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If you’re running out of storage space on your laptop or you need to back up your data and store that backlog of videos you’re going to edit one day (I am, I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem. The trouble is, there are hundreds of drive options ranging from dirt-cheap to crazy-expensive—which one is right for your needs? I’ve tested dozens, across operating systems and with different use cases in mind, to find the best external hard drives for storage, backups, gaming, video editing, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and more.
Updated January 2026: We’ve added Seagate’s One Touch SSD, swapped out our padding drive pick, and removed the Crucial X6, which, sadly, has been discontinued. We’ve also added a note explaining the rebranding of WD_Black and WD Blue drives as SeaGate Optimus GX, and updated prices and links throughout.
Table of Contents
Best for Backups
Courtesy of Western Digital
Western Digital
Elements Desktop Hard Drive
For incremental backups, which we recommend, speed isn’t a huge factor. That’s why the first drive I recommend is this Western Digital Elements hard drive. I have been using a variation of the Elements desktop hard drive to make incremental backups of my data for more than a decade. These drives are big and require external power, but they’re some of the cheapest, most reliable drives I’ve used.
Transfer speeds are not off the charts—the Elements drive I tested scored 120 megabytes per second (MB/s) for sequential writes on Windows—but again, you should ideally be running backups overnight anyway, and even at these speeds the average PC backup will be done by morning. These drives use USB-C with support for USB 3, and I’ve had no problem using them with Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Storage options go all the way up to 20 terabytes. Just check the prices; sometimes you can get a 10- or even 12-TB drive for not much more than the 8-terabyte version. And I have not seen a huge difference between the Elements line, the WD My Book drives, or the WD My Passport drives. The My Passport drives command a premium price because they’re smaller, and the My Book drives have some encryption features that drive up the price, but I find the basic Elements drive is sufficient for most people.
Other Great Backup Drives
Seagate Expansion 8-TB External Hard Drive for $159: Seagate is another reliable drive maker. It never hurts to have more backups, and if you do want multiple backups, use drives from different brands, since it will reduce the chance that both fail simultaneously.
Best for Portable Backups
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Western Digital
My Passport Ultra
If you travel a lot, you’ll want something that’s easier to carry than the Elements drives, which aren’t the best in a suitcase. For backups when traveling, I love Western Digital’s My Passport series, especially the new “Ultra” version, which uses a standard USB-C cord, eliminating the need to carry a separate cable. It’s not the thinnest drive on the market, but it’s less than an inch thick and solid enough that I never worried about tossing it in my bag. (Although it should be said that this is a spinning drive, so don’t literally toss it.) I also like that the corners are nicely rounded and there are no screws or anything else that will catch on fabric in your bag.
There are a variety of colors available and you can get from 1 TB to 6 TB. I tested the 5-TB model, but Western Digital claims the same speeds regardless of drive size. I tested it using CrystalDiskMark on Windows, AmorphousDiskMark on macOS, and KDiskMark on Linux and averaged the results to come up with 121 MB/s for read speed and 115 MB/s write speed. It’s not what you’d want to copy photos quickly for a client in the field, but fast enough to run a daily backup in your hotel room.
Other Portable Backup Drives
Western Digital Elements 5-TB Portable HDD for $135: This drive is slightly thinner than our top pick, but feels flimsier in my experience. Speeds are tad slower as well, but if you’re on a budget this will save you a little cash. Corsair is marketing this as a good way to backup your iPhone ProRes footage, and while it certainly works for that, performance is limited by the iPhone’s USB-C interface. For maximum throughput, connect it to a PC with a USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 port.
Seagate One Touch 4-TB for $125: Seagate’s One Touch drive offers some encryption tools, but speeds lagged a little behind our top pick. Still, this is a solid option for backups and it’s surprisingly small for a spinning drive enclosure. Also note that this drive is sometimes sold with four months of Adobe Creative Cloud (a roughly $40 value), but if you use it, be sure to cancel because after those four months you’ll be charged.
Best USB5 Drive: The Thunderbolt 5
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
LaCie has updated its rugged SSD line with the Rugged Pro5. This one ditches the iconic orange padding for blue, but it is otherwise just like the ordinary LaCie padded drives on the outside. On the inside, this is an amazingly fast drive. The 5 in the name is for, you guessed it, Thunderbolt 5, which despite being announced seemingly forever ago, has been painfully slow to trickle onto the market. This made testing a bit tricky, but fortunately a friend let me borrow his brand-new MacBook Pro 14 for testing. The results were impressive.
LaCie claims read/write speeds of up to 6,700 MB/s and 5,300 MB/s, which it says are enough for real-time editing of 8K and 6K RAW footage. In testing the highest speeds, file transfers were 5,787 MB/s read and 5,188 MB/s write—which, while not quite matching the claim, is still far and away the fastest drive on the page. But raw speeds are just numbers for spreadsheets; I was more interested in real-world performance. Since I happened to also be testing the Nikon Z6III (8/10, WIRED Recommends), which can shoot 6K ProRes RAW, I loaded a good bit of footage on the Pro5 and was indeed able to edit using DaVinci Resolve Studio.
