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    W.N.B.A. Season Preview: New Talent Is Here, but an Absence Looms

    The league will honor Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, who remains in custody in Russia, as its new season begins Friday.The longest W.N.B.A. season in league history will begin on Friday. For the first time, teams will each play 36 regular-season games as the next step in the league’s plan for incremental growth — a plan stifled for the past two seasons by the coronavirus pandemic.As the league enters its 26th season, new sponsors and some increased engagement from team ownership is inspiring some optimism about the state of the W.N.B.A. Growth in viewership at the college level means more buzz for graduating players aiming to become professionals, while new broadcast deals and a heavier emphasis from the league’s primary partner, ESPN, have made games more accessible.Looming over all that optimism, though, is the continued absence of one of the league’s best players, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, who has been detained in Russia — where she also plays professionally — since February on drug charges. An image of Griner and her jersey number No. 42 will be on each team’s court throughout the season.“We are keeping Brittney at the forefront of what we do through the game of basketball,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement.Here’s what to expect from the 12 W.N.B.A. teams this season.Seattle StormThis could be Sue Bird’s final season. The Seattle Storm drafted her No. 1 overall in 2002. She turns 42 in October.Matt York/Associated PressNo matter what happens, this season will likely mark the end of an era for the Storm and for women’s basketball. After contemplating retirement last season, Sue Bird announced in January that she would return and with the hashtag #1moreyear suggested this season would be her last. When she was drafted No. 1 overall by Seattle in 2002, the franchise had played only two seasons; four championships later, won in part by Bird’s consistency, the Storm have become one of the most dominant teams in W.N.B.A. history.The 41-year-old’s farewell tour will inevitably include many teary tributes and gaudy highlight reels, but the Storm will aim for its final stop to be a champions’ parade. The team is playing its first season in the new Climate Pledge Arena, which the Storm are sharing with the N.H.L.’s Kraken. The Storm will still have Breanna Stewart, who met with the Liberty in the off-season before signing a one-year deal, and Jewell Loyd, who also met with the Liberty before re-signing for two years. Bird, Stewart and Loyd form the team’s core, and the likelihood of playing without them in the near future makes the team’s quest for a league-leading fifth title more urgent than ever.Los Angeles SparksNneka Ogwumike will have some offensive reinforcements on the Sparks this season with the additions of Liz Cambage, Jordin Canada and Chennedy Carter.Michael Conroy/Associated PressA host of new faces crowd the Sparks roster, as Los Angeles looks to reignite this season. The team struggled last year in the wake of Candace Parker’s departure and the fallout from a legal battle with Penny Toler, the team’s former general manager.The Sparks had an excellent season defensively in 2021 but fell short of the playoffs for the first time since 2011 because of their woeful offense. This year, they’ve added starpower designed to boost their scoring with the flashy young guards Chennedy Carter and Jordin Canada and center Liz Cambage, who owns the single-game scoring record and is looking for a fresh start after promising seasons in Las Vegas that still ended short of titles. The question is how all those talents will fit together under Coach Derek Fisher: There aren’t many role players on this Los Angeles team, so sorting out responsibilities could prove challenging.Those players will join Nneka Ogwumike, still the team’s best chance at filling that Parker-size hole, as well as the veterans Brittney Sykes and Kristi Toliver as they chase a new kind of chemistry befitting the franchise’s storied legacy.Indiana FeverNaLyssa Smith, a rookie out of Baylor, could be the difference-maker for the Indiana Fever, as it rebuilds.Adam Hunger/Associated PressFor the sixth year in a row, the Fever will try to return to the playoffs — or at least not be the worst team in the league yet again. Without a modicum of success to show for years of high draft picks, Indiana was compelled to nearly start from scratch this year. The team amassed four picks in the first round alone after cutting Kysre Gondrezick, their top pick in the 2021 draft at No. 4 overall.A gaggle of rookies, then, will join the veterans Danielle Robinson, Bria Hartley, Tiffany Mitchell and Kelsey Mitchell, as Lin Dunn, the interim general manager, tries to right the ship.NaLyssa Smith, Indiana’s top 2022 draft pick at No. 2 overall, was dominant at Baylor and enters the W.N.B.A. with something to prove after an underwhelming senior postseason. She’s been clamoring to compete at the professional level and, at 6-foot-4 with impressive athleticism, Smith could well prove to be the difference-maker the Fever desperately need.Dallas WingsArike Ogunbowale, the sharpshooting All-Star, has been the center of Dallas’s offense.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesLast season, the Wings had one of the youngest rosters in the league. Though they seem to have found some stability, having made only one non-draft addition, the 6-foot-7 center Teaira McCowan, there’s still some uncertainty about how the team will balance all that potential. Dallas has a lot of depth but few clear front-runners who can define the team’s core.Arike Ogunbowale is one exception to that rule. The sharpshooting All-Star has been the centerpiece of Dallas’s offense, and she signed a multiyear extension in the off-season. She had help from guard Marina Mabrey, her former Notre Dame teammate; they work together so well they have earned the moniker Marike.This season, the second-year Wings Coach Vickie Johnson, will try to take the team past the first round in the playoffs for the first time since 2015 by finding consistency in the frontcourt. Forward Satou Sabally, with her refined footwork inside and ability to find high-percentage shots, seems like the perfect balance for Ogunbowale’s pull-up-from-anywhere mentality — the Wings just have to make sure she’s touching the ball.Minnesota LynxLynx center Sylvia Fowles won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2021. She has said this will be her last season.Andy Clayton-King/Associated PressThe four-time champion Lynx will lose the final piece of their last two title-winning squads at the end of this season with the retirement of the 6-foot-6 center Sylvia Fowles, who was playing at a near-M.V.P. level last season despite being 35 years old then.Fowles’s continuing dominance could push Minnesota back into position to win in the postseason. However, she and Coach Cheryl Reeve will face the added challenge of competing without forward Napheesa Collier, the team’s leading scorer last season, who is pregnant and likely to miss most or all of the season.The five-time All-Star Angel McCoughtry, who injured her knee last season, will join Fowles in the effort to push the Lynx back to the playoffs for the 12th consecutive year. The veterans Kayla McBride and Aerial Powers round out a Lynx roster that could, once again, outperform expectations, thanks to Reeve’s consistent coaching and the team’s experience.Las Vegas AcesA’ja Wilson led the Aces to the brink of the championship series last season.