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      From Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketballFrom Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.A year that began with the deaths of two N.B.A. icons could not end soon enough, marked by heartache along the way but also small moments worth celebrating now.Kobe Bryant and LeBron James dominated a year of tragedy and triumph in the basketball world.Credit…John McCoy/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETThe longest and possibly saddest year in pro basketball history is almost over. From this world that plays out on hardwood, as with so many other wings of society, there will be few fond farewells to 2020.The basketball public has been losing and grieving since the first day of January, when David Stern, the N.B.A.’s former longtime commissioner, died at age 77. Soon after, a helicopter headed for a weekend youth tournament with nine aboard, among them Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, Calif. There were no survivors.Mere weeks later, the country was gripped by the coronavirus. Inside and outside of the sport’s sphere, life did not get easier and, as 2021 dawns, it still hasn’t.Yet there was some undeniable good along the way, most of all the N.B.A.’s leadership in coping with the coronavirus, and how its players, in tandem with their longtime activist peers from the W.N.B.A., lent many loud and influential voices to a year of profound social reckoning. The N.B.A. was the first major professional sports league to shut down in response to the pandemic, completed its 2019-20 season by engineering an ambitious protective bubble, and amplified the fight for racial justice and equality.Those were real-world triumphs that will be long-lasting.So let’s celebrate them. In the final edition of Year 3 for this newsletter, I have singled out a few of the far smaller victories, too, as opposed to rehashing a frequently dispiriting 12 months in detail. For all the natural Year In Review instincts that kick in for all of us every December, I’d rather reach back for some smiles, thin as they might be, than recount all the tumult and tragedy.Allow me to rewind to All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February, when the much-maligned dunk contest, and a competitive All-Star Game crunchtime enhanced by the use of the Elam scoring system, generated a level of tension and watchability that many skeptics no longer thought possible.Derrick Jones Jr. won the dunk contest during a revitalized All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February.Credit…Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere were five uplifting Sundays in a row during the mostly lonely (and scary) days of April and May when a basketball documentary about Michael Jordan, “The Last Dance,” delivered the sort of shared experience and sense of community — through sports — that was otherwise unavailable.Michael Jordan captivated millions each week this spring with his recollections of his Chicago Bulls glory days.Credit…Jon RocheThe recent sports trading card renaissance extended to basketball, and led to rookie cards from LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo fetching $1.8 million — each — at auction.The creative forces behind the acclaimed animated series “Game of Zones” served up one final season that, to my great shock and pride, managed to work in a few lucky sports scribes.The seventh season of the animated show “Game of Zones” by Bleacher Report includes characters inspired by Marc Stein, right, and the former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade, left.Credit…Bleacher ReportAnd when it comes to something that really matters: Delonte West, the former N.B.A. guard, was back in Maryland to spend Christmas with his family after years of struggling with bipolar disorder and drug use. A video surfaced in late September that appeared to show West, a former Dallas Maverick, homeless in Dallas. That led Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, to track him down and help West enter a drug rehabilitation facility in Florida.The dunks and trading cards and M.J. memes, to be clear, were mere footnotes at a time even sports struggled to provide its usual escape, but one suspects we will keep coming back to the bigger headlines from basketball’s intersection with a global health crisis.“This will go down as the most remembered year in N.B.A. history,” said Jared Dudley, the veteran forward and frequent unofficial team spokesman for the Los Angeles Lakers. “They will be making movies about 2020 for years to come.”He’s probably right. Tales from the bubble are bound to hold considerable long-term interest, particularly after Dudley’s Lakers emerged from the grand experiment as champions.Hollywood’s team is back on top for the first time since 2009-10, and the ending did include a surprise element: James and Co. have not been subjected to as much asterisk talk as the curmudgeons among us (like me in April) envisaged.My original view stemmed to some degree from fears that the N.B.A. postseason would be truncated from its usual four rounds of best-of-seven series, and thus not constitute a representative championship run. Critics could have also seized on the absence of travel, arenas without fans, and how much living and playing at the same address might have benefited the Lakers, so I still wanted to give it some time to see how their 17th championship would be received.LeBron James said he has won “the two hardest championships” in N.B.A. history, including the 2019-20 title.Credit…Harry How/Getty ImagesThe response has been encouraging. Occasional jabs about James and his supposed “Mickey Mouse” ring haven’t really stuck.Perhaps James went too far the other way with his recent assertion on the “Road Trippin’” podcast that he had won “the two hardest championships” in league history: Cleveland’s comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the 2015-16 N.B.A. finals against the 73-win Golden State Warriors, and the Lakers’ bubble crown. Historians haven’t exactly rushed to endorse those claims, but there is an no shortage of appreciation for what the Lakers did overcome during their 95-day bubble stay, cut off from the outside world.There was a mental toll from essentially living at work. There was isolation. There was an internal conflict to manage, as James and many of his peers would explain, for athletes playing a game and feeding the entertainment industry at a time of so much social unrest in their home communities.The truth, of course, is that you could slap an asterisk on just about anything that happened in 2020, sports or not, since we strayed so far from normalcy in too many precincts to count. Or did so much change get foisted upon all of us that nothing in 2020 should be sullied by the asterisk treatment?Maybe we’ll have that figured out by next year’s final newsletter.