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      WNBA Draft: Aliyah Boston Goes No. 1 to Indiana Fever

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      Boston, a senior forward from the University of South Carolina, was the second-ever top pick from her college.When Aliyah Boston was 12 years old, she took a 1,700-mile journey with her sister to their aunt’s home in Massachusetts from the U.S. Virgin Islands, hoping to become a good enough basketball player to go to college for free and maybe one day make it to the W.N.B.A.Boston fulfilled that dream on Monday night at Spring Studios in New York when the Indiana Fever selected her with the first pick in the W.N.B.A. draft. Boston is the University of South Carolina’s second-ever No. 1 pick in the draft; A’ja Wilson was the first, in 2018.The Minnesota Lynx selected Diamond Miller, a guard from the University of Maryland, with the No. 2 overall pick. At No. 3, the Dallas Wings chose Maddy Siegrist, a forward from Villanova University.The Wings, who also had the fifth pick, shook up the night by trading future draft selections to the Washington Mystics for the fourth pick, Iowa State center Stephanie Soares. They took Connecticut guard Lou Lopez Sénéchal with the next pick.Boston’s selection didn’t come as a surprise. She had been linked with the Fever since they landed the first pick at the draft lottery in November. Boston, a forward, will join a former South Carolina teammate, guard Destanni Henderson, in Indiana.Henderson was in the audience recording on a phone and before Boston headed into a news conference they embraced and celebrated loudly.“She was like, ‘We’re reunited and we’re teammates again,’ and I was like, ‘And it feels so good,’ you know that song?” Boston said before singing her version of the song “Reunited” by the group Peaches & Herb.South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley, center, poses with Gamecocks players who were drafted on Monday, left to right: Laeticia Amihere, Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke and Brea Beal.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesWith Henderson in 2021-22, Boston had the best statistical season of her college career, ending it with a national championship win over Connecticut. Boston and Henderson will look to recreate that winning chemistry for the Fever, who have been something of a punching bag for the rest of the league.Indiana has not made the playoffs since 2016 and has finished with the league’s worst record in the past two seasons. Last season, the Fever finished with five wins; the second-worst team, the Los Angeles Sparks, had 13.“She’s going to have an immediate impact on this league,” Fever General Manager Lin Dunn said at a predraft news conference on Thursday. “And I’m just thankful — I think we all are — that she opted to come into the draft.”It was a South Carolina-laden first round as forward Laeticia Amihere was selected eighth by the Atlanta Dream, and guard Zia Cooke was taken 10th by the Sparks. Brea Beal, who anchored South Carolina’s perimeter defense, was selected by the Minnesota Lynx at No. 24. Alexis Morris, the star Louisiana State guard who helped the Tigers win their first championship just over a week ago, was selected by the Connecticut Sun with the 22nd pick.Boston had been a top player in college basketball since she arrived in South Carolina in 2019. She is a post-scoring, shot-blocking forward who anchored the Gamecocks as they amassed a 129-9 record over her four seasons. Boston was the consensus national player of the year in 2022 and won the Naismith Award for the defensive player of the year in each of her final two seasons.Alexis Morris, who won the N.C.A.A. championship with Louisiana State this month, was drafted by the Connecticut Sun in the second round.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesIn her final year, Boston led South Carolina to its first undefeated regular season in program history. Boston’s numbers were down, partly because of South Carolina’s depth and a defensive strategy used by many opponents that made it difficult for her to get loose. The Gamecocks averaged the most bench points per game in Division I in the 2022-23 season with 36.1, almost 5 points per game more than the next closest team.With Henderson gone, South Carolina never found a reliable scoring guard next to Cooke. So all season, teams sagged off the other guards, daring them to shoot and helping in the paint to deny Boston the ball.That’s a strategy teams can’t employ in the W.N.B.A., because of both the scoring ability of professional guards and the league’s defensive three-second rule, which forbids defenders from standing in the paint for longer than three seconds unless they are within an arm’s length of an offensive player they’re guarding. So Boston will likely see much more one-on-one defense and space to roam than she had over her college career.“I’m really excited for that type of spacing,” Boston said in a recent interview. “Because I think it just shows everyone how they’re able to, you know, just use their talent and go to work.”For that reason, South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley encouraged Boston to enter the draft this year, after the team lost to Iowa in the Final Four.“There are defenses that are played against her that won’t allow her to play her game. And then it’s hard to officiate that,” Staley said.Staley added: “She’s meant everything to our program. She has been the cornerstone of our program for the past four years. She elevated us. She raised the standard of how to approach basketball. She’s never had a bad day.”Boston still had a year of eligibility remaining, the extra year granted to athletes by the N.C.A.A. due to the coronavirus pandemic. She likely would have been in the conversation for player of the year again, and South Carolina would have been a favorite to win the national title with her back.But perhaps the most significant incentives to stay were the earnings she could have made in college, thanks to rules that allow athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness.Maryland’s Diamond Miller was the No. 2 draft pick, by the Minnesota Lynx.Adam Hunger/Associated PressMany women’s basketball players, like Boston, can make more money from collectives and endorsements as college athletes than they can earn from W.N.B.A. salaries alone; the base pay for rookies this season will range from $62,285 to $74,305, depending on the draft round.That earning potential likely played a role in the decisions of the stars who weren’t at the draft this year. Several eligible players who may have been first-round picks opted to return to college, such as UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Virginia Tech’s Elizabeth Kitley, Indiana’s Mackenzie Holmes and U.C.L.A.’s Charisma Osborne. (The W.N.B.A. requires players from the United States to turn 22 years old in the calendar year of the draft.)That makes next year’s draft all the more exciting. It could be loaded with talent: L.S.U.’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the two stars who headlined the Division I women’s tournament with their scoring and showmanship, will be eligible. (For her part, Reese said on a podcast that she is in “no rush” to go to the W.N.B.A. because she is making more than some top players in the pro league.)Still, there are only 12 teams and 144 roster spots in the W.N.B.A. Only 36 players are picked in the draft, and only about half of those players typically make an opening day roster. And without a developmental league like the N.B.A.’s G League, some of the best basketball players end up going overseas to play professionally.“Our top players will not make a pro team,” Arizona Coach Adia Barnes said, adding: “You’re competing against, like, 30-year-old women. It’s hard. It’s competitive.”Expansion seems like it could be an easy fix to this issue, but W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has cited financial concerns for why it’s not possible right now. Engelbert said in February that the league was not in a rush to add new teams but would like to see at least two new teams added in two to four years.“I’m not going to give a timetable,” Engelbert said on Monday night, adding: “The last thing we want to do is bring new owners in that are going to fail.”One of the league’s biggest issues has been how teams travel. W.N.B.A. players fly commercial, while most major college programs fly charter. Ahead of Monday night’s draft, the league announced it would offer charter flights for all postseason games and select regular-season games where teams have back-to-back games.“We intend to do more,” Engelbert said, adding: “We do need some patience and time to build it so that we feel comfortable funding something more substantial as we get into our ensuing years.” More