The downside here is the price. At $600 for the 4-TB version (which is the minimum you’d want for working with ProRes RAW video files), this is a very pricey drive. It is, however, well worth the money if it’s speed you’re after.
Best USB4 Drive
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
If you don’t yet have any devices with Thunderbolt 5 support, this Thunderbolt 4 drive would be my recommendation for anyone obsessed with speed. Corsair’s EX400U is an impressive little drive, consistently delivering speeds of around 3,800 MB/s for sequential read and and 3,550 MB/s write. Again, this is only going to be possible if you have a device that supports USB4/Thunderbolt 4 (including recent Macbooks, Dell XPS, and others—see our guide to the best laptops for more). Technically, just as I was wrapping up this update, Lacie’s new rugged SSD came out which beat this drive in my tests by about 10 MB/s, but this drive is smaller, lighter, and cheaper.
I also like that Corsair has included a Magsafe connector on the back of the case, which makes great option for backing up ProRes video footage from your iPhone.
Best for Photographers
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Crucial’s X9 Pro hits the sweet spot of speed, portability, and price to be one of the best drives out there for photographers looking to make backups in the field. These drives are tiny, about half the size of a deck of cards, and weigh a mere 1.3 ounces (38 grams). They’ll connect to just about anything. I tested the X9 Pro on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS and never hit any issues with any of them. When it comes to speed, the X9 Pro claims symmetrical read and write speeds, at 1,050 MB/s. I actually consistently got higher speeds, up to 1,110 MB/s for read and 1,100 MB/s for write. That puts the X9 Pro at the top of the pack in terms of portable drive speed.
I’ve been testing the X9 Pro for several months now, and while I can’t yet speak to the long-term survival rate, I have been testing X6 and X8 drives from Crucial for over two years now without issue. There is also the X10 Pro drive ($235), which offers even faster speeds if you have a PC that supports USB 2X2. (The latest Intel chips support this spec, but Apple does not, so there’s no point in buying the X10 Pro if you have a Mac.) I do not own a PC that supports USB 2X2 for extensive testing, but I did get a chance to at least try it, and the X10 Pro does indeed deliver on its promise of 2,100 MB/s (I got it up to 2,050 MB/s). If your hardware supports it, the X10 Pro is worth the extra money.
Best Tiny Drive
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Seagate’s new Ultra Compact SSD straddles the line between USB thumb drive and traditional external drive. The size, design, and built-in USB-C connector make it a thumb drive, but the drive inside is much faster, offering 1,000 MB/s throughput via USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps). In my CrystalDiskMark test, it managed 1034 MB/s and a write speed of 1018 MB/s, which, while not as fast as some of the new Thunderbolt 5 drives coming on the market, is still way, way faster than most USB sticks. In some ways, performance-wise, this is a more compact, down-market version of the X9 drive above (LaCie is Seagate’s high-end, Mac-focused brand). You do get slightly less performance for the money, but the compact, no-cable-needed form factor might be worth it to some people.
My one gripe with this drive is that it’s on the wide side for a thumb drive, which means that if your laptop has USB-C ports close together it might cover two. You can mitigate this by ditching the rubber housing, but then you lose some of the protection (the drive with housing is rated to withstand 3 meter drops and is IP54 rated for dust and water resistance). It also goes in and out of stock frequently. Seagate’s Ultra Compact SSD is one of several SSDs adopting the thumb drive form factor. We’ve also tested and like the SK Hynix Tube 31, which is featured in our guide to the Best USB Flash Drives.
Other Great Tiny Drives
Kingston XS1000 2-TB for $203: This tiny little drive is one of the smallest in this guide. Like the Crucial X6, it has a mostly plastic enclosure, but it has withstood life in my bag quite well. While it’s not as robust as the padded options below, it’s strong enough for most things. It’s also speedy. Kingston claims up to 1,050 MB/s. I never managed that, but I routinely hit around 800 MB/s, with some older laptops closer to 600 MB/s, which is still quite good. The drive bogs down a bit with large files (MP4s, for example), so it’s not the best for pro videographers, but for everyone else, this is a solid, slightly cheaper option.
Best Go-Anywhere Drive
OWC
Envoy Pro Elektron SSD
If you need a drive that can stand up to life in a backpack or camera bag, get wet, or handle a drop onto hard surfaces, OWC drives are your best choice. It’s tough to pick a winner here because there are many solid options, but OWC’s Elektron drive narrowly beat others in benchmark tests. I also like that you can swap out the drive inside the aluminum casing (it’s easy to unscrew), which means two years from now, you can pick up a faster bare SSD and drop it in the hardy Elektron enclosure.
Other Great Rugged SSDs
Sabrent Rocket Nano 1-TB SSD for $170: I really like this one. It’s smaller and slightly faster than the OWC, but it has two drawbacks. The first is that it can get hot. If you’re trying to work with it in your lap, it can be downright uncomfortable. The other issue is that sometimes it’s slow to be recognized by my PC. I could find no pattern to this; sometimes it appeared right away, and other times it took a couple of minutes. If those things don’t bother you, this drive is tiny, cheaper, and includes a padded rubber case.
