Appointments and Executive Changes

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      How Mike Whan Is Changing U.S. Golf

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      The new chief executive, who turned the L.P.G.A. into a thriving tour when he was its boss, is sprinting to advance the game.The United States Open is returning this week to the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., one of the five founding clubs of the United States Golf Association. It will be the club’s fourth U.S. Open. Its first, in 1913, when a 20-year-old amateur won, still lives in sports lore.The club has also hosted several United States Amateur and United States Women’s Amateur tournaments and a Ryder Cup. Founded in the 19th century, it has deep traditions.But this time around, the United States Golf Association, which chooses the clubs and organizes the U.S. Open and 13 other national championships each year, has at its helm a new chief executive who has cultivated a reputation for being the opposite of a traditionalist. The executive, Mike Whan, is a changemaker, in the parlance of the corporate marketing world he came up in.For 11 years before joining the U.S.G.A. last year, Whan was the commissioner of the L.P.G.A., taking it from a struggling U.S.-based entity to a thriving global tour with more events and more prize money.“He rebuilt the tour, and then reimagined its future, by bringing new events, new sponsors and a new value proposition around diversity and inclusion to the L.P.G.A.,” said Vicki Goetze-Ackerman, the L.P.G.A. Tour’s player president, when Whan stepped down. “He has that rare ability to get people of all ages and backgrounds excited and on board with his vision.”While the U.S.G.A. attracts criticism like any governing body, it has created a wildly lucrative event in the U.S. Open, the revenue from which funds most of the organization’s other championships and initiatives around turf grass and water conservation.Compared with the PGA Tour, the U.S.G.A. looks even better. The PGA Tour, whose playing privileges were long the goal of professional golfers, is fending off an attack on its status by the new Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf Invitational Series, which has lured away many players.Add in one more factor: Interest in golf from recreational players is still riding a post-pandemic high. If it’s not broke, as the saying goes, what does Whan have to fix?“Change is in the process,” Whan said in an interview at Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania. “A 35-year-old Mike Whan would have changed everything. The 57-year-old Mike Whan says, ‘Where am I needed?’ I’m not needed on championship setup. That was Mike Davis’s specialty.”Davis was Whan’s predecessor, a 31-year veteran of the U.S.G.A. who served as its executive director and then chief executive. He pushed for changes to course setups and tried new things like different heights of rough and giving public courses, including Erin Hills in Wisconsin and Chambers Bay in Washington, a chance at hosting a U.S. Open.Davis was given credit for trying different approaches around the championships, some more successful than others, but also for investing in some of the less public research projects that the U.S.G.A. funds. But Davis was also criticized, for how he set up courses (too hard) and for how the association regulated equipment (not tightly enough).The U.S.G.A. plans to build a player pavilion at the Pebble Beach course, the first time it is making permanent improvements to a host site. Douglas Stringer/Icon Sportswire, via Getty Images“Their No. 1 job should be controlling the equipment,” said Alex Miceli, a longtime golf commentator, referring to the debate over the distance a pro can hit a ball. “The U.S.G.A. did a horrible job with that. It’s like the Federal Reserve saying, ‘Inflation is going to be transitory, inflation is going to be transitory, inflation is going to be transitory.’ Well, it isn’t.”Whan said in the interview that he had no interest in wading into the course setup debate. That’s the domain of John Bodenhamer, the association’s chief championships officer.“When I walked into a setup meeting, I said to John, ‘I’m not necessary here, and I might be a detriment,’” Whan said. “The only guidance I’ve given is once you have a plan or a strategy, don’t change it. Don’t let scores or the media change it. Athletes don’t want that. I know that from being the L.P.G.A. commissioner.”Yet when Whan came on board after last year’s U.S. Open, several senior U.S.G.A. executives left, with the chief commercial officer departing on Whan’s first day in charge and the chief brand officer leaving about a month later.Whan then did something that no association executive has done: He brought in a title sponsor for one of the organization’s marquee championships. The United States Women’s Open, which dates from 1946, is now the U.S. Women’s Open Presented by ProMedica. The partnership with the health care company nearly doubled the purse to $10 million. When the Australian golfer Minjee Lee won the championship this month, she took home a record $1.8 million first-place check.Whan said in the interview that his focus was on improving the important things the association did that no one saw.