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In early March, Michele Roberts announced she would be stepping down as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association after six years on the job.Days later, the National Basketball Association said it was suspending its season because of the coronavirus. Basketball was the first major sport to shut down, and the decision became one of the defining moments of normal life around the country rapidly grinding to a halt.Six months later, Ms. Roberts is still on the job, and working as hard as ever. She helped the league, owners and players design the “bubble” in Orlando, Fla., where the N.B.A. resumed play at the end of July. As part of those negotiations, she worked with stars like LeBron James and Chris Paul to get the league to paint “Black Lives Matter” on every court, embrace the concept of printing messages supporting social justice on jerseys and set up a fund to support economic growth in Black communities.That work continued last month when the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court after the shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, by the police in Kenosha, Wis. The Bucks’ decision triggered a leaguewide stoppage, and prompted players in other sports to join the protests. For a short time, it was unclear if the N.B.A. season would continue.The players ultimately agreed to resume play, but not before Ms. Roberts collaborated with them to get the league to agree to additional efforts to promote racial justice, including a commitment to try to use some N.B.A. arenas as voting sites in November.Her work isn’t done. While players won a lucrative contract three years ago, the pandemic has upended the economics of live sports, and Ms. Roberts, the union and league officials are trying to figure out when the next N.B.A. season will begin, under what conditions it will be played and how much money players will earn.Ms. Roberts had no experience in the sports business before taking over the players association. She had spent decades as a lawyer, first as a public defender and then as a corporate attorney at firms including Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. But basketball, Ms. Roberts said, was “another business that I had to immerse myself in.”“I had to understand its historical context, the relationship between management and labor, figure out who the stakeholders were and identify my enemies and friends,” she said in an interview from the bubble. “It was very much the way I prepared when I would get a new corporate client.”This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.Tell me about growing up in New York.I grew up in the projects in the South Bronx. We were poor. My mom raised us pretty much on her own. She was an extraordinary woman. She kept me safe, happy, fed and sheltered. And she kept me dreaming that there was nothing I couldn’t do. I give myself zero credit for this wistful desire to be great. My mom decided that, and I went along with the program.What was the program like?When you got home from school, you didn’t play. You went upstairs and did your homework. We had a television, but it didn’t go on until my mom had a chance to make sure the homework was done. If I brought home a B, I had to explain why it wasn’t an A. It sounds harsh, but I didn’t feel put upon. I enjoyed school. I loved to read.Why did you decide to become a public defender?My mom introduced me to the world of litigation and trial work. She was a trial watcher. It was a hobby she somehow developed. She liked to go watch cases and arraignments in a nearby court, and I went with her. I didn’t understand half of what I was seeing, but I thought it was the most magnificent thing in the world, and very early on I wanted to be a lawyer.What did you learn about the American criminal justice system during your time as a lawyer?I think the apparatus, the legal system, is second to none on the planet. I mean, if you think about the notion of a presumption of innocence — that someone does not have to prove his or her innocence, but instead that the state has to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt — that’s an incredibly high standard. And the system is required to appoint competent counsel. So there’s nothing that strikes me as being necessarily wrong with the legal apparatus.It’s the operation of the system that can be horrifying, especially if you’re a person of color, and most especially if you’re poor, no matter what color you are. People say the criminal justice system is corrupt, and there’s some truth to that. But the corruption comes from the actors who abuse it. It’s not the system itself that is inherently corrupt.As a woman leading a group of male players, have you ever felt like your gender was an issue?Admittedly there was a time when I’d be incredibly conscious of the fact that I was the only woman at a meeting, or the only woman in the courtroom, or the only person of color. But I soon realized that spending energy and time on that was detracting from my ability to do my work. And so I trained myself to stop it. I’ve never encouraged anyone to spend a lot