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      A Growing W.N.B.A. Still Boxes Out Some Personalities

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      Ahead of the W.N.B.A. draft, women’s basketball remains troubled by racial disparities in how its stars are showcased.Aliyah Boston, one of the most dominant and decorated players in women’s college basketball, was selected with the top pick in the W.N.B.A. draft Monday night.It’s a big deal — a milestone for any player and a key day for building excitement as a new W.N.B.A. season is soon to begin.But in the lead-up to the big event, much of the conversation around women’s hoops swirled around two players returning to the college game — not heading off to the pros.Since Angel Reese made a mocking gesture to Caitlin Clark at the end of the N.C.A.A. Division I championship game between Louisiana State and Iowa nearly two weeks ago, players, fans and internet rabble-rousers have weighed in on racial double standards that exist in the women’s game: How ponytailed, high-scoring white players are lauded for their brashness while Black women who talk trash are vilified for it.The matter of racial hypocrisy has been a bone of contention in the W.N.B.A., a league where 80 percent of players are women of color but that, players say, has struggled to promote its Black stars. Nneka Ogwumike, the president of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association and one of the league’s most compelling talents, lamented that the style, skill and personalities of Black women drive the league forward, but “when it comes to the perception, the reception and the marketing” of women’s professional basketball, they “don’t get the credit.”White stars such as Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird and Kelsey Plum have made similarly sharp observations.Plum, a guard for the Las Vegas Aces, has said that when she entered the league as the No. 1 draft pick in 2017, she felt she was getting preferential treatment from the league’s marketing machinery because she is straight and white. “It’s absolutely a problem in our league. Just straight up.”Is there any hope that the league will know what to do with Boston, who became a star of college basketball last season during South Carolina’s run to a national title?She emerged as the consensus national player of the year in 2022 as much for her personality as her skill. During national broadcasts, Boston showcased her playfulness, her dancing and her candid thoughtfulness during interviews, where she selected her words as carefully as she selects the pinks or oranges or blues of her next set of braids.In a perfect world, she will end up being embraced and promoted as much as her white counterparts in a league still struggling to gain a foothold with the average sports fan.I want to believe the slew of talented, young Black basketball players taken in the W.N.B.A. draft will end up being as embraced and promoted as much as their white counterparts.But I can’t say they will.The W.N.B.A. highlights players’ off-court fashion, but Nneka Ogwumike of the Los Angeles Sparks said there were fashionable Black players who had not been among those recognized.Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty ImagesOgwumike, who won both the W.N.B.A. title and Most Valuable Player Award while starring for the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016, said that at the start of each season, the league still emphasizes to players the importance of decorum.“There’s this perception that they want our game to be family oriented and that means no trash talking and no real, like, true natural expression,” she said.Ogwumike said every year she has pushed back against the demand, couched as respect for the game, “because we’re not allowed to be our full selves within reason,” adding that her male peers in the N.B.A. are “admired and looked up to” for their antics.Elevating the contributions of the W.N.B.A.’s Black talent is high on the list of ways players would like their league to evolve.Case in point: The league increasingly markets itself as a cultural trendsetter. Pointing to off-court fashion as one example — think of the camera shots of players clad in boundary-pushing, often gender-bending attire as they head to arena locker rooms — Ogwumike said those who are starting the trends are often not getting their due.“There are lot of Black players in the W who have been dressing fashionably for a long time and setting trends for a long time,” she said. “But they are not the ones being recognized as trendsetters.”The tilt toward whiteness can be quantified.A recent study of W.N.B.A. media exposure on the popular websites ESPN, CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated found a yawning coverage gap between the races. People like me, journalists who cover women’s basketball and care about the untapped potential of women’s sports, need to look in the mirror and think about who we’re focusing on and how we are talking about them.In 2020, a year when race was at the forefront of the American conversation, Black players won 80 percent of the league’s postseason awards: M.V.P., Rookie of the Year, and Defensive Player of the Year, to name three. And yet, according to the study’s University of Massachusetts researchers, Risa Isard and Nicole Melton, Black players received roughly 50 percent less focused attention than their white counterparts.That same year, the W.N.B.A. invested more in marketing, committing to spending $1 million annually to highlight performance and diversity, which has directly impacted several Black players such as A’ja Wilson, Betnijah Laney and Jonquel Jones. And as part of a $75 million investment raised in 2022, the W.N.B.A. planned to prioritize marketing and improving its website and app.Another nugget: The former South Carolina star Wilson, who has won two M.V.P. Awards since being drafted No. 1 overall in 2018 by the Aces, was the only Black player in 2020 to receive more media attention than Commissioner Cathy Engelbert.In 2021, Wilson was the only Black player to crack the top five in jersey sales, trailing Sabrina Ionescu, Bird, and Diana Taurasi, and ranking just ahead of Stewart.No, I’m not saying the W.N.B.A. is rife with abject racism. Far from it, the W.N.B.A. is a model in many ways.That said, the league is simply a microcosm of a broader world that struggles mightily with all of the vexing issues around race.It’s time to move past the old dichotomies and expand the range of what is possible for female athletes. The W.N.B.A. can help by fully embracing the stories of Boston and Stewart and Wilson, along with all the other players of every hue and identity who strut their stuff in their own distinctive ways.Let’s see the league showcase that. More

