Markus Andrews

More stories

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Basket

    Derrick Rose Leads Knicks Past Hawks in Game 2

    The Knicks head to Atlanta tied with the Hawks, 1-1, thanks to a halftime switch and 26 points from Derrick Rose.Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau, known for his rigidity, had to change something.The Knicks’ starters had been listless in the first half of Game 2 of their first-round N.B.A. playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday. The starting five had combined to hit only four field goals in the first two quarters. Thibodeau had benched his point guard, but the Knicks still trailed by 13 points at halftime. Madison Square Garden, packed with fans again, was restless.So Thibodeau pulled out a surprise, something he is typically hesitant to do. He opened the second half with two lineup changes, sending out Derrick Rose and Taj Gibson, both of whom had kept the Knicks in the game to that point.The move changed everything: The Knicks went from 13 points behind to holding a 1-point lead entering the fourth quarter. The crowd was revived. So was the team, which pulled away to beat the Hawks, 101-92.The victory was the Knicks’ first playoff win since 2013, and tied the series at 1-1. Game 3 of the best-of-seven series is Friday night in Atlanta.“We just felt like we were flat and needed a jolt of energy,” Thibodeau said after the game. “We wanted to change it up and we got going. It started with the defense, then we started sharing the ball.”The Garden was full for Game 2.Elsa/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWhat was notable about Thibodeau’s turning to Rose and Gibson was that they are the two players with whom Thibodeau has the most experience, making Wednesday’s midgame switch less an adjustment than a revival. Rose, 32, and Gibson, 35, have played for Thibodeau on three different teams he has coached: the Chicago Bulls, the Minnesota Timberwolves and now, the Knicks.Rose and Gibson were key parts of Thibodeau’s most successful team: the 2010-11 Chicago Bulls, who went to the Eastern Conference finals. Each player has a different, lesser role on Thibodeau’s current team, but his trust in them has never faltered.The five players he sent out for the second half on Wednesday night — RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, Rose, Gibson and Reggie Bullock — were not a makeshift group; they were, in fact, the Knicks’ fifth-most-used lineup during the regular season, according to the N.B.A.’s tracking numbers. They were extremely successful in 109 total minutes, with a net rating of 14.4 (a measure of how much a team is outscoring the other team or being outscored).“Regardless of who was out there, I think us, as a team, we came out with a different intensity level and focus and we were able to make them uncomfortable,” Randle said.Randle finished with 15 points on 5-of-16 shooting, adding 12 rebounds and four assists. But in the first half, the Hawks once again flummoxed him with double teams, a repeat of Game 1, and he could not hit his jumpers. Randle’s teammates did not make shots off his passes, either, allowing Atlanta to make its double teams even more aggressive. In the game-changing third quarter, with Rose on the floor as another playmaker, Randle had more room to operate: He scored 11 points, including two 3-pointers, which helped turn the tide.Rose finished with 26 points in 39 minutes, while Gibson had 6 points and 7 rebounds in 30 minutes. But it was Gibson’s defense in the paint that helped limit the effectiveness of the Hawks star Trae Young, who had hit the game-winning shot in Game 1 and hushed the Garden crowd.That is not to say Young didn’t give the Knicks fits again. He finished with 30 points on 20 shots, often leaving his primary defender, Rose, in the dust. But this time it was Rose, and the Knicks, who got the last word. As the final seconds ticked off, Rose dropped the basketball and aggressively clapped his hands.“To get that far and play the way that we played, to come back and get the lead, and not only that, but to win, it shows a lot,” Rose said. “It shows fight.”Inserting Gibson and Rose into the lineup after halftime was not Thibodeau’s only tweak. Elfrid Payton, a starting guard, played only the first five minutes of the game and, after being replaced by Rose, did not return. For months, Payton had been a prime example of Thibodeau’s unwillingness to bend: He has largely been ineffective as a player since March, but he never received less than 12 minutes the entire regular season, and averaged 24 minutes overall. Now, he might be out of the rotation altogether.Thibodeau also gave his bench, which has been a pleasant surprise, more leeway on the court than he typically does. The Knicks began the fourth quarter with Obi Toppin, Nerlens Noel, Immanuel Quickley, Alec Burks and Bullock on the floor. And at a crucial juncture in the game, with minimal playmaking on the floor, that group extended the Knicks’ lead to 10.And Barrett, who averaged 34.9 minutes a game during the regular season, sat out the entire fourth quarter. Instead, Thibodeau’s final adjustment was his closing lineup of Rose, Burks, Bullock, Randle and Gibson, a five the Knicks had not tried all season. It worked, particularly defensively, as they forced the ball out of Young’s hands.Trae Young, left, with Reggie Bullock. Young scored 30 points but took 20 shots.Elsa/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe game was tied with about five minutes left. Atlanta did not score another field goal the rest of the game. Instead, the Hawks looked like the Knicks had in the first half, tentative and unable to make shots. Young was able to get off only one shot in that stretch, to the delight of a Garden crowd that had booed every mistake of their new archenemy.Now the series will move to Atlanta for Games 3 and 4. The Knicks were 16-20 on the road during the regular season. Thibodeau and his team can take solace in the fact that, despite their best players putting up poor performances, they barely lost Game 1 and rallied to tie the series on Wednesday. Whatever questions they have, the Knicks certainly have the confidence of Thibodeau.“Look, I love this team,” Thibodeau said, high praise from the typically impassive coach. “There’s a great will and determination to them.” More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Basket

