all of this sorta exemplifies the problem with labels. there’s sites where they label everything either sport or cruiser. sites that label sports cruiser and naked/standard, but they usually then define standards as mostly naked sports bikes, or the old CHP type bikes. another site puts naked/standards in the cruiser catagory. add to it that triumph now has an old styled naked/standard bike that harkens back to the good old days.
personally to me, the sportster looks more like a cruiser than any other style of bike on the current market. and maybe it’d look more like a standard if there were more standards being made today. but then I guess it doesn’t really matter a whole lot either way. some can call it a cruiser, others call it a standard or whatever, the truth is likely somewhere in between.