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      The NBA Was Redesigned for Drama, and It’s Working

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      The last day of the regular season saw flashes of brilliance from the best teams, punches thrown and disappointing defeats.The N.B.A.’s Western Conference has been a confusing mash of disarray this season, with few teams seeming capable of separating themselves and the rest mired in a chaos borne of some combination of injuries, disillusion and malaise.The drama reached its apogee during a two-and-a-half-hour period on Sunday afternoon. Seven games between West foes tipped off simultaneously and determined half the postseason seeding, including which teams could rest for a week and which could be knocked out in the play-in tournament before the playoffs even start. There were blowouts, shenanigans and punches thrown.It was one of the most exciting days of the season, and highlighted part of N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver’s ethos: that change, though it may come at a cost, can be good.Kyle Anderson and Rudy Gobert had to be separated after a heated altercation during a timeout. pic.twitter.com/HVuPNdjrxs— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 9, 2023
      The world of sports is an obstinate and unyielding realm, where tradition reigns. Two years ago, Silver met resistance when he introduced the play-in tournament, in which the teams seeded seventh through 10th compete for the last two of eight playoff spots in each conference.Luka Doncic of the Mavericks argued that it was unfair for teams to play a whole season to land among the top eight seeds just to face elimination in the play-in tournament. The Lakers star LeBron James said whoever came up with it should be fired.But two weeks ago, Silver said all but four of the league’s 30 teams still had a chance to make the playoffs. On Saturday afternoon, with two days of games left, the N.B.A. posted a dizzying, color-coded graphic on Twitter with 64 scenarios for the final West seedings.Did any team really want to face the Warriors, the defending champions?How dangerous could the Clippers be once Kawhi Leonard locked in, and if Paul George was healthy?A team with James and Anthony Davis is fearsome no matter its record, and their Lakers have excelled since the trade deadline.On the other hand, Sacramento (No. 3) and Denver (No. 1) haven’t inspired fear in conference opponents this year. The Kings, who are in the playoffs for the first time since 2006, were well aware that some teams hoped to face them in the first round.“If I’m another team, I’m targeting us, too,” Kings Coach Mike Brown told reporters last week. He paused and shrugged. “I would target us too. And we’re the only ones that can change that narrative.”None of this intrigue would have been possible without the play-in tournament.This is an era when player injuries have concerned teams enough that they have been cautious by occasionally resting them. The league tried to address the wear and tear on players’ bodies several years ago by reducing the number of back-to-back games on the schedule. Adding games with a play-in tournament seemed counterintuitive to that.It’s undeniable, though, that it made the end of the season more intriguing. With more teams in the playoff hunt, that left fewer teams willing to coast for more favorable draft positioning.The Golden State Warriors beat the Portland Trail Blazers by 56 points on Sunday. Klay Thompson had six 3-pointers in the win.Craig Mitchelldyer/Associated Press“It makes it more exciting and it keeps things really interesting all the way down the stretch,” Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said recently, adding: “I’m watching all of it for sure.”There are certain lulls in the 82-game season during which stakes are hard to manufacture. The last month of the season is often one of those times. Added interest during the regular season could help the league as it looks toward its next media rights deals after the 2024-25 season.Every team played on Sunday. The slot at 1 p.m. Eastern time offered a slate of mostly meaningless Eastern Conference games. At 3:30 p.m. the real drama began.Golden State (No. 6) dismantled the Portland Trail Blazers by 56 points, but it was only the team’s 11th road win. At about the same time, the Dallas Mavericks, with no chance to make the playoffs, lost to the San Antonio Spurs by 21 points. At the trade deadline, the Mavericks had acquired Kyrie Irving from the Nets to play with Doncic and seemed to be a championship contender. And yet there they were, ending the season by losing to a 22-win team while under investigation for tanking.The Lakers finished the season with an emphatic win over the Utah Jazz to claim the seventh seed.The Lakers had spent most of the season floundering, with injuries further hampering a mismatched roster that struggled to flow. They improved at the trade deadline, but by that point they needed a furious rally to give themselves even a chance at the playoffs. Finishing with the seventh-best record in the West was an accomplishment, but one that took a lot out of them.Their reward is another game on Tuesday, in the play-in, when their stars could use some time to heal from their bumps and bruises.The Suns, settled in the fourth seed, sat their stars on Sunday, but the Clippers played their stars as they fought for better seeding.Rick Scuteri/Associated PressThe Lakers’ opponent Tuesday, the Minnesota Timberwolves (No. 8), had the most dramatic day. They had spent all season trying to adjust to adding center Rudy Gobert, for whom they had traded away a treasure trove of assets last summer. On Sunday night, during the second quarter of their game against the New Orleans Pelicans, Gobert punched his teammate Kyle Anderson during a verbal altercation. A few minutes earlier, Timberwolves forward Jaden McDaniels broke his right hand by punching a wall.McDaniels is out indefinitely, and Minnesota suspended Gobert for the play-in game against the Lakers. It’s not the kind of drama the N.B.A. wants, but it did have people talking. It also showed another example of how much can go wrong with a blockbuster trade for a star.Then there were the Suns and the Clippers. The Clippers were playing to stay out of the play-in tournament and the only way to ensure that was to win — even if that meant facing a star-studded Phoenix team in the first round.“I’m not a fan of the play-in, me personally, because we didn’t make it last year and we fought so hard to get a top-eight seed,” Clippers Coach Ty Lue said last week. “You don’t make it, it’s tough. But we knew today was a big game to stay away from that.”The play-in tournament is not the last break with tradition Silver will oversee. This month the league and the players’ union agreed to add an in-season tournament to the regular season. It will add more games, but could also add drama. This weekend’s theatrics may be taken as evidence that it doesn’t hurt to try. More

