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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

Many N.B.A. stars are loud, flashy and quick to air grievances. What to make of one who shies away from all of that? More

Hartley, a seventh-year guard, was having a career year for Phoenix before a season-ending injury cut it short. But this year has given her something to build on, even beyond basketball. More

The first Black coach to lead a team to the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball championship, he helped mold N.B.A. stars like Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson at Georgetown University. More