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    New York Liberty Fans Get Creative With Jerseys, Art and Cross Stitches

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    As their favorite team in the W.N.B.A. experiences a surge in popularity, fans are expressing their love creatively.Eric Trude walked into Barclays Center on Sunday afternoon wearing one of the custom jerseys that he had designed to honor two of his great loves — hockey and the New York Liberty. Nobody was as surprised as he was.Trude, originally from Northern Virginia, grew up hating New York sports teams. Basketball was never his thing.Now, he’s collecting signatures from his favorite Liberty players on the back of his seafoam-green jersey that bears the name of one of the team’s star players, Sabrina Ionescu, on the nameplate. Call him a convert.As new fans of the W.N.BA. find their way to the game, they are expressing love for their favorite teams creatively — with homemade apparel, crochet, embroidery, painting and even crop art (or creating art out of seeds). No group is as thrilled as Liberty fans, who are hoping the team will win its first championship in the franchise’s nearly 30-year history against the Minnesota Lynx this week.The boom in creative pursuits and art based on the players is dovetailing with the W.N.B.A.’s surge in popularity.The hype wall in Eric Trude’s home.Eric Trude

    @samwojart Game Day 🏀 Let’s go @nyliberty 👏 . . . . #wnba @WNBA #newyorkliberty #ellie #newyork #art #basketball ♬ Welcome To New York – Taylor Swift We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      While N.B.A. Plays in Abu Dhabi, Critics Cry Foul

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      The league has held preseason games in the United Arab Emirates for three years. It says its impact has been positive, but others say it’s helping a repressive regime.Jaylen Brown, the Boston Celtics star, grabbed the microphone, ready to delight the crowd 6,600 miles from home.“As-salaam alaikum, Abu Dhabi!” he said energetically, offering a common greeting in the region.The crowd cheered. Brown, who grew up in Georgia, introduced himself and thanked the crowd in Arabic to more cheers.“I’ve been working on my Arabic,” he said later.It was a festive beginning on Friday to the N.B.A.’s third annual trip to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for preseason games. This time the league sent its past two champions, the Celtics and the Denver Nuggets, along with the championship trophy and several former N.B.A. players, including the Celtics great Kevin Garnett.Abu Dhabi has become the N.B.A.’s hub in the Middle East. The players visited cultural sites, league and team personnel met with business partners, and the league showcased the work it has done with children, especially girls, in the region. Abu Dhabi in turn presented its modernization, luxury resorts, low crime rates and commitment to religious tolerance — a message prominently displayed at its cultural sites.Jaden Springer with the ball in the second game, played at Etihad Arena on Sunday. Watching from the second row was Jamad Fiin, a Somali American basketball player. She also joined a panel discussion that was a part of the N.B.A.’s visit. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rebecca Lobo Helped Build the WNBA. Now She’s Seeing It Flourish.

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      Lobo, one of the W.N.B.A.’s first stars, will now be broadcasting perhaps the most anticipated postseason in league history.Rebecca Lobo’s shoelace was untied.If it were anyone else dressed in morning sweats, standing in line for mediocre coffee in a hotel lobby this month, the stray lace might have gone unnoticed. But in New York City, hours before her former team, the New York Liberty, was set to play just a few subway stops away at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, her fans couldn’t let it go.As Lobo waited for her caffeine fix, two different people cautiously reached up to tap the 6-foot-4 Lobo on the shoulder and let her know about the shoelace. Each time, she was grateful and gracious.“I’m like my own children — ignoring the good advice I’m getting,” she said with a smile.Lobo’s approachability belies the fact that, in the history of women’s basketball, she is royalty. At the University of Connecticut, she was the star of the 1995 team that won the first of the program’s 11 national championships. She was part of the United States’ gold-medal-winning team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. And Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes were the first three players to sign with the Women’s National Basketball Association when it was founded in 1997.Now, more than 20 years since her playing days ended, Lobo, 50, again finds herself in the middle of a pivotal moment in the sport’s history. As the top analyst for ESPN’s W.N.B.A. coverage, she will be calling perhaps the most anticipated postseason the league has ever seen.“We’re on the ascent,” Lobo said of the sport in an interview.The W.N.B.A., whose playoffs began over the weekend, has been one of the hottest topics in sports for months. A star-studded rookie class, led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has generated unprecedented interest, shattering television ratings and game attendance records. That has also invited a wide range of commentary, from the informed to those approaching the game as though it had come out of nowhere.What sets Lobo apart from the hot takes of social media is her depth of knowledge. It’s difficult to get more institutionally aware than someone who has been with the W.N.B.A. since its founding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Woj’ Leaves ESPN, and a Changed Sports Media, to Join St. Bonaventure

