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    N.B.A. Fans Wanted a Show. They’re Also Getting a Reckoning.

    The entertainment of the playoffs has been coupled with a pressing message from players that fans have disrespected them for too long.Isaiah Thomas finally felt a conversation was in order.Thomas, a member of the Washington Wizards in 2019-20, was playing in Philadelphia against the 76ers. A fan had been cursing at him, while holding outstretched middle fingers from both of his hands.After it happened a third time, Thomas walked into the stands — calmly, he said — to talk to the fan.“I’m not going to go in there by myself, trying to raise havoc,” Thomas said. “But in my situation, I needed to say something to that man and let him know that that was not right.”The fan, Thomas said, quickly apologized, saying he was upset that a free throw Thomas had made prevented him from cashing in on a promotion for a free Frosty.“That means you don’t respect me as a human being,” Thomas said. “I think that’s why players are so upset now. It’s like: ‘Are you looking at us like human beings? As people? Or just somebody you’re coming to watch?’”The N.B.A., moving into the second round of the playoffs, has given fans plenty to watch, from the stunning play of Phoenix’s Devin Booker, the quick exit of the Los Angeles Lakers, and the aligning of the Nets’ stars to the battles of one-upmanship between Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Portland’s Damian Lillard.But the playoffs have also been defined by unruly fan behavior as N.B.A. arenas started opening to near capacity in time for the playoffs. The last time there were this many fans in arenas, it was before the N.B.A. was at the center of the protests for social justice and equality that roiled the country in the fall. Fans are returning to watch many of the same players — but the players are not the same. The message from athletes, especially those who are Black, is that they want to be respected.In New York, a fan spat on Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young. In Utah, the family of Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant was targeted with racist and lewd remarks while watching in the stands. In Boston, Nets guard Kyrie Irving had a water bottle hurled in his direction. In Philadelphia, a fan dumped popcorn on Washington’s Russell Westbrook as he left the floor after an injury.Knicks fans cheered before Game 1 in the first round of the 2021 N.B.A. playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks.Seth Wenig/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“What if he would’ve ran into the stands and put his hands on that fan?” Thomas said. “Everybody would’ve said he was wrong. But in any other setting in life, if I’m walking down the street and somebody pours popcorn on me, what do you think is going to happen?”In some ways, raucous behavior is another indicator of a return to prepandemic life. Sports is often a bellwether for society, and to a point, extreme behavior is ingrained in fandom — hence the term fanatic. As the country reopens, airlines are experiencing boisterous conduct and people are fighting in stands at baseball stadiums.In basketball, fans are stimulated by the charged atmosphere of the playoffs and some are spurred by liquid courage. The intimacy of the sport allows fans to be in proximity to players, and while players are in postseason form, security forces are not yet back in the rhythm of hosting this many fans for the first time in more than a year.“The fans are emboldened and lessen the value of these athletes as human beings when they engage with them in this way,” said David West, a retired forward who won two championships with Golden State.Emerging from the pandemic may have created a reckoning between N.B.A. fans and players. Some fans may have pent-up frustration from being isolated for so long. Kevin Durant, Irving’s Nets teammate, said pandemic quarantining had “got a lot of people on edge.” The incidents involve only a minuscule fraction of the thousands of fans who have returned to N.B.A. arenas. The egregiousness of the behaviors cannot be defined under a singular classification.But some travel beyond the traditional heckling of, say, Spike Lee at Madison Square Garden taunting an opposing player. They involve subtle and overt racism — “underlying racism and just treating people like they’re in a human zoo,” Irving said. And while the interactions are not new, the infractions are being documented through social media and arena cameras, and players seem more willing to speak out against them.“In general, it seems like this is what happens when people haven’t been outside for a year and a half,” said Louis Moore, an associate history professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “Specifically, it’s part of who we are as fans. It’s fandom. It’s rowdyism. And then it’s even more specific when it looks like these N.B.A. incidents are targeted at Black athletes. That’s part of American sports.”Before Irving, a former Celtic, returned to Boston, he asked fans not to be belligerent or racist. Black athletes in multiple sports, including the Celtics legend Bill Russell, who once had someone break into his home and defecate on his bed, have spoken about the racism they’ve experienced in Boston. The treatment dates all the way back to George Dixon, who was the first Black man to win a boxing world title and fought in the United States during the post-Civil War era.The police in Boston arrested Cole Buckley, a 21-year-old from Braintree, Mass., on suspicion of throwing the water bottle toward Irving. Buckley pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.Buckley being arrested after the game.Elise Amendola/Associated Press“I’ve had situations so often throughout my career where we don’t really talk about it, because we want to be mentally tough,” Irving said after the incident. “We want to be tough-minded. We don’t want to be called soft or we’re not man enough to deal with boos.”As in Boston, opposing players have also spoken out against the treatment they’ve received in Utah. In 2019, two fans at Vivint Smart Home Arena were barred for using racist language toward Westbrook.“You felt this sense of angst that exists with some of the fans,” West said of playing in Utah, adding, “I just never let it affect me, but it also never got physical with me.”The fans involved in the first-round incidents were barred indefinitely from the arenas.“There is zero tolerance for inappropriate and disrespectful fan behavior at our games,” Commissioner Adam Silver of the N.B.A. said in an interview. “Fans engaging in acts like that in our arenas will be caught and banned from attending. The safety of players, officials and all attendees is our top priority, which is why we have worked diligently with our teams and law enforcement to increase security presence at our arenas throughout the remainder of the playoffs and will pursue all legal remedies against anyone who violates our fan code of conduct.”In Utah, the Jazz owner Ryan Smith provided Morant’s family with courtside seats for Game 5. Tee Morant, Ja’s father, praised the organization and Jazz players for their response, although his wife, Jamie, decided against returning to Salt Lake City.“It was a nice gesture from the Jazz,” Tee Morant told ESPN. “It was unfortunate. It was just a few fans — most of them were great and cheering right alongside with us.”Durant told reporters after the Irving incident that fans needed to “grow up” and treat players with respect. “These men are human,” he said, adding that players are not “animals” and “not in a circus.”In 2019, Thomas received a two-game suspension after the Frosty incident, and two fans — the one who had held up his middle fingers toward Thomas and another heckler — were barred from Wells Fargo Arena for a year.“The consequences, I don’t know what it should be,” Thomas said, “but I think it should be a little bit more so fans would think twice about what they do before they do it or what they say before they say it. But I don’t think the arena ban is scaring anybody off.”He continued: “I don’t have the answer to what they could possibly do. I know the N.B.A. is on top of everything for the players, but something’s got to change for sure.” More