“On planes, I’d get the question, ‘What does the U.S.G.A. do?’” he said, pulling out a card with “U.S.G.A.” written down the side. “I came up with Unify, Showcase, Govern and Advance.”And for him the last one is a priority. “‘Advance’ was the big one that was missing,” he said. “We don’t want to preserve; we preserved croquet and that’s not good.”Big areas of investment are strategies to reduce water usage and to develop junior golfers that way other countries do.While Whan said he had no desire to tinker with the U.S. Open, he’s also not about to neglect the tournament that brings in around 75 percent of the organization’s revenue.“The key is not to take it for granted,” he said, drawing a comparison to professional bowling, which dominated weekend television time when he was a child, but has fallen off drastically. “If we take it for granted, there’s no reason we couldn’t end up like bowling.”He repeated an oft-told story about Jason Gore, a former PGA Tour player who is the senior director of player relations at the U.S.G.A. Where the players win their U.S. Opens matters, Gore told him.While the men’s side is sewed up with stern tests for the next decade, including Oakmont, Shinnecock Hills, Pebble Beach and Merion, Whan has made a push to have equally prestigious sites for the U.S. Women’s Open, with Riviera, Merion, Pinehurst and Pebble Beach on the roster.Securing these sites has come with U.S.G.A. investments. At Pinehurst, the association is building a second headquarters. At Pebble Beach, it is building a permanent player pavilion, which the course can use for other events. Taking a long-term view, the organization has done capital improvements to a host site; in the past it has put up and taken down structures.These initiatives are meant to make it easier for the U.S. Open, an immense logistical undertaking that ties up courses for months, to come back year after year. But it’s also to have sites host other events and work toward his goal of advancing other initiatives.“I don’t need U.S. Open partners,” Whan said. “I need partners in growing the game. We want to make sure these cathedrals of golf accept the responsibility to host not just the biggest and the most financially lucrative events.” More

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      How Pat Riley Quit on the Knicks

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      In a book excerpt, a writer details the Knicks’ infighting and the tense contract negotiations that led Coach Pat Riley to leave for the Miami Heat in 1995.The following are excerpts from “Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks” by Chris Herring. They have been edited and condensed. The book was released Tuesday. Herring is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.The infighting within the Knicks’ locker room seemed to be catching up with them.Perhaps it was the stress of getting so close — one win away from the 1994 N.B.A. championship, before a crushing Game 7 loss to Houston — only to watch it all slip away. Or perhaps it was the new campaign getting off to a rocky start, with a pedestrian 12-12 mark by Christmas and a five-game losing streak — their longest in Coach Pat Riley’s four years there.Whatever the reason, the squabbles were apparent.In early December, Riley got into it with the veteran guard Doc Rivers, with the men loudly trading expletives in Riley’s office during a spat over Rivers’s role. The argument ended with Rivers asking Riley to release him from the team.During a separate standoff that month, Riley’s two best players, Patrick Ewing and John Starks, traded barbs in Atlanta after Ewing declined to pass to an open Starks, drawing his ire.When Starks yelled at Ewing, Ewing snarled back, essentially telling Starks to know his place. The blowup was a breaking point, as Starks felt teammates had frozen him out of the offense during his recent slump. And while some players felt Riley had previously given Starks too much leash to shoot, no one felt that way after the loss to the Hawks.“Who are you to ever question anyone’s shot selection?” Riley screamed at Starks inside the visiting locker room. “Did anyone here ever say a word to you about [Game 7]?” The coach was referring to Starks’s disastrous 2-for-18 showing against Houston in the finals.Starks, almost in tears during the dressing-down, would be benched the following game.But deep down, Riley was the one beginning to feel distant. And change felt inevitable.‘He went quiet on us’Dave Checketts, left, the former president of Madison Square Garden, and former Knicks General Manager Ernie Grunfeld, right, discuss the resignation of Pat Riley on June 15, 1995.Marty Lederhandler/Associated PressDuring that last week of December, Riley gave his players time off from the grind. He took time for himself, too, chartering a jet on New Year’s Eve to Aspen, Colo., to visit Dick Butera, a longtime friend and wealthy real estate developer.Riley had a weighty issue to discuss. “I don’t know if this [situation with the Knicks] is going to work out,” Riley told Butera and other friends while at the developer’s home.As Riley dropped his bombshell, Butera countered with one: He and a group of deep-pocketed acquaintances planned to make a run at buying the Miami Heat. Riley said he’d consider being the team’s coach, Butera said.With a contract extension offer from the Knicks already in hand, Riley was far from desperate. But knowing he had a friend with a decent chance of purchasing a team may have emboldened him in his dealings with the Knicks. In January, after the Aspen trip, he sent a counteroffer to the Knicks, asking for a stake in ownership and a promotion to team president. These asks — which Riley said would assuage his concerns about the Knicks’ frequent ownership changes — were in addition to the $3 million salary New York had already offered.In late January, Riley met with Rand Araskog, the chief executive of ITT, which controlled 85 percent of the Madison Square Garden properties. (Cablevision owned 15 percent.) Garden president Dave Checketts gave Araskog a heads-up that Riley would likely request a 10 or 20 percent share of the Knicks as part of his extension.