Sports
Elliott: Teenager Josephine Lee announces her presence on figure skating's big stage
Josephine Lee’s figure skating talent is obvious to even the most casual observer.
The sureness of her jumps, her ability to captivate an audience and the exquisite quality of her edges — the technique that puts the “figure” in figure skating — make her an entrancing athlete. Lee, who turned 16 on Feb. 3, confirmed her 2026 Olympic ambitions by performing the highest-scored long program at the recent U.S. championships, a stunning routine that lifted her to an unexpected but deserved second-place finish behind Amber Glenn and ahead of defending champion Isabeau Levito.
Yet Lee, who lives in Irvine and trains at Lakewood Ice, has another talent that isn’t as obvious: She can solve a Rubik’s cube with her feet.
She played a video of her feet feat for The Times but was too modest to share it. Suffice to say that if finishing a Rubik’s cube with your feet ever becomes an Olympic sport, she’d contend for a gold medal.
She had solved it with her hands, but she didn’t stop there. “One time I was on a long car ride and I got really bored, so I decided to put the Rubik’s cube on the floor. It took about an hour,” she said. “It’s a really good ankle exercise.”
It’s not a conventional training method, but it’s working for her.
Lee is too young to compete in this year’s world championships at the senior level but will go to the world junior competition later this month in Taiwan in hopes of improving on her 19th-place finish a year ago. She’s trying to stay in the moment while positioning herself to earn a berth on the U.S. team at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games, a tough balance to maintain.
She has the talent and the temperament. She was 4 when her father, Jeff, a computer programmer, took her to a rink near his office. She was, she joked, the only person ever to fail a Tot 1 learn-to-skate class. But even then, she recognized the challenges and sense of accomplishment the sport offered. That determination carried her through a stress fracture in her back when she was 11, and it fuels her efforts to conquer those jumps and spins on the way to living her Olympic dreams.
“I think she’s got a good shot. I think her work ethic and her desire to get there is more than anyone I see out there,” said her coach, Amy Evidente of Los Feliz.
“The good thing about her is you tell her to work on something or you work on something with her and it’s better the next day. She’s really taking everything in and trying to take the instruction or correction or whatever it is that she’s told. She will make sure that it’s done. And so I think she’s got as good of a chance as Amber and Isabeau and Lindsay Thorngren, whoever else is one of the top athletes.”
Josephine Lee competes during the women’s free skate at the U.S. figure skating championships on Jan. 26.
(Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press)
Lee didn’t expect much from herself at the U.S. championships because she felt she hadn’t lived up to her potential this season. She was first after the short program at the Cranberry Cup junior event but dropped to third overall, and she finished eighth at a Grand Prix junior event in Linz, Austria. She did win the Pacific Coast sectional title.
Part of the problem was she had grown to about 5-foot-4 over the last year and wasn’t comfortable in her developing body. “It’s been a little struggle adjusting to that,” she said, “but I think my skating matured.”
Evidente was nervous for Lee before the U.S. competition.
“Only because she worked so hard and I just wanted her to put out two programs that she could walk away with that she could say, ‘I’m very proud that I did that,’” Evidente said. “My expectation was just for her to go and enjoy herself and kind of learn about herself through this process.”
Lee stood fifth after the short program. That was a moral victory because a costly mistake on an element in the short program a year ago had left her in 11th place, giving her a steep climb to her eventual fifth-place finish. This time, she pulled off a triple flip-triple toe loop jump combination and sailed through.
She was within reach of a medal. Suddenly, her expectations rose. “Then I was, ‘Shoot, I’ve never been in this position before,’” she said.
She handled the pressure beautifully, enjoying her performance instead of ticking off each technical element in her mind like a shopping list. She completed seven triple jumps without a single negative grade of execution from any of the nine judges; though she did a triple flip-double axel-double axel sequence instead of a triple-triple combination, she racked up 138.85 points, a personal best and three points better than Glenn’s free skate routine. Her final total score was 204.13 points.
Josephine Lee, right, hugs her coach, Amy Evidente, after learning her free skate score at the U.S. figure skating championships.