Best Padded Drive
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
Samsung’s T9 has been my go-to portable drive for a couple years now. While I do like the LaCie drives (like the rugged Pro5 above) that usually dominate this category, the Samsung is plenty fast. The 20Gbps T9 was able to take full advantage of that speed, clocking in at over 1350 MB/s, handily beating the Crucial X9. The T9 also seems to have a lower power draw, or at least when I plug it into my Android tablet it drains the battery far less than any other drive I use regularly.
The padding on the T9 is less than what the LaCie drives offer, but it’s also considerably cheaper and has help up well to life on the road. The only catch is that its not waterproof or dust proof. The padding stops on the ends so it’s not completely sealed. I haven’t had any issues, but if you get it wet it will be a problem. If you’re worried about that, check out the T7 Shield below.
Another Great Padded Option
Samsung T7 Shield 2-TB SSD for $235: This is very similar to the above, but it adds an IP65 rating, which means it’s fine in the rain and is protected from dust and sand. The T7 line is notable for its built-in security features like hardware-based encryption, but unlike the Touch model, the Shield does not have a fingerprint reader.
Best Gaming Drive
Photograph: Western Digital
Western Digital
P40 Gaming Drive
Take this category with a grain of salt. Most of the drives here will work just fine for gaming (just stick with the fastest you can afford). That said, Western Digital’s new P40 does have some cool RGB lights on the bottom if that’s your jam. In my testing, that didn’t seem to impact power consumption.
As for speed, my tests were inconsistent. This drive is capable of speeds that handily beat both the Envoy Pro and Samsung T7, but at other times it seemed to bog down (at least in benchmarks). In real-world use, the bottleneck I consistently hit was some lag in transferring huge amounts of data. That might be a deal-breaker for some, but for the price, it remains a solid choice.
Best Bare Drive
If you want to put a bigger SSD in your laptop, all you need is a bare drive, which is generally cheaper than the drives with enclosures listed above. The first thing to figure out is which drive your PC uses. Consult your manufacturer’s documentation to find out. These days the most common form factor is M.2 2280, which is the long, thin drive in the image above. More compact laptops may use the similar, but shorter, M.2 2242 design. Again, check your PC to confirm the drive it needs before you buy. Of the dozens I’ve tried, Western Digital’s WD Black series has stood out for speed, and it doesn’t run very hot.
The SN 990 PRO SSD NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 achieved speeds of 7,458 MB/s reads in my testing, more or less matching the claimed 7,450 MBs / 6,900 MBs read/write speeds. If you’re doing a lot of drive-intensive tasks, like editing video or gaming, this drive is well worth the money. The largest version you can get is 4 TB, and the price is reasonable considering the speed. There are faster drives, but you’ll pay for them and I find that currently, beyond this drive there is a diminishing return in the speed vs price curve. I’ve been using this one as my main drive for several months months now and it works great for editing 5.2K video footage and compiling software. My favorite part? It generates very little heat.
Other Options
Western Digital SN850X 1-TB SSD for $245: Another fast one, Western Digital claims up to 7,300 MB/s read speeds, and in benchmark tests, this drive’s results came close. Like the Samsung above, to take full advantage of the speed here, you’ll need a system that supports the PCIe 4.0 SSD standard, but this is a great drive if you want to upgrade a gaming system, whether it’s a desktop PC or your PlayStation. This drive is also one of the few I’ve seen that’s available up to 8-TB capacity.
Samsung 990 Evo Plus 2-TB for $273: The 990 EVO Plus is an upgrade to the very popular 990 EVO. The original did not offer anything compelling and never made this guide, but the new version manages to be impressively speedy and not overly hot, as many Gen 5 PCIe disks I’ve tested have been. The 990 EVO Plus also launched with a 4-TB model, something missing the first time around. In terms of speed it doesn’t quite match the SN850X above, topping out at 5,677 MB/s read, but it’s plenty fast for most uses and remains quite cool even when pushed. If you’re looking for a good all-around drive that stays cool, this one makes a good choice, though it is on the pricey side for what you get.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Happened to WD_Black Drives?
The short answer is that they’re still around, and the HDD versions appear to be sticking around, but the SSDs are being rebranded. For a long time Western Digital and SanDisk were the same company. Recently the two split and now the WD Blue and WD_Black brands are split between the two companies, with Western Digital taking the large, spinning drive portion of the brands and SanDisk the SSDs. SanDisk is in the process of rebranding its SSDs from WD_Black to Optimus GX and Optimus GX Pro. I’ll be testing both as the new models become available later this spring.
Picking the right hard drive comes down to balancing three things: speed, size, and price. If you’re making nightly backups, then speed probably doesn’t matter. Go for the cheapest drive you can find—up to a point. Drives don’t last forever, but some last longer than others. I suggest sticking with known brands with a good reputation, like Seagate, Western Digital, Samsung, and the others featured here. This is based partly on experience and partly on the drive failure data that Backblaze has been publishing for years now. Backblaze goes through massive amounts of hard drives backing up customers’ data, and its report is worth reading. The takeaway is simple: Stick with names you know.
Which Are the Most Reliable Brands of External Hard Drives?