“I have to discuss something with you,” Riley said, pulling out a leather briefcase to talk numbers. Before he got another word out, Araskog stopped him. The answer was no.Riley pursed his lips. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I understand,” he said, declining to press the issue. The meeting concluded shortly after.“He went quiet on us after that,” Checketts says. “He’d only talk basketball with us.”‘I’m finished in New York’In “Blood in the Garden,” Chris Herring reported that Riley wanted an ownership stake in the Knicks as part of a contract extension but was denied.Ron Frehm/Associated PressIt was mid-February 1995, the first game after the All-Star break, and the Knicks were getting drilled on the road by a Detroit club 12 games under .500. By halftime, they trailed by 25. A red-faced Riley responded by punching a hole in the visiting locker room’s blackboard.The team’s play that night wasn’t all that was bothering Riley. Butera had just been informed he wouldn’t be getting the Miami Heat. “He’d kept telling me, ‘I’ll definitely come with you if you can buy the Heat,’ ” Butera recalled.But even after that plan fell through, a different opportunity remained.That same month, Micky Arison, chairman of Carnival Cruise Lines, took over as the majority owner of the Heat, and had a series of calls with Butera, phone records would later show. And while it’s not clear what was discussed — Butera denied Riley was the topic of conversation — it wasn’t long after that Arison sought to meet Riley when the Knicks were in town.On the morning of Feb. 16, Arison, who’d grown up a Knicks fan, arrived at Miami Arena early. He waited in a corridor that led to the court, wanting to watch the Knicks’ shootaround. Riley was fiercely competitive and private, so no, Arison couldn’t stay.“I was curious, based on his reputation,” Arison said. “The fact that he refused? I respected it.”But as Riley prepared to leave with his players, the new owner was standing at the exit. He pulled Riley aside, asking if he could talk with him for a few minutes.Arison’s persistence stopped Riley in his tracks. Since he’d taken the Knicks job, Riley had prioritized loyalty. The idea of being all the way in, or all the way out. Riley didn’t believe in fraternizing with anyone outside the team. So could he really agree to meet with Arison now, after a team workout, just hours before a game?Surprisingly, Riley nodded. Yes, he’d meet with Arison in the tunnel.But just for a few minutes.Arison didn’t need long, though. All he needed to know was that Riley was open to a conversation — one they could presumably finish at a later point.That point came in May, after the Knicks suffered a bitter Game 7 loss to Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Maybe an hour after the Knicks’ season ended, Butera’s phone rang. It was Riley.The Indiana Pacers pile on Reggie Miller after they defeated the Knicks in Game 7 of the 1995 Eastern Conference semifinals.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images“Are you still friendly with the guy who owns the Heat?” he asked Butera.“Yeah, I am. He’s a good guy. Why?”“Because I’m done. I’m just done,” Riley responded. “All I can tell you is, I’m finished in New York.”Butera wanted more detail. The agitated tone in Riley’s voice suggested something aside from the defeat itself had taken place. And Butera could hear noise in the background of the call. So he asked Riley where he was calling from — especially while discussing such a potentially explosive subject.“I’m calling you from my cellphone. I’m on the team bus,” Riley said.That struck Butera. Riley was so angry, he didn’t care that he might be within earshot of other people.“Make it happen,” Riley told Butera. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”‘That’s just how Pat is’Riley, left, signed his new contract to be head coach and president of the Miami Heat on Sept. 2, 1995, while Micky Arison looked on.Andy Newman/Associated PressButera met with Arison in Long Beach, Calif., on one of Arison’s cruise ships.“What does he want?” Arison asked.“He wants $50 million for 10 years,” Butera said.Arison laughed. No N.B.A. coach, not even Riley, was making $3 million a year, let alone $5 million. “What does he really want?” Arison asked.Butera reiterated his stance. Riley, already the highest-paid coach in the sport at $1.5 million a season, wanted $50 million over 10 years to run the show for Arison in Miami.Arison sat still for a moment. The asking price was a small fortune. But paying it — and getting perhaps the best coach in basketball to take over a listless organization — could prove worthwhile if Riley turned the Heat into a winner.