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      Why the ‘Scariest’ Night Didn’t Keep LaMarcus Aldridge Out of the N.B.A.

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      Aldridge, the veteran Nets center, briefly retired after 15 seasons because of a heart issue. He was depressed — then determined to return.In April, Nets center LaMarcus Aldridge was staring into the abyss. He stunned the basketball world by announcing his retirement from the N.B.A. after experiencing an irregular heartbeat during a game. Aldridge had learned during his rookie season in 2006-7 that he had Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which causes a rapid heartbeat, but that night in April, he said, was “one of the scariest” in his life.By his own telling, he was depressed about having his career cut short. Except it turned out that he had more basketball left in him. In the off-season, Aldridge, 36, was medically cleared to return to the N.B.A., which was almost as surprising as his retirement. He came back to the Nets.“I wanted to fight through and come back and show that I still can play this game,” he said in a recent interview, adding that he wanted to win a championship and “be a part of something special.”The early returns have been strong. He has been one of the team’s most productive players, averaging 11.6 points and 5 rebounds on 62.9 percent shooting over nine games off the bench through the Nets’ 116-103 win over the Raptors on Sunday. He recently scored his 20,000th point, making him one of seven active players to reach the milestone. Despite a basketball résumé with seven All-Star and five All-N.B.A. selections, Aldridge has never received the attention of the others in the 20,000-point club, like his teammates Kevin Durant and James Harden.In part, it is because Aldridge has largely eschewed some of the perks that come with N.B.A. stardom and has avoided the media spotlight. His best years came in Portland, where he spent the first nine years of his career. There, playing with teammates such as Brandon Roy, Greg Oden and Damian Lillard, Aldridge has said that he felt uncertain of his place in the pecking order, despite being near the top of the franchise’s career leaderboards in most categories.He surprised many by leaving Portland before the 2015-16 season for San Antonio, where he helped lead the Spurs to the Western Conference finals in 2017.In a recent interview at the Nets’ practice facility, Aldridge discussed his retirement that wasn’t, his future plans and his new lease on basketball.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.You told The Athletic after the announcement that you were depressed after retiring. Describe to me the feelings you have now. Is there fear?No. I feel excitement, joy, to be back doing what I love to do. And to have what happened and have it taken away so quickly, and to now be back in it, I feel joy. I’m thankful. I’m enjoying every minute of it as I’m out there. No fear. I went through enough testing where fear is no factor.What was that first day of training camp like, where you’re running up and down the floor?It was exciting to be back with the group that I knew the previous year. It was exciting to show that I still can play this game. I wasn’t gone long, but I feel like people feel like I was gone for, like, a whole year, and it was like five months. I feel like everyone was like questioning, “Can he still play after retiring?”Do you remember what the first day of retirement was like?The first day didn’t feel real. The first day felt like I had an off day. And then your second day, you feel like it’s a game day, so you’re just at home. And after like a week or two, you’re like: “Man, I’m not at the gym. I’m not with the fellas. I’m not traveling, not playing.” Like two weeks in, I was like: “Man, this is what it is. I have to find my new interest, shift my focus to something else.” That’s when it hit me, like, “Man, what’s next?”You said a couple years ago you’re probably one of the most misunderstood players in the league. Do you still feel that way?Not here, no. I think as people get to know me, they realize I’m not about any drama. I’m not about any friction. I just want to be appreciated for what I do, and let’s go win. That’s all. I feel like clickbait and television, it was things that were made up over the years to make me out to be some type of person, but I’m not that person.Once I’m on your team, I’m on your side. I’m down the whole way. I’ve got your back, no matter what. And I feel like, as people have gotten to know me, they’ve seen that, so I’m not worried about that anymore. I’m the guy that would give you the shirt off my back if you needed it, and I was being painted as this selfish guy, which I’m not nowhere near that.I’ve seen you describe yourself as an introvert. I’ve seen other people describe you as quiet and reserved. But I don’t actually see that. I see you pretty chatty with teammates. Have you become more outgoing over time?This is my comfort zone. This is my safe space. We go to war together. We’re in the trenches together. We’re battling together. So then you get that extra chemistry. You get that extra connection with them. But no, they would definitely tell you, other than that, I’m pretty quiet. On the bus, I don’t really talk.You’ve talked about feeling overlooked in the past, in spite of your sterling basketball résumé, because you don’t do as much media. You don’t do the red carpet stuff. You’re not doing commercials and interviews.Introvert! [LAUGHTER]Exactly. Is there a part of you that wishes you did more of that?No. I am who I am, and I don’t have any regrets of the things I’ve done with my career as far as more cameos. When I was in “Portlandia,” that was fun. I did, like, little things that I thought would be fun for me. But no, I don’t regret that, because that’s not really my brand. I’m more about hard hat and just go to work.Chris Bosh, after he retired early, talked about how, in retirement, one of the hardest things to come to grips with is not having a full schedule anymore. And not being around teammates or cheered by fans. And the guys that were texting you every day and aren’t texting you as much because you’re not part of the crew anymore. How did you deal with that?I’m to myself more than most, so the guys not texting me didn’t affect me. I don’t really text with guys now. But the whole traveling and your schedule, you have to figure out how to do it, how to fill that void. Because if you don’t, you end up feeling lost and kind of like, “What’s next?” That was very, very tough.Your first week or two is tough, because you go from busy, busy, busy to just — your phone’s quiet. Not even just from teammates. Just like, “Be at practice” or “Be at shootaround.” It goes from that to just this tranquil quietness that you could enjoy, but you’re also uncomfortable with, because you never had it.You’ve said you’ve talked to Damian Lillard about finishing your career in Portland. That seems to suggest to me that there may be some more years left after this one. Is that fair to say?I’m going year to year, but I definitely, how I feel now, how I’m moving now, I definitely have some more years in me. I feel rejuvenated, refreshed and just ready to go. More

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      Warriors Among N.B.A.'s Best Even Without Klay Thompson

