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      A Tough Start in Texas Turned Jimmy Butler Into an NBA All-Star

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      Butler is impossible to miss as the fiercely competitive star of the Miami Heat. But he got his start at a small junior college in Texas after bigger schools overlooked him.TYLER, Texas — Jimmy Butler and Joe Fulce knew enough to find a basketball hoop that was a safe distance from anyone else who happened to be working out at Wagstaff Gymnasium. Sometimes, they would play to 11. Sometimes, the player with the ball would be permitted only one dribble. Sometimes, they’d go for hours. The rules? Depended on the day. As for calling fouls?“Had to be a straight hack,” said Fulce, an all-American forward who would try to use his long arms to neutralize Butler’s strength.At Tyler Junior College, a leafy two-year school about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, Fulce was among the teammates who came to understand how seriously Butler treated the combative art of one-on-one basketball. It was the most pure distillation of his competitive drive.“If you ask him to play one-on-one and you’re not really ready to play one-on-one with him, don’t do it,” Fulce said, “because it’ll mess up your relationship with him.”Before he went to Marquette and then entered the N.B.A. as a late first-round draft pick, before he famously eviscerated teammates at a practice in Minnesota and then fashioned the N.B.A.’s Covid-era bubble into his personal stage with the Miami Heat, Butler spent one season at Tyler that set the foundation for everything that followed.“It was the first time,” Butler said, “that someone actually took a chance on me.”By now, Butler has cemented his reputation as one of the league’s best two-way players, a six-time All-Star with an eight-figure salary who has positioned Miami as a perennial title contender. In his spare time, he works as a global pitchman for a low-calorie beer and drinks expensive coffee.Butler is a six-time All-Star and led the Miami Heat to the N.B.A. finals in 2020. Michael Dwyer/Associated PressThough the Heat have been uneven so far this season — they were 2-3 ahead of their game against Golden State on Thursday — Butler, 33, figures to have them in the mix again. He knows better than most that a strong finish is more important than a tough start.At Tyler, there are reminders of the year he spent there. Outside the gym is the “Jimmy Butler Lobby,” replete with a trophy case that includes photographs, magazine covers, his old jersey and a box of Corn Flakes with his image on it.But back when he arrived at the school in the summer of 2007, he seemed acutely aware of what was at stake: his future.As for his past? He could not go back. Even now, he has no interest in rehashing his childhood outside of Houston. On only a couple of occasions has he spoken about how his mother kicked him out of the house when he was 13, about how he survived by couch-surfing for several years before a friend’s family took him in.“I’m not personally going to talk about his business,” Fulce said, “but if you take everything away from somebody and you have to learn what that feels like at a young age, that would drive anybody to be like, ‘Yo, I’ll never go back to where I was.’ And a lot of people will never understand what that’s like because they can’t even imagine it.”Joe Fulce, right, said he told Marquette that he wouldn’t join the men’s basketball team unless Butler came, too.John Dunn for The New York TimesButler spent three seasons at Marquette before he was selected with the final pick of the first round of the 2011 N.B.A. draft.John Dunn for The New York TimesComing out of Tomball High School, Butler had a scholarship offer from Centenary, a small college in Louisiana that has since transitioned to Division III, and a partial offer from Quinnipiac. One afternoon, he got a phone call from Mike Marquis, the longtime coach at Tyler, who had heard about Butler from a Houston-area scout named Alan Branch.“He thought Jimmy was a better player than had been reported,” Marquis said. “So, we raced down and picked him up and brought him in for a visit. It didn’t take long to realize he had something special about him, just the way he carried himself.”On his daylong visit to Tyler, Butler toured the campus, asked lots of questions and participated in an open gym. He said in an interview that he had no biases about the quality of play at the junior college level — “I didn’t really have any offers, so how could I have preconceptions about anything?” he asked — but he came away impressed.“Those guys were really good,” Butler said, “and I don’t think I’d ever played worse.”Mike Marquis, who coaches the men’s basketball team at Tyler Junior College, said Butler would spend hours in the gym.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesStill, Marquis loved his attitude and his potential, and Butler signed his scholarship papers that day. At the first team meeting, a phone rang from one of the lockers, which was a violation of team rules. Butler was among those who could have identified the guilty party but no one gave him up, and Marquis had the team run sprint after sprint.“We were some loyal dudes,” Fulce said.It was, in its own way, a sign of early togetherness.“I think that rallied them more than any sort of team-building exercise we could have done,” Marquis said.The team lived at Bateman Hall, a red brick building that also housed the men’s soccer team. The players attended class, ate at Whataburger and roamed the aisles at Dollar General. They otherwise lived in the gym, Fulce said, and kept one another out of trouble. Ricky Williams, the team manager, enforced curfew as if it were the most important thing in the world.“Oh, my goodness, Ricky,” Fulce said. “If you didn’t get into a fight with Ricky, then you wasn’t trying to live.”Fulce got the sense from Butler that he was determined to absorb everything he could from everyone around him. Each day was an opportunity to learn and improve. In the preseason, Marquis said, Butler would come to practice early and stay late so that he could spend hours — yes, hours — working on his footwork.“All that pivoting,” Marquis said, “which is the sort of stuff he uses nightly now.”Tyler had a terrific season behind Butler, Fulce and Jamie Vanderbeken, a forward who would go on to play at Iowa State. Known as the “Three J’s,” they led the team to a 24-4 record ahead of a regional tournament game against Panola College, a team that Tyler defeated by 27 points the previous week.Playing at the Wagstaff Gymnasium at Tyler Junior College.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesButler spent one season, 2007-8, at Tyler Junior College. He scored 43 points in his final game, a triple-overtime loss.