of time sitting in a meeting saying: “I’m the only Black woman in this room. Should I say anything? Do they hate me? Do they think I’m stupid?” That’s a process, a passage that I think everyone who looks like me has to go through. But you’ve got to go through it. And then you’ve got to stay through it. Thankfully I’ve been done with that for a while.Why do you think we’re seeing players engage in social activism so forcefully these days?Two words: social media. I have not stopped being amazed at the reach that is made possible through social media. When a new kid comes into the league I’ll check his Facebook and Twitter accounts, and he has 250,000 followers. Because he plays basketball and is very good at it, people want to hear what he has to say. That’s power.These guys feel both the power but also the responsibility that they have. If they feel passionately about an issue, and they do, they want to be able to say: “This is wrong. This has to change.”It’s a very different viewing experience now, with “Black Lives Matter” written on the courts, the slogans on the jerseys, and the announcers talking about Breonna Taylor and the Tulsa race massacre.The world has changed. People always say, “When I watch sports, I just want to shut off the rest of the world.” OK. But the world is still out there. You can spend that two hours watching a basketball game, but the minute you click off that game, it’s still the case that Black men are being killed disproportionately in their contact with police. The world right now is on fire.I’m a Christian. And so I think that I have responsibility to understand what’s going on in my world and in my community. If I was blissfully ignorant of what’s going on in the streets, I would consider it a sin. And people that want to just put blinders on and just not be bothered with events in the world that are uncomfortable, you know, shame on them.The walkout following the shooting of Jacob Blake prompted athletes from other sports to take action, too. What did the N.B.A. players learn from that experience?One of the reasons they decided to continue to play was because they saw the overwhelming amount of media attention that they received, and they observed the influence their behavior had on athletes in other sports. It just underscores that if they really want to influence what’s happening in this country, they can, and they can do it collectively in a way that sends a message throughout the country and around the world. To the extent the players didn’t appreciate their reach, they certainly do now.How do you counsel players about these sensitive issues? A recent association meeting allegedly got heated when one player, Patrick Beverley, took issue with you discussing the financial implications of an early end to the season.I don’t really want to comment on the Patrick thing. What happens in our meetings should stay in our meetings. But players have the responsibility to understand the consequences of their actions with respect to the business. And this is a business. This is how they make their living. Some of them are fortunate to be able to do this for 15 or 20 years. But most of them are not. Most of them have an average of less than five years in the league, and those will likely be their best revenue-generating years. So I’ve got to make sure that they understand what they’re doing, how much it will cost and what’s the impact.Black men and women are underrepresented in front offices around the league. What needs to be done to change that?When there’s a challenge to diversify in other industries, you frequently hear the complaint, “Well, it’s just hard to find people that have the skill set and experience to fill these roles.” That’s not something that can be claimed in this game at all. So there is no excuse. The way to remedy it is to be more inclusive. It’s that’s simple. Same thing with women. It just comes down to people just putting their money where their mouths are and just hiring more people of color.How is the bubble in Orlando working so well?I’m shocked when I turn the TV on and see college kids who are acting as if they are immortal and congregating with abandon. Our players are about the same age, but they got it. They comply, and people have all been safe. That’s the key. You’ve got to have a protocol, and then you’ve got to have cooperation. It breaks my heart to watch kids who want very much to go back to school and then immediately can get engaged in conduct that can shut these institutions down. They should take a lesson from the Orlando bubble. You can make it work if you just follow the protocol.What do you think next season will look like, both from a protocol perspective and an economic perspective?I do think we’ll have a season, but I don’t think it will begin in December. Some bubblelike environment may be necessary. I suspect that we will have a hybrid environment, maybe with division bubbles that last for a certain number of months, and then we stop. But the concept of putting our players in a bubble for an entire season is unrealistic.There will be a revenue drop. I do see a possibility of there being some reopening of some arenas. But if we’re lucky we will see 25 percent of the revenue that ordinarily comes through gate receipts, etc. That’s optimistic. Hopefully we can soften the blow, but I don’t see us packing arenas. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The joke doesn’t have quite the same bite now that the N.B.A. is playing all of its games in a so-called bubble, but it elicited a hearty laugh from P.J. Tucker of the Houston Rockets regardless.Have you heard the one about how the only center in Houston is the Toyota Center?“That’s true and false,” Tucker said, chuckling at the reference to his team’s home arena. “But it’s mostly true.”The Rockets, you see, insist that none of their players have assigned positions, no matter how they are listed in the box score. Tucker has invited onlookers to call him a center — “Label it however you want to,” he said — but he is not even Houston’s tallest starter. Nor does Tucker jump center for the Rockets when the game tips off, typically ceding that duty to the 6-foot-7 Robert Covington.Tucker is nonetheless often described as the closest thing to a center among the Rockets’ primary players, which owes largely to his physical defense. Yet even when Tucker, who is 6-5, guards someone much bigger, such as the Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis, he is quick to point out that his offensive responsibilities call for him to “still do everything” asked of smaller forwards.One clear takeaway amid all these contradictions is that LeBron James and the Lakers have been thrust into a precarious position in the second round of the N.B.A. playoffs against Houston because they have to cope with the Rockets’ unconventional approach — with Tucker at the heart of the chaos. The Lakers lead the series, 2-1, but have been forced to play smaller lineups than they prefer to counter a fleet, floor-spacing front line led by Tucker and Covington.“Every team needs a P.J. Tucker,” Cleveland’s Larry Nance Jr., a former Laker, tweeted Sunday during Game 2 of the Rockets-Lakers series.Tucker played a starring role defensively in Houston’s Game 1 victory, then overcame foul trouble in Game 2 to register 18 points and 11 rebounds, though the Rockets’ rally fell short. He managed just 3 points Tuesday in a quiet Game 3 performance, shortly after openly disappointed Rockets officials learned that Tucker had not been selected to the N.B.A.’s all-defensive first or second team.“What we see,” Rockets Coach Mike D’Antoni said, “we think he’s the best.”The Rockets, to use General Manager Daryl Morey’s word, were for years unabashedly “obsessed” with trying to topple the Golden State Warriors, who won three championships in their five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals from 2015 to 2019. This season, with the Warriors missing Kevin Durant (left in free agency) and the injured guards Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry, Morey took even bigger swings than usual in his roster construction. He followed the much-debated trade that dispatched Chris Paul to Oklahoma City for Russell Westbrook by assembling a four-team trade in February that sent Clint Capela, Houston’s starting center, to Atlanta to acquire Covington from Minnesota. The emphasis on small ball was widely rebranded as “microball.”Despite the 2-1 series deficit, and fears that Houston’s small lineups are being worn down by the Lakers’ power, Tucker has not wavered in his belief that the Rockets can win the series. As significant a surprise as that would be, it would also not automatically rank as the biggest upset by a Tucker team.The Toronto Raptors drafted Tucker No. 35 over all in 2006, but he didn’t stick, and headed to Israel for the 2007-8 season. There he led unheralded Hapoel Holon to a stunning victory over Maccabi Tel Aviv, the perennial European club power, for the championship; it was one of only two seasons between 1970 and 2008 that Maccabi failed to win it all domestically.“To this day, that’s my No. 1 basketball moment,” Tucker said.It was the start of a five-season odyssey in the international game, with additional stops in Ukraine, Greece, Italy, Puerto Rico and Germany, during which Tucker developed the long-distance shooting touch that makes him one of the N.B.A.’s most productive corner 3-point shooters.“He used to just bully guys down low,” said Omri Casspi, Israel’s most successful N.B.A. export and a teenager with Maccabi when Tucker was named the most valuable player with Holon. There was “no match” in the league for Tucker physically, Casspi said.Tucker excitedly recounted how loud the crowds were, calling them the most vociferous fans he has ever played for — “no doubts, hands down, no close seconds.” Yet he said that his current role, as a key two-way contributor for an N.B.A. championship contender, seemed like an unreachable dream for much of his time abroad.“Back then the league was different,” Tucker said. “Being a ‘tweener’ was terrible. Nobody wanted tweeners. You had to be a wing player that could shoot 3s or a back-to-the-basket big — and if you fell in the middle you didn’t fit. So a lot of times, I was lost.