This is difficult to answer, as it depends on too many factors. But if you go by Backblaze’s stats report for 2023, the best drive makes are Toshiba, Seagate, Western Digital, and Hitachi (HGST in Backblaze’s charts). The current best-performing drives appear to be Seagate’s 6- and 8-TB SSDs. With that in mind, if I were building a network-attached storage (NAS) system, the Seagate Exos 8 TB HDD is what I would use. After that though, failures—especially among SSDs—appear pretty random.
Which Is Better, SSD or HDD?
It depends on what you’re doing. If you need fast data transfer speeds, then you want a solid-state drive (SSD). If you have massive amounts of data to store or back up, then a spinning drive (hybrid hard drive, or HDD) is the cheaper option. If you’re a videographer, you need both—open your wallet wide. In general, SSDs are the way to go when you can afford it.
If speed trumps price, then you want to look at the solid-state drives we’ve listed here. SSDs don’t just have a speed advantage. They also lack moving parts, which means they’ll withstand the bumps and falls of life in a bag on the road better than spinning drives. The disadvantage is that they can wear out faster. Every write operation to an SSD—that is, when you save something to it—slightly degrades the individual NAND cells that make up the drive, which wears it out somewhat faster than a spinning drive. Just how much faster depends on how you use it. That said, I have several SSDs that are more than five years old, and I’ve used them for daily backups throughout that time. None of them have had any problems.
Do you need an SSD over a spinning drive? The answer is almost always yes—if you can afford it. But they’re especially useful for any drive you’re working with regularly: your main boot drive, an external drive you use to edit documents from, and for backups, if you need them to happen fast.
The one caveat is that if your Mac or PC doesn’t support the same USB standard as the external SSD you’re considering, then you might be wasting your money. A drive claiming USB 3.0 speeds in the neighborhood of 2,000 MB/s will do you no good if all your laptop has is USB 2.0 ports. Be sure to check the specs for your laptop, and don’t waste your money paying for transfer speeds you’ll never see.
The other caveat is if you’re going to be leaving the drive in an off state for long periods of time—think years, not weeks. In this case SSDs are sometimes more prone to data corruption and traditional hard drives (or tape drives) are a better choice. For most casual users though, this will not be an issue.
Which Backup Software Should You Use?
The answer depends on whether we’re talking about macOS, Windows, Linux, Android or iOS. Unfortunately, there is no one solution for everything. We suggest using one (or two) of the storage devices here and some kind of cloud storage backup as well. That way, even if your drives fail, your data is still backed up in the cloud. See our complete guide to backing up your digital life for our top-pick backup solutions for every platform.
How We Tested External Hard Drives
I tested these drives by first running them through a suite of benchmarking tools. On Windows, I use CrystalDiskMark to measure both sequential read/write speeds and random read/write speeds. On macOS, I do the same with the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and sometimes AmorphousDiskMark, and on Linux I use KDiskMark (and I usually reformat the disk from exFAT to ext4). I run tests six times and then take the average. In addition to benchmarks, I have two folders for testing real-world speeds. I transfer a 25-gigabyte folder of MP3 files, and then a folder with three files that together are 25 gigabytes in size. For top end drives I also test read and write speeds for ProRes RAW video files.
Once I’ve run the tests, I use the drive in day-to-day tasks—editing files directly off it (booting from it in the case of bare drives), making nightly backups, tossing it in my camera bag, and so on. All these data points, along with price, form factor, portability, and other functionality (does it offer encryption, etc.), go into informing the decisions about which disk is best.
Great Job Scott Gilbertson & the Team @ WIRED Source link for sharing this story.
For those wondering where Kristy ‘Sarah’ Scott stands after video footage showed her estranged husband Desmond Scott lip-locking with a mystery woman — now confirmed as Marissa Springer. Well, it looks like Kristy just gave an update on how she’s feeling and fans are living for her energy!
If unfazed was a person right now, it would definitely be Kristy Scott. The influencer and mom of two is literally bobbing through life amid her divorce from Desmond Scott. On Friday, January 16, Kristy dropped a post on Instagram, and fans immediately felt she was unbothered as she shared a funny clip “activating” he new look — a sleek bob. The clip had the girlies saying “stiff where?” as Kristy was too busy bobbing and weaving to be worried about her estranged husband’s kissing activities with 24-year-old Marissa Springer. In the new video, Kristy shakes her new hair while wearing a vintage Juicy Couture sweatsuit.
Fans Hype Up Kristy’s Rebrand
Kristy’s comment section was immediately flooded with love from fans who were living for her un-bobthered energy! See what we did there. Folks said her level up is already going crazy and they are sticking right beside her in her new era.
