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    George McGinnis Dies at 73; Powered His Way to Basketball Stardom

    He won two titles with the Pacers of the A.B.A. before joining Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s 76ers, but it was 35 years before the Hall of Fame inducted him.George McGinnis, whose rare combination of size and agility made him a pillar of two early 1970s championship teams in the upstart American Basketball Association, but whose heralded pairing with Julius Erving on the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers failed to fulfill expectations of a title, died on Thursday in Indianapolis. He was 73.The Indiana Pacers, the team with which he won his A.B.A. titles, said his death, in a hospital, resulted from complications of cardiac arrest, which he suffered last week at his home in Indianapolis. McGinnis had struggled to walk in recent years after undergoing multiple back surgeries because of a hereditary condition, the team said.McGinnis played at the high school, college and professional levels in basketball-obsessed Indiana, where he broke Oscar Robertson’s scholastic scoring records while leading Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 record and a championship in 1969.McGinnis led Washington High School in Indianapolis to a 31-0 title run in 1969.Frank Fisse/IndyStar, via ImagnAs a forward, he averaged 30 points and 14.7 rebounds in his one season at Indiana University before joining his hometown Indiana Pacers. The Pacers immediately won successive A.B.A. championships, though McGinnis, surrounded by the veterans Mel Daniels, Roger Brown and Bob Netolicky, was not the team’s unquestioned star until his second season, when he averaged 27.6 points and 12.5 rebounds per game.At a chiseled 6 feet 8 inches, 235 pounds, McGinnis was a harbinger of basketball’s athletic revolution, featuring taller players who could be brawny around the basket but more agile away from it with each passing decade, navigating skillfully in open space.“Big guys in my era couldn’t handle the ball,” he said in an interview with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame before he was inducted into it in 2017, an honor that many believed was egregiously overdue 35 years after he retired. “But I could dribble with my left hand, my right hand and take guys outside.”He credited those skills to the coaching he had growing up in Indiana, where “fundamentals are well taught,” he said.Len Elmore, a Pacers teammate for one season — McGinnis’s last in Indiana before joining the 76ers in 1975 — said in a telephone interview that he harked back to McGinnis when LeBron James, slightly bigger at 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, entered the N.B.A. in 2003 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.“Similar size, strength, mobility,” Elmore said, “I remember saying it immediately — George was LeBron before LeBron. You couldn’t believe that with his body he could be that agile.”McGinnis during Game Two of the N.B.A. finals against the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977.James Drake/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesOne distinctive part of McGinnis’s game was his midrange jumper, a right-handed shot-put-like release that made purists cringe. “It was different, but he made it work for him,” Elmore said.After leading the A.B.A. in scoring, averaging 29.8 points, and sharing the league’s 1974-75 Most Valuable Player Award with Erving, his future 76ers teammate, McGinnis left the cash-strapped Pacers, calling his departure “a dollars and cents thing.”In a challenge to the N.B.A.’s constitution, he tried to circumvent Philadelphia’s draft rights by signing with the New York Knicks. But when the league voided the deal, McGinnis joined the 76ers, accepting a six-year contract for $3.2 million (the equivalent of about $18.3 million today). It was one season before the team acquired Erving from the New York Nets as it entered the N.B.A. with three other A.B.A. teams, including the Pacers.“George was the turnaround factor in pro basketball in this town,” Pat Williams, the team’s general manager, told Sports Illustrated in 1982. “Julius put up the walls and a roof, but it was George who built the foundation.”The 76ers’ slogan for McGinnis’s first season in Philadelphia was “Let George Do It.” Led by McGinnis, who was voted to play in the first of his three N.B.A. All-Star games, the 76ers increased their win total to 46 from the previous season’s 34 but lost in the first round of the playoffs.Erving’s arrival electrified the sport, though questions abounded on whether the two prolific forwards could coexist. “It was inevitable that people would say we hated each other, but Julius and I knew it wasn’t true, and we were above it,” McGinnis said in the Sports Illustrated article.The 76ers were within two victories of fulfilling their supposed destiny, taking the first two games against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1976-77 league finals. But the Bill Walton-led Blazers won the next four. McGinnis struggled with his shot until the last game in Portland, when he scored 28 points.The Western Conference All-Stars in 1979. McGinnis is seated on the left, in the front row.NBAE, via Getty ImagesTrailing by two with one last possession in Game 6, the 76ers’ head coach, Gene Shue, called a play for McGinnis. Erving, who had already scored 40, was bewildered by Shue’s bypassing him and Doug Collins, the team’s best pure shooter.After another disheartening playoff exit the following season, the 76ers dealt McGinnis to the Denver Nuggets, landing Bobby Jones, whose staunch defense better complemented Erving and helped the 76ers win the title in 1983.McGinnis did not have a long career, especially compared with James’s 21st-century standard. His performance declined in Denver, in part because of an Achilles’ tendon injury. He returned to the Pacers during the 1979-80 season, finishing his 11th and final pro season, 1981-82, with an average of 4.7 points over 76 games.George F. McGinnis was born on Aug. 12, 1950, in Harpersville, Ala., about 30 miles southeast of Birmingham, the son of Burnie and Willie (Keith) McGinnis. His father was a carpenter. With a daughter, Bonnie, the family settled on the west side of Indianapolis.During McGinnis’s senior year of high school, his father died after falling off scaffolding at a construction site — days after watching George score 53 points and grab 30 rebounds in an All-Star game. McGinnis, who was also an all-state football player, said he left Indiana University early to help support his mother.He expressed regret that he had missed out on playing for the Indiana coach Bobby Knight by one season, speculating, “I think it would have given me different values.” (Knight died in November.)Many believed McGinnis’s induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 was egregiously overdue, coming 35 years after his professional retirement from the sport.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMcGinnis was married for 43 years to Lynda (Dotson) McGinnis, who had been a high school girlfriend. She died of cancer in 2019, not long after he underwent surgery to address a back issue, spinal stenosis, that forced him to walk stooped with a cane or walker. His survivors include his sister, Bonnie McGinnis.After his playing years, McGinnis worked as a broadcaster in Indianapolis, where he and his wife founded GM Supply Company, a provider of special tooling and abrasives to manufacturers, in 1991.McGinnis remained a popular fixture in the state’s basketball community, and in September was inducted into the Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame.Twenty years earlier, he told The New York Times, “One of the great things about being a basketball player in Indiana is that they never forget you.”Alex Traub More