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      Domantas Sabonis’s N.B.A. Stardom Is Fueled by Family Legacy

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      The Sacramento Kings big man Domantas Sabonis plays with the bruising style of his father, Arvydas. It has made him an All-Star and helped the Kings break a 16-season playoff drought.For Domantas Sabonis, basketball has long been it.“Never a plan B,” Sabonis, 26, said. “Only basketball.”In many of his baby pictures, Sabonis said, he is holding a basketball. The same goes for his 1-year-old son.This makes basketball a sort of generational inheritance. Sabonis’s father is Arvydas Sabonis, a Lithuanian player who dominated in Europe, spent seven seasons in the N.B.A. and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.Now, Domantas is the Sabonis dominating. In his seventh N.B.A. season, he is a three-time All-Star and has helped the Sacramento Kings clinch a playoff spot for the first time since 2006, breaking the longest active postseason drought in the four major North American men’s professional sports leagues. Sabonis is the N.B.A.’s leading rebounder, one of its best passing big men and one of its most efficient scorers.From his game, one can easily draw a straight line to his father. At 7-foot-3, Arvydas was a slick passer with refined post skills and immense upper body strength. It wasn’t unusual to see him go at Shaquille O’Neal and hold his own. Domantas’s hands are drawn to loose balls around the basket, and defenders bounce off him like rubber. Arvydas had more of a shooting touch; Domantas is quicker, though not fast by today’s standards. Slow centers who stay near the basket have gone out of vogue over the last decade, but the 6-foot-11 Domantas has turned this bruising style of play in the paint into success for the Kings. In some ways, Domantas’s game is a stubborn tribute to Arvydas.“It’s the eyes, the fingers, the hands, the little gestures,” said his older brother Tautvydas Sabonis, who goes by Tuti. He added: “You throw a pass. It leaves his fingers like this and it’s like, that’s 101 Dad.”Tuti, on a video conference call from Lithuania, held his hands out wide to demonstrate.Sabonis is averaging 19.2 points per game and a league-best 12.4 rebounds per game this season.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated Press“The most important thing is they both get pissed the same way,” he said. “It’s the same characters, same mind-set. It’s ‘rah, rah, rah, rah, rah!’ Lithuanian. All the swear words you can imagine. Throw in a little English. Throw Spanish in there.”Tuti, 30, is a basketball coach in Lithuania and played professionally in Europe. So did the other Sabonis brother, Zygimantas, 31, who goes by Zygi. Domantas was born during the playoffs of Arvydas’s rookie year in the N.B.A. with the Portland Trail Blazers. A sister, Ausrine, was born the next year. Domantas and Tuti recalled that the Blazers’ practice facility had a children’s room where they would try all of the Gatorade flavors and play the “floor is lava” game while they waited for practice to be over. Players like Scottie Pippen and Rasheed Wallace would refer to Zygi, Tuti and Domantas as Sabonis Jr., Sabonis Jr. Jr., and Sabonis Jr. Jr. Jr. Guard Damon Stoudamire told them that his Afro came from sticking his fingers in an electric socket.Shortly before Arvydas retired from the N.B.A. for the second and final time, in 2003, the family moved to Spain. It wasn’t until Domantas turned 10, when he started playing basketball and watching YouTube highlight videos, that he understood his father’s prodigious basketball legacy, he said.“We knew he was a basketball player, but we saw him as our dad,” said Sabonis, who like his father is comfortable out of the limelight. “We didn’t know what he actually was.”He said his father didn’t push any of the children to play basketball. Neither did their mother, Ingrida Sabonis, a former Miss Lithuania. As a teenager, Domantas played professionally for the Spanish club Unicaja Malaga before he spent two years at Gonzaga. Tommy Lloyd, who as an assistant coach helped recruit Domantas to Gonzaga, said he talked to Tuti but didn’t meet Arvydas until after Domantas had committed to the college, which was unusual.Lloyd said Arvydas told him: “‘My son should have the right to make his own decisions. And I feel good as a parent allowing him to do that since I was never allowed to.’”The Blazers drafted Arvydas in 1986, but it took almost a decade for him to make his N.B.A. debut. Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union, whose officials wanted Arvydas to remain an amateur so he could compete in the 1988 Olympics. After the Olympics, Arvydas doubted his ability to compete with the N.B.A.’s best because he’d had multiple Achilles’ tendon injuries. In 1990, Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union. Two years later, Sabonis played for the Lithuanian Olympic team, helping it win a bronze medal.(The American men — the Dream Team — got much of the attention at the 1992 Olympics, but Lithuania’s tie-dye warm-ups sponsored by the Grateful Dead also became a cultural sensation.)Sabonis is unusual in his limited shooting range, but his skill in the paint has been a boon for the Kings.Thearon W. Henderson/Getty ImagesArvydas Sabonis spent seven seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers, beginning in the mid-1990s.Doug Pensinger/Getty ImagesThe Blazers kept pitching Arvydas on coming to the United States. After years of wooing from lawmakers, diplomats and basketball executives, he finally relented.“If not N.B.A. now, never,” a 30-year-old Arvydas said at the time. “Last chance.”Arvydas, who declined a request for an interview, spent seven seasons with the Blazers between 1995 and 2003. He skipped one year, citing mental and physical exhaustion. Now he texts Domantas after each of his N.B.A. games, despite the 10-hour time difference between Sacramento and Lithuania. And if he’s not texting Domantas, he’s texting the siblings.“I think my dad’s our best friend,” Tuti said. “He’s amazing. He watches all of Domas’s games. He’s always calling me: ‘Are you watching?’ I’m like, ‘Dad, I’ve got to work tomorrow.’”While Arvydas has never coached his children, he’s always given one particular piece of advice.“You got to take care of the point guard,” Tuti recounted. “You’re not going to take care of the shooting guard because he’s there to shoot. The point guard, he’s going to give you the ball to score. So if you’ve got to take someone out to drinks, this is the guy you take care of.”For Domantas, that is De’Aaron Fox, a lightning quick 25-year-old point guard who has been Sabonis’s partner in lifting Sacramento’s fortunes. Fox has played in Sacramento for his entire six-year career, but Sabonis joined him only last season in a trade from Indiana.“They want me to be one of the main pieces and have a say and change something around,” Sabonis said. “And that’s just motivation.”Mike Brown, who is in his first season coaching the Kings, designed an offense that leaned into Sabonis’s passing skills, which helped balance the floor and give Fox more space to operate. It has been a resounding success: Sacramento has the N.B.A.’s best offense, and this season Fox made his first All-Star team. Fox said that Sabonis is one of the league’s best finishers and passers, and he sets strong screens to dislodge pesky defenders for his guards.“I think any offense can be successful around someone like that,” Fox said.Tautvydas Sabonis, No. 11, is one of Domantas’s two older brothers. He played in Europe and is now a basketball coach in Lithuania.Robertas Dackus/Euroleague Basketball via Getty ImagesSabonis’s hard-nosed play has easily won over teammates and coaches, and made him a fan favorite. He’s been playing through a thumb injury for much of the season, but he has not shied away from contact, whether in the post or while diving for a rebound. Brown recalled Sabonis apologizing to him once for a bad turnover. But Brown wasn’t concerned.“‘As hard as you play, I don’t know if I can ever get mad at you for turning the ball over,’” Brown recalled responding to Sabonis. “I said, ‘Just go sit down.’”It may seem daunting for Sabonis to follow in the footsteps of his famous father, especially in the withering spotlight of the N.B.A. But he insists that his father’s basketball legacy has not created extra pressure. In fact, he has embraced it, wearing his father’s No. 11 in college and with Indiana before arriving in Sacramento, where No. 11 is retired.“Since I was a kid, you always hear: ‘Your dad is better than you. Your dad’s this. Your dad is that.’ You hear it all the time in every game,” Sabonis said. “But if anything, without that, I wouldn’t have been where I am. If anything, I use it as fuel to be better.”Brown said that Sabonis “probably wants to be more impactful and better than his dad to show his dad, that yes, I can do this as your son.”Lloyd, the former Gonzaga assistant who is now the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Arizona, said that Domantas used to tell him that he was motivated by respect for his fathers and brothers.“He felt like he was carrying on the Sabonis basketball legacy,” Lloyd said. “And it’s something he took really, really, really serious. I don’t want to say there was a fear of failure, but there definitely was a want to succeed for the family name.”As far as their N.B.A. careers go, “Sabonis Jr. Jr. Jr.” has already surpassed his father, though the league never got to see Arvydas at his best. Domantas has helped revitalize a Kings franchise desperate for relevance. There’s been no intergenerational trash talk, though.“My dad loves it,” Tuti said. “He’s your son. He’s playing at the highest level ever. It’s not about accolades. It’s not about this. It’s just putting on the television and getting to enjoy your own son.” More

