Sports, in brief

The regular season of the WNBA, the top women's basketball league in the US, ended on Thursday night. [1][2]

Eight teams are in the playoffs, and all four first-round series start on Sunday. [3]

Each first-round series is best of three games. The higher seed is at home for game one and for any game three. [3]

The Minnesota Lynx are the No. 1 seed and play the No. 8 New York Liberty, a repeat of the 2024 final. [9]

The Lynx lost six regular players last winter, and their star Napheesa Collier had surgery on both ankles. [8]

They still led the league from 12 July, and they are the top seed for a second year running, the first time since 2016 and 2017. [8]

The Golden State Valkyries, a club in only its second season, are No. 2 and play the Dallas Wings. [1][4]

The Valkyries kept second place on Thursday by coming back from 16 points down to beat the Los Angeles Sparks. [4][5] They had lost all three games to the Aces, so a defeat could have dropped them to third. [3]

The Las Vegas Aces, last year's champions, are No. 3 and meet the No. 6 Indiana Fever. A'ja Wilson scored 34 in their last game. [6]

The Atlanta Dream beat the Liberty 83-65 on Wednesday to take No. 4, so they host the first game against the Washington Mystics. [3][7][2]

The Mystics and the Fever both finished 28-16. [3][1] The Mystics went fifth because they won two of the three games between the teams. [3][10]

The Mystics had missed the playoffs for two seasons, and they won 16 of their last 19 games. [2][3]

The Lynx held the tiebreak over the Valkyries too, having won three of their four games against them. [12]

Six months ago a labour dispute between the players and the league made it unclear whether this season would start at all. [11]

Why it matters. Watch game one in Atlanta on Sunday: the Dream earned home court by one place, and the Mystics arrive having won 16 of their last 19. [2][7]

Lachie Neale, Brisbane's star player, will play Saturday's AFL Grand Final after the league's appeals board cleared him on Thursday night. [15] The AFL is the top league in Australian rules football. Neale had been banned for one match for striking Jack Ginnivan. [15] The rule that freed him lets a player with an exemplary record argue it is an exceptional circumstance, and Neale had never been banned in 320 games. [15] Brisbane play Fremantle at the MCG in Melbourne at 2:30pm on Saturday. [16]

Why it matters. Brisbane, chasing a third title in a row, get their captain back for the biggest game of the year. [16][15] A Sporting News columnist wrote that plenty of fans still think Neale should miss it. [15]

The United States lead the International team 3-2 after Thursday's first five matches of the Presidents Cup, a team golf event, at Medinah near Chicago. [17][18] The Americans are trying to win it for an 11th time in a row. [17] Scottie Scheffler, the world number one, won a match with Sam Burns for the first time, after they had struggled together before. [17] Japan's Hideki Matsuyama and first-timer Ryo Hisatsune won a point, and so did South Korea's Tom Kim and Si Woo Kim. [17][18] The first team to 15.5 of the 30 points wins. [17]

Why it matters. The International team has won once, in 1998, and the two sides tied in 2003. [17] Five more matches are played on Friday, and all 24 players play singles on Sunday. [18]

The Laver Cup, a three-day team tennis event, starts on Friday at London's O2 Arena. [20] Team Europe includes Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev, and Team World includes Taylor Fritz and Alex de Minaur. [19] A match win is worth one point on Friday, two on Saturday and three on Sunday, and the first team to 13 wins. [19] With four matches a day, that is 4, 8 and 12 points, so Sunday carries half the total. [19] Tommy Paul and Ben Shelton pulled out of Team World, and Francisco Cerundolo and Brandon Nakashima replace them. [29]

Why it matters. Each player on the winning team gets an extra $250,000, and the losing team gets nothing more. [19] Team World won 15-9 in San Francisco last year, and Europe leads the series five wins to three. [20]

A New York state judge ruled on Thursday that Roddy Gayle can play a fifth college season for Michigan, last season's national basketball champions. [21] The NCAA, which runs US college sport, changed its rules in June to allow five seasons, but not for players who graduated in 2026. [21] Hundreds of athletes hired lawyers to fight that cut-off. [21] Gayle graduated after four seasons and played two NBA Summer League games without ever signing a contract. [21] The NCAA is expected to appeal. [21]

Why it matters. Michigan get back an experienced guard after losing their coach to the NBA and a top freshman to a knee injury. [21] Each ruling like this adds pressure on a rule that hundreds of other players are also fighting in court. [21]