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesThe story of the Aces centers on one crucial off-season move: the introduction of Becky Hammon as the highest-paid head coach in the W.N.B.A. Combined with the construction of a shiny, new Aces-specific practice facility in Henderson, Nev., Hammon’s hiring was part of owner Mark Davis’s efforts to flaunt his investments in the team so far. All that’s left is for the team to finally win its first title.Hammon will undoubtedly be in the spotlight — perhaps even more so than her players — after returning to the W.N.B.A., where she first flourished as a player, and passing up what many saw as a likely shot to become the first female head coach in N.B.A. history.In her first head coaching role, the longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant will try to retool the Aces following the departure of center Liz Cambage and forward Angel McCoughtry, veteran talents who accounted for much of the team’s production. Last season ended with an ugly upset loss to the Mercury in the playoffs, one game away from the championship series. This year, Hammon will work with A’ja Wilson, the 2020 M.V.P., to take the talented team to the next level, relying on guards Chelsea Gray and Kelsey Plum to amp up the Aces’ offense.New York LibertyBetnijah Laney made her first All-Star team in 2021, helping lead the Liberty to the playoffs.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesThe Liberty’s 2021 season was a surprise: It was Betnijah Laney who took the reins to lead the team back to the playoffs for the first time since 2017 and not Natasha Howard, the former defensive player of the year who missed most of the season with a knee injury or the highly-touted guard Sabrina Ionescu.This season, they’ve added Stefanie Dolson from the reigning champion Sky and hired a new coach, Sandy Brondello, to put all the pieces together. The team is full of potential but a complete mystery as far as chemistry. Despite losing 10 of their last 12 games at the end of the 2021 regular season, the Liberty were two points shy of upsetting the Phoenix Mercury in the first round of the playoffs — a confusing outcome consistent with their unpredictability last season.If Brondello, who led the Mercury to a championship in 2014, can find consistency among a group of veterans who have found a lot of success on other teams, the Liberty might be able to make a deeper run in the playoffs.Phoenix MercuryThe Mercury will try to claim the franchise’s fourth title behind veterans like Skylar Diggins-Smith, right, and Tina Charles, center.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThe Mercury begin the season under a particularly large shadow: the continued detention of their star center, Brittney Griner, in Russia, where she has been held since February. Her indefinite absence leaves a huge hole in the team and league, on and off the court. Until she returns, the Mercury will have to figure out how to play without one of the most dominant centers in W.N.B.A. history for the first extended period in nearly a decade.An esteemed group of veterans will also be fighting for another title. Skylar Diggins-Smith and Diana Taurasi were joined by Tina Charles in the off-season, sparking much discussion about so-called superteams in the W.N.B.A. Coach Vanessa Nygaard, in her first year, has been charged with getting the team into shape to try to claim the franchise’s fourth championship. Phoenix made it to last season’s championship series before losing in four games to the underdog Chicago Sky.Taurasi, who will turn 40 years old in June, insists that she’s not planning on retiring anytime soon. But she — the league’s career leading scorer — has had nagging injuries over the past few seasons, making the Mercury’s pursuit of another deep postseason run even more pressing than usual.Connecticut SunJonquel Jones is back for Connecticut after winning the league’s Most Valuable Player Award last season.Sean D. Elliot/The Day, via Associated PressThe Sun have been nothing if not consistent over the past few seasons, both in their regular season dominance and in their inability to finally secure the franchise’s first championship. If they were ever in win-now mode, though, this would be the time, having re-signed Jonquel Jones, last season’s M.V.P., in the off-season.Jones rejoins Alyssa Thomas, Jasmine Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones — one of the league’s most consistent core groups. While other teams around the league are working out their rotations, the Sun and their longtime coach, Curt Miller, will look to refine a long-established dynamic. Even their biggest move of the off-season — securing the return of guard Courtney Williams — was to bring a team veteran back into the fold after her brief stint with the Atlanta Dream.Connecticut can nearly take for granted the fact that this group will reprise one of the better defenses in the W.N.B.A., with its veterans who seem to summon unfathomable energy to stifle opponents year after year. The trouble comes when the shots stop falling for the physical team. Williams, and perhaps some offense-minded young players coming off the bench, will have to close that gap.Atlanta DreamAtlanta Dream guard Rhyne Howard, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 draft, fights for the ball during a preseason game against the Sun.Sean D. Elliot/The Day, via Associated PressThe Dream seem like they have been in rebuilding mode for several seasons now, winning single-digit games in each of their past three seasons and facing turnover at the coaching and ownership tiers.But this season, Atlanta will attempt to actually start fresh, with the first-year head coach, Tanisha Wright, and a slew of young talent joining Tiffany Hayes and Monique Billings, who have stuck with the Dream through all those losses. Aari McDonald, whom the Dream drafted with the third overall pick last year, will be joined by the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft, Rhyne Howard — whom Atlanta traded up to snag — and Kristy Wallace, who spent the past few years honing her skills in an Australian professional league. The veterans Erica Wheeler and Nia Coffey, both of whom last played for the Sparks, round out the upstart group, which will aim to outperform expectations and make it to the playoffs for the first time since 2018.Chicago SkyKahleah Copper had a breakout season with the Sky in 2021 and was named M.V.P. of the finals.Paul Beaty/Associated PressAfter winning their first championship as underdogs in 2021, the Sky return as contenders to become the first W.N.B.A. team to win repeat titles in two decades. Many core members of last season’s team are back, including Candace Parker; Kahleah Copper, last year’s finals M.V.P.; and the veteran guards Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot. The team added center Emma Meesseman, who was the finals M.V.P. when the Mystics won the 2019 championship.The Sky must have been certain that this group would be enough when they traded away all of their 2022 draft picks, relying instead on their veteran squad and the talents of Coach James Wade to lead them to another deep postseason run. Copper in particular, who stuffed her 2021 finals highlight reels with circus shots and tough layups, will look to continue her breakout run this season.Washington MysticsThe Mystics’ season could hinge on whether Elena Delle Donne has fully recovered from a back injury.Nick Wass/Associated PressSince winning the W.N.B.A. championship in 2019, the Mystics’ fate has revolved around one variable: whether Elena Delle Donne, who has played just three games in the past two seasons, can get and stay healthy. Delle Donne sustained a back injury in the 2019 W.N.B.A. finals that required multiple surgeries, left her with lingering back issues and has taken extensive therapy and conditioning work to overcome.If Delle Donne and Alysha Clark, who missed last season with a foot injury, can stay on the court, Washington’s roster suddenly looks a lot more solid. Ariel Atkins, Natasha Cloud and Myisha Hines-Allen are all settled well into Coach Mike Thibault’s system, and Elizabeth Williams, a new addition, can provide support in the post if Delle Donne isn’t ready to go. More

