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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Before the Milwaukee Bucks labored through a stretch of basketball that could wind up altering their future, Giannis Antetokounmpo did something that he tends to do well: He elevated for a dunk, a brief burst of explosiveness that gave the Bucks a fourth-quarter lead against the Miami Heat in Game 3 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series.But upon landing, Antetokounmpo grimaced. He had rolled his right ankle in the first quarter, and perhaps it was bothering him even if he would later refuse to admit it. But in that moment, his expression — his face contorted in pain as he turned to get back on defense — was, in its own way, a sign of so much more misery to come.The Bucks went the rest of the game without making a field goal, and their 115-100 loss to the Heat on Friday night put them in the deepest hole imaginable. Miami will have a chance to sweep the top-seeded Milwaukee in the best-of-seven of series on Sunday afternoon, while thorny questions are already percolating about the Bucks — and the uncertainty that looms.For the second consecutive year, the Bucks entered the playoffs with the league’s best regular-season record. Last year, their championship hopes were extinguished by the Toronto Raptors in the conference finals. (The Raptors went on to win it all.) This year, the Bucks’ stay inside the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World is on the cusp of being prematurely popped.“They made every play,” the Bucks coach, Mike Budenholzer, said of the Heat, “and we didn’t make enough, obviously.”An early exit would be less forgivable this time around. Antetokounmpo, 25, a dynamic force whom the Bucks drafted and groomed, is the favorite to collect his second consecutive N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award sometime in the coming days. But his contract situation — he can become an unrestricted free agent in 2021 if he refuses to sign an extension this off-season — has been brewing like a storm cloud, rumbling closer with each blown postseason opportunity.And while this series is not over, most of the stories about this game will read as epitaphs (including this one) for good reason: No team in N.B.A. history has come back from a three-games-to-none deficit in a best-of-seven series. The Bucks would need to become the first, to sustain their title dreams.“Might as well make history,” the Bucks’ George Hill said. “First time in the history of the N.B.A. that we’re playing in a bubble. First time that a team can come back from down 3-0. We’ve got to trust each other and continue to believe.”But do they believe? The Bucks missed their final 10 shots as the Heat closed out Friday’s game with a 17-1 run. All told, Miami outscored Milwaukee by 40-13 in the fourth quarter, which was the most lopsided fourth quarter of a playoff game since the advent of the shot clock, according to ESPN. For his part, Antetokounmpo rattled through a long list of problems, starting with the twin observations that the Bucks could neither rebound nor score. And while the Heat played with discipline, he said, the Bucks lost their composure.“They’re a great team, and you know they’re going to play hard,” Antetokounmpo said of the Heat. “They play hard for 48 minutes. For you to beat them, you have to match that. You cannot play hard for 36 minutes. You cannot play hard for 24 minutes. You have to play hard for 48 minutes to beat a team like that. We knew that coming into the series, and they played harder than us.”Sports and the VirusUpdated Sept. 4, 2020Here’s what’s happening as the world of sports slowly comes back to life:The 146th running of the Kentucky Derby, which was moved to Saturday from May 2, will have no spectators present because of the coronavirus pandemic.The coronavirus pandemic has had an uneven impact on high school football across the United States.The most complicated puzzle in sports is the return of college athletics during a pandemic. The University of California, Berkeley is allowing The Times an inside look at their journey’s ups and downs.The idea that the Heat had “played harder” than the Bucks was a theme for Antetokounmpo: He mentioned it 16 times over the course of a six-minute news conference. Jimmy Butler, in particular, left his imprint all over the game for Miami, finishing with 30 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists.Antetokounmpo collected 21 points, 16 rebounds and 9 assists but shot 7 of 21 from the field. He also played just 35 minutes in a game that the Bucks desperately needed to win, and started the fourth quarter on the bench. He said he could have played more. His ankle, he said, was “great.” Budenholzer indicated that he had no regrets about limiting Antetokounmpo’s playing time.