    It’s Been a Busy Few Days for One Arena

    It’s Been a Busy Few Days for One ArenaTalya MinsbergReporting from Brooklyn 🏀Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesAfter the turnaround, the N.B.A. playoffs returned to Barclays Center on Tuesday night for Game 2 of the Nets’ first-round series with the Boston Celtics. The Nets won, 130-108, and took a 2-0 lead in the series. More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Basket

    Knicks’ Julius Randle Wins N.B.A.’s Most Improved Player Award

    Randle led the Knicks in scoring and fueled their run to the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference.Julius Randle can claim another accolade after his unexpected leap to stardom this season. He is the winner of the N.B.A.’s Most Improved Player Award.He is the first Knick to win the award. Randle’s winning was not much of a surprise, given that the 26-year-old posted career highs in several categories, including points per game, 3-point percentage and assists per game. His strong play garnered him his first career All-Star selection and he is also a candidate to make an All-N.B.A. team for the first time. If he makes the All N.B.A. team, he will be the first Knick to do so since Carmelo Anthony in 2013.In an interview with TNT’s “Inside The N.B.A.” on Tuesday evening, Randle said that the award “embodies who I am as a person.”“When the summertime comes, that is really where I have the most fun because I enjoy the process of getting better,” Randle said. “So all of a sudden you look at the trajectory of my career, every year, I’ve taken steps forward to get better and improve my game and that’s really what I’m proud of. I never want to feel like I’m staying in the same spot or I’m not getting better.”Randle was the Knicks’ best player all season, and he was as durable as he was reliable — leading the N.B.A. in minutes played. On a team without many playmakers, Randle, a 6-foot-8, 250-pound forward, shouldered much of the offensive burden each night, and he became a fan favorite in the process.His versatility put the Knicks squarely in a playoff race for the first time since 2013. And now, Randle is leading the Knicks as a No. 4 seed in a first-round playoff series against the fifth-seeded Atlanta Hawks. The Knicks lost the first game in a nail-biter, 107-105. Game 2 is Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden.Recent winners of the award include Randle’s former teammate Brandon Ingram of the New Orleans Pelicans (2020), Pascal Siakam of the Toronto Raptors (2019) and Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks (2017), who went on to win back-to-back Most Valuable Player Awards.Randle, who is in his second year with the Knicks, has only one year left on his contract. The Knicks can extend him this summer and likely will try after his strong season and their yearslong struggle to attract big-name free agents. But if they cannot come to an agreement, Randle can bet on himself and test the free-agent market in the summer of 2022. Or if the Knicks decide that Randle cannot be one of the best players on a championship team or don’t want to risk losing him for nothing, they can use him as the centerpiece in a trade for another superstar.For his part, Randle told The New York Times earlier this year that he would like to remain with the Knicks long-term. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Basket

    The Lakers Weren’t Ready for the Moment. Devin Booker Was.