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      Golden State is among the N.B.A.’s best teams, even without one of its best players in the injured Thompson. And it’s not just because of Stephen Curry.There he was on the court before a game in San Francisco, dressed in the uniform the rest of his team would wear to play that night against the Charlotte Hornets — striped socks and all. Golden State guard Klay Thompson traveled around the arc for several minutes practicing 3-pointers.He’s close to a return. He can feel it. His teammates can feel it.In the past few months, Thompson, sidelined for more than two years with two serious leg injuries, has been cleared to try the types of movements he’ll use in games. These are the movements that helped him score 37 points in a quarter or 60 points while dribbling just 11 times.“Once he got to that stage it was like a cloud lifted,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said.Not just for Thompson, for the whole team.They ended Wednesday’s game tied with the Utah Jazz and the Miami Heat for the best record in the N.B.A., at 6-1. They did it by beating a thrilling young Hornets team, 114-92. While his teammates wait for Thompson, they’ve made sure they’ll be poised as a legitimate threat to win the Western Conference after he returns.“We got a run going on so we’re just trying to stay with it,” said guard Jordan Poole, who scored 31 points and grabbed 4 steals on Wednesday.Poole has been a big part of Golden State’s recent success as the team’s starting shooting guard in Thompson’s absence. He has leaned on Thompson and Stephen Curry for handling the ebbs and flows of being in that position. Wednesday’s game followed a relative shooting slump for Poole, who became no less aggressive through it. He shot 16 3-pointers against the Hornets, making seven.Golden State drafted Poole late in the first round in 2019, just after the last of its five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals, which resulted in three championships — and just after Thompson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. And so began an unusual rebuilding project.Golden State fortified its roster with lottery picks while it waited through Thompson’s knee injury and a later injury to Curry. Then Thompson tore his right Achilles’ tendon in November 2020.That month, Golden State selected James Wiseman with the second overall pick in the draft. He’s been unavailable this year with an injury as well. Jonathan Kuminga, the seventh overall pick in this year’s draft, has also missed time with an injury, delaying his development.To top it off, Curry wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday, Kerr said.For a while the Hornets took advantage of some sloppy play by Golden State. Kerr got caught pouting during the first quarter.Forward Draymond Green noticed and told him to buck up. The team needed his energy.“I was kind of embarrassed,” Kerr told reporters after the game, smiling at the thought. “After all the turnovers I was like, ‘Fine, fine, whatever.’ Acting like they were on their own out there. It was not my best moment as a coach.”The team has shown repeatedly this season, though, that it has developed enough depth to overcome challenges, self-created or otherwise.That strong defensive performance proved critical on Wednesday. The Hornets entered the game as the highest scoring team in the league, and Golden State held them under 100 points. A dazzling young team with two burgeoning stars in LaMelo Ball (14 points and 8 assists on Wednesday) and Miles Bridges (32 points and 9 rebounds) got a history lesson in the third quarter. That’s when Golden State likes to deliver its kick.Gary Payton II was a big part of the team’s defensive success during the game.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressWhen Golden State was dominating the league a few years ago, it didn’t matter what its opponents did in the first half — a third-quarter domination by Golden State would bury them.The script was a little bit different on Wednesday night.Against the Hornets, Gary Payton II energized the team with a memorable dunk, plus steals, blocks and deflections.“This is what I’m here for,” he said. “Just to come in and spark whatever we need to spark on the defensive end and get us going. You know our offense, we can do anything.”The son of the Hall of Fame defender Gary Payton, he had earned Golden State’s 15th roster spot with his defense. The 28-year-old journeyman had three steals and a block to go with 14 points and played in a way that Kerr said earned him regular playing time.“We’re starting to build an identity and it’s very much defensive minded,” Kerr said. “Which is kind of fun.”After an active final stretch from Payton, Kerr wanted to let the crowd fete him. He removed him from the game with 2 minutes 23 seconds left so the fans could chant his name. As they did, Kerr noticed Green at the free-throw line applauding Payton as well.Thompson, his lightly worn uniform traded in for black denim, wasn’t playing, but he wasn’t absent either. He sat on the bench and marveled at the team he saw before him — particularly Payton.“I can watch Gary Payton II play defense all night long,” he wrote on Twitter, shortly after the game ended.Said Payton, when asked about Thompson’s tweet: “I can watch Klay Thompson shoot the ball all day long. And I can’t wait to watch that all game long.”Klay Thompson watched from the bench Wednesday. Coach Steve Kerr won’t rush his return.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressKerr said he has no intention of rushing Thompson, knowing the patience necessary when a player returns from an Achilles’ tendon injury.“Generally speaking, the ones who have waited a full year plus have done much better,” Kerr said before Wednesday’s game. Thompson had surgery to repair his Achilles’ tendon on Nov. 25, 2020. After all these months, what’s another? More

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      Scottie Pippen Takes Aim at Michael Jordan in New Book