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    Dwyane Wade Talks Hall of Fame Induction and a Political Hopes

    When the Miami Heat selected Dwyane Wade with the fifth pick of the 2003 N.B.A. draft, the league was in dire need of star players to carry it out of the Michael Jordan era.Wade’s draft class — which also featured LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Carmelo Anthony — ended up fitting the bill and then some. Wade immediately became one of the league’s most popular players, and his Miami teammate Shaquille O’Neal gave him the catchy nickname Flash. It was apt — Wade routinely attacked the rim with snazzy spin moves and finished with highlight-reel dunks and layups on his way to winning three championships.This weekend, Wade will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, a feat that seemed inevitable as he piled up accolades over a 16-year career. He made 13 All-Star teams, led the league in scoring once and was named the most valuable player of the 2006 N.B.A. finals, which Miami won over Dallas.“To be able to be one of those select few out of an entire generation of people who have tried to play the game of basketball and to be able to walk into the Hall of Fame, it doesn’t matter if I knew 10 years ago or I just got the call yesterday — it all feels surreal,” Wade said in a recent interview.Since retiring in 2019, Wade has acquired an ownership stake in the Utah Jazz and the W.N.B.A. team in his hometown Chicago, the Sky. In the spring, Wade revealed that he had moved his family out of Florida to California because of state laws that negatively affect the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Wade’s teenage daughter, Zaya, is transgender, and Wade has been outspoken on her behalf.Wade recently spoke to The New York Times about his basketball career and potentially running for political office.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.Dwyane Wade’s jersey is lifted into the rafters during his jersey retirement ceremony at American Airlines Arena in 2020.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesYou grew up in the South Side of Chicago without very much. When you retired, the former President Barack Obama taped a tribute video to you. How do you reflect on that journey?My dad and I talk about it. We still can’t believe it. We still can’t believe the N.B.A. career happened and it’s gone by. I got a call from President Obama on my birthday when I turned 40, and it was like: “Hey, pick up the phone at this time. There’s going to be a call coming.” I’m like, “OK.” Once I got on, I heard, “You’re waiting for the president of the United States.” I was like: “What? This is my life, right?”Your first N.B.A. game was against Allen Iverson. You’re having a bit of a full-circle moment this weekend by having him induct you. Why did you pick him?Michael Jordan was my favorite player. But as I was growing up as a kid, as Michael Jordan decided to retire from the game, Allen Iverson became the hero of our culture. I think a lot of people know I wear No. 3, but a lot of people don’t know why I wear No. 3. And so I just wanted to take this moment as an opportunity that is supposed to be about me, and I wanted to be able to shine light and give flowers to individuals that allow me and help me get here. My family, of course. My coaches, of course. My teammates, of course.But what about those individuals that gave you the image of what it looks like and how it can be done? And Allen Iverson gave me the image of how it looks like, how it could be done coming from the broken community that I came from. So I want to give him his flowers in front of the world because he deserves it.Wade and Allen Iverson attend the Stance and Dwyane Wade’s Spade Tournament at The One Eighty in Toronto in 2016.George Pimentel/WireImage, via Getty ImagesYou’re being inducted alongside Dirk Nowitzki, with whom you had, let’s call it a tense relationship at points. What’s your relationship with him like now?I respect Dirk as one of the greatest players that ever played this game of basketball. It’s funny to have something with someone and we’ve never guarded each other. We played totally different positions, but as I’ve always said, if I’m going to have any words with anyone, I want them to come in the finals.Dirk and I have played in the finals against each other twice. His team won once. My team won one. So I call it a wash. And I’m thankful to be able to be a part of the class that I’m a part of. And Dirk to me — and there’s no shade on anybody who’s ever played — but I think Dirk will probably be looked at as the greatest international player that we’ve ever seen.You’ve talked at length about your advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, especially with your own child. What was your reaction to the Orlando Magic donating $50,000 to the super PAC affiliated with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida? (DeSantis has supported legislation such as what opponents deemed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a law signed last year that limits what instructors can teach about sexuality and gender in classrooms. The Magic’s donation was dated May 19, just days before DeSantis announced a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.)I have so many things that I’m focused on and there’s so many, so many battles to fight, in a sense. That’s one that I’m not choosing to fight, with so many other things where my voice is needed. People are going to do what people want to do. And there’s nothing that you’re going to be able to do to stop them, per se. And so I’m trying to help where the need is and where I can.There were some reports in the spring that Florida Democrats were recruiting you to run for Senate.[Laughter] I heard that.Have you ever been approached to run for office?Yes.“I’ve been able to be a star,” Wade said. “I’ve been able to be Robin.”Ike Abakah for The New York TimesSo describe to me what that approach was like.I mean, it’s just conversation. “Hey, you would be good for,” “Hey, we can see you in,” “We would love to have you in.”It’s things that I’m passionate about that I will speak out on and speak up for. And so I don’t play the politician games. I don’t know a lot about it.But I also understand that I have a role as an American citizen and as a known person to be able to highlight and speak on things that other people may not be able to because they don’t have the opportunity to do this.So you’re running.[Laughter]Let me see if I can get you to be a little spicy. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the comments Paul Pierce has made comparing the two of you. He’s said a couple of different things. But one of the things he said — I’ll read the quote — “Put Shaq on my team. Put LeBron and Bosh with me. I’m not going to win one? You don’t think me, LeBron and Bosh, we’re not going to win one? We’re not going to win a couple?”What was your reaction to seeing what Paul said about you?I’m living rent-free right now.I got so many things going on in my life. Comparing myself to someone who’s not playing or someone who is playing is definitely not on my to-do list. Listen, Paul Pierce was one of the greatest players that we’ve had in our game. And I think, you know, when you are a great player and you don’t get the attention that you feel like your game deserved, sometimes you’ve got to grab whatever attention where those straws are. And Paul believes he’s a better player than me. He should believe that. That’s why he was great. That’s not my argument, and I didn’t play the game to be better than Paul Pierce. I played the game the way I played it, and I made the sacrifices that I made. Everybody doesn’t want to sacrifice.Wade shot against Paul