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesA trophy case in the Jimmy Butler Lobby at Tyler’s gym includes a cereal box with a photo of Butler, who was part of the U.S. men’s national team in 2016.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesFulce heard rumblings during warm-ups that a scout from the San Antonio Spurs was in the building — it was an indication, he said, that he and his teammates were on the right track — and they put on a show. In a game that went to triple overtime, Butler scored 43 points and collected 10 rebounds in a 123-121 loss that ended Tyler’s season.“It was Joseph Fulce’s fault and it was Jamie Vanderbeken’s fault because they fouled out of the game,” Butler said. “Joe fouled out at like halftime. And then Jamie fouled out two minutes after halftime. Two of our top-three scorers were gone.”Butler’s memory was rusty: Fulce and Vanderbeken both fouled out in the first overtime.“We actually argued about this a couple of weeks ago, and that was the first time we’d ever talked about the game,” said Fulce, a former college assistant who now runs his own player-development company. “I was like, ‘Bro, I didn’t foul out in the first half!’”After the season, Butler was weighing several Division I offers, including one from Kentucky. Fulce, who had already committed to Marquette, called Buzz Williams, the team’s new coach, and urged him to sign Butler.“If you don’t take Jimmy, I’m not coming,” Fulce recalled telling Williams.A week later, Butler and Fulce made their way to a McDonald’s near campus so that they could use the restaurant’s fax machine. Butler fed his national letter of intent to attend Marquette into the machine.“He really didn’t know what was coming next,” Fulce said. More

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      Tiffany Jackson, Texas Star Forward and W.N.B.A. Veteran, Dies at 37

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      She was an All-American in college and spent nine years as a pro. “I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive,” her college coach said.Tiffany Jackson, an All-American forward for the University of Texas women’s basketball team who went on to play nine seasons in the W.N.B.A., died on Monday in Dallas. She was 37.The cause was cancer, the university said.Jackson noticed a lump in one of her breasts in 2015 while she was playing overseas in Israel during the W.N.B.A. off-season. She put off being tested until she returned to the United States and, even then, not until after the start of the season for the W.N.B.A.’s Tulsa Shock.“I didn’t let my teammates know until the playoffs,” she told ESPN in 2016, “because I knew I was going to have to go back to Dallas, after Game 2, win or lose, to start treatment. I ended up telling everybody via mass text, because I was afraid if I did it in person, I would just break down.”Jackson was a powerhouse player at the University of Texas, where she was the only women’s basketball player in the school’s history to score at least 1,000 points, grab 1,000 rebounds and have 300 steals and 150 blocks. She is ranked fifth overall in points with 1,197.“What made her stand out was her versatility,” Jody Conradt, who coached the Texas women’s team from 1976 to 2007, said in an interview. “She was 6-3, very mobile and could play multiple positions. But that was secondary to her competitiveness — I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive as Tiffany.”In her four years at Texas, Jackson averaged 15.6 points and 8.4 rebounds a game. As a freshman she helped lead the team to the Sweet 16 round of the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament in the 2003-4 season.Her 2004-5 season was her strongest: She averaged 18.3 points and 8.7 rebounds a game.Tiffany Jackson was born on April 26, 1985, in Longview, Texas. Her mother, Cassie Brooks, had played basketball for the University of New Mexico; her father, Marques Jackson, had been a tight end at the University of Tulsa.At Duncanville High School, near Dallas, Tiffany led the Pantherettes to a state title in 2003, scoring a team-high 16 points in the championship game, shortly after being named a McDonald’s All-American.Jackson was recruited vigorously by more than 60 colleges. One coach said that the school that signed her would become an instant championship contender.“That’s a big statement to make, and I feel good that people think that much of me,” Jackson told The Austin American-Statesman in 2003. “It makes me want to work harder to prove them right.”While the Longhorns never won a national title, Jackson’s star was undiminished. Drafted by the New York Liberty with the fifth overall pick in the 2007 W.N.B.A. draft, she played with the team until she was traded to the Tulsa Shock (now the Dallas Wings) in 2010. She played a final season with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2017.She averaged 6.2 points and 4.5 rebounds a game over her career. She was at her best in 2011, with career highs of 12.4 points and 8.4 rebounds a game.Jackson took off the 2012 season to give birth to her son, Marley. She sat out the 2016 season for breast cancer treatment, which included radiation and a mastectomy.“After that first month, never in my mind did I think I wasn’t going to play again,” she told USA Today in 2017. “So throughout my entire treatment, I was always working out. It was something that kept me going.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.After retiring as a player in 2018, Jackson became an assistant coach for two seasons at the University of Texas. This year, she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. She died before she could coach a game for the team. More

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      Pete Carril, Princeton’s Textbook Basketball Coach, Dies at 92