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      In a new memoir, Pippen makes a sharp turn from decades of praising his former Chicago Bulls teammate to calling him selfish, hypocritical and insensitive.Scottie Pippen’s new memoir, “Unguarded,” is a master class in settling scores, or creating new ones.Beginning in the prologue, Pippen expresses anger at Michael Jordan over “The Last Dance,” the 2020 ESPN documentary on the 1990s Chicago Bulls, which Pippen writes “glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates.” Pippen gets more caustic from there.“How dare Michael treat us that way after everything we did for him and his precious brand,” Pippen writes, adding, “To make things worse, Michael received $10 million for his role in the doc while my teammates and I didn’t earn a dime.” (Pippen and several Bulls players appeared on camera for the documentary. It has not been publicly disclosed how much Jordan, whose company Jump 23 was part of the project, made for the series.)In response to Jordan calling Pippen “selfish” in the documentary for delaying a foot surgery and asking to be traded, Pippen writes, “You want to know what selfish is? Selfish is retiring right before the start of training camp when it is too late for the organization to sign free agents,” a reference to Jordan’s unexpected first retirement after his father’s death. He calls Jordan hypocritical and insensitive. And he criticizes Jordan for his behavior toward co-workers: “Seeing again how poorly Michael treated his teammates, I cringed, as I did back then.”“Michael and I aren’t close and never have been,” Pippen writes.That’s just in the opening pages. In the rest of the book, Pippen takes shots at everyone from Charles Barkley (“wasn’t dedicated enough to win a championship”) to Isiah Thomas (“dirty” player, “with a knack for making the most inappropriate comments”).Pippen also tees off on the former Bulls Coach Phil Jackson about the famed moment in 1994 when Pippen refused to re-enter a playoff game for the last 1.8 seconds after Jackson drew up a play for Toni Kukoc instead of for him. After telling Dan Patrick in a radio interview earlier this year that it was racist for Jackson to have done so, Pippen backs off that assertion in the book. Even so, Pippen writes that Jackson humiliated him and that “the moment of truth had come, and he had abandoned me.”As open as Pippen is in the book, he seemed far less willing to engage with the material in an interview. The conversation over a video conference became terse, and Pippen canceled a photo shoot afterward.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.You come from very humble roots. You weren’t recruited by a huge school. You were underpaid compared with market value for a significant period of your career. Is there any point in your life when you didn’t feel overlooked? Because this book seems to stem from a lot of you wanting to write your own story and wanting to set the record straight.I think I can say there was no part in my life that I felt overlooked. That may be your take of what you took from reading the book, but I didn’t feel like I was overlooked. I just felt like it was a different journey than most people have traveled — who’s played on a professional level, who’s had to go to college.From the opening pages of the book, you take a cudgel to Michael Jordan. Have you always felt this way and just kept that inside or did those feelings really come into focus after watching “The Last Dance”?I think he’s always separated himself a little bit from what I consider the traditional team concept, in some sense. And I think “The Last Dance” just put the icing on the cake. So it was all about him at the end of the day.One of the most interesting lines is when you write, “We didn’t win six championships because he got on guys, we won in spite of his getting on guys.” And I thought that was really interesting, because Jordan’s treatment of teammates has long been heralded as a virtue. Did you find it to be unproductive?Well, I can’t say I found it to be unproductive, because it was productive.But you also said that you guys won in spite of it.Well, we won when he retired. We didn’t win a title, but obviously we didn’t have a full roster, so.Do you worry that your book will create a permanent split between you two?To answer your question, no.Have you given him any sort of heads up about what you’re saying about him?No.You write that Isiah Thomas reached out after the documentary aired and wanted to declare a truce with you. You said that you were unwilling to speak to him. Why is that?Well, I played in the league for 18 years and there was never a relationship there. I’ve been out of the league for 15 years, so why now? It’s not like we’re crossing each other’s paths anymore.You write that the book pushed you where you needed to be pushed, even to some places you didn’t want to go. What’s an example of a place that you really needed to push to talk about? What places didn’t you want to go?I don’t want to specifically point that out. I think you should read the book and figure it out. I’m not going to make your job easy by getting some controversy on that.Your interview with Dan Patrick in the spring made a lot of headlines. You said it was racist for Phil Jackson not to draw up the play for you in the famous 1.8 second game. You walked that back in the book. After you made those comments, did you hear from former teammates about it? What were you hearing from people and what made you walk that back in the book?What made me walk it back?Yeah.I didn’t walk it back. I just didn’t have it in the book. I said it was probably not right for me to say that about Phil being racist at this stage. It’s water under the bridge now. But at that point in time, based on where I was as a player, the year that I was having, I thought it was a bad move on his part.When was the last time you spoke to Phil Jackson?I can’t recall.Just to clarify, because I just want to make sure I don’t put words in your mouth. You don’t think that Phil