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      Jill Biden Stumbles by Inviting N.C.A.A. Winners (and Losers) to the White House

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      The first lady waded into the aftermath of a women’s basketball championship game that was about more than who won and who lost.WASHINGTON — It was, to borrow from sports parlance, an unforced error.Jill Biden, the first lady, attended the N.C.A.A. women’s championship game last weekend, sitting in the stands with college basketball players and telling them about how far female athletes had come. On Monday, she was still so excited that she said she hoped to invite Louisiana State, the team that had wrested the title from Iowa on Sunday, 102-85, to the White House.“But, you know,” she added, “I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”And with that, Dr. Biden stumbled into the fraught tradition of White House sports invitations, which have become more politicized by the year as the forces of race, social justice, gender and politics continue to reshape the realms of athletics and fandom.Sports fans, newscasters and the athletes themselves quickly pointed out to the first lady that White House invitations were only to be extended to winners. But the game was about more than just who won and who lost.The story featured Angel Reese, the star forward for L.S.U., who led her team’s efforts to topple Iowa and their premier guard, Caitlin Clark. Ms. Reese is Black and Ms. Clark is white. And Ms. Clark, the consensus national player of the year who used a dismissive hand gesture to antagonize her opponents, never took as much criticism for her behavior as Ms. Reese did for brandishing her championship-ring finger to Ms. Clark during the title game, as the Tigers pulled away to win.“If we were to lose, we would not be getting invited to the White House,” Ms. Reese said on a podcast. She indicated on Tuesday that she would not accept an apology anyway and left it an open question whether she would visit the White House. “We’ll go to the Obamas. We’ll see Michelle; we’ll see Barack,” she added.Her comment dismissed the cleanup effort conducted on behalf of Dr. Biden, a first lady who makes few public mistakes but whose missteps have drawn rebukes from vocal groups who have said she lacks cultural knowledge.Last summer, she was criticized by Latino groups when she compared the diversity of the Hispanic community to the breadth of breakfast taco options available in Texas. In 2021, she botched the Spanish saying “sí se puede” during a visit to the first headquarters of the United Farm Workers of America.Katherine Jellison, a historian who studies first ladies, said the current role, which has no formal expectations, was surrounded by more cultural land mines than in years past, both because of the immediacy of the social media response and because of the array of platforms available to critics.“I would just say there is more awareness and also more ways to comment through social media as well as traditional media,” Ms. Jellison said. “In that way, it’s definitely a new ballgame.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Both Ms. Clark and Ms. Reese have given multiple interviews about the White House invitation, with Ms. Clark saying she did not believe runners-up should attend. And Ms. Reese has been particularly vocal on Twitter, calling the first lady’s invitation to both teams “a joke” and retweeting a message from the sportscaster Chris Williamson: “Your apology should be as loud as your disrespect was.”On Tuesday, Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s press secretary, said Dr. Biden was trying to spotlight all female athletes when she suggested inviting both teams.“The first lady loved watching the NCAA women’s basketball championship game alongside young student athletes and admires how far women have advanced in sports since the passing of Title IX,” Ms. Valdivia wrote on Twitter, referring to the landmark 1972 law that prohibited gender discrimination in sports. “Her comments in Colorado were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.”The first lady has invited female athletes to the White House before, and has used those invitations to highlight issues surrounding equity in sports. On Equal Pay Day in 2021, she delivered remarks alongside Megan Rapinoe and Margaret Purce of the U.S. women’s soccer team, both of whom have been vocal in pushing for female athletes to be paid the same amount as male athletes.“You know I’m old enough that I remember when we got Title IX. And we fought so hard, right? We fought so hard,” Dr. Biden said in her remarks on Monday. “And look at where women’s sports has come today. So we got to keep working. We got to keep working.”Sports teams began visiting the White House in 1865, when President Andrew Johnson welcomed baseball’s Washington Nationals and Brooklyn Atlantics. And in recent years, some athletes have forgone the ceremonial visit in exchange for the opportunity to share their views on the invitation — or the president.The golfer Tom Lehman once turned down an invitation from President Bill Clinton, whom Mr. Lehman called a “draft-dodging baby killer.” In 2012, Tim Thomas, a goalie for the Boston Bruins, skipped a championship ceremony hosted by President Barack Obama because, he said, “the federal government has grown out of control.”No president has drawn more protests than Donald J. Trump, who was also known to rescind invitations if he received word that athletes planned not to attend. In 2018, he revoked an invitation to the Philadelphia Eagles over a debate about players kneeling during the national anthem at games.On Tuesday, President Biden said both the men’s and women’s basketball champions would be invited to the White House. (No word on Iowa, though.)“We can all learn a lot from watching these champions compete,” Mr. Biden said on Twitter, adding, “I look forward to welcoming them at each of their White House visits.” More