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    Chris Paul’s ‘Revenge Tour’ Is No Fun for Luka Doncic

    The second-round playoff series between Paul’s Suns, who lost in the N.B.A. finals last year, and Doncic’s Mavericks has at its center two of the game’s best point guards.Chris Paul had already started the fourth quarter by draining a long 3-pointer and passing to Cameron Johnson, his Phoenix Suns teammate, for another. It was a bad sign for the visiting Dallas Mavericks, because Paul hadn’t even called for the defensive matchup he really wanted.His next time up the court, Paul was dribbling against Reggie Bullock when Johnson set a high screen on Bullock, dragging his defender with him. That defender was Luka Doncic, who found himself guarding Paul after the switch — and even managed to poke the ball away. But after Paul regained possession, he needed about 3 nanoseconds to blow past Doncic for a layup.It was the sort of scene that kept repeating itself in the closing stages of the Suns’ 129-109 victory in Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series on Wednesday. The Suns were determined to force Doncic onto the ball, and then they were eager to capitalize. Doncic, who has the meaty build of a tight end at 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds, is an all-world offensive player. But his defense? For one game, at least, he went from hunter to hunted against shifty guards like Paul and Devin Booker.“Just have to play better defense,” Doncic said, “that’s it.”No one has been surprised to see two point guards take center stage in this series, which the Suns lead, 2-0, as it heads to Dallas for Game 3 on Friday. But in the process, Paul and Doncic have offered contrasting approaches. Paul has picked his moments to take charge, a luxury given the talent that surrounds him, while Doncic has tried to do it all, in large part because he has no choice.“We believe, man,” Doncic said, adding: “We’re going to believe until the end.”The Suns have been able to frustrate Doncic in many ways, even as he manages to pour in points as the driver of the Mavericks’ offense.Matt York/Associated PressDoncic has been putting up preposterous numbers, even by his gaudy standards. In Game 1, he finished with 45 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists. In Game 2, he had 35 points, 5 rebounds and 7 assists. Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd put the pressure on Doncic’s supporting cast to assert itself in Game 3.“He had a great game,” Kidd said of Doncic, “but no one else showed. So we’ve got to get the other guys shooting the ball better. We can’t win with just him out there scoring 30 a night, not at this time of year.”For Paul, the playoffs are another opportunity — arguably his best one yet — to win his first championship, one season after the Suns fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in the N.B.A. finals. Phoenix, Booker said, is on a “revenge tour,” which Paul seems to be steering from his personal time machine. Paul finished with 28 points and 8 assists on Wednesday, a tour de force two days before his 37th birthday.“He can tell you better than I can,” Booker said, “but he’s feeling younger by the day.”In his own way, given his size and approach, Paul is unapologetically old school. Growing up in North Carolina, he was the prototypical point guard: a dazzling scorer, to be sure, but someone who was responsible, first and foremost, for involving teammates. Now, he has the institutional knowledge of 17 N.B.A. seasons informing each of his decisions.Doncic, on the other hand, is one of the league’s new-age players, a 23-year-old prodigy with a multidimensional game that was informed by his childhood in Slovenia, where children, no matter how big or how small, learned the fundamentals of shooting and passing.In this playoff series, the throwback has the edge. It helps, of course, that the Suns are a deeper team and that Paul plays alongside Booker, a three-time All-Star and one of the league’s most gifted scorers.For three quarters of Wednesday’s game, Paul largely created for his teammates, attempting just nine shots. He exploded in the fourth quarter, scoring 14 points while shooting 6 of 7 from the field.“It’s amazing,” the Suns’ Jae Crowder said. “For the first two quarters, he’s relaxed, chilling. He’s not too aggressive, just reading the game. And then he has a switch where he just turns it on.”Booker, 25, thought back to his childhood when he would watch games with his father, Melvin Booker, a former N.B.A. guard who shaped his son through daily workouts. In front of the TV, they would study Paul together. Devin was 5 years old, he said, exaggerating modestly.“See how he makes sure everyone’s involved?” Booker recalled his father asking him. “And then he picks his times when he’s going to take over the game?”Booker added: “I’ve always admired the way he does that. He’s just in control at all times. He’s two, three steps ahead of what the other team is doing.”Paul has long been known as one of the N.B.A.’s best passers.Joe Camporeale/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAs Paul surged in the fourth quarter, Doncic, having already carried such an enormous load for his team, seemed to tire — especially on defense. Kidd said he would need to concoct a plan to ensure that Doncic’s teammates “do a better job of helping him.” Perhaps the Mavericks need to avoid switching on screens so frequently, or perhaps they need to send more double-teams at Booker and Paul. Easier said than done.Paul joined Booker at his postgame news conference in time to answer a question about the importance of making Doncic work at both ends. Booker glanced at Paul and seemed to smirk, as if to say they had done their job picking him apart. Paul, forever the cagey veteran, chose the diplomatic route.“We just try to play,” he said. “Take what the defense gives us.”It was an exhausting night for Doncic. As he made his way off the court at halftime, he wheeled around to bark at a heckler.“He was just saying something reckless,” Doncic said. “If it’s something normal, I would not even look because I don’t care. But sometimes you’re in a bad mood and they say some bad stuff. It’s normal. We’re people, man. It’s normal to turn around.”Ahead of Game 3, Doncic had a chance to plot some revenge of his own. More

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    Liz Cambage Is Done ‘Living Someone Else’s Dream’