    Booker, the Phoenix Suns’ All-Star guard, is already showing the poise and determination of a playoff regular in his first postseason.The roots of everything that the Suns are now — a winning team, a franchise with championship hopes — date to 2015, when Phoenix made Devin Booker the 13th overall pick of the N.B.A. draft. For his first couple of seasons in Phoenix, he played in relative anonymity. The Suns were a terrible team. The closest Booker got to the playoffs was watching other players celebrate big wins on television.Still, he kept refining his craft as change swirled around him. The franchise kept tinkering and building. By the start of last season, none of the teammates he had as a rookie remained on the roster. He made his first All-Star team, then helped the Suns close out their season a few months later with eight straight wins in the bubble environment at Walt Disney World — a run that cemented their identity as a young, tough-minded team but was not enough to make the playoffs.Booker had to wait a little longer for his first trip to the postseason. On Sunday afternoon, the Suns opened the doors of their arena to nearly 12,000 fans for Game 1 of their first-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Suns were among the teams that were able to increase their arena capacity for the start of the playoffs, and Coach Monty Williams said he found it jarring in the best way possible.“When I came out and saw that many people and heard the noise, I was like, ‘Holy smokes, this is pretty cool,’ ” he said. “I had to get myself under control emotionally because I hadn’t been in that environment in a long time.”If everything about the experience was new to Booker, he did a good job of hiding it in the Suns’ 99-90 win. He was dominant in an almost effortless way, outshining the title-tested luminaries with whom he shared the court. Booker has been on the cusp of emerging as one of the league’s brightest young stars for several years, but perhaps he needed to lead the Suns to a playoff win — against the Lakers, no less — to solidify his arrival.“Honestly,” he said, “it’s a little different. The intensity is different. The physicality is different.”It was only one game, of course, and it is worth remembering that the Lakers lost a pair of playoff series openers — to the Trail Blazers in the first round and to the Rockets in the conference semifinals — before crushing both Portland and Houston on their march to last season’s finals victory.But the big stage did not seem to affect the 24-year-old Booker. If anything, he embraced it.In the game’s early stages, he quickly passed out of a double-team, a decision that led to an open shot for a teammate. It was a small but significant moment: Booker seemed determined not to force much of anything. Instead, he was going to trust his teammates and bank on the slow, methodical process that had put the Suns in this position in the first place, as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference.Suns Coach Monty Williams, middle, talked with Booker and forward Jae Crowder during the second half.Christian Petersen/Getty Images“Book has this reputation as a scorer, but he’s an unbelievably good passer,” Williams said, adding: “When he sees the double-team, he gets out of it. That’s who he is, and he probably doesn’t get enough credit for his willingness to pass.”Make no mistake: Booker scored, too. He spun through small crowds of defenders. He pulled up from the 3-point line. He finished with a game-high 34 points while shooting 13 of 26 from the field. He also had 8 assists and 7 rebounds, stamping the playoffs with his presence.The only player who may have been more impressive was his teammate, Deandre Ayton, the third-year center and 2018 No. 1 overall pick. He had 21 points and 16 rebounds while defending (and outplaying) the Lakers’ Anthony Davis, who was limited to 13 points and 7 rebounds. Davis took the blame for the Lakers’ loss. Booker described the 22-year-old Ayton’s performance as “next level.”“You could see it in his face pregame, that he was ready to go,” Booker said.There is an enormous disparity in experience in this best-of-seven series, and for one game, at least, it did not matter. While it was postseason game No. 1 for Booker and Ayton, it was postseason game No. 261 for the Lakers’ LeBron James, who first went to the playoffs when Booker was in the fourth grade.James, who sprained his ankle in March and wound up missing 26 games, had a muted opener against the Suns, scoring 18 points and attempting just 13 field goals. As a team, the Lakers shot poorly from the 3-point line and were outrebounded.It was an afternoon that, in some ways, typified their season. Because of injuries, the Lakers have seldom been whole. The defending champions, they limped into the playoffs as the conference’s No. 7 seed. Still, their struggles did not seem to matter to the oddsmakers who, before the start of the series, were favoring them to eliminate the Suns. Respect is hard won.Lebron James had 18 points in the loss.Ross D. Franklin/Associated PressOn Sunday, bodies collided and tempers flared. The Suns’ Chris Paul, one of the few players on the team with plentiful postseason experience, injured his right shoulder but played through apparent pain. (Paul is expected to play in Game 2 on Tuesday night.) Cameron Payne, his teammate, was ejected for throwing an elbow — and the ball — at the Lakers’ Alex Caruso.Aside from that kerfuffle, however, the Suns kept their composure. They never trailed in the second half, a surprisingly mature effort. Williams often tells his players that there are moments when “preparation meets opportunity,” and Booker seized his own. In fact, he had been preparing for Sunday’s game for years.He could have cited the summer mornings when he was a teenager and he would run sprints while wearing a weighted vest under the watchful and demanding eye of his father, Melvin, a former N.B.A. player. Or the YouTube videos of stars that he would parse. Or his first few seasons in Phoenix, which were not much fun. The past, though, was prelude. Booker said he could sense “something inside” of him before Sunday’s game. It was hard to define.“I was ready for it,” he said. More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Basket

