Before the answers to life’s questions fit in our pocket, you used to have to turn a dial. If you were lucky, Phil Donahue would be on, ready to guide you toward enlightenment. In a stroke of deluxe good fortune, Dr. Ruth Westheimer might have stopped by to be the enlightenment. He was the search […] More
Before the answers to life’s questions fit in our pocket, you used to have to turn a dial. If you were lucky, Phil Donahue would be on, ready to guide you toward enlightenment. In a stroke of deluxe good fortune, Dr. Ruth Westheimer might have stopped by to be the enlightenment. He was the search […] More
The N.B.A. star is worried that for too many youth basketball players, the sport is no longer fun. He’s trying to find ways to change that.Luka Doncic was 13 when he moved from his native Slovenia to Spain to play for Real Madrid. He didn’t know English or Spanish, but he could speak basketball fluently, and the expectations of a storied professional organization hung over him.But it was fun for him, even with that pressure, the same way it is now that he has become one of the N.B.A.’s brightest stars, playing for the Dallas Mavericks.He has noticed that it’s not like that for many players in youth programs around the world, a number of whom have quit basketball while still in adolescence.“The kids are, I think, a little bit stressed,” Doncic said in an interview.So this year, his foundation, which debuts this week with a focus on making sports an enriching part of children’s lives, hired a research organization called Nonfiction to study youth basketball in the Balkans and the United States. Over five months, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with dozens of coaches, players, parents, trainers and other basketball experts. They also surveyed more than 1,200 parents of youth basketball players and immersed themselves in eight basketball camps and training centers. They collected letters from children who wrote about the sport’s importance to them.The researchers found that youth programs in the Balkans focused on the team more than the individual. They also found that when Yugoslavia dissolved in the early 1990s, much of the government support for basketball in that region disappeared. The corporations that filled the void through sponsorships sometimes put pressure on teams to win, which led some coaches to pay less attention to player development and emphasize winning over everything else.A research organization hired by Doncic’s foundation collected letters from children saying how much basketball means to them.The Luka Doncic FoundationWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A three-time All-Star, he played for the Knicks and the Phoenix Suns. For one season, he and Tom Van Arsdale were hard-to-tell-apart teammates.Dick Van Arsdale, a three-time All-Star who, with his brother, Tom, was half of the first set of identical twins to play in the N.B.A. after starring and confusing opponents and teammates alike in high school and at Indiana University, died on Monday at his home in Phoenix. He was 81.Tom Van Arsdale said the cause was heart and kidney failure.While the Van Arsdales had remarkably similar statistical careers, Dick was considered the slightly better player, if only by the measure of superior pro teams. He played for the New York Knicks and the Phoenix Suns during 12 N.B.A. seasons, making the playoffs four times, while Tom suited up for five teams, none of which made the playoffs during the same span.Blonde and blue-eyed, the Van Arsdale twins were the stereotypical picture of their rural Indiana roots, but on the basketball court neither was a precise positional fit at 6 feet 5 inches: not fast enough for the backcourt, not big enough for the frontcourt.Dick, who began his pro career as a forward and switched to guard, was nonetheless a rugged defender while averaging a career 16.4 points per game, exceeding 20 three times during his years in Phoenix.Van Arsdale had played three seasons with the Knicks when, in 1968, he joined the newly formed Suns, an expansion team whose general manager, Jerry Colangelo, had selected him first. Van Arsdale scored the franchise’s first points and became an organization fixture, known as the original Sun. He served as interim coach during the 1986-87 season, then as a front-office executive and later a television analyst.“We couldn’t find a better player on or off the floor to build our team,” Colangelo told The Arizona Republic in 1970. “If I could field five Vans, what I’d lack in height and rebounding, I’d offset with fight and desire.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Connor Sports, in the tiny mill town of Amasa, Mich., is one of the leading makers of hardwood floors for top professional and college teams.Los Angeles Clippers fans are being wowed this season by the bells and whistles in the team’s new $2 billion home, the Intuit Dome. They can watch replays on the world’s largest double-sided scoreboard, sit in a 51-row section reserved for die-hard supporters and buy a jersey in the 5,000-square-foot team store.But for all of that, most of their attention will be focused on the court, whose construction is a tale all on its own.It begins 2,200 miles away from Los Angeles, in the tiny mill town of Amasa, Mich. There, Connor Sports, one of the leading makers of hardwood courts, spent about a year procuring trees and building the court, a process that involved dozens of logs, hundreds of workers and thousands of hours. At the company’s plant amid the forests of the Upper Peninsula, workers traversing a maze of conveyors, saws and other machinery dried, cut, planed and shaved strips of wood during the two 10-hour shifts that run six days a week.Almost all of the courts from Connor Sports are made from northern hard maple wood.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe company builds about 800 courts a year, for N.B.A. and college teams as well as high schools around the country.