“OK,” Arison said. “What else does he want to get this done?”Butera and Riley soon compiled a list of asks in a four-page, 14-point memo. Riley wanted an immediate 10 percent ownership of the team and another 10 percent share over the course of his deal. He also wanted Arison to loan him money to pay taxes on the initial 10 percent stake.He also wanted complete control over Miami’s basketball operations, and to be named the team president. Riley wanted Arison to purchase his sprawling homes near Los Angeles and New York City. He wanted a limo service to and from games in Miami. He wanted credit cards and a $300 per diem.Butera took a copy of the memo to Arison at a bar at Los Angeles International Airport on June 5. Arison’s eyes narrowed when he saw the per diem.“He couldn’t understand how someone getting a deal worth tens of millions would ask for such a nickel-and-dime sort of thing,” Butera recalled. “But that’s just how Pat is.”‘Wind this up’Riley had one year left on his contract with the Knicks when he left for the Heat.Robert Sullivan/AFP via Getty ImagesAs Butera and Riley were solidifying things with Arison in early June, Riley’s agent, the Los Angeles attorney Ed Hookstratten, was more than hinting to Checketts that Riley had finished his Knicks career, despite having another year left on his contract.“You and Pat have got to wind this up,” Hookstratten told Checketts during a June 7 meeting in Beverly Hills, urging him to let Riley out of his deal for a clean divorce. But Checketts wanted to talk with Riley.Checketts said when he and Riley met two days later at the coach’s home in Greenwich, Conn., Riley was noncommittal. “I’m having a hard time with [the Indiana] loss,” Riley said. “I’m having a hard time figuring out the extension. I’m having a hard time with all of it.”Checketts backed off, thinking he needed to give Riley space to decide.One day went by. Then a second. And a third. Around then, Riley asked assistant coach Jeff Van Gundy to quietly grab Riley’s things from his office. The following day, June 13, Riley met with his assistants to inform them: He was planning to resign, but wanted them to keep the news private for a few more days, as he wasn’t ready to tell the front office or the media.By June 15, Riley was ready. That day, Ken Munoz, the Knicks general counsel, was in his office when a fax came through his machine. It was a letter from Hookstratten’s law firm.Riley, one of the N.B.A.’s greatest coaches, and the Knicks’ best since Red Holzman, had faxed his resignation.And with that, the man who had taken a 39-win Knicks club and squeezed 51, 60, 57, and 55 victories out of it in four years while coming up just short of a championship was officially out the door.By the time the fax arrived and began making waves throughout the New York media, Riley was at 40,000 feet on a flight to Greece, likely to tune out the noise of the sonic boom he’d just triggered. More

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      McCollum on Simmons Trade Rumors, Vaccines and Blazers Firing

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      Portland guard CJ McCollum is facing challenges both personal and professional in his first year as president of the players’ union. “It’s the life I chose,” he said.Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum has been interested in the business machinations of the N.B.A. since early in his career. He was a team representative and vice president in the players’ union, the National Basketball Players Association, before he was elected to succeed Chris Paul as its president this year.The job pays nothing. It adds phone calls and video conferences to his already busy schedule with his day job. His wife is due to deliver their first child any day now. He has a fledgling wine business.Why would McCollum want to take this on?“I’m ready for the next step, the next evolution of myself,” he said in a recent phone interview. “And that’s being more mature, having more responsibility, but also figuring out ways to help more people. Figuring out ways to provide leadership, counsel, guidance.”Since he started, more challenges have faced him and the Trail Blazers. McCollum, who is in his ninth season playing in Portland, has been the subject of trade rumors. As the team struggled on the court in recent weeks, its then president and general manager, Neil Olshey, was fired for improper workplace conduct. And McCollum is now sidelined as he recovers from a partially collapsed lung.On top of that, the union is navigating the coronavirus pandemic, with McCollum — who has said he doesn’t allow unvaccinated people into his home — and the league encouraging vaccines. The players do not have a vaccine mandate, but McCollum said, “We were at 98, we might even be around 99 percent vaccinated right now, which is a big deal.”He’s sought advice from Paul, other veteran players and lawyers and executives who work for the union. He’s learning to advocate for players while building relationships with teams and the league office. The next collective bargaining agreement will be negotiated during his term, and he’d like to help players with financial literacy.He recently spoke with The New York Times about being the players’ union president during a pandemic, how he handles trade rumors and his relationship with Olshey.