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      Giannis and Bucks Eliminate Durant and Nets in Game 7 of NBA Playoffs

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      Injuries to the Nets’ stars weighed on the team, which had been favored to win the championship this season.The Milwaukee Bucks are headed to the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals after defeating the Nets, 115-111, in overtime on Saturday night in a decisive Game 7 for their semifinal series.Giannis Antetokounmpo led the way for the Bucks, scoring 40 points and grabbing 13 rebounds, allowing Milwaukee to withstand another masterful showing from Kevin Durant, who countered with 48 points and 9 rebounds of his own.Durant repeatedly exploited screen-and-rolls, and deftly used his post-up game to befuddle the Bucks defense. The deafening Barclays Center crowd roared when Durant hit a long jumper to tie the game with 1 second left in regulation to send the game to overtime. But the Nets, whose bench players scored no points and attempted no shots all game, were outscored in overtime, 6-2, and lost.It was a disappointing end to the series for the No. 2-seeded Nets, who entered the playoffs primed to make a championship run, with their stars at last seemingly healthy at the same time. Their best three players — James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Durant — played only eight games together during the regular season because of injuries and other absences.The Nets started the series favored against the third-seeded Bucks, but once again, injuries to the stars piled up, increasing the potential of an upset.In Game 1, James Harden left after less than a minute because of a right hamstring strain. Nonetheless, the Nets won the first two games of the series at home in convincing fashion.Then the Bucks squeezed out a win at home in Game 3. And in Game 4, the Nets lost Irving to a sprained ankle in the first half. The Nets also lost the game and appeared to be losing momentum with the best-of-seven series suddenly tied at two.But in Game 5, Durant put together one of the greatest playoff performances ever, finishing with 49 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists and becoming the first player to record those numbers in a playoff game. Harden surprisingly returned for that game, but was largely ineffective. The Bucks led by as many as 17 points, only for Durant to snuff out their lead almost single-handedly in the second half. Jeff Green emerged to fill some of the gap left by Irving, scoring a playoff-career-high 27 points, the most points off the bench by a Net in postseason history.The Bucks struck back with strong performances from their stars in Game 6, with Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday scoring 89 of the Bucks’ 104 points.Throughout the series, the Nets tried to take advantage of Antetokounmpo’s ineffectiveness as a shooter, a weakness that has vexed him throughout several playoff runs. Defenders routinely left him open on the perimeter or sent him to the free-throw line, where he also struggled. That made Antetokounmpo, a two-time Most Valuable Player Award winner, less of a threat late in games.But Antetokounmpo still managed to have one of the best series of his career. Through the first six games, he averaged 30.5 points and 12.8 rebounds per game on 56.5 percent shooting. It was good enough to get the Bucks to a Game 7, and to the Eastern Conference finals for the second time in Antetokounmpo’s career.The Nets had difficulty getting production from their role players, many of whom had career years. Joe Harris, one of the best shooters in the N.B.A., struggled all series — shooting just 35.5 percent from the field and only 32.5 percent from 3 through the first six games.The Bucks’ series win brings them one step closer to winning their first championship since 1971, when the team was led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the Eastern Conference finals, they’ll will face the winner of the other semifinal matchup, between the Atlanta Hawks and the Philadelphia 76ers. That matchup is headed to a Game 7 on Sunday, after the Sixers tied the series behind a strong performance from Seth Curry on Friday. The Eastern Conference finals are set to begin on Wednesday.The Nets missed a chance to make their first conference finals since 2002 and 2003, when they were in New Jersey led by Jason Kidd. Both of those years, the Nets went to the finals. They haven’t won a championship since the A.B.A. merged with the N.B.A. in 1976. More

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      Sugar Rodgers Is Rewriting Her Life Story Through the W.N.B.A.

