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With a fourth quarter scoring run propelled by CJ McCollum and Carmelo Anthony, Portland earned a spot in the first round of the N.B.A. playoffs. They will face LeBron James’s Lakers. More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Zion Williamson, the Pelicans’ cornerstone forward, will have a new coach in New Orleans next season as he tries to rebound from an injury-plagued rookie season.The Pelicans fired Coach Alvin Gentry on Saturday with one year left on his contract. The widely expected move came the day after the Pelicans had returned home from a disappointing showing in the N.B.A. restart at Walt Disney World.Two of the first five teams eliminated from the N.B.A. bubble made major moves in response to their early exits. Before Gentry’s ouster, Sacramento General Manager Vlade Divac stepped down under pressure on Friday after the Kings had extended their league-leading playoff drought to 14 seasons.New Orleans was one of six sub-.500 teams given a chance by the league’s return-to-play format to force their way into the postseason, joining the 16 teams that had attained playoff positions when the season was suspended indefinitely on March 11. The Pelicans won just two of eight games and finished 21st out of 22 teams.After missing nearly two weeks’ worth of basketball activities in the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble, attending to what the Pelicans described as an urgent family matter and completing a subsequent four-day quarantine before he could rejoin the team, Williamson played no more than 27 minutes in his five games in Florida.Williamson also missed the first 43 games of his rookie season after undergoing surgery in October to repair a torn meniscus in his right knee and wound up playing in just 24 of New Orleans’s 72 regular-season games. He posted big numbers when he did play, though, becoming the first rookie since Shaquille O’Neal in 1992-93 to average at least 20 points (22.5) while shooting better than 55 percent from the field (.583).Gentry, who is owed an estimated $5 million next season, coached the Pelicans for the past five seasons, posting a record of 175-225 (.438), but managed just one playoff berth amid a seemingly constant swirl of injuries.New Orleans reached the second round of the playoffs in 2017-18 and then endured a season of tumult in 2018-19 that ultimately led the star forward Anthony Davis to force a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers in July 2019.The Pelicans’ struggles last season, however, did put them in position to win the 2019 draft lottery and the right to select Williamson out of Duke. With Williamson, Jrue Holiday and Brandon Ingram — who was acquired in the Davis deal — on the roster, New Orleans is expected to attract a strong field of candidates to replace Gentry. The former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue, the former Milwaukee Bucks and Nets coach Jason Kidd and the former Nets coach Kenny Atkinson have already been mentioned as potential successors.The Pelicans join the Chicago Bulls as the only current teams with coaching openings, but the Nets are expected to conduct a broad coaching search that would also include Lue and Kidd when their stay in the bubble is over. The Nets have said repeatedly that their interim coach, Jacque Vaughn, will also receive consideration for the full-time post.“I’m grateful for and appreciative of Alvin’s commitment to the organization and, most importantly, the local community,” David Griffin, the Pelicans’ executive vice president of basketball operations, said in a statement. “These types of moves are often about fit and timing, and we believe now is the right time to make this change and bring in a new voice.”Williamson was held out of the Pelicans’ final two games in Florida after they had been eliminated from playoff contention, but he seemed to acknowledge in his final interview session with reporters on Thursday morning that playing at his listed weight of 285 pounds might have contributed to his injury issues this season.Williamson said he planned to spend the off-season doing the requisite “work on getting my body where it needs to be.”When pressed about his weight and conditioning, Williamson said: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But I’m going to stick to the opinions of the people closest to me and my team and just go from there.” More

The Nets have been one of the most impressive teams inside the bubble, but a first-round playoff matchup with the defending champion Toronto Raptors is a next-level challenge. More

San Antonio leaves Walt Disney World having failed to make the playoffs for the first time since 1996-97. But the team’s irascible 71-year-old coach indicates he expects to be back next season. More

The Liberty’s season hasn’t gone as planned, but they have been competitive in several losses, and key players are showing growth. More