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThe league’s free agency investigation of the Bucks ruined Milwaukee’s chances of signing Bogdan Bogdanovic, who landed with the Atlanta Hawks.Credit…Brett Davis/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: It is vital that it be explained why this was the “line in the sand” for the N.B.A. There have clearly been other examples of tampering. Why were no draft picks rescinded in those cases? — @Wanediggity from TwitterStein: I know Bucks fans are upset, but I don’t think the league’s decision to strip their team of a second-round pick in 2022 in the wake of Milwaukee’s failed attempt to court Bogdan Bogdanovic is such a mystery. For all the league’s shortcomings in policing and curbing tampering, it has been consistent in dishing out penalties when violations were blatant. The violations, in this case, were pretty blatant.These were not mere rumblings or assumptions about the sort of free-agent conversations that many of us suspect are happening leaguewide before they are supposed to. The league opened an investigation in response to a detailed news report about a five-player deal involving the Bucks and Sacramento Kings that had Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent, landing in Milwaukee — nearly four days before free agency was scheduled to start.The league took action again on Monday when it fined Daryl Morey, Philadelphia’s new president of basketball operations, $50,000 for a seemingly harmless tweet congratulating James Harden on a statistical milestone he hit when Morey was still his general manager in Houston. It doesn’t matter if the social media post was automated or accidental, as ESPN reported Morey told the league office. The mere fact that Morey publicly “discussed” another team’s player put him in line for a fine.Bucks fans have asked me: What about all the teams that have tried to recruit Giannis Antetokounmpo behind the scenes? My retort: Do we have proof? If there was a detailed news report in circulation about a specific team doing so — or if text messages Antetokounmpo has reportedly received from players on other teams were turned in to the league — I’m quite sure penalties would be imposed on the offending clubs. But no such evidence has surfaced in the public domain. It’s not that the Bucks are the only ones breaking the rules. Other teams have just been better at hiding it.Whether or not Milwaukee or Sacramento wanted this stuff to be out there, it got out. Both were operating as if they had a deal even though Bogdanovic insisted he never agreed to anything. The league wasn’t going to let that go.Even though the league announced in September 2019 that it would institute a new set of anti-tampering regulations to crack down on the practice, there is clearly still much to fix, given how many deals we still saw coalesce in the early hours of free agency on Nov. 20. But the league’s stance on this one, in the words of its general counsel Rick Buchanan, is that Milwaukee had to be sanctioned for “gun-jumping” the start of free agency.There is plenty of skepticism regarding Commissioner Adam Silver’s claim that the punishment “will act as a clear deterrent” to other teams, since the whole episode technically only cost Milwaukee a future second-round pick. Yet it’s also true that the league’s decision to investigate essentially snuffed out any chance the Bucks had of resurrecting a deal for Bogdanovic — someone, by all accounts, Antetokounmpo badly wanted to play with.So losing the ability to pursue Bogdanovic was Milwaukee’s real penalty here, while Sacramento wound up losing Bogdanovic without compensation after electing not to match Atlanta’s four-year, $72 million offer sheet. The Kings did not receive any formal penalty from the league office, but they would have acquired a player they coveted from the Bucks (Donte DiVincenzo) had the original sign-and-trade plan been resuscitated.Q: Any word on the status of Jeremy Lin getting his FIBA Letter of Clearance yet? Many fans want to know! — Tom GardnerStein: To catch up those who weren’t following this saga as it played out on Dec. 19, Golden State needed a clearance letter from the Beijing Ducks, Lin’s last team in China, to sign and then immediately release him before 11 p.m. Eastern time that day. That would have allowed the Santa Cruz Warriors to secure Lin’s G League rights.In part because FIBA’s office is closed on weekends, Golden State couldn’t obtain the letter in time. The rush to get the clearance letter pretty much ended then, because it initially appeared that subsequently obtaining Lin’s G League rights would require some complicated (and more costly) roster gymnastics for the Warriors.It has since emerged that the Warriors will have a new pathway to steering Lin to their G League affiliate that wasn’t apparent then — provided that the G League goes ahead with a 2020-21 season that will be at least partly played in a bubble environment. The N.B.A. is instituting a rule that will enable N.B.A. parent clubs to recruit players to fill one G League roster spot with an N.B.A. veteran who has at least five years of service time. The Warriors will thus have a mechanism to guarantee that Lin can play with Santa Cruz, their G League affiliate, should he decide to sign with the league.Neither the Golden State Warriors nor the Santa Cruz Warriors would sign Lin. He would have to sign with the G League first and then be allocated to Santa Cruz via the new rule, which some G League observers are even calling “the Jeremy Lin rule.” Yet there is no frantic need for the clearance letter now with the G League still trying to resolve some outstanding issues and commit to a season.If Lin decides he wants to go the G League route in hopes that it can boost his chances of an N.B.A. comeback at age 32, and if Santa Cruz is where he wants to play, it will happen.Q: Knowing James Dolan, do you think that the Knicks want to trade for James Harden? I’m sure Dolan is already tired of the Knicks playing second fiddle to the Nets. — Frank AlecciStein: After skipping the opening week of training camp and forcing the league to hit him with an additional four-day quarantine last week, while repeatedly violating the league’s health and safety guidelines in both instances, Harden made his season debut Saturday and promptly uncorked 44 points and 17 assists in Houston’s overtime loss to Portland.As my Houston Chronicle colleague Jonathan Feigen put it, Harden quickly reminded us that, yes, he is worth the trouble on a lot of levels.This would be especially true for a Knicks team that doesn’t have anything close to a certifiable franchise player at the