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      Without athletic scholarships, he made outgunned teams winners by keeping them moving and unnerving opponents, leading to one of the biggest upsets in college basketball.Pete Carril, who coached men’s basketball at Princeton for 29 years and scared big-name opponents with his undersize, often underskilled scholars playing an old-fashioned textbook game, died on Monday. He was 92.His family announced the death in a statement posted on the Princeton Tigers’ website. It did not say where he died or give the cause of death.As the men’s head coach from 1967 to 1996, Carril (pronounced care-ILL) taught a thinking man’s basketball at Princeton. As an Ivy League member, Princeton could not offer athletic scholarships, and its academic demands were high, but Carril’s teams, almost invariably outmanned and overmatched, still won twice as often as they lost.His record at Princeton was 514-261, with 13 Ivy titles, 11 appearances in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s championship tournament, two in the National Invitation Tournament (his team won in 1975) and only one losing season. Fourteen of his Princeton teams led the nation in defense. In 1997, he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.He emphasized a deliberate off-the-ball offense that kept players passing the ball and setting screens until a shooter was open or someone broke free to the basket in a patented backdoor play. The scores were low, and no matter how much opponents prepared, they were frustrated and often lost their poise.“Playing Princeton is kind of like going to the dentist,” said Jim Valvano, the North Carolina State coach who died in 1993 at 47. “You know that down the road it can make you better, but while it’s happening it can be very, very painful.”The New York Times sportswriter Bill Pennington wrote: “The most unsophisticated basketball fan could admire and understand a Pete Carril team at first glance. The most devoted hoops junkie could be spellbound by a Pete Carril team in motion. It was basketball not of talent, but of team. It may not be the way everybody should play, but it was the way everybody used to try to play.”In the N.C.A.A.’s annual tournament, Carril’s teams might lose to national powers but not before unnerving them and threatening an upset. In the first round alone, Princeton lost to Georgetown by 50-49 in 1989, Arkansas by 68-64 in 1990 and Villanova by 50-48 in 1991.Carril’s final college victory came on March 14, 1996, in Indianapolis, in the first round of the N.C.A.A. tournament against U.C.L.A., the defending champion. Thirteenth-seeded Princeton, 7 points behind with six minutes left, scored on — what else? — a backdoor with 3.9 seconds left and won. The next day, The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, ran this headline across Page 1:“David 43, Goliath 41.”Carril said he was under no illusions: “If we played U.C.L.A. 100 times, they would win 99 times.” (The Tigers went on to defeat, 63-41, in the second round against Mississippi State.)Around the Princeton campus he was a revered, raspy-voiced figure in a well-worn sweater and baggy khakis (or, when he dressed formally, a bow tie). A colleague once described him as “a rumpled Lilliputian who would look as out of place in an Armani suit as he would in a Vera Wang gown.” And during games he was known for an animated coaching style.Every year at his first practice session, Carril made the same speech to his players.“I know about your academic load,” he said. “I know how tough it is to give up the time to play here, but let’s get one thing straight. In my book, there is no such thing as an Ivy League player. When you come out of that locker room and step across that white line, you are basketball players, period.”But he also told his players:“Princeton is a special place with some very special professors. It is something special to be taught by one of them. But you are not special just because you happen to go here.”Pedro José (later known as Peter Joseph) Carril was born on July 10, 1930, in Bethlehem, Pa. His father, an immigrant from Spain, worked for 40 years at the blast furnaces of Bethlehem Steel and, his son said, never missed a day of work.In high school in Bethlehem, Pete was an all-state basketball player, and at Lafayette, where he played for Butch van Breda Kolff, he was a Little All-American. Then, for 12 years, he coached high school basketball in Pennsylvania while earning a master’s degree in education from Lehigh University in 1959.In the 1966-67 season, he coached Lehigh to an 11-12 record. Then, van Breda Kolff, who was coaching Princeton, left to coach the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association. Princeton considered Bobby Knight and Larry Brown as successors. Instead, it took Carril.He left college coaching after the 1995-96 season.“I’ve been dodging bullets for 30 years,” Carril said. “I find I’m not seeing as much. I used to think the kids felt my coaching was worth five points a game to them. Maybe it was, but I get the sense they don’t feel that way now. I think I make less of a difference.”The next year, he became an assistant coach of the Sacramento Kings of the N.B.A. under Coach Rick Adelman, spending most of his time breaking down game tapes. He remained with the team for most of the next decade, retiring in 2006, but three years later, at 78, he rejoined the Kings as a consultant.“Being an assistant doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “The aggravation and the pain in your stomach and the headaches that you get when you see things that are done wrong or when you lose, or all those problems you have as a head coach, I’d had enough.”With Dan White he wrote “The Smart Take From the Strong: The Basketball Philosophy of Pete Carril” (1997). His coaching methods were even the subject of an academic paper by a Fordham University marketing professor, Francis Petit, titled, “What Executives Can Learn From Pete Carril.”Information on his survivors was not immediately available.Carril at Princeton in 2007. “People ask me, ‘How do you want to be remembered?’” he once said. “I tell them I don’t.”Aaron Houston for The New York TimesCarril was ambivalent about his success. He once said: “People ask me, ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ I tell them I don’t.”But he will be remembered, even though none of his teams gained the ultimate honor. He brushed that off, too.“Winning a national championship is not something you’re going to see us do at Princeton,” he said in his final years there. “I resigned myself to that years ago. What does it mean, anyway? When I’m dead, maybe two guys will walk past my grave, and one will say to the other: ‘Poor guy. Never won a national championship.’ And I won’t hear a word they say.”Frank Litsky, a longtime sportswriter for The Times, died in 2018. William McDonald contributed reporting. More

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      Pretty in Any Color: Women in Basketball Make the Style Rules