“Going over there, I learned how to be a team player. I had to grow up. Being the main guy for three or four years, I understood what it took to be the leader. Coming back to the N.B.A., being one of those other guys again, I knew exactly how to do my job.”Becoming proficient from long range certainly didn’t hurt: Tucker made a league-high 90 corner 3-pointers during the regular season. As D’Antoni noted, Tucker is also the key defender in Houston’s schemes that depend on the frequent switching of individual assignments.“Now I bask in that whole area of the unknown,” Tucker said. “It’s the most beautiful thing ever.”At 35, Tucker averaged a career-high 34.3 minutes per game during the regular season. His seemingly boundless determination to collect sneakers tends to generate more media attention than his game — Tucker plans to open his own sneaker store in Houston next month called the Better Generation With P.J. Tucker — but what he covets most is an N.B.A. playoff memory to usurp what he did in Israel.He continues to agonize over the Rockets’ fate in the 2018 Western Conference finals. Up, 3-2, over the Warriors, Tucker’s Rockets had two shots to eliminate the reigning champions but could not overcome the loss of Paul to a hamstring injury in Game 5. In Game 7, Houston missed a still-unfathomable 27 consecutive 3-pointers and lost at home.“It’s been frustrating; I won’t lie about that,” Tucker said. “I still haven’t watched Game 6 and Game 7 from two years ago, because we knew that was the championship, whoever won that series. There’s nothing worse than that.”Yet the stakes for the Rockets seem higher than ever this postseason. D’Antoni’s future is uncertain in the final year of his contract as coach, and Tucker, who will be seeking an extension this off-season, has just one year left on his deal. Questions likewise persist about how Westbrook fits alongside James Harden — and the holes in Harden’s and D’Antoni’s playoff legacies.All of that tends to generate considerable noise around the Rockets, but Tucker, defiant as ever, said, “We laugh at it.”“We think it’s hilarious,” Tucker said.Such material is presumably not as humorous as the Toyota Center crack, but imagine the last laugh Tucker would have if, spotting the 6-foot-10 Davis five inches and after all those years abroad, if he led a Houston comeback to take down the West’s No. 1 seed. More

Steve Nash, the newly minted Nets coach, sounded all the right notes at his introductory news conference on Wednesday. He called the first coaching job of his career a “unique opportunity” and said the Nets had “an incredible roster” at an “incredible point in the history of the franchise.”He also defended his hiring, which has reignited the long-simmering debate over how much more often white people are chosen for N.B.A. head coaching jobs than Black people in a league where an estimated 80 percent of the players are Black.[Read: N.B.A.’s Head Coaching Diversity Under Scrutiny as Vacancies Loom]“Well, I did skip the line, frankly,” said Nash, who is white and has no coaching experience. “But at the same time, I think leading an N.B.A. team for almost two decades is pretty unique.”He added: “To be the head of the team on the floor. Think on the fly. To manage personalities, people and skill sets, and bring people together. Collaborating with a coaching staff for almost two decades. I mean, it’s not like I was in a vacuum.”Nash’s hiring was a surprise to many basketball observers. He has never officially coached at any level. Jacque Vaughn, who had been the Nets’ interim head coach since March, was passed over for the permanent role and asked to remain on as lead assistant.Nash’s résumé is almost entirely based off his N.B.A. playing days, which lasted from 1996 to 2014, during which he become one of the greatest point guards in N.B.A. history. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and made eight All-Star teams. He led the Phoenix Suns’ so-called “seven seconds or less” offense that focused on quick shots and 3-pointers, which contributed to a broad evolution in playing style across the league.These attributes, General Manager Sean Marks said, made Nash the ideal head coach. Marks, a former teammate of Nash’s, joined Nash at the news conference. They wore matching black Nets polos and sat several feet apart, socially distanced.“As we spread the net in our search for the next leader, the next connector, a communicator and a cultural driver, we looked for these qualities, and all these qualities we found in Steve,” Marks said. “His résumé, his Hall of Fame résumé, his experiences both on and off the court and his character are second to none.”Nash told reporters that he reached out to Marks over the summer to express interest in the coaching job, but the conversation was a culmination of a two-decade relationship with Marks.