Pierce in 2012 in Miami.Scott Cunningham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesI’ve been able to be a star. I’ve been able to be Robin. I’ve been able to be part of the Larry, Curly and Moe, like, whatever. I’ve been able to be successful and great in all those areas.It’s easy to say what you would do if you have a certain talent on your team, but you have to play with that talent. And that’s the hardest thing to do — to play with talent in different generations and different styles, which I was able to do.What is it like to watch old highlights of yourself now that you’re 41?I just got done watching a 2005-2006 edit. I think it was 45 minutes. I watched about 15 minutes. I walked away from that edit, and I was just looking at the way I played the game and I hooped.Nowadays, we’ve got the kids. And I love what development is going on, but kids are working on their moves. I just reacted to defenders. My moves came from just reacting, and those are the moves that are being worked on and are being highlighted now. I just played the game of basketball just like I was back in Chicago playing with my uncles and my dad and my family.So I love watching old highlights of myself because, just being honest, I haven’t seen a lot of people with my game and with my style. And so it was unique. And I’m thankful to have one of those games that no one can really understand how good I really was.Ike Abakah for The New York Times More

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    Willis Reed, Hall of Fame Center for Champion Knicks, Dies at 80

    He was beloved by New York fans for his willingness to play hurt, as memorably exemplified in the decisive Game 7 of the 1970 N.B.A. finals at Madison Square Garden.Willis Reed, the brawny and inspirational hub of two Knicks championship teams that captivated New York in the early 1970s with a canny, team-oriented style of play, died on Tuesday. He was 80.His death was confirmed by his former teammate Bill Bradley, the former United States senator. He said Reed had congestive heart issues. It was not clear where Reed died, but he had been under treatment at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Bradley said.Reed was notably absent last month, for health reasons, when the Knicks celebrated their 1972-73 championship team during a 50th-anniversary halftime ceremony at Madison Square Garden attended by many former members of that squad, including Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas. Reed spoke to the crowd in a prerecorded video.In an era when Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain were the more celebrated big men, Reed was a highly skilled 6-foot-9 center with a resolute physicality that was much admired over a 10-year career, though it was marred by injury and ended at 31.It was Reed’s willingness to play hurt that brought him his greatest measure of respect and fame, and his grittiness was never more exemplified and celebrated than on May 8, 1970, in the decisive game of the National Basketball Association finals.Days earlier, he had torn a right tensor muscle, which originates in the hip and extends to the thigh, while driving to the basket on Chamberlain during the first quarter of Game 5 at Madison Square Garden — a game the Knicks rallied to win without him. Saving whatever he had left for a possible Game 7, he sat out Game 6 in Los Angeles, in which Chamberlain scored 45 points.When the Knicks went out to warm up before the start of Game 7, Reed stayed behind in the trainer’s room for treatment. As everyone in the packed Garden anxiously awaited word on whether he would play, he made his way stiff-legged through the players’ tunnel and emerged to a crescendo of cheers to join his teammates, who were already warming up.“You’re five stories above the ground and I swear you could feel the vibrations,” Reed said in 2009. “I thought, this is what an earthquake must feel like.”Limping noticeably, he hit his first two southpaw jump shots for his only points of the game. Frazier carried the Knicks from there, with 36 points and 19 assists, and the Knicks, with a 113-99 victory, clinched the franchise’s first title.In 1990, around the 20th anniversary of Game 7, Reed told The New York Times: “There isn’t a day in my life that people don’t remind me of that game.”Heroism Under DuressHis threshold for tolerating pain — however much dulled that night by pregame injections of carbocaine, a powerful derivative of novocaine — has for decades been invoked as a standard measure, a “Willis Reed moment,” for athletic heroism under physical duress.“It was the best example of inspiration by an individual in a sporting event I’ve ever seen,” Bradley once said.Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.After his playing days, Reed was a coach or executive for the Knicks, the New Jersey Nets and the New Orleans Hornets. He was part of the Nets’ front office when the team lost consecutive N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003. He also coached at Creighton University from 1981 to 1985, and was an assistant coach in the N.B.A. for the Atlanta Hawks and the Sacramento Kings.Reed, a Louisiana native, was an avid outdoorsman. His hobby fit his playing persona as a rugged, proud man whose patience wore thin with those who challenged or crossed him.The Knicks’ starting five after winning a playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks in 1970. From left were Dick Barnett, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Reed. Dan Farrell/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty ImagesOn Oct. 18, 1966, at Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Lakers learned the hard way that Reed was no one to fool with. Beginning his third season with the Knicks, Reed was embroiled in a battle with the Lakers’ Rudy LaRusso, a bruising 6-foot-7 forward. Throughout the game, Reed had been complaining to the officials about LaRusso’s tactics, but when his pleas were ignored he acted on his own.Lined up at the free-throw line late in the third quarter, Reed elbowed LaRusso to the side of the head. On the way up court, LaRusso responded with a chopping punch. Reed, in a sudden fury, shook off Darrall Imhoff’s bear hug from behind and floored the 6-foot-10 Imhoff, cutting him near the eye; he broke the nose of John Block, a 6-foot-9 rookie, who had foolishly stepped into his space; and he finally chased LaRusso into the Lakers’ bench, throwing wild punches and sending several of the players fleeing from Reed’s range.A grainy black-and-white film of the melee surfaced in 2014 in an ESPN documentary on the Knicks teams of the early 1970s. In the film, “When the Garden Was Eden,” Reed sheepishly called it “a good fight.”He also recalled being upset that none of his teammates had joined the fray and noted their reticence in the postgame locker room. Barnett later said that he had remarked, “Man, you were winning.”A Gentle GiantOff the court, Reed was a much gentler giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Within the Knicks organization, he was known to be generous with teammates in an era when financial rewards in professional sports were not as substantial as they are today.