    LOS ANGELES — Liz Cambage strutted through the Sparks practice facility like it was her own home. There was a grin on her face. Her arms swayed back and forth with each step.After a recent practice there, Cambage, the team’s new star center, lounged in a black folding chair in a back corner of the basketball court, waving at teammates who passed by on their way out. One teammate offered to cook her a meal sometime soon, an invitation Cambage happily accepted.“I think I’m the most sound and relaxed that I’ve been in a long time,” Cambage said, her legs crossed comfortably. “I’m where I want to be. I’m surrounded by the people I want to be surrounded with, and we’re working hard.”During practice, she was focused, yelling “Execute!” during team drills, and chiming in when Sparks Coach Derek Fisher addressed the team afterward.Cambage’s fire on and off the court has defined her unique career. Few W.N.B.A. players have her size, mobility, unapologetic confidence and candor, though with time, Cambage said, she’s becoming less vocal and reactive.That drive allows her to pull down rebounds and score easy baskets in the post against double and triple teams. It carried her through a dark rookie year and stressful Olympics stints, and through a difficult mental health journey on which, on her bad days, she struggled to get out of bed or take a shower.Entering her sixth W.N.B.A. season, Cambage will begin the final leg of her playing career, which has included four All-Star selections, a runner-up finish in Most Valuable Player Award voting and a single-game scoring record, but never a championship.Cambage, 30, signed with the Sparks in the off-season, after Los Angeles missed the W.N.B.A. playoffs last year for the first time since 2011. Adding Cambage to a frontcourt that has Nneka Ogwumike, who is a former M.V.P., and Chiney Ogwumike, a former No. 1 overall pick and rookie of the year, could lift Los Angeles back into championship contention.“We don’t necessarily feel like it’s going to happen overnight,” Fisher said at Cambage’s introductory news conference in February. “Greatness does take time. But we do feel like we’re farther ahead than where we were last year when we started overhauling our team.”Her one-year deal is worth $170,000, well below the super-maximum salary she earned in her last stop, as a member of the Las Vegas Aces. To Cambage, relocating was worth the pay cut.“I’m at a point where I’m too old to be in places I don’t want to be,” Cambage said, adding, “I’ve got into a place where I make so much money off the floor that I can take a pay cut to wherever I want to be here in the league.”‘I wanted to wake up and not be here.’In the 2019 Body Issue of ESPN The Magazine, Cambage posed with a long, sleek dark ponytail, a silver basketball and only her tattoos covering her body.“I love my whole body,” Cambage said during the shoot. “I’m proud of my whole body, every inch. My soft, soft skin. My big lips. My crazy hair. I just love me.”Signed to the talent agency IMG, Cambage has modeled sportswear for Adidas and is a brand ambassador for Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie line.“You wouldn’t necessarily see a 6’8” woman model lingerie — they don’t show that,” said Kaila Charles, a guard/forward who recently played for the Connecticut Sun. She added that seeing Cambage so comfortable in her skin gave her the confidence to love her own body after being picked on as a young girl.Cambage’s love for fashion and modeling come through on game days, when she typically wears suits because that’s what she saw her mother wear to work every day when she was younger.“I’m not trying to impress anyone,” Cambage said. “I dress for me. My fashion is for me.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times“It’s just powerful to me,” she said. “I’m not trying to impress anyone. I dress for me. My fashion is for me.”Cambage’s confidence in herself and her body are as much of a calling card as her moves in the post. But it took a while for her to feel that way.Born in London to a Nigerian father and a white Australian mother, Cambage grew up in the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne after her parents split up. There, she was bullied for not fitting in at all in the majority-white environment. She was too tall. Her feet were too big. Her eyes weren’t blue.“I was made to feel like a freakish monster for being tall and a person of color,” Cambage said.When she was 10 years old, Cambage came home from school one day and told her mother, Julia Cambage, that she didn’t want to live anymore. The bullying and isolation were too much.“It hurts me to still speak on that because I know how much pain that put my mother through,” she said. “No mother wants to hear that.”She added, “But just having the notion of the idea, the motive, that I wanted to wake up and not be here since 10 years old, that’s a lot.”Searching for options that could help her daughter make friends, Julia forced Liz to go to a basketball practice one Sunday.Cambage had never been interested in sports. She had played the violin and piano, but her mother had to sell her piano when they moved to Melbourne, effectively ending her musical exploration. She fell in love with basketball, though she couldn’t even run or dribble properly at first.“I was just surrounded by really lovely girls,” Cambage said. “I was just supported and loved and I really grew to love the game from that.”As she became serious about basketball, she accelerated quickly and by age 17, she was a member of the Australian junior women’s national team. Two years later, in 2011, she was drafted second overall by the W.N.B.A.’s Tulsa Shock, a struggling franchise that hoped to build its roster and future success around the 19-year-old Cambage.“I think it wasn’t until I moved to America when I was 19 that I really loved who I am,” she said. “And as a woman of color, as a bigger woman, those two things are really embraced here in America.”As big of an impact as the culture made on her, transitioning to the W.N.B.A. was rocky early on. Tulsa won just three games during Cambage’s rookie season, and she struggled to adjust in a new place that felt like an alternate universe. In Melbourne, she was able to vote, drive and party as freely as she wanted to. In Tulsa, she was considered underage, and felt like she was treated like a child.Foundering on and off the court, and thousands of miles from her support system, Cambage said the Shock’s veterans players told her she should pack her bags and leave if she didn’t want to be there. Her agent at the time told her to suck it up and stay.“I cried every day,” Cambage said.Elizabeth Cambage shoots against Brittney Griner during a game in 2013.Shane Bevel/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThings only got worse. She dominated playing in China and Australia, where she won the Australia’s Women’s National Basketball League’s M.V.P. Award in the 2010-11 season. But she still felt isolated as she missed birthdays, weddings and baby showers to play in games.Cambage sank deeper into depression as her body and mind were battered. She sat out the Shock’s 2012 season, returned in 2013, then tore her Achilles’ tendon in 2014. By the 2016 Olympics, she was one of the best-known athletes in Australia playing for the lauded women’s national team, but privately, Cambage was ready to walk away from basketball. Her team did not medal for the first time in six Olympics.Cambage needed a sports psychologist just to make it through the games. Most of the time, she coped by partying, drinking and self-medicating.“It’s a vicious cycle that you don’t really realize you’re caught up in until you’re burned out from Valium or Xanax,” she said. “But that was my toxic way of dealing with just feeling too much.”She leaned on her mother’s support and the encouragement of Fred Williams, then the Shock’s head coach, who persuaded her to come back to the Shock in 2018, after the team had relocated to Dallas and rebranded as the Wings.“If I didn’t have Coach Fred reminding me who I am and how great I am every other day and trying to get me back to Dallas in 2018, I probably wouldn’t have come back,” she said.Cambage averaged 23 points per game that season and finished second in M.V.P. voting behind the Seattle Storm’s Breanna Stewart. Her 53 points against the Liberty in July 2018 were the most ever scored in a W.N.B.A. game.‘I speak on it.’By the time Cambage joined the Las Vegas Aces in 2019 after demanding a trade out of Dallas, she was one of the most dynamic and outspoken players in women’s basketball. She wore her 6-foot-8 height proudly, even though she said referees struggled to officiate someone her size. Last season, the head coach of the Connecticut Sun, Curt Miller, was suspended for one game after he made a comment Cambage said was disrespectful about her weight as he tried to persuade referees to call a foul on her.She has spoken loudly about racial and gender equity issues, even when people on social media told her to be quiet.“Liz is a force on and off the court,” Chiney Ogwumike said during the Sparks’ media day last month. She added: “I think a lot of people don’t understand how much she wants to win and dominate and be great.”Liz Cambage handles the ball against the Atlanta Dream in 2019.Scott Cunningham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesOn New Year’s Eve, Las Vegas announced it had hired as head coach Becky Hammon, the former W.N.B.A. star and a longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant who many assumed would eventually become the N.B.A.’s first female head coach. Hammon’s contract was reportedly worth around $1 million dollars a year in salary, about four-times the league’s 2022 maximum salary of around $230,000 for top veteran players, a number that rankled Cambage.“Ahhh yes the @WNBA, where a head coach can get paid 4X the highest paid players super max contract,” Cambage wrote in a Twitter post.Player salaries in the league are collectively bargained, unlike coaches’ salaries, and Cambage said her comment was meant to be a critique on the league’s pay disparities, not an attack on Hammon.“I don’t understand how you have a C.B.A. for teams and a salary cap that’s $1.4 million, but a coach can get millions,” said Cambage, who had led the Aces to the W.N.B.A. semifinals in 2019 and 2021.W.N.B.A. contracts have been a hot topic since February, when Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner was detained on drug charges in Russia, where she and many other women play in the off-season because the contracts are much more lucrative than stateside.Last year, the league fined the Liberty $500,000 for secretly chartering flights to games during the 2021 season; the collective bargaining agreement only permits teams to fly commercially in premium economy. The fine drew criticism from many players, including Cambage, who said she has to pay to upgrade her seats on team flights to have more leg room. Charter flights are common for professional male athletes.Cambage has continued to be vocal about equity issues that persist in women’s sports because she wants to make it easier for the generation that follows her.“I don’t think I’m going to get a million-dollar contract in the W.N.B.A. tomorrow,” she said, “but I speak on it because right now it’s like, I wouldn’t want my daughter to play in this if my daughter was in college right now.”Cambage has spoken out about racial and gender equity issues.Bethany Mollenkof for The New York Times‘This has always been my dream.’After the recent Sparks practice ended, Cambage stayed afterward to get up extra shots. Some from the corner or the wing, some closer to the basket.She has been living in an apartment in West Los Angeles, close to the water. Sparks fans have already used the term Liz Angeles to term this new chapter, which begins Friday against the Chicago Sky, the defending champions.“I think everyone knows who I am, the player I am,” she said. “I’m loud, I’m vocal, and that’s the energy I bring right from the jump.”It has been a long journey for Cambage to get to this point: She loves what she sees when she looks in the mirror. She’s excited to wake up and come to work every day, to chase a championship with the Sparks.“I had been living someone else’s dream, chasing that for a minute,” she said. “But now I’ve realized that this has always been my dream, being here in L.A. and playing here.” More

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    Joel Embiid Is Carving a Path Into the Heart of Philadelphia