was racist in designating Toni Kukoc to take that last shot?Did I say it? What are you asking?OK, in your book, and I’m quoting you here — —Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Have you heard me say that I said that?Well, yeah, I watched the interview.OK, so I said it. Now what are you asking me?In your book you write: “I was so hurt when he picked Toni over me that I needed to come up with an explanation for why I was rejected. For why, after everything I had given to the Chicago Bulls, I wasn’t allowed to have my moment. So I told myself at the time that Phil’s decision must have been racially motivated, and I allowed myself to believe that lie for nearly 30 years. Only when I saw my words in print did it dawn on me how wrong I was.” So you call it a lie. So I just want to clarify exactly what it is. Do you or do you not believe that Phil was being racist when he drew up that play?I feel like it was a moment where he did me wrong. How about that? How about I answer your question that way.OK, fair enough. What do you think is a big misconception about you? Is there something that people don’t know about you that you would like them to get to know about you?I’m private, so there’s not much you can learn about me. More

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      Knicks Fall to Raptors Amid Flurry of 3-Pointers

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      A devotion to long-distance shots has changed the Knicks’ approach and their results. But is trading 3s for 3s a winning strategy?Near the end of the first quarter on Monday, Julius Randle, the Knicks’ burly All-Star forward, pulled up and banked in a shot from 25 feet. It was the kind of shot that might have sent him to the bench in a previous era of basketball, or even on a previous Tom Thibodeau-coached team. On Monday, it was Randle’s fourth 3-pointer in 12 minutes.It was also a shot emblematic of the new-look Knicks: This year’s version is taking 3-pointers. Lots of them. In the first quarter alone against the Toronto Raptors on Monday, 13 of the Knicks’ 19 shots — and five of Randle’s — were from behind the 3-point line. The approach has been a hallmark of the new Bing Bong-era of the Knicks, and it is part of the reason Thibodeau’s team is off to a 5-2 start, the franchise’s best since the 2012-13 season.In their second game, the Knicks set a team record for most 3-pointers in a game with 24, en route to a 121-96 victory. This year, the Knicks are taking 40.6 deep shots per game; that is good for eighth in the league and is 10 more per game than last season, when the Knicks ranked near the bottom of the league in attempts.“With the 3, you can make up ground quickly,” Thibodeau said. Or not. On Monday, the Knicks tried 36 of them, made less than half and absorbed their second defeat of the season, a 114-103 loss to the Raptors.While the Knicks didn’t try as many 3s last season, they were accurate in the few they shot: 39.2 percent over all, good for third in the N.B.A. This year, they are near the top in accuracy again, only with more volume. At their current rate, the Knicks are on track to have a top-five offense for the first time since that 2012-13 team.The Knicks have also picked up their pace, if only slightly. Last season, the Knicks were dead last in fast break points. This year, they are 22nd.“I think this is the fastest I’ve seen them play for a long time,” Toronto Coach Nick Nurse said before Monday’s game.The early positive returns on the Knicks season are the clearest indication that Thibodeau — a coach known for stubborn adherence to his brand of physical basketball — is capable of adjusting to the new realities of the modern N.B.A. He has reinvented the team’s offensive identity with a simple mantra.“Drive the ball, get your spacing, make your rim read — keep the game simple,” Thibodeau told reporters on Monday, adding, “When we do that, we’re really good.”Still, the transition to a more 3-pointer-heavy offense wasn’t simply a case of telling the team to shoot more of them.Thibodeau received a significant assist — or by some interpretations, had his hand forced — by a shift in personnel. Last season, the Knicks’ starting point guard was Elfrid Payton, a nonshooter whom opposing defenses would often ignore on the perimeter, clogging the paint for Randle and leaving him more susceptible to double teams. This year, Kemba Walker has occupied that spot, and he entered Monday night shooting an almost assuredly unsustainable 57.9 percent on 3-pointers.It is not just having better shooters. Walker and Evan Fournier are superior ballhandlers, and their arrival, along with the improved RJ Barrett, allows the Knicks to more easily break down defenses and create open opportunities on the outside.The Knicks’ ability to stop 3-pointers remains a work in progress. Working inside and outside, Toronto’s OG Anunoby scored 36 points on Monday night.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressHaving a healthy Mitchell Robinson in the starting lineup has been a boost as well. At 7 feet, Robinson draws attention at the rim as one of the Knicks’ best alley-oop threats at the basket. That gives the Knicks more space on the perimeter to create open looks.If there is a worrisome sign, it is on the defensive end, where the Knicks have been below average — something highly unusual for a Thibodeau-coached team. While the Knicks have been taking a lot of 3s, they also give up a lot — more than all but two teams in the N.B.A.Their new acquisitions — Walker and Fournier — aren’t known for their defense. On Tuesday, the Knicks surrendered looks — and points — on the inside and outside to Raptors forward OG Anunoby, who scored 36 points. While Toronto made only 14 of its 42 3-point shots, it was enough to pad a double-digit lead in the second half.Seven games isn’t a huge sample size. Inevitably, some shooting numbers, like Walker’s, will return to earth. But the new-look Knicks, with a sleek, contemporary offense, seem to have the personnel to merit their early optimism. More