“If you’re going as hard as these guys are in a playoff game — 35, 36 — I think that’s pushing the ceiling,” Budenholzer said, referring to the minutes he wanted his best players to supply.When the season was suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Bucks were 53-12 and looking primed for a title run. But they have not been able to reassemble the pieces in the bubble. In eight seeding games, they went 3-5, then lost the first game of their first-round playoff series with the Orlando Magic before winning the next four.At the same time, the Bucks have been at the center of various tensions and challenges for players here. It was Hill, one of the team’s veteran leaders, who led his team to boycott one of their playoff games against the Magic after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha, Wis. It led to a wave of disruptions and protests across multiple sports leagues.On Friday, Hill was asked whether the team was struggling to focus on basketball with so much else going on.“There’s no excuses,” he said. “We’re here in the bubble, and we’re playing. We can’t make excuses why we’re not playing good, quality basketball right now. You’ve still got to go out on that court and lace your shoes up just like every other team here.”In the face of the longest odds, Antetokounmpo seemed to be doing what he could to remain upbeat.“I believe in my teammates,” he said. “I trust my teammates. I love my teammates, and I want my teammates to be confident. I’m confident.”The Bucks have another opportunity to prove it. They may not have many more. More

On the court, Layshia Clarendon has become the leader of a young Liberty team coursing through a season with many unexpected challenges. As an executive committee member of the W.N.B.A.’s players’ union, Clarendon has also become a voice for social justice for the league this year.Clarendon is averaging a career-high 11.7 points a game, but the Liberty are 2-15 and in last place in the Eastern Conference. The team is playing this season without several key players who decided to opt out of this season because of concerns over the coronavirus. Sabrina Ionescu, their star No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft, has been out since she sprained her ankle in the third game of the season.Clarendon, who is in their eighth season, missed all but nine games last year, with the Connecticut Sun, because of a right ankle injury. The ankle “gets stiff every now and then,” Clarendon said, but they have still been able to serve as a critical veteran presence for a young Liberty team that began the year with seven rookies.But this year is about more than just statistics for Clarendon. The W.N.B.A. has dedicated its season to Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman who was shot and killed by the police in Louisville, Ky., and the Say Her Name campaign, which focuses on Black women and girls affected by police brutality and violence. Clarendon is one of the players leading the W.N.B.A.’s social justice initiatives.The New York Times talked to Clarendon about playing fearlessly, the challenges of the tight game schedule this season and how, they said, social justice movements often overlook Black women.Q: What has life in the bubble been like for you?Clarendon: It’s up and down, depending on the moment. The schedule is really hectic. I don’t think I expected it to be this challenging to consistently play three games a week, so that’s been really tough from a purely recovery standpoint.There’s just not a lot of downtime or time off just because we are playing so often.How do you cope with the busy schedule?Normal ice baths and recovery stuff that I do every season. It’s definitely been a more mentally challenging season. Obviously, with Covid going on, the state of the world and police murdering people left and right, it’s been more emotional and spiritual than physical most of the time. You can sleep for nine hours and still wake up and feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.What do you think is the best part of your game?I would say tenacity and fearlessness. It doesn’t matter if I get blocked, I’m going to go right back in the paint again against the same player who blocked me on the previous play.How did you develop that tenacity and fearlessness?Practice finishing a lot, trying to get into people’s bodies and create contact. I think it’s a mind-set, too. If you are really early on in the league and you get your stuff thrown into the stands, it’s embarrassing. But if you don’t get crossed-up in this league or your shot blocked in a game or something really bad in game, then you probably aren’t playing hard enough and you really don’t have your heart in it.This league is so good, it’s just going to happen. Part of that is a mind-set of knowing that when you go up against Sue Bird or A’ja Wilson, they are going to block you. You are also going to get them. It’s about looking at it as a challenge and an opportunity rather than a: ‘Oh, I got blocked. That’s so embarrassing.’ No one wants to be on the wrong side of “SportsCenter.”As a member of the executive committee, you helped lead the day of reflection last week. What went into the decision to call it a day of reflection instead of a boycott or strike? (The league missed two days of games last week after its players joined an N.B.A. work stoppage to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot in the back multiple times by the police in Kenosha, Wis. )After we had a players meeting we realized just how exhausted everyone was. It was more like we needed that day. I think very much of it was standing in solidarity with our N.B.A. brothers. You could see it in people’s faces that day on TV how exhausted and heartbroken everyone was.Yes, we were striking. Yes, we were fighting injustice, but we are exhausted and we are tired. We are calling it for a day of reflection and a day of mourning. We needed the time to take a step back.What would you like to see the W.N.B.A. do next?Voting is going to be a big one that we are trying to figure out a strategy around it right now. We could wear a ‘vote’ mask, which would be great awareness, but there has to be some longer game strategy behind how we are going to engage people. We are going to really focus on voting and the work we have been doing with Say Her Name, which I think can’t be understated.At a time when Black women continue to be erased from the larger conversation of police brutality and violence, that’s why our work is particularly important. While, yes, we also stand with Jacob Blake and his family and all of the men who have been murdered in this movement, it is a constant reminder of how women have to choose between erasing themselves to stand up for their race or standing up for women, standing up for their own women.That’s the constant struggle I feel like we are always in. I don’t want us to get away from Saying Her Name because that’s the whole point of the movement and why we came here. It’s sad that we always have to choose between standing up for our men and standing up for ourselves, because who stands up for us? No one. More

The New York Liberty guard has worked all summer in Florida as part of the W.N.B.A.’s experiment isolating in a bubble. More

Steve Nash, who is white, landed a head coaching job this week despite his inexperience, renewing discussions about how few posts are filled by Black people in a league where most players are Black. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Ja Morant was announced as the winner of the N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year Award on Thursday night after nearly leading the Memphis Grizzlies to an unexpected postseason berth while dazzling crowds with his playmaking abilities and highlight-reel dunks.Morant, a 6-foot-3 point guard and the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft, received 99 of a possible 100 first-place votes. The Miami Heat’s Kendrick Nunn, who went undrafted in 2018 and spent last season in the G League, placed second in the voting. The New Orleans Pelicans’ Zion Williamson, a dynamic forward who was injured for much of the season, placed third and received the only other first-place vote from the panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. (The New York Times does not participate in awards voting.)“I need to figure out who was that person who didn’t pick me first,” Morant said in a conference call. “I want to shoot a direct message to them and thank them for motivating me even more to do more, be better and do whatever I can to help my team win basketball games. If anybody know who that is, let me know.”Morant, 21, who grew up in Dalzell, S.C., was a lightly recruited high school player before he emerged as a star in two seasons at Murray State, a mid-major school in Kentucky. It did not take him long to acclimate to the speed of the N.B.A. In his first season with the Grizzlies, he averaged 17.8 points and 7.3 assists a game while shooting 47.7 percent from the field.When the season was suspended in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Grizzlies were eighth in the Western Conference and positioned for a playoff run. But they were undone by injuries once the season resumed at Walt Disney World, and lost to the Portland Trail Blazers in the first-ever play-in game for the final spot.Morant recalled telling his family and friends on draft night that it was his goal to win the award.“And I told them I was going to do whatever I can and work to get it,” he said. “But I also told them it wasn’t my main focus. My main focus was to try to be better at the end of the season than I was at the beginning of the season.”Still, the Grizzlies’ future appears bright. Morant is a player around whom the franchise hopes to build in the wake of the “grit and grind” era that featured players like Mike Conley, now with the Utah Jazz, and Marc Gasol, who won a championship last season with the Toronto Raptors. The Grizzlies have a talented young core that also includes Jaren Jackson Jr., a second-year center who averaged 17.4 points and 4.6 rebounds a game. Brandon Clarke, another first-year player for the Grizzlies, finished fourth in the rookie of the year voting.“For him, it’s just been rapid growth,” Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins said of Morant in an interview earlier this season. “The great thing about him is he’s mature beyond his years, he’s got a high basketball I.Q., he loves the game, he’s always watching and studying and talking about it with his teammates, and he embraces coaching.”Williamson, the first overall pick in last year’s draft, missed the first half of the season with a knee injury but was a thrilling presence when he did play. In 24 games, he averaged 22.5 points and 6.3 rebounds while shooting 58.3 percent from the field. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The Nets made a stunning move Thursday to fill their coaching vacancy by hiring Steve Nash, the Hall of Fame point guard and two-time N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award winner, despite Nash’s lack of coaching experience.Nash will replace Jacque Vaughn, who will stay on as an assistant. Nets officials, led by General Manager Sean Marks, decided to take a splashy gamble on Nash rather than retain Vaughn or hire a more experienced replacement, believing Nash is a coaching natural who will benefit greatly from his relationship with the star forward Kevin Durant.Nash’s name was not previously mentioned in connection with the job and Vaughn, according to a Tuesday report from The Athletic, is the only other known candidate to have formally interviewed for the post.Vaughn had been the Nets’ interim coach since March 7, when the team, on course for a playoff berth, abruptly announced that it had mutually agreed to part ways with Kenny Atkinson. Despite missing most of his frontline players apart from Caris LeVert and Joe Harris, Vaughn coached the Nets to a 5-3 record in the eight seeding games at the N.B.A. restart. The Nets were then swept in the first round by the Toronto Raptors, the reigning champions, but surprised many with a victory over Milwaukee and a one-point loss to Portland that nearly prevented the Trail Blazers from reaching the playoffs.Vaughn became the fourth head coach — and third Black head coach alongside New Orleans’ Alvin Gentry and Indiana’s Nate McMillan — to lose his job after his team returned home from the N.B.A. bubble at Walt Disney World. Philadelphia also fired Coach Brett Brown after a first-round sweep against Boston.The Nets have maintained since March that Vaughn would be considered strongly for the full-time post. They were also widely expected to pursue Tyronn Lue, the Los Angeles Clippers’ in-demand assistant coach, among a number of other experienced candidates. Lue coached the Nets’ star guard Kyrie Irving to a championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016.Yet Marks had quietly targeted Nash for some time, according to three people familiar with the search who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Marks’s interest stemmed in part from Nash’s strong bond with Durant, which he built across Durant’s three seasons in Golden State while working as a part-time consultant for the Warriors in player development.The more immediate challenge for Nash will be establishing a similar rapport with Irving, who played in only 20 games in an injury-riddled debut season in Brooklyn. Durant sat the season out entirely as he recovered from a torn right Achilles’ tendon he sustained during the 2019 N.B.A. finals.“He continues to be a very loud voice in terms of where we’re going in the future and what we’re doing and I involve him like the other players and staff and how we’ll continue to build this team and how we move forward,” Marks said of Durant in early July.Nash, 46, arrived in Brooklyn this week, according to the people. An eight-time All-Star who led the league in assists five times, Nash had resisted all previous overtures to join an N.B.A. coaching staff full time, even as an assistant, since retiring after the 2013-14 season, saying repeatedly that he intended to put his coaching and front office aspirations on hold until his five children were older.The Phoenix Suns, with whom Nash won his back-to-back M.V.P. awards in 2005 and 2006, gauged Nash’s interest in recent years in both coaching and front-office work. Marks, though, convinced Nash to move up his timetable and make an immediate leap to head coaching, similar to what the Nets’ previous regime did in June 2013 when they hired Jason Kidd, one of Nash’s playing contemporaries, just after Kidd had participated in the playoffs with the Knicks.The hiring, beyond the questions sure to be raised about Nash’s lack of experience, will also bring renewed attention to the league’s dwindling number of Black head coaches. Vaughn’s reassignment has left the N.B.A. with just five in a league in which the player pool is estimated to be roughly 80 percent Black. At the start of the 2012-13 season, there were 14 Black head coaches.New Orleans and Indiana have yet to replace Gentry and McMillan; Philadelphia and Chicago are the N.B.A.’s other two teams with a coaching vacancy. The other current Black coaches are Atlanta’s Lloyd Pierce, Cleveland’s J.B. Bickerstaff, Detroit’s Dwane Casey, Phoenix’s Monty Williams and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Doc Rivers. Charlotte’s James Borrego was the first Latino coach in N.B.A. history, and Miami’s Erik Spoelstra, of Filipino descent, was the league’s first Asian-American coach.In retirement, Nash has worked with the men’s senior national basketball team in his native Canada — both as the program’s general manager and in an advisory role — while maintaining a significant presence in soccer as both a team owner and broadcaster. For the past two seasons, Nash was part of Turner Sports’ coverage of the Champions League. The various soccer jobs, Nash has said, allowed him to be home with his children in the Los Angeles area. More

Natasha Cloud of the Mystics and Bradley Beal of the Wizards are leading their teams in a joint push against racism in Washington, D.C. More

In this week’s newsletter, Marc Stein reflects on what he will miss as he leaves the bubble after more than 50 days. Plus: How long will Mike D’Antoni stay with the Rockets? More