Latest in Naomi Osaka

It’s been 50 years since the passage of Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding, and the new short Mink! is a reminder of how circumstances easily could have limited the scope of its impact on sports. Mink! tells the story of the first woman of…

Add Naomi Osaka’s new company to the Marketing Blunders Hall of Fame. The tennis star announced earlier this week that she has partnered with Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James’s SpringHill to start a media company. She expessed the hope that it would produce TV shows, documentaries and branded content. The name…

EXCLUSIVE: MINK!, filmmaker Ben Proudfoot's follow up to his Oscar-winning documentary short The Queen of Basketball, will launch this week, a project that teams him with tennis star Naomi Osaka and her newly-announced production company. MINK! tells the story of Patsy Takemoto Mink, a Hawaii Democrat who became the…

Some of the most acclaimed documentaries of recent decades have come out of the arena of sports, among them Hoop Dreams (1994), When We Were Kings (1996), Senna (2010), O.J.: Made in America (2016), Icarus (2017), and The Last Dance (2020). Netflix continues that distinguished tradition with a pair of Emmy-contending…

We may have seen the last of Naomi Osaka for at least this year. In a tearful press conference following her defeat at the hands of Leylah Fernandez Friday night at the US Open, she said she’s “going to take a break for a while.” Osaka, the defending US Open champion, had a near meltdown during her third round match…

Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open and skipped Wimbledon earlier this year, revealing she suffers from depression and social anxiety. In her first major since then, things did not go well for the defending U.S. Open champion. She took the first set and then the usually stoic Osaka lost her composure, repeatedly…

Sisters Serena Williams and Venus Williams said Wednesday that they will not play in the upcoming U.S. Open tennis tournament because of injuries. They join standouts Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in their withdrawals, marking the first major tournament since 1997 without the quartet of stars who have largely…

In her first press conference since she withdrew from the French Open and Wimbledon, the world’s No. 2 women’s tennis player Naomi Osaka teared up Monday before stepping away from the podium. The trigger reportedly was a question from longtime Cincinnati Enquirer sports columnist Paul Daugherty in a session for the…

EXCLUSIVE: After executive producer Jada Pinkett Smith introduced a show distinguished by the remarkable amount of candor on personal issues facing women and families with the Facebook series Red Table Talk, the brand is expanding into the realm of sports. Red Table Talk Productions is developing The Toughest…

Tennis champion Naomi Osaka, one of the biggest stars at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, made a surprise early exit, losing to World No. 42 Markéta Vondroušová in the third round. “This is a very big story,” stunned Mary Carillo said during Olympic Channel’s live broadcast of the match, which Osaka lost in straight sets, 6:1…

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains details of this morning’s Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony live on NBC. Ever imagine what it would be like if they held an Olympics and almost nobody came? Well, with Japanese-born tennis superstar Naomi Osaka holding the flame and lighting the cauldron, today's opening ceremony of…

Once upon a time in a three-network world long long ago, television went into the doldrums during the summer. That is not the case this still pandemic uncertain summer with premieres, returning series and more from the broadcasters, cablers, premium cablers, streamers and every other platform out there. Which, by its…