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      New Black N.B.A. Coaches Wonder Why It Took So Long to Get a Shot

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      The N.B.A.’s coaching ranks have long been dominated by white men, but a demand from Black players for more diversity may be changing things.Jamahl Mosley has traveled the world for basketball.He played for professional teams in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Finland and South Korea. He was a player development coach with the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets when Carmelo Anthony was there. He was an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the four long years after LeBron James left for Miami. Dirk Nowitzki’s final years with the Mavericks and the rise of Luka Doncic? Mosley was there, too, as an assistant in Dallas.He spent 16 seasons on N.B.A. coaching staffs, developing his skills and hoping for his big break to be a head coach. He had heeded his mother’s advice about playing college basketball for a Black coach, to learn leadership skills from someone who looked like him. The doubts about his ever getting that kind of job only surfaced in recent years when he interviewed for — and was turned down for — seven N.B.A. head coaching jobs.“Because you knew you were qualified,” Mosley said. “You knew you had interviewed well. You knew that you had the ability to do it.”The N.B.A.’s coaching and executive ranks have long been dominated by white men, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black. But this year, Mosley became part of an unusual off-season, in which seven of eight head coaching vacancies were filled by Black candidates. Five of them, including Mosley, who was hired by the Orlando Magic in July, are first-time head coaches. The others are Wes Unseld Jr. of the Washington Wizards, Willie Green of the New Orleans Pelicans, Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics and Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers. Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks and Nate McMillan of the Atlanta Hawks had been head coaches elsewhere before.“If this was 15 years ago, we probably don’t get these positions,” Green said.The uptick — 13 of the league’s 30 coaches are now Black and two others are not white — came during a broader national conversation about race and hiring practices. Black players harnessed their voices to seek change that they felt was overdue.“This is a stain on the league that no one can deny,” Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, said in an interview, “and we’ve got to continue to do better.”‘There’s a natural cultural bond’Long before he became the coach of the Celtics, Udoka was a self-described student of the game. As a teenager in Portland, Ore., he would record games that featured some of his favorite college players, standouts like Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten and Lamond Murray of the University of California, Berkeley. Then he would head to the playground to mimic their moves. (Udoka still has a stack of VHS tapes at home.)“There’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players,” Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“I wasn’t the most athletic or skilled guy,” Udoka said, “so I really had to use my brain for an advantage. I always thought through the game a certain way, and I think some coaches saw that in me, too.”Udoka grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, went to a Black high school and had Black coaches. He was not especially conscious of race, he said, since being in that environment was all he knew. But his high school coach “preached family and togetherness and a brotherhood,” Udoka said, and he carried those lessons with him.Udoka was bouncing around the N.B.A. as a defense-minded forward when he got what he described as “the coaching bug.” He helped found an Amateur Athletic Union team in Portland that included Terrence Ross and Terrence Jones, future N.B.A. players. Udoka also participated in coaching clinics hosted by the N.B.A. players’ union. After retiring, he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2012 as an assistant under Gregg Popovich.The Celtics job opened in June when the team announced that Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for eight seasons, would be its new president of basketball operations. Jaylen Brown, one of the Celtics’ young stars, said in a recent interview with The Undefeated that he had told the team to hire a Black candidate. Representation was important to him, he said.Udoka, left, talked with Marcus Smart during a preseason game this month.Winslow Townson/Associated Press“Players were asking and demanding and wanting to see more guys who looked like them,” Udoka said. He added: “In coaching, I think there’s been a shift from Xs and Os and game plans to the value that’s placed on relationships. And there’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players.”Udoka said he was not suggesting that white coaches couldn’t bond with Black players. He cited Popovich, who is white, as someone who has long stressed the importance of relationships. But for a new coach on a new team, it would be naïve to believe that race was not a factor.“Basketball is mainly minority-based,” Celtics point guard Marcus Smart said in an interview. “So having a minority as a coach, I can connect with him. I can say things to him, or he can say things to me, and we get it. Whereas it’s different when you don’t. You have to try to figure out, OK, how can I meet them halfway?”Still, a coach is a coach: Udoka suspended Smart for the team’s preseason finale for breaking an unspecified team rule.‘This decision is coming fast’About three years ago, Rick Carlisle, as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, was hearing from an increasing number of young assistants of diverse backgrounds who felt they were not getting a fair shake at head coaching jobs.The league and the coaches’ association soon began the N.B.A. Coaches Equality Initiative, a program aimed at developing young coaches and ensuring that qualified candidates are visible when jobs arise. Since 2019, there have been numerous workshops, summits, panel discussions and networking opportunities.David Vanterpool, left, was passed over for the head coaching job in Minnesota after the team fired Ryan Saunders, right.David Zalubowski/Associated PressAnd there is an app, a coaches database that was unveiled last year. It now includes profiles of about 300 coaches, whom the league’s power brokers — owners, general managers, team presidents — can access, Carlisle said. Coaches can upload their histories, their philosophies and even their interview clips. Think of it is as Bumble for the N.B.A. coaching set. But it is all part of a larger mission, said Oris Stuart, the chief people and inclusion officer for the league.“We have ongoing conversations with our teams about the importance of making sure that, as they’re making decisions, the process is inclusive,” Stuart said in an interview. “We focus on the importance of making sure that the best talent is considered, that we make a wide reach and that we go beyond the pre-established networks that people are working from.”But within the past year, the hiring processes for two white coaches — including the one that landed Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers — have been criticized for not appearing to be inclusive.The Minnesota Timberwolves fired Ryan Saunders as their coach in February and announced his replacement, Chris Finch, who is white, on the same day. The Timberwolves chose not to promote the team’s associate head coach, David Vanterpool, who is Black, which would have been typical after a midseason firing. (Vanterpool is now an assistant for the Nets.)The perception was that there was no way the Timberwolves could have seriously considered any Black candidates given their accelerated timeline, said Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union. The timing of the change, she added, “got under a lot of people’s skin.”Within days, Carlisle and David Fogel, the executive director of the coaches’ association, released a statement in which the organization expressed its “disappointment” with Minnesota’s search, saying that it is “our responsibility to point out when an organization fails to conduct a thorough and transparent search of candidates from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.”Rick Carlisle expressed some trepidation before he accepted the offer of head coach from the Indiana Pacers in June.Doug Mcschooler/Associated PressBut just a few months later, in June, Carlisle accepted the Pacers job after what appeared to be an abbreviated search. Indiana had fired Nate Bjorkgren earlier in the month after just one season, and they had interviewed only one other candidate when they offered Carlisle the job. Chad Buchanan, Indiana’s general manager, said in an interview that the team wanted an experienced coach and that Carlisle had unexpectedly become available after he resigned from the Dallas Mavericks, which he had coached for 13 seasons and led to a championship in 2011.Buchanan sought to assure Carlisle by telling him that the Pacers had interviewed 17 candidates, of whom eight were Black and one was female, before hiring Bjorkgren eight months earlier.“This was something I was concerned about,” Carlisle said, “but when they gave me that information, I was comfortable moving forward.”Washington Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. was known as the Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game.Sarah Stier/Getty Images‘It’s more of a systemic issue’As an economics major at Johns Hopkins University, Wes Unseld Jr. thought he would get into investment banking. But for two summers, before and after graduating in 1997, he interned for the Wizards. His father, also Wes, who was synonymous with the franchise from his Hall of Fame playing days, had moved into the front office as the team’s general manager after seven seasons as its head coach. The elder Unseld invited his son to learn the ropes, just in case the financial world was not for him.“If you’re going to be in this business, you’ve got to learn the business,” Wes Unseld Jr. recalled his father telling him. “So I’m thinking, OK, I’ll be around basketball. ‘No, you’re going to intern in every department.’ Community relations, public relations, marketing, sales — you name it, I did it.”Unseld, who was a very good Division III player for Johns Hopkins, soon realized that he could not leave the game behind, and he became one of the many unsung, behind-the-scenes fixtures in the N.B.A. After eight seasons as a scout for Washington, he spent the next 16 as an assistant for various teams around the league. He refined offenses. He built defenses. With the Wizards, he was known as The Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game. In Denver, he helped shape Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into stars.Yet Unseld could not land a head coaching job. He said he was never sure if his race was a factor. “When an opportunity doesn’t pan out, sometimes it’s easy to ask, ‘Was it that?’” Unseld said. “And it may have been. It’s difficult to tell.”Willie Green, the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans, spoke to reporters at a news conference last month.Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesAfter a record 14 Black coaches were manning benches for teams at the start of the 2012-13 season, those numbers dipped in subsequent years, showing how tenuous progress can be. Unseld said the N.B.A. is “a network business like any other business.”“If you’re not connected to the decision makers, it can be difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s an overt way of not interviewing or not giving people of color a chance, but maybe they just don’t have that network to pull from. It’s more of a systemic issue.”Roberts commended the coaches’ association for working to address that issue in recent seasons. But the real power, she said, has come from the players themselves.“A happy team is probably a more successful team,” she said. “And if the players think management is thumbing its nose at their articulated concerns about a coaching staff, then what’s their motivation to stay?”In New Orleans, Willie Green often thinks of his uncle, Gary Green, who coached him when he was growing up in Detroit, and who imbued him with the fundamentals. After several years as an assistant with Golden State and Phoenix, Green said he felt a heightened sense of responsibility.“We have to be caretakers of these opportunities,” he said.In Boston, Garrett Jackson, a former player on Udoka’s A.A.U. team, is now one of Udoka’s video coordinators. And Mosley got his first win for the Magic with a narrow victory against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was gifted the game ball, then got back to business.“It’s like anything,” he said. “You just put your head down and do the work.” More