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      Rodgers used basketball, and later her writing skills, to forge a brighter path after a painful childhood. The former All-Star is now an assistant coach for the Las Vegas Aces.For much of Sugar Rodgers’ life, her job was survival: staying alive, healthy and out of jail in her Suffolk, Va., neighborhood, where the pop of bullets nearby forced her inside and away from the basketball hoop she loved.When many eighth graders were buckling down on schoolwork and extracurricular activities, or skipping school to hang out with friends, Rodgers was truant for other reasons: to babysit her nephew while his mother was at work, or to feed and bathe her bedridden mother, who was dying of lupus.“‘What goes on in this house stays in this house,’ ” Rodgers said her mother told her. “So, I couldn’t reach out and ask people for help and do certain things because that always stemmed in the back of my mind.”Still, Rodgers said, she finished eighth grade on time by doing extra assignments, and stayed on track academically throughout high school. She was recruited to play basketball at Georgetown, and graduated as the career scoring leader. The Minnesota Lynx selected her in the second round of the 2013 W.N.B.A. draft, and she helped them win a championship that year.She played the next five seasons with the Liberty, where she became an All-Star and won the Sixth Woman of the Year Award in 2017. Now, after two seasons playing with the Las Vegas Aces, Rodgers has matriculated into the coaching ranks as an assistant for the team.Rodgers ended her time at Georgetown as the school’s career scoring leader.Jessica Hill/Associated Press“I’m just going to bring whatever it is that they need me to do,” Rodgers said. “Just like as a player — whatever they needed me to do, I did. Whatever sacrifices they needed me to make, I did those, for the betterment of the team. And I’m willing to do that as a coach as well.”A recent graduate of Georgetown’s masters’ program in sports industry management and the author of “They Better Call Me Sugar,” a young adult memoir about her childhood, Rodgers, 31, spoke to The New York Times about her childhood, the sanctity of writing and the perspective she brings to the sideline.This interview and has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.Your parents forced you to stay back in second grade. How did that impact your education journey?My mom said, like, “You’ll be fine. This is where you belong because you’re not learning at the pace that they are pushing at.”As a kid, you don’t look at it that way. You just look at it, like, “All my friends are going to be in the next grade and I’m going to get picked on because I was left behind.” And in my mind, like, it’s a reminder that I have failed, and because of that failure, I just have been, like: “I can’t fail again. I can’t fail again.”I’ve always tried to put myself in a position to be successful, so using basketball as a tool to get out of my situation, that’s what I’ve done.How did you find time while playing in the W.N.B.A. to pursue a master’s degree at Georgetown?When I wasn’t in the gym working on my game, I was at home working on my degree. It was a little bit of a struggle, especially because I started in 2019 during the playoffs. Can you imagine? I’m just starting school, and we’re in the playoffs, and just having to find that balance in between the two. I really wanted to go back to school, so I know it’s something I really wanted to accomplish and I just made time. I just made it work, whether it was some nights I stayed up a little bit later, or I got up a little bit earlier.Do you feel a shift is happening to include more women and women of color in W.N.B.A. head coaching and front office roles? And how did you know you were ready to move from center court to the sidelines?For me, I do see it changing. I do see more African American women are, you know, coming on the sidelines and taking it, especially former players. I also think for me, I just woke up and didn’t want to work out anymore. So, I just knew mentally, spiritually and physically it was time for me to look into something else.I actually kind of wanted to retire like two years ago.“It’s some things that I can say to players because I’ve actually been through it,” Rodgers said of coaching.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesWhat made you postpone your retirement and go to Las Vegas and play for your old coach Bill Laimbeer again?Once the Liberty decided to trade me, I was like, at this point, a little exhausted with basketball and how long I had been playing. Mentally, it was having an impact on me and I wanted to just be able to take a break from basketball.Bill and them, they traded for me. So, I was like, yeah, I’ll come out. They’d be a great organization.It seems that the Liberty’s move in 2017 from Madison Square Garden to the Westchester County Center in White Plains was a low point for the franchise. Would you agree?It was just, like, ‘Oh man, oh man.’ Like, a lot of people is not going to commute that far. You know, the die-hard fans are going to come, but we had a great fan base here in the city. I think that was kind of the devastating part of it, not being able to play in front of our fans and keep them coming back to the games and excited about the seasons.Fast-forward to 2021, and the Liberty is a very different franchise, with a new owner in Joseph Tsai, a new arena in Brooklyn’s Barclays and a hot start to the season. To what do you attribute this massive turnaround?I think they have a great owner. I think it started there when they were like, OK, we’re going to go play in the Barclays, and we’re going to treat you like A-1 class athletes. And that put them in a position to be able to get players to come play in New York.Throughout “They Better Call Me Sugar,” you write about your mother wanting you to put golf first and basketball second, or not at all. As an adult looking back, do you have an understanding of why she held this view?I just know golf was her thing, and maybe because back when she played basketball, there wasn’t opportunities for women. Because my mom was a basketball player, but way back in the day, it wasn’t opportunities like how it was for men. But now, looking at it, the W.N.B.A. is 25 years old. And just to be a part of that, it shows the W.N.B.A., can grow, the salaries can get there. It just takes one step at a time.How did you begin writing about your childhood, and has writing been a source of healing for you?When I was at Georgetown, I had a coach who suggested that I go to therapy and I’m just like, I’m not going to therapy. It’s for white people. But I was just ignorant to the fact because therapy, it’s taboo in the African American community.I really didn’t like talking, and I went to therapy and I wouldn’t talk and I remember [the therapist] was like, “Well, just write it down.” And I would just write these stories and he would read them when I came in, because I didn’t like to talk. And, you know, I was like, man, these stories could become a book. It can help somebody in a situation that’s like mine or worse than mine.Writing is therapeutic for me.What do you feel like you bring that’s unique to coaching?I just bring life experience in itself. There’s some things that you can’t teach that I just bring naturally. It’s some things that I can say to players because I’ve actually been through it.You get a lot of coaches who players cannot relate to, and I think sometimes you need that balance on the coaching staff. But if you have players who cannot relate, those players don’t fit because they feel like nobody understands them. And I just feel like I bring a lot. More