    Embiid came into his own this season, positioning the Sixers for a run at a championship. Yet another injury may derail that goal, but he has earned respect.There was a time when it wasn’t certain that the Philadelphia 76ers should be placed on the broad shoulders of Joel Embiid.There were questions about his maturity, like when he danced shirtless onstage at a Meek Mill concert in 2017 while out with a knee injury. Bryan Colangelo, then the team’s head of basketball operations, called it “a little” disappointing. (This was silly.)The more concerning questions were about Embiid’s conditioning and weight after he was drafted, in 2014, and then about his durability, when he missed his first two seasons with foot injuries. That was when the Sixers were going through one of the worst periods in franchise history — also known as The Process.Fast forward to now: Embiid has convincingly put all those concerns to rest. Over the last two seasons, he has transformed into one of the best players in the N.B.A. and a contender for the Most Valuable Player Award.And he’s just not any superstar. He’s a Philadelphia Superstar — by and of the city — the proverbial man of the people. The kind who you might occasionally spot going for a jog through the streets of Philadelphia (sorry, Mr. Springsteen) or dropping by a local court to play pickup. Since the Sixers drafted him, Embiid has made being in Philadelphia a core part of his identity, all while a turnstile of other top players have left their teams. His Twitter biography reads “PROCESSING” — a nod to his assumption of The Process as a nickname. The term refers to a string of losing seasons in the mid-2010s as the Sixers stockpiled draft picks — picks that have, at least in part, led to Philadelphia’s success today.It seems appropriate that Embiid won the scoring title this year, making him the first Sixer to do so since the deeply beloved Allen Iverson in 2005. Embiid is on track to do what no other basketball player this century has approached: give Philadelphia basketball fans someone (not named Iverson) to truly believe in.Embiid has had to shoulder much of the load of leading Philadelphia by himself.Matt Slocum/Associated PressThis year, Embiid’s path to permanent enshrinement in Philadelphia lore hit a snag when he was diagnosed with a concussion and an orbital fracture after he was elbowed in the face during the final game of a first-round playoff series against the Toronto Raptors. The Sixers moved on to the second round to face the Miami Heat, the East’s No. 1 seed, and lost the first game in a blowout on Monday without Embiid. Game 2 was set for Wednesday.Entering the postseason, it had seemed that this would be one of the Sixers’ best opportunities to win a championship in decades — even better than when they were the No. 1 seed in 2021. They had a dominant Embiid and a strong partner to share the load in James Harden, who was named M.V.P. with Houston in 2017-18. They also have a cast of talented teammates, such as the second-year guard Tyrese Maxey. But it’s unclear when Embiid will be able to play again, and the Sixers are, at best, on even footing with Miami if Embiid is healthy.But even if the Sixers don’t advance, Embiid’s play has earned him a deep well of affection within his city. The Sixers were shrouded in drama this season as a result of the trade demand from Ben Simmons, who was supposed to help Embiid in the championship quest but never took the court before he was traded to the Nets for Harden in February. Instead of letting the season get derailed, Embiid mostly stayed quiet about Simmons and kept his focus on the court, where he averaged 30.6 points, 11.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game.Philadelphia has long been known as a difficult city in which to earn longstanding affection from fans. Only a few athletes have been able to attain that — and often not without significant bumps along the way: players like Julius Erving and Charles Barkley, and in other sports, the Eagles’ Brian Dawkins.Other stars (ahem: Simmons) are often run out of town.“A big part of my job is recruiting free agents directly or even indirectly in trade,” said Daryl Morey, the Sixers’ president of basketball operations. “And I think there’s a respect of the Philadelphia fan base that the players have that they’re like, ‘Will they accept me or not?’“Because if they don’t accept you, it gets ugly fast for everybody.”Marc Zumoff, who was the Sixers’ play-by-play broadcaster for almost three decades before retiring last year, said in an email that, “Philadelphia fans like to know they are part of the process.“Whether they’re cheering, booing, or chanting in unison, they want to elicit reactions from the players, coaches, officials or whoever is their target,” he said. “In Joel’s case, his expressions, gyrations or especially when he holds his arms out in exaltation, he feeds the frenzy.”He added, “Sometimes he reacts to the fans; other times, they react to him.”James Harden, left, was traded to the Sixers from the Nets in February.Matt Slocum/Associated PressEmbiid has come to be known for his playful behavior, on and off the court.Cole Burston/Getty ImagesThat’s not the case for every Philadelphia star, Zumoff said, citing a Phillies icon.“Mike Schmidt may have been the greatest third baseman in baseball history, but I think our fans wanted more outward emotion from him,” he said.If there’s a figure who understands being beloved as an athlete in Philadelphia, it’s Jimmy Rollins, who played for the Phillies from 2000 to 2014. He won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2007 and helped deliver a World Series in 2008.Winning over fans from Philadelphia “takes responsibility,” said Rollins, who is now an analyst for TBS.“When I say responsibility, I mean owning up to when you mess up,” he said. “Not making excuses, but showing up every day and playing with a certain style of grittiness.”Embiid has alluded to such sentiments, while also being willing to throw some of that same energy back at fans.“I haven’t forgotten but 2 years ago, I got booed, people in Philly wanted me to be traded,” Embiid said on Twitter before this season. “I even shushed them. Only the real ones didn’t but I just put the work in that off-season to be better cuz I knew I wasn’t playing up to my potential. Philly fans, y’all also gotta be better.”There are two ways to be an athlete who never has to buy a meal in Philadelphia ever again. You can help win a title, as the N.F.L. quarterback Nick Foles did in leading the Eagles to the Super Bowl in the 2017 season. Or you can be a larger-than-life star, like Iverson. Ideally, you’re both.Iverson wasn’t just a force in the city. He was a cultural beacon who affected the way players dressed, wore their hair and felt about themselves. He was also one of the most visible figures in all of sports. But the city’s fondness for Iverson went beyond his production and style. It was also about size. Iverson was barely six feet tall and constantly outplayed opponents much bigger than him. In the case of Embiid, he’s a dominant physical presence unto himself and is in part successful because he’s able to outmuscle defenders. Most players are smaller than him.Allen Iverson, who led the Sixers to the N.B.A. finals in 2001, is one of a kind, but Embiid is carving his own path into the hearts of Philadelphia fans.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesEmbiid has essentially carved out his own path. He’s a millennial superstar — meaning he’s aware of and makes use of the internet more than Iverson’s generation of players ever had to. It’s been one of the many ways Embiid has increased his reach in a way that’s been rare for professional athletes. A meme here. A trash talk Instagram caption there. The occasional joke to sate the masses.“It’s pretty rare to have someone as talented as him — the best player in the league, we would argue — and also be so aware of his impact on the daily lives,” Morey said.If Embiid comes back this series, he’ll be playing through, in addition to the orbital fracture, a torn ligament in his thumb. Just by taking the floor, he’ll burnish his image as a warrior willing to, as Rollins said, “find a way to make that impossible happen,” a willingness Rollins said is key to gaining the warm embrace of Philadelphia.Whatever Embiid is, he is Philadelphia’s.“I think he’ll always be a beloved figure no matter what,” Morey said. More

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    Why Brittney Griner Could Be the Last American Basketball Star in Russia