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe company builds about 800 courts a year, with most of them destined for high school gymnasiums and recreational centers in all 50 states and beyond. Almost all are made with northern hard maple, a dense, durable wood harvested from forests above the 35th parallel, a standard set by the Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association, an industry group whose members make most of the hardwood floors in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Known for his quick wit and garish sweaters, he took the New York City university to national basketball prominence over 24 seasons.Lou Carnesecca, the Hall of Fame coach who took St. John’s University to national basketball prominence and who was known for his quick wit and colorful courtside persona, died on Saturday. He was 99.His death was confirmed by Brian Browne, a spokesman for the university, who provided no other details.When Carnesecca took over as the St. John’s head coach in 1965, the university, while rich in basketball tradition, played as an independent. It had begun a gradual move to the Jamaica section of Queens from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn 10 years earlier, and its Alumni Hall athletic building was only four years old.With the founding of the Big East Conference in 1979, St. John’s began competing regularly against leading basketball programs.Carnesecca took St. John’s to 18 N.C.A.A. championship tournaments and six N.I.T. tournaments, including the 1989 championship, and his teams won the Big East tournament championship in 1983 and 1986.St. John’s won 526 games while losing 200 in Carnesecca’s two stints there, from 1965 to 1970 and then, after his three seasons coaching the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets in the old American Basketball Association, from 1973 to 1992.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Love was a cornerstone of the franchise’s success in the early 1970s. He struggled with a stutter that he overcame only after his playing days were over.Bob Love, a cornerstone player for the ascendant Chicago Bulls during the first half of the 1970s who overcame an enervating stutter after his playing days to work for the team as a motivational speaker, died on Monday in Chicago. He was 81.The Bulls announced his death, saying the cause was cancer.Love’s stuttering, which traced to a childhood in rural, segregated Louisiana, was so inhibiting that he seldom did interviews with reporters during his 11 seasons in the N.B.A., despite leading the Bulls in points per game or total points scored for seven straight seasons.“The reporters had deadlines — they couldn’t hang around all night for me to spit something out,” Love told The New York Times in 2002.Nicknamed Butterbean in high school because of his fondness for butter beans, Love even struggled to get words out in huddles during timeouts. A teammate, Norm Van Lier, often spoke up for him.A 6-foot-8 forward, Love averaged a career-high 25.8 points per game during the 1971-72 season, utilizing a smooth jump shot arched high over his head. He appeared in three All-Star games and twice was voted second-team all-league. But he was a complete player, three times named second-team all-league defense. And he was the Bulls’ third all-time leading scorer, behind Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.Jerry Reinsdorf, the Bulls’ owner, said in an interview for this obituary that Love was “a tenacious defender who set high standards for competitiveness and toughness.” We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
A pro-Harris video from LeBron James. A pro-Trump hat on Nick Bosa. With Election Day near, more have been showing their preference.Over the past eight years, the three top American sports leagues — the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and the National Football League — have at times dived headlong into political maelstroms.In 2016, the N.B.A. moved its All-Star Game out of North Carolina to protest a state law that eliminated anti-discrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Baseball moved its All-Star Game out of Georgia in 2021 in reaction to the enactment of more restrictive voting rules. And in 2020, as President Donald J. Trump reiterated criticism of N.F.L. players who knelt during the national anthem, Commissioner Roger Goodell issued a statement supporting players’ right to peacefully protest and condemning “the systematic oppression of Black people.”During this presidential cycle, the leagues have stayed neutral, their only message being encouraging people to vote. However, many owners, players and coaches have opened up their wallets or their mouths in support of candidates. In recent days, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James announced his support of Vice President Kamala Harris, and the San Francisco 49ers defensive lineman Nick Bosa sported a hat with Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan on national TV.It was a show of how the professional sports world, just like the country, is divided by presidential politics.Jonathan Isaac, who plays for the Orlando Magic, and Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, have perhaps been the most vocally conservative active athletes in the three leagues. Mr. Butker was little known outside the N.F.L. until he gave a commencement address in May at Benedictine College, a conservative Roman Catholic school in Kansas, in which he said the women in the audience were probably more excited to get married and have children than they were about their degrees. He subsequently started a political action committee to support Mr. Trump.Mr. Isaac has been well known in conservative circles since he declined to join many other N.B.A. players in kneeling during the national anthem when the league restarted in a Covid “bubble” setting four years ago in Orlando, Fla. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
For decades, beginning in 1959, he was a regular presence at Madison Square Garden (in two locations), befriending players and heckling opposing players and refs.Stan Asofsky was more than a rabid New York Knicks fan. He was a ticket holder with access, reflecting a time when professional sports venues were far less fortified and class-segregated. When one didn’t have to be Spike Lee, or Taylor Swift, to walk in a celebrity athlete’s world.Or play. During the 1960s, Mr. Asofsky delivered crisp bounce passes to Cazzie Russell, a young Knicks forward, while Russell practiced jump shots at the 92nd Street Y, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Then they would shower and walk a few blocks south to the hot-dog emporium Papaya King, so Russell could rehydrate with a glass of tropical juice.“He wasn’t getting enough minutes, and he wanted the workout,” Mr. Asofsky told me in 2009. “I said, ‘Come to our Y.’ He said, ‘Are there ballplayers there?’”Mr. Asofsky, who died on Sept. 12 at 87, was more than a prideful gym rat with a bum knee, not to mention a superfan; he could also be an accommodating friend: He once set Russell up on a blind date, with a woman who worked with Mr. Asofsky in CBS’s publishing division, as he recalled in the 2009 interview, for a book I was writing about the Knicks’ glory days.Certainly seat location helped in the creation of the insider persona that Mr. Asofsky developed alongside Fred Klein, his front-row companion for a half century at two Madison Square Garden locations.Long before there was such a thing as celebrity row, where Mr. Lee has stretched his vocal cords and enhanced his exposure as a premier filmmaker, Mr. Asofsky and Mr. Klein were the arena’s best-known baiters of Knicks’ opponents and referees alike.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