    W.N.B.A. Suspends Coach for Body-Shaming Liz Cambage

    Cambage, the Las Vegas Aces center, said Connecticut Sun Coach Curt Miller had made disrespectful comments about her weight during a game on Sunday.The W.N.B.A. suspended and fined Curt Miller, the head coach of the Connecticut Sun, after he was called out by Las Vegas Aces center Liz Cambage for body-shaming her during a game on Sunday.The fine is $10,000, and the one-game suspension will keep Miller out of Connecticut’s matchup with the Seattle Storm on Tuesday.“If there is one thing about me, it’s that I will never let a man disrespect me,” Cambage said in an Instagram video on Sunday. “Ever. Ever. Ever.”Though Cambage did not refer to Miller by name — “Little sir man, I do not know your name,” she said — in the video she said “the coach of Connecticut” had tried to appeal for the referees to call a foul by saying, “Come on, she 300 pounds,” in a reference to her.Cambage, who is listed at 6-foot-8 and 216 pounds on the Aces’ roster, said in the video that she is 235 pounds and “very proud” of her body.Connecticut Sun Coach Curt Miller said he “made an inappropriate and offensive” comment about Cambage that he regretted.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressMiller apologized Monday morning in a statement from the Sun. His suspension was announced in the evening. “During last night’s game, while arguing a call with an official, I made an inappropriate and offensive comment in reference to Liz Cambage’s height and weight,” Miller said. “I regret what I said in the heat of the moment and want to sincerely apologize to Liz and the entire Aces organization. I understand the gravity of my words and have learned from this.”In her call-out of Miller, Cambage spoke about how the uneven power dynamic between players and coaches made the situation difficult for her. She described Miller’s comments as “protected abuse — because we can’t do nothing back.”This is Miller’s sixth year coaching the Sun, who are undefeated in five games this season and have the best record in the W.N.B.A.Cambage is a three-time All-Star in her fifth W.N.B.A. season and second with the Aces. The Tulsa Shock, now the Dallas Wings, selected her with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2011 draft. She’s averaging 13.8 points and 7.5 rebounds per game this season for the Aces, who lost last year’s finals to Seattle. Cambage opted out the 2020 season for health reasons. More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Basket