Instagram user @h.opee_ wrote, “The rebranding about to be crazy and I’m here for it ”
Instagram user @themyobrown wrote, “Bobbiaannnnaaaaaaaaaa ”
While Instagram user @jade_dope_ wrote, “You know just what you doing in that juicy area ”
Then Instagram user @lebloomerie wrote, “Keep going girl. We all rooting for you ”
Another Instagram user @teataylor_ wrote, “I love how she’s still herself and silly thru this ”
Instagram user @abbys0ul_ wrote, “They could NEVER make me hate you ”
While another Instagram user @minalbowie wrote, “I just know her DMs are flooded with NBA/NFL players ”
Lastly, Instagram user @iambohogoddess wrote, “We know when a woman cuts her hair the game is over”
Desmond Scott Riles Up Social Media With Steamy Make-Out Session Video
Just days after Kristy Scott filed for divorce from Desmond, TMZ dropped video footage of him in a steamy make-out session with Marissa Springer. At first, the blonde bombshell was a mystery, but hours later TMZ confirmed she’s a 24-year-old influencer and college student. She finished her bachelor’s in marketing and management and is working toward a master’s in business, according to UH Bauer Graduate & Professional Programs. In the now-viral clip, Desmond and Marissa were caught kissing at a bar in Houston. As of right now, there’s still no word on where they stand and Desmond has kept his lips sealed about the make-out moment.
Warren Buffett is synonymous with ambition, success, and fortune. The former Berkshire Hathaway CEO was once the world’s richest man, famously dethroning Bill Gates in 2008 with a $62 billion net worth, and held the spot for quite some time.
But one of the people closest to him didn’t even know how wealthy and successful Buffett was: his own son, Peter Buffett.
Peter, now 67, didn’t realize his own father’s status until he was in his 20s. The realization happened when Peter saw his dad’s name on the Forbes list of the richest Americans, according to a 2013 Forbes interview with both Peter and Warren Buffett.
“I’m not kidding. It was when I was in my 20s that my mom and I talked at some point, because there he was, on this list,” Peter said. “And we laughed about it, because we said, ‘Well, isn’t it funny? You know, we know who we are, but everybody’s treating us differently now.’”
Peter is the youngest of Warren Buffett’s three children with his first wife, Susan Alice Buffett. Peter is an American musician, composer, author, and philanthropist who has won a regional Emmy Award, become a New York Times best-selling author, and served as co-chair of the NoVo Foundation. But Peter recalled that conversation with his mom, with little effect on his outlook or perception of his family.
“It was a fascinating switch, although not a huge one because we didn’t live in that world or a cultural framework where there was a lot of wealth being shown,” Peter said. “Our friends were as surprised as I was.”
Warren Buffett backed up his son, saying that by the time his children found out just how rich they were, they had already formed their own personalities and paths.
“The kids were formed by that time, and they knew who their friends were, and their friends were their friends because they liked ’em, and not because they were the rich kid on the block or anything of the sort,” Warren Buffett said.
Warren Buffett’s net worth and outlook on money
While Warren Buffett may no longer be the world’s richest man, he is still very much a billionaire, worth about $145 billion, making him the 10th wealthiest person in the world.
Still, Buffett has never been much of one to brag about money—and it’s not how he defines success.
“Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government,” Buffett wrote in his final Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter published in November.
The 95-year-old “Oracle of Ohama,” known as one of the most successful investors of all time, also lives a very frugal life. He eats McDonald’s, drives a beat-up old car, and still lives in his modest Nebraska home, which he bought for just $31,500 in 1958. His license plate once read “THRIFTY.” Rather, he says he prioritizes helping others using his fortune, which he will ultimately pass down to his children, who will use it for their respective philanthropic organizations.
“When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world,” Buffett wrote. “Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior…Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman.”
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“We’ve only heard the plan or the fireworks of how amazing it will be, how much potential there is,” EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejunas said of the NBA’s proposed league. “But having a theory is one — and making it work is two.”
“We’ve been here for 26 years. We know how Europe functions.”
With clubs like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, the EuroLeague is considered the best men’s professional competition outside the NBA. The 20-team league is comprised of 13 “shareholder” clubs immune from relegation. The rest either qualify through their domestic leagues or through invitation.
The NBA, in partnership with FIBA, is eying a 16-team model with 12 permanent members — with a target start of October 2027. It has identified Athens, Istanbul, Paris, Lyon, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, London and Manchester as potential host cities.
Attention is currently on three EuroLeague shareholder clubs that haven’t renewed their 10-year licenses — Real Madrid, Fenerbahce in Istanbul and the Tony Parker -owned ASVEL near Lyon. Parker has signaled his support for the NBA.
Recent holdout Barcelona has indicated it will extend for another 10 years beyond this season.
“It’s a big deal, of course. It’s an important brand, and we’re happy that they committed,” Motiejunas said of Barcelona, which hasn’t commented publicly.
Motiejunas, in an interview with The Associated Press, said he’s confident all 13 clubs will stay.
“The NBA has been announcing and announcing things for a year but still it’s nothing that you can grasp on,” Motiejunas said. “As businessmen, these are team owners, they also begin to see it’s a little bit of a broken record of ‘we will announce later,’ … The ’27 start is already around the corner.”
EuroLeague clubs reportedly have a 10 million euro ($11.6 million) exit clause, but Motiejunas would only say that through “consequences and legal teams” contracts can be broken. There’s no NBA opt-out, he added.
NBA vs EuroLeague?
The EuroLeague claims to still be open to some type of relationship with the NBA. But in the meantime, it sent a letter to the NBA warning of legal action should talks with EuroLeague shareholders continue.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver shrugged off the threat Thursday in Berlin ahead of the Orlando Magic’s 118-111 win over the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA’s first regular-season game in Germany.
He also shrugged off the EuroLeague more generally.