“Willis would always take the rookies under his wing,” Frazier, a Hall of Fame guard on those championship teams, was quoted as saying in “Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks,” written by Dennis D’Agostino and published in 2003. “He would loan you his car or money. That was his personality.”He was also recognized as a natural leader. Shortly after the brawl with the Lakers, he was named team captain — a role he had filled for his high school basketball and football teams and during his junior and senior seasons as a star at the historically Black Grambling College (now Grambling State University). He was just 24.Reed after the Knicks beat the Lakers on May 8, 1970. Off the court, he was a gentle giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Associated Press‘We Made the Best of It’Willis Reed Jr. was born on June 25, 1942, in Hico, La., the only child of Willis and Inell Reed. As a young boy, he lived on a 200-acre farm owned by his grandparents, Baptist teetotalers who preached commitment and hard work.When Reed reached school age, his parents moved about 10 miles away to Bernice, a town of three square miles in north central Louisiana that was then a thriving lumber and agricultural community. His father worked in a sawmill factory, and his mother worked as a domestic.Reed grew up with an acute sense of what Jim Crow law meant: separate but not really equal. “Didn’t have the houses the white folks have, didn’t have a car,” he said in 2009. “But the situation was what it was. We made the best of it in Bernice until it changed.”Still, Reed always maintained, he never harbored ill feelings for white people. He believed that attending an all-Black high school, Westside, a few miles from Bernice, provided role models for him he might not have had in an integrated school.Reed attempted to block a shot by Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics in a mid-1960s game at Madison Square Garden.Ken Regan/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMost prominent was the school’s basketball coach, Lendon Stone, who wore a jacket and tie to school every day and demonstrated to Reed that he could avoid the backbreaking work his father did.Reed majored in physical education at Grambling and planned on being a teacher until he became a dominant player, averaging 26.6 points and 21.3 rebounds per game as a senior. The Knicks drafted him with the first pick of the second round in 1964, after 10 other players had been chosen. With their first-round pick, the Knicks selected another big man, Jim Barnes, who had beaten Reed out for a spot on the 1964 United States Olympic team.Reed believed he was better than Barnes and most of the other first-round picks, and he was determined to prove it. When he was offered his first Knicks contract, for $11,000 with a $3,000 signing bonus, he told Eddie Donovan, the team’s general manager, that he wanted a bigger bonus. Told that the team wanted him to earn it on the court, Reed accepted the challenge and vowed to make Donovan pay him after the season.As team captain, Reed took his leadership responsibilities seriously, and Red Holzman, his coach, relied on him to motivate and police teammates as the Knicks improved dramatically from the middle to the late 1960s.They narrowly missed making the N.B.A. finals in 1969, losing a tough six-game series to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. With Russell retired by the next season, the Knicks reeled off 17 early-season victories in a row, equaling a record then held by Boston.Reed battled for the ball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks, then known as Lew Alcindor, in a 1970 Eastern Division playoff game.Associated PressTriumphs and ChallengesThey appeared to be a team of destiny. But along the way to the championship there were significant challenges, one of which was internal and demanded Reed’s exceptional leadership to quell a festering internal conflict.In mid-January of that season, Cazzie Russell, the Knicks’ best offensive substitute, was late to a practice on an off-day in Detroit. Driving out of Ann Arbor, where he was visiting with friends, Russell was pulled over by the police and ordered out of the car at gunpoint. When he produced a driver’s license, the officers apologized and explained that an African American male with a beard had broken out of prison. Russell, who was African American, had a beard.Upon arriving at practice, upset by what he considered to be a case of racial profiling, Russell began throwing elbows at the Knicks’ white players, in particular Bradley, a college rival at Princeton who had joined the Knicks after Russell and who eventually took his starting forward position.Reed halted the scrimmage, approached Russell and asked what he was doing. In “The Open Man,” a diary of the 1969-70 season, the Knicks’ Hall of Fame forward Dave DeBusschere recalled that Russell blurted out, “Be quiet, Uncle Tom.”For Reed, a child of the segregated South, it was deeply offensive to be spoken to in such a way, especially in front of his teammates. Russell quickly realized the risk he had taken. He had made his N.B.A. debut in 1966 on the night Reed brawled with the Lakers.Reed returned to Madison Square Garden in 2010 to join his former teammates in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Knicks’ first championship.Jason Szenes/The New York TimesBut when Reed was at Grambling in the early 1960s, his team occasionally competed against white teams in the national small-college tournament. His coach, Fred Hobdy, admonished his players about allowing the incendiary issue of race to infect their mental preparation and execution.“He used to say, ‘Listen, you guys are athletes, and you don’t need to be out there demonstrating — the best thing you can do is what you do best,’” Reed said in 2009.On the Knicks, which had Black and white players, Reed intuitively recognized the danger of the team splintering or Russell being emasculated if he overreacted to the insult.Reed stepped forward and issued a blunt warning to Russell: Be quiet, play the right way, or “this Uncle Tom will be kicking some ass.” Given a moment to gather himself, Russell apologized.The Knicks kept winning, and Russell helped them hold off the Baltimore Bullets in the decisive game of a first-round playoff series, on a night when Bradley played poorly and the team needed a fourth-quarter lift.Recalling the incident in 2010 when he was back in New York for a 40th-anniversary celebration, Russell called Reed “an amazing man.”Bradley said the incident with Russell captured the essence of Reed, whom he called “a strong and selfless leader, who was the heart of our team.“Even as the league’s M.V.P.,” Bradley continued, “he knew that the individual was never as important as the team, and that points were transitory, championships were forever.”Reed’s greatest triumphs were the two championships in New York, but his most deflating career moment also came at Madison Square Garden. On Nov. 10, 1978, he was summoned there by Sonny Werblin, the Garden’s president, and fired just 14 games into his second season as Knicks coach, despite having made the playoffs in the previous season.Reed did return to the Knicks in a nominal administrative role around the turn of the century. But he accepted an offer to join the New Orleans front office as vice president of basketball operations in June 2003. His widowed mother’s health was failing, and he relished the opportunity to be closer to the home he had built for her in Bernice.The plan went awry when Inell Reed died four months later.Reed’s survivors include his second wife, Gale Kennedy, and a daughter, Veronica, whom he had with his first wife, Geraldine (Oliver) Reed. A son, Karl, also from his first marriage, died in 2017 at 53. In 2005, the New Orleans franchise was temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, approaching his 65th birthday, Reed retired from basketball.On a lush, sprawling property not far from Grambling, with oak trees and man-made streams, Reed built a home far from the bright lights of New York, where he could count on being recognized and extolled by baby boomers on sight.Upon his retirement, Reed told The Times, “Call me in Louisiana and my wife will tell you I’ve gone fishing.” More

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    Australia’s Lauren Jackson Completes Her Remarkable Comeback Story