    Rowdy, Rude and Really Loud: New York N.B.A. Fans Let Loose

    We’re back, baby! The chants. The cursing at referees! The cursing at opposing players. The cursing just because you can! And that was just in living rooms.New York City basketball fans were out in full force this past weekend, as the Knicks began a first-round playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks, and the Nets opened their postseason against the Boston Celtics.Much to the chagrin of Knicks fans — known for their patient, understanding nature — their team lost to the Hawks in Game 1 of their series on Sunday, 107-105, thanks to a last-second floater from the villainous Trae Young.Across the East River the day before, the Nets — currently the Knicks’ adorable, more talented younger brother — easily dispatched Boston, 104-93.Yes, the Nets are the team more likely to win a championship this season. With the addition of James Harden to the tandem of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, they might have one of the most talented rosters in N.B.A. history. Yet, if this weekend was any indication, if the Nets indeed win the title, New York City may react with a collective shrug.Meanwhile, as the Knicks tipped off against the Hawks, the fans in Manhattan reacted as if Elvis had risen from the dead.OK, we’re being kind of unfair to the Nets. They’ve built an enduring fan base of their own. So they say. But attendees yelling “Brooooklyn!” repeatedly doesn’t have the same ring as Knicks fans yelling, uh, nevermind. We can’t type that here.“The crowd kind of threw me off a bit,” Harden said. “It was pretty loud in there, and the vibe was what we’ve been missing.”Derrick Rose, the Knicks guard, said the crowd was “everything that we expected and probably a little bit more.”Basketball has a long history in New York City, even if N.B.A. championships do not. This is a city of basketball aficionados, and seeing both the Knicks and the Nets make legitimate playoff runs at the same time is a cultural event.Who knows when we’ll get to see this again? More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Basket

