Rajon Rondo and Markieff Morris gave the Lakers an unexpected lift Sunday in the team’s 117-109 victory over the Houston Rockets to even the Western Conference semifinal matchup heading into Game 3. More
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Giannis Antetokounmpo was waiting in the locker room for his teammates on Sunday, standing on his bad right ankle to greet every one of them. His season isn’t over yet.Khris Middleton scored 36 points, including a big 3-pointer with 6.4 seconds left in overtime, and the Milwaukee Bucks avoided a sweep by beating the Miami Heat, 118-115, in Game 4 of the teams’ Eastern Conference semifinal series.The Heat still lead the series, 3-1, but the Bucks, the best team in the regular season, are still alive, even after Antetokounmpo left early in the second quarter with an aggravation of his sprained right ankle.“Khris is very unique,” Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer said. “He’s got a way about him. He wanted to play. He asked to stay in the game.”As if there were any other option. Middleton’s season high before Sunday was 40 minutes; he logged 48 in Game 4, taking over with Antetokounmpo watching from the locker room.“Just keep fighting,” said Middleton, who also had eight rebounds and eight assists. “That’s all my teammates did.”Bam Adebayo had 26 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists for Miami. Duncan Robinson scored 20 points, Jae Crowder had 18 and Goran Dragic and Jimmy Butler each finished with 17 for the Heat.“We didn’t deserve to win that game,” Butler said.Miami had an 8-point lead in the fourth quarter, promptly allowed the Bucks to score the next 12, and now needs to come back on Tuesday in an effort to finish the series off.“At the end of the day, we should have played like we did in Game 1, Game 2 and Game 3,” Adebayo said.Antetokounmpo scored 19 points for the Bucks in only 11 minutes, while Brook Lopez and Eric Bledsoe each had 14 for Milwaukee. George Hill added 12 for the Bucks.Miami managed only 2 points in the first 4 minutes 30 seconds of overtime, got within one on a 3-pointer from Tyler Herro, but Middleton delivered the biggest shot of the night to make it 116-112.Herro made another 3-pointer with 3.0 seconds left, but Middleton sealed it with a pair of free throws — and Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra lauded Milwaukee’s effort afterward.“The reality is, they deserved to win the game,” Spoelstra said. “They were doing things with more force, more consistency.”Antetokounmpo had 19 of Milwaukee’s first 30 points, shooting 8-for-10 from the floor. But in an instant, everything changed for the Bucks.He aggravated his sprained right ankle with 10:18 left in the second quarter, rolling it inward — just as he did in Game 3 on Friday — as he tried to drive past Miami’s Andre Iguodala. He tumbled to the court, grabbing the ankle and screaming in pain.He took the free throws; without doing that, he would not have been permitted to return. But at halftime, the Bucks delivered word that he would not be back.So his game was over.The Bucks’ season wasn’t. Milwaukee said Antetokounmpo would receive treatment Sunday night and Monday before a decision is made about his availability for Tuesday.“He’s going to be back,” Bledsoe said.Middleton did all he could to keep the Bucks afloat, scoring 21 points in the third quarter — the highest-scoring quarter of his career — on 6-for-9 shooting from the field and 7-for-7 from the free-throw line. His previous best in a quarter was 20, on Nov. 1, 2017, against Charlotte.He set the tone, and the Bucks’ season is still alive.“We’ve got to fight every night to keep on playing,” Middleton said. More
It was just two years ago when Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers’ gregarious and talented center, told reporters about an interaction he had with his gifted rookie partner, the much more subdued but still skillful Ben Simmons.Simmons approached Embiid after the Boston Celtics had just eliminated the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals in five games and showed him his hands.“There’s going to be a lot of rings on these,” Embiid recounted Simmons saying.The Sixers were the envy of many opposing teams, their two young dynamic stars with their best days in front of them. They had won over a typically unforgiving fan base, many of whom among it brushing aside their flaws, assuming that, like with many league greats, they would be fixed with time.Two disappointing playoff runs later, Philadelphia finds itself once again hitting reset. The Sixers were heartbroken in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the eventual champion Toronto Raptors last year, when Kawhi Leonard’s series-clinching jump shot rimmed in, and humiliated this year, when those pesky Celtics swept them in the first round with Simmons out injured. Gone is the hopefulness with which Simmons held up his hands. The team has little salary cap flexibility, few trade assets with which to retool and an unclear organizational direction. They’ve gone from the envy of the league to a cautionary tale.Much of the blame has fallen on the front office, particularly Elton Brand, the team’s general manager, for putting together a mismatched roster through botched trades and by overpaying inconsistent veterans like Tobias Harris and Al Horford. The team blamed the coach, Brett Brown, saying in the announcement of his firing on Aug. 24 that the Sixers “fell well