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      Angel Reese considers herself “a pink kind of girl.”Pink nails, pink hair tie, pink shoes, sometimes even “a little bit of pink in my lashes,” Reese said of the eyelash extensions she applies before basketball games. “Everything’s pink.”It’s all part of the pregame routine for Reese, who in May transferred to Louisiana State after a breakout season on Maryland’s women’s basketball team. Before Reese hits the court, she swipes on lip gloss and gels down her edges — her hairline — to prevent flyaways.“Grandma would always emphasize, ‘Don’t let anybody make your makeup sweat,’” Reese said.Reese’s devotion to her appearance for games expresses who she is as much as her playing style. Players in women’s basketball freely mix a traditionally feminine beauty standard with finishing touches that are popular in Black and Latina culture, like gelled edges. It’s a freedom that some say is an advancement in a sport whose athletes have historically been pressured to fit a mass-market ideal that has long benefited straight, white women. Reese is Black.But the introduction of name, image and likeness deals in college sports and an influx of marketing money in professional women’s basketball have added dollars-and-cents stakes to female players’ decisions to glam up. In interviews with a dozen college and professional players, women talked about how the decision on how to express themselves through their appearance has been changing.“I’ve never really felt the pressure until the N.I.L. thing started,” said Reese, whose endorsement deals include Xfinity, Amazon, Wingstop and a Washington, D.C.-area supermarket chain.Camille Lenain for The New York Times‘There is a pressure for me to look a certain way.’Stanford forward Cameron Brink usually applies concealer, eyebrow gel, mascara and maybe a little blush before she heads out for a game, but she scoffed at the idea of in-game touch-ups. “I look like this when I was playing, I’m going to live with it,” she said.Her shot-blocking was a key piece of Stanford’s run to the 2022 Final Four, where the team lost to Connecticut in front of 3.23 million TV viewers, a 19 percent increase over the previous season and a 49 percent bump from 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s also a swelling fan base that follows Brink on social media. She posts makeup tutorials, which she loves because she views makeup as art. “It’s really relaxing to me,” she said. Brink has had deals with ThirdLove, Visible Mobile, the energy drink Celsius and Portland Gear.She acknowledged that her following — 203,000 on Instagram and 62,800 on TikTok — had built up at least in part “because I do play into that role of being feminine and dressing femininely.”“There is a pressure for me to look a certain way,” said Brink, who is white. “Sometimes it’s refreshing to go out and play sports and not worry about it.”Stanford’s Cameron Brink said that she felt some pressure to conform to traditionally feminine beauty standards but that her beauty routine was also something she enjoyed.Rikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesRikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesLast year, the N.C.A.A. changed its rules to allow college athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses in marketing deals. Women’s college basketball players quickly began out-earning athletes in every other sport besides football, according to the marketing company Opendorse. Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, who is white, signed with Gatorade for an estimated $1 million.Blake Lawrence, a co-founder of Opendorse, said female college basketball players had outshined their male counterparts in the N.I.L. marketplace in part because of how they distinguish themselves through their appearance.“They’re willing to create content; they’re willing to create a character that you want to follow and cheer for while on the court, while on the track, while on the grass,” Lawrence said. “That may be through hairstyle changes; that may be through makeup changes; that may be through the accessories that you bring to the field.”But with that can come tremendous pressure to fit traditional notions of attractiveness, adding another layer of competition to college basketball.“Comparing yourself to other people — oh, this girl is really pretty; oh, she looks really pretty — it’s hard,” Oklahoma guard Kelbie Washington said.Washington enjoys spraying on perfume as part of her pregame routine (Jimmy Choo is her favorite), and she pays for eyelash extensions, which can cost more than $130 a set.“Everyone is human,” she said of the urge to compare herself with others. “Everyone has those emotions, whether they say it out loud or not.”‘Women have to be so much more marketable than men.’TV ratings for college and W.N.B.A. games are rising, and the profiles of the players — among the most vocal and visible social justice activists in sports — are exploding.Within that explosion, Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State, sees the players driving a generational shift, a reframing of norms. “Athletes themselves are pushing back against historical ideas of what it means to be a female athlete and what’s acceptable to be performed as a female athlete,” Jackson said, adding that the W.N.B.A. is “a good example” of that.Nefertiti A. Walker, an associate professor in sports management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a former college basketball player, said players didn’t necessarily feel as if they had to fit the usual standards.“What you’re seeing is certainly athletes now who, because of the changes we’ve seen in college sport — they all have pride nights, there’s gay marriage now — all these changes that have happened in their lifetime that signal it might be OK to perform their gender in a different way,” she said.That may be true on the court, but a recent swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated suggested a narrower view of sex appeal, which can be an important factor in marketing. The magazine included five W.N.B.A. players in bikinis and one-piece swimsuits with cutouts.Courtney Williams, an All-Star guard on the Connecticut Sun, said on Twitter that the shoot would have been better if it had included a player in a sports bra and baggy shorts. “There’s more than one way to look sexy, and I hope in the future we can tap into that,” she said.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesCamille Lenain for The New York TimesRikkí D Wright for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesJonquel Jones was the W.N.B.A.’s most valuable player in 2021. “If u don’t fit into the normal stereotype of what feminine is or what it ‘should be’ you lose opportunities,” Jones said in an August 2020 Twitter post. “Women have to be so much more marketable than men.”W.N.B.A. players, with a maximum base salary of about $230,000, earn far less than their millionaire counterparts in the N.B.A., making marketing dollars even more important. The W.N.B.A. has a pool of $1 million that it must spend on marketing deals for players, and each team has to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 per year on player marketing deals. Any unspent amount carries over to the next season on top of the minimum.The league said it selects players to participate in marketing efforts based on a variety of factors: on-court performance, an established personal brand with an active fan base, and the willingness to travel and participate in league events.