    Lauren Jackson, a hero of Australian women’s basketball and a three-time W.N.B.A. most valuable player, has rejoined her national team after injuries knocked her out of the sport in 2014.SYDNEY, Australia — It was an inconspicuous return. Just over a year ago, Lauren Jackson, one of the greatest players in women’s basketball history, returned to the suburban courts of Albury, a small regional city in southeastern Australia, to play social basketball. No crowds, no fuss. Just hoops.“I was pretty overweight,” Jackson said. “But I could still get up and down the court. I could still shoot the ball. And I was still very competitive.”Jackson, 41, was a four-time Olympic medalist for the Australian national team (nicknamed the Opals), a two-time W.N.B.A. champion with the Seattle Storm, a three-time W.N.B.A. most valuable player and a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. But she had been out of the game for years, having retired in 2016 after injuries all but ended her career in 2014.She didn’t think of her return to her hometown courts as a comeback, but it turned out to be just that. Jackson, who had an office job with Basketball Australia, last month completed her remarkable return to competition when she was named to the Opals’ squad for in the 2022 FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Sydney. Australia meets Serbia on Sunday and Canada on Monday.As Jackson spoke about her comeback in an interview at her team’s hotel, in Sydney’s Olympic precinct, tears formed in her eyes.“I’m sorry, I get emotional about it,” she said. “The sport has meant so much to me, on and off the court. Even the fact I’m still working in it — I just want to see it thrive. So to have this opportunity, this last shot at being a part of something special — this journey might be the most significant in my entire life.”Jackson played against Lisa Leslie during the gold medal game in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The United States has repeatedly foiled Australia’s attempts to win gold.Vincent Laforet/The New York Times Jackson, the daughter of two national basketball team players, was a teenage sensation in Australia, entering the Australian Institute of Sport at 16 and leading its team to a national championship at 18. The W.N.B.A.’s overall No. 1 draft pick in 2001, she was a seven-time league all-star.“Everyone I talk to has her in the top three” of all time, Kobe Bryant said of Jackson in 2012. “And I mean everyone.”A series of injuries, including chronic troubles with her right knee, sidelined Jackson late in her career. It was her dream to retire after the 2016 Olympics, where she hoped to lead the Opals past their archrivals from the United States. Jackson’s Australian team had lost to the Americans in the Olympic gold medal matches in Sydney in 2000, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008, and in the semifinals in London in 2012.More on the W.N.B.A.Swan Song: Sue Bird, who had said she would retire after this season, shepherded the Seattle Storm to the playoffs. The team’s loss on Sept. 7 marked the end of her incredible career.Greatness Overshadowed: Sylvia Fowles, who has also announced her retirement from basketball, is one of the most successful American athletes ever. Why isn’t she better known?A Critical Eye: As enthusiasm for women’s basketball and the W.N.B.A grows, fans are becoming more demanding of the league and more vocal about their wishes.Making the Style Rules: Players in women’s basketball are styling themselves before the games. Their choices are an expression of their freedom, and can be lucrative too.But she wasn’t able to return.“I tried to suit up a couple of times,” Jackson recalled, “but I was just in so much pain that I couldn’t move.” Missing out was a cruel end to a two-decade basketball career. “It definitely wasn’t on my terms,” she said.Jackson returned to Albury, a city of 50,000, and took a position with Basketball Australia, leading its women’s basketball program. She had two children. She started taking medical marijuana, as part of a clinical trial, to ease her knee pain.In time, she returned to the court, at age 40, at a local facility named in her honor: the Lauren Jackson Sports Center.Jackson high-fived teammates at the World Cup game between Australia and France in Sydney on Thursday.Stephanie Simcox for The New York TimesLocal players were star-struck — and a little intimidated, even unhappy, to be facing down a legend of the game. “There were a lot of complaints,” Jackson said. “I was like: ‘I’m a single mom, I’ve just had two kids and I have a knee replacement — and you’re complaining?’ But it was fun, a lot of fun.”Jackson discovered that the pain relief she got from the cannabis allowed her to return to the gym. “One training session led into another,” she said. Her training partner and best friend since childhood, Sam McDonald, also happened to be the assistant coach of the Albury Wodonga Bandits, a semiprofessional team. He suggested a return and, by April of this year, Jackson was competing again.She scored 21 points in 22 minutes for the Bandits in her first competitive game in nine years. “Is the G.O.A.T. back?” tweeted FIBA, basketball’s global governing body.With Australia scheduled to host the World Cup in September, whispers soon spread of a national team comeback. Jackson initially brushed off the idea, but then was invited to a training camp with the Opals.“I remember when I first went into camp, I said to the girls: ‘I don’t expect that I’m going to go any further than this, but it’s a real honor to be here — to be part of this process, to see the way you train, to help in any way I can.’” That led to an international camp in New York.“I remember thinking, in the back of my head, this is going to be it,” she said. “Because I just didn’t know how my body was going to hold out.”Yet last month, the Opals’ coach, Sandy Brondello, who also coaches the New York Liberty, told Jackson on a video call that she had made the team. In a recording of the call, Jackson looks shocked. “I don’t think there was ever a moment where I was like, ‘I’m going to make the World Cup,’ until I was actually told by Sandy,” she said in an interview.On Thursday in Sydney, Jackson played her first competitive game for Australia in almost a decade. She wore the number 25 on her jersey, marking the quarter-century since she first played for the Opals.Jackson checked in halfway through the first quarter, to a huge roar from the crowd. She missed her first shot, but soon nailed a 3-pointer, causing another eruption in the stands.It was a tight game until the final quarter, when France pulled away to win, 70-57. Jackson played more than 10 minutes, proving important defensively but not adding any further scoring.Jackson wears the number 25 for the Opals to signify the 25 years since she joined Australia’s national basketball program at age 16.Stephanie Simcox for The New York Times“It’s pretty crazy to be here,” she said after the game. Jackson was disappointed by the loss, but added, “I can’t wipe the smile off my face because I’m so honored to be here representing Australia.”Brondello called the game “an amazing comeback for Lauren.” She conceded that Jackson was not likely to dominate as she once did, though she expected her to grow into the tournament. “This doesn’t change her legacy at all,” Brondello said.The Opals’ prospects at the World Cup are uncertain. Their loss to France was not a promising start, but they bounced back on Friday with a 118-58 win over Mali (Jackson contributed eight points). As ever, the United States is likely to stand between the Australians and a gold medal.According to Jackson, this tournament will be her last. She has no plans to play in the 2024 Olympics in Paris (she will be 43; it would be her fifth Games). “No way,” she said. “I say that to you knowing full well where I’ve come from, so anything is possible, but I don’t think that’s happening.”It’s not clear if she will be welcome back at social basketball, either. “I don’t know if they’ll let me,” she laughed.But after her first farewell to basketball ended in agony, Jackson is glad to be bowing out on her own terms. She still endures the knee pain — “I feel it every day,” she said — but thanks to medical cannabis and a therapeutic use exemption (marijuana is on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s prohibited list), Jackson can have one last dance.“I don’t believe in fairy tales,” she said. “I just don’t. But if it ends today, if it ends tomorrow, I don’t care. I’ve had the ride of my life.”Stephanie Simcox for The New York Times More