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      Kevin Garnett Talks Missed Opportunities, On and Off the Court

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      Garnett, the 15-time N.B.A. All-Star, discusses the new owners of the Timberwolves, whether he’s ready to forgive Ray Allen and his thoughts on player activism.At one point in a new Showtime documentary, Kevin Garnett unexpectedly jumps out of his seat during an interview to curse into a boom microphone.Sitting down has never been one of his strengths, whether on the basketball court or in typically sleepy affairs, like talking about yourself on camera.The film, titled “Kevin Garnett: Anything Is Possible,” premieres on Nov. 12. It traces Garnett’s life story, from his upbringing in South Carolina through his ascent to being one of the most celebrated prep-to-pros players in basketball history by winning an N.B.A. championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008.This documentary is the latest in a trend of athletes trying to shape the narratives about themselves through their own productions. Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and Russell Westbrook have been involved in similar projects.In Garnett’s documentary, for which he is an executive producer, one scene stands out. Garnett and the rapper Snoop Dogg are in a recording studio discussing athlete activism, and Garnett criticizes the N.B.A. players who resumed the playoffs after walking out to protest social injustice in the summer of 2020.“I actually thought for a second that the players had momentum to where, if they could’ve took a stance, all of them together, and said, ‘No, we’re not playing,’ that they could’ve actually went on Capitol Hill and started a conversation, a real one, and started talking about police reform,” Garnett tells Snoop Dogg.Garnett added, “Just falling in line actually didn’t really help anything.”In a recent interview, Garnett discussed those comments on player activism, his acting ambitions and his relationship with his former Celtics teammate Ray Allen.You do a very impressive impersonation of Doc Rivers, the former Celtics coach, in the documentary. We’ve seen your acting skills in “Uncut Gems.” What is your interest in continuing your acting career?I feel like obviously the character that I played in the “Uncut Gems” was myself, and I didn’t think that I can mess that up, and I felt confident in that. I’m getting some opportunities, just nothing that speaks to me. Some of the things that have come across my desk are just things that I can’t relate to and I don’t feel like fit me. But I have very high interest. I would love to do more movies if possible.There’s an interesting scene with Snoop Dogg where you’re talking about the N.B.A. players and the post-George Floyd protests. You essentially suggested that the players fell in line when it came to protesting police shootings, and that they should have stopped playing until there was real reform. Is that an accurate framing of how you feel?Well, if I’m being frank, yeah. I think what I tried to insinuate, if not say, was that I just think that if players really, really felt passionate about the George Floyd situation, and they wanted to do more, I think the way that — or at least the way I thought that — you should actually effect change is changing. If that meant you all not playing, then you shouldn’t. I thought that should’ve been an option.I thought the league actually took advantage of the players and knowing that the majority of the players needed to play and needed the opportunity to play, and that wasn’t going to be an option.It seems like during the pandemic, the world linked on sports for entertainment, or to keep things at a calm. With that type of leverage, you got to know how to actually use that leverage. I don’t think the players really had a firm leadership in being able to devise a plan and put it together.Were you particularly political in your playing career? For example, would you have been willing to stop playing until there was legislation addressing a reform that you were passionate about?I would have taken the opportunity to go on Capitol Hill and use my platform to be loud and to say whatever it was I felt. You’ve got to remember, this is your livelihood. And as 400-plus players, you’re not just speaking for yourself. You’re trying to speak for a body of players that think differently, on all accounts. This is how you eat. This is how you feed yourself, and everybody is in different categories as far as economics, when it comes to the league.I probably would have been in a position to take a stance and actually want to initiate a conversation. But, again, I felt like it would have been important to have proper people, proper politicians and proper partnerships to be able to go to the table with proper vision to talk about reform. That’s all.[Later, Garnett added a clarification.]I want to make clear that I actually love the way the players stayed together, and whatever decision they came up with, they were in unison with it. I don’t want to come off like I’m going at the future players or the players that are current and they should have did this.I actually support the players, LeBron, Chris Paul and all they do for the union and for the players.Garnett and some of his Celtics teammates were upset that Ray Allen, left, would join the Miami Heat right after Miami defeated Boston in the 2012 playoffs.Mike Blake/ReutersPaul Pierce is featured heavily in the documentary, as are several other Celtics teammates from 2008. One who is barely mentioned is Ray Allen. Have you softened your stance toward Ray at all? [Some of Allen’s teammates were angry after Allen, who was with the Celtics from 2007 to 2012, left for Miami in free agency after the Heat defeated the Celtics in the playoffs.]I wish Ray all the best, and I wish him and his family all the best, and whatever he’s doing, I’ll always be supportive of it. And that’s all I got to say.Your teammates from that team have said, “It’s K.G. who has to be the one who wants to talk to Ray.” Are you open to any sort of reconciliation with him?It’s not that big of a deal to me. I think Ray’s living his life. I’m living mine. That’s where I stand on it. I think if people wanted to do something, we would have done it by now. So it’s pretty obvious where we’re at, but I wish all the best to all my teammates and people that I played with. Not just Ray, everybody.Paul Pierce mentioned recently that you and he were in the process of maybe starting a podcast. Who would you have as your first guest?Probably [former President Barack] Obama or Jamie Dimon [the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase]. Yeah. You caught me off guard.Well, you can call Paul after and talk about it.I was just about to say, right? “So Paul, since you put it out, who would be the first guest, right?” Paul would be like, some “Girls Gone Wild”-type stuff.Garnett was the fifth overall pick in 1995 when the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted him out of high school.Ann Heisenfelt/Associated PressCan you tell me a bit about your relationship with Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez, the new ownership group of the Minnesota Timberwolves?I haven’t had any conversations with them. I haven’t spoken to A-Rod personally.Do you have any interest in being part of the new ownership group, whether in basketball operations or as a minority owner or in some way being part of the franchise?I think that opportunity has passed. I actually think I’ve been hearing whispers that A-Rod is actually going to take the Timberwolves to Seattle. So we’ll see. I don’t know.Would you be upset if that happened? [The Timberwolves didn’t respond to a request for comment.]No one wants to see the Wolves leave Minneapolis, but you know, it’s business. I would never want the Timberwolves to leave Minneapolis and Minnesota. I think that team means a lot to that state. More

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      Luka Doncic Autographs Questioned Among Collectors