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      The Bucks Respond With a Star Performance of Their Own

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo helped force a Game 7 with 30 points and 17 rebounds.The Milwaukee Bucks looked wobbly for a moment in the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Game 6 against the Nets. A 15-point lead had been cut to 5 in a matter of minutes. Kevin Durant, coming off a marvelous Game 5 performance, looked primed for a repeat after scoring 12 third quarter points. Milwaukee’s offense was stagnant.But the Bucks’ top trio responded in a decisive and rather undramatic stretch. Khris Middleton was fouled shooting a 3-pointer and hit all three free throws. Jrue Holiday drove for a layup. Giannis Antetokounmpo hit two free throws, followed by an emphatic “and-1” to push the lead to back to 15.That stretch saved the season for the Bucks, sealed a 104-89 victory in Milwaukee and forced a winner-take-all Game 7 in Brooklyn on Saturday. It was a microcosm of the Bucks at their best: Middleton creating offense from the perimeter. Holiday being able to break down a defense. Antetokounmpo being unguardable near the rim. And the team defense not allowing easy baskets for the Nets. This was the kind of basketball that has been hard to come by for Milwaukee in this series, and it came at a necessary time.“They responded after every run we made,” Durant said after the game.Antetokounmpo finished with 30 points and 17 rebounds. Middleton carried most of the load offensively, with 38 points, 10 rebounds and five assists — with five steals for good measure. Holiday added 21 points, eight rebounds and five assists of his own. The three scored 89 of the Bucks’ 104 points.On Middleton, Nets coach Steve Nash said, “We just kind of let him out of the bag tonight.”When the team needed its stars, they responded from the start. The Bucks attacked the rim relentlessly from tipoff. Antetokounmpo, who has faced withering criticism for his penchant for taking too many jump shots, did not take a single 3-pointer the whole game. In one play, he went up for a jump shot, changed his mind midair and tossed it out to Middleton for an open 3.“I think there were was maybe one or two plays where I was open on the 3-point line that I could shoot it, but I still felt like I could go downhill. But you know, this game I didn’t shoot a 3,” Antetokounmpo said. “Maybe the next game I’ll shoot a couple. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I can’t predict the future. But what I know is that I enjoy the game when I’m aggressive.”He set the tone, scoring 11 points and grabbing seven rebounds in the opening quarter. The Bucks also put the Nets on their heels by pushing the ball in transition, often thanks to Antetokounmpo doing so himself. Milwaukee had 26 fast break points, compared to the Nets’ 4. The Bucks shot only 7 for 33 from deep (21.2 percent). They did their damage at the rim, a place where the Nets defense has been vulnerable all season.What has been seemingly lost in this series, particularly in the wake of Durant’s record-setting Game 5 performance, is that Antetokounmpo, for all his faults, is having an excellent series, one of the best of his career. He has reached 30 points in five of the six games. He is averaging 30.5 points and 12.8 rebounds a game on 56.5 percent shooting, all while the Nets defense has been designed specifically to get him away from the rim. More often than not, Antetokounmpo has been able to get to his spot regardless. And on Thursday, the Bucks did a better job of getting Antetokounmpo the ball on the move rather than with him standing in one place.It’s easy to focus on the missed jump shots, but technically, there haven’t been many. It’s just that the misses look terrible and are easy to fixate on.“Giannis, coming into the game, was in a good place,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said, adding that the team tried to get him into “multiple actions,” and to “just get him where he’s attacking, creating for his teammates and creating for himself.”The home team has won every game in this series, which bodes well for the Nets in Game 7. However, there are also some signs that may favor Milwaukee heading into the concluding game. For one thing, the Nets have been held below 100 points in three of the last four games — the three Milwaukee wins. Durant scored 32 points in Game 6, but it took him 30 shots to do it. He was only 2 for 8 from 3, and missed both of his free throws.By most other N.B.A. players’ standards, it was a productive game. But for Durant, that statline is him being contained — a plus for Milwaukee. The Bucks were able to slow the game down enough to force Durant into more isolations and difficult shots.Of course, the Bucks benefited from a hobbled James Harden, who was still clearly struggling with his hamstring strain on Thursday. He still managed to score 16 points and dish out seven assists, but his ability to accelerate seemed hampered, allowing Milwaukee to put more pressure on Durant.“We’re not expecting too much from him movement wise, but he’s going out there and giving it his all. And we respect that,” Durant said, referring to Harden.It didn’t help the Nets that usually reliable role players, like Joe Harris and Jeff Green, struggled with their shooting as well.Giannis Antetokounmpo had 30 points and 17 rebounds in Game 6.Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesThis will be Antetokounmpo and Middleton’s second Game 7 in their careers. The last one was a loss against the Boston Celtics in the first round of their 2018 series. Durant has played in four of them, the most recent one being the 2018 Western Conference finals with the Golden State Warriors against his now teammate, James Harden, who was then with the Houston Rockets. Durant has won three of those deciding games. His best performance came in a 2011 semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies, when he dropped 39 points. Harden was his teammate then on the Oklahoma City Thunder.Whoever wins Game 7 is likely to be favored to head to the championship over either the Atlanta Hawks or the Philadelphia 76ers. If the Bucks can’t win their first road game of the series, it will be yet another playoff disappointment for Milwaukee, and Budenholzer could be dismissed. There will be questions — once again — about whether Antetokounmpo can be the best player on a championship team. If the Nets lose, injuries or not, it will be a missed opportunity that the franchise mortgaged its future for.It was Harden who might have provided the elixir for either team wanting to break through and advance: “We’ve just got to go out there and hoop.” More