    A Wrenching Knicks Loss, but an Electric Night at the Garden

    Playoff basketball returned to Manhattan as a cultural event with a loud, spirited crowd and a new archenemy, the Hawks’ Trae Young.For 47 minutes 59.1 seconds, the fans at Madison Square Garden ranged from raucous to delirious, as the Knicks — their Knicks — were locked in a dogfight on Sunday night against the Atlanta Hawks in the New York team’s first N.B.A. playoff game since 2013.And with nine-10ths of a second remaining, Trae Young, the Hawks’ star guard, was able to get around Frank Ntilikina, a guard ostensibly known for his defense, and hit a game-winning floater.Young then added insult to injury by using his finger to shush the crowd, a good portion of which had been sending profane chants his way for much of the game, a 107-105 Hawks win.”Next one.”🤫🤫-@TheTraeYoung pic.twitter.com/e41Knsyl53— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) May 24, 2021
    “I’ve always looked at it as I’m doing something right if I’m offending them with my play that much,” Young told reporters after the game, adding, “Just got to let my play do the talking because at the end of the day, fans can only talk. They can’t guard me.”Neither could the Knicks in Game 1 of this best-of-seven first-round series. An unfazed Young took the air of the building repeatedly as he took over in the fourth quarter. It wasn’t just the game winner. It was the two free throws with 28 seconds left. Another floater with less than two minutes left, plus a free throw. Young scored 13 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter, deftly casting aside the howling home fans and the haymakers the Knicks kept throwing the Hawks’ way in a back-and-forth thriller. All nine of Young’s free throws came in the final quarter, as did three of his 10 assists.The Knicks tried valiantly to keep Young contained in pick-and-rolls. It didn’t work, as Young used his best weapon — the floater — to frustrate much taller centers.“He’s a great player,” Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks’ coach, said. “We’ll take a look at the film. You’re not going to be able to stay with a steady diet of anything, so obviously we have to do a better job.”Gathering outside Madison Square Garden before the game.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesOn their feet inside near the end of the game.Pool photo by Seth WenigSunday’s game had all the hallmarks of the classic Knicks playoff games N.B.A. audiences were accustomed to in the 1990s. (Before tipoff, Thibodeau, who was an assistant coach for the Knicks then, recalled that he had never heard a building as loud as Madison Square Garden when Larry Johnson hit a game-tying 3 against the Indiana Pacers in Game 3 of the 1999 Eastern Conference finals — one of the most famous shots in Knicks history.)Game 1 was low scoring and defensively oriented, much like the premillennium Knicks. Angry fans chanted profanities at an opposing team’s best player (and the referees). Those same ones screamed so loudly that the public-address announcer could not be heard after RJ Barrett’s fast-break dunk over Bogdan Bogdanovic in the third quarter sent the crowd of 15,047 into a frenzy.An exuberant Spike Lee berated the referees and embraced Knicks players from the sideline. Other celebrities, like Tracy Morgan, Jon Stewart and Rachel Brosnahan, sat courtside to aid in efforts to rattle the Hawks. Christopher Jackson, the Broadway star, sang the national anthem. David Guetta, the French D.J., performed at halftime.The playoff opener was a reminder that at its best, the Knicks basketball experience is as much a cultural event in New York as it is a basketball one. (To that end, Andrew Yang, one of the leading candidates for mayor of New York City, posted a video of himself on Twitter shaking hands with attendees outside the arena before the game. He had apparently gotten over his previous disavowal of the franchise, which had also been done on Twitter.)The contest had everything Knicks fans could want except for a win. But this was the kind of game that had some significant outliers, making it difficult to project the rest of the series. For one thing, while Young, an All-Star, came through for the Hawks, the Knicks’ All-Star did not. Julius Randle, facing a steady rush of double teams, shot 6 for 23 from the field for 15 points. He dominated the Hawks during the regular season, but could not get his jumpers to fall on Sunday.“Listen, I’m not making no excuses,” Randle said. “I’ve got to be better, and I will be better. I’ll just leave it at that.”As a whole, the Knicks were one of the most accurate 3-point-shooting teams in the N.B.A. On Sunday, they were 10 for 30 from deep — 33 percent, far below their season average of 39 percent.The Knicks stayed in the game mostly because of the play of the reserves, particularly Alec Burks, who led the team with 27 points off the bench. Derrick Rose had 17 points and Immanuel Quickley added 10, including two momentum shifting 3s.Immanuel Quickley celebrated after hitting a 3-pointer in the first-half.Pool photo by Seth WenigA slight bounce here or a friendly foul call that doesn’t go Young’s way, and this discussion is way different. It would be about the Knicks returning to playoff glory and the large number of city residents who suddenly had to — wink, wink — call out sick on Monday. It would be about how the Knicks beat the Hawks despite their best players not playing well, and how well that bodes in a series in which the Knicks have home-court advantage.But the Hawks pulled it out. And they’re one game closer to a series win than the Knicks are.But there’s plenty of reason for optimism for the Knicks heading into Game 2 on Wednesday night at the Garden. Randle showed himself to be too good a player this season, particularly against Atlanta, to have a repeat of Sunday’s game. By the law of averages, more of those 3s the Knicks missed will start going in. The supporting cast showed it was capable of taking some of the load off Randle. And the team was 25-11 at home in the regular season.The unsolvable issue may be Young, one of the few players who can hurt a team from anywhere on the court. When the Knicks played up on him, he drove around them. When they gave him room to operate, he got off his floater or found Hawks teammates for dunks. The answer may be to pack the paint and encourage him to shoot more from 3-point range, where he was a 34.3 percent shooter during the regular season, or to send more traps at him to force the ball out of his hands.Even though Ntilikina was burned on Young’s game winner, he may get more time if Young continues to abuse the guards who had difficulty with him, like the starting guard Elfrid Payton, who continued to be ineffective.The one constant for Game 2 is that Knicks fans will be out in force. Lee will be there screaming, and thousands of others will match him note for note. As Rose said about the opener, the fans gave the team “everything that we expected and probably a little bit more.” More

