Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein’s weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. Josh Hart and the New Orleans Pelicans were supposed to play at home against the Knicks last Friday. Hart instead found himself stuck at home and in a mood to muse. “I miss the Premier League,” Hart said on Twitter […] More
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the class of 1969 from tiny Union-Whitten High School in Iowa still met once a month. Its homecoming queen, Denise Rife, then known as Denise Long, once scored 111 points in a basketball game, and was the first woman drafted by an N.B.A. team. Rife, a retired pharmacist, turned 69 last […] More
James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, has tested positive for the coronavirus, the team announced Saturday night in a statement. The statement said Dolan was in self-isolation but was “experiencing little to no symptoms.” He is the first owner in the N.B.A. publicly known to have tested positive for the virus, which has […] More
The connections in New York City basketball run deep. Generations of boys and young men starred on the playgrounds, the school courts, in the AAU leagues. If you did not play with someone, you probably played against him. Across the basketball courts of New York, there aren’t many degrees of separation. It did not take […] More
This obituary is part of a series about people who died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Dave Edwards grew up in New York City public housing and played in Harlem’s Rucker Park, a spawning ground of basketball greats. He graduated from Andrew Jackson High School in Queens and became a record-breaking, crowd-pleasing […] More
Fred “Curly” Neal, whose dribbling wizardry made him one of the most well-known members of the beloved Harlem Globetrotters traveling basketball team, died on Thursday at his home near Houston. He was 77. The team announced the death but gave no other details. Nicknamed “Curly” upon joining the Globetrotters in a humorous nod to his […] More
As the N.B.A.’s hiatus extended into its third week on Thursday, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry made use of his off time by hosting an Instagram Live discussion about the coronavirus with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the most visible medical figure in […] More
The W.N.B.A. plans to hold its draft as scheduled in April, using video conferencing in hopes of recreating the moment so many athletes say they dream about: when a league commissioner hands them a jersey and their professional lives begin. “We want to make sure that the players who are the draftees get their moment […] More