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    Why Del Harris and Other Hall of Famers Had to Wait

    The basketball, baseball and pro football halls of fame make some deserving candidates wait decades for enshrinement. For the few who are chosen, the wait is hard but worth it.Del Harris tried not to think about enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He told his avid supporters, including the Hall of Famer John Calipari, not to worry about his fate. It did little good.Harris, 85, already had many awards and honors from his coaching career: enshrinement in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame, lifetime achievement awards from Naismith and from the National Basketball Coaches Association, screen time in the original “Space Jam.” But he admits that wasn’t quite enough.“I don’t want to diminish any of the other awards and things, but I think everybody understands if you’re a baseball guy, it’s Cooperstown,” he said. “If you’re a football guy, it’s Canton. And in basketball, it’s the birthplace of the game.”On Saturday, Harris will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., the last of the summer’s salutes to sports heroes past after the Pro Football Hall of Fame held its induction in August and the Baseball Hall of Fame held its in July.Harris’s long wait — he was last a head coach in 1999 — isn’t an outlier. Nearly every year’s inductions in the American sports Halls of Fame feature honorees who have been asked to wait decades to receive their officially sanctioned immortality. A mixture of hope, logic and good old-fashioned denial is required. No matter how many times they hear “better luck next year,” the long-skipped want the honor.Del Harris coached the Los Angeles Lakers to 50 or more wins in three straight seasons, the last two of which came with Shaquille O’Neal.Mike Nelson/AFP, via Getty ImagesHarris was honored for his Hall of Fame induction at a Final Four game in April. He had not been a head coach in the N.B.A. since the 1998-99 season.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesTony Boselli, 50, had not played in the N.F.L. since 2001 and had been a Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist six times before he was inducted this summer. Boselli, who was a superstar left tackle for seven seasons, had talked with his wife, Angi, about the possibility of never getting in. “I’ll be fine; I’ll be OK,” he told her. “I have a great life. I have an amazing family. I’ve been blessed by God to be able to do what I love to do. I have great friends.”It was the best attitude to take, “especially being a finalist that many times and being told that I didn’t make it,” Boselli added.For Drew Pearson, a star receiver for the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970s, the “logjam” of qualified candidates gives the Pro Football Hall of Fame its prestige and meaning. Pearson was finally inducted in 2021 after having retired in 1983. As the Hall of Fame eluded his grasp, Pearson sought clarity. The process for induction, he said, has biases and politics, but it’s the best option available.“There are guys that say, ‘I don’t like the Cowboys so I’m not voting for Drew Pearson’ and that type of thing,” he said, lamenting how there is nothing a former player can do in that situation to help his case. “You can’t go out there and run any more routes. You can’t catch any more balls or Hail Marys. It is what it is, and you hope that it’s good enough.”That doesn’t mean the process doesn’t rankle. Jim Kaat, a star pitcher for the Minnesota Twins who retired in 1983 but was not enshrined in Cooperstown until this summer, knew the writers wouldn’t vote him in. That was for the Seaver-Koufax class of pitchers. And the Hall of Fame’s veterans committees over the years had routinely been populated by people who had never seen him play, he said, which was frustrating.Injuries limited Tony Boselli to seven seasons in the N.F.L., but the left tackle for the Jacksonville Jaguars was a three-time All-Pro and five-time Pro Bowler.Rick Wilson/The Florida Times-Union, via Associated PressTony Boselli, third from left, said he felt an immediate connection to the Pro Hall of Fame’s Class of 2022. Three members of the class did not live to see their induction.Gene J. Puskar/Associated PressThis year, Kaat liked his chances. Voters on the Hall’s Golden Days Era Committee had played against him, played with him or were active when he pitched from 1959 to 1983. They knew he was durable and reliable and that his numbers dipped because he moved to the bullpen. He was named on 12 of the committee’s 16 ballots — exactly the number needed for election.For Kaat, Pearson, Boselli and others, the sense of relief when their sport’s Hall of Fame does come calling can be palpable.After Pearson was passed over one last time in 2020, he broke down. It was filmed by a Dallas news crew, and he said his reaction was not the exception. The rejection is personal. You just never see it.“It showed the committee what it means to us players, so don’t mess around, OK?” he said. “Don’t mess around with us, don’t have the biases, don’t have the politics.”That pain is still the reality of Marques Johnson, a five-time N.B.A. All-Star in the 1970s and 80s, and a star at U.C.L.A. in the late 1970s. He has been a finalist for basketball’s Hall of Fame three times, including 2022. He considered removing his name from consideration until his sons and friends dissuaded him.Induction would put a “cap on a great career, a great life, he said, but “it’s the not the be-all, end-all for me. There are more important things.”Encouragement from Hall of Famers such as Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Bill Walton, he said, reinforced that he had been an elite player. But that praise doesn’t protect a psychic wound.Marques Johnson had his jersey number retired by the Milwaukee Bucks in 2019. He is still hoping to be elected to basketball’s Hall of Fame.Morry Gash/Associated Press“In the recovery process, we try to avoid the deliberate manufacturing of misery,” Johnson, who is 20 years sober, added via text message. “That day, waiting to hear whether I ‘made the cut,’ is one that I can easily do without. It dredges all types of memories, good and bad — my exceptional exploits and my shortcomings as a player and human being, on both counts.”Time, though, can exact a toll. When Johnson’s mother Baasha, whom he referred to as Madea, was hospitalized with a stroke in October, he urged her like “a Baptist preacher” to hang on — Madea had to make that trip to Springfield. She died Jan. 5. Kaat’s wife of 20 years, MaryAnn, died in 2008. His daughter, Jill, died in 2021.Of the seven players elected into Cooperstown this year, only three lived to see their induction.Time, though, can also bestow gifts. Kaat, who has remarried, shared the day with his grandchildren and was inducted with longtime teammate and friend, Tony Oliva. Pearson, 71, has seen an uptick in endorsements and business opportunities. Boselli developed a kinship with his classmates.