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      Handwriting experts disagree about whether the N.B.A. star’s signatures could be from one person. And collectors have brewed a bigger conspiracy theory — that Doncic’s mother signed his cards.Luka Doncic can appear to lack no superpower on the basketball court, where the 22-year-old Slovenian star regularly treats N.B.A. fans to long-distance floaters, nutmeg passes and playoff fireworks. But cyber sleuths have been flummoxed by the inconsistency he displays during a more pedestrian task: writing his name.Many collectors believe that an elegant signature of Doncic’s name on the lone copy of a basketball card that sold for $4.6 million this year was written not by him, but by his mother. Like the signature seen on many of his other highly coveted trading cards, the blue script is not the tilting scribble Doncic used during his teenage years.Although player autographs evolve and handwriting analysis is subjective, the conjecture has become a powder keg for the sports card industry, which has thrived during the coronavirus pandemic.When live sports went silent last year, some people discovered the drama of watching others rip open expensive packs of cards on YouTube. Speculators stripped Target and Walmart shelves of lucrative boxes, flipping them for fivefold prices. Bolstered by stay-at-home orders and stimulus funds, the frenzy shared the get-rich-quick impulses that propelled cryptocurrency and meme stocks.Investors also flocked to grading companies, which by authenticating autographs and rating cards as pristine — sharp corners, smooth edges, perfect centering and an unmarred surface — can spin cardboard into gold. The demand was so great that Professional Sports Authenticator, which charges at least $150 to grade a card, temporarily refused most submissions.Few of the companies that benefited as money poured in to the collection industry are willing to discuss the ecosystem of athlete autographs, which are used as a key way to tantalize customers. Among collectors, autographed cards found within sealed packs are called “hits.”Luka Doncic signing autographs in 2019, during his rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesRumors of ghost signers spring every so often, with the signatures of workaday players and superstar athletes like Shaquille O’Neal and Cam Newton sometimes questioned. This summer, collectors were startled by apparent similarities between the autographs of the Charlotte Hornets teammates LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges. And the companies that make sports cards — and imprint them with a guarantee of authenticity — have acknowledged a few cases when athletes did not sign their own cards.“This whole thing is just an honor system,” Adam Gellman, who runs the blog Sports Cards Uncensored, said of how card companies like Panini obtain most of their autographs through the mail. “Historically, players have abused it to the nth degree.”Early doubts regarding Doncic’s signature were highlighted in an extensive Blowout Cards forum thread in early 2019, before the promising Dallas Mavericks rookie had generated the stream of triple-doubles that amplified fervor among collectors. The user who started the thread had previously identified fake basketball cards from the 1990s that were of such high quality that they had fooled grading companies.Card aficionados traced the evolution of Doncic’s autograph, debating whether the “Luka” signature he has used in person — which slants to the right, with narrow letters and significant peaks and valleys — could be from the same hand as the symmetrical, loopy cursive known as the “Lulu” signature. (There is a wide spectrum of universally accepted Doncic autographs, and not all “Lulu” signatures have drawn suspicion, but the questioned ones are in that script.)A signature from an Upper Deck Exquisite Collection card.The signature from the $4.6 million Doncic card.Matt ChaseIt is practically impossible to prove who signed a particular card; without video proof, not even a “Sasquatch” signature could be unequivocally discredited. Yet that has not stopped some collectors from speculating that Doncic’s mother is responsible for the “Lulu” signatures, which they describe as more feminine.There is zero evidence for that specific theory, which has become a pervasive inside joke in the industry, but the larger skepticism surrounding the “Lulu” autographs has persuaded some people to purge those versions of the cards from their collections.Doncic declined to comment, a Mavericks spokeswoman said.His mother, Mirjam Poterbin, said the idea that she had signed any of his cards was a crazy rumor. “I don’t even know how people can say things like this,” she said, adding, “He’s probably changing his writing — I don’t know. I don’t know.”Many star athletes, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Mahomes, have simplified their autographs, with the different signatures containing underlying consistencies, such as the relative heights and widths of letters. Skeptics of the “Lulu” signatures argue that it is unusual for an autograph to become neater and to take longer to write.Three forensic handwriting analysts with no ties to the sports industry disagreed when shown examples of the “Luka” and “Lulu” autographs. One said no determination about their authenticity could be made. One said they were unlikely to be written by the same person. And one said the signatures were generally consistent. A common thread, each expert said, was that the simple four-letter autograph would be easy to forge.The “Lulu” signatures are primarily on cards printed by Panini, which holds an exclusive license with the N.B.A. and directly reaches contracts with athletes for their autographs; it announced an exclusive deal with Doncic this year. Panini referred questions to a public relations agency, which did not answer inquiries about the authenticity of Doncic’s signatures, or how the company validates autographs.Several months after the buzzy forum thread in early 2019, Upper Deck, a Panini competitor, posted an Instagram video of Doncic signing cards in its Exquisite Collection. For several interested observers, the swift strokes that produced two long, angled consonants in “Luka” also sharpened Occam’s razor.“When we hear of issues where authenticity is being questioned, we like to do everything to let people know they’re getting the right thing,” said Chris Carlin, Upper Deck’s head of customer experience.Top rookies often sign cards at in-person promotional events. But it is otherwise common for athletes to privately sign sheets of stickers that will be affixed to cards, along with a legally binding affidavit that promises the autographs are theirs.When Upper Deck receives a stack of signed stickers through the mail, Carlin said, the company goes “through it with a fine-toothed comb,” rejecting those that have smeared in transit or that raise authenticity questions. “Usually we eliminate it before it ever gets out to the market,” he said.Yet there have been times when companies have recalled autographed cards. In 2017, Panini said that in “an extremely unfortunate situation,” N.F.L. defensive end Takkarist McKinley was not always the person who had signed his rookie cards “Takk.” Two months later, Panini recalled some cards of Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, announcing that it chose to remanufacture them “after being contacted by an autograph authenticator and following an internal quality control process.”Now the rumors about Doncic’s autographs have some collectors wary.When his official memorabilia website offered signed photos as a promotion last year, a Facebook thread was inundated with questions about their authenticity. The store, which is based in Slovenia and did not respond to requests for comment, dutifully responded that it had personally witnessed his autograph session.“Luka has really special way of signing,” it said in one reply. “If you compare Luka’s signature a year ago and today, yeah it’s different. It’s just the way he does it. Even his signature today is different then 8 months ago. Who knows with what he will surprise us in future.”Interest in Luka Doncic cards has risen alongside his star power in the N.B.A.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesDoncic was named the most valuable player of the Euroleague at age 19 and had immediate success in the N.B.A., making two All-Star teams after being named rookie of the year. This summer he led Slovenia to a fourth-place finish in its first Olympic basketball appearance.“He cares about one thing and one thing alone, and that’s winning,” said Doncic’s agent, Bill Duffy, who added that the athlete did not relish the growing off-court obligations.“Quite frankly,” he added, “everything else is just burdensome.”Asked directly whether someone other than Doncic was responsible for any of his autographs, Duffy said the accusation was “false” before deferring to a spokeswoman for the agency, who said, “There has been no fraud, whatever the word is, with any of these signings.”Collectors who agree that the “Lulu” signatures are legitimate point to a gift for the Slovenian president that features one, a skipped pen stroke that has been observed in both archetypes of autographs, and the fact that grading companies authenticate them.A spokeswoman for Beckett Grading Services said in an email that outside speculation about Doncic signatures did not influence its autograph experts, who consider “the letter shape and formation, the pen pressure, the flow, rhythm, conviction and spontaneity of the signature, and letter size and spacing to determine if it is consistent with known exemplars.” Professional Sports Authenticator declined to comment.Another common defense of the “Lulu” signatures is that the variations can be attributed to fatigue from frequent signings. Industry experts said that it took about an hour to sign 400 stickers and that Doncic might have signed at least 10,000 as a rookie.Gellman, who runs Sports Cards Uncensored, dismissed that explanation, noting that he once watched the quarterback Johnny Manziel replicate his intricate signature for four hours.“Athletes are required to sit and do this for so many parts of their life that it becomes secondhand to sign everything the same,” Gellman said.Ultimately, the rumblings about Doncic’s signature have not dulled the top end of his card market.Nick Fiorella, an entrepreneur who puts most of his disposable income into sports cards, said his riskiest purchase was the $4.6 million Doncic card with an N.B.A. logo and a “Lulu” autograph. But he is betting that the player and the hobby will continue to soar.“To me, if it’s him or his mom or whatever, it’s always going to be his one-of-one,” Fiorella said. “If he becomes a transcendent player, it doesn’t really matter if I signed it.”Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. More

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      Vanessa Bryant Tells of Kobe Bryant's Death in New Deposition