“If I thought that the ceiling was the existing EuroLeague and their fan interest,” Silver said, “we wouldn’t be spending the kind of time and attention we are on this project.”
Media reports indicate the NBA is looking for at least a $500 million franchise fee. Silver noted that any investors will have to be patient because “it will take a while, I think, before it is a viable commercial enterprise.” He added it will be “multi-decades in the making.”
Silver cautioned that “potentially” starting a new league is an “enormous undertaking” and described talks with Real Madrid and other Spanish clubs as “more in the category of fact finding.”
European market
The European basketball landscape is similar to soccer in that domestic leagues feed the continental competitions. EuroLeague is like UEFA’s Champions League. Basketball also has several other international leagues — but they’re lesser known than their soccer counterparts, so fans get confused. FIBA, for example, has its own Basketball Champions League, which would be a potential feeder to an NBA league.
Silver sees potential because basketball is the No. 2 sport in Europe after soccer.
“Rather than think of us as taking share from (soccer), I look at the commercial side of basketball as it exists now in Europe, and it probably represents about 1 percent of the commercial sports marketplace,” he said.
Middle East impact
Many European basketball teams, including some in the EuroLeague, have struggled financially. The system has often relied on wealthy owners to cover team debts each year. EuroLeague has implemented spending restrictions to promote financial sustainability.
In a revenue boost, the EuroLeague last season took its “Final Four” championship outside Europe — to Abu Dhabi — for the first time. It brought a flavor of Euro hoops chaos, too, as Panathinaikos majority owner Dimitris Giannakopoulos was handed a 5-game ban for his “threatening actions” against referees.
EuroLeague also granted a multi-year license to a newly created Dubai team and recently extended its partnership with global sports marketing agency IMG.
“We focus on ourselves,” Motiejunas said. “We will be able to adapt, there’s no question about it, and we will continue to fight.”
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Netflix has a new hit thriller series on its hands. His & Hers, which premiered in early January, is currently the most-watched show on the platform. With 19.9 million views this week, it’s also #1 in 51 countries where the service is available.
Not only that, but it dethroned the final season of Stranger Things! That’s no easy feat. Twisty and addictive, His & Hers clocks in at only six episodes. Should we expect a season 2?
His & Hers Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, Netflix hasn’t announced any plans about a potential His & Hers season 2. The production is also listed as a limited series and was adapted from a standalone novel. In other words, there’s a chance this might be all we get.
That said, the viewership numbers are great, and the show is enjoying quite the momentum. As long as its popularity holds steady, the platform could decide to order more episodes.
For now, all we can do is wait and see. If the title does get renewed, a follow-up could arrive in a couple of years.
His & Hers Cast
Tessa Thompson as Anna Andrews
Jon Bernthal as Detective Jack Harper
Pablo Schreiber as Richard Jones
Marin Ireland as Zoe Harper
Sunita Mani as Priya “Boston” Patel
Rebecca Rittenhouse as Lexy Jones
Crystal Fox as Alice Andrews
What Could Happen in His & Hers Season 2?
A psychological thriller, His & Hers explores how truth shifts depending on who’s telling the story. Based on the bestselling novel by Alice Feeney, the series follows Anna, a high-profile journalist whose life unravels when a woman is found murdered in her hometown.
Forced to return to the place she worked hard to escape, Anna is confronted with a past she isn’t fond of. She also has to deal with Jack, the detective investigating the crime and her estranged husband. As the investigation unfolds, their history complicates the search for the truth.
The show makes you question whose version of events can be trusted. It also touches upon the stories people tell themselves to survive. Add some unexpected twists into the mix, and it’s difficult to look away from this one.
By the time the finale wraps up, viewers find out who was behind the murders, so you don’t have to worry about cliffhangers. Still, while the story is self-contained, there’s room for a sequel. His & Hers season 2 could see Anna and Jack deal with a new case, or zoom in on the fallout from the big finale reveal.
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A cold front is expected to push into San Antonio late Friday or early Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Gusty winds out of the north up to 25 miles per hour will combine with low humidity to increase the risk of wildfires.
A red flag warning is in effect from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday.
Residents should not conduct outdoor burning, park vehicles in grassy areas, toss cigarette butts out vehicle windows, or perform work that could create a spark, such as welding.
The cold front will also bring San Antonio its first freeze of winter. Temperatures are expected to dip into the upper 20s just before sunrise on Sunday. It will be even chillier in the Hill Country to the north and northwest of San Antonio, especially with wind chills factored in.
The front will result in weekend highs just above or just below 60. The weather for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day March in San Antonio on Monday should start out in the upper 30s around sunrise and warm into the upper 60s by late afternoon.
Highs in the 50s and lower 60s will follow through the middle of the next work week.
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In 2024, Donald Trump won a 49.8 percent plurality of the popular vote. Many different kinds of voters pulled the lever for him for many different reasons, but he certainly made no secret of his desire to carry out mass deportations. At the 2024 Republican National Convention, delegates waved professionally printed signs calling for “Mass Deportation Now.”