moment. I imagine that Harden would hold appeal throughout the organization — not just with Dolan — despite being under contract only for the rest of this season and next season before he has the right to become a free agent in July 2022.The harsh reality of the Knicks’ current roster, though, is also a problem when it comes to getting into the Harden sweepstakes, since Houston has made it clear that it wants a player like Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons to headline the package it receives for Harden. If there is a combination of Knicks players and draft picks that would entice the Rockets, I don’t see it.Numbers GameKevin Durant (7) and Kyrie Irving (11)Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty Images7-11In one of the better quotes from the season’s opening week, Kyrie Irving said he and his Nets teammate Kevin Durant had “introduced the world to 7-11” with their scoring outbursts in the Nets’ first two games. Irving, of course, was referring to their jersey numbers, not the famed convenience store chain.23.2The average margin of victory from the league’s five Christmas Day games was a whopping 23.2 points. Only the first game (Miami over New Orleans by 13) and the last one (Clippers over Denver by 13) could be classified as competitive. Not what the N.B.A. was hoping for when it pushed up the start of the season at the behest of the league’s television partners, who badly wanted a Christmas week launch.107There were 107 international players from 41 countries on opening-night rosters, including a record 17 players from Canada and a record-tying 14 African players. It’s the seventh consecutive season that opening-night rosters included at least 100 international players; 113 at the start of the 2016-17 season is the record. France (nine), Australia (eight) and Serbia and Germany (six each) are the countries with the most players after Canada.5K.C. Jones earned enshrinement to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1989, but his coaching résumé is perhaps even more H.O.F.-worthy. Jones coached three teams in the N.B.A. across 10 seasons (Washington, Boston and Seattle) and made five trips to the N.B.A. finals in that short span, winning championships with the Celtics in 1983-84 and 1985-86. Jones died on Christmas at the age of 88.4,500There is a strong argument to be made, as a matter of fairness, that fans should not be in N.B.A. buildings until all 30 teams were allowed by local health regulations to do so, because it is a competitive advantage to have a crowd of any size. Yet it’s worth noting just how varied the maximum crowd sizes are for the six teams currently admitting fans. At the low end: Cleveland (300 fans maximum), New Orleans (750) and Utah (1,500). At the high end: Toronto (3,800 fans maximum in Tampa, Fla.), Orlando (4,000) and Houston (4,500).Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      K.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro BasketballK.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.Jones, who was Black and won eight championships as a player and two as a coach with the Boston Celtics, was underappreciated as one of the N.B.A.’s most successful coaches.K.C. Jones head coach, of the Boston Celtics talks with his team during a timeout an NBA game in 1986.Credit…Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETIn early December 1990, K.C. Jones sat in a hotel suite overlooking the New Jersey Meadowlands before a game with the Nets, trying to explain why a coach who won 75 percent of his games and two N.B.A. titles with Boston, and who reached four league finals over five seasons, had been shoved upstairs into a toothless front-office position before ultimately departing his beloved Celtics to coach in Seattle.His new team, whose roster featured the very young Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, had lost the previous night by 33 points to Larry Bird and the Celtics, with eight Celtics scoring in double figures. On the bench, Jones pointed out the opponents’ superior ball movement, hoping his players might learn something from the drubbing.“See that — there’s no N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E,” he recalled telling the Seattle wannabes, who may or may not have appreciated that Jones’s selfless, unpretentious approach to the game was still as much a part of the Celtics as their parquet floor.Teachable moments, those obvious or subtle, were not to be wasted. At one point during the hotel interview with two reporters, Jones excused himself to dial another room. “Quintin, what time is the bus tonight?” he asked. After a pause, Jones replied, “OK, see you there.”The two reporters looked at each other, confused. What kind of coach needed to call Quintin Dailey, a player known for, shall we say, poor conformity habits to ask about when the bus would be leaving for the arena? Then it hit them — this was classic K.C., tactfully checking on Dailey, purposefully understated.Jones returned to his seat and said, “Where were we?”He was, as it turned out, nearing the end of a decades-long love affair with the game that was best defined by championship celebrations.With Bill Russell, he won two N.C.A.A. titles at the University of San Francisco and an Olympic gold medal. With Russell in Boston, as a point guard specializing in defense, he won eight N.B.A. titles. As an assistant coach to his former Celtics teammate Bill Sharman in Los Angeles, he sprinkled championship dust on the Lakers in 1971-72. He won another ring in 1980-81 as Bill Fitch’s assistant in Boston and two more as the head coach during the prime years of the Bird era.Sad to say, to the day he died at 88, on Christmas last week, Jones never got the credit he deserved.Or put it this way: In a sport that defines its champions by the superstars who drive them, Jones never had the self-promotional skills or ego-driven desire to muscle his way onto a pedestal. He never overcame the news media stereotype of him as some hybrid shepherd/spokesman for the collective genius he sent onto the floor each night.Consider that in the five years Jones coached the Celtics to a higher winning percentage, regular season and playoffs, than Red Auerbach, Russell, Fitch or anyone else, Jones never was voted coach of the year. His 1985-86 team won 67 games and went 40-1 at home — that wasn’t good enough.