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    Coach K’s Retirement From Duke and the End of the College ‘Supercoach’

    Mike Krzyzewski of Duke announced his retirement shortly after his Tobacco Road nemesis, Roy Williams, announced his, as the N.C.A.A prepares to grant athletes greater agency.Is the supercoach soon to be extinct?Jim Boeheim, how much longer will you hold on at Syracuse?John Calipari, what about your long ride at Kentucky?Tom Izzo at Michigan State, and even Nick Saban, the czar of college football at Alabama, have you been double-checking your retirement plans?Together, you represent the last of a dying breed.The herd of such coaches — transcendent, paternalistic, charismatic, leading the most vaunted men’s programs in the most popular sports — thinned significantly last week when Mike Krzyzewski, a coaching legend, announced his plans to decamp from Duke. At the end of next season, with 42 years and at least five national titles in the bag, Krzyzewski will pull the curtains on a remarkable career.The transition isn’t just a monumental moment in the history of Duke basketball, royalty in college sports. It also signals broad, fundamental change. As amateur and professional players disrupt the status quo, they are sparking a revolution that is giving athletes increased power while diminishing the prevalence of coaches’ unquestioned authority.Nowhere is that more apparent than in college, particularly in football and men’s basketball, where supercoaches are now an endangered species.It was not long ago when they strode unquestioned across the college sports firmament. More famous than all but a few of their players, they weren’t just coaches, they were archetypes, part of a mythology in American sports that connects to the days of Knute Rockne at Notre Dame.The annual games pitting Duke against North Carolina were billed as a test of deities — first Krzyzewski against Dean Smith, then Coach K against Roy Williams.But Williams retired two months ago, after 48 years, suddenly and surprisingly. An avowed traditionalist, it was clear that he had seen enough of the changes shaping the future of college sports.“I’m old school,” Roy Williams has said of the new N.C.A.A. transfer rules. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end.”Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesUpstart disrupter leagues such as Overtime Elite and the Professional Collegiate League are set to take on the establishment, even as the G League flourishes as a minor league alternative to the N.B.A. They are offering lucrative contracts to the best high school players — Overtime Elite offers $100,000 annually — legitimizing payments to players who have long operated under the table in the college game.Krzyzewski earns in the neighborhood of $10 million a year, a mogul who operates atop an economic caste system that has kept the athletes unpaid at the bottom of the barrel.Players have fought for the ability to be paid, too, and soon they will finally be able to earn significant sums by trading on their marketability as the N.C.A.A. prepares to respond to legislation sweeping the country that will allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. Eventually they may end up getting salaries from their universities for their work on the field and court. A push continues to allow them to unionize.Coaches have always had the freedom to walk away from their contracts for better deals at other colleges.Players fought for similar mobility.Now they can transfer to another school and play immediately, instead of being penalized with sitting out for a year. Baylor just won the men’s national title in basketball on the strength of players who started their careers at other universities.What’s the supercoach take on that kind of player freedom?“I’m old school,” said Roy Williams, considering the matter before he retired. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end. I believe when you make a commitment, that commitment should be solid.”The irony is thick. In 2003, Williams bolted to North Carolina from Kansas. He left the Kansas players he had recruited, no doubt with promises that he was going to stay put, in the rearview mirror.Gone are the days of reeling in top players like Duke’s Grant Hill and Christian Laettner, watching them mature for four years and riding their talents to multiple national titles.Gone, too, are the days when athletes didn’t have options. They kept complaints quiet or risked being banished to the bench, maybe for good. Today’s college athletes can take their concerns to far-flung audiences on social media or easily move to another university.All of this makes players less likely to follow every last dictate without question. It lays siege to the kind of authority that has powered the best-known men’s coaches in the biggest college sports for over a hundred years.In the news conference announcing his departure, Krzyzewski said his retirement had nothing to do with the swiftly evolving landscape.“I’ve been in it for 46 years,” he said. “Do you think the game has never changed? We’ve always had to adapt to the changes in culture, the changes in rules, the changes in the world. We’re going through one right now.”That’s a dodge.Equating today’s tectonic shifts to the relatively minor changes of yesteryear — the introductions of the 3-point line or the shot clock, for instance — misses the mark.The world of old seems quaint now. Think of the 1980s, after Krzyzewski went to Durham after coaching at West Point.Along with Coach K at Duke and Smith at North Carolina, Jim Valvano strode the sideline at North Carolina State. Not far away, in the mighty Big East Conference, stood Lou Carnesecca (and his famed sweater) at St. John’s. Rollie Massimino was at Villanova. John Thompson at Georgetown. And a much younger version of Boeheim, now 74, at Syracuse.Apologies to the younger generation, to the likes of Baylor’s 50-year-old men’s basketball coach, Scott Drew, but it will never be that way again. Not with the players getting in on the action, getting a share of the pie, demanding their rights.The time is right for change. Ten years down the line, what will the landscape look like?Nobody can say for sure, which is both exciting and daunting. But this much seems inevitable: The supercoach, secure in power, dictating the terms, firm in archetypal fame, is unlikely to still be around. More

