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      ‘Grief Comes Out of the Clear Blue’: The Death of Kobe, the Father

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro Basketball‘Grief Comes Out of the Clear Blue’: The Death of Kobe, the FatherDiana Munson, the widow of the Yankees’ Thurman Munson, talks about raising children after the death of their celebrity father and her advice, as a mother, to Vanessa Bryant.Kobe Bryant with his wife, Vanessa Bryant, and their three older daughters, Gianna Maria Onore Bryant, Natalia Diamante Bryant and Bianka Bella Bryant, at his jersey retirement ceremony in 2017. The youngest, Capri Kobe Bryant, was born in 2019.Credit…Allen Berezovsky/Getty ImagesJan. 26, 2021Updated 6:07 p.m. ETMarc Stein is away this week.When the news broke on that terrible Sunday afternoon, the tears came, once again, in a flood from a reservoir that never runs dry.“I’m an Italian girl who gets emotional, maybe more than I should,” said the former Diana Dominick, who in marriage became Diana Munson.The moment when she heard Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash was destined to embed itself deep in the heart of Thurman Munson’s widow. Another tragedy from the air. Another famous sports star — along with eight others, including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna — instantly lost in the flames.Most of all, more young ones deprived of their father. And this time — even worse than it had been for her own children — Bryant’s children lost a sister, as well.Though it now feels so very long ago, it has been one year since the plume of smoke rose over Calabasas, Calif., about 30 miles west of Los Angeles. When the tragedy was still being absorbed, Diana Munson predicted she would always be able to pinpoint the time and place: at home with the television on. Just as so many other people — particularly Yankees fans of a certain age — could tell you, and as some have told her, exactly where they were on Aug. 2, 1979.That was the day her Thurman died at 32 while landing his small plane at the Akron-Canton Airport in his native Ohio. She never took offense when people brought her back to that moment. “They just really wanted to talk about the impact he’d had on their life,” she said.For a young sports journalist at the New York Post, Munson’s death meant back-page pandemonium, a departmentwide call to action. For the Yankees fan I had been growing up, it was the painful loss of the indispensable catcher and captain of two beloved World Series champions. Within the American sports culture of the late 1970s, Munson of the New York Yankees was every bit the name — if not the brand — that Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was.More than 40 years later, the Bryant shocker was delivered to me as it was for so many millions — from a smartphone, while I was in line at a Macy’s checkout counter after a carefree roaming of the department store aisles. Remember those? That, too, seems like part of another life, considering all the Covid-19 casualties still being counted into the new year.Several days later, I met up with Diana Munson in a Manhattan hotel lounge before the 40th annual Thurman Munson Awards Dinner, an event that has raised more than $17 million for the benefit of people with disabilities. (The 41st dinner is scheduled, virtually, for Feb. 2 and will honor, among others Gio Urshela and Luke Voit of the Yankees.)I have come to know her as someone able to articulate complicated emotions. While I was visiting her home for a story on the 10th anniversary of Thurman’s death, Diana led me into his office, its contents untouched from the day he died, right down to the miniature model of a Cessna Citation on his desk. That was the plane that two men — a friend and a flight instructor — had escaped after being unable to free a paralyzed Munson from a smoking cockpit.So while Diana made sure to say that one “should never compare tragedies,” and that she couldn’t imagine the pain that Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s widow, was having to endure in losing a child, she couldn’t help but dwell on an obvious parallel. “Thurman learned to fly because he wanted to spend more time with his family during the season,” she said. “I read where Kobe used helicopters to get home so he could do things like pick up his kids from school.”A plaque dedicated to the memory of Yankees catcher Thurman Munson was viewed by his widow, Diana, and outfielder Bobby Murcer, during a ceremony at Yankee Stadium in 1980.Credit…Associated PressSo if she could offer any advice to Vanessa Bryant, it would have to be as a mother, one who knows that children cannot be shielded from the world, no matter how hard one tries.Tracy was 9, Kelly 7 and Michael 4 when their father died. Other children would, presumably without intent, “say hurtful things, upsetting things,” Diana said. She recalled the day one of her children came home in tears after being told that another child’s father had found a small piece of wreckage from Thurman’s plane in the woods around the airport and saved it as a souvenir.