short of our goals” and that it would be “best to go in a new direction.” This is what often happens in these situations: a clean, easy way to absolve the front office of responsibility.But there are also the curious cases of Embiid and Simmons, the franchise pillars who have not shown the growth expected of prospective superstars. Embiid, 26, is a maestro in the low post. His dazzling footwork near the basket has made him difficult to stop during his four healthy seasons.Yet, after averaging a career high 27.5 points a and 13.6 rebounds per game last year, his numbers dipped to a more pedestrian 23 points and 11.6 rebounds this year. His 3-point shooting (33.1 percent) remained a weak point, down slightly from his rookie-year percentage of 36.7. And yet again, Embiid’s conditioning became an issue late in games, as he often looked tired and was slow getting up and down the floor.Simmons, 24, has developed into one of the best defenders in the league over three seasons, after he missed his post-draft season with a foot injury. But his numbers haven’t varied much beyond what they were this season: per-game averages of 16.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 8 assists. A constant stream of criticism of Simmons has centered on his strange, seemingly purposeful refusal to shoot 3-pointers; he’s shot just 24 in three seasons.It became enough of an issue that Brown publicly called for Simmons to shoot more from deep. A month later, in January, Brown said that he had “failed” to get Simmons to change his game.Simmons and Embiid have put up good, consistent numbers — and, occasionally, great ones. Their production has been reliable. But “good,” “consistent” and “reliable” typically are not the words most prominently associated with franchise centerpieces who win championships.So the question becomes: Are Embiid and Simmons championship-level focal points? Or are they merely mortal stars? If the answer to the latter is yes, Simmons’ hands will be devoid of rings for years to come.If this seems unfair, remember that it was the players — particularly Embiid — who raised expectations for themselves. After Embiid’s rookie 2016-17 season, in which he played less than half the 82 regular-season games, he declared to The Daily Mail, “I think I have the talent to become a Hall of Famer, to win championships, and Most Valuable Player awards.”This is not to say that the book has been written on the duo, who have contrasting playing styles, personalities and approaches to the game at a still-early stage in their careers. Their best days may very well be in front of them.Billy Lange, an assistant coach for the Sixers from 2013-19, said in an interview that observers should be patient. After all, he said, greatness does not happen over night.“I think sometimes what gets very lost in how people evaluate them is that, look, this is still very new,” said Lange, now the head coach at Saint Joseph’s University. “Ben just finished his third season and he didn’t have a full season. People want to often comment about what he can’t do, but the reality is that he’s an All-Star and now he’s got to take the next jump to superstar.”He added, “I can say this about both of those guys: They have ambition. What comes with maturity and ownership is now, ‘How do I match that ambition to reach those goals?’ They both want to be great.”When Simmons and Embiid entered the N.B.A. two years apart, they came with different levels of fame. Simmons, the first pick of the 2016 draft, was quieter but in some ways better known. That fall, Showtime released a documentary called “One & Done” that examined Simmons’s lone year at Louisiana State University.Embiid was drafted third in 2014 out of the University of Kansas. Hailing from Cameroon, he was more of a mystery, having arrived in the United States when he was 16, shortly after playing basketball for the first time. From his own telling, he learned how to shoot by watching videos on YouTube. After missing his first two N.B.A. seasons — because of foot injuries, which also cost Simmons his first post-draft year — Embiid quickly drew attention with his unfiltered, jovial nature. Just a sampling:There was the time in 2017 when a Lyft driver spotted Embiid casually going for a nighttime jog by himself through the streets of Philadelphia.In 2018, Embiid asked Rihanna on Twitter if she was single.And there was lots of trash talk, aimed at opponents — and, sometimes, their parents.Embiid won over the Philadelphia fans, who have not seen a 76ers championship since 1983, by being funny, vicious and brilliant on their behalf. But as the Sixers embarked on a disappointing regular season that left them fighting for the sixth seed in the N.B.A.’s weaker Eastern Conference, there were signs that Embiid’s relationship with the city’s fan base had frayed. In February, Embiid shushed the home crowd after hitting a clutch 3-pointer against the Chicago Bulls, following reports of booing from the unhappy fans. At the end of July, Embiid downplayed that incident on “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast, saying that he loved playing in Philadelphia because of its passionate fans.“But then again,” Embiid said, “if you dish it, you’ve also got to be able to take it. Just like when I shushed them and they all went crazy. I’m like ‘Well, you were booing me!’”For now, it appears that the Embiid and Simmons partnership is staying together. On that same podcast, Embiid said that they “can get so much better than we are right now.”