“Ideas about bodies play out most explicitly on the bodies of athletes — harmful ideas and also positive ideas,” Jackson said. “That’s another way in which this can be a space of conflict and a space of harm, too, depending on the way those ideas are packaged and sold.”‘They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete.’Tiffany Mitchell likes to feel the swing of her ponytail as she runs the court.Mitchell, who is Black, has often worn her hair in long, braided styles past her waist since she starred at South Carolina from 2012 to 2016. This kind of protective hairstyling allows her to go longer between restyling and can prevent breakage during the grind of the season with the W.N.B.A.’s Indiana Fever.Those swinging braids became an issue during the W.N.B.A. off-season in December, when she was competing with the Melbourne Boomers, a professional women’s team in Australia. Basketball Australia, the sport’s governing body, said the league’s players had to tie their hair back or up, mistakenly attributing the policy to a FIBA rule that was no longer in effect. Mitchell, one of just three Black players on the Boomers’ roster, felt targeted, since she had never had to change her hair for other international competitions. Basketball Australia later apologized and rescinded what it called a “discriminatory” policy.“They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete,” Mitchell said. “So I think that me bringing it to their attention called out the ignorance because there have been players in this league that have had braids before me, and it was never an issue.”Tiffany Mitchell loves playing basketball while wearing long braids. But that became an issue when she was competing in Australia.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times‘When I look good, I feel good, I play good.’As early as fifth grade, Deja Kelly’s mother encouraged her to create a signature hairstyle.“She would call it a ‘D-I do’: If you want to go D-I, you have to look like you play D-I,” Kelly said.She adopted a slicked-back ponytail or a bun as her preferred hairstyles. Her glam routine now — eyelash extensions, a tight bun and detailed edges — “has never affected my performance” as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s leading scorer last season. Kelly has had endorsement deals with Dunkin’, Beats by Dre, Forever 21 and the sports drink Barcode, among others.“For me, when I look good, I feel good, I play good,” Kelly said. “That’s something I always prided myself in.”Walker, the sports management professor, said her studies on women’s sports pointed to a trend: Women in basketball are showcasing greater agency and self-determination by glamming.Video by Gabriella Angotti-JonesDiJonai Carrington of the W.N.B.A.’s Connecticut Sun said she felt that she played better after she had gone through her glam routine.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times“A lot of women’s basketball players feel free to express themselves, to perform in a way aesthetically that accomplishes whatever they want to accomplish,” Walker said. “Sometimes we underestimate how business savvy they are, particularly in this day and age.”Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington has had an endorsement deal with Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand. She makes sure she has on her 20-millimeter mink eyelash extensions before every game. Her nails, typically coated with some sort of bright polish, are usually done with acrylic extensions. She’s grown so accustomed to applying gel to her hairline that it takes her only about 30 seconds.“I feel like I play better. I don’t know if I do or I don’t, but I just feel like I do,” Carrington said. “And I never have wanted to compromise one thing or another, whether that’s being a hooper and being a dog on the court and still being able to look a certain way.” More

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      Looking for Aces Guard Jackie Young? She’s Probably in the Gym.

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      Young, set to start in her first W.N.B.A. All-Star Game, is known for her competitive drive. “She’s going to try to beat everyone,” one teammate said.Las Vegas Aces guard Jackie Young has met success at every level of basketball. She has a high school championship, an N.C.A.A. Division I title at Notre Dame, and last summer, she claimed Olympic gold in the first 3×3 competition. Now, as a first-time W.N.B.A. All-Star, Young, an Indiana native, has added another accolade en route to her ultimate goal.“Everyone wants a ring. I definitely want a ring,” Young said, adding, “We’ve been close each year.”Young is in her fourth W.N.B.A. season with Las Vegas and has made the playoffs each year, including a trip to the finals in 2020. The Aces selected her No. 1 overall in the 2019 draft.Young is one of the top defensive weapons on the Aces and is posting the best offensive numbers of her career, which helped her earn a place as a starter in her All-Star debut this weekend. The All-Star Game is Sunday in Chicago.When Young came to Las Vegas in 2019, it was her first major move away from Indiana. She was the middle child, and both her older brother, Terrence, and younger sister, Kiare, played basketball, too.Jackie attended Princeton Community High School where she tallied 3,268 career points for the girls’ basketball team, a record for the girls’ and boys’ teams. From Princeton, Young traveled about 300 miles northeast to play for Notre Dame.Young won an N.C.A.A. championship with the women’s basketball team at Notre Dame in 2018.Michael Caterina/South Bend Tribune, via Associated PressAs a sophomore, she dropped a game-high 32 points in the 2018 Final Four semifinal game against Connecticut. In the championship game against Mississippi State, Young hit the game-tying shot and came up with the steal that led to her teammate Arike Ogunbowale’s game-winning basket. Young played one more season with Notre Dame before entering the 2019 W.N.B.A. draft.“It was always a dream of mine to play in the W.N.B.A., and it came down to making a decision for my family. I knew I needed to help my family, and that’s what I’ve worked for my whole life,” Young said.She described her family as “close-knit” and said she had uncles and aunts around to help her mother, Linda Young. Her extended family shared housing sometimes to stay afloat financially. Jackie Young’s decision to leave Notre Dame meant less financial burden for her family.