The NFL, American football's top league, fined at least four players this week over their celebrations. [23] San Francisco's Kyle Juszczyk was fined $14,926 for miming drinking a beer, which he says is a nod to his nickname, Juice. [22][23] Indianapolis's Matt Goncalves was fined $8,847 for a similar gesture. [23] Cincinnati's Ja'Marr Chase says he will appeal his own fine, for a move he says copied a wrestler. [23] Juszczyk has already appealed. [22]

Why it matters. The money goes to two league charities, and the NFL has collected about $4m a year in fines since 2011. [24] Chase said star players should push the players' union to fight the fines. [23]

The Connecticut Sun beat the Toronto Tempo 95-81 on Thursday, in a game between two of the WNBA's worst teams. [4][9] That left both clubs level for the best odds in next year's draft lottery, which decides who picks first. [9] The league judges most teams on two seasons of results, to stop them losing on purpose. [9] The Tempo, a new club, are judged on this season alone. [9] If the chances cannot be split evenly, the Tempo win the tiebreak because they won the season series. [9]

Why it matters. The Sun move to Houston in 2027 after two losing seasons, and the draft is expected to include JuJu Watkins, whom CBS Sports says could change a club. [9] Their own win on the last night may have cost them sole hold of the best chance. [9]

Nneka Ogwumike played the last game of her 15-year career on Thursday for the Los Angeles Sparks. [5] She had 17 points and 15 rebounds, her 19th double-double of the season, meaning ten or more of both in one game. [5] Her 134th career double-double is the sixth-most in league history. [5] Ogwumike, the league's best player in 2016 and an 11-time All-Star, announced her retirement on 19 August. [5][14] The Sparks led Golden State by 12 with under five minutes left and lost. [5]

Why it matters. The Sparks' season ends outside the playoffs, so this was her farewell. [5] She said recently she had learned there is power in knowing when to walk away. [14]

Baseball's regular season ends this weekend with several playoff places still open. [25] Going into Thursday, the San Diego Padres led the Phillies and the Cubs by one game for the top wild-card spot, a place for good teams that did not win their division. [25] Both the Phillies and the Cubs hold the tiebreak over San Diego. [25] Texas and Houston were tied for the American League West title, and Houston holds that tiebreak. [25] A storm forced Boston and the Cubs into two games on Friday. [25]

Why it matters. The Padres can finish level with either team and still lose out, because the tiebreak was settled by games played earlier. [25] San Diego end the season with three games against Arizona. [25]

The New York Yankees' manager, Aaron Boone, said he expects Aaron Judge to miss the wild-card series, baseball's first playoff round, with a calf strain. [26] Judge himself is pushing to play. [26] On the bracket as it stood on Thursday, the Yankees would face their biggest rivals without him. [26]

Why it matters. The wild-card round is short, so a team without its best hitter has little time to recover from one bad game.

Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, two British heavyweight boxers, will fight on 11 December at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. [27] ESPN reported on Thursday that the date is confirmed. [27] The two have been talking about fighting each other for more than a decade, and earlier plans kept falling through. [27]

Why it matters. Both men are British, and the fight will now be held in Britain, at a stadium in Wales. [27]

India won two silver and three bronze medals on Thursday, the fifth day of the Asian Games in Aichi and Nagoya, Japan. [28] Their mixed 4x400m relay team won silver. [28] Roshibina Devi won silver in wushu, a Chinese martial art, at 60kg. [28] Seema won bronze in the women's 10,000m, and a men's rowing pair took bronze. [28] In kabaddi, a team game of tag and wrestling, India's women beat Japan 50-25 to reach the semi-finals. [28]

Why it matters. Reaching the kabaddi semi-finals guarantees India's women a medal before they play again. [28]

The New York Giants confirmed that their quarterback Jaxson Dart is out for the season with a knee injury. [26] Jameis Winston replaced him on Monday night and did not play well, CBS Sports wrote. [26] The Giants may now look for a quarterback in a trade. [26] One name CBS Sports raised is Joe Flacco, who won a Super Bowl in 2012 with the Giants' coach, John Harbaugh, when both were at Baltimore. [26]

Why it matters. Washington have also just lost their quarterback, Jayden Daniels, so two clubs could be looking for the same few players. [26]

Contract talks between the New York Knicks and Karl-Anthony Towns have stalled, CBS Sports reported. [26] Towns helped the Knicks win their first NBA title in 53 years. [26] A new deal now looks unlikely before training camp starts. [26] The Knicks' owner, James Dolan, wants to stay below the second apron, a spending level where the NBA adds heavy extra penalties on top of its luxury tax. [26]

Why it matters. The Knicks must choose between paying to keep their title team together and staying under the apron. [26] CBS Sports wrote that the current group may not have long left together. [26]