“I love to compete,” Nash said. “I love to teach, lead and to be a part of the team. So to be in a position where I can do all those things on a day-to-day basis is a perfect fit. While I haven’t necessarily publicly stated a desire to coach, privately it’s always been in my mind.”He added: “When you can’t run up and down the court anymore, what can you do? What can you contribute?”Nash was close with Nets forward Kevin Durant before taking the coaching job. In 2015, Nash was hired by Golden State as a player development consultant and worked with Durant, who spent three seasons with the Warriors. Nash also said Wednesday that he has a relationship with Nets guard Kyrie Irving. They worked out together in New York after Nash retired. Durant and Irving are two of the best players in the league and together make the Nets a formidable championship contender.“Kyrie is one of my favorite players of all time,” Nash said. “He’s brilliant. His skill level is historically off the charts. Creative. Guts. Competitiveness. So for me to get to coach him is a pleasure.”Asked what kind of coach he would be on the sideline, Nash said he wasn’t sure yet.“I don’t see myself as a yeller and screamer,” Nash said. “But I haven’t actually been over there yet so we’ll see what transpires. But I think the reality is I’m going to be myself. If I’m anything other than myself, it’s not going to work. I can’t come in trying to conform to what I think a coach is supposed to be.” More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Everything was simpler in November and December, back when the Milwaukee Bucks were rolling through the regular season and chasing a championship and no one knew anything about the coronavirus. Giannis Antetokounmpo had somehow improved his game, and the future was rife with possibility.When the Bucks reconvened here at Walt Disney World for the N.B.A.’s restart in July, they were not whole. Two players did not make the trip after testing positive for the coronavirus — Eric Bledsoe and Pat Connaughton eventually joined the team — but it seemed to foreshadow the challenges that loomed.The challenge of reassembling the unusual qualities that had made the Bucks such a special team before the season was suspended. The challenge of generating energy in a spectator-free bubble. The challenge of unearthing their chemistry after a four-and-a-half-month hiatus. And, of course, the challenge of shining a spotlight on social justice issues as the world watched.The basketball part of the equation never came together for the top-seeded Bucks, who were eliminated from the playoffs after losing to the Miami Heat on Tuesday night in Game 5 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series. Antetokounmpo, favored to win his second consecutive N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award, sat out the Bucks’ 103-94 loss with a sprained ankle, relegated to the role of cheerleader as his teammates pushed on without him. Antetokounmpo had hoped to be healthy enough to play in Game 6.“If it’s up to me, I play with one leg,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we have people with the team that sometimes have a bigger say than you and have to protect you.”One of those people, Coach Mike Budenholzer, helped make that decision. It was also Budenholzer, along with team executives in the front office, who supported the players last month when they chose to sit out a first-round playoff game against the Orlando Magic, a move they described as a boycott after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha Wis., about 40 miles south of Milwaukee. Similar protests spread across multiple sports leagues.On Tuesday, Budenholzer choked back tears as he tried to reconcile the twin threads of the Bucks’ experience in the bubble. There was the obvious disappointment of his team’s early exit, especially given the expectations of a deep run. But those feelings were counterbalanced by the protest and the platform that his players seized.“Our team,” Budenholzer said, “was on the right side of history.”Nothing about the restart was easy for the Bucks, who were 3-5 in eight seeding games ahead of their series against Orlando. And then something much more significant happened. After Blake was repeatedly shot in the back by a white officer, George Hill, a point guard and one of the team’s veteran leaders, expressed regret about having decided to play at all in the bubble.“We shouldn’t have came to this damn place, to be honest,” he said at a news conference. “Coming here just took all the focal points off what the issues are.”He was referring to issues like systemic racism and police brutality, issues that the Bucks sought to highlight by sitting out their game against the Magic. The league wound up postponing its schedule for three days, and there was some doubt about whether the postseason would even resume.But the players opted to stay, as N.B.A. team owners pledged to try to use some arenas across the league as voting sites in November.The Bucks soon closed out their first-round series before meeting the Heat — a formidable opponent that ran out to a 3-1 lead. After spraining his ankle in Game 3, Antetokounmpo aggravated the injury early in Game 4. Without him, his teammates plowed to a 118-115 overtime win to extend the series to a fifth game.But it was a temporary reprieve for a tired (and injured) team, one that had also committed itself to addressing problems that the players felt were of greater importance.