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    Even LeBron James Isn’t Eternal

    At 36, with his team’s future in doubt, James faces basketball mortality.His season was not finished — not yet, anyway — when LeBron James grabbed a seat at the far end of the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench on Tuesday night in Phoenix. He would occasionally approach a teammate or an assistant so that he could lean in close for a one-sided conversation. But he otherwise seemed resigned to the reality of the situation.The Lakers were getting routed by the Suns in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series, and James — such an indomitable force throughout his 18-year-old career, but now facing an early summer — was oddly powerless to stop it.Perhaps there was hope, in some distant corner of Lakerland, that he could muster more of his familiar magic to help the team avoid elimination two days later in Los Angeles. Instead, the Lakers were bound for more of the same: more offensive fireworks from the Suns, more disappointment, more questions about their future.The surprise was not so much that the second-seeded Suns won the best-of-seven series, clinching a trip to the Western Conference semifinals with their 113-100 victory in Game 6 on Thursday night. Rather, it was the way in which they did it — by winning the final two games of the series against the defending N.B.A. champions so convincingly.For the Lakers, it was a gloomy coda to their brief reign atop the league.“It’s been draining,” James said, referring to the past 18 months. “Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally draining.”Devin Booker of the Suns is one of the younger players threatening James’s throne.Harry How/Getty ImagesBy any objective measure, the Lakers faced their share of obstacles. Their run to last season’s championship came in the middle of a pandemic and stretched into October. The 2020-21 season started about two months later. Despite the short break, the Lakers got off to a strong start, going 21-6 before injuries slowed them down. They eventually slipped into the playoffs as a No. 7 seed, and only after playing their way in.“I just think the whole thing was a challenge, to play all the way into October and start the season as quickly as we did,” Coach Frank Vogel said. “It was going to be an uphill battle.”There is a big “what if,” of course: What if Anthony Davis, the Lakers’ All-Star power forward, had remained healthy against the Suns? The Lakers had a 2-1 series lead when Davis strained his groin in Game 4. Sensing weakness, the Suns pounced to even the series. Davis was in street clothes for Game 5, which the Suns won by 30 points, and then spent only 5 minutes 25 seconds on the court in Game 6 before he left in pain, done for the night and for the season.Davis is extraordinarily talented and helped fuel the Lakers’ championship, but nobody is accusing him of being the sturdiest player in the league. Prone to injuries for much of his career, he missed about two months this season with a calf strain, and his problems in the playoffs cost the Lakers at the worst time.“We had the pieces,” Davis said. “We just couldn’t stay healthy. A lot of that is on me.”James, 36, was not immune to injury, either. He sprained his right ankle in March and missed a total of 26 games before the playoffs. On Thursday, he tried to tow the Lakers back from a 29-point deficit, helping cut it to 10 in the fourth quarter. He finished with 29 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists, but acknowledged that his ankle was still bothering him. He said he was looking forward to a full off-season.“It’s going to work wonders for me,” he said, indicating that he would not play in the Olympics.The brightest star in the series was the Suns’ Devin Booker, who, at 24, has officially arrived as one of the league’s premier players. On Thursday, he scored 47 points and shot 8 of 10 from beyond the 3-point line. When James made his first trip to the playoffs, with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2006, Booker was 9 years old. After Thursday’s game, James autographed his jersey and gave it to him.“I love everything about D-Book,” James said. “He continues to make the jump.”While the Suns go about preparing for the Denver Nuggets in the next round, the Lakers will begin the hard work of addressing where they go from here.Just five players — James, Davis, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and Marc Gasol — are under contract for next season, and Montrezl Harrell has a player option. (In a contractual quirk, the Lakers also owe Luol Deng, who last played for the Lakers in 2017, $5 million.) The big earners, though, are James, Davis and Caldwell-Pope, who, combined, are due nearly $90 million — a sum that, because of salary-cap restrictions, will limit the Lakers’ ability to make significant moves in free agency. The Lakers are unlikely to undergo any extreme makeovers. And they could wind up paying a hefty luxury tax if they re-sign some of their own free agents.James said he had faith in Rob Pelinka, the team’s general manager.