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Have you had to explain to others why the extra coronavirus testing is a good thing? [The league and union agreed to require additional testing, even for vaccinated players, after Thanksgiving, which has coincided with an uptick in positive tests.]I think when we explain to people the importance of knowing — there’s a lot of things that go under the radar in terms of being positive, but being asymptomatic. So I think testing around the holidays when people are flying or traveling, families are coming in from out of town, you’re gathering, you’re more exposed. It just makes sense and the only bad thing that can come from it is finding out that you are positive. But the good news is you’re finding out early and you can save and not expose some of your friends and family.As training camps opened, there was a lot of attention on the small number of unvaccinated players. Did that annoy you?Yeah, it did. I feel like we were targeted. Obviously, people look up to us. We play a sport for a living. It’s entertainment. People looked at us as the bar. In reality, we are kind of the bar: We got 98 percent of our league volunteered to be vaccinated, whereas the public was 55 percent or 60 percent at that point. No one was talking about corporate America going through the same problem, no one was talking about how there were health care workers going through the same issues. It was us in the spotlight, and I thought it was unfair because we were doing such a great job of educating our players.There was a lot of conversation about vaccine hesitancy in the Black community as being a problem for the N.B.A. How did you view that?There was hesitancy, but I think there’s hesitancy from everyone. We wanted to know more, we wanted more data. Understanding historically Blacks and African Americans have been taken advantage of, especially in similar circumstances and situations. Historically, we’ve been used almost as guinea pigs at times for experimental medicine. There was caution, there was pause, but for good reason.I think as we’ve continued to educate ourselves and ask the right questions from experts, we’ve learned that there was a shift.As union president, you have to think about the welfare of other players, but some of their situations impact you too. I’m thinking about Ben Simmons, who hasn’t played this year and how your name gets mentioned in trade rumors with him. How do you process your dual role in that?The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 5The Omicron variant. More

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      Trail Blazers Fire Team President Neil Olshey

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      Neil Olshey, who has been with Portland since 2012, was fired for “violations” of the team’s code of conduct related to the workplace environment at the team’s practice facility.The Portland Trail Blazers fired Neil Olshey, the general manager and head of basketball operations, on Friday, citing “an independent review of concerns and complaints around our workplace environment at the practice facility.”In a statement posted on social media, the Blazers did not provide further details, saying, “Out of respect for those who candidly participated in that privileged investigation, we will not release or discuss it.”The Blazers did not immediately respond to a request from The New York Times seeking more details about the nature of the concerns and complaints that prompted Olshey’s firing.Statement from the Portland Trail Blazers pic.twitter.com/W9j4V3nNl2— Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) December 3, 2021
      Olshey, who also did not immediately respond to a request for comment, was hired as general manager of the Blazers in 2012 and was promoted to president of basketball operations in 2015. During his tenure, Portland made the playoffs eight straight years, but won only four playoff series.Olshey, who grew up in Queens, began his N.B.A. career working for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2003 as their director of player development. He then rose steadily through the organization until he was named vice president of basketball operations in 2010. His most noted move was acquiring the star point guard Chris Paul from the New Orleans Hornets in 2011.In July, Olshey and the Blazers were criticized for hiring Chauncey Billups, the former point guard, as Portland’s head coach because Billups had been accused of sexual assault in 1997. The organization conducted what many felt was an incomplete investigation into the allegation against Billups as part of the hiring process.When asked about the investigation at the news conference announcing Billups’s hiring, Olshey said, “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened. We stand by Chauncey.”After a reporter pressed for details, Olshey called the findings “proprietary” and added, “You’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”In early November, the Blazers announced that they were conducting a workplace investigation related to “concerns” at their practice facility but did not say who was the focus of the concerns. Multiple news reports, including from The Athletic and Yahoo Sports, cited anonymous sources who said the investigation