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      Bryant was being questioned by a lawyer defending Los Angeles County in her lawsuit about the sharing of photos of human remains from the helicopter crash that killed nine people.The morning started for Vanessa Bryant the way most weekends do for parents with busy children. One of her daughters was at a college prep class. Her husband was taking another daughter to a basketball game. She stayed home with the two youngest girls, a toddler and a newborn.But then a family assistant knocked on the door around 11:30 a.m. that Sunday and told Bryant that her husband, Kobe Bryant, and their daughter Gianna had been in a helicopter accident, according to a transcript of a deposition of Bryant in a lawsuit between her and Los Angeles County.The assistant said that five people had survived the crash that day, Jan. 26, 2020. Bryant said that she figured Kobe and Gianna would be among them and would be helping the other victims. But as she tried to call her husband, notifications began popping up on her phone: R.I.P. Kobe. R.I.P. Kobe.“My life will never be the same without my husband and daughter,” Bryant said during the deposition.Read the Deposition of Vanessa BryantBryant described the day of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, Kobe Bryant, and their daughter Gianna.Read Document 50 pagesIt would be hours before Bryant would learn, officially, that Kobe, 41, and Gianna, 13, had been killed along with seven others in a crash just outside Los Angeles. In her rush to get to the crash site, before she learned of their deaths, Bryant went to an airport in an attempt to secure a helicopter to take her — but was rebuffed because she was told the weather made it unsafe to fly.These and many other details of that day have become public for the first time through questions Bryant answered during a videoconferencing meeting with a lawyer defending Los Angeles County. She is suing the county and some of its agencies and employees for emotional distress she said was caused by emergency medical workers who took and shared photos of the human remains at the helicopter crash site.Kobe Bryant, the retired Los Angeles Lakers superstar, had been on his way to coach Gianna in a series of games at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif.Vanessa Bryant’s deposition comes at a crucial point in the case and amid an escalating battle between the lawyers over the scope of what Los Angeles County and the other defendants can request of Bryant, other plaintiffs and witnesses.One of the most contentious issues, the subject of numerous court filings in recent days, is whether the county can conduct what are called independent medical examinations, which involve psychiatric evaluations, of each of the plaintiffs.Bryant’s lawyers argue that the examinations are “cruel” and that the county is sending a message by requesting them. “When public servants violate the privacy and constitutional rights of the citizens they swore to protect and serve, the victims must run a gauntlet to seek justice,” Bryant’s lawyers argued in one of the filings.But the county contends that the examinations are “a routine part of the discovery process,” according to filings. Bryant and the other plaintiffs are arguing that they suffered emotional distress because of the actions of county employees, and the county believes a medical professional should be allowed to examine the extent of that suffering.At times, Louis Miller, an attorney representing Los Angeles County, expressed remorse for asking Bryant invasive questions. “It’s not harassment,” Miller said at one point. “It’s just a lawsuit. And I’m so sorry to put you through this, but like I said at the beginning, I’ve got to do my job.”“I shouldn’t have to be going through this,” Bryant responded. “It’s not just a lawsuit.”Bryant said that after she was told that she could not fly to the crash site, she met up with Rob Pelinka, the Lakers general manager who served as Kobe’s agent during part of his N.B.A. career. Pelinka, Bryant said, drove them during the hour-and-forty-five-minute trip to the sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash site.At the sheriff’s station, Bryant said “no one would answer” questions about her husband and daughter. She was escorted back and forth between rooms, and after a long wait, she said, a pastor walked in and then Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva came with a publicist. Bryant said she wanted privacy and asked the publicist to leave the room.Villanueva confirmed the deaths, Bryant said, and asked if he could do anything for her.“And I said: ‘If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure that no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area,’” Bryant said during the deposition. “And he said: ‘I will.’ And I said: ‘No, I need you to get on the phone right now and I need you to make sure you secure the area.’”Villanueva, Bryant said, excused himself from the room. Bryant said that he reassured her the area had been secured when he returned. Bryant said that she exited the back of the office while a news conference was being conducted in the front of the office.Miller asked Bryant if she was seeking a monetary judgment in the lawsuit.Bryant expressed her desire to have the responders who took the pictures held accountable.“The impact of the helicopter crash was so damaging, I just don’t understand how someone can have no regard for life and compassion, and, instead, choose to take that opportunity to photograph lifeless and helpless individuals for their own sick amusement,” Bryant said.Miller asked again: “Ms. Bryant, I understand your testimony about accountability. My question to you is: Are you also seeking monetary recovery, damages, money, in this lawsuit?”Bryant responded that it would be up to the jury.Later in the deposition, Miller repeatedly asked Bryant to look at some graphic images and messages that had been sent to her on social media, some digitally altered, to make the point that others besides sheriff’s deputies were causing her emotional distress. Bryant, according to the deposition, put her hand in front of the camera and monitor instead of looking at the images. She said she interacted with fans less often on social media out of fear that she would be blindsided with pictures of the crash site.Bryant said she recovered the clothes that Kobe and Gianna wore during the crash over concerns that people would take photos of them.“They suffered a lot,” Bryant said during the deposition. “And if their clothes represent the condition of their bodies, I cannot imagine how someone could be so callous and have no regard for them or their friends and just share the images as if they were animals on the street.”The sides are also fighting over whether Villanueva and Daryl Osby, the Los Angeles County fire chief, should sit for depositions.Villanueva has gained public prominence in the last few years in part because his department handled high-profile cases like the helicopter crash, and a car crash in which the golf star Tiger Woods was injured. As he prepares for re-election next year, Villanueva has been accused of targeting political enemies and has fought with city councilors and watchdog groups.The defendants contend that, as department heads, Osby and Villanueva generally are not subject to depositions, and that they do not have any specialized knowledge that other fire and law enforcement officials who have already been deposed do not have. But in an email, lawyers for Bryant listed 14 different reasons they believe Villanueva should have to sit for a deposition, mostly relating to how he handled the possession of photos of the crash site by sheriff’s deputies.After the requests to medically examine all plaintiffs, 10 of them, including all of the young children involved, have recently exited the case. Two families settled with the county last week, the terms of which have not been disclosed. And while Christopher Chester, whose wife, Sarah, and daughter Peyton died in the crash, is continuing his lawsuit, he has dismissed his surviving children as plaintiffs.The sides are also fighting over the scope of witness interviews, and which documents those witnesses must produce.Bryant listed a number of witnesses to the emotional distress she said she has experienced, including Rob and Kristin Pelinka; the pop star Ciara Wilson; the television host and actress La La Anthony; the R&B singer Monica Arnold, known more popularly as Monica; Sharia Washington, Kobe Bryant’s sister; and Catherine Gasol, the wife of the former N.B.A. player Pau Gasol.All of those witnesses are being scheduled for depositions, and they are being asked to produce volumes of documents. The subpoena issued to Wilson, for instance, asked for all documents and communications related to Bryant’s emotional distress between Wilson and Bryant or anybody else since 2010 — 10 years before the crash. It also sought all documents and communications between Wilson and Bryant about any topic since the day of the crash, and all of Wilson’s communications with others about Bryant since the day of the crash.“Defendants’ document requests are grossly overbroad,” a lawyer for the witnesses wrote in an email on Monday that was submitted to the court.“As we have discussed, the document requests are not overbroad,” a lawyer for the county responded, though they did later agree that witnesses wouldn’t have to turn over all of their communications with Bryant since the crash, just the communications about her mental state going back to 2010.Some of these issues and others could be resolved in the coming days. The judge has scheduled hearings for Oct. 29 and Nov. 5 to rule on some motions. More