“I will have some input,” James said, “but he always asks my input.”No one is about to feel sorry for the Lakers. Davis forced his way to Los Angeles. James is starring in a major motion picture this summer. And the Lakers, with all the inherent advantages as a big-market franchise, won it all last fall. So spare the tears.But the road does seem a bit uncertain for them, and for James in particular. One of the game’s great competitors, he was the sixth-oldest player in the league this season. (Worth noting: The two oldest players, Udonis Haslem and Anderson Varejao, combined to appear in six games and score 17 points.) In two of the last three seasons, James sustained serious injuries after avoiding them for most of his career. No athlete is immortal.Now James is fighting the inevitable effects of age while trying to ward off a group of up-and-comers like Booker — “Young guns,” James called them — who are determined to seize their rightful share of the stage. Perhaps they already have. James was asked whether their presence would motivate him to come back stronger.“I don’t need motivation from anybody in this league,” he said. “I motivate myself.” More

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    Lakers Eliminated from Playoffs With Game 6 Loss to Suns

    The Los Angeles Lakers, the defending N.B.A. champions led by LeBron James, struggled with injuries all season.The Los Angeles Lakers’ brief reign is over.The Phoenix Suns eliminated the Lakers from the N.B.A. playoffs on Thursday night with a 113-100 victory in Game 6 of their first-round series, ending LeBron James’s hopes of hauling the Lakers to back-to-back championships.It is the first time that James, 36, has exited the playoffs in the first round — and it was a young, up-and-coming team that hastened his departure.The second-seeded Suns, who are making their first postseason appearance since 2010, leaned on the inside-outside combination of Devin Booker, 24, and Deandre Ayton, 22, throughout the series.“I just know they wanted to be in these types of games,” Monty Williams, the Suns’ coach, said before Thursday’s game. “And I think they haven’t run from the moment, run from situations.”Both players, Williams said, got a taste of the spotlight last season, when the Suns won eight straight games in the league’s bubble — a run that left Phoenix short of qualifying for the postseason but made the team’s young core eager to achieve more.The Suns will now face the Denver Nuggets in the conference semifinals. The Nuggets eliminated the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday.Devin Booker led the suns with 47 points.Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Lakers, who were hindered by injuries throughout the regular season, seemed to come unglued against the Suns after Anthony Davis, their All-Star power forward, strained his groin before halftime of Game 4. The Suns went on to win that game and then crushed the Lakers on Tuesday in Game 5 to seize momentum.Frank Vogel, the Lakers’ coach, said before Thursday’s game that Davis “very much” wanted to play. Davis tried: He was in the starting lineup but was running gingerly from the tip and appeared to aggravate his injury while trying to block one of Booker’s layups early in the first quarter. Davis promptly went to the bench and never returned to the game.The Suns, meanwhile, were volcanic, shooting 10 of 13 from beyond the 3-point line in the first quarter en route to a 22-point lead heading into the second. Booker finished with 47 points and shot 8 of 10 from 3-point range.Since joining the Lakers before the start of the 2018-19 season, James has experienced highs and lows. His first season with the team unraveled when he injured his groin on Christmas Day, and the Lakers missed the playoffs. Last season, he engineered a resurgence, joining Davis to lead the Lakers to their 17th championship. For James, the run was a crowning achievement: his first title with the Lakers, and his fourth overall with three teams.As expected, the Lakers entered this season with big goals but struggled. After a strong start that seemed to position him as a candidate to win his fifth N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award (and his first since 2013), James missed a total of 26 games after he sprained his ankle in March. And Davis, who has been hobbled by injuries throughout his career, was sidelined for about two months with a calf strain.The result was that the Lakers, who had been considered among the preseason favorites to win another title, were seldom whole, and they limped into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed in the West.Still, the Lakers were not an ideal first-round matchup for the Suns — and the task became even more challenging for Phoenix when Chris Paul, the team’s starting point guard and veteran leader, injured his right shoulder in the first game of the series. Paul played through the pain, though, and was terrific in Phoenix’s Game 4 win, a turning point for a franchise on the rise. More