“You get to know their families — their wives, their kids — who they are as men,” he said. “You go from maybe casually knowing some of these guys — you compete against them, maybe see them around — to really being tied together forever in football history as the Class of 2022.”Bob Dandridge, upper left, was part of fearsome Milwaukee Bucks team that also included, clockwise, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Greg Smith, Oscar Robertson, Coach Larry Costello and Jon McClocklin.Associated PressDandridge, who retired after the 1981-82 season, was presented at his Hall of Fame induction in 2021 by Robertson. Robertson was inducted in 1980.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesFor Bob Dandridge, who was elected into basketball’s Hall of Fame in 2021, the 39-year wait after his N.B.A. career ended resulted in his children being old enough to realize the occasion’s importance. Even his two basketball-obsessed grandsons, Thaddeus, 5, and Zachary, 7, were excited to attend. They recognized the legends of more recent vintage such as Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Family members assembled “without any malice, just love.”“Ten years ago,” Dandridge said, “I wouldn’t have had this type of quality in my life. The wait has been awesome for me.”Weeks before his induction, Harris, recovering from a back operation, could not yet reflect on how the Hall of Fame has changed his life. But he knew the role basketball had played.“I had graduated from college to be a preacher,” Harris said. “My Greek professor called me two weeks before school was supposed to start at seminary. He said, ‘I’ve been thinking about you. I really think you should work a year before you go to graduate school; there are no scholarships for that. If you agree, I already have a job for you.’”Harris coached middle school basketball at King Springs School in Tennessee, a short drive from Milligan College, his alma mater. That was in 1959. Coaching in the N.B.A. finals, writing six books and teaching in clinics worldwide followed. He’s still working in basketball, now as vice president of the G-League’s Texas Legends.It all started with those boys and girls decades ago. “As I saw their lives change,” Harris said, “mine changed.” More

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

    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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    Bob Lanier, a Dominant Center of the 1970s and ’80s, Dies at 73

    Playing for the Detroit Pistons and the Milwaukee Bucks, he held his own against titans of the era like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Willis Reed.Bob Lanier, who as a center for the Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks in the 1970s and ’80s parlayed a deft left-handed hook shot, a soft midrange jumper and robust rebounding skills into a Hall of Fame career, died on Tuesday in Phoenix. He was 73.The N.B.A. said he died after a short illness but provided no other details.Lanier, who stood 6-foot-11 and weighed about 250 pounds, excelled in an era of dominant centers like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Nate Thurmond and Wes Unseld.“Guys didn’t change teams as much, so when you were facing the Bulls or the Bucks or New York, you had all these rivalries,” he told NBA.com in 2018. “Lanier against Jabbar! Jabbar against Willis Reed! And then Chamberlain and Artis Gilmore and Bill Walton! You had all these great big men, and the game was played from inside out.”He added: “It was a rougher game, a much more physical game that we played in the ’70s. You could steer people with elbows. They started cutting down on the number of fights by fining people more. Oh, it was a rough ’n’ tumble game.”As a Pistons rookie in the 1970-71 season, Lanier shared time at center with Otto Moore. In his second season, as a full-time starter, he averaged 25.7 points and 14.2 rebounds a game, putting him in the league’s top 10 in both categories.“He understood the small nuances of the game,” Dave Bing, a Pistons teammate and fellow Hall of Famer, said in a video biography of Lanier shown on Fox Sports Detroit in 2012. “He could shoot the 18-to-20-footer as well as any guard. He had a hook shoot — nobody but Kareem had a hook shot like him. He could do anything he wanted to do.”Lanier wore what were believed to be size 22 sneakers. In 1989, however, a representative of Converse disputed that notion, saying that they were in fact size 18 ½. Whatever their actual size, a pair of Lanier’s sneakers, bronzed, is in the collection of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.During nine full seasons with the Pistons, Lanier played in seven All-Star Games. He was elected most valuable player of the 1974 All-Star Game, in which he led all scorers with 24 points.But the Pistons had only four winning seasons during his time with the team and never advanced very far in the playoffs. The roster was often in flux. Coaches came and went. Lanier dealt with knee injuries and other physical setbacks.“It was like a life unfulfilled,” he told Fox Sports Detroit.In early 1980, with the Pistons’ record at 14-40, the team traded Lanier to the Milwaukee Bucks for a younger center, Kent Benson, and a first-round 1980 draft pick. Frustrated by the Pistons’ lack of success, Lanier had asked to be sent to a playoff contender.“I’m kind of relieved, but I’m kind of sad, too,” he told The Detroit Free Press. “I’ve got a lot of good memories of Detroit.”Lanier averaged 22.7 points and 11.8 rebounds a game with the Pistons.Lanier in his college years at St. Bonaventure, resting during a game against Marquette in 1969. A pair of his exceptionally large sneakers is in the collection of the Basketball Hall of Fame.AP PhotoRobert Jerry Lanier Jr. was born on Sept. 10, 1948, in Buffalo to Robert and Nannie Lanier. Young Bob was 6-foot-5 by the time he was a sophomore in high school, and he played well enough there to be wooed by dozens of colleges. He chose St. Bonaventure University in upstate Allegany, N.Y.He was a sensation there, averaging 27.6 points and 15.7 rebounds over three seasons.In 1970, the Bonnies defeated Villanova to win the East Regional finals of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, sending them to the Final Four. But Lanier injured his knee during the game, forcing the Bonnies to face Jacksonville in the national semifinal game without him. St. Bonaventure lost, 91-83.“I didn’t even know at the time I tore my knee up,” Lanier told The Buffalo News in 2007. “But when I ran back down the court and tried to pivot, my leg collapsed. I didn’t know at the time I had torn my M.C.L.”Lanier was still recuperating from knee surgery when the Pistons chose him No. 1 overall in the N.B.A. draft; he was also chosen No. 1 by the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets of the American Basketball Association. He quickly signed with Detroit.Although he had statistically better years with the Pistons, Lanier enjoyed more team success with the Bucks (and also played in one more All-Star Game). Under Coach Don Nelson, the Bucks won 60 games during the 1980-81 season, and they advanced to the Eastern Conference finals in 1982-83 and 1983-84.Lanier was also president of the players’ union, the National Basketball Players Association, and helped negotiate a collective bargaining agreement in 1983 that avoided a strike.Lanier at an N.B.A. roundtable discussion before Game 5 of the 2005 finals between the Pistons and the San Antonio Spurs. In retirement, he worked with the N.B.A. as a global ambassador and special assistant to the commissioner.Melissa Majchrzak/NBAE via Getty ImagesEarly in the 1983-84 season, his last as a player, Lanier became angry with Bill Laimbeer, the Pistons’ center, for riling him under the boards at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich. Lanier retaliated with a left hook that leveled Laimbeer and broke his nose.The act not only earned Lanier a $5,000 fine; it also delayed the retirement of his No. 16 jersey by the Pistons until 1993. The Bucks retired his number in late 1984.He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.In retirement, he owned a marketing firm and worked extensively with the N.B.A. as a global ambassador and special assistant to David Stern, the league’s longtime commissioner, and Adam Silver, his successor. Lanier was also an assistant coach under Nelson with the Golden State Warriors during the 1994-95 season and replaced him as interim coach for the final 37 games of the season after Nelson’s resignation.