“Obviously, it’s hard to balance those two,” Antetokounmpo said, adding: “We chose as a team to do both. Is it harder to do both? Yes, it’s harder to do both. But that’s what we chose as a team, to stand up for something that’s bigger than basketball, to stand up for something that we believe, and at the same time play basketball. But it’s not easy.”As for his own future, Antetokounmpo said he was already looking ahead to next season — yes, with the Bucks.“We can learn from this and get better as a team,” he said, “and come back and hopefully build a culture in Milwaukee that, for many years, we can come out here and compete every single year for a championship.”Antetokounmpo, a 6-foot-11 forward whom Milwaukee drafted in 2013, is eligible to sign a contract extension this off-season. But if he declines to do so, he could become an unrestricted free agent after next season. The Bucks need to sign him, or they risk losing him. The entire situation is already producing agita among basketball fans in Wisconsin.For now, Antetokounmpo appears committed to the Bucks. (He told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday night that he would not request a trade if he does not finalize an extension, saying he wanted to “get right back at it next season.”) But his contract situation will remain a source of intrigue, and the Bucks will need to find ways to improve his supporting cast.Even so, the Bucks left an imprint on this odd, challenging season — not in the way that many would have predicted at the start of the year, with a championship parade along the shores of Lake Michigan, but in a meaningful way that went beyond the game and a season that ended too soon. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Another season for the Milwaukee Bucks ended in disappointment, this one nearly 11 months after it started. The top-seeded Bucks were ousted from the N.B.A. playoffs on Tuesday night with a 103-94 loss to the Miami Heat, who clinched their Eastern Conference semifinal series, four games to one.In an odd season that was interrupted and then extended by the coronavirus pandemic, the Bucks still seemed primed for a championship run when they arrived for the N.B.A.’s restart at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., this summer. But after finishing with the league’s best regular-season record for the second straight year, the Bucks again flamed out in the playoffs.Last season, Milwaukee lost to the Toronto Raptors, the eventual champions, in the conference finals. This season, the Bucks went up against a formidable opponent in the conference semifinals. Led by Jimmy Butler, who has left his tough-minded imprint all over the Heat in his first season with the team, Miami wore down the Bucks, who were undermanned by the end of the series.The Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is widely expected to collect his second straight N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award sometime in the coming days, sprained his right ankle in Game 3 before tweaking the injury early in Game 4. Without him for much of that game, the Bucks were able to stave off elimination with an unexpected win that showed their resolve.But Antetokounmpo, 25, did not play in Game 5 — he warmed up before the team ruled him out — and his teammates could not compensate for his absence.Now, the Bucks are sure to face questions — and important decisions — about their future. Antetokounmpo, a 6-foot-11 forward and generational talent whom Milwaukee drafted in 2013, is eligible to sign a contract extension this off-season. But if he declines to do so, he could become an unrestricted free agent after next season. More

Rajon Rondo and Markieff Morris gave the Lakers an unexpected lift Sunday in the team’s 117-109 victory over the Houston Rockets to even the Western Conference semifinal matchup heading into Game 3. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Giannis Antetokounmpo was waiting in the locker room for his teammates on Sunday, standing on his bad right ankle to greet every one of them. His season isn’t over yet.Khris Middleton scored 36 points, including a big 3-pointer with 6.4 seconds left in overtime, and the Milwaukee Bucks avoided a sweep by beating the Miami Heat, 118-115, in Game 4 of the teams’ Eastern Conference semifinal series.The Heat still lead the series, 3-1, but the Bucks, the best team in the regular season, are still alive, even after Antetokounmpo left early in the second quarter with an aggravation of his sprained right ankle.“Khris is very unique,” Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer said. “He’s got a way about him. He wanted to play. He asked to stay in the game.”As if there were any other option. Middleton’s season high before Sunday was 40 minutes; he logged 48 in Game 4, taking over with Antetokounmpo watching from the locker room.“Just keep fighting,” said Middleton, who also had eight rebounds and eight assists. “That’s all my teammates did.”Bam Adebayo had 26 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists for Miami. Duncan Robinson scored 20 points, Jae Crowder had 18 and Goran Dragic and Jimmy Butler each finished with 17 for the Heat.