“People saw him as this nice, quiet guy,” Danny Ainge said after Jones left the Celtics. “But he’s so intense, so competitive.”It wasn’t as if Jones hadn’t played a winning coaching hand before replacing Fitch on the Celtics bench in 1983-84 (and promptly beating Pat Riley’s Lakers in the finals): In 1974-75, he coached Washington to a 60-22 record, a 13-game improvement over the prior season, beat the Celtics in the playoffs and made the finals. He lost the coach of the year vote to Phil Johnson and his 44 wins in Kansas City.Of course, racial typecasting was part of this. Just one Black head coach won the Coach of the Year Award in its first 28 years — none in the 1980s. In those days, the N.B.A. was only marginally better at developing and honoring Black coaching talent than other professional sports. The most reliable path for a Black man to the hot seat was, by and large, being a brand-name star in his playing market — a Russell in Boston, a Willis Reed in New York, a Lenny Wilkens in Seattle.K.C. Jones, right, wasn’t given as much credit as he deserved for coaching the Boston Celtics to four N.B.A. finals and two championships in five seasons during the 1980s.Credit…Mike Kullen/Associated PressJones was certainly no headliner as a player — an unreliable shooter who averaged 7.4 points and 4.3 assists per game over nine years. He was a Celtics loyalist, however, and that got him the job, in part because Fitch sometimes objected to Auerbach’s heavy front-office hand. Jones was hired with such fanfare that he learned of the appointment from a flight attendant. Auerbach confirmed it later and told him: “Come in tomorrow — and don’t bring an agent.”That made Jones something of a precedent-setter, for this was how the network served so many white journeymen players, even Riley, who, like Jones, was handed a team that had already won a title (under Paul Westhead). And while Riley didn’t win coach of the year until the 1989-90 season, his last in Los Angeles, he parlayed his excellent work with the Lakers into best-selling motivational books and lucrative banquet speaking fees.Before long, rare was the assertion that all Riley had to do was hand the ball to Magic Johnson, enjoy the view from the bench, as was the case with Jones and Bird in Boston.Jones was no doubt obscured by the rise of the celebrity coach, on the pro and college levels. By men who had polished nightly monologues and celebrated systems. If they won, they were hailed as brilliant. If they lost, the players didn’t fit the system. Some wise old heads considered this to be self-serving nonsense. Red Holzman was one of them. While Hubie Brown lectured the world with a bullhorn (on his way to a sub .500 career record) as Holzman’s replacement with the Knicks, Holzman quietly admired Jones’s work in Boston.Jones’s teams, he would say, played beautiful situational ball, exploiting the weaknesses of their opponents. His players weren’t fast, but they ran perfect positional fast breaks. Like Holzman with the championship Knicks of the early 1970s, Jones was good with them getting all the credit. He was a company man who accepted, without public rancor, the front-office plot to replace him with Jimmy Rodgers, a longtime Celtics assistant.Jones’s last season in Boston, when injuries and age were taking a toll, produced 57 wins and a conference-finals loss to the rising Detroit Pistons. It was his first failure there to make the finals. Letting the reporters come to their own conclusions in that New Jersey hotel, he said, simply: “And here came Jaws.”Under Rodgers, the Celtics didn’t make it out of the first round for the next two years. But sharks leave reputational scars, too. Though Jones made the playoffs in his one full season in Seattle, he was fired in early 1992 with an 18-18 record, as management brought in George Karl as its preferred teacher for Payton and Kemp.Draw your own conclusions on that.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Nets’ Spencer Dinwiddie Out Indefinitely With Torn A.C.L.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNets’ Spencer Dinwiddie Out Indefinitely With Torn A.C.L.Dinwiddie, who started at guard alongside Kyrie Irving, hobbled off the court Sunday in the third quarter with what was initially called knee strain.Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie, who partially tore his right anterior cruciate ligament on Sunday, also tore his left A.C.L. in college.Credit…Michael Dwyer/Associated PressDec. 28, 2020Updated 3:20 p.m. ETThe Nets’ first loss of the season Sunday night at Charlotte has proved especially costly, with the team announcing on Monday that Spencer Dinwiddie, who has been starting at guard alongside Kyrie Irving, partially tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee and is out indefinitely.Early in the second half of the Nets’ 106-104 loss to the Hornets, Dinwiddie fell to the floor clutching his right knee after an awkward step in the paint as he passed the ball to Kevin Durant. The team said more details about Dinwiddie’s recovery are expected after surgery next week.Dinwiddie averaged 6.7 points, 4.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists in 21.4 minutes per game in the Nets’ 2-1 start. The Nets routed Golden State at home and Boston on the road in its first two games before slumping to defeat against the Hornets, who had started 0-2 and are not expected to contend for the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. The Nets will be without Dinwiddie, Durant and Irving on Monday night against Memphis at Barclays Center, with Durant and Irving being held out for rest on the second night of a back-to-back.Dinwiddie, 27, averaged 20.6 points and 6.8 assists per game last year while Durant was sidelined for the entire season while recovering from an Achilles’ tendon tear and with Irving limited to just 20 games by various injuries. But Dinwiddie did not join the Nets in the bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., in July, missing the N.B.A. restart while recovering from Covid-19.He earned a spot in the starting lineup this season when the new Nets coach, Steve Nash, decided to deploy Caris LeVert as a sixth man, only to be felled by the second knee injury of his career. Dinwiddie tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during his junior season at Colorado.The injury Sunday occurred on a drive to the basket against Charlotte’s Bismack Biyombo. Dinwiddie hobbled to the Nets’ bench and, after some treatment, was soon ruled out of the game for what was initially termed a right knee sprain.“When Spencer is going, he can’t be stopped — his offensive game when he’s going downhill creating shots for others,” Jarrett Allen, Dinwiddie’s teammate, told reporters after the game. “And even off the court, everyone loves having Spencer around. His energy, just his personality, is great in the locker room.”Playing on what is regarded as one of the N.B.A.’s most attractive contracts, Dinwiddie can become a free agent at season’s end or invoke a $12.3 million player option for the 2021-22 season.Despite Nash’s lack of coaching experience and uncertainty about how Durant and Irving would mesh after injuries prevented them from playing together in their first season in Brooklyn, the Nets are widely billed as a championship contender — in part because they have one of the league’s deepest rosters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      N.B.A. Postpones Houston Rockets Game Because of Coronavirus