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      At ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski leveraged social media to get the news out quicker. That skill made him rich and famous. He will manage the basketball team at St. Bonaventure University.For years, the sportswriter Adrian Wojnarowski used his sources and his hustle to repeatedly beat the competition on basketball stories big and small. But his drive and deft use of social media also helped change the entire sports journalism landscape.Wojnarowski, who announced Wednesday that he was retiring from ESPN to become general manager of the basketball team at St. Bonaventure University, his alma mater, developed a well-earned reputation for getting professional basketball news first, and then rapidly getting it out to the public, often via a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.When he was first, which was often, and the news was big, it was dubbed a “Woj Bomb.” Other reporters scrambled to confirm the news, then sent out tweets of their own, but crucially only after Wojnarowski’s. Even if he was only 30 seconds faster than the competition, Wojnarowski had his scoop. And because the social media algorithms often prioritize being first, the speed could gain him tens of thousands of extra clicks.The medium was a big part of the message for Wojnarowski. Rather than following the old media model — interacting with an editor, polishing the prose and waiting for publication — Wojnarowski went straight to social media, even if it was just with a sentence reporting that a trade had occurred or that a free agent had signed a contract, to own a story.It made him a star and it made him rich. ESPN paid him millions of dollars.“Scoops are not a new thing,” said Laith Zuraikat, an assistant professor of radio, TV and film at Hofstra University. “But what he did so effectively was take a lot of that traditional journalistic insider work and transition and use Twitter. I’m sure others thought of it, but nobody did it as well as he did. He was the guy.”Far from being an anomaly, Wojnarowski, first at Yahoo and then at ESPN, became a model for many other reporters who embraced his style. ESPN emphasized other accomplished journalists, like Jeff Passan on baseball, Adam Schefter on the N.F.L. and Pete Thamel on college sports, who focused on breaking news that would then drive hours or even days of coverage on the company’s various shows. Other media companies tried to match that lineup with scoop-breakers of their own who could race to share their knowledge on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Co-Hosts of N.B.A. Player Podcasts Have ‘Best Job on the Planet’

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      For the friends of some famous athletes, hosting a show can mean a little money, some fame and a whole lot of work.Josh Hart grabbed a microphone, settled into his chair at the center of the stage and tugged the brim of his baseball cap. He looked to his left and saw the former N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady and the rapper Lil Wayne on a black leather love seat. He looked to his right and saw his New York Knicks teammate and close friend Jalen Brunson in a matching easy chair.Then he looked beyond Brunson, to the only person onstage who needed an introduction at all.“That’s the man, the myth, the legend: Matt Hillman,” Hart said. “If you guys know the pod, you know Matty Ice.”“I’m the only one onstage you guys don’t know,” Hillman replied.“Y’all will know who he is by the end,” Hart told the crowd.It was a Friday in mid-August, and Hart, Hillman and Brunson were recording the first-ever live episode of their podcast, “The Roommates Show,” at Fanatics Fest NYC. The show, which started in February, has attracted a growing audience in part because of the popularity and personal connections of a young, surging Knicks team: Hart and Brunson are among four Knicks players who were teammates at Villanova. (They were also, as the title suggests, roommates.)“I’m the only one onstage you guys don’t know,” Hillman said to the crowd.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe show exists in a relatively crowded niche. There’s no official list, but some online tallies put the number of podcasts hosted by current or former N.B.A. players at nearly 60. Last season, active players hosted at least two dozen podcasts, meaning that one out of roughly every 20 players had a show. Beyond their ubiquity, another interesting feature has emerged in this small corner of sports media: More than half the podcasts have relatively anonymous co-hosts, like Hillman.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Al Attles, a Golden State Warrior in Name and in Spirit, Dies at 87

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      He was known as the Destroyer for his gritty intensity as a player. He later coached Golden State to an N.B.A. championship and served as its general manager.Al Attles, the Basketball Hall of Fame guard who was among the most prominent figures in the history of the Golden State Warriors and their forerunner franchise in Philadelphia, died on Tuesday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 87.His death was announced by the Warriors, the team Attles served as a tough, defensive-minded guard, an N.B.A. championship-winning coach, a general manager and, until his death, a community relations representative. His career spanned the Warriors’ Philadelphia years and their decades in the Bay Area.When Attles was selected by the Philadelphia Warriors in the fifth round of the 1960 N.B.A. draft, he was a newly hired junior high school gym teacher in his native Newark.As a little-known player out of a historically Black college, he knew that his chances of making the Warriors’ lineup seemed slim.But he decided to give it a shot at training camp, and for six decades he remained an enduring face of the Warriors’ franchise.The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., presented Attles with its John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and inducted him in 2019. Although he was never an All-Star in his 11 seasons in the backcourt, he was among six players whose numbers have been retired by the Warriors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Micky Lawler, a Longtime Tennis Executive, Turns to Basketball