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      Was The NBA Season Too Much Too Soon After the Bubble?

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      A rash of injuries leads LeBron James to question the league’s packed schedule.The Los Angeles Lakers will not play another game until October, but LeBron James was apparently not ready to stop dunking. Fresh off the maiden first-round playoff exit of his career, James responded to a cresting wave of injuries sustained by marquee stars with a social media scolding of the N.B.A.In response to a sobering bulletin about the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, who is out indefinitely after sustaining a knee sprain in the Clippers’ second-round series against the Utah Jazz, James took to Twitter. He offered commiserations to fans about the record-setting eight current All-Stars who have missed at least one game this postseason — and criticized league officials for not doing more in this pandemic season to “protect the well being of the players.”By more he meant less: James said he issued clear warnings about the increased injury risk attached to wedging a 72-game regular season between Dec. 22 and May 16, with the playoffs timed to end right before the Tokyo Olympics, compared with starting in mid-January and possibly playing fewer games. The 2019-20 season, remember, strayed into October and spawned the shortest off-season in league history after a four-month interruption imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote. “I knew exactly what would happen.”Self-serving? Yes. Vague? Yes again. There was an undeniable whiff of convenience to James’s remarks, as a rationalization for the swift end to the Lakers’ title defense, along with a lack of clarity. James did not specify to whom, when or where those warnings were registered. He was also surely aware that the 2020-21 schedule was mutually agreed upon by league officials and the National Basketball Players Association, and that starting later, as James had hoped, very likely would have cost both parties significant television revenue by falling shy of the 72-game threshold.Yet the soliloquy, above all, amounted to a loud and powerful “told you so” from James that drowned out the disclaimers. It carried more bite than his recent blasts about the N.B.A.’s decision to stage an All-Star Game in Atlanta in March, followed by protests against the playoff play-in tournament that his Lakers, after long-term injuries felled both James and Anthony Davis, had to win to make the playoffs after slipping to No. 7 in the West.Beyond the uncomfortable spotlight he brought to a dampened N.B.A. postseason increasingly known for who isn’t able to play, James said what so many of his fellow players have surely been thinking — using his biggest-in-the-game megaphone. The rant highlighted a prime concern in front offices and among medical staffs throughout the league: What cost, present and future, did the stacking of two pandemic seasons with such a short turnaround impose?The players’ union agreed to that timeline after learning that the N.B.A.’s television partners pushed for it. The players, who essentially split annual profits and losses evenly with team owners, were told that starting in December rather than January would result in a difference of roughly $500 million in revenue, after last season’s shortfall of $1.5 billion. No less important to the league office was the opportunity to wrap this season up in time to return to its usual October-through-June arc in 2021-22.In retrospect? It was a giant ask. The physical and mental toll of last season’s restart in the Florida bubble, combined so soon with the rigors of a season in home markets governed by strict Covid-19 protocols and daily testing that ate into rest and recovery time, had teams fearful from the start of a spate of soft-tissue injuries. Player stress and training time lost, with fewer practices and a second-half crush of games to make up earlier postponements, only increased those fears.As the number of injured stars became a dominant second-half story line, whether truly a byproduct of the compressed schedule or purely bad luck in some instances as seen with the ankle injuries sustained by James and the Nets’ Kyrie Irving, more questions surfaced. One of the biggest: How will the franchise cornerstones who shoulder such demanding loads rebound next season?“I don’t know if people do get the question you asked,” the Philadelphia 76ers coach, Doc Rivers, told me. “There’s so much stress on those guys. Some guys log heavier minutes — they have to do more.”Joel Embiid after falling hard in the fourth quarter of Game 5 against the Atlanta Hawks. Embiid has been playing through a meniscus tear in his right knee.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersRivers’s All-Star center, Joel Embiid, is one of those guys. Embiid has been playing through a small meniscus tear in his right knee and, after a roaring start to Philadelphia’s second-round series against Atlanta, was unable to prevent the top-seeded Sixers from falling into a 3-2 deficit entering a Game 6 on the road.Those eight All-Stars who have missed at least one playoff game include Embiid. The number will swell to nine if Phoenix’s Chris Paul, who this week entered the league’s health and safety protocols, has to miss any of the upcoming Western Conference finals.As I’ve been writing since April, there is little charm to be celebrated from the uncharacteristically wide-open nature of these playoffs when the suspense largely stems from game- and series-changing absentees.“Injury rates were virtually the same this season as they were during 2019-20, while starter-level and All-Star players missed games due to injury at similar rates as the last three seasons,” said Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, citing the league’s internal data. “While injuries are an unfortunate reality of our game, we recognize the enormous sacrifices N.B.A. players and teams have made to play through this pandemic.”While true that one of the sport’s eternal struggles is conclusively attributing an injury to overuse, and that no one on the outside can conclusively say a 60-game schedule would have kept stars safer than 72 games, internal data that isn’t made public has obvious limitations. Thanks to James’s blasts, much more attention has been placed on the numbers dispensed by the Elias Sports Bureau. It heaped the loudest pressure yet on the league to prove that 72 games across five months before the playoffs, even with reduced travel, wasn’t an injury accelerant.Kevin Durant uncorked a performance for the ages (49 points in 48 minutes) on Tuesday to haul the Nets to the brink of the Eastern Conference finals despite Irving’s absence and James Harden’s limited effectiveness on an injured right hamstring. Hours after the Clippers and Suns lost Leonard and Paul on a wretched Wednesday, Atlanta tried to bring the focus back to basketball with its remarkable Game 5 comeback against the 76ers — or, depending on your perspective, Philadelphia’s unfathomable fold.These are the things we should be dissecting. The Leonard-less Clippers’ Game 5 win in Utah, inspired by Paul George right after the Sixers squandered a 26-point lead to the Hawks, was another.Over and over, sadly, injuries have changed the conversation. They affect every postseason, true, but the intrusions have seemingly been a constant since March 20, when James (high ankle sprain after Atlanta’s Solomon Hill collided with him) and Charlotte’s newly named Rookie of the Year Award winner LaMelo Ball (fractured wrist after crashing to the floor) were hurt on the same day.Elias circulated last week that this season’s 27 All-Stars combined to miss a higher rate of games (13.7 games per player and 19 percent overall) than in any previous season. Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, declined to comment on Wednesday when asked if James had indeed raised his concerns about such developments in consultation with union officials before the season.“I speak for the health of all our players and I hate to see this many injuries this time of the year,” James said as part of his rim-shaking social media post.On this occasion, and this topic, they were comments heard — and felt — by an entire league. More

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      N.B.A. All-Stars Set a Painful Record for Missing Playoff Games

