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    Lakers’ Russell Westbrook Deal Shifts Power Back to Los Angeles

    Westbrook, 32, averaged a triple-double last season and should help the Lakers rebound from their first-round exit from the playoffs.As the N.B.A. braces for the start of free agency negotiations on Monday, a pending blockbuster trade that would send Russell Westbrook to the Los Angeles Lakers is already in the running to be this summer’s most impactful transaction. More

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    Cade Cunningham Is No. 1 Pick For Pistons in N.B.A. Draft

    Cunningham, a 6-foot-8 guard out of Oklahoma State, becomes the latest part of Detroit’s pursuit of a resurgence.The Detroit Pistons, a franchise that spent most of the last decade in the N.B.A. wilderness, will rest their hopes for a rescue on Cade Cunningham, the 19-year-old Oklahoma State standout guard. More

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    Not ‘Bad Boys’ Anymore, the Pistons Just Want to Be Good Again

    Detroit has the No. 1 overall pick in Thursday’s N.B.A. draft, the culmination of years of mediocrity. The team is banking on the top pick and a young core for revival.Jalen Rose had gathered with basketball fans inside a bar for Game 2 of the N.B.A.’s Western Conference finals between the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Clippers. It was also the night of the draft lottery, which Rose, the retired small forward, was covering in his role as an analyst for ESPN. More

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    5 N.B.A. Draft Prospects to Know

    They don’t have to be big names to make an impact. “Getting buckets for myself, getting buckets for my teammates — that’s what I do,” Florida’s Tre Mann said.From the cheap seats at Barclays Center on Thursday night, the N.B.A. draft might appear to be back to normal. Fans will be in attendance, and so too will some of the league’s future stars. When their names are called, they’ll saunter up to the stage, greet Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., and show off their custom suits. More

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    3×3 Basketball Comes to the Games With a G.O.A.T.: Dusan Bulut

    Since 2012, FIBA has organized six World Cup tournaments in three-on-three basketball. Dusan Bulut and his Serbian teammates have won four of them.TOKYO — It all started with “White Men Can’t Jump.”Dusan Bulut was 9 years old and channel surfing at home in Novi Sad, Serbia, when the street ball caper starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes appeared on the television. More

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    Coronavirus Cases Threaten Basketball Recruiting

    Top prospects at Peach Jam, one of the most important summer basketball tournaments, hoped to impress college scouts but have been sidelined by coronavirus cases.NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. — The recent surge of coronavirus cases has waylaid the Olympic hopes of dozens of athletes and sidelined Major League Baseball players like Aaron Judge of the Yankees in the last week, so perhaps it is predictable that a Delta variant that has thrived among unvaccinated people would pose a particular threat to the peripatetic world of grass roots youth basketball. More

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    Alex Rodriguez Joins Ownership Group for Timberwolves and Lynx

    Rodriguez and Marc Lore, an e-commerce billionaire, have a pathway to controlling ownership of the professional Minnesota basketball teams in two years.Alex Rodriguez, the former Yankees star, and Marc Lore, an e-commerce billionaire, officially joined the ownership group of the N.B.A.’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx on Wednesday, after their purchase of a limited stake in the teams was approved by the N.B.A.’s Board of Governors.For now, the teams will still be controlled by their longtime owner, Glen Taylor, but it is expected that in 2023 Rodriguez and Lore will be the controlling owners. In April, a spokesperson for the Timberwolves said the purchase agreement “will initially entail a limited partnership stake with a pathway to controlling ownership of the organization.” The teams were sold for $1.5 billion, The New York Times has reported.Taylor, 80, is a Minnesota native and made his fortune in printing. He purchased the Timberwolves in 1994 from an ownership group that was attempting to move the team out of state. He has told the Star Tribune newspaper, which he also owns, that the sale agreement would include language to keep the teams in Minnesota, though it is unclear if that ended up happening.Marc Lore made billions in e-commerce, from Diapers.com and Jet.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGlen Taylor has owned the Timberwolves since 1994.Ann Heisenfelt/Associated PressRodriguez and Lore were part of a group, along with Jennifer Lopez and others, that attempted to buy the Mets, but came up short to Steven Cohen’s billions.Since his retirement from playing baseball in 2016, Rodriguez has worked as a baseball commentator for both Fox and ESPN, as well as invested in a number of companies. Lore made his fortune founding Diapers.com, which was sold to Amazon, and Jet, which was sold to Walmart for $3.3 billion.While Rodriguez and Lore are now part of the ownership group, there is no guarantee that everything goes well.One of the two will have to be designated the control owner, as N.B.A. rules, like those of other major professional sports leagues in the United States, require one person to be the final decision maker. Planned ownership succession can proceed smoothly, like with the Nets, or messily, like with the Denver Broncos. And despite the inclusion of a clause that the new owners of the Seattle SuperSonics put forth a “good faith effort” to find a new arena in the Seattle area in 2006, two years later the team became the Oklahoma City Thunder, a situation the N.B.A. surely does not want to repeat with the Timberwolves, who joined the league in 1989. More

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    Brilliance, and Heartbreak: The Story of Chris Paul’s Career

    Paul, the veteran Phoenix Suns point guard, ends this N.B.A. season the same way he has 15 times before: without a championship. The question is whether that should define him.In defeat, Devin Booker said that the youthful Phoenix Suns had hoped to skip many of the brutal roadblocks that can quickly vanquish a team with championship aspirations. More