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      Golden State Falls to Denver for Another Road Loss

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      A loss to the Nuggets dropped the champions to 9-30 away from home.DENVER — As various members of the Golden State Warriors began to filter out of the visiting locker room at Ball Arena on Sunday night, Klay Thompson sat silently on a folding chair with his head bowed. He fiddled with a wristband. He was still wearing his game shorts.Thompson has coped with adversity, losing two seasons to injury. But the N.B.A. has a way of humbling even the most determined players. And in the glum aftermath of the Warriors’ 79th game of the season, Thompson was left to dwell on errant shots and missed opportunities. He was not alone.The Warriors are a tough team to figure out, and their 112-110 loss to the Nuggets on Sunday was another jumbled effort in a season full of them. They were thrilling and connected, then sloppy and disjointed. They led by as many as 15 points in the second quarter, then allowed all that good feeling to evaporate.“We stopped playing,” Coach Steve Kerr said. “We just lost our focus on both ends, gave up a ton of offensive rebounds, missed box outs. Offensively, we had several mindless possessions in a row, throwing the ball away, a bunch of shot turnovers — just bad shots.”Teams have wildly different agendas at this late stage of the season. The Nuggets, who are on the cusp of clinching the top seed in the Western Conference, have the luxury of prioritizing health. Nikola Jokic, the league’s back-to-back most valuable player, missed his third straight game with calf tightness.“There really is an injury there, and it’s just us being smart about it,” Michael Malone, Denver’s coach, said before Sunday’s game. “The type of injury he has, the worst-case scenario is he plays and it creates a much bigger issue where he’s out for an extended period of time. And I think we all realize that we’re only going to go so far when Nikola is such a big part of what we do.”The Warriors, on the other hand, are desperate to avoid the play-in bracket as the defending champions. With the top six seeds in each conference assured playoff berths, the Warriors (41-38) are now tied for fifth with the Clippers in the West after Sunday’s loss. Kerr likes the addition of the play-in — “It keeps things really interesting all the way down the stretch,” he said — but that does not mean he wants to be a part of it.The Warriors have three games remaining. After playing host to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday, they will go on the road to face the Sacramento Kings on Friday and the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday.“We need to win out,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said, adding: “It’s just understanding there’s a sense of urgency with these last three games, and not only the wins but the vibe you create going into a playoff series, because that does matter — finishing strong, finishing with a sense of purpose. You want to feel good about yourself when you turn the clock to the playoffs.”The real challenge is that the Warriors play two of their final three games on the road, where they have been awful this season. The disparity between their record at home (32-8) and their record on the road (9-30) is a mystery without an obvious explanation.“We’ve got to have faith in ourselves that we can figure it out,” Curry said.No solutions surfaced against the Nuggets, though it did look good for the Warriors, at least for a while. They assembled one of their familiar master classes in ball movement in the first quarter.There was Draymond Green tipping a pass to Donte DiVincenzo for an-up-and-under layup. There was Thompson drawing a cluster of defenders on a drive before dumping a pass to Anthony Lamb for an open dunk. The ball zipped from teammate to teammate. Green had five assists in the first quarter, and the Warriors assisted on 11 of their 13 field goals, committing only one turnover.But sustaining that sort of effort has been problematic for the Warriors this season, particularly on the road. They missed all eight of their 3-point shots in the second quarter and committed five turnovers.“It’s kind of been a vibe of how it’s been on the road for us all year,” Curry said. “There’s a four- or five-minute stretch and the wheels just fall off. And you not only give a team momentum, but you give them belief that they’re supposed to win that game. And that’s a dangerous position to be in with the amount of talent that’s in this league, no matter who you’re playing.”Curry and Thompson combined to shoot 17 of 56 from the field, and Golden State committed 15 turnovers. Add it up, and it was the game that the Warriors had “no business” winning, Curry said.The basketball gods concurred. After Thompson’s 3-point shot with 4.5 seconds left caromed off the back rim, he rebounded his own miss. But his desperation heave at the buzzer was swatted away by Jamal Murray, who had a terrific all-around game for the Nuggets with 26 points and 8 assists.“The season has been like this all year,” Kerr said. “It’s been stops and starts. Just when you think we’ve got some momentum, we give it back.”As the visiting locker room continued to empty out, Thompson finally rose from his chair and packed for the trip home. The team bus was idling outside.“We just have to keep pushing,” Kerr said. More