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      Injury woes are not new, but they have been acute during the playoffs. Never before have eight All-Stars missed at least one postseason game in the same year.Sprained knees. Strained hamstrings. Twisted ankles. Shattered hopes.The N.B.A. playoffs have turned into a battle of attrition as the league grapples with a growing list of injuries to many of its biggest stars. No less an eminence than LeBron James, whose Los Angeles Lakers made a hasty first-round exit after his All-Star teammate Anthony Davis injured his knee (and then his groin), weighed in on Wednesday, blaming the league’s compressed schedule. Regular-season games began in December after an abridged off-season.“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote on Twitter. “I knew exactly what would happen.”It is worth noting that the league and its players’ union agreed on the schedule.But injuries were a problem for many N.B.A. teams even before the start of the playoffs — the Denver Nuggets, for example, were left without Jamal Murray, their starting point guard, when he sustained a season-ending knee injury in April — and a fresh batch of injuries in the postseason has only amplified the issue. In fact, with two-plus playoff rounds remaining, the N.B.A. has already set an ignominious record: eight All-Stars (and counting, perhaps) have missed at least one postseason game.Here is a look at those players, and how their injuries and absences have affected their teams:Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles ClippersKawhi Leonard sat during the end of Game 4 against the Utah Jazz on Monday with knee soreness.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesInjury: Leonard was huge for the Clippers on Monday in Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Utah Jazz, finishing with 31 points and 7 rebounds in a win that evened the best-of-seven series at two games apiece. But the Clippers’ victory proved costly: Leonard sprained his right knee.Impact: Leonard was expected to miss Game 5 on Wednesday night, and the Clippers did not offer a timetable for his return. One of the top two-way players in the league, Leonard is vital to the Clippers’ championship hopes. There is also a sense of urgency for the franchise, which has never made a conference final and had been banking on the star-studded pairing of Leonard and Paul George to help deliver its first title: Leonard can opt for free agency after the season. Another playoff disappointment could figure in his decision. The Clippers would prefer that they not have to find out.Anthony Davis, Los Angeles LakersAnthony Davis’s injuries hurt the Lakers’ quest to defend their championship this season.Harry How/Getty ImagesInjury: After helping the Lakers win it all last season, Davis stumbled through the 2020-21 regular season, missing about two months with a calf strain. It only got worse for him in the Lakers’ first-round series with the Phoenix Suns, as he injured his knee and his groin.Impact: Despite spraining his left knee in Game 3 against the Suns, Davis played through pain to deliver a win. But he strained his groin in Game 4, then missed Game 5. He limped through the early stages of Game 6 before heading to the locker room in pain, and the Lakers lost the game and the series without him. The Lakers had hoped to mount a stronger title defense. Davis blamed himself. “We just couldn’t stay healthy,” he said. “A lot of that is on me.James Harden, Brooklyn NetsHarden played with a strained hamstring in Game 5 against the Bucks. He scored just 5 points.Adam Hunger/Associated PressInjury: It took less than a minute for Harden, holding his hamstring, to leave Game 1 of the Nets’ second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks. Harden missed the next three games before making a last-second decision to play in Game 5 Tuesday night. Strain to the same hamstring caused Harden to miss most of the last month of the regular season.Impact: The Nets’ top three stars — Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — played only eight games together during the regular season. Harden is one of the most productive scorers in N.B.A. history, and he was largely ineffective in his return on Tuesday night in Brooklyn, with just 5 points and one made field goal. Without Harden’s shooting and playmaking ability, and combined with the loss of Irving, the Nets’ path to a championship becomes much more difficult. Harden is, however, expected to play in Game 6 on Thursday in Milwaukee.Kyrie Irving, Brooklyn NetsKyrie Irving landed on another player’s foot and sprained his ankle.