In this week’s newsletter, Marc Stein selects the N.B.A.’s All-Lefty Team and wonders what could have been for Zion Williamson’s too-short rookie season. More

There was a time in Carmelo Anthony’s nearly two-decade N.B.A. career when his maturity was called into question. As recently as last summer, there was even uncertainty about whether Anthony, the aging 10-time All-Star, was employable as a professional basketball player and could accept being a part of a supporting cast.But in November, Anthony signed with the Portland Trail Blazers, embraced a reduced role and began having his best season in years.Now, his story is one of redemption. At 36, he is considered a valued elder statesman who is destined for the Basketball Hall of Fame. After spending much of his N.B.A. tenure fending off questions about his commitment to winning, Anthony showed up noticeably slimmer last month for the league’s restart at Walt Disney World, and he has hit key baskets that have helped Portland remain in the hunt for the playoffs.“I feel like we could have been in the finals last year if we had him,” Damian Lillard, Portland’s franchise star, told reporters recently, referring to Anthony.Maybe this is the year. But even if it’s not, Anthony’s strong play has helped him maintain a platform for an endeavor for which he says he will never accept a reduced role: speaking out about social justice.“Everything is shifting,” Anthony said in a phone interview. “We have to adapt to the change.”His latest foray into activism comes in a partnership with Chris Paul, the All-Star Oklahoma City Thunder guard, and Dwyane Wade, the retired N.B.A. star. The three helped create the Social Change Fund, a philanthropic effort to invest in organizations that support people of color, both from a policy perspective — such as advancing causes like criminal justice reform and expanded voting rights — and at a community level by targeting racial inequities in housing and education.Anthony said the group came together because of the conversations about racism after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by the police in Minneapolis in May, setting off nationwide protests. Several N.B.A. players participated. Anthony said he hoped this fund would be able to address inequality on the front end, short-circuiting the familiar conversations after the fact.“Before, we would say things and we would follow through, then it would just die out until something else happened,” Anthony said. “And then something else happened. We keep being reactive as opposed to being proactive.”He added, “We realize that we’re still in the same situation that we’ve been in for a very long time.”Anthony, Paul and Wade contributed the initial funds for the project with the hope that their names could draw more investments. Goldman Sachs and Creative Artists Agency have signed on as seed funders, according to a news release.“We all have our different lanes,” Anthony said. “Whether I’m on criminal justice reform, or I want to be on educational reform, we all have these different lanes. So we just want to build this whole actual fund so we could then attack those lanes.”Anthony has been one of the more outspoken players in the N.B.A. for several years. Last month, he guest-edited Slam, a basketball magazine, and appeared on the cover with his 13-year-old son, Kiyan, both in black hoodies. In a column, Anthony wrote, “Will you ever take your knee off our necks? Is it because I’m Black? Does that scare you?”In 2016, Anthony, Wade, Paul and LeBron James took the stage at the ESPYs and began the show with a monologue decrying racism and police brutality. The year before, Anthony marched in Baltimore, where he grew up, to protest the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who died in police custody.Early in Anthony’s N.B.A. career, he was criticized for appearing briefly in an anti-snitching DVD that was filmed in Baltimore and threatened potential witnesses to crimes. Soon after the video emerged, Anthony disavowed its content.Now, Anthony is speaking out about police reform. He said he grew up in a community where everyone knew each other and some police officers had a strong relationship with the neighborhood. But others were unfamiliar, and that caused issues.“I’ve dealt with it all. Have I ever experienced police brutality before? Yes,” Anthony said, adding: “Whether it was being pulled over, being racially profiled, or being in my neighborhood and being on my block and the police jumping out of their cars and snatching you up and throwing you on the sidewalk and make you sit there — I’ve experienced that.”Asked if he supported the movement to defund the police, Anthony said he wanted to learn more.“Have I thought about it? Yes. Have I come to a solution? No, I haven’t,” Anthony said. He added, “If we don’t understand the root of policies and police and where that stems from, then going out there and trying to speak on defunding the police would not make sense.”He continued: “At the end of the day, do we need police? Yes, we need police, but we need them to do their job or we need them to do it the right way and we need to hold them accountable for that the same way we are held accountable for the things we do as well.”Anthony has rarely spoken about President Trump, but in June, after the National Guard and other law enforcement tear-gassed peaceful protesters outside the White House, he said in an Instagram post that the president had “declared war on the American people.”But Anthony said that he was not interested in getting involved in the presidential campaign. A few other players have, such as James, who has publicly supported Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Paul, who signed a letter published this week calling on Biden to name a Black woman as his running mate.“I’m not a politician so I don’t want to get involved in politics,” Anthony said. “Where I will get involved in is my community and the future of my community and where my community is at right now.”Issues motivate Anthony more than specific candidates, from his telling.“I want what’s right for my people,” he said. “If you’re a Republican and it’s right for my people, then it is what it is. If you’re a Democrat and it’s right for my people, then it is what it is. I’m not in the business of picking a side just to pick a side.”On this trajectory, Anthony’s legacy, which has been linked to immense talent but notable failures, may end up being about something else entirely. It’s unclear how much longer he will play in the N.B.A., but it seems like his days of making All-Star teams are behind him — though people have counted him out before. One way or another, Anthony said he would continue to use whatever microphone he has to talk about social justice.“This conversation doesn’t just start and stop with me being a basketball player,” Anthony said. “This is a lifelong journey, a lifelong fight, a lifelong conversation I will continue to have. It’s not that I’ll be ‘focusing’ on that. I am that.” More