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    The Knicks Enter a Summer of Tough Calls

    Their transformation into a playoff team was one of the more remarkable stories of the season. But keeping the momentum going will require some more good calls.As the dejected Knicks wound down the closing minute of their season on Wednesday night, the near-capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden rained cheers on them.It didn’t seem to matter that the Knicks had been thumped once again by the Atlanta Hawks, or that they had lost their first playoff series since 2013 in a surprisingly noncompetitive fashion, four games to one. It didn’t seem to matter to the fans that one of the best defenses in the league was carved up by Trae Young, or that much of this team is unlikely to be back next season, since many are set to be free agents.Asked what the biggest difference was between this season and last, RJ Barrett, the Knicks guard, put it succinctly: “A lot more winning. Winning was fun.”This team’s overnight turnaround from 21-45 to 41-31 was one of the more remarkable stories of a turbulent N.B.A. season. And even though the Knicks collapsed in the playoffs, raising some new questions entering the off-season, this iteration was one that their fans could enjoy watching again. In the 21st century, that was something Knicks aficionados could only rarely say.The Knicks team that made the playoffs could be headed for a makeover.Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I’m proud of what our team accomplished this year,” Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Obviously, disappointed with the result tonight, and hopefully we can learn and get better from it. But I thought our guys gave us everything they had all year long.”The Knicks confounded preseason expectations by earning the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference after many observers wrote them off even before the season began. But it wasn’t just that they won more games this season. It was the way they did it.The Knicks were rarely the most talented team on the floor. They won on the back of a tough defense and cast of scrappy players who reflected their coach, Thibodeau. Their best player, Julius Randle, had been underwhelming a year ago, renewing questions about whether the three-year, $63 million contract he had received in 2019 was just the latest in a long line of ill-fated Knicks signings.Instead, the 6-foot-8, 250-pound Randle reinvented his game under Thibodeau and adapted to the modern N.B.A.: He developed his 3-point shot while also improving his passing and defense. Doubts about Randle faded as he morphed into an All Star.“We’re bringing a brand of basketball back that the city can be proud of,” Randle said, adding, “We have something to build on for the future.”That is the most important takeaway from this season. The Knicks are a coveted ticket again, which means they may be more successful at attracting top free agents, a task at which the team has struggled for most of the last two decades. That change in perception alone could make this season a success, regardless of how the series against the Hawks ended.The Knicks finally have something they have craved for years: They have built the ground floor of something. Under the team president Leon Rose and the coaching of Thibodeau, there appears to be an organizational direction and a sincere — at least, for now — commitment to long-term development over short-term thinking. There are promising young players like Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin. There are building blocks like Barrett and Randle. The Knicks also have multiple first-round picks in this year’s draft.And, because of a handful of expiring contracts, the Knicks will have a great deal of cap flexibility. Several of this year’s Knicks, including Derrick Rose, Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel, Reggie Bullock and Elfrid Payton, will be free agents this summer — the result of a strategy in recent years to stack their rosters with short-term contracts.To be sure, the Knicks have some important decisions to make. In many ways, the season that just ended was supposed to have been a bridge year. Instead, the team overachieved by making the playoffs, and then underachieved once it got there.One of the first big calls will be deciding what to do about Randle, who turns 27 in November. As strong as he was in the regular season, Randle was abysmal against the Hawks in his first postseason, shooting 29.7 percent. This was his seventh N.B.A. season, but which is the real Randle: the one who grew into an All-Star during the season, or the one who vanished against the Hawks? And what now?The Knicks must decide whether to tie up a large portion of their salary budget with a long-term extension for Randle and build the team around him, or to sell high as they did with Kristaps Porzingis, the last Knicks All-Star who excited the fan base.It was a promising season for Knicks fans.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I told him I still do believe in him,” guard Derrick Rose said. “I’m going to ride with him to the end just like everybody on the team. Like, he got us here.”The calculations only get more complicated from there. Should the Knicks give Mitchell Robinson, their shot-blocking center, an enormous extension, or go shopping in a thin free-agent year? DeMar DeRozan, who just finished a successful run with the San Antonio Spurs, and Kyle Lowry of the Toronto Raptors are two players who do seem to fit the Thibodeau mold. Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers could opt for free agency if the Clippers lose to the Dallas Mavericks in the first round.Committing lots of money to the wrong players, though, is the surest way for a team to keep itself in N.B.A. purgatory, a fact that Knicks fans know as well as anyone. Draft picks can be squandered. Signings can go wrong. Injuries might derail a run.But those worries can wait a day or two. For the moment, this season can be viewed as a refreshing change in direction for the Knicks. For most franchises, making the playoffs would be a small step. For the Knicks, it was a giant leap. They are back in the discussion.“Who wouldn’t want to play for the Knicks or be in New York?” Rose said Wednesday night.When was the last time the Knicks, or their fans, could say that and mean it? More