“​​My mom, a single mother, made a lot of sacrifices for me and my siblings,” Young said. “She definitely went without to make sure we have food on the table, clothes on our backs, and so I knew if I had the chance to leave early I was going to.”Young will make about $72,000 this season and more than $165,000 in each of the next two seasons until she is an unrestricted free agent in 2025, according to Her Hoop Stats.Her transition from college to the W.N.B.A. was swift.Notre Dame narrowly lost to Baylor by 1 point in the 2019 N.C.A.A. women’s basketball championship in Tampa, Fla. Three days later, Young was in New York City being announced as the first overall pick in the W.N.B.A. draft.Aces forward A’ja Wilson had a similar transition to the W.N.B.A. the year before, but with an added twist: The Aces transitioned, too, from being the San Antonio Stars. The franchise spent 15 seasons in Texas, then moved to Las Vegas as the Aces for Wilson’s first season.“When I got drafted, we were such a new franchise,” Wilson said. “I didn’t have a quote-unquote vet that kind of knew the ropes.”Wilson decided to embrace the chance to be a big sister to Young.“Jackie was kind of like our first rookie that we had,” she said. “We already were pretty much established, in a sense, so I wanted to make sure that I could be that vet that I didn’t have for her and answer all the questions that she needed, making sure that she was comfortable.”Young, right, finished her college career just three days before the Las Vegas Aces drafted her No. 1 overall in 2019.Julie Jacobson/Associated PressNow Young is a veteran, and she is held accountable when she’s asked to assert herself by other players or Aces Coach Becky Hammon.“I talked with Becky about this earlier in the season, just talking about my court awareness and seeing things before it happens,” Young said. She added: “I think that would help us along the way, too, me just being more vocal. I’m just working on that every day.”The work hasn’t gone unnoticed by Wilson, who won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2020.“Jackie is someone where she understands her assignment, 100 percent. She is a pro at what she does and watching that growth, it’s been incredible, honestly, to watch,” Wilson told reporters recently. She added: “She’s locked in no matter what, and she makes sure that others around her are doing the same.”Another challenge for Young is to also know when to shut off her competitive edge.“She’s someone who’s in the gym all the time. I’ve got to kick her out,” Hammon told reporters before a recent win over the Minnesota Lynx.“I literally tell her to go home and take the ball and put it on the rack,” she added.Hammon, who retired as a guard for the San Antonio Stars, said she believed Young was en route to being considered for the M.V.P. Award this season. She trusts Young with defending the best perimeter shooters every night.“I really take pride in that,” Young said. “I know how to get stops, and I have a big assignment each night. So I think everyone knows that on this team.”Aces forward A’ja Wilson, right, described Young, left, as “locked in no matter what.” Aces guard Kelsey Plum, second from right, said Young “wants to win everything.”Ellen Schmidt/Associated PressThe next level of Young’s game, as Hammon sees it, is to be more demanding on offense. That goes hand in hand with her growing into a confident communicator on the court — a floor general.“I want her to be an animal. That’s what I want,” Hammon said, adding, “I want her to understand that she can impact a game like that and demand that kind of attention offensively.”Offensively, Young is posting career numbers in points and steals per game while continuing her reliable defense. She averages about 17 points per game, more than 10 points per game above her average in her rookie season. Her 46.9 percent accuracy from 3-point range is among the best in the league entering the All-Star break.On Sunday, Young will not only appear in her first W.N.B.A. All-Star Game, but she will also start opposite her Las Vegas Aces teammates Wilson and Kelsey Plum.Will the fun festivities in Chicago be a chance for the hard-working Young to shift into a lower gear? Not likely.“I don’t think there’s such thing as less competitive for Jackie,” Plum said. “I think she’s going to do what she does.”This will also be Plum’s first All-Star appearance, and she is ready to take on Young. They were both set to compete in the skills competition on Saturday.“I know she’s going to try to beat everyone including me, you know,” Plum said. “That’s just who she is. She wants to win everything. And if she doesn’t win, someone cheated.” More

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      For Some NBA Draftees, Making it to the Pros Runs in the Family

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      Three of the top five picks in this year’s N.B.A. draft have parents who played professionally, including in the W.N.B.A.When the Houston Rockets selected Auburn’s Jabari Smith Jr. with the third pick of the N.B.A. draft on Thursday, it continued a tradition of basketball as a family inheritance.His father, also named Jabari Smith, played in the N.B.A. in the early 2000s.“My dad just told me it was time to amp it up a little bit, time to work even harder,” Jabari Smith Jr. said of his father’s reaction to the draft. “It’s a new level, whole new game. Just trying to get there and get to work.”For a cadre of N.B.A. players, having a parent or being related to someone who played in the N.B.A. or W.N.B.A. isn’t particularly unusual. And many players who aren’t related to someone who played professionally have parents who played college basketball.This past season, 30 second-generation players appeared in at least one N.B.A. game — a total that represents 5 percent of the league, and is nearly twice as many players as about two decades ago.Jabari Smith Jr., center, with his father, Jabari Smith, left, and mother, Taneskia Purnell, right.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesSmith was one of several players drafted this year whose father had N.B.A. experience. Among them was the University of Wisconsin’s Johnny Davis, whom the Washington Wizards picked at No. 10. His father is Mark Davis, who played in the N.B.A. briefly after the Cleveland Cavaliers drafted him in 1985. There was also Duke’s A.J. Griffin, picked at No. 16 by the Atlanta Hawks. His father is Adrian Griffin, who played in the N.B.A. from 1999 to 2008, and has since been an assistant coach in the N.B.A. The other was Colorado’s Jabari Walker, a late-second-round pick for the Portland Trail Blazers, the son of Samaki Walker, who played a decade in the N.B.A. and won a championship with the Los Angeles Lakers.W.N.B.A. connections could also be found among top picks. Rhonda Smith-Banchero, the mother of the No. 1 pick, Paolo Banchero, played in the W.N.B.A. Banchero, who was drafted by the Orlando Magic, said his mother “stayed on me, always held me accountable and made sure I was on the right track.” The Detroit Pistons selected Purdue’s Jaden Ivey with the fifth pick. His mother, Niele Ivey, played in the W.N.B.A. and was a recent assistant coach for the Memphis Grizzlies. She’s now the coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team.