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus DealThe Latest Vaccine InformationF.A.Q.AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyN.B.A. Postpones Rockets Game, an Early Test of the League’s Virus RulesMultiple positive or inconclusive coronavirus tests, and a health protocol breach, left the Houston Rockets with too few players to compete in their season opener Wednesday.The N.B.A. said James Harden of the Houston Rockets was “unavailable” for Wednesday’s game after violating health and safety protocols.Credit…Pool photo by Carmen MandatoDec. 23, 2020Updated 8:04 p.m. ETIn an immediate blow to the N.B.A.’s attempt to stage a season without the protection of a restricted-access bubble, league officials were forced to postpone the Houston Rockets’ season opener on Wednesday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder when the Rockets were unable to field the required minimum of eight players in uniform.On just the second night of the 2020-21 season, an announcement that the game would be postponed “in accordance with the league’s health and safety protocols” came less than three hours before the game’s scheduled tipoff in Houston. Three Rockets players, according to the league, had coronavirus tests that were either positive or inconclusive, leading to the placement of four other Rockets players in quarantine after contact tracing.In addition, one other Rocket (Chris Clemons) is injured and the All-Star James Harden was prevented from playing because of what the league termed “a violation” of its health and safety guidelines. The league later fined Harden $50,000 for attending “a private indoor party” on Monday; video began to circulate this week showing him at an indoor venue without a mask.The Rockets were one of six teams in the 30-team N.B.A. scheduled to allow reduced-capacity crowds into their buildings at the start of the season, which comes as the coronavirus wreaks its worst havoc yet across the United States. Commissioner Adam Silver said in a series of interviews on Monday that the N.B.A. was anticipating “bumps in the road along the way,” but being forced to order a postponement so soon illuminated the various complications it faces.Unlike the N.F.L. and college football, which have been besieged by their own coronavirus setbacks, the N.B.A. is trying to operate a contact sport played entirely indoors — outside of a bubble — with mere 17-player rosters and frequent travel amid an unyielding pandemic.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Amar’e Stoudemire Is a Coach Now. But Don’t Call Him That.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonNets and Clippers Win BigMVP: LeBron or Luka?The Reloaded LakersWill the Nets Reign?Assistant coach Amar’e Stoudemire of the Brooklyn NetsCredit…Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesSkip to contentSkip to site indexAmar’e Stoudemire Is a Coach Now. But Don’t Call Him That.Stoudemire has reunited with his Phoenix Suns cohort of Steve Nash and Mike D’Antoni on the Nets’ staff. It’s weird to him, too.Assistant coach Amar’e Stoudemire of the Brooklyn NetsCredit…Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 23, 2020, 5:03 p.m. ETAs recently as late July, Amar’e Stoudemire was seemingly as far away as possible from joining the Nets’ coaching staff and a high-wattage reunion of Phoenix Suns alumni in Brooklyn. Stoudemire was still playing abroad — and helping Maccabi Tel Aviv win a 54th league championship in Israel.He didn’t know at the time that Steve Nash, the former on-court conductor of the Suns’ “Seven Seconds or Less” era, was a top-secret candidate to become the Nets’ new head coach. Like most connected to the N.B.A., Stoudemire also had no inkling that Mike D’Antoni — who had built a revolutionary offense in Phoenix around the Nash-and-Stoudemire combination — would soon pivot from coaching the Houston Rockets to becoming Nash’s offensive coordinator.For most of the summer, Stoudemire, 38, mostly wrestled with whether to keep playing. He was offered a new one-year contract by Maccabi soon after his performance (18 points and 7 rebounds) in the Israeli Basketball Premier League title game earned him most valuable player honors.Champions and MVP. #stayfocus #StayPostive pic.twitter.com/OySkZYr3yr— Amar’e Stoudemire (@Amareisreal) July 29, 2020
      “I never really thought much about coaching, to be honest with you,” Stoudemire said.That all changed in September after Nash, who played alongside Stoudemire for six seasons in Phoenix, was hired by the Nets as their head coach. Stoudemire reached out with interest in exploring his options to begin a post-playing career. Nash, who had also pitched player development roles on his fledgling staff to his former teammates Dirk Nowitzki and Raja Bell, made a similar offer to Stoudemire.“He’s just getting his foot in the door,” Nash said. “We wanted him to come in and share all the things that he learned from his experiences — but also to learn about coaching, video analysis, analytics and the front office.”Israel had “absolutely” become a second home, Stoudemire, a former Suns and Knicks player, said, after he immersed himself in Judaism over the past decade and then obtained Israeli citizenship in March 2019. That comfort level only added to the lure of playing one more season with Maccabi, but Stoudemire decided to give coaching a try, unsure as he was, even after 14 seasons in the N.B.A. and three playing in Israel and China, that he had reached an age he associated with the profession.