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesInjury: During the second quarter of Game 4 against the Bucks, Irving sprained his right ankle when he landed on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s right foot after a layup. He is out indefinitely.Impact: Losing just Irving, given the Nets’ depth, probably would be a storm the team could weather. But his loss combined with Harden’s problematic hamstring, makes the Nets much more vulnerable. It puts pressure on Durant to produce historic numbers like he did in Game 5 against the Bucks (49 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists). But even without Irving, the Nets, as they showed Tuesday night, may be deep enough to get by without him if role players like Jeff Green continue to show up.Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ersEmbiid has missed just one game with a small lateral meniscus tear, but the injury has also negatively affected him when he’s played.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesInjury: Sidelined with a left knee bone bruise for a couple of weeks during the regular season, Embiid sustained a small lateral meniscus tear in his right knee in the 76ers’ first-round series with the Washington Wizards.Impact: Despite the apparent severity of his injury, Embiid has been out only once — Game 5 against the Wizards, which the 76ers won to close the series. He was terrific at the start of their conference semifinal series with the Atlanta Hawks, averaging 35.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game as the 76ers took a 2-1 series lead.He struggled, though, in a Game 4 loss, shooting 4 of 20 from the field, including 0 for 12 in the second half. He acknowledged afterward that his knee was bothering him. “As far as being 100 percent, I don’t think that’s going to happen until the year is actually over,” Embiid told reporters. “I just got to go out and manage it.”Donovan Mitchell, Utah JazzUtah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell (45) is helped off the court after injuring his ankle.Russell Isabella/USA Today Sports, via ReutersInjury: Mitchell missed the last 16 regular-season games and Utah’s playoff opener against the Memphis Grizzlies because of a sprained right ankle.Impact: The Jazz lost their first playoff game against Memphis without Mitchell. After Mitchell returned for Game 2, the Jazz dominated the series. Mitchell averaged 28.5 points and 5.8 assists in four games on 45 percent shooting. In Utah’s second-round match up against the Clippers, Mitchell has been even more dominant, with 37.3 points a game on 46.8 percent shooting through the first four games.Mike Conley, Utah JazzMike Conley’s absence leaves the Jazz without one of their key scorers beyond Donovan Mitchell.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressInjury: Conley has not played in Utah’s semifinal series against the Clippers because of a right hamstring strain. He also missed 20 games during the regular season because of injuries or rest related to that hamstring.Impact: Conley, when healthy, is the starting point guard for the Jazz. On a team that sometimes is too reliant on Mitchell to make plays, Conley is another player who can help break down defenses to take the pressure off Mitchell. During the regular season, Conley made his first All-Star appearance and averaged 16.2 points and 6 assists per game on 44.4 percent shooting, placing him firmly in the upper tier of N.B.A. guards.Jaylen Brown, Boston CelticsBrown had season-ending wrist surgery in May.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesInjury: The Celtics announced on May 10 that Brown would miss the end of the regular season and the entire postseason because of a torn ligament in his left wrist.Impact: Brown established himself as a star this season, with averages of 24.7 points and 6 rebounds per game. He also made his first All-Star team. But his presence likely would not have made much of a difference in the playoffs, where the Celtics lost to the heavily favored Nets in the first round in five games. More