    The atrocities of the war in Ukraine and Griner’s detention in Russia on drug charges could cut off a lucrative pipeline for women’s basketball players.Mike Cound had decided on a figure — a reasonable salary request, he said — for a client who wanted to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team in Russia. As an experienced sports agent, that was what he was supposed to do.But when he doubled the request on a whim, the team accepted without hesitation. And when another client injured her knee and could not play, the team paid her anyway. For yet another client, UMMC Yekaterinburg offered more than triple the amount she could make in the W.N.B.A. in the United States — if she would agree to play only in Russia.None of that was normal. But UMMC Yekaterinburg was not like any other team.“There’s nothing like it in sports,” Cound said. “The Yankees, maybe, in the old days with George Steinbrenner, when they would pay four times as much as somebody else.”That type of spending and largess, fed by the Russian oligarchs who own teams for pride and political reasons, has drawn many W.N.B.A. players over the years to a country they barely know, thousands of miles from home, for a financial bounty generally unavailable in the United States.But those days may be over. Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s detention of the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner on drug charges and increasing pressure from the W.N.B.A. to limit overseas play have forced an overdue reconsideration of the ethical and financial implications of playing basketball in Russia.Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury who was in Russia to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg when she was detained in February, was reportedly earning at least $1 million from the team — far more than the W.N.B.A.’s maximum base salary of about $230,000. Similar paydays have lured other big-name stars, like Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart.UMMC Yekaterinburg celebrated winning the EuroLeague Women in 2021.Murad Sezer/ReutersBut Griner’s detention, the atrocities of the war and related economic sanctions have heightened the scrutiny of associating with Russian businesses — including its basketball teams. The State Department on Tuesday said that Griner had been “wrongfully detained” and that its officials were working to have her released. Griner could be the last American basketball star to play professionally in Russia, fracturing a lucrative pipeline that a list of renowned players has tapped for a generation.“If you’ve got your daughter you’re entrusting with me and listening to my counsel,” Cound said, “I do not see where I can look you in the face and say, ‘Yeah, this is a good idea,’ if Vladimir Putin is still in charge.”‘We can get the best’As the Mercury prepare for the 2022 W.N.B.A. season, which begins Friday, Griner remains in custody with other women in Russia, where she has gone to play basketball since 2015.In February, Russian customs officials accused Griner of carrying vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow. If Griner is convicted, she can face up to 10 years in prison. American officials have long accused Russia of detaining people on trumped-up charges.In March, a Russian court extended Griner’s time in custody until at least May 19. That hearing did not deal with the merits of the case. The State Department has not explained why or how its officials determined that her detention was wrongful.In March, Lisa Leslie, the Hall of Fame player, said on the “I Am Athlete” podcast that she and others in the W.N.B.A. community were told not to make a “big fuss” over Griner’s detention for fear of inflaming tensions with Russia. The State Department’s statement on Tuesday was the most significant public acknowledgment of Griner’s situation by the U.S. government.Some W.N.B.A. players and fans have been vocal, using a #FreeBrittney hashtag on social media to plead for intervention. But most, like Taurasi, Griner’s Mercury teammate, have said little as part of a strategy of quiet diplomacy.A fan showed his support for Griner during a men’s basketball game between Iowa State and Baylor in March. (Griner won a national title with Baylor in 2012.)LM Otero/Associated Press“I spent 10 years there, so I know the way things work,” said Taurasi, who has played for Russian teams and is the leading scorer in W.N.B.A. history. “It’s delicate.”UMMC Yekaterinburg paid Taurasi a reported $1.5 million to skip the 2015 W.N.B.A. season and play only in Russia.“It was a very personal choice,” Taurasi told The New York Times at the time. “My agent said it would be financially irresponsible not to do it.”UMMC Yekaterinburg, based in the city of the same name and roughly a two-hour flight from Moscow, is controlled by the oligarch Iskander Makhmudov and his business partner, Andrei Kozitsyn. Makhmudov and Kozitsyn head Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, which mines commodities like copper, zinc, coal, gold and silver, and is one of Russia’s top producers.They were part of a wave of oligarchs who amassed their wealth after the collapse of the Soviet Union by investing in industries like gas, oil and precious metals. Following Putin’s ascent, oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Prokhorov bought into prominent sports franchises, like the soccer teams Chelsea and Arsenal F.C. and the N.B.A.’s Nets.While some owners had legitimate reasons for investing in sports, others who funded or purchased teams were doing so at least in part to seem more legitimate to American and British authorities, according to Karen Greenaway, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated international corruption and spent a part of her career in the former Soviet Union. Makhmudov has been linked to criminal activity and has business associations with other oligarchs tied to organized crime in Russia, according to civil suits lodged in the United States and the United Kingdom by competitors and law enforcement officials.Makhmudov was accused of being involved in a scheme to take over the Russian aluminum industry, according to a civil case filed in New York in 2000. In it, Makhmudov and two other oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska and Michael Cherney, were accused of a racketeering scheme which involved fraud, bribery and attempted murder. They contested the allegations, and the case was dismissed in the United States because the judge consented to move it to Russia.“Organized crime was making the money, and Makhmudov and Deripaska were investing the money,” Greenaway said. Several attempts to reach Makhmudov and Kozitsyn for this article were unsuccessful.Proceeds from mining helped Makhmudov and Kozitsyn invest in women’s basketball and other sports in Russia, like martial arts and table tennis.Andrei Kozitsyn at a news conference in 2014.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersAnother former F.B.I. agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his current employer had barred him from speaking publicly, said oligarchs want to be associated with high-profile legitimate businesses like sports teams to make it more difficult for Putin to severely punish them without anyone noticing. Making too much money outside Russia could upset Putin, the agent said, as could seeming to interfere with his political agenda. “When oligarchs have stepped into the fray, then he comes after you full guns ablazing,” the agent said.Brendan Dwyer, an associate professor and a director at the Center for Sport Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, said interest in Russian women’s basketball is related to Putin’s desire that Russia be viewed as a worldwide sports powerhouse.“Really, it’s an opportunity for the oligarchs to draw the best international talent to the country and raise awareness for the sport,” Dwyer said, noting Putin’s background in judo. “But I think the ultimate goal is to showcase: ‘Listen, we have the best athletes in the world. We are the best country in the world. We can get the best to come here.’”‘More than the whole budget of the next team’Yekaterinburg sits on an eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, close to Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, and is a city where the profits of the country’s mining and metallurgical industries pool. The city gained infamy in 1918 when Czar Nicholas II, Russia’s last czar, was killed along with his family by Bolshevik revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution.The Russian Basketball Federation governs several men’s and women’s basketball leagues, including the women’s Premier League with about a dozen teams. UMMC Yekaterinburg has dominated the Premier League, where most of the teams are bankrolled by government municipalities. Makhmudov lists the team on his website among his charitable endeavors.“There’s this vision that this is happening all over Russia,” Cound said. “No, no. It’s this team. You probably have three players on Yekat that’s more than the whole budget of the next team down.”Right before UMMC Yekaterinburg’s run of sustained dominance began in 2008, Taurasi and Sue Bird, two of the world’s most famous women’s basketball players, won several EuroLeague championships for Spartak Moscow. In 2006, the average W.N.B.A. salary was only $47,000 a year, with the league maximum at $91,000 for veterans.In Russia, Bird and Taurasi were treated like celebrities. Shabtai Kalmanovich, Spartak Moscow’s owner, lavished players with high salaries, cash bonuses and gifts.Iskander Makhmudov, the president of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, in 2014.Dmitry Dukhanin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKalmanovich once told ESPN that he lost millions every season. The team paid to have its games broadcast in Russia and did not charge fans to attend, hoping to first get spectators invested in the sport before charging admission.He told Sports Illustrated in 2008 that “you need to have a big heart” and to “be something between a fanatic and a patriot” to invest in women’s basketball. But for the very rich, like Kalmanovich, that was often enough incentive.“If you understand that you can’t eat breakfast twice, and you can wear only one tie at a time, there might as well be something else,” he said.What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in RussiaCard 1 of 5What happened? More

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    Against Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors Feel Range of Emotions