“I just never liked the title Coach,” Stoudemire said. “There’s not a lot of swagger that comes with that title. I’m still not quite there yet. I’m still very young, and I like to feel young.”On the Nets’ organizational chart, Stoudemire has been officially named a player development assistant. He brings some experience to the role despite his ambivalence about the coaching label, having hosted a few Nike camps in his Suns and Knicks prime in which he worked briefly with future stars such as Blake Griffin, DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis.At Maccabi last season, Stoudemire also served as a mentor to the Israeli teenager Deni Avdija, who last month became the first lottery draft pick in his country’s history when the Washington Wizards took him with the No. 9 overall selection. Stoudemire, himself a former No. 9 pick in Phoenix, routinely urged Avdija, a versatile 6-foot-9 forward, to “get a triple-double every single chance he gets” and to “attack the rim with force.”Amar’e Stoudemire, right, was a mentor to the Israeli teenager Deni Avdija, left, who was drafted ninth over all by the Washington Wizards.Credit…Tolga Adanali/Euroleague Basketball, via Getty Images“We worked on a no-mercy mind-set,” Stoudemire said.Stoudemire “brings great energy,” Nash said, and can still participate in drills when needed. Nash called him “one of the first true small-ball centers” with much to pass on to modern big men. Nash and D’Antoni have often lamented that their groundbreaking Phoenix teams didn’t lean even harder on smaller lineups, rampant 3-point shooting and fast-paced play — all of which is much more accepted now than it was then. They were wildly successful but ultimately fell short of a championship.Beyond the practice floor, yet another Suns alumnus from that period — Nets General Manager Sean Marks — has given Stoudemire the latitude to sit in on management meetings to get a taste of front-office planning, scouting and recruiting strategies and integrating analytics with traditional coaching.“He has complete access,” Nash said. “We’re pushing him to be as involved as he wants.”“I get to learn from all departments,” Stoudemire said, “to see where I want my career to go.”The varied coursework feeds into a studious side that took hold of Stoudemire as his career progressed in the N.B.A. and blossomed in Israel, where he had two stints with Hapoel Jerusalem, Maccabi’s fiercest rival, before a January 2020 move to join the Tel Aviv club. Initially inspired to become a student of Torah after joining the Knicks in July 2010 and gaining more exposure to Judaism and its connections to his family’s heritage, Stoudemire enrolled at multiple yeshivas as a Jerusalem player to learn the religion’s Orthodox customs. He completed a formal conversion to Orthodox Judaism in August.Stoudemire observes the Jewish Sabbath (Shabbat) from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, keeps a kosher diet and became known in his Maccabi days for arriving at games in all-black Orthodox clothing rather than the trendy gear that has transformed player arena entrances in the N.B.A. into a virtual sport unto itself. Stoudemire, whose Hebrew name is Yehosaphat, said he would work with the Nets to determine the best way to maintain the same level of Orthodox Shabbat observance now that he is back in the United States, where businesses do not shut down on Friday nights as they largely do in Israel.“My time in Israel was amazing,” Stoudemire said. “It took me to another level of purifying myself and making me more mature. From the first day I got there to the last day to walking off with the M.V.P. trophy, it was simply a remarkable experience.”Nash said: “I really admire him. It’s not just our history and our relationship, but how open and inquisitive he is. Amar’e never feels like he’s fully formed; he’s always trying to learn more and do more. So when he showed interest, I said, ‘This is the kind of guy I want.’”Steve Nash, second from left, recorded his first coaching victory with the Nets in their opener on Tuesday night, a 125-99 win over the Golden State Warriors.Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesThe learning continues back on American soil: Stoudemire said he was taking online courses at the University of Miami in pursuit of an M.B.A. to augment his new job. One veteran coach who knows him well, though, thinks Stoudemire is more of a coaching natural than he even realizes.Phil Weber, known as Drill Phil for his player development work on D’Antoni’s staff in Phoenix, predicted that “players will immediately respect and naturally gravitate towards him.” Weber worked for years with Stoudemire on his shooting after their time together in Phoenix and said it would quickly be evident to the Nets “how much Amar’e cares and how personable he is.”The Nets’ Kyrie Irving said of Nash and the influence of so many former Suns: “Coming in with Mike D’Antoni, with Amar’e Stoudemire, they have been able to guide us to come together as a group.”Stoudemire emphasized, for the record, that he had not formally retired as a player. He likewise remains uneasy about Nets big men such as DeAndre Jordan and Jarrett Allen calling him Coach because the connotation, he said, “has kind of an older vibe to it.”Told that, on the flip side, being addressed in that manner could also suggest he had a higher level of wisdom, Stoudemire said, “I’ll take it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      8 Fearless N.B.A. Season Predictions

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonNets and Clippers Win BigMVP: LeBron or Luka?The Reloaded LakersWill the Nets Reign?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketball8 Fearless N.B.A. Season PredictionsHouston’s James Harden is widely expected to be traded soon. But Kevin Love? Zach LaVine? LaMarcus Aldridge? They could be on the move, too.The outlook for James Harden is now about when, not if, he will be traded from the Houston Rockets.Credit…Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressDec. 23, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ETThe N.B.A.’s 75th season began Tuesday night with wins by the Nets and the Clippers. A new calendar year arrives in just nine days.The time, then, has never been more right to consult our crystal roundball for the usual batch of eight (almost) fearless predictions for what awaits in #thisleague in coming months:James Harden will be traded no later than Jan. 25 — two full months before this season’s trade deadline.The initial rumblings, at the start of Harden’s standoff with the Houston Rockets, suggested that a trade was unlikely to materialize until closer to the March 25 deadline. The Rockets were determined to first see if they could repair their relationship with Harden, then to leverage the two guaranteed seasons left on his contract on the trade market.More current rumblings indicate that tension within the Rockets is mounting each day Harden goes untraded. The Athletic illuminated some of that tension with a report Tuesday that Harden recently threw a ball in practice at Jae’Sean Tate, his new rookie teammate. Both sides now want to move on as quickly as possible. It’s time.I still regard Philadelphia as the most likely landing spot for Harden, largely because Ben Simmons most closely fits the description of the sort of building-block player Houston is holding out for in return. I’m also told that the familiarity between Daryl Morey and his Rockets successor, Rafael Stone, will outweigh any lingering ill feelings from Morey’s move to Philadelphia as president of basketball operations less than two weeks after he walked away from his Houston contract. I know Morey has said that Simmons is going nowhere. I also know Morey made similar statements about Chris