(Josie Lepe / Associated Press)
Her only misstep occurred when, overwhelmed by the occasion, she tried to exit the ice through the Zamboni door instead of the skaters’ door.
“You go through a program and you watch a girl like that and you just go, ‘OK girl, you can do this,’” Evidente said. “‘Just six more jumps. OK, you can continue doing this. You can stay up. Just keep going.’”
They were both happily shocked by her score, but four skaters remained. Lee and Evidente didn’t know if her total would hold up as No. 1 for the long program and they didn’t know where she’d finish.
Lee didn’t see the final skaters or track the standings. “My eyelashes fell off and I was reapplying those. They fell off when I was crying in the kiss-and-cry. So I didn’t really watch Amber’s entire skate,” Lee said.
“But my friends were texting me, like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to place.’ I think I was getting interviewed in the mixed zone during Isabeau’s skate so I didn’t get to watch her. But I had no idea that I had won the free skate until afterward. Way after.”
Glenn and Levito are headed to the world championships, but Lee said she’s not disappointed to return to junior worlds. Her mother, attorney Caroline Tseng, is from Taiwan, so Lee welcomes the chance to visit. Since she didn’t expect to do well enough at the U.S. championships to be chosen for the junior world team, the chance to gain additional high-level international experience is a bonus. “I’m definitely really grateful for the opportunity,” she said.
She will face high expectations. Evidente, who began coaching her late in 2020, believes she’s better prepared than she was a year ago.
“I think with experience you just know so much more. And she knows how to handle herself so much more. So I think she will be able to thrive in that environment this year,” Evidente said. “The only expectation for me for her, as I told her [recently], is to stay loyal to her hard work. And to stay really present, because I think everything else comes from that.”
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Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo made NBA history on Tuesday night.
Adebayo scored 83 points, all while setting league marks for free throws made and attempted in a game for the Miami Heat in a 150-129 win over the Washington Wizards. It is the second-highest scoring game for a player ever, only to Wilt Chamberlain’s famed 100-point game.
“An absolutely surreal night,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters after the game.
Adebayo started with a 31-point first quarter. He was up to 43 at halftime, 62 by the end of the third quarter. And then came the fourth, when the milestones kept falling despite facing double-, triple- and what once appeared to be a quadruple-team from a Wizards defense that kept sending him to the foul line.
He finished 20 of 43 from the field, 36 of 43 from the foul line, 7 for 22 from 3-point range.
After the game, he was seen in tears while he hugged his mother, Marilyn Blount, before leaving the floor after the game.
“Welp won’t have the highest career high in the house anymore,” Adebayo’s girlfriend, four-time WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson, wrote on social media, “but at least it gives me something to go after.”
MAGIC’S ANTHONY BLACK MAKES INCREDIBLE DUNK OVER FOUR DEFENDERS IN HISTORIC NBA GAME
Bam Adebayo #13 of the Miami Heat celebrates during the fourth quarter of the game against the Washington Wizards at Kaseya Center on March 10, 2026, in Miami, Florida. (Megan Briggs/Getty Images)
The NBA’s previous best this season was 56, by Nikola Jokic for Denver against Minnesota on Christmas night. The last player to have 62 points through three quarters: one of Adebayo’s basketball heroes, Kobe Bryant, who had exactly that many through three quarters for the Los Angeles Lakers against Dallas on Dec. 20, 2005.
He wound up passing Bryant for single-game scoring as well. Bryant’s career-best was 81 — a game that was the second-best on the NBA scoring list for two decades.
Adebayo scored 31 points in the opening quarter against the Wizards, breaking the Heat record for points in any quarter — and tying the team record for points in a first half before the second quarter even started.
He finished the first half with 43 points, a team record for any half and two points better than his previous career high — for a full game, that is — of 41, set Jan. 23, 2021, against Brooklyn.
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Adebayo’s season high entering Tuesday was 32. He matched that with a free throw with 5:53 left in the second quarter, breaking the Heat first-half scoring record.