“We didn’t deserve to win that game,” Butler said.Miami had an 8-point lead in the fourth quarter, promptly allowed the Bucks to score the next 12, and now needs to come back on Tuesday in an effort to finish the series off.“At the end of the day, we should have played like we did in Game 1, Game 2 and Game 3,” Adebayo said.Antetokounmpo scored 19 points for the Bucks in only 11 minutes, while Brook Lopez and Eric Bledsoe each had 14 for Milwaukee. George Hill added 12 for the Bucks.Miami managed only 2 points in the first 4 minutes 30 seconds of overtime, got within one on a 3-pointer from Tyler Herro, but Middleton delivered the biggest shot of the night to make it 116-112.Herro made another 3-pointer with 3.0 seconds left, but Middleton sealed it with a pair of free throws — and Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra lauded Milwaukee’s effort afterward.“The reality is, they deserved to win the game,” Spoelstra said. “They were doing things with more force, more consistency.”Antetokounmpo had 19 of Milwaukee’s first 30 points, shooting 8-for-10 from the floor. But in an instant, everything changed for the Bucks.He aggravated his sprained right ankle with 10:18 left in the second quarter, rolling it inward — just as he did in Game 3 on Friday — as he tried to drive past Miami’s Andre Iguodala. He tumbled to the court, grabbing the ankle and screaming in pain.He took the free throws; without doing that, he would not have been permitted to return. But at halftime, the Bucks delivered word that he would not be back.So his game was over.The Bucks’ season wasn’t. Milwaukee said Antetokounmpo would receive treatment Sunday night and Monday before a decision is made about his availability for Tuesday.“He’s going to be back,” Bledsoe said.Middleton did all he could to keep the Bucks afloat, scoring 21 points in the third quarter — the highest-scoring quarter of his career — on 6-for-9 shooting from the field and 7-for-7 from the free-throw line. His previous best in a quarter was 20, on Nov. 1, 2017, against Charlotte.He set the tone, and the Bucks’ season is still alive.“We’ve got to fight every night to keep on playing,” Middleton said. More

It was just two years ago when Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers’ gregarious and talented center, told reporters about an interaction he had with his gifted rookie partner, the much more subdued but still skillful Ben Simmons.Simmons approached Embiid after the Boston Celtics had just eliminated the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals in five games and showed him his hands.“There’s going to be a lot of rings on these,” Embiid recounted Simmons saying.The Sixers were the envy of many opposing teams, their two young dynamic stars with their best days in front of them. They had won over a typically unforgiving fan base, many of whom among it brushing aside their flaws, assuming that, like with many league greats, they would be fixed with time.Two disappointing playoff runs later, Philadelphia finds itself once again hitting reset. The Sixers were heartbroken in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the eventual champion Toronto Raptors last year, when Kawhi Leonard’s series-clinching jump shot rimmed in, and humiliated this year, when those pesky Celtics swept them in the first round with Simmons out injured. Gone is the hopefulness with which Simmons held up his hands. The team has little salary cap flexibility, few trade assets with which to retool and an unclear organizational direction. They’ve gone from the envy of the league to a cautionary tale.Much of the blame has fallen on the front office, particularly Elton Brand, the team’s general manager, for putting together a mismatched roster through botched trades and by overpaying inconsistent veterans like Tobias Harris and Al Horford. The team blamed the coach, Brett Brown, saying in the announcement of his firing on Aug. 24 that the Sixers “fell well short of our goals” and that it would be “best to go in a new direction.” This is what often happens in these situations: a clean, easy way to absolve the front office of responsibility.But there are also the curious cases of Embiid and Simmons, the franchise pillars who have not shown the growth expected of prospective superstars. Embiid, 26, is a maestro in the low post. His dazzling footwork near the basket has made him difficult to stop during his four healthy seasons.Yet, after averaging a career high 27.5 points a and 13.6 rebounds per game last year, his numbers dipped to a more pedestrian 23 points and 11.6 rebounds this year. His 3-point shooting (33.1 percent) remained a weak point, down slightly from his rookie-year percentage of 36.7. And yet again, Embiid’s conditioning became an issue late in games, as he often looked tired and was slow getting up and down the floor.Simmons, 24, has developed into one of the best defenders in the league over three seasons, after he missed his post-draft season with a foot injury. But his numbers haven’t varied much beyond what they were this season: per-game averages of 16.