was focused on Olshey, but a team spokesperson declined to comment when asked if it did.In Friday’s statement about Olshey’s firing, the team said, “We are confident that these changes will help build a more positive and respectful working environment.”The Blazers also cited unspecified “violations” of the team’s code of conduct.Olshey’s most consequential basketball move for the Blazers was drafting Damian Lillard, now one of the N.B.A.’s biggest stars, with the sixth pick of the 2012 draft. But the franchise has struggled to put championship-level talent around Lillard, which Lillard publicly expressed frustration about over the summer.The Blazers have tapped Joe Cronin, the team’s director of player personnel who joined the franchise as an intern in 2006, to be the interim general manager. More

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      Jane Brown Grimes, a Rare Female Force in Tennis, Dies at 80

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      She was a top executive at three organizations, including the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was later inducted.Jane Brown Grimes, who as one of the rare women executives in tennis in her time modernized the International Tennis Hall of Fame, ran the rule-making body of women’s tennis and was president of the United States Tennis Association, died on Nov. 2 at her home in Manhattan. She was 80.The cause was cancer, her daughter, Serena Larson, said.“Jane did everything behind the scenes,” Chris Evert, who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, said in an interview. “She didn’t crave attention and quietly went about her work. Not a lot of women tennis players know what she did, because she was under the radar.”In 1989, Mrs. Brown Grimes, as managing director of the Women’s International Professional Tennis Council, which governed women’s tennis, headed talks that led to a change in title sponsorship of the women’s tour — from Virginia Slims, a cigarette brand marketed to women, to Kraft General Foods. Both were owned by Philip Morris (now the Altria Group).Anti-tobacco activists, as well as some players, had for years demanded that women’s tennis move on from its tobacco sponsorship, the financial backbone of the tour since the early 1970s, to one that promoted a healthier lifestyle.“Jane was a very strategic, intelligent leader, and she was clear that the council had to move away from tobacco,” said Anne Worcester, who was director of worldwide operations for the Virginia Slims series and succeeded Mrs. Brown Grimes as the council leader in 1991.Pam Shriver, who won 132 titles in her career, acknowledged in an interview that “there were no apologies for Virginia Slims being a sponsor.” But, she added, “By the time Jane was in a key position to make a change, she made it happen.”Mrs. Brown Grimes speaking to Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, widow of the tennis star Arthur Ashe, during a match in 2008 at the U.S. Open in Flushing, Queens. The Ashes’ daughter, Camera, is on the left.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg NewsJane Trowbridge Gillespie was born on Jan. 20, 1941, in Freeport, N.Y., on Long Island. Her father, Samuel Hazard Gillespie, was a litigator who served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1959 to 1961. Her mother, Ruth (Reed) Gillespie, was the head librarian at the Collegiate School in Manhattan.In her youth, Jane played on her grandparents’ clay tennis court on Long Island and regularly attended the United States National Championships at Forest Hills, Queens — the precursor to the U.S. Open — with her family. She reveled in watching stars like Althea Gibson, Margaret Court, Tony Trabert and Maureen Connolly.“They were my movie stars,” she told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., in 2009. “They were my idols.”She studied history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and received a bachelor’s degree in 1962. After working as a fact checker for Life magazine and then for a documentary filmmaker, she joined the Manhattan office of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977.Starting as an event planner, she became a fund-raiser before rising to executive director of the Hall of Fame in 1981, a post she held until 1986. Working mainly from its Manhattan office, she helped raise money to rehabilitate buildings at the Hall, in Newport, R.I., and was the director of tournaments held on its grounds.After leaving to join the women’s tennis council, Mrs. Brown Grimes returned to the Hall as president in 1991 and stayed through 2000, overseeing the acquisition of tennis memorabilia critical to the Hall’s historical mission and continuing the renovations.She was elected to the board of the United States Tennis Association in 2001 and then rose through its ranks to become volunteer chairman and president in 2007. The second woman to hold that position, she served through 2008. During her two-year tenure she particularly championed youth programs and was involved in the U.S.T.A.’s acquisition of the Western & Southern Open.