“It’s actually an amazing story to have a mother who’s been in the league,” Jaden Ivey said. “You don’t see too many stories like that, and the bond that we have is special. I thank her for all the things that she’s done for me. I know I wouldn’t be on this stage, I wouldn’t be here, without her.”Niele Ivey, left, played college basketball at Notre Dame before her W.N.B.A. career. She’s now the head coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team.Photo by Vincent Laforet/The New York TimesSometimes the connection to professional basketball players isn’t parental. Midway through the first round, the Charlotte Hornets drafted Mark Williams out of Duke. His older sister Elizabeth Williams has been in the W.N.B.A. since 2015. In the second round, the Cavaliers picked Isaiah Mobley out of the University of Southern California, which will be convenient for family visits, as his brother, Evan Mobley, is already on the team. (Brothers are common in the N.B.A. See: the Lopezes, Antetokounmpos, Balls and Holidays.)In some cases, there were recognizable names who weren’t drafted but nonetheless received contracts. Scotty Pippen Jr., who played three seasons at Vanderbilt, is expected to sign a two-way contract with the Lakers. His father, Scottie Pippen, won six championships with the Chicago Bulls. Ron Harper Jr., a Rutgers alum whose father, Ron Harper, won three championships alongside Pippen, is expected to be offered a similar deal with the Toronto Raptors.But while the N.B.A.’s father-son connections were highlighted by this year’s draft class, the phenomenon is nothing new. Consider Golden State’s roster, which featured four second-generation players during the team’s championship run this year: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and Gary Payton II.And some of their fathers were front and center.Each player has a family connection in professional basketball: For Paolo Banchero, left, it’s his mother; for Mark Williams, center, his sister; and for A.J. Griffin, right, his father.John Minchillo/Associated PressPaolo Banchero hugs his mother, Rhonda Smith-Banchero, who played in the W.N.B.A. Banchero was the No. 1 pick in the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty ImagesAs Payton got set to check into Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals against the Boston Celtics, he spotted his father, Gary Payton, a nine-time All-Star, sitting courtside with Detlef Schrempf, one of his former teammates. Father and son made eye contact — no words needed to be exchanged.“He just shook his head,” Gary Payton II said. “I know that means it’s time. You know, go to work.”And as the final seconds ticked away in Golden State’s championship-clinching win in Game 6, Curry embraced his father, Dell Curry, along one baseline. Stephen Curry broke down in tears.“I saw him and I lost it,” he said, adding, “I just wanted to take in the moment because it was that special.”In fact, the N.B.A. finals offered up a smorgasbord of generational talent. Among the Celtics: Al Horford, whose father, Tito Horford, played for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Washington Bullets, and Grant Williams, whose cousins, Salim and Damon Stoudamire, both played in the N.B.A. This season, Damon Stoudamire was able to keep a close eye on Williams as one of the Celtics’ assistants.Players and coaches have cited a number of factors in the steady, decades-long emergence of father-son pairings, starting with genetics: It obviously helps to be tall. But many sons of former players also benefited from early exposure to the game, from top-notch instruction from the time they could start dribbling and from various other perks. For example, Stephen Curry and his younger brother, Seth Curry, who now plays for the Nets, had access to a full-length court in their family’s backyard, complete with lights.But with certain privilege comes pressure — especially when you share a name with a famous father. Gary Payton II recalled how his father had learned to back off when it came to basketball so that his son could develop a passion for the game on his own. They simply stopped talking about hoops, and that has remained the case.“Nowadays, he really doesn’t say anything,” Gary Payton II said. “We just talk about life, family, other sports and whatnot.”But sometimes it can cause strains, like the one between Tim Hardaway Jr., a Dallas Mavericks guard, and his father, Tim Hardaway, a five-time All Star who played from 1989 to 2003. They have both publicly spoken about how their relationship was made more difficult as a result of how hard the elder Hardaway was on his son about the game.Scotty Pippen Jr., the son of the Chicago Bulls great, Scottie Pippen, was expected to sign a two-way deal with the Lakers after going undrafted.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressIt can also be a strain if your father is the coach, a situation that Austin Rivers was faced with when he played for his father, Doc Rivers, on the Los Angeles Clippers. Doc Rivers played in the league from 1983 to 1996 and is also an accomplished N.B.A. head coach. The younger Rivers called it “bittersweet.” Doc Rivers had his back as his father, but Austin Rivers told The Ringer that “everything else, man, was hell,” because it created an awkward dynamic with his teammates.A similar situation may repeat itself next season: The Knicks hired Rick Brunson, a former N.B.A. player, as an assistant coach and are expected to target his son, Jalen Brunson, one of the top free agents, as an off-season acquisition.Of course, it could work out just fine, as it did for Gary Payton. In the hours after Golden State won it all last week in Boston, he celebrated his son’s triumph by dancing through the hallways at TD Garden. More

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      From Tattoos to Malcolm X T-shirts, N.B.A. Hopefuls Talk Style