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      She was a force at the WTA and is now the commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league.Micky Lawler knows a thing or two about starting over.As a child, Lawler, whose father was an executive with a Dutch electronics company, lived in seven countries: the Netherlands, where she was born, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, France and Belgium.But the move that impacted Lawler the most came when she was 24 and returning to the Netherlands after finishing graduate school in Delaware.“As the plane pushed back, I could see my friends, who had come to the airport to say goodbye, standing by the gate, and I realized that I would miss them much more than they would miss me,” Lawler, now 63, wrote in an email last month. “For me, this departure entailed closing a very important chapter and leaving behind everyone I held so dear.”Lawler felt the same chapter-closing emotions when her position as president of the Women’s Tennis Association was eliminated last December, months after the WTA announced its partnership with the venture capital firm CVC Capital Partners. That ended a 38-year career in tennis, during which Lawler was instrumental in overseeing the growth of tournaments, sponsorship, marketing and broadcast deals for the largest women’s sports entity.But Lawler has already moved on. In June, she was named commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league to debut next January.Unrivaled is designed to be a complement, not a competitor, to the W.N.B.A. It was founded by, among others, Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty forward, and her United States Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier, a forward with the Minnesota Lynx. The league features three-on-three play on a court that is about 70-feet long, two-thirds the size of a traditional basketball court. Each hourlong game consists of four seven-minute quarters designed to attract the devotion of younger, goldfish-attention-span fans. Media rights deals are still being worked out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Every 4 Years, Timmy McCarthy Gives Ireland a Reason to Watch Basketball

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      While the Irish have no team in the Olympic tournament, Timmy McCarthy’s eccentric, enthusiastic commentary has earned him his own fervent fan base.Every four years, the Summer Olympics brings forth a collective fever dream of strange, communal treasures. We discuss synchronized diving instead of the weather. Flava Flav is temporarily rebranded as a champion of women’s water polo. The phrase “pommel horse” re-enters our shared lexicon. Snoop Dogg feeds carrots to dressage horses.And, for those who know where to look, the lyrical lilt of Timmy McCarthy returns to the Irish airwaves to commentate — at loud, joyous volume — on basketball. He growls. He sputters. He shrieks so loudly the microphone crackles.SHAKE AND BAKE!COAST TO COAST!Taking a shot from….DOOWWNNTOWWNN!In a crowded field of feel-good Olympic quirks, Mr. McCarthy, who turns 64 on Friday, may be one of the longest-running — a hidden gem that is both uniquely Olympian and uniquely Irish, broadcast only to those with access to Ireland’s state broadcast channel.First tapped by Raidió Teilifís Éireann in 2004 to anchor basketball for the Athens games, Mr. McCarthy’s commentary has since spawned memes, a Soundboard, Facebook fan pages, YouTube remixes and a modest but mighty fandom for whom his appearances are an Olympic touchstone — and the only Irish connection to the Games’ popular basketball series, in which Ireland has failed to qualify.“Timmy is a national treasure that gets dusted off every four years,” said Brendan Boyle, an Irish writer and basketball fan who lives in Spain and has followed Mr. McCarthy’s broadcasts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LeBron James Faces the Basketball World He Helped to Create

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      James is the sport’s global ambassador, and at the Olympics, he is playing in front of — and against — people who grew up dreaming of seeing him in person.LeBron James lowered himself into a cold tub the size of a large Jacuzzi at a practice facility at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas last month.He had just finished a session with the U.S. men’s basketball team ahead of his first Olympics in 12 years. As the icy water got to work on his 39-year-old muscles, he thought about the first time he ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean.“I was, like, super intimidated and super scared to just be out of the country,” James said.He was 15 and had joined a group of basketball players from Ohio for a trip to Italy. They stayed with local families and did some sightseeing. He smiled at the memories, fuzzy as they were.He had been hesitant to go, but his high school coach, Dru Joyce II, recalled in an interview telling James he needed to “see how big the world was.”In the decades since, the world has changed, and so has James.At the Paris Games, he is playing in front of — and against — people from around the globe who grew up dreaming of one day seeing him in person. During James’s two decades in the National Basketball Association, the sport’s popularity has exploded internationally. A fascination that began with greats like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant has been supercharged during the James era. Because of advances in technology and lucrative media rights deals, teenagers in countries like the Philippines, Uganda and Brazil can easily watch his games. His was the best-selling N.B.A. jersey in the world last year.Now, far removed from the teenager who was frightened to leave the country, James is basketball’s global ambassador, his presence marketing the game better than anything else. On an Olympic roster replete with All-Stars, James is the unquestioned star as the team prepares for its quarterfinal matchup against Brazil on Tuesday. His otherworldly talent, unique personal story and career longevity have meant that fans around the world have spent 22 years voraciously consuming content about him. Some of them love the game because of him. Some don’t love the game, they just love James.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More