“The potential that we have, I love him, I want to be with him for the rest of my career,” he said.And despite the team’s struggles this year, Brand recently told reporters that he intended to continue to build around Embiid and Simmons. But if they don’t make a leap soon, there is a decent chance that the city’s love for them — tenuous with even the best athletes — may come to an end.“We do this thing with Ben and Joel where we call them superstars and then when they fail, we say, ‘Well, they’re just young. You can’t expect a lot out of them,” Spike Eskin, a host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” said in an interview. “Those two things don’t exist together. Either you are growing and getting better and a future star, or you are a superstar. But you can’t be both.” More
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Before the Milwaukee Bucks labored through a stretch of basketball that could wind up altering their future, Giannis Antetokounmpo did something that he tends to do well: He elevated for a dunk, a brief burst of explosiveness that gave the Bucks a fourth-quarter lead against the Miami Heat in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series.But upon landing, Antetokounmpo grimaced. He had rolled his right ankle in the first quarter, and perhaps it was bothering him even if he would later refuse to admit it. But in that moment, his expression — his face contorted in pain as he turned to get back on defense — was, in its own way, a sign of so much more misery to come.The Bucks went the rest of the game without making a field goal, and their 115-100 loss to the Heat on Friday night put them in the deepest hole imaginable. Miami will have a chance to sweep the top-seeded Milwaukee in the best-of-seven of series on Sunday afternoon, while thorny questions are already percolating about the Bucks — and the uncertainty that looms.For the second consecutive year, the Bucks entered the playoffs with the league’s best regular-season record. Last year, their championship hopes were extinguished by the Toronto Raptors in the conference finals. (The Raptors went on to win it all.) This year, the Bucks’ stay inside the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World is on the cusp of being prematurely popped.“They made every play,” the Bucks coach, Mike Budenholzer, said of the Heat, “and we didn’t make enough, obviously.”An early exit would be less forgivable this time around. Antetokounmpo, 25, a dynamic force whom the Bucks drafted and groomed, is the favorite to collect his second consecutive N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award sometime in the coming days. But his contract situation — he can become an unrestricted free agent in 2021 if he refuses to sign an extension this off-season — has been brewing like a storm cloud, rumbling closer with each blown postseason opportunity.And while this series is not over, most of the stories about this game will read as epitaphs (including this one) for good reason: No team in N.B.A. history has come back from a three-games-to-none deficit in a best-of-seven series. The Bucks would need to become the first, to sustain their title dreams.“Might as well make history,” the Bucks’ George Hill said. “First time in the history of the N.B.A. that we’re playing in a bubble. First time that a team can come back from down 3-0. We’ve got to trust each other and continue to believe.”But do they believe? The Bucks missed their final 10 shots as the Heat closed out Friday’s game with a 17-1 run. All told, Miami outscored Milwaukee by 40-13 in the fourth quarter, which was the most lopsided fourth quarter of a playoff game since the advent of the shot clock, according to ESPN. For his part, Antetokounmpo rattled through a long list of problems, starting with the twin observations that the Bucks could neither rebound nor score. And while the Heat played with discipline, he said, the Bucks lost their composure.“They’re a great team, and you know they’re going to play hard,” Antetokounmpo said of the Heat. “They play hard for 48 minutes. For you to beat them, you have to match that. You cannot play hard for 36 minutes. You cannot play hard for 24 minutes. You have to play hard for 48 minutes to beat a team like that. We knew that coming into the series, and they played harder than us.”Sports and the VirusUpdated Sept. 4, 2020Here’s what’s happening as the world of sports slowly comes back to life:The 146th running of the Kentucky Derby, which was moved to Saturday from May 2, will have no spectators present because of the coronavirus pandemic.The coronavirus pandemic has had an uneven impact on high school football across the United States.The most complicated puzzle in sports is the return of college athletics during a pandemic. The University of California, Berkeley is allowing The Times an inside look at their journey’s ups and downs.The idea that the Heat had “played harder” than the Bucks was a theme for Antetokounmpo: He mentioned it 16 times over the course of a six-minute news conference. Jimmy Butler, in particular, left his imprint all over the game for Miami, finishing with 30 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.Antetokounmpo collected 21 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists but shot 7 of 21 from the field. He also played just 35 minutes in a game that the Bucks desperately needed to win, and started the fourth quarter on the bench. He said he could have played more. His ankle, he said, was “great.” Budenholzer indicated that he had no regrets about limiting Antetokounmpo’s playing time.