  • 75 Shares129 Views

    in Basket

    These N.B.A. Playoffs Burst 2020’s Bubble

    The confined, roiled 2020 N.B.A. playoffs reflected their times. So, too, do this year’s celebratory games.Last August, as the N.B.A. began its 2020 postseason in the confined bubble of Walt Disney World in Florida, the coronavirus pandemic raged, a vaccine was nothing but a dream and the battle for racial justice stood firmly at the forefront of every game.That was then, and this is now: The playoffs are back, but this time set against a much different backdrop. Vaccines have softened the pandemic’s blow, allowing America to reopen and N.B.A. fans to attend games in numbers that, while still limited, would have shocked last summer.Black Lives Matter slogans are not painted on the courts or stitched on jerseys. Players no longer lock arms and kneel during the playing of the national anthem.Last year’s N.B.A. postseason reflected the tension, tenor and tone of society. The league’s players, 75 percent of whom are Black, sparked a movement that spread to other sports when they boycotted games to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis. These days, as the 2021 playoffs get off the ground, shootings continue without such stoppages.The tinderbox days of the bubble seem like forever ago.This postseason is more about moving forward and sloughing off, however tentatively, the raw pain of the last year. It’s about welcoming new possibilities. It’s about basketball, the pure sport and entertainment of it.And so far, after the first few days of action, it can’t get much better.It began with the so-called play-in tournament, an innovation first tried in the Florida bubble, which gives the league’s middle-of-the-pack teams a shot at making the playoffs.The tournament, held last week, gave us Jayson Tatum leading his Boston Celtics over the Washington Wizards, sinking every shot imaginable as he went for a cool 50 points.It gave us another unforgettable duel between the two players and two teams that have defined basketball in the 21st century. That the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors struggled through injury-filled seasons hardly mattered. Wednesday’s matchup was LeBron James against Steph Curry in a game with real meaning — even if it wasn’t the N.B.A. finals, where they met four times before.It ended like poetry, with James squaring his shoulders, setting his feet and nailing a 34-foot jumper with seconds on the shot clock and less than a minute left in the game. That he did so over the outstretched arms of Curry, his longtime nemesis, added to the moment’s indelible heft.Friday night, reeling from the heartbreak loss to the Lakers, there was Curry again, only this time his Warriors were playing on their home court, in their still new arena in downtown San Francisco. Roughly 7,500 fans were on hand, the largest, most boisterous crowd at Chase Center this season.Many lament that Steph Curry, left, will not be a part of a playoff run but what would the N.B.A. be without the emergence of fresh talent like Ja Morant, right?Jed Jacobsohn/Associated PressAnd this time, they played against the league’s youngest team, the Memphis Grizzlies, with everything on the line. The winner would advance to the playoffs. The loser, to vacation.Curry claims to be 33. Maybe he’s fooling us. Coming off an M.V.P.-caliber regular season in which he led a hobbled, patchwork team to the league’s most improved record, he barely took a breather. True, there were signs of fatigue. His slow walk during breaks in action. The occasional slump of his shoulders. The slight hint of bewilderment in his face as he endured another night of battering from swarming defenders.And yet he scored 39 points and willed his team from a 17-point deficit to force an overtime.The narrative, so said almost every pundit, would belong to Curry and the Warriors in the end. Ja Morant had other ideas. Memphis’s 21-year-old, catlike point guard outdueled Curry. Normally underwhelming from long range, Morant made five of his 10 3-point attempts. And when it counted most, in the last two minutes of overtime, he showed why he is one of the brightest young stars in the league, ready to emerge from the shadow of Zion Williamson, who was taken one spot ahead of Morant in the 2019 N.B.A. draft. Morant finessed his way past the Warriors’ defense in the last gasps of overtime and sank a pair of deft push shots to seal a Memphis win, 117-112.Many lament that Curry, global icon, will not be a part of a playoff run. Many still grouse about the play-in tournament, claiming it is unfair or that it cheapens the regular season. Remember when James said, seemingly only partly in jest, that the N.B.A. official who drew up the tournament should be fired? Considering the feast the games provided as an appetizer to the main course — and, of course, the high television ratings — the criticism seems silly now.Sure, we don’t have Curry and the Warriors in the playoffs, but what fun is sport without surprises and novelty? What would the N.B.A. be without the steady emergence of fresh talent like Morant and his cast of young Grizzlies teammates, who now must prove themselves anew in their first-round playoff series against the Utah Jazz, holders of the league’s best record, which began Sunday night?Last year, the N.B.A. reflected the mood of our society. Angered, standing up in the face of worry and fear.But if our sports are to be a mirror, they must also mirror our hope and joy and celebrate new genius.That’s what we’re seeing now: an N.B.A. still wary about the troubles of the past year but ready to do what it does best. Ready, as the playoffs of 2021 get underway, to put on a show. More