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      Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball Named N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year

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      Ball, 19, made the Hornets one of the most exciting teams to watch during the regular season.LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets won the N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year Award on Wednesday, joining Larry Johnson and Emeka Okafor as players in the franchise’s history to receive the honor.Ball, who before this season bypassed college ball to play professionally in Australia and had a stint in Lithuania while still in high school, received 84 of 99 first-place votes to beat out Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards despite Edwards’s second-half surge. Tyrese Haliburton of the Sacramento Kings finished third.Selected with the No. 3 pick in the 2020 draft, Ball moved into Charlotte’s starting lineup in the 21st game of the season and, in tandem with the former All-Star Gordon Hayward and guard Terry Rozier, unexpectedly led the Hornets into contention for a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference. That push was derailed by a fractured right wrist Ball sustained on March 20 that forced him to miss 21 games, and Hayward was knocked out of the lineup on April 2 by a sprained right foot that sidelined him for the rest of the season.Ball, who turns 20 in August, averaged 15.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game. He also shot a respectable 43.6 percent from the field and 35.2 percent from 3-point range, after worrisome showings in both categories in the preseason (26.2 percent shooting overall and 27.3 percent on 3s in four games) amplified skepticism about his shooting ability as he made the transition to the N.B.A.Most of all, Ball has come to be known for his court vision and passing, especially as he regularly connected with Miles Bridges for alley oops and long-range assists.The Hornets’ chance to draft Ball arose only because they fortuitously moved up to No. 3 in the draft lottery from their No. 8 projection. After Charlotte landed a top-three pick, word began to spread in league circles that Michael Jordan, the Hornets’ majority owner, was a Ball fan.“He’s got a long way to go, but he’s got a chance to be a heck of a player,” Mitch Kupchak, Charlotte’s president of basketball operations, said of Ball in a phone interview with The New York Times recently.Ball was a runaway favorite to win the award before the wrist injury, which the Hornets initially feared would be season-ending. He returned to play in Charlotte’s final 10 regular-season games but, with Hayward still sidelined, could not prevent Charlotte’s lopsided loss at Indiana in a playoff play-in game after the Hornets had finished with the East’s 10th best record.Edwards, who also turns 20 in August, quickly gained a reputation for highlight-reel dunks after the Timberwolves selected him with last year’s No. 1 overall pick. He made the awards race closer than anticipated with his strong play while Ball was injured. Edwards averaged 23.8 points per game and shot 45.4 percent from the field during the season’s second half, helping Minnesota go 16-20 after a treacherous 7-29 start.Ball’s comeback enabled him to play in 71 percent of Charlotte’s games. Had he not made it back from injury, Ball would have appeared in only 57 percent of Charlotte’s games — a lower percentage than anyone who had gone on to be named rookie of the year. Patrick Ewing’s 60 percent (50 out of 82 games) for the Knicks in the 1985-86 season stands as the lowest.Johnson won rookie of the year honors for the Hornets in 1992, and Okafor won in 2005 when the franchise was known as the Bobcats. Recent winners of the award include Ja Morant (2020) of the Memphis Grizzlies, Luka Doncic (2019) of the Dallas Mavericks and Ben Simmons (2018) of the Philadelphia 76ers.Ball and his brother Lonzo Ball, who was drafted No. 2 overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2017 and now plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, are the first brothers in N.B.A. history to both be selected among the top three picks. More