“If you’re going as hard as these guys are in a playoff game — 35, 36 — I think that’s pushing the ceiling,” Budenholzer said, referring to the minutes he wanted his best players to supply.When the season was suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Bucks were 53-12 and looking primed for a title run. But they have not been able to reassemble the pieces in the bubble. In eight seeding games, they went 3-5, then lost the first game of their first-round playoff series with the Orlando Magic before winning the next four.At the same time, the Bucks have been at the center of various tensions and challenges for players here. It was Hill, one of the team’s veteran leaders, who led his team to boycott one of their playoff games against the Magic after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha, Wis. It led to a wave of disruptions and protests across multiple sports leagues.On Friday, Hill was asked whether the team was struggling to focus on basketball with so much else going on.“There’s no excuses,” he said. “We’re here in the bubble, and we’re playing. We can’t make excuses why we’re not playing good, quality basketball right now. You’ve still got to go out on that court and lace your shoes up just like every other team here.”In the face of the longest odds, Antetokounmpo seemed to be doing what he could to remain upbeat.“I believe in my teammates,” he said. “I trust my teammates. I love my teammates, and I want my teammates to be confident. I’m confident.”The Bucks have another opportunity to prove it. They may not have many more. More
On the court, Layshia Clarendon has become the leader of a young Liberty team coursing through a season with many unexpected challenges. As an executive committee member of the W.N.B.A.’s players’ union, Clarendon has also become a voice for social justice for the league this year.Clarendon is averaging a career-high 11.7 points a game, but the Liberty are 2-15 and in last place in the Eastern Conference. The team is playing this season without several key players who decided to opt out of this season because of concerns over the coronavirus. Sabrina Ionescu, their star No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, has been out since she sprained her ankle in the third game of the season.Clarendon, who is in their eighth season, missed all but nine games last year, with the Connecticut Sun, because of a right ankle injury. The ankle “gets stiff every now and then,” Clarendon said, but they have still been able to serve as a critical veteran presence for a young Liberty team that began the year with seven rookies.But this year is about more than just statistics for Clarendon. The W.N.B.A. has dedicated its season to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed by the police in Louisville, Ky., and the Say Her Name campaign, which focuses on Black women and girls affected by police brutality and violence. Clarendon is one of the players leading the W.N.B.A.’s social justice initiatives.The New York Times talked to Clarendon about playing fearlessly, the challenges of the tight game schedule this season and how, they said, social justice movements often overlook Black women.Q: What has life in the bubble been like for you?Clarendon: It’s up and down, depending on the moment. The schedule is really hectic. I don’t think I expected it to be this challenging to consistently play three games a week, so that’s been really tough from a purely recovery standpoint.There’s just not a lot of downtime or time off just because we are playing so often.How do you cope with the busy schedule?Normal ice baths and recovery stuff that I do every season. It’s definitely been a more mentally challenging season. Obviously, with Covid going on, the state of the world and police murdering people left and right, it’s been more emotional and spiritual than physical most of the time. You can sleep for nine hours and still wake up and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.What do you think is the best part of your game?I would say tenacity and fearlessness. It doesn’t matter if I get blocked, I’m going to go right back in the paint again against the same player who blocked me on the previous play.How did you develop that tenacity and fearlessness?Practice finishing a lot, trying to get into people’s bodies and create contact. I think it’s a mind-set, too. If you are really early on in the league and you get your stuff thrown into the stands, it’s embarrassing. But if you don’t get crossed-up in this league or your shot blocked in a game or something really bad in game, then you probably aren’t playing hard enough and you really don’t have your heart in it.This league is so good, it’s just going to happen. Part of that is a mind-set of knowing that when you go up against Sue Bird or A’ja Wilson, they are going to block you. You are also going to get them. It’s about looking at it as a challenge and an opportunity rather than a: ‘Oh, I got blocked. That’s so embarrassing.’ No one wants to be on the wrong side of “SportsCenter.”As a member of the executive committee, you helped lead the day of reflection last week. What went into the decision to call it a day of reflection instead of a boycott or strike? (The league missed two days of games last week after its players joined an N.B.A. work stoppage to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back multiple times by the police in Kenosha, Wis. )After we had a players meeting we realized just how exhausted everyone was. It was more like we needed that day. I think very much of it was standing in solidarity with our N.B.A. brothers. You could see it in people’s faces that day on TV how exhausted and heartbroken everyone was.Yes, we were striking. Yes, we were fighting injustice, but we are exhausted and we are tired. We are calling it for a day of reflection and a day of mourning. We needed the time to take a step back.What would you like to see the W.N.B.A. do next?Voting is going to be a big one that we are trying to figure out a strategy around it right now. We could wear a ‘vote’ mask, which would be great awareness, but there has to be some longer game strategy behind how we are going to engage people. We are going to really focus on voting and the work we have been doing with Say Her Name, which I think can’t be understated.At a time when Black women continue to be erased from the larger conversation of police brutality and violence, that’s why our work is particularly important. While, yes, we also stand with Jacob Blake and his family and all of the men who have been murdered in this movement, it is a constant reminder of how women have to choose between erasing themselves to stand up for their race or standing up for women, standing up for their own women.That’s the constant struggle I feel like we are always in. I don’t want us to get away from Saying Her Name because that’s the whole point of the movement and why we came here. It’s sad that we always have to choose between standing up for our men and standing up for ourselves, because who stands up for us? No one. More
The New York Liberty guard has worked all summer in Florida as part of the W.N.B.A.’s experiment isolating in a bubble. More
Steve Nash, who is white, landed a head coaching job this week despite his inexperience, renewing discussions about how few posts are filled by Black people in a league where most players are Black. More
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Ja Morant was announced as the winner of the N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year Award on Thursday night after nearly leading the Memphis Grizzlies to an unexpected postseason berth while dazzling crowds with his playmaking abilities and highlight-reel dunks.Morant, a 6-foot-3 point guard and the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft, received 99 of a possible 100 first-place votes. The Miami Heat’s Kendrick Nunn, who went undrafted in 2018 and spent last season in the G League, placed second in the voting. The New Orleans Pelicans’ Zion Williamson, a dynamic forward who was injured for much of the season, placed third and received the only other first-place vote from the panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. (The New York Times does not participate in awards voting.)“I need to figure out who was that person who didn’t pick me first,” Morant said in a conference call. “I want to shoot a direct message to them and thank them for motivating me even more to do more, be better and do whatever I can to help my team win basketball games. If anybody know who that is, let me know.”Morant, 21, who grew up in Dalzell, S.C., was a lightly recruited high school player before he emerged as a star in two seasons at Murray State, a mid-major school in Kentucky. It did not take him long to acclimate to the speed of the N.B.A. In his first season with the Grizzlies, he averaged 17.8 points and 7.3 assists a game while shooting 47.7 percent from the field.When the season was suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Grizzlies were eighth in the Western Conference and positioned for a playoff run. But they were undone by injuries once the season resumed at Walt Disney World, and lost to the Portland Trail Blazers in the first-ever play-in game for the final spot.Morant recalled telling his family and friends on draft night that it was his goal to win the award.“And I told them I was going to do whatever I can and work to get it,” he said. “But I also told them it wasn’t my main focus. My main focus was to try to be better at the end of the season than I was at the beginning of the season.”Still, the Grizzlies’ future appears bright. Morant is a player around whom the franchise hopes to build in the wake of the “grit and grind” era that featured players like Mike Conley, now with the Utah Jazz, and Marc Gasol, who won a championship last season with the Toronto Raptors. The Grizzlies have a talented young core that also includes Jaren Jackson Jr., a second-year center who averaged 17.4 points and 4.6 rebounds a game. Brandon Clarke, another first-year player for the Grizzlies, finished fourth in the rookie of the year voting.“For him, it’s just been rapid growth,” Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins said of Morant in an interview earlier this season. “The great thing about him is he’s mature beyond his years, he’s got a high basketball I.Q., he loves the game, he’s always watching and studying and talking about it with his teammates, and he embraces coaching.”Williamson, the first overall pick in last year’s draft, missed the first half of the season with a knee injury but was a thrilling presence when he did play. In 24 games, he averaged 22.5 points and 6.3 rebounds while shooting 58.3 percent from the field. More