    A tense playoff series against the Grizzlies has Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green reliving the emotional roller coaster of their championship runs.MEMPHIS — The Golden State Warriors expected a physical fight in Game 2 of their second-round N.B.A. playoff series with the Memphis Grizzlies. But to lose that game, 106-101, and to lose a beloved defender to a fractured elbow? Those events they did not expect.It created a mélange of emotions after the game — anger, disappointment, frustration.Still, point guard Stephen Curry, the emotional center of the team, offered several reasons Golden State did not plan to panic.“It’s going to be a long three days with that feeling, but we understand what we need to do,” he said.And also: “We’ve been in a lot of different series that’s taken a lot of twists and turns.”And later: “Lot of adversity, a lot of adrenaline and emotion. We’ve just got to win four games somehow some way.”The loss, on Tuesday night, showed the challenge of the emotional balance the Warriors pride themselves on having. As they attempt to win another championship, they are finally getting to play in high-stakes games after a two-year postseason drought. With that comes the potential for highs, like their emotional 1-point win in Game 1 against the Grizzlies, but also lows, like the way they felt after their loss Tuesday. The series, which is tied 1-1, will continue in San Francisco with Game 3 on Saturday.“Everybody’s bummed out,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said. “But it’s the playoffs, so everybody will shower up and we’ll get on the plane and head home. We’re in a good spot.”Golden State forward Draymond Green raised his middle fingers toward a booing Memphis crowd as he left the court after an inadvertent elbow to the face left him bloodied.Brandon Dill/Associated PressThe two years during which Golden State missed the playoffs made those players who had been through the championship years that much more wistful for the thrill of playoff stakes.“I think it’s almost like a drug in some ways,” said the assistant coach Ron Adams, who has been with the team since 2014.Only six players from the last N.B.A. finals run, in 2019, remain, but they have returned to the playoffs with a deeper understanding of their emotions.“I got excited after Game 1 because it was such a hard-fought game, but as soon as I went back to the hotel that adrenaline wore off and I realized it’s just one game and it’s a marathon,” guard Klay Thompson, 32, said. “For me, I think I’m a lot more centered than I was our first time doing this.”He also believes some things haven’t changed, and shouldn’t.“I’ve been through the biggest battles with Dray, and he embraces those moments, he embraces being the villain,” Thompson said of forward Draymond Green. “We need that. He really makes us go, and without him, we’re not the Warriors.”On Tuesday morning, Kerr had said Golden State expected Game 2 to be the most physical game the team had played all season.It roiled their emotions, with the hostile Grizzlies crowd lifting the home team. Memphis guard Ja Morant scored 47 points, including 18 in the fourth quarter, and the Grizzlies capitalized on Golden State’s mistakes late. But the opening minutes set a tense tone.Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks was ejected less than three minutes into the game, having received a flagrant-2 foul after swiping Gary Payton II across the head as Payton was in the air to try to make a basket. Payton fractured his elbow when he landed awkwardly.“I don’t know if it was intentional, but it was dirty,” Kerr said, later accusing Brooks of jeopardizing Payton’s career.Green also left the game in the first quarter after Xavier Tillman inadvertently elbowed him in the face. Hearing boos from the crowd, Green raised his middle fingers toward the fans as he left the court to get stitches above his right eye.“It felt really good to flip them off,” said Green, who answered other questions about the night in clipped sentences. “You’re going to boo someone that got elbowed in the eye and had blood running down your face? I could’ve had a concussion or anything. So if they’re going to be that nasty, I can be nasty, too. I’m assuming the cheers was because they know I’ll get fined. Great. I make $25 million a year. I should be just fine.”Green and Grizzlies fans were already on bad terms coming into the game. He had been ejected from Game 1 after a hard foul on Memphis forward Brandon Clarke. On Tuesday, Green returned to the game at the start of the second quarter with his right eye nearly swollen shut.All the while, Golden State was figuring out how to recover from a hot Grizzlies start and Payton’s injury.“It was like 8-0 at the time, so I was trying to get settled in the game,” Curry said. “That play happens. It pisses you off, you have a reaction, understand there’s 45 minutes left in the game. You’ve got to kind of settle back in emotionally. We did a really good job until the fourth quarter.”It was a marked change from Golden State’s demeanor following the Game 1 win, but that shift is typical in playoff series, particularly the closer they are to the finals.Curry’s signature emotion is happiness. Lately, as Golden State has advanced in the playoffs, as the games have become more crucial and challenging, those around him have seen more of that.“Just the simple phrase, ‘You got to love it’; heard him say that a few times,” Bruce Fraser, an assistant coach who works closely with Curry, said Tuesday morning. “You can feel his energy. He walks around with an energy around him. I know him so well it’s hard for me to describe what that is because I just feel it.”Golden State guard Klay Thompson. left, was riding high after beating Memphis in Game 1.Joe Rondone/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBeing able to prevent an emotionally taxing loss from changing that has been a part of Golden State’s success in the past.On Tuesday morning, Thompson spoke not just about his efforts to stay calm in exciting moments, but also about his improved ability to not worry too much in more negative moments. He said he loved to play in any game he could, given his two-year absence from the sport as he recovered from two leg injuries.He also spoke about his confidence that Golden State could handle anything, because in his years playing with Curry and Green, they have, he said, “been through everything.”He recalled a playoff series against the Grizzlies in 2015 and how aggressively that Memphis team played. Golden State also lost Game 2 of that series before winning it on the way to Thompson, Curry and Green’s first championship. That’s not to say the situations are identical. In 2015, Golden State was the top seed in the Western Conference, while Memphis was fifth. This season, the Grizzlies had the second-best record in the N.B.A., while Golden State was third.Those types of experiences, though, help keep emotions stable.After Tuesday’s game, Curry spoke with reporters before he even changed out of his game uniform. Still, he already seemed to be moving past the emotion of the game. He exhibited the cerebral quality that leads the rest of his team.“It’s in our DNA,” Curry said when asked how Golden State would recover from this loss. “We know what to do.” More

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    Brittney Griner Was ‘Wrongfully Detained’, U.S. Government Says