Paul before he traded Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook.The Heat let it be known this week that they are not actively pursuing Harden, which is a blow for the Rockets because Miami is one of those fearless teams with the oft-proven gumption to embrace an enigma like Harden in spite of the various red flags. The Sixers and the Nets, though, may not be the only other options: In recent days, it has become known that Toronto, Boston and Denver have also had exploratory talks with Houston.The Rockets will keep probing the market, as eager to move on now as the superstar they catered to for the past eight seasons.At least three of the following five players will be traded this season in addition to Harden: LaMarcus Aldridge, Aaron Gordon, Buddy Hield, Zach LaVine and Kevin Love. Maybe even all five.Love’s case is the most intriguing. He has $91.5 million left on his Cleveland contract with two more seasons after this one. Yet the flurry of contract extensions we’ve seen during the N.B.A.’s truncated off-season may encourage a team or two out there to sacrifice some future salary-cap flexibility to absorb Love’s deal, knowing that free-agent options will be more limited than anticipated.Both Aldridge and Gordon are interesting candidates with their shorter remaining contracts to slot in Boston’s $28.5 million trade exception, which the Celtics (depending on their willingness to run up their luxury-tax bill) can use to add absorb a huge salary in a trade.Kevin Durant will be first player in N.B.A. history to go from an Achilles’ tendon tear to Most Valuable Player Award candidacy.Kevin Durant’s game looked as fluid as ever during the preseason.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressIn Tuesday’s New York Times, as part of a staff compendium of award predictions for the coming season, I went with Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks as my M.V.P. selection. As strong as Doncic’s case will surely be, I’ve been asking myself if I should have gone with Durant.It is super early in his comeback, true, and the Nets will be wary of overtaxing their star forward during the regular season. But Durant is shooting, moving and, yes, dunking as fluidly as we’ve ever seen a player post-Achilles’ tendon surgery.Even at 32, Durant looks highly capable of changing the devastating history of the most dreaded injury in the sport. Then again, Durant is one of the sport’s true offensive unicorns, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.The Eastern Conference will earn your respect.I can’t claim to have invented the phrase, but I think I’ve been using “Leastern Conference” jabs in stories for almost 20 years. Even in recent seasons that produced a champion from the East, depth on that side of the N.B.A. has often been lacking.This season will be different. Although the West still has more teams that can credibly compete for a playoff spot, it appears that more challengers to the Lakers’ throne (starting with Milwaukee, Miami and the Nets) can be found in the East.Sorting out the East’s top seven, if the Indiana Pacers are indeed more dynamic offensively under new coach Nate Bjorkgren, should be complicated and fun.Finishing sixth in each conference will mean more than it ever has before.One of the best things about the N.B.A.’s play-in playoff round, beyond giving four more teams than usual a pathway to the postseason, is how much more value finishing sixth in the East or West holds.The No. 6 seed clinches a first-round playoff berth. The No. 7 seed slips into a four-team scramble that, in the worst-case scenario, could result in an early off-season. In the N.B.A.’s ongoing quest to make the regular season more meaningful (and watchable), this should help.The No. 9 or No. 10 seed in either conference would have to win two consecutive games to bump off No. 7 or No. 8 for a playoff spot.Game 1: The format calls for the seventh-place team in each conference seed to play No. 8, with the winner claiming the No. 7 seed.Game 2: The No. 9 seed goes up against No. 10. The loser is eliminated.Game 3: The loser of Game 1 faces the winner of Game 2. The Game 3 winner claims the final playoff berth, with the loser heading to the lottery.Got it?There will be All-Star balloting, like usual, even if there is no All-Star Game.All-Star festivities will be different this season, but we’ll still fight about selections and snubs as usual.Credit…Nathaniel S. Butler/NBA PhotosThe N.B.A. has already announced that its 2021 All-Star Weekend, which was scheduled to be held in Indianapolis, has been postponed to 2024 to give the Hoosier State another shot at hosting. Indianapolis last played host to an N.B.A. All-Star Game in 1985.I think the league, deep down, would like to arrange a simpler All-Star Game, just this season, if it made sense to do so. That, however, is a lot to ask in these coronavirus times — especially when a true midseason break of some sort is sure to be welcomed by players after the shortest off-season in history for most teams.Can you live with traditional All-Star balloting, coaches selecting the reserves and the usual Twitter fisticuffs over who got snubbed? I’m pretty sure we’re going to get all that.The Miami Heat will reach the N.B.A. finals again.This is going to be harder than it sounds if you remember the above warnings about the East’s top seven.It will be doubly difficult if you endorse the belief in some league circles that the Heat would not have advanced to the finals at Walt Disney World if not for some bubble anomalies, like the lack of travel and the absence of hostile environments on the road. Miami’s ever-demanding culture for players that puts so much emphasis on fitness and focus, as the theory goes, had its roster primed to cope better than anyone with the long bouts of isolation in the bubble and other mental-health challenges.I don’t buy it. I think the Heat have a worthy, versatile, defensive-minded team that orbits around Jimmy Butler and will be stronger this season as Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson develop. They beat the Lakers twice in the finals, remember, despite the injuries sustained by Adebayo and Goran Dragic.Miami was not a mirage.There will be a loud campaign for the N.B.A. to start cooking up a new all-time team, featuring 75 players as the league’s 75th birthday nears in June, to replace or update the league’s list of 50 greatest players named in October 1996, the league’s 50th season.And if I’m wrong and no loud campaign materializes, I will start it myself.The Scoop @TheSteinLineGrizzlies fans will have to watch Ja Morant from home for now.Credit…Brandon Dill/Associated PressCorner ThreeTrevor Ariza has probably been on your favorite team.Credit…John Raoux/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: The West is obviously going to have more than eight teams vying for playoff spots. Which teams do you think we can rule out now? — Natalie Anfuso (Wayne, Pa.)Stein: I totally understand why you’re asking, because it’s a difficult question to answer. If you’re looking to rule out teams completely, I would feel comfortable naming only Oklahoma City — and that’s just because the Thunder have aggressively embraced a rebuilding posture. It wouldn’t surprise me, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander running the offense and Al Horford and Luguentz Dort anchoring the defense, if even the Thunder proved to be a tougher out than expected.Every team in the West that finished eighth or lower last season has grander visions of this season’s ceiling. No. 8 Portland believes it will contend for a top-four seed after the acquisition of Robert Covington and some additional roster tweaking. Memphis placed ninth and is counting on a similar finish, at worst, purely through Ja Morant’s presumed improvement in Year 2. And No. 10 Phoenix is widely regarded as playoff material now after going 8-0 at the Walt Disney World bubble and then trading for Chris Paul.While outsiders await a potential trade that ships out a veteran like LaMarcus Aldridge, DeMar DeRozan or Patty Mills, No. 11 San Antonio is optimistic that the experience its younger players gained in the bubble will make the Spurs a playoff sleeper. No. 13 New Orleans is one of the more difficult teams to assess and figures to have a puncher’s chance to reach the postseason purely based on the track record of its new coach, Stan Van Gundy, and Zion Williamson’s promising preseason. Golden State, of course, is expected to bounce back from the league’s worst record (15-50) to contend for a playoff berth — even with Klay Thompson out for the season after he tore his right Achilles’ tendon in November.I have more confidence in Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell clicking and No. 14 Minnesota joining that mix ahead of No. 12 Sacramento, but the Timberwolves and the Kings have to be considered playoff long shots in a conference this deep. The Kings, remember, have missed the postseason for a league-high 14 consecutive seasons and, even with a revamped front office, left numerous rival teams stunned by their decision not to match Atlanta’s four-year, $72 million offer sheet to Bogdan Bogdanovic.Q: Maybe it wasn’t part of the wildest off-season ever, but Luke Ridnour had a wild week in 2015 — he was traded five times, if I remember correctly. Did he ever play for any of them? — Barron Hall (Chicago)Stein: Good follow-up question to our recent debate in this space about the proper amount of awe in response to the leaguewide frenzy of transactions in the days before and after the Nov. 18 draft. Ridnour was actually traded four times in a week in June 2015 — one trade more than Trevor Ariza was subjected to last month — but he never played for any of the teams involved.In fact, Ridnour never played in the league again after his stint with Orlando in 2014-15. He had a nonguaranteed contract worth $2.75 million for the 2015-16 season, which is why Ridnour kept being moved, but he decided to stop playing after Toronto acquired him from Oklahoma City in trade No. 4. The first three trades sent him from Orlando to Memphis, Memphis to Charlotte and Charlotte to Oklahoma City.Ariza is on the Thunder’s opening-night roster and, according to my old friends at HoopsHype, has been traded 10 times in his career — more than any other player in league history. Ariza is likely to be mentioned frequently as the potential recipient of an in-season contract buyout that makes him a free-agent target for contending teams like the Lakers, but who would be surprised if Oklahoma City finds a way to trade him again?Q: I honestly don’t know what normal is anymore, but the last five minutes of the Golden State-Sacramento game last Tuesday night were pure joy. All the rookies and reserves were playing their hearts out, Kyle Guy’s buzzer-beater gave the Kings a win, and Steve Kerr, Alvin Gentry and Luke Walton were all laughing through their masks. As a basketball-starved, 70-year-old woman, I enjoyed all of it. Bring it on! — Gigi CoeStein: You get the last word, Gigi. Let’s hope, as the regular season opens Tuesday night, that we have lots of scenes like the one you describe to dissect and savor.Numbers GameCharlotte’s LaMelo Ball has wowed with his passing. Not so much his shooting, yet.Credit…Matt Stamey/Associated Press6Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo last week became the sixth player to sign a so-called supermax contract extension, joining Golden State’s Stephen Curry, Portland’s Damian Lillard, Houston’s James Harden, Washington’s Russell Westbrook and Houston’s John Wall. Two marquee stars who were eligible to sign supermax deals with their former teams but declined: Anthony Davis (New Orleans) and Kawhi Leonard (San Antonio). Utah’s Rudy Gobert was also eligible for the supermax but signed a five-year deal on Sunday with the Jazz at roughly $23 million below the highest amount he could have received.3The supermax contract was introduced to help incumbent teams retain superstar players, after Kevin Durant left Oklahoma City for Golden State in July 2016, but Harden recently became the third of those six supermax recipients to request a trade. Westbrook has been traded twice since signing his supermax with Oklahoma City in September 2017. Wall signed his with Washington in July 2017 and was traded for Westbrook on Dec. 2 after both players asked for a trade.26.2Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball threw some of the best passes I’ve ever seen during the preseason — including a one-handed bounce pass against Orlando on Saturday with skip and bend that should be enjoyed over and over — but Ball, a rookie guard, is struggling as badly as feared with his shooting. Drafted No. 3 over all by the Hornets in November, Ball shot 26.2 percent from the field and 27.3 percent on 3-pointers in Charlotte’s four exhibition games.44.3With a career conversion rate of 44.3 percent, Philadelphia’s Seth Curry ranks second in league history in 3-point percentage behind Golden State Coach Steve Kerr, who was a career 45.4 percent shooter from long range. The Warriors’ Stephen Curry is sixth at 43.5 percent, behind Hubert Davis (44.1 percent), Drazen Petrovic (43.7 percent) and Duncan Robinson (43.7 percent).5,739We can’t forget that Stephen Curry, coming into this season, had attempted 5,739 3-pointers in his 11 N.B.A. seasons. That’s more than Kerr (1,599), his brother, Seth (1,007), and Miami’s Robinson (641) combined (3,247).Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.comAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More