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    The Nets Aren’t Unbeatable, but It’s OK to Be Impressed

    The Boston Celtics tried in their first-round series but were too depleted to compete. The Nets’ next opponent, the Milwaukee Bucks, may have a better shot.The game and the series were never in serious doubt.The depleted Boston Celtics maintained a sliver of hope of emerging with a victory over the Nets on Tuesday by initially keeping the score close in Game 5 of the best-of-seven series. But, in quick and devastating succession, the Nets crushed any ambition the Celtics had left. That’s what can happen when you have stars like these:Kevin Durant opened the salvos with a 3-point shot midway through the fourth quarter.Kyrie Irving buried one on the Nets’ following possession.Next, James Harden followed with one of his own.In less than a minute, an 8-point Celtics deficit ballooned to 15 and a first-round series win for the Nets.For the Nets, the sequence showcased their roster as envisioned months ago, the stars aligning to alternate taking turns at the helm in piloting the Nets toward a championship.Yes, that lineup had few opportunities to coalesce throughout a rickety regular season. The Nets entered the postseason with questions about the chemistry of their three best players. They had played just eight games together while limited with injuries and coronavirus health and safety protocols.Durant, Irving and Harden are basketball geniuses.So what if they didn’t play much together?Throw one of them the ball in isolation and watch the buckets pour in.“We don’t want to take any of this for granted,” Irving said after the Game 5 victory. “We know this doesn’t happen too often in our culture, in our history, where three of the best scorers to ever play the game and then you have a collection of guys that have done unbelievable things as well in this league, either coming off the bench or starting with us.”The Nets faced a shorthanded Celtics team. Boston entered without the services of the All-Star Jaylen Brown (wrist) and lost key components as the series wore on in guard Kemba Walker (knee) and center Robert Williams (ankle). But the Celtics still mustered a fight and forced the Nets to break a sweat in dispatching them.“We’ve made strides in just a short period of time,” Irving said.Here are some other key takeaways following the Nets’ first-round victory over Boston.Kyrie Irving is ready for the moment.Irving balled out against the Celtics.He, of course, had experienced previous postseason success. He hit the crucial shot that propelled Cleveland to a championship over Golden State in 2016. But he did not have the subsequent breakthrough after he was traded to Boston in 2017 — as Celtics fans will certainly attest — and spent most of the 2019-20 season, his first with the Nets, out while rehabbing an injury.He is among friends now.More than anything, the Nets’ three stars sound like admirers of one another, appreciative of their individual skill sets.Here’s Durant discussing Irving following the Boston series: “His mind is so different that stuff that he brings out is just unexpected — one legger, off the right leg, shooting off the glass, left-hand finishes, right-hand finishes, ball handling.”“He’s a joy to watch and play with,” Durant added.Irving had a spectacular regular season. Against Boston, he was dynamic.He punctuated his first-round performance by pouring in 39 points in a Game 4 blowout win.“I’m grateful for the opportunity that I had in Boston,” Irving said, adding that “there was a lot going on personally while I was there in Boston that people don’t know about.”Now, he said, he’s moving on: “So just grateful that we have a chance to be together in the trenches, me and my teammates, and we just get to move on from this.”James Harden had the Nets’ first playoff triple double since the days of Jason Kidd.Adam Hunger/Associated PressJames Harden is willing to sacrifice.Harden, in the first-round series, showed he was willing to use any of the tools in his bag to win.Often, he blows past his primary defender and surveys the remaining defense. He scores if the lane is open, but is only too happy to pass the ball if an easy scoring opportunity presents itself.In Game 5, Harden amassed a triple-double — 34 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, becoming the first Net to do so in the playoffs since Jason Kidd in 2007.“He comes into the gym every day and it’s just excitement to play basketball,” Durant said. “With somebody who loves to play so much, the energy is just infectious and you can tell everybody was drawn to James since the day he got here and his presence was just key for us.”Harden is the lone member of the Nets’ Big Three without a championship. This may be his best shot.Kevin Durant’s defense will be key.Durant is an amazing scorer. That is not debatable.But the Nets have that area covered. Durant’s defense may be one of their best weapons for their second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks.Milwaukee breezed past Miami in a first-round sweep, atoning for last year’s playoff loss to the Heat and reinserting themselves as an Eastern Conference contender.No one on this planet can fully contain the offensive juggernaut that is Durant, Harden and Irving. Milwaukee, at least, has the ingredients to possibly slow them down. Jrue Holiday, acquired in an off-season trade, is arguably the league’s top perimeter defender. P.J. Tucker and Khris Middleton don’t mind mixing it up in the trenches. Giannis Antetokounmpo is last season’s defensive player of the year.“He’s long, athletic,” Durant said of Antetokounmpo. “He plays hard. He cares about his teammates. He cares about winning. Put that combination together, you make a tough player.”But Durant may as well have been describing himself. Against Boston, he swooped in from the weakside to have the backs of defeated primary defenders. His defensive acumen will probably be a key if the Nets are to advance to the conference finals.Second-round injury watch?Both the Nets and the Bucks are largely healthy but not at full strength. Milwaukee’s Donte DiVincenzo is out for the remainder of the playoffs with an ankle injury.Jeff Green, the Nets’ versatile defender, missed the last three games of the Boston series with a strained plantar fascia. More