After seeing what those mass deportations look like in practice, though, there’s been a sea change in public opinion. There was a period early last year when immigration and border policy was the only issue where Trump’s poll numbers were above water. Since then, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has torn through American cities brutalizing people with abandon and impunity, Trump’s immigration policy has become less and less popular. By December 2025, the share of Americans expressing disapproval of the administration’s deportation actions had grown from 44 percent in March to 53 percent. And that was before ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot American citizen Renee Good three times in the face for trying to drive away.
The shooting of Good may be one of the best-documented murders in human history, with multiple videos from various angles painting a picture of what happened that isn’t seriously debatable. Polls show that only 28 percent of Americans believe the shooting was justified. Trump supporters may be tempted to blame liberal media bias, but the same polls show that the vast majority of respondents have seen video footage for themselves. The first polls after the killing show it dealt a major blow to ICE’s already declining favorability.
The Trump administration’s full-throated defense of Ross has had the predictable effect of emboldening ICE agents to engage in ever more thuggish behavior on the ground. This, in turn, continues to generate a nonstop stream of horrifying footage and makes it implausible that the slide of public opinion against ICE will stop any time soon. This week, even talk show host Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump for president with great fanfare in 2024, said that ICE was acting like “the Gestapo.”
Increasing numbers of Americans even want to entirely eliminate the agency tasked with carrying out the mass deportations. For the first time since pollsters have asked the question, more Americans want to abolish ICE (46 percent) than keep it (43 percent).
To some ears, the demand to disband the agency might blend together with far more radical ideas that are also advocated in some corners of the Left, like “abolishing” prisons or the police. It’s important to remember, though, that ICE has existed for less than twenty-two years. It was founded in March 2003, the same month as the invasion of Iraq, as part of the George W. Bush administration’s aggressive reorganization of the federal bureaucracy for “war on terror” purposes. If you were born in, say, 1983, it should be very easy to imagine a world without ICE. Just imagine the world as it was when you were nineteen.
Bush established ICE, part of the newly founded Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as a larger, more aggressive, and more militarized replacement for the older Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Its operations ramped up further under the administrations of Bush’s successors. Barack Obama was derided by the American Civil Liberties Union and immigrants’ rights groups as the “deporter-in-chief.” Under the first Trump administration, the brutality of a policy of separating undocumented parents from their children led to widespread outrage and the first high-profile calls to abolish ICE. Joe Biden did nothing to curb the agency, whose budget considerably increased during his time in office.
Under the second Trump administration, though, ICE has become something altogether different and qualitatively worse. As Senator Bernie Sanders put it, ICE increasingly looks and acts like “Trump’s domestic army.” More and more, the agency is dispatched in force to cities where there have been mass protests against the administration’s policies as an intimidating show of force, with the apparent mission of bullying critics of the Trump administration into submission.
Until Trump took office, it wasn’t common practice for ICE agents to wear masks on the job. Now it’s so routine that many Trump supporters accused the media of “doxing” Jonathan Ross by identifying him and printing his name. The administration itself has often (falsely) suggested that it’s illegal for citizens to document the agency’s abuses by filming them.
ICE agents themselves have been referencing Renee Good’s murder to threaten people who monitor their activities. In Minneapolis, one agent asked a woman filming him, “Have y’all not learned from the past couple of days?” As she queried his meaning, he said something about “filming federal agents” while snatching the phone from her hand. Another banged on an observer’s car window and yelled, “This is your warning. Stop f—ing following us, you are impeding operations. Did you not learn from what just happened?”
Democracies aren’t supposed to have secret police forces. In many state and local police departments around the country, officers are required to display a badge or name tag on their uniforms with their last name and/or an identifying number. If an officer mistreats you or violates your constitutional rights, you know exactly who to file a complaint about. If a masked ICE officer does the same, you have no such recourse.
A typical social media post from the official DHS account last year called for Americans to join ICE to “defend your culture.” Note: Not “enforce the law,” not even “defend our safety” against some imagined horde of violent drug-running narcoterrorists streaming across the border. But defend American culture against the grave threat of too many people living here who supposedly have the wrong ethnic background. This is just one among many recruitment posts that explicitly evoke white nationalism and historical fascism.
As for vetting the people who heed this call, recruitment standards are so low that anti-ICE commentator Laura Jedeed, who applied to the agency as a test, was offered a job without having to sign any paperwork or pass a background check. In December, one DHS official expressed concern that the rushed hiring of unqualified ICE agents had resulted in onboarding many recruits who “can barely read or write.”
Put all this together, and you get an agency full of people who increasingly haven’t even gone through cursory background checks, who have been recruited on the basis of flagrant appeals to racism, and have gotten a taste for being able to push around and physically brutalize citizens with the blessings of the administration.
ICE has evolved into a rogue, thuggish paramilitary force. In the greater scheme of things, it’s a brand-new addition to the American state, and it’s highly volatile. Even if a new president with better intentions inherits this state-sanctioned gang, it’s far from clear that it would ever be reformable. It’s really not crazy to suggest it shouldn’t exist.
It’s not clear why a free society would require a whole law enforcement agency dedicated to hunting down and deporting otherwise law-abiding people for the crime of unauthorized entry (which, at least for a first offense, is usually treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony in any case). Even if we did need a new, less militarized agency to handle these immigration functions, though, it would be better to start over with a new force that hadn’t been recruited with appeals to “defend your culture” and the promise of “absolute immunity.”