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      Three top draft prospects — Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams — explained their approach to fashion. “I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said.Paolo Banchero lifted the right sleeve of his black hooded sweatshirt to point out the green tattoo ink on his forearm. His long arms make up most of the 7-foot-1 wingspan that positioned him as one of the top prospects in the N.B.A. draft on Thursday, but they also tell a story.His right arm is packed with tattoos that depict crucial parts of his upbringing and make statements about his style: the Space Needle and the rest of the skyline of his hometown, Seattle, sit on his right shoulder; “19th and Spruce” is written on his inner biceps as a nod to the Boys and Girls Club where he began playing basketball; and on his inner forearm is the logo for his friend’s Seattle-based Skyblue Collective clothing brand, which he sports often and says is “a part of him.”Banchero has a tattoo on his right arm that reads “19th and Spruce,” a nod to the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle where he grew up playing basketball.Bob Donnan/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBanchero, 19, who led the Duke men’s basketball team to the Final Four this year, uses his tattoos and outfits as a form of self-expression, a subtle way of sending messages. At a pre-draft style event at a Brooklyn barbershop on Tuesday, he wore an all-black luxury designer outfit, which he said was tame compared to what he would put together on draft night.On Thursday, he wore a bright purple suit as the Orlando Magic selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.Banchero and many of the top players in the 2022 draft class already have a public persona, but it will be boosted immensely if an N.B.A. team signs them. While playing well and winning championships are paramount in how an N.B.A. player is perceived, style and image are a close second. After all, this is the league in which Los Angeles Lakers forward/center Anthony Davis made his unibrow a celebrity in its own right, even trademarking the phrase “Fear The Brow” in 2012.N.B.A. athletes have made it easy for fans to appreciate their fashion sense, turning their pregame entrances into their own version of the Met Gala. Fans on social media quickly share photos and videos from players’ 30-second walks to the locker rooms from cars or team buses at N.B.A. arenas. GQ magazine crowned Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the N.B.A.’s most stylish player of 2022, over Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, because “the guy cares about getting dressed.”Jalen Williams, a forward from Santa Clara University and a potential first-round pick in the draft, is looking forward to the pregame catwalk. On his cellphone, he has multiple search tabs open for different clothing brands. He laughed and pointed at Jaden Hardy from the G League Ignite, another potential 2022 draft pick, when he saw that they were wearing the same black sweatpants from the brand MNML at the event on Tuesday.Williams said he tried to balance being conscious about what he wore while having fun with his style, because he knew that he would be judged by his outfits and appearance. He incorporates clothing from less popular brands into his wardrobe to encourage those who may look up to him to be “comfortable in their own skin.”Jalen Williams said fashion was important to him — even in video games.Young Kwak/Associated PressWilliams at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images“I think that’s the biggest thing that gets misunderstood in fashion,” Williams, 21, said. “You feel like you have to please whoever or look a certain way, but whatever you like is what you like.”Williams said he also tried to support small brands and promote social-justice issues through his clothing. He sported a jacket from Tattoo’d Cloth, which made custom embroidered jackets for some draft prospects, and tagged the brand in an Instagram story. On Juneteenth, he wore a shirt featuring Malcolm X, and he frequently wears different kinds of apparel supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. “I think as athletes, it’s important to inspire people and kind of spark a change and use our platform,” Williams said. “Sometimes, not even saying anything but wearing the clothes is really important.”Williams’s style goes beyond his outfits, too. As a high school sophomore, he decided to don a single braid while keeping the rest of his hair unbraided, hanging the braid at eye level. That has become a popular style in the N.B.A.“I’m not going to say I started it, but I might’ve started it,” he said jokingly.Fashion has long played a significant role in Williams’s life, back to his childhood when he began using the My Player mode in the N.B.A. 2K video game, in which users create players and can style them for hanging out in a virtual park. He is serious about the fashion choices of his My Player.“You can’t pull up to the park in brown and gray,” Williams said, mocking the generic outfit given to the created players. “No brown shirts!”The Oklahoma City Thunder selected Williams with the 12th pick in the draft on Thursday. He wore a dark pinstriped suit and large sunglasses with his famous single braid draped over them.Chet Holmgren, who is seven feet tall, said it was hard to find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame when he was younger.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHolmgren at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty ImagesFor the seven-foot center Chet Holmgren, who played at Gonzaga and was expected to be a top-three pick on Thursday, being fashionable was a challenge growing up. He could never find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame, and he could not afford the custom-fitted outfits he adored. He ridiculed his most impressive childhood outfit: Nike socks, basic T-shirts, basketball shorts and basketball shoes. In high school, Holmgren said, his style skyrocketed as he turned to resale websites and brands that had clothes in the large-and-tall sizing. Now, he is confident that he is the most fashionable prospect in this draft class.“In my opinion, I’m the swaggiest dude beyond just what I am wearing,” Holmgren said. He further explained that fashion was about more than just the pieces a person was wearing.“You could spend $10,000 on an outfit, but you might have a trash outfit on,” he said. “You might have the right pieces, but if you can’t put them together, the outfit’s not going to be great.”Like Williams, Holmgren is looking forward to the N.B.A.’s pregame runway, and he isn’t apprehensive about his style choices.“I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said. “So whatever I’m wearing, I’ll be all right.”Holmgren was drafted second overall to the Oklahoma City Thunder. His diamond chain, which featured a pair of dice, shone in Barclays Center as he walked to the stage. He chose dice for his chain, he said, because he was “big on betting on himself.” More