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 8 assists. A constant stream of criticism of Simmons has centered on his strange, seemingly purposeful refusal to shoot 3-pointers; he’s shot just 24 in three seasons.It became enough of an issue that Brown publicly called for Simmons to shoot more from deep. A month later, in January, Brown said that he had “failed” to get Simmons to change his game.Simmons and Embiid have put up good, consistent numbers — and, occasionally, great ones. Their production has been reliable. But “good,” “consistent” and “reliable” typically are not the words most prominently associated with franchise centerpieces who win championships.So the question becomes: Are Embiid and Simmons championship-level focal points? Or are they merely mortal stars? If the answer to the latter is yes, Simmons’ hands will be devoid of rings for years to come.If this seems unfair, remember that it was the players — particularly Embiid — who raised expectations for themselves. After Embiid’s rookie 2016-17 season, in which he played less than half the 82 regular-season games, he declared to The Daily Mail, “I think I have the talent to become a Hall of Famer, to win championships, and Most Valuable Player awards.”This is not to say that the book has been written on the duo, who have contrasting playing styles, personalities and approaches to the game at a still-early stage in their careers. Their best days may very well be in front of them.Billy Lange, an assistant coach for the Sixers from 2013-19, said in an interview that observers should be patient. After all, he said, greatness does not happen over night.“I think sometimes what gets very lost in how people evaluate them is that, look, this is still very new,” said Lange, now the head coach at Saint Joseph’s University. “Ben just finished his third season and he didn’t have a full season. People want to often comment about what he can’t do, but the reality is that he’s an All-Star and now he’s got to take the next jump to superstar.”He added, “I can say this about both of those guys: They have ambition. What comes with maturity and ownership is now, ‘How do I match that ambition to reach those goals?’ They both want to be great.”When Simmons and Embiid entered the N.B.A. two years apart, they came with different levels of fame. Simmons, the first pick of the 2016 draft, was quieter but in some ways better known. That fall, Showtime released a documentary called “One & Done” that examined Simmons’s lone year at Louisiana State University.Embiid was drafted third in 2014 out of the University of Kansas. Hailing from Cameroon, he was more of a mystery, having arrived in the United States when he was 16, shortly after playing basketball for the first time. From his own telling, he learned how to shoot by watching videos on YouTube. After missing his first two N.B.A. seasons — because of foot injuries, which also cost Simmons his first post-draft year — Embiid quickly drew attention with his unfiltered, jovial nature. Just a sampling:There was the time in 2017 when a Lyft driver spotted Embiid casually going for a nighttime jog by himself through the streets of Philadelphia.In 2018, Embiid asked Rihanna on Twitter if she was single.And there was lots of trash talk, aimed at opponents — and, sometimes, their parents.Embiid won over the Philadelphia fans, who have not seen a 76ers championship since 1983, by being funny, vicious and brilliant on their behalf. But as the Sixers embarked on a disappointing regular season that left them fighting for the sixth seed in the N.B.A.’s weaker Eastern Conference, there were signs that Embiid’s relationship with the city’s fan base had frayed. In February, Embiid shushed the home crowd after hitting a clutch 3-pointer against the Chicago Bulls, following reports of booing from the unhappy fans. At the end of July, Embiid downplayed that incident on “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast, saying that he loved playing in Philadelphia because of its passionate fans.“But then again,” Embiid said, “if you dish it, you’ve also got to be able to take it. Just like when I shushed them and they all went crazy. I’m like ‘Well, you were booing me!’”For now, it appears that the Embiid and Simmons partnership is staying together. On that same podcast, Embiid said that they “can get so much better than we are right now.”“The potential that we have, I love him, I want to be with him for the rest of my career,” he said.And despite the team’s struggles this year, Brand recently told reporters that he intended to continue to build around Embiid and Simmons. But if they don’t make a leap soon, there is a decent chance that the city’s love for them — tenuous with even the best athletes — may come to an end.“We do this thing with Ben and Joel where we call them superstars and then when they fail, we say, ‘Well, they’re just young. You can’t expect a lot out of them,” Spike Eskin, a host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” said in an interview. “Those two things don’t exist together. Either you are growing and getting better and a future star, or you are a superstar. But you can’t be both.” More