“Jane was one of the few who paved the way for other women to have leadership roles in tennis,” Ms. Worcester said.Mrs. Brown Grimes was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her sons, Jim Schwarz and Ames Brown; her brother, Sam Gillespie; and five grandchildren. Her marriage to Marshall Schwarz ended in divorce, and her marriages to Ames Brown and Charles Grimes ended with their deaths.Ever curious, Mrs. Brown Grimes continued her education well into her later years. She earned an M.B.A. degree from Baruch College in Manhattan in 2012, then used her knowledge of tennis to earn a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge in 2015.Her thesis was about the 1986 Federation Cup tournament in Prague, which marked Martina Navratilova’s return to her homeland for the first time since defecting to the United States in 1975 from what was then Czechoslovakia. Mrs. Brown Grimes had attended the tournament.“When it was over and the U.S. had won, Martina was given a big microphone and started her speech in English, but within about 10 seconds she switched into Czech and the place went nuts,” Mrs. Brown Grimes said in an interview with Steve Flink of Tennis.com this year. “Her mother was sitting in front of me, and down a ways, and she was in tears.”When she died, Mrs. Brown Grimes had nearly finished her dissertation in history at Cambridge — about women’s tennis during the Open era, after tournaments were open to professionals and not just amateurs in 1968. More

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      Blazers’ Billups Hire Draws Attention to Sexual Assault Accusation

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      Chauncey Billups was announced as Portland’s head coach on Tuesday as a team executive dodged and deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Billups.At a news conference on Tuesday, the top basketball executive for the Portland Trail Blazers dodged or deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Chauncey Billups, whom he was announcing as the team’s new head coach. A public relations official for Portland cut off a questioner entirely, and the executive, Neil Olshey, would not elaborate on an independent investigation into the incident he said the team had commissioned.Billups’s hire has elicited criticism both from within and outside Portland’s fan base because of the accusation, which was made during Billups’s 1997-98 rookie season as a player with the Boston Celtics.Olshey, the Blazers’ president of basketball operations, introduced Billups on Tuesday and said that he had “been successful at everything he’s done in his life, on and off the court.”He also said that the Blazers “took the allegations very seriously” and that “other N.B.A. organizations, business partners, television networks, regional networks have all enthusiastically in the past and present offered Chauncey high-profile positions within their organizations.” Billups is currently finishing his first season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, who are in the Western Conference finals, and he was previously an analyst for ESPN.Olshey said the team-initiated investigation was done with Billups’s support. “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened,” he said. “We stand by Chauncey. Everyone in the organization.”Neil Olshey, right, Portland’s president of basketball operations, said the team commissioned an independent investigation of the sexual assault accusation against Billups, left.Craig Mitchelldyer/Associated PressWhen asked by a reporter to give more details on the investigation, Olshey declined.“So that’s proprietary, Sean,” Olshey said, referring to the N.B.A. reporter Sean Highkin. “So you’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”Jason Quick, a reporter for The Athletic, followed up later to ask Billups about the impact the incident had on him, after Billups had said that “not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how every decision that we make could have a profound impact on a person’s life.” Olshey took a sip of bottled water and appeared to glance at a public relations official for the organization, who then cut off Quick, though Billups appeared willing to respond.“Jason, we appreciate your question,” the official said. “We’ve addressed this. It’s been asked and answered. Happy to move on to the next question here.”The 1997 accusation came from a woman who said in a lawsuit that on the night of Nov. 9, following an evening at a Boston comedy club, she was raped by Billups, Ron Mercer and Michael Irvin — who is of no relation to the former N.F.L. player — at Antoine Walker’s home. Walker and Mercer were Billups’s teammates in Boston, while Irvin was Walker’s roommate. No criminal charges were filed. Billups and Mercer settled with the woman for an undisclosed amount in 2000, and Walker also settled a lawsuit with the woman soon after. Billups denied any nonconsensual contact, but said he had sex with her.The lawsuit did not affect Billups’s career prospects. It rarely came up, if at all. He played 17 years in the N.B.A., made five All-Star teams and won the N.B.A. finals Most Valuable Player Award in 2004.“I learned at a very young age as a player, and not only a player, but a young man, a young adult that every decision has consequences,” Billups said on Tuesday, in addressing the accusation, “and that’s led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I’ve had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and about what they may have to read about me in the news.”Damian Lillard, Portland’s star guard, publicly lobbied for the team to hire Jason Kidd as its coach and spoke highly of Billups. He has since said he did not know about the accusation against Billups.Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe hiring of Billups immediately spurred a backlash, with the Trail Blazers being accused of glossing over the assault accusation at the expense of more experienced candidates like Becky Hammon, the seven-year San Antonio Spurs assistant who was a finalist for the job. Olshey said more than 20 candidates were considered for the role. Billups’s only coaching experience is this season with the Clippers.The Billups hiring also has brought criticism on the franchise’s biggest star, Damian Lillard, who spoke glowingly about Billups and publicly lobbied for the team to hire the former point guard Jason Kidd, who was recently hired as the coach of the Dallas Mavericks after working this season as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2001, Kidd pleaded guilty to spousal abuse against his then-wife, Joumana Kidd.On Twitter, Lillard addressed some of the criticism for supporting Kidd and Billups, saying: “Really? I was asked what coaches I like of the names I ‘heard’ and I named them. Sorry I wasn’t aware of their history I didn’t read the news when I was 7-8 yrs old. I don’t support Those things … but if this the route y’all wana come at me… say less.”At the news conference, Olshey said that Lillard had been “involved in the process” for hiring a new coach and that he attended some of the video conference interviews. According to Olshey, Lillard also spoke to Billups directly before the hire.“We have different sectors in this organization,” Olshey said. “And, you know, Dame represents the player sector, and we took his input in the process. We value it. It’s important to us to kind of know where he stands. But at the end of the day, this is an organizational decision and the organization believes that Chauncey is the best person to be our head coach.” More

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      Nets Assistant Ime Udoka Nears Deal to Coach the Celtics

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      Udoka, who has been with the Nets for one season, will be hired by Brad Stevens, his predecessor. Stevens recently was promoted to president of basketball operations.Ime Udoka, who was an assistant for the Nets this season, is nearing an agreement to become the next head coach of the Boston Celtics, a person familiar with the discussions but not authorized to discuss them publicly said on Wednesday.Udoka spent seven years as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich and one season as an assistant in Philadelphia before coming to the Nets. He also played in the N.B.A. as a reserve for seven years, including spurts with the Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers and three seasons with the Spurs.The news of the impending hiring was first reported by ESPN.This will be the second high-profile move made by the new Celtics team president, Brad Stevens, who was unexpectedly thrust into the role this month. His predecessor, Danny Ainge, stepped down after the Nets knocked the Celtics out of the playoffs in the first round.Stevens had coached the team for the last eight years, but this season had been a particularly tumultuous one for the Celtics, who were besieged by injuries and an ill-fitting roster that lacked depth. Boston’s best player, the All-Star Jayson Tatum, also dealt with lingering effects from Covid-19. After making the Eastern Conference finals in 2019-20, the Celtics had to fight just to get into the playoffs and finished the season at 36-36.Udoka, 43, will inherit a team centered on two All-Star wings, Tatum and Jaylen Brown. In his first major move as team president, Stevens last week traded Kemba Walker, who was the team’s starting point guard, and Boston’s 2021 first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Al Horford and Moses Brown, an up-and-coming center. The move increased the Celtics’ financial flexibility.At the news conference announcing his promotion, Stevens said of the coaching search: “I think that the good news about whoever we hire, they don’t have to fill Doc Rivers’s shoes like I did, and they don’t have to fill Danny Ainge’s shoes now like I do. The good news is they have to figure out a way to be better than the last guy.”Udoka, who is Nigerian American, will become the sixth Black coach in the history of the franchise. The others were Rivers (2004-13), M.L. Carr (1995-97), K.C. Jones (1983-88), Tom Sanders (1978) and Bill Russell (1966-69).In a league that has been criticized for predominantly hiring white coaches, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black, Udoka will be one of nine nonwhite head coaches. (This does not include Nate McMillan, who is Black and the interim head coach of the Atlanta Hawks.) Udoka will be coaching in a city that was once again in the spotlight for its treatment of Black athletes, during this year’s playoffs. Kyrie Irving, who played for the Celtics from 2017 to 2019, suggested that he had heard racist comments from fans during his time in Boston and said that he hoped he wouldn’t hear them as a member of the Nets.There are six other head coaching vacancies across the league, in Portland, Orlando, Indiana, New Orleans, Washington and Dallas. More