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LeBron James has seen a great deal during his 17 seasons in the N.B.A. He has already won three championships, and now aspires to win his first with the Los Angeles Lakers. At 35, he is one of the oldest players in the league, with patches of gray showing in the beard he grew out during the four months he recently spent in relative seclusion.It is not often, then, that James finds himself in a new environment, coping with unusual circumstances that no one could have seen coming. But there he was on Thursday night, stationed on the foul line in a largely empty arena at Walt Disney World, barking defensive assignments at teammates as a game-operations crew piped in artificial crowd noise.James had not played basketball for the (television) viewing public in 135 days, since the N.B.A. suspended its season in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. But if there were questions about how he would look in his much-anticipated return, as the Lakers faced the Dallas Mavericks in a scrimmage ahead of the league’s official restart later this month, he crammed his 15 minutes of playing time full of answers.In short, LeBron James looked exactly the same.There are so few guarantees as the N.B.A. hopes to finish the season in its so-called bubble at the sprawling theme park near Orlando, Fla., but James seems determined to fill his familiar role. Against the Mavericks, he collected 12 points, 5 assists and 3 rebounds while shooting 4 of 6 from the field. He watched the second half from the bench, where he put ice packs on various parts of his body and accessorized his warm-up top with a couple of gold chains. The Mavericks’ 108-104 victory in a game with 10-minute quarters was an afterthought.“We wanted to try to get better,” James said. “We’re using this moment as a training camp to implement our identity, and our identity is to defend, share the ball, push the tempo and play together. I think we were able to accomplish that for as close to 40 minutes as possible.”Skeptics have suggested that this season — interrupted and uncertain, somehow both abridged and extended — will come with an asterisk. James does not subscribe to that theory, and why would he? As the window on his career narrows, he wants to seize another crack at a title. History will not remember that he won his fourth ring in a bubble.Giannis Antetokounmpo would love to win his first. Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks’ do-everything forward and the league’s reigning most valuable player, described the format as “the toughest championship you could ever win, because the circumstances are really, really tough right now.”It is an argument that suits his purposes, but there are merits to it. Players had to stay in shape during the long layoff, and even now, teams are short-handed. Like the Lakers, the Bucks made their Disney debut on Thursday. And in a 113-92 win over the San Antonio Spurs, the Bucks were without Eric Bledsoe, their starting point guard, and Pat Connaughton, one of their reserves. Both players recently revealed that they had tested positive for the coronavirus. Connaughton live-tweeted the game from his home in Milwaukee.As for Antetokounmpo, the odd atmosphere became apparent to him when he went to shoot free throws in the first quarter.“It was just quiet,” he said. “But at the end of the day, you play basketball, try to make the right play. Just listen to your coach. So for me personally, I tried to lock in.”Antetokounmpo also said that he felt out of shape, adding that he hoped to spend the next couple of weeks ratcheting up his fitness. All he did against the Spurs was score 22 points in 21 minutes while shooting 9 of 13 from the field. Imagine the havoc once he has his legs under him.The Lakers, too, are dealing with some absences. Avery Bradley, their top perimeter defender, opted out of participating in the restart, citing family reasons. Rajon Rondo is expected to miss several weeks after fracturing his right thumb shortly after the team arrived in Orlando, and Alex Caruso sat out Thursday’s scrimmage with a back injuryIt is worth noting that all three of those players are guards. James often has the ball in his hands regardless of his supporting cast, but it is a safe assumption that he will be his team’s primary facilitator throughout its stay at Disney. One scrimmage is a small sample, but he was the driving force on Thursday — and it worked out well, per usual.“You’ve got to create your own energy here,” James said.At the same time, James appears determined to continue speaking about issues that are important to him. After Thursday’s game, he prefaced his news conference by saying he wanted to “shed light on justice” for Breonna Taylor, a Black medical worker in Louisville, Ky., who was shot and killed by the police on March 13.For more than 10 minutes, James fielded additional questions about social justice causes and challenges facing Black people across the country. At one point, he objected to the idea that Black Lives Matter was a movement with some sort of resolution in the near or distant future.“When you wake up and you’re Black, that is what it is,” James said. “It shouldn’t be a movement. It should be a lifestyle. This is who we are. And we understand that. And we know that for one step that someone else might have to take, or for one yard someone else may have to take, we know we’ve got to take five more steps.”He added, “I don’t like the word ‘movement’ because, unfortunately, in America and in society, there ain’t been no damn movement for us.” More