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Lanier said that after he retired, he was less likely to be recognized by the public than when he was a player. After Shaquille O’Neal, one of the league’s most dominating centers, came along in the early 1990s, people figured he must have been O’Neal’s father, he told NBA.com in 2018.“‘You’re wearing them big shoes,’” he said people would tell him. “I just go along with it. ‘Yeah, I’m Shaq’s dad.’” More

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    Lusia Harris, ‘Queen of Basketball,’ Dies at 66

    She was the only woman officially drafted by the N.B.A. and the first Black woman inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.Lusia Harris, a powerful center who led the Delta State University’s women’s basketball team to three consecutive national championships in the mid-1970s, died on Tuesday in Mound Bayou, Miss. She was 66.Her daughter Crystal Stewart Washington confirmed the death at a therapy facility, but did not know the cause. She lived in Greenwood, Miss.Ms. Harris was one of women’s basketball’s most accomplished players. She averaged 25.9 points and 14.4 rebounds a game at Delta State in Cleveland, Miss.; scored the opening points when women’s basketball was first played at the Olympics, in Montreal in 1976; was the only woman officially drafted by an N.B.A. team; and was the first Black woman inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.Pat Summitt, her Olympic teammate who went on to a Hall of Fame career as the women’s basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, described Ms. Harris as “the first truly dominant player of modern women’s basketball, 6-foot-3 and 185 hard-muscled pounds of pivoting, to-the-rim force,” in her book, “Sum It Up” (2013, with Sally Jenkins).Ms. Harris, known as Lucy, played at Delta State before the N.C.A.A. held a women’s basketball tournament (its first one was in 1982) and before major universities began to dominate the sport.But there was a title for the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, and the Delta State Lady Statesmen won their first in 1975, defeating Immaculata University. During the next season, Ms. Harris scored 46 points against Queens College before 10,032 fans at Madison Square Garden.“She was just a giant,” said Donna Orender, who played for Queens College and later became president of the W.N.B.A. “There just weren’t that many women of that size and skill then. Down low, she was effective and efficient.”Ms. Harris scored the opening points when Olympic women’s basketball was first played, at the Montreal Summer Olympics, in 1976.ABC Photo Archives/Disney, via Getty ImagesDelta State soon after defeated Immaculata again to win the A.I.A.W. championship. Then, in 1977, the Lady Statesmen won the title over Louisiana State University.“The men’s team didn’t sell out as well as the women’s team,” Ms. Harris said in “The Queen of Basketball” (2021), a short documentary about her directed by Ben Proudfoot that premiered at the Tribeca Festival. “We began to travel on airplanes. As a matter of fact, the men didn’t fly. I guess the women were bringing in the money.”A few months after her final game at Delta State, Ms. Harris was chosen in the seventh round of the N.B.A. draft by the New Orleans (now Utah) Jazz. Only one woman before her, Denise Long, then a high school senior, had been drafted — by the San Francisco (now Golden State) Warriors, in 1969 — but Walter Kennedy, the N.B.A. commissioner, disallowed the pick.Ms. Harris declined to join a Jazz rookie camp; she was already married to her high school sweetheart, George Stewart, and pregnant. She also doubted that she could play successfully on a men’s team.“I knew that I couldn’t compete on that level,” she told The Undefeated last year.Born on Feb. 10, 1955, Lusia Mae Harris grew up in Minter City, Miss. Her parents, Willie and Ethel (Gilmore) Harris, were sharecroppers. Lusia picked cotton but also played basketball with her brothers in their backyard. She molded her game, especially her defensive skills, at Amanda Elzy High School, in Greenwood, before attending Delta State.By the time she was chosen for the 1976 United States Olympic team, Ms. Harris was a star. In addition to Ms. Summitt, the squad included Nancy Lieberman and Ann Meyers, two future Basketball Hall of Famers, and Gail Marquis. Ms. Harris scored the first points in women’s Olympic history in the opening game against Japan, which the United States lost.One of her biggest challenges was playing against Juliana Semenova, the Soviet’s 7-foot center.“She is so much taller, so much bigger and she didn’t jump,” Ms. Harris told the Kentucky Women’s Basketball Oral History last year. “All she had to do was extend her arms. And I mean, I’m only 6-3. The thing I figured out is that I would beat her down the court because she wasn’t that fast.”The Soviets routed the Americans, 112-77, with Ms. Semenova scoring 32 to Ms. Harris’s 18. The United States team nonetheless departed Montreal with a silver medal after defeating Czechoslovakia.In five games, Ms. Harris averaged 15.2 points and 7 rebounds.Ms. Harris graduated with a bachelor’s degree in health, physical education and recreation. But she had few opportunities to play professional basketball. The W.N.B.A. was two decades away. The men got the opportunities she craved. “Yeah, they’re millionaires, famous,” she said in “The Queen of Basketball.” “But I wanted to grow up and shoot that ball just like they would shoot it, and I did.”She worked as an admissions counselor and assistant women’s basketball coach at Delta State; played briefly for the Houston Angels of the short-lived Women’s Professional Basketball League during the 1979-80 season; and coached the Texas Southern University women’s basketball team from 1984 to 1986.Ms. Harris, pictured at the 2021 Tribeca Festival Premiere Shorts, made history when she was enshrined at the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992.Cindy Ord/Getty ImagesShe earned a master’s in special education from Delta State in 1984, taught special education and coached high school basketball in Mississippi. She retired nearly 20 years ago.In addition to Ms. Stewart Washington, she is survived by another daughter, Christina Jordan; two sons, George Jr. and Christopher; her brothers Clarence Harris, Kendrick Blossom and Ronnie Blossom; her sisters Ethel James, Ella Harris, Darlene Lindsey and Linda Washington; and 10 grandchildren. Her marriage ended in divorce.Ms. Harris’s enshrinement at the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992 — where her presenter was Oscar Robertson, whom she idolized — was a reminder of how much impact she had as a player.“Lucy was mean underneath the boards,” Margaret Wade, her coach at Delta State, told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss. “When she wanted to score, she could score. But the thing I liked about Lucy was, she was a team player. She did what the team needed and that’s why we were successful.” More