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      The N.B.A. and Its Players’ Union Reach a Tentative Labor Deal

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      The collective bargaining agreement, which is said to create a new in-season tournament, must be ratified by the players and team governors.The N.B.A. and the N.B.A. players’ union have agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement that will ensure labor peace, the league announced Saturday morning. The new deal must be ratified by N.B.A. players and the league’s board of governors before it becomes official.The deal includes the addition of an in-season tournament with monetary rewards for players and coaches who win it, the removal of marijuana as a banned substance, and a second luxury tax tier, according to a person familiar with the terms who requested anonymity because the deal is not ratified.The new collective bargaining agreement will begin next season and last for seven years, with a mutual opt-out clause after six years, the same person said.Although some expected that this collective bargaining agreement would lower the age limit for entering the N.B.A. draft from 19 to 18, the sides did not agree to that. The age limit will remain at 19, which means most players coming out of high school will need to wait a year before entering the draft.The league announced the deal in a tweet at 2:59 a.m. Saturday. The parties had agreed to extend the midnight deadline for either side to opt out of the current agreement, which has been in effect since 2017.Had the sides not agreed or come close by Friday, the league intended to exercise the opt-out clause, according to Commissioner Adam Silver. That would have caused the current collective bargaining agreement to expire on June 30 instead of next year, compressing the time the sides would have had to avoid a work stoppage.The N.B.A. has not had a work stoppage since the lockout in 2011, which delayed the start of that season until Christmas.This deal is the first negotiated by executive director Tamika Tremaglio, who began her tenure as the head of the union in 2021, and for CJ McCollum, the Pelicans guard who became its president in August of that year.The second luxury tax tier appears to be a compromise from what the league had wanted. The league had been concerned that some teams were at too great of a disadvantage because a small number of them vastly outspent the others through salary cap exceptions within the existing luxury tax system. This season, the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers are paying luxury taxes and spend far more on their star-studded rosters than any other team. To prevent that spending imbalance, the league had hoped to institute a fixed sum that teams could spend on salaries, but the union made clear early on that it would not accept any hard spending limit for teams.The sides hope the new tier will allow more teams to enter the luxury tax.Adding a tournament during the N.B.A. season had long been a priority for Silver.“It’s something that I remain excited about,” Silver had said during a news conference in September. “I think it continues to be an opportunity within the current footprint of our season to create some more meaningful games, games of consequence, during an otherwise long regular season.” More

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      As Bargaining Deadline Looms, N.B.A. and Players’ Union Enjoy Friendly Ties