Although athletes who say they’re “in the best shape of their life” after a long off-season aren’t usually to be trusted, the oft-overlooked W.N.B.A. had a solid claim on the cliché heading into its 24th year.Following a hard-fought five-game finals in 2019, the league saw one of its most dramatic free-agency periods ever as the shuffle of A-listers like Skylar Diggins-Smith and DeWanna Bonner created an almost entirely new field of competition. The W.N.B.A. welcomed point guard Sabrina Ionescu — a triple-double phenom and one of its buzziest prospects in years — and most notably, players secured a new collective bargaining agreement that allowed the average W.N.B.A. player to earn six figures for the first time, including base salary and incentives. It’s common for players to compete year-round by going overseas in the off-season to make additional money.[Coming Friday: capsule previews for all 12 teams.]“It was long overdue progress,” said Dawn Staley, a Hall of Famer who spent eight seasons in the league and now coaches the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team. “It’s not like playing in the W wasn’t a real profession before, but you don’t have to supplement your income in the same way anymore. You have choices.”“We were just seeing tremendous momentum for the W.N.B.A. and women’s sports over all,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times. “Obviously, then we hit the pandemic.”Suddenly, that optimism — already rare in a league that is still too often compelled to defend its very existence — evaporated. Players, scattered across the globe with their overseas teams, scrambled to find a way back to the United States, and league officials started questioning whether they could stage a season at all. More

What kinds of moments are you missing as a fan in the stands? We’d like to hear from you in the callout at the bottom of this article.LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers was the first player on the floor Wednesday afternoon, lining up for the N.B.A.’s first jump ball in more than four months — without waiting for the public-address announcer to begin introducing the starting lineups.The improvisation was one of many aspects of the N.B.A.’s long-awaited return that could be classified as untraditional. With no fans to be found in the stands, hockey-style plexiglass encasing the scorer’s table and the Orlando Magic operating as the visiting team just 23 miles from their home arena, Leonard’s Clippers posted a 99-90 victory in a game that was predictably scruffy after such a long layoff. The game also did not count, but it was a significant occasion nonetheless.It was the first time two N.B.A. teams had shared the same floor since the abrupt suspension of the season on March 11 after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus shortly before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. After months of negotiations, preparations and debate about the feasibility of resuming and sustaining an indoor, contact sport during a pandemic, the league took what it regards as a significant step in its comeback by holding four scrimmages, 15 days after teams began arriving at the Walt Disney World campus.Twenty-two teams were invited to live, practice and play in a so-called bubble with greatly restricted access at Disney World near Orlando, Fla., to try to complete a season some within the league initially feared would not be salvaged. Each team will take part in three of these scrimmages before the New Orleans Pelicans face the Jazz on July 30 to begin an 88-game schedule leading into the playoffs. Wednesday, then, was a test run for the N.B.A. as much as for the players in what many regard as the most ambitious undertaking in league history.“Once you get in between the lines, you can make a case that that’s probably as comfortable as the players will ever be,” Clippers Coach Doc Rivers said. “You can see the rust and all that, but for them, they were back in their natural habitat.”Quirks were plentiful in the N.B.A.’s return, with 10-minute quarters instead of the usual 12, extended bursts of quiet during free throws, and music and synthesized arena sounds piped in to fill the noise void. A vibe reminiscent of the N.B.A.’s annual summer league in Las Vegas was unmistakable, but the first competitive basketball played in the bubble also appeared to play out without incident, with Lou Williams (22 points) and Paul George (18) combining for 40 points to lead the Clippers. Nikola Vucevic had 18 points and 10 rebounds for the Magic.The N.B.A. has leaned into its starting-over reality, judging by the numerous signs all over the building that display its #WholeNewGame slogan. Without the clamor of fans, chatter among the players was frequently audible during lulls in the sounds playing over arena speakers and the occasional recorded chants of “de-fense, de-fense.” More

