Recomendations for Lens

[JohnnyC]

I have a Nikon D90. What lens would you recomend for sports. The sports that I shoot are Basketball and football, and sometimes baseball. I have a flash, but I dont want t use it when I'm shooting basketball. Any suggestion?

Also I like to shoot random portriat shots of people. Suggestions for that as well?

[BCampbell]

What is your budget?
Are you shooting indoor or outdoor?
How close to the action can you get?

We need to at least know that first.

The good news is that, unless you need an extremely long telephoto lens, you can probably find one lens to meet both of your needs.

[kirbinster]

Tough call as your distance from the action will likely be very different. Assuming you are further away than courtside for basketball then a good choice might be a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR. It is an incredible lens.

[JohnnyC]

Well basketball would be indoors and football/baseball out. So I suppose a mixture of both.
Budget: I'm not sure, I mean I dont want to miss out on quality, however I do not think I'l be about to spend over a 1k. So under 1k

[inkista]

Won't be ideal, or make your life particularly easy, but if you were a Canon shooter, I'd say get a stabilized 70-300 for the football/baseball (assuming you're talking daytime games), and a 85/1.8 for the basketball. Either that, or a Sigma/Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 zoom.

[cowsled]

I'd second inkista's recommendation on the tamron/sigma 70-200 2.8. From the looks of it, the Tokina 70-200 also looks decent. Have a look at sample pictures at Pixel-Peeper -- Over a million full-size sample photos from lenses, SLR cameras and digicams.