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      The connections between team owners and players are stronger now than in previous years. A deadline to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement offers a test of that relationship.Tamika Tremaglio, the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union, organized a friendly social gathering ahead of this season between union officials and N.B.A. league executives: party games, cocktails and even a five-on-five basketball game. They would spend much of the next few months negotiating against each other for the next collective bargaining agreement, and Tremaglio first wanted them to have a little fun together.Tremaglio and N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver competed against each other in an egg toss.“For our benefit,” she said, “Adam and I, we didn’t have to play basketball.”The tenor of the relationship between the league and its players’ union seems a far cry from the contentious moments that have dotted their history: the players’ very first attempts to unionize in the 1950s; tense years in the 1990s; and antagonistic battle in 2011 that led to the league’s most recent lockout.Recently, the N.B.A.’s labor landscape has been peaceful, but the strength of that collegiality is being tested by pressure points during a negotiation that has addressed issues like the age limit for players entering the league, a possible in-season tournament and the league’s luxury tax system.One of those pressure points might come this week as the deadline for either side to opt out of the current agreement looms on Friday. Silver said on Wednesday afternoon that he can foresee a deal being reached by Friday, but the league would likely opt out if not. That would make the current collective bargaining agreement expire on June 30 instead of after the 2023-24 season and add urgency to the negotiations for a new agreement. Tremaglio said in a statement that the union does not plan to opt out.“If we don’t have a deal and the league decides to opt out, it will be disappointing considering all the work both sides have put into the negotiations, and the fair nature of our requests,” Tremaglio said.Whatever happens will be set against the backdrop of an era in which N.B.A. players and team owners have largely cooperated, making their dynamic look far different from the labor fights that have played out recently across numerous industries in the United States.People on both sides refer to the relationship between players and team owners as a partnership, and they often develop friendships with each other. During this period, star players have immense power over their careers on and off the court, and the league has benefited from lucrative media rights deals.“It’s not like you can draw a line and say previously it was bad and now it’s good or anything else,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the principal outside counsel for the union, who has been working with the union since 1978. “It just varies over time, shaped by a lot of different forces, shaped by the economics at the time, shaped by the personalities at the time, shaped by the experience. They go through different cycles.”Finances, as they often do with collective bargaining in any industry, have shaped the tenor of the relationship for decades. In 1954, when N.B.A. players first tried to organize, back pay for a group of players was among their top issues. The league recognized the union three years later.Over the next several decades, issues like pensions, free agency and players’ share of league profits became sticking points.“We were the first ones to establish a percentage of the growth revenue going to the players,” Junior Bridgeman, a former player, said, referring to the 1983 C.B.A., two years before he began his tenure as president of the players’ union as the league’s popularity was growing because of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. “No one thought at the time that the numbers would get to where they are today and it would be as meaningful as it is today.”Today, Bridgeman is a business magnate who built a fortune in the food and beverage industry, but when he first attended bargaining sessions, he considered it an unofficial curriculum for a master’s in business administration. He saw what mattered to the team owners and how they communicated.“Most of the meetings ended up being contentious to some extent,” Bridgeman said. He added: “We went to one meeting that lasted all of seven minutes. We got up and walked out. It was the art of negotiation in real life.”In 1995, the league locked out the players for the first time. Union leadership and the league’s representatives had agreed to a deal, but players were unhappy with basic terms and the way the negotiation was conducted. A group of high-profile players filed an antitrust lawsuit and moved to decertify the union.They reached an agreement before the season began, but the deal had an opt-out clause that eventually led to the longest lockout in league history, nearly canceling the 1998-99 season. The sides reached an agreement in January 1999.Silver has worked for the N.B.A. since 1992, spending much of his early years in N.B.A. Entertainment. He became the league’s deputy commissioner, serving under David Stern, in 2006, the year an age limit of 19 went into effect for the draft.The league’s next work stoppage came in 2011. Stern appointed Silver as the league’s lead negotiator for those talks. Silver chuckled at the title.“When David Stern is in the room, he’s the lead negotiator,” Silver said in a phone interview Monday.Stern, who died in 2020, was indeed still the face of those negotiations. His biting wit and tough demeanor led to memorable moments. Billy Hunter, then the union’s executive director, once said he thought the league’s claim that it was losing $400 million a year was “baloney.” Stern, whose family owned a deli, quipped in response: “I grew up at Stern’s delicatessen. He has his meat wrong.”As a player, Michael Jordan had been heavily involved in union battles. His name was on the antitrust lawsuit Kessler filed on the players’ behalf in 1995.In 2010, he became the majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, now the Hornets, and took an active role in labor negotiations later that decade. He is now the chairman of the labor relations committee.“The expectation maybe from some people on my side that when Michael was at the table, everything would be hunky-dory,” Silver said. “‘Oh, Michael Jordan is saying it. Therefore that must be a fair position.’”As a player, Michael Jordan, right, helped the league increase its popularity and was active in union battles. As a team owner, he took an active role in labor negotiations in the 2010s.Chuck Burton/Associated PressPlayers, he said, didn’t agree. Silver recalls the star guard Chris Paul, who was the president of the union from 2013-21, telling him: “No question I admire and trust Michael Jordan, but we’re now, in essence, adversaries in this process.”Silver believes the relationship between players and the league is more trusting now than in previous bargaining cycles, in part because the league is more open about its finances.“It doesn’t necessarily mean that it makes it easier to get a deal done,” Silver said. “But we’re now able to jump over what used to be months of back and forth over what the so-called truth was regarding the league’s financials.”Paul, who was drafted in 2005, said he has seen players become more interested and involved in understanding the business of the league now than earlier in his career. Silver has made a point to build personal capital with players. He also fostered a close relationship with Michele Roberts, Tremaglio’s predecessor, who held the post from July 2014 to January 2022. Roberts declined to be interviewed for this story to avoid the appearance she was trying to influence negotiations from retirement.“That’s one of his strengths,” Jerry Colangelo, who was an executive for the Bulls in the 1960s before leaving to work for and later own the Phoenix Suns, said of Silver. “He’s a communicator, a terrific communicator. David was a little bit more arm’s length.” He added: “Both are really good negotiators. Both really could be very tough when they need to be tough. But on a personal basis, Adam is more available.”Both Silver and Paul said that doesn’t mean negotiations are easier.“They always get contentious,” Paul said.Where that productive relationship helps is in times of unexpected upheaval, like when the coronavirus pandemic hit and caused the league to shut down operations in 2020.“The shutting down of the business, playing in a bubble in Orlando, all those things were far outside the scope of our agreement,” Silver said. He added: “The trust enabled us to sit down with the leadership at the union and with the leaders and with the players executive committee, and we worked through some really difficult issues.”Their shared stakes also helped them navigate the work stoppage that occurred in the bubble when players, led by the Milwaukee Bucks, decided not to play after a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., shot a Black man named Jacob Blake. Before games resumed, players met with team owners over videoconferencing and asked them to commit to support social justice concerns.During the pandemic stoppage, Silver said he and other key league executives began having daily calls with Paul, guard Kyle Lowry and center Dwight Powell, who were part of the league’s competition committee. They checked in on how players were feeling about issues like returning to play, their own safety and the racial justice movements that were sweeping the country.When CJ McCollum replaced Paul as president of the union in August 2021, he was added to those calls. Silver said the calls are no longer daily, but still happen regularly.“We talk about everything,” McCollum, a Pelicans guard, said of his relationship with Silver. “The state of the game, where the game is at, ways to improve.”This season they discussed topics like an uptick in travel calls and changes to foul calls. When the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was imprisoned in Russia, McCollum said they sometimes discussed what they could do to help the efforts to free her.Tremaglio, the N.B.P.A.’s executive director, said the party last fall helped her bolster her relationships with league executives, too.“We are in business together, right? We have a partnership,” Tremaglio said. “For me, I tend to do business with people that I like and know something about.” She added: “I thought it was really critical before we go into negotiations that we had a chance to really get to know one another.”There were some new faces in the union and new faces in the league office, and most of their interactions during the past several months had been held remotely.“I share her view,” Silver said. “I thought it was a great idea.”He added: “When you negotiate with a players’ association, or frankly any collectively bargained relationship, you get a deal done and then the next day you’re dealing with those exact same people and you’re living under that deal.”Tremaglio said the union won the games, though league sources dispute that contention. The stakes were lower that day, but their competitive natures persisted. More