In 2002, when ICE didn’t exist, the U.S. was far from having an open border. You had to pass through a checkpoint to drive into the country. (A completely separate agency, the Border Patrol, handled that then and continues to handle it now.) And there were even deportations, if not at anything like the mass scale we’ve become accustomed to in the era of ICE. But the basic institutions of a free society were in far better shape than they are now. It’s easy to imagine going back.
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In his pieces, Ken Womack captures the looming shadow of modernity and capitalism, often transforming everyday items into cyclopean artifacts.
Image courtesy of Ken Womack
Physical size is tied to human conception of worth. It’s why they hand out big novelty checks as prizes even though a standard one cashes just the same. The difference between how big something is in terms of our regard for it and how big it is in objective measurement is an ever-present source of wonder and friction.
Dallas sculptor Ken Womack rides that frictional space the way his daddy used to ride bulls. Born and raised in Texas, Womack spent 35 years in the advertising game, founding agencies like Shift Option J, Agent 485, MindHandle, and The Agency Hack. Like all ad men, his job was to take things and make them bigger in the public mind, and he brings that same point of view to his remarkable pop art sculptures.
“I instinctively use all of my ad and promotional training when developing and displaying my art, although there are some key distinctions between displaying a product and displaying art,” said Womack via an email interview. “You are trained as a marketer to work backward from the mindset and desires of the target. Often times that actually impacts the development of the product, as the point is always to sell product. For art, I’d (of course) like to sell it, but the exploration of the piece is about self-expression and the meaning of the artwork, not sales.
There’s no denying that Womacks’s presentation is influenced by advertising even as he subverts the practice. “Texas Toast” is an enormous sculpture of buttered bread shaped like the state and almost as tall as Womack himself. Another piece, “Tore Up From the Floor Up” gives the same megaphiliac treatment to a crushed Lone Star Beer can. It’s kitschy, no doubt. Either piece would look at home on the wall of a popular locally owned steak restaurant.
Photo courtesy of Ken Womack
But divorced of that setting and given an unbiased space in a gallery, they become something much more open to interpretation. These kaiju-sized versions of food and garbage obliterate your normal conceptions the way Mothra destroys the definition of insect. It’s almost a form of idolatry, especially fitting in a modern world that almost worships its consumer items.
Flann Harris is a partner at the Dallas-based Scout Design Studio, which has hosted many works by Womack. Harris has seen visitors wowed by the size and audacity of Womack’s work.
“Ken’s work has swagger without ego,” he said in an email interview. “It’s bold, graphic, and confident—but still soulful. You don’t have to ‘get’ art to feel his pieces; they hit you instantly. We’ve seen a lot of artists come through Scout Design Studio over the years, but Ken is truly in a league of his own. It’s creative, pop-culture-laced, whimsical, punchy, and pingy—yet still legit AF in its execution. No one else is producing work like this; the sheer talent and vision are incredible.”
Scout is displaying one of Womack’s newest works starting January 15. The piece is called “Brolaroid 2,”and is part of Womack’s fascination with analogue media. He’s designed giant cassette tapes and vinyl records, but the “Brolaroid” is a fully interactive Poloaroid camera. Visitors can use it to take enormous selfies. The illusion is created using a screen to display pictures on the extending film part of the structure. So, you can’t take the photo with you, but it’s an interesting commentary on the selfie as seen in the instantaneous digital now versus the slightly less instantaneous analog then.,
“The fascination of legacy media is not accidental, but a human response to our rapidly changing digital existence, I believe,” said Womack. “People are seeking authentic human interaction. We all spend too much time on our screens, and that can be isolating. So art like the Brolaroid is an antidote of sorts. It’s a ‘selfie machine,’ and after watching crowds interact with the first Brolaroid in Miami at the Spectrum Art Fair in 2023, it was clear the power of the piece is seeing people get lost watching themselves on TV, becoming voyeurs of themselves. It’s an interesting sociology experiment blending real life action and digital capture. My original intent was to create a fun, interactive piece, but I think it’s more than that after seeing it in action.”
Womack’s work is deeply impactful and spreading. Later this month, the ABV Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia will display Womack’s “Nevermind,” a 4-foot sculpture of a Nirvana-inspired mix tape. In June, the Museum of the Southwest in Midland is hosting a solo exhibition of Womack pieces called “GIANT,” featuring 20 large works.
In his pieces, Womack captures the looming shadow of modernity and capitalism, often transforming everyday items into cyclopean artifacts. Advertising does this on billboards and movie screens every day to convince us to see things like Coca-Cola and pop stars as essential needs, but Womack’s subversion dares us to look at them as items of worth in and of themselves. He does this with tongue firmly in cheek, but the awesomeness remains even if you laugh at it.
It’s the sort of art that really only works in Texas, a place obsessed with size for size’s sake which will make an idol out of anything provided it’s ten feet tall. Through his work. Womack understands Texas more than the state does itself.
“There is a romance to the state and the oil and cowboy culture that the entire world understands, and my art embraces, references and pokes fun at it all at the same time,” said Womack.
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