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers provided a pointed response on Wednesday night to President Trump’s criticism of players’ kneeling during the national anthem: The games will go on without you watching.After Trump said earlier Wednesday that he regarded N.B.A. players’ kneeling during the national anthem as “disgraceful” and vowed to stop watching games, James said that the basketball community was not “sad about losing his viewership.”In a Wednesday morning telephone interview with Fox & Friends, Trump said he turned off N.B.A. games “when I see people kneeling” and “disrespecting our flag and disrespecting our national anthem.” Asked about Trump’s comments after the Lakers’ 105-86 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder later in the day, James fired back.“The game will go on without his eyes on it,” James said at his postgame news conference from the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World in Florida. “I can sit here and speak for all of us that love the game of basketball: We could care less.”The practice of teams lining up and kneeling during the national anthem to protest systemic racism and police brutality has become a standard feature of every game at the N.B.A. restart since the league officially resumed its season July 30. There have been only a few exceptions; Orlando’s Jonathan Isaac, Miami’s Meyers Leonard, San Antonio Coach Gregg Popovich and his assistant coach Becky Hammon have chosen to stand.Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, said last week that he would not enforce the league’s rule — which dates to 1981 — mandating that players, coaches and team staff members line up and stand in a “dignified” posture for the playing of the national anthem before every game.“I respect our teams’ unified act of peaceful protest for social justice and under these unique circumstances will not enforce our longstanding rule,” Silver said.Trump tweeted last month that he would turn off games if players knelt, then broadened his criticism in Wednesday’s Fox & Friends interview.“It’s not acceptable to me,” Trump said, expressing disappointment because the White House, he said, worked “very hard” with the N.B.A. to help the league reboot after the season was suspended on March 11 because of the coronavirus pandemic.“When I see them kneeling, I just turn off the game,” Trump said. “I have no interest in the game.”Trump has often criticized athletes for kneeling during the anthem in what is broadly seen as a strategy to appeal to to his political base. In 2017, Trump urged N.F.L. team owners to fire anyone who would not stand for the anthem. In June, he said he would not watch the N.F.L. if players continued to kneel.James had criticized Trump before, calling him “U bum” in a 2017 tweet in which he said it had been “a great honor” to go to the White House — a tradition for champion sports teams — until Trump took office.In Wednesday’s Fox interview, Trump said that no president had done more for Black people than he had — “with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.” When told of those comments, James said: “You trying to make me laugh right now? I appreciate that.” More