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Months before Cathy Engelbert had been hired as the commissioner of the W.N.B.A. — and even longer before she had settled a landmark collective bargaining agreement with its athletes on Jan. 14 — she met with Terri Jackson, executive director of the players’ union. After Lisa Borders had stepped down as the league’s president in […] More

NEW ORLEANS — Zion Williamson was apprehensive in the first half of his first regular-season game with the Pelicans. He deferred to teammates. He passed out of traps. He did not use his 6-foot-6, 284-pound frame to demolish smaller defenders or propel the crowd to its feet with his dunks. Instead, he seemed determined to […] More

Maya Moore, the W.N.B.A. star regarded as one of the greats of the sport, will sit out for a second straight season and remove herself from contention for the Olympics so she can continue to push for criminal justice reform and the release of Jonathan Irons, a man she believes is innocent of the crime […] More

Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein’s weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. Don’t even start with the Rookie of the Year Award stuff. Beginning with his scheduled return from injury Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs, Zion Williamson can, at most, play 38 games for the New Orleans Pelicans in his […] More

NEW ORLEANS — As Zion Williamson spent the past three months recovering from knee surgery, he tried to be patient. It did not always work. “It was a lot of times when I wanted to just punch a wall or kick chairs,” he said, “because it’s frustrating to not be able to move your body […] More

Halfway through what was ambitiously billed as a wide-open season featuring more potential champions than usual in the N.B.A., three teams have separated themselves. The Milwaukee Bucks and the co-tenants of the Staples Center in Los Angeles — LeBron James’s Lakers and Kawhi Leonard’s Clippers — are in a tier of their own at the […] More

LOS ANGELES — The Orlando Magic were less than 24 hours removed from the elation of a stunning victory this week when Coach Steve Clifford found himself admonishing his players after one of their most lethargic losses of the season. “If you want to be really good, you have to find your intensity every night,” […] More

A new year, at the start of a new decade, makes this a natural time for N.B.A. teams to search for innovative ways to combat the offensive flourish of the previous decade. Yet as disconsonant as it sounds, especially for a league reputed to be as progressive as the N.B.A., its coaches are increasingly dipping […] More