For nearly two weeks, the Twitter accounts @NBABubbleLife and @WNBABubbleLife have anonymously chronicled the world’s best basketball players shotgunning beers, dancing with their teammates, failing at fishing and going about everyday activities, like getting haircuts and eating pancakes.The posts — a curated series of videos, photos and musings pulled from players’ social media accounts — detail the mundanity, and sometimes absurdity, of life in quarantine for the players as they restart their seasons, at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. (N.B.A.) and IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. (W.N.B.A.). They have delighted basketball fans and garnered attention from the players and from ESPN, a broadcast partner of the N.B.A.So who is behind the #wholesomecontent? Both accounts are run by a quartet of self-described West Coast “hoop heads” and friends, some of whom work in the N.B.A. media world: Nick DePaula, who writes about the shoe industry for ESPN; Wells Phillips, who works in marketing for the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board; Travonne Edwards, a podcast host for The Athletic and an elementary schoolteacher in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Drew Ruiz, a staffer for the Drew League, the Los Angeles-based basketball association, who has also written for Slam Magazine. They all met through the basketball and sneaker worlds in Los Angeles.Since launching on July 10, @NBABubbleLife has accumulated more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, a large amount for such a short period of time. A companion Instagram account has more than 13,000 followers. The W.N.B.A. Twitter account, which started the next day, has about 2,300 followers.In an email, the group said that their employers were not aware of their involvement with the accounts.During a Zoom conversation with The New York Times, the four friends said the idea sprang from their group text. DePaula, 35, sent a message: “Account that would blow up on Twitter: @nbabubblelife.” Phillips, 38, wrote back after setting up the handle: “The account is open,” he said, adding that it would be a “passion project.”“This is something we’d be following and talking about among ourselves regardless,” DePaula said.For this quartet of basketball aficionados, the accounts provide not just some laughs for the consumers, but also a welcome distraction from the daily deluge of troubling news, particularly rising case counts for Covid-19 and social unrest related to police brutality. Edwards, the teacher, said the account had helped him deal with the uneasiness of returning to school in the fall. Phillips’s day job in tourism has ground to a halt because of the pandemic.“This project has helped me mentally to have an escape,” Phillips said. “I get some fun versus six hours a day of seeing negativity. The timing has been perfect.”They all create posts, based on their availability. Ruiz, 29, often posts in the morning, for example, and Phillips around noon.“We’re really staying in communication. ‘Hey, I’ve got to go work out.’ Or ‘Hey, I have to go step out for a bit.’ Can somebody do this and watch this account? We really run this egoless,” Edwards, 35, said.The accounts provide a wide-ranging, heavily filtered glimpse into the lives of basketball players who, for at least a couple months, have few physical responsibilities outside of basketball and may not be in this situation again. They are away from the public and far from cameras that aren’t their own.A video of Ben Simmons, the Philadelphia 76ers guard, posing with a fish he had just caught and then bungling the throw back into the water has more than 1.5 million views. It spawned several rounds of Twitter jokes about Simmons’s shooting ability — a brief return to normalcy for those who routinely follow basketball social media accounts. There was a picture of Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks star, decorating a door for his brother Thanasis’s birthday. A post from Sunday shows Simmons’s teammate, Josh Richardson, being fascinated by a turkey on a golf course.“This is like ‘Man vs. Wild,’” Richardson exclaimed in his Instagram post, which @NBABubbleLife then reposted.“They’re kind of kids, right?” Phillips said. “A lot of them are not that old, so I think the fun that we’re seeing is a lot of these guys who were in A.A.U. in these same situations under 10 years ago. It’s just back to living their teenage years out at 25, and they just happen to be millionaires now.”On the W.N.B.A. account, there are posts highlighting the sneaker collection of Los Angeles Sparks guard Te’a Cooper; Chicago Sky players’ dancing; and thoughts about the Florida weather from Candace Parker, the Sparks star and two-time Most Valuable Player Award winner.“You step outside and the humidity does something to you, like to your soul,” Parker says in a video.On the second day the N.B.A. account was up, New Orleans Pelicans guard JJ Redick was asked how many retweets it would take for him to shotgun a Bud Light. Redick responded, setting the bar at 10,000 — a high number by Twitter standards. But the internet can be a powerful place: Redick’s tweet surpassed that number within a matter of hours, and he kept up his end of the bet, posting a video of himself chugging a beer in an ice bath.