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    Knicks’ Resurgent Season Ends With Game 5 Loss to the Hawks

    Julius Randle had 23 points for the Knicks, but it wasn’t enough. The Hawks’ star guard Trae Young dominated again down the stretch.The Knicks were eliminated from the playoffs on Wednesday in a 103-89 Game 5 loss to the Atlanta Hawks at Madison Square Garden, a deflating end to a promising season.It was a feisty, defensive battle, with both teams getting off to a slow start. But the Hawks, once again, methodically took control in the second half, led by their star guard Trae Young. He finished with 36 points.Julius Randle, the Knicks star, struggled again. He scored 23 points and grabbed 13 rebounds, but was only 8 for 21 from the field and had 8 turnovers.The Knicks’ Taj Gibson and Atlanta’s John Collins grappling for the ball.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThis season marked an unexpected return to relevance for the Knicks, who surpassed even some of the most optimistic preseason expectations by obtaining the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. It was the team’s first trip to the postseason since the 2012-13 season, bringing fresh optimism for a beleaguered New York City fan base.Randle emerged as a legitimate franchise player, making his first All-Star Game and winning the N.B.A.’s Most Improved Player award. RJ Barrett, in his second season, made significant strides as a shooter and playmaker. The rookies Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin provided sparks off the bench.There was much hope for the playoffs after the Knicks went 16-4 over the final 20 games of the regular season. The fifth-seeded Hawks were seen as a beatable opponent, especially because the Knicks defeated them in all three of their regular-season matchups.Instead, even with home-court advantage, the Knicks collapsed in the playoffs, in large part because of the poor play of the starters. With several players, including Randle and Barrett, making their playoff debuts, the team looked rattled at points by the spotlight. The Knicks were also without one of their key weapons: the springy starting center Mitchell Robinson, an effective rebounder and rim protector, who had foot surgery in late March.In the series opener, the Knicks lost at the last second on a Young floater, a shot Atlanta’s top player used to punish the Knicks all series. The Knicks won Game 2, bolstered by a deafening home crowd and a stirring second-half comeback. But they fell apart on the road in Games 3 and 4, as Young scored and created opportunities for his teammates.Julius Randle shot 28 for 94 in the series, a 29.8 percent clip.Pool photo by Wendell CruzRandle shot 20 for 73 through the first four games — a dismal 27.4 percent. He had almost as many turnovers (15) as he did assists (17). His performance was even more confounding considering Randle’s thorough domination of the Hawks during the regular season: He averaged 37.3 points in three matchups — his most against any team. But the Hawks flummoxed Randle throughout the series, sending double and triple teams to him on almost every touch.Barrett was mostly ineffective as well. Through Game 4, he was shooting just 39.6 percent from the field and 27.3 percent from deep. In Game 2, the Knicks’ only win of the series, he was benched in the fourth quarter. Several of his misses in the series came on passes from Randle, which made it easier for the Hawks to continue to pressure Randle.With Randle and Barrett struggling, the Knicks relied on a surprisingly productive bench. Derrick Rose, who only started three of the 35 games he played for the Knicks during the regular season after coming over from Detroit, was their best offensive player in the first four games. He averaged 22.8 points and 5 assists per game on 50.7 percent shooting. Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau moved Rose and the veteran center Taj Gibson into the starting lineup for Game 3. More

