the end of World War II, Graham played during the 1946 season for the National Basketball League's Rochester Royals, who won the league championship that year. Paul Brown, Cleveland's coach, signed Graham to play for the Browns, where he thrived. After he left football in 1955, Graham coached college teams in the College All-Star Game and became head football coach at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut. After seven years at the academy, he spent three unsuccessful seasons as head coach of the Washington Redskins. Following his resignation, he returned to the Coast Guard Academy, where he served as athletic director until his retirement in 1984. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1965. (Full article...)

Selected team

Four members of the Portland Trail Blazers
Four members of the Portland Trail Blazers
The Portland Trail Blazers, commonly known as the Blazers, are an American professional basketball team based in Portland, Oregon. They play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Trail Blazers originally played their home games in the Memorial Coliseum, before moving to the Rose Garden in 1995.

The franchise entered the league in 1970, and Portland has been its only home city. The franchise has enjoyed a strong following; from 1977 through 1995, the team sold out 814 consecutive home games, the longest such streak in American major professional sports. The Trail Blazers are also currently the only NBA team based in the Pacific Northwest, after the Vancouver Grizzlies relocated to Memphis and became the Memphis Grizzlies in 2001 and the Seattle SuperSonics relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.

The team has advanced to the NBA Finals three times, winning the NBA Championship once, in 1977. The other NBA Finals appearances were in 1990 and 1992. The team has qualified for the playoffs in 29 seasons of their 42-season existence, including a streak of 21 straight appearances from 1983 through 2003, the second longest streak in NBA history.

Six Hall of Fame players have played for the Trail Blazers (Lenny Wilkens, Bill Walton, Clyde Drexler, Dražen Petrović, Arvydas Sabonis, and Scottie Pippen). Bill Walton is the franchise's most decorated player; he was the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player in 1977, and the regular season MVP the following year. Three Blazer rookies (Geoff Petrie, Sidney Wicks, and Brandon Roy) have won the NBA Rookie of the Year award. Two Hall of Fame coaches, Lenny Wilkens and Jack Ramsay, have patrolled the sidelines for the Blazers, and two others, Mike Schuler and Mike Dunleavy, have won the NBA Coach of the Year award with the team. (Full article...)

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