Adebayo’s 43-point first half was the NBA’s second-best in at least the last 30 seasons — going back to the start of the digital play-by-play era that began in the 1996-97 season.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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BOSTON — Charlie McAvoy scored 39 seconds into overtime and Jeremy Swayman stopped 14 shots on Tuesday night to earn the Boston Bruins their 13th straight victory at home, 2-1 over the Kings.
Mason Lohrei scored midway through the third period to break a scoreless tie. But the Kings tied it five minutes later when Drew Doughty’s shot from the blue line deflected off the heel of Bruins forward Elias Lindholm and into the net.
It was the seventh straight time the teams had gone to overtime in Boston.
In the overtime, Mark Kastelic blocked a shot in the defensive zone and made a long pass to David Pastrnak, who waited for McAvoy to come into the zone. The Bruins’ defenseman and U.S. Olympian, who went to the locker room at the end of the second period after taking a puck off his mouth, skated in on Darcy Kuemper and went to his backhand for the winner.
Kuemper stopped 21 shots for the Kings, who entered the night one point out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The victory kept Boston in possession of the East’s second wild-card spot.
Swayman tied his career high with his 25th win of the season. The Bruins haven’t lost at the TD Garden since before Christmas.
After the game, Kings forward and future Hall of Famer Anze Kopitar stayed on the ice to shake hands with the Bruins after what is expected to be his last game in Boston.
Sports
Jon Jones requests UFC release after Dana White says legend was ‘never’ considered him for White House card
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Mixed martial arts legend Jon Jones ended his retirement from UFC simply because he wanted a spot on the “Freedom 250” fight card at the White House in June.
But, when UFC CEO Dana White announced the card during UFC 326 this past weekend, Jones wasn’t among the fighters. As a result, he has requested a release from his UFC contract.
White was candid when asked about Jones following the UFC 326 card.
Jon Jones of the United States of America reacts after his TKO victory against Stipe Miocic of the United States of America in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York City. ((Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images))
“Never, ever, ever, which I told you guys a hundred thousands times, was Jon Jones ever even remotely in my mind to fight at the White House,” White explained, per CBS Sports. “Some guy with Meta Glasses filmed him talking about his hips – that his hips are so bad. And I don’t know if you guys saw that flag football game where he can barely run. Jon Jones retired because of his hips. He’s got arthritis in his hips. Apparently, doctors say he should have a hip replacement.”
White added that “the Jon Jones thing is bulls—,” saying that he texted the fighter’s lawyer saying he would never be on the White House card despite Jones saying he was in negotiations for it.
UFC ANNOUNCES CARD FOR WHITE HOUSE EVENT
The Meta Glasses incident White is referring to came from a viral video, where Jones, unaware he was being filmed, discussed issues with his hips to a fan.
On Monday, Jones composed a thorough response to White’s comments about him and the White House Card. He previously posted and deleted social media explanations, but Monday’s appeared to be his final statement on the matter.
UFC President Dana White speaks after UFC Fight Night at Toyota Center on Feb. 21, 2026. (Troy Taormina/Imagn Images)
“Yes, I have arthritis in my hip and it’s painful, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” Jones, who retired a heavyweight champion in 2025, said. “So let me get this straight, if I had accepted the lowball offer, suddenly my hip would be fine and I’d be on the White House card? That doesn’t make sense. I even received stem cell treatment last week to get ready for the White House card, and training camp was scheduled to start today. I was preparing to be ready.
“I understand business deals fall through sometimes, but going out publicly and saying things that aren’t true isn’t right. After everything I’ve given to the UFC, the years, the title defenses, the fights, hearing that I’m ‘done’ is disappointing. Especially when as recently as Friday UFC was calling me trying to get me on that White House card for a much lower number.”
Jones finished his statement by saying he “respectfully” asks to be released from his UFC contract.
Jon Jones enters the ring before facing Stipe Miocic in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City, New York. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)
“No more spins, no more games. Thank you to the real fans who know what’s up,” he wrote.
The UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.
Jones is considered one of the best UFC fighters of all time, owning a 28-1-1 record, which includes his last bout with Stipe Miocic, knocking him out to take the heavyweight title belt. He is also a two-time light heavyweight champion.
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