    More than two months after the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was accused of having drugs in her luggage and taken into custody in Russia, the U.S. State Department on Tuesday said that it had determined she was “wrongfully detained.”“The U.S. government will continue to provide appropriate consular support to Ms. Griner and her family,” a State Department official said in a statement, adding that an interagency team would work to have her released.Griner, 31, has been held in Russia since February on drug charges that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years if she is convicted. Russian customs officials accused Griner of carrying vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow as she returned to Russia to resume playing for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team, after a two-week break.“Brittney has been detained for 75 days and our expectation is that the White House do whatever is necessary to bring her home,” Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said in a statement.The State Department did not explain why it was now designating Griner as wrongfully detained. ESPN first reported the change.A law passed by Congress in 2020 established 11 criteria for such a designation, any one of which can be a sufficient basis to secure the detainee’s release, including “credible information indicating innocence of the detained individual,” “credible reports that the detention is a pretext for an illegitimate purpose,” or a conclusion that U.S. “diplomatic engagement is likely necessary.”Under the law, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken must personally approve such a designation, and transfer responsibility for the case from the department’s consular affairs bureau to the office of the special envoy for hostage affairs.Some of Griner’s supporters and inner circle had been concerned about politicizing Griner’s case because of the frayed relationship between the United States and Russia and the tensions of the war in Ukraine. Most W.N.B.A. players and government officials have said little about the situation beyond expressing general support for Griner, as part of a strategy of quiet diplomacy.In other cases of wrongful detention, the United States had insisted that it would not link the fate of imprisoned individuals to larger policy issues. The State Department has repeatedly said, for instance, that Americans held in Iran are not part of the negotiations between Washington and Tehran to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.In March, a Russian court extended Griner’s detention until at least May 19 and denied an appeal from Griner’s legal team in Russia, who had hoped to have her transferred to house arrest. That hearing did not deal with the merits of the case.Word of Griner’s new status comes less than a week after the United States conducted a prisoner swap with Moscow. Russia had for two years detained Trevor R. Reed, a former U.S. Marine, on what his family considered to be trumped-up charges of assault.Reed’s release renewed optimism that Griner would also be freed.“As I do everything in my power to get BG home, my heart is overflowing with joy for The Reed family,” Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, wrote on Instagram. “I do not personally know them, but I do know the pain of having your loved one detained in a foreign country. That level of pain is constant and can only be remedied by a safe return home.”Among publicly-known cases of Americans wrongfully held abroad, the average case has lasted more than four years, said Cynthia Loertscher, director of research at the nonprofit James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. The foundation is named after an American journalist kidnapped in Syria and executed by the Islamic State in 2014.The United States has designated as wrongfully detained Americans citizens and U.S. nationals who are currently imprisoned in China, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, Belarus, Myanmar and Cuba, among several other nations. In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired in February, Roger D. Carstens, the diplomat who will be overseeing the interagency effort to free Griner, said that over 40 Americans were wrongfully detained abroad.Many W.N.B.A. players join international teams to earn additional income during the league’s off-season. The top-tier players can make more than $1 million by playing in Russia. Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and seven-time All-Star, is set to earn about $228,000 with the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury in the 2022 season, according to the website Her Hoop Stats, just shy of the league’s maximum salary.The W.N.B.A.’s new season begins Friday. The league plans to “acknowledge the importance” of Griner by featuring her initials and jersey number, 42, on the sidelines of teams’ home courts.“There’s not a day that goes by where we’re not spending significant time on strategizing with, essentially, the administration experts,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times in an interview last month.She added: “Everybody wants her to come home as quickly as possible. It’s a complex situation.” More

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    The W.N.B.A. Strikes an Uneasy Silence Over Brittney Griner

    Advisers are taking a discreet approach to negotiating the Phoenix Mercury center’s release from Russian detention, putting her anguished teammates and the league in a discomfiting position.PHOENIX — When will Brittney Griner be set free?That painful question hangs over the Phoenix Mercury, just as it is likely to hang over the coming W.N.B.A. season.Last week, at a home preseason game pitting Phoenix against the Seattle Storm, hip-hop blared and gyrating dance squads revved up the crowd. When the teams took the court, the public-address system crackled with the names of some of the most well-known players in women’s basketball. Sue Bird. Breanna Stewart. Tina Charles. They were joined by the Mercury’s 39-year-old virtuoso, Diana Taurasi, who was in street clothes for the preseason game but who plans to be ready when the regular season begins Friday.Griner, the Mercury’s seven-time All-Star center, will not. Since February, she has been in Russian custody after customs officials at a Moscow area airport said they found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.Her glaring absence struck an awkward note. On the mammoth screen looming over the court in Phoenix, Griner’s image flashed alongside her teammates’ in promotional videos. Dozens of fans in the crowd wore Mercury jerseys emblazoned with her name and number, 42.This was the first time the Mercury had played since Griner was taken into Russian custody, yet there was no official acknowledgment of her absence by the players, no moment of silence to reckon with the collective anguish for one of the league’s most beloved performers, who is known to teammates and fans as B.G.Fans of Brittney Griner wore her national team and W.N.B.A. team jerseys.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThe silence is by design.The W.N.B.A. is perhaps the most progressive and outspoken American sports league. Its players have long taken public stands on issues such as race, gender equality, politics and reproductive rights. In the days after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, W.N.B.A. players boycotted games. During the early, cloistered days of the pandemic, they wore black shirts that said, “Say Her Name,” referring to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman shot and killed by the police in Louisville, Ky.But with Griner detained in Russia, her whereabouts and specific details on how she is faring relayed only to an inner circle of friends, family and advisers, the league is taking a stealthier approach.Instead of raising a ruckus, the players are quiet.Instead of clamoring for change, they keep their mouths shut.They are following the lead of Griner’s advisers, who have determined it best to let behind-the-scenes diplomacy work. With Griner facing up to 10 years in prison, they have reasoned the wisest move is to keep a low profile right now. At the moment, it makes sense, the reasoning goes, not to give President Vladimir V. Putin leverage in using Griner as a bargaining chip in negotiations while his military wages war against Ukraine.“We are absolutely outspoken about everything that we can possibly be,” Mercury guard Kia Nurse, who is entering her fifth year in the W.N.B.A., said at the team’s training facility last week. “But we are also very good at admitting that we don’t know everything, and we are not the experts on every topic.”A Phoenix Mercury fan wore a T-shirt calling for Griner’s release last week.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times“We’re following the process,” Nurse said, before noting the week’s hopeful news. On Wednesday, the State Department announced that a former U.S. Marine, Trevor R. Reed, had gained his freedom in a prisoner swap after nearly three years of Russian detention.Among the Mercury players, Reed’s return delivered a fresh dose of optimism that Griner could be next.But the deal for Reed also sparked renewed calls from activists outside her camp who wonder aloud whether enough is being done to bring Griner home. Why, they ask, wasn’t she included in the swap? Why is everyone in the league remaining so circumspect? Wouldn’t loud and visible protests for Griner help pressure some action?In Phoenix, more than a few fans told me they didn’t feel Griner’s case was getting enough attention. Or that if an N.B.A. star were in Russian custody — waiting for a hearing, as Griner is, and facing a possible lengthy prison sentence, as Griner is — the calls for his release would be thunderous, insistent and nonstop.“Having her missing, it feels like we are missing a limb,” said Dacia Johnson, an ardent Mercury fan who wore a Griner jersey. “And the way the team and league remain so quiet makes it worse. There was not one word about her at the beginning of this game. I’m really upset about that.”Tina Charles, back, started at center, Griner’s position with the Mercury.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesWhat if Devin Booker was in Russian custody, she wondered, referencing the high-scoring guard for the Phoenix Suns?“If this was Booker, and not a gay, 6-foot-9-inch Black female? If this was someone from men’s sports, I think they would have had something in his honor, even if it was a moment of silence.”Johnson seemed as emotional about Griner as the player’s teammates, who looked stricken with sadness every time I brought up Griner’s name. Still, the Mercury players stuck to the script. They spoke of how much they love B.G. How special she is. How she is like a member of their family, and constantly in their thoughts and prayers. Behind careful words was raw pain.“That’s my sister, so I love her,” said Skylar Diggins-Smith, who won gold alongside Griner at last summer’s Olympics in Tokyo. Diggins-Smith’s straightforward words were weighted as her voice quaked with frustration and anguish shone in her eyes. She continued: “I think about her every day, and I can’t wait till she gets back here with us.”We are in uncharted territory. As the season begins, the W.N.B.A. is still wrestling with ways to honor Griner that won’t hurt her cause. The league’s teams plan to expand Griner’s Heart and Sole charity, which gives shoes to those in need, beyond Phoenix. Other ideas are in consideration, too.But fans like Johnson and her girlfriend, Autumn Gardner, want boldness from the league that has come to be known for it. As the preseason game against the Storm wound toward its conclusion, a 4-point Mercury loss, Gardner did not just say Griner’s name. She yelled it. “B.G.!” she chanted, loud and insistent enough to reach down to the court. “B.G.! B.G.! B.G.!”A young fan touched a mural of Griner outside the Footprint Center in Phoenix.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times More