“A bet’s a bet,” Edwards said. “When that rolled out, we were kind of like, ‘We’ve got something, fellas.’”Days later, Meyers Leonard of the Portland Trail Blazers and Jordan Clarkson of the Utah Jazz indulged in a speedy beer drinking competition of their own and tagged the bubble account.As the accounts have gained popularity, the men behind them said they have begun to take their passion project more seriously, feeling a responsibility to provide basketball fans with bubble-related nourishment.This is not an account, however, where players will be made to look foolish — at least not intentionally. It is meant to be a counterweight to some things players have shared and been criticized for, such as when Rajon Rondo, the Lakers guard, posted a picture of his hotel room and compared it to a Motel 6. This is also an unusual role for those who work in N.B.A.-related media to take on: creators of a friendly account designed to make the players they cover look good.“We didn’t want it to be us making fun of guys or showing the bad food pictures or make it seem like they were just complaining,” DePaula said. “We wanted to celebrate everyone’s personality.”They must now decide how to make use of the account’s popularity and whether to take it past October, when the season concludes. They’ve discussed using the account to raise money for causes that players residing on the campuses care about.“We’re four friends who decided to just do something fun and it turned out to be something special,” Edwards said. “If we can merge both worlds and give our part to social injustice, that’s the most important thing for us.” More

Elena Delle Donne, the W.N.B.A.’s reigning most valuable player, said she had been denied a medical waiver for the league’s abbreviated season, which begins July 25.Had she received the waiver, Delle Donne, who has struggled with Lyme disease for more than a decade, would have been able to sit out while still being paid for the season. Now if she chooses not to play, she will not be paid.Delle Donne, 30, made the revelation to ESPN. She said she had not yet made a decision on whether to play. She is the star player for the defending champions, the Washington Mystics.The decision to deny her the waiver came from a panel of doctors, selected jointly by the league and the players’ union. Delle Donne said her personal physician had advised her not to play because of an increased risk of contracting and suffering complications from Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.“I love my team, and we had an unbelievable season last year, and I want to play,” she told ESPN. “But the question is whether or not the W.N.B.A. bubble is safe for me.”The league has not commented on Delle Donne’s case, and it ordinarily does not comment on such matters because of medical privacy issues.The W.N.B.A. plans to hold its season in Bradenton, Fla. Like other professional leagues, it will test players for the coronavirus, keep them in a “bubble” to reduce the risk of transmission and not allow fans at games.Despite such precautions, a number of players in various sports, including some stars, have decided not to play in their makeshift seasons. Among them are Megan Rapinoe of the National Women’s Soccer League, Ryan Zimmerman, Buster Posey and David Price of Major League Baseball and Wilson Chandler of the N.B.A.The W.N.B.A.’s regular season, shortened to 22 games per team, will run until Sept. 12 with the playoffs to follow.Delle Donne is perhaps the biggest star in the league. A 6-foot-5 forward who is notably mobile for her height, she spent four seasons in Chicago before being traded to Washington in 2017, culminating in her second M.V.P. Award and first league title last season.Delle Donne has been a high-profile player since high school. After initially planning to play for powerhouse Connecticut, she opted to go to Delaware to remain closer to home. She led the normally unheralded Blue Hens to the final 16 in her senior year, and was selected second over all in the W.N.B.A. draft in 2013.She is unusual among W.N.B.A. stars in that she has not played very much for teams overseas, where the players generally earn the bulk of their income.A Mystics teammate, Tina Charles, has also applied for a waiver to skip the season. She and Delle Donne were not with the team in Florida while they awaited the panel’s decisions. Teams that lose players to medical waivers may not be permitted to sign replacements, depending on their salary cap situation. More

Russell Westbrook, the Houston Rockets star and one of the most high-profile players in the N.B.A., said on Monday in a social media post that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He said his positive test came before the Rockets left for Orlando, where the N.B.A. is attempting to restart its season.“I’m currently feeling well, quarantined, and looking forward to rejoining my teammates when I am cleared,” Westbrook said in his statement. He added: “Please take this virus seriously. Be safe. Mask up! #whynot.”pic.twitter.com/Kq7CE26TxD— Russell Westbrook (@russwest44) July 13, 2020