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    Danny Ainge Retires as Celtics President

    Ainge, who played for the Celtics in the 1980s, had been in the role since 2003. He will be replaced by Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for the past eight seasons.Danny Ainge retired as the president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics on Wednesday and was replaced by the team’s coach, Brad Stevens, whom Ainge hired in 2013 out of the college ranks. It was a stunning change at the top of the franchise that Ainge ran for nearly two decades. Stevens has no front office experience, though as the head coach he gave input on roster moves.The announcement came a day after the Nets beat the Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round series to eliminate them from the playoffs, capping a disappointing season. Ainge, flanked at a news conference by two Celtics owners and Stevens, said that the decision to step down was entirely his and that he began thinking about doing so two years ago, when he had a heart attack during the 2019 playoffs.“I trust my instincts,” Ainge said. “My instincts told me a couple months ago that it was time for me to move on. That’s what is best for us. That’s what’s best for the Celtics.”Wyc Grousbeck, the majority owner of the Celtics, said: “For the record, Danny came and said it’s his time. It’s completely his decision with no support whatsoever from ownership in making that decision. No support was offered except for wishing him the best once it became clear that was his decision.”Ainge, 62, and Stevens, 44, said they had casually discussed the possibility of Stevens inheriting Ainge’s job in the past. Grousbeck called elevating Stevens to the front office a “natural promotion from within.”“He was at the table here with Danny in the war room and all of our roster decisions along the way for the eight years, which has had a number of notable successes,” Grousbeck said.Ainge’s hiring was one of the first moves Grousbeck and Stephen Pagliuca made after purchasing the Celtics in 2003. The Celtics had made the 2002 Eastern Conference finals, led by Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce, but had not won a championship since 1986, when Ainge played in Boston’s backcourt. Rather than building on that success, Ainge blew up the team, including a trade of Walker.In 2007, he pulled off two trades that revitalized the franchise, for Ray Allen and for Kevin Garnett. The moves were considered risky, but almost overnight, Boston became a championship contender. The Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2008 N.B.A. finals for the franchise’s first championship in 22 years.Since then, Ainge has kept the team competitive, in part through shrewd moves like trading Pierce and Garnett to the Nets for the draft picks that became Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But some of his moves backfired. In 2017, he traded one of those Nets picks and guard Isaiah Thomas for Kyrie Irving, then a disgruntled star with the Cleveland Cavaliers. After the 2018-19 season, Irving spurned the Celtics and signed with the Nets in free agency.Brad Stevens made three appearances in the conference finals over eight seasons as head coach.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesEven before Ainge was hired by the Celtics, he was revered by fans for his play on two Boston championship teams. He is the only figure in Celtics history to win rings both as a player and an executive.On Wednesday, Ainge did not rule out working in basketball again. He said his immediate goal was to assist Stevens with the transition. “I’ll think about the future somewhere in the future,” Ainge said.Among the first decisions Stevens has to make is who will succeed him as coach. He was an unexpected hire when he replaced Doc Rivers in 2013. Stevens had spent six years as the men’s basketball coach at Butler, where he orchestrated several cinderella runs in the N.C.A.A. tournament. As an N.B.A. coach, Stevens went 354-282 over eight seasons and made the playoffs in seven times, including three trips to the Eastern Conference finals.“I’m looking forward to really diving into this process,” Stevens said. “I think that the good news about whoever we hire, they don’t have to fill Doc Rivers’s shoes like I did and they don’t have to fill Danny Ainge’s shoes now like I do. The good news is they have to figure out a way to be better than the last guy.”Much of the Wednesday afternoon news conference served as a tribute to Ainge, who had been criticized over the past week for saying in a radio interview that he had not heard about racism toward players at the Celtics’ arena in his 26 years with the team. His comment was in response to a remark from Irving, who had asked Boston fans not to be belligerent or racist when the Nets came there for Games 3 and 4 of their first-round series. A fan was arrested at Game 4 in Boston after throwing a bottle that nearly hit Irving in the head, and many athletes over the years have spoken out about racism they experienced in Boston.“I’ve been in professional sports for 44 straight years,” Ainge said on Wednesday. “And I’ve had a lot of ups and downs and fun and sad losses. Today is not a great day. I wish we would’ve finished the year on a much better note but I feel like there’s so much hope in the Celtics going forward.” More