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      Chris Paul Out Indefinitely Because of Coronavirus Protocols

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      Paul, the Phoenix Suns guard, could miss at least a part of the Western Conference finals.After leading the Phoenix Suns into the Western Conference finals, Chris Paul is in danger of missing at least part of the series after entering the N.B.A.’s coronavirus health and safety protocols.How soon Paul can return to the Suns was not immediately known. The Suns announced Wednesday that Paul was “currently out” because of the protocols and that they would next provide an update about his status on Saturday.Among the factors that will determine how long Paul, 36, will be away from the Suns are his vaccination status and whether he tested positive for the coronavirus. Players who test positive are typically placed in isolation for 10 days, but isolation time, depending on the circumstances, can be reduced if a player is vaccinated.The team did not say why Paul was in the protocol. It could mean that he tested positive, but it also could just indicate that he was in close contact with someone who did. The N.B.A. announced Wednesday afternoon that one player tested positive for the virus within the past week but, as per usual, did not name the player. It’s not clear whether Paul has been vaccinated.The prospect of Phoenix’s losing Paul, after landing a spot in the conference finals on Sunday by completing a four-game sweep of the Denver Nuggets, was the latest blow to an N.B.A. postseason rocked by a string of health-related absences for star players.With the Los Angeles Clippers announcing on Wednesday that forward Kawhi Leonard would be out indefinitely with a sprained right knee, Leonard was poised to become the eighth All-Star to miss at least one playoff game this year because of injury. That is the most in league history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Leonard hurt his knee in the fourth quarter of the Clippers’ Game 4 victory against the Utah Jazz.The seven other All-Stars on that list: the Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Boston’s Jaylen Brown, Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley, and the Nets’ James Harden and Kyrie Irving. The Clippers said Leonard would miss Wednesday night’s Game 5 against the Jazz. Paul would be the ninth All-Star to miss time this postseason if he is not cleared to rejoin the Suns before the conference finals, which will begin Sunday or Tuesday.Paul secured just the second trip to the conference finals of his 16-year career with perhaps the best series of his career. He averaged 25.5 points per game, shot 62.7 percent from the field and committed just five turnovers against 41 assists in the four games against Denver.Paul’s only previous appearance in the N.B.A.’s final four came with the Houston Rockets in 2018 and was marred by a series-turning injury. A hamstring issue sidelined him for the final two games against Golden State after Houston had taken a 3-2 series lead. Golden State capitalized on Paul’s absence to win those two games without Paul and went on to win its third championship in four years.A shoulder injury plagued Paul through the first several games of the Suns’ first-round series against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. But Paul recovered to help the Suns capitalize on Davis’s limited availability and eliminate the Lakers in six games, the earliest playoff exit in LeBron James’s career.When asked about the shoulder after the Suns’ sweep of the Nuggets, Paul said, “I’m good now.”The N.B.A. began the season in December in each team’s home market rather than in another restricted-access bubble environment like the one it engineered last summer in Florida to complete the 2019-20 season because of the pandemic. During the first half of the regular season, the league postponed 31 games because of coronavirus intrusions that left at least one team in each matchup without the minimum of eight players in uniform. But all 30 teams managed to complete their 72-game regular seasons in May, and Commissioner Adam Silver told Time magazine in April that more than 70 percent of the league’s players had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.The N.B.A. has issued weekly updates on the number of positive coronavirus tests leaguewide and, before Wednesday, had announced three successive weeks with zero positive tests since the playoffs began on May 22. More

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      Why Kevin Durant Was Unstoppable as the Nets Beat the Bucks

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      The Bucks could not contain Kevin Durant on Tuesday.Elsa/Getty Images Kevin Durant’s performance on Tuesday night was a Pantheon Game, one that gets talked about for years to come and elevates a star player’s legacy. With Kyrie Irving out because of an ankle injury, and James Harden clearly hobbled, the Nets needed Durant to carry […] More