Westbrook and Houston’s other superstar guard, James Harden, did not travel with the team to the Walt Disney World campus in recent days. Luc Mbah a Moute, a veteran forward whom the Rockets signed earlier this month, also did not make the trip. Coach Mike D’Antoni did not specify why in comments to reporters over the weekend but said he expected them to be in Orlando shortly.“These are things that people are dealing with,” D’Antoni said. “We’re not going to get into why not. They’re on their way.”It is unclear when Westbrook will be able to join the Rockets or when his quarantine period began. Other players, like Spencer Dinwiddie and D’Andre Jordan of the Nets, are skipping the N.B.A. restart entirely after they learned they had the coronavirus. More

ESPN’s most prominent basketball reporter has been suspended for a two-word vulgar email reply to the office of a United States senator on Friday morning in response to the senator’s critical statements about the N.B.A.’s relationship with China.The reporter, Adrian Wojnarowski, sent the email to the office of Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, who posted a screenshot of it on Twitter.The suspension, which was confirmed by someone close to Wojnarowski, means he will not be traveling this week to report on the N.B.A.’s resumed season at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World in Florida. On a recent podcast episode, Wojnarowski said he had sent a number of packages to the Orlando area in advance of his planned arrival on Sunday.Hours after sending the email, Wojnarowski apologized, saying he was “disrespectful” and “made a regrettable mistake.” ESPN called his email “inexcusable” and said it would address it with him internally. A spokesman declined to comment on the suspension.The Washington Post reported the suspension would be from one to two weeks.Wojnarowski was responding to an email sent by Hawley’s press office to a number of journalists, criticizing the N.B.A. for “kowtowing to Beijing” and its decision to allow players to wear social justice messages on their jerseys during the coming restart of the N.B.A. season in Florida.The list of acceptable messages, which was agreed to by the N.B.A. and the union representing the players, includes “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe.” None reference last year’s widespread protests in Hong Kong or China’s increasing grip on the city.The matter called into question Wojnarowski’s distance from a league he covers and appeared to be defending. Hawley has been known to selectively criticize the N.B.A.’s relationship with China.The N.B.A. has been a frequent target for many Republicans since the league’s rift with China began before the season started. Several castigated the N.B.A. — accusing the league of not firmly standing behind Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets’ general manager, who posted an image on Twitter that was supportive of the pro-democracy Hong Kong protesters in October. This incensed the Chinese government, which has since limited its business with the N.B.A.Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, even called for the N.B.A. commissioner, Adam Silver, to testify on the subject. When prominent and frequently outspoken league figures like Steve Kerr, LeBron James and James Harden were asked about Morey’s comments, they either demurred or declined to support Morey.When it comes to the leader of their own party, President Trump, Republicans have mostly been silent, including after Trump said to Axios that he wanted to avoid punishing China for its mass internment of ethnic Uighurs last year because of ongoing trade talks. Trump has also spoken warmly about President Xi Jinping of China, referring to him as “a friend of mine” and “an incredible guy,” and urged the country to investigate the Bidens.After Wojnarowski’s tweet, conservative critics like the sports blogger Clay Travis pounced. Travis sarcastically tweeted about ESPN’s “left-wing bias,” and Hawley reshared that tweet with his followers. Travis’s site, Outkick, later was first to report about Wojnarowski’s suspension.For years, conservative critics, and often some competitors, have accused ESPN of liberal bias and claimed, with little evidence, that it has resulted in lower ratings. Still, Jimmy Pitaro, who became ESPN’s president in 2018, has sought to steer the network in a direction that focuses more on what happens on the field. In the last few months, that position has been challenged, as there have been few sports to cover because of the coronavirus pandemic and as athletes have spoken out about racism in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody.Sopan Deb contributed reporting. More

As the first N.B.A. teams arrived at Walt Disney World for the resumption of their season, Commissioner Adam Silver reiterated his conviction that the restricted environment in Florida will be safer for the league’s personnel during the coronavirus pandemic than being anywhere “off this campus.” The ultimate test of that belief had begun just a […] More