“My kids would be devastated by things like that, but they didn’t want to show emotion so they internalized it,” she said. “They had a time growing up where they had to figure it out for themselves.”She believed it was all made easier by being in Canton where Thurman had moved the family in 1978 from the New York suburbs, and where he was more townie than icon. In Los Angeles, Bryant will always be cast as an all-conquering superhero for his five N.B.A. titles, his explosive scoring and his 60-point finale in 2016, albeit on the often-overlooked sum of 50 shots.Abetted by the news media, the public invariably mythologizes its sports heroes, but in doing what we do, we typically overdo. In death, Bryant was hailed as an emergent champion of women’s basketball, as if there weren’t elements of self-interest — Gianna’s apparent love of the game and especially Bryant’s post-playing-career brand rehabilitation from a 2003 sexual assault allegation in Colorado — probably driving his passion. (His besieged accuser became unwilling to testify, and the charges were dropped.)What Diana Munson realized early on was that her children needed to know their father the way she did: as a complex man who survived his abusive father, and who was self-protectively gruff to the world at large but tender at home to the point of being the preferred parent to brush his daughters’ hair.She could predict that Bryant’s three surviving children, especially the two who were younger than 5 when he died, would have questions as they grew up and would deserve and demand more than a highlight reel. The young Michael Munson, having repeatedly studied video of Thurman’s mammoth home run that won Game 3 of the 1978 American League Championship Series against Kansas City, was moved to ask: “If my daddy was so strong, how come the other two men got out of the plane and he didn’t?”“Grief comes out of the clear blue,” is what Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, graciously advised Diana in a phone call decades ago. She was reminded of that days before my 1989 visit. She and Michael, then 14, went to see “Field of Dreams,” knowing only that it was a baseball flick, not a father-son story that would leave them sobbing in each other’s arms when the father’s ghost — in full catcher’s gear — materialized at the end to toss a few balls with his son.She knew then that they couldn’t live in the past if they expected to have a future. Vanessa Bryant touched on the same theme — generously for the hundreds of thousands in mourning over the past months — when she posted on Instagram recently: “One day you’re in the moment laughing and the next day you don’t feel like being alive. I want to say this for people struggling with grief and heartbreaking loss. Find your reason to live.”Diana Munson never remarried but her family grew, adding seven grandchildren. Tracy and Michael remain near her in the Canton area, while Kelly relocated, coincidently to Tampa, Fla., the Yankees’ winter home, which Diana visited shortly before the 2020 dinner. Out with the family one night in a restaurant, she ran into Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ owner. There were introductions all around and suddenly, thankfully, there was another moment to remember. But surely not to mourn.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThough Marc is away this week, you can still send in your questions via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.)Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      He Bonded With Kobe as a Competitor, Then as Another #GirlDad

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerZach and Mackenly Randolph in the backyard of their home nearly a year after Kobe and Gigi Bryant have passed away.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexHe Bonded With Kobe as a Competitor, Then as Another #GirlDadA year after Kobe Bryant’s fatal crash, the former N.B.A. All-Star Zach Randolph and his daughter MacKenly, who played for Bryant’s girls’ basketball team, are still learning how to grieve.Zach and Mackenly Randolph in the backyard of their home nearly a year after Kobe and Gigi Bryant have passed away.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 24, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETZach Randolph and Kobe Bryant were contemporaries in the N.B.A.’s Western Conference for more than a decade. They were teammates in two All-Star Games. They even shared a workplace during Randolph’s brief stint with the Los Angeles Clippers, who played in the considerable Staples Center shadow of Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers.They crossed paths often enough to develop what Randolph described as “a mutual respect.” Yet there were no hints back then that the relationship was destined to take on a coach-parent dynamic — that Randolph, in his first year of retirement, would ask Bryant to make room for his eldest daughter, MacKenly, on Bryant’s Team Mamba.“Who could imagine it?” Randolph said.Until the summer of 2019, when Randolph relocated from Memphis to Southern California, all his go-to Kobe stories centered upon Bryant’s maniacally competitive nature and what it was like to experience it firsthand. Those showdowns go back to the start of Randolph’s career in the early 2000s during his turbulent start with the Portland Trail Blazers, long before his run as one of the most successful and popular players in Memphis Grizzlies history.The recollections that flow now from Randolph tend to focus heavily on Bryant’s coaching ways as opposed to their N.B.A. encounters, memories cherished from the few months MacKenly was able to work with Bryant before tragedy intervened. On his way to a Team Mamba game on Jan. 26, 2020, Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, Calif.The crash, nearly one year ago on a foggy Sunday morning, killed all nine people aboard — including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, her Team Mamba teammates Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester and the assistant coach Christina Mauser. The catastrophe has left Randolph fixated on the image of Bryant as the girls’ ultra-organized, practice-obsessed and, in stark contrast to his playing persona, reserved-during-games coach.“He’s one of the best to ever do it,” Randolph said, referring to Bryant’s coaching rather than to his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in N.B.A. history.Randolph marveled at the N.B.A.-inspired lengths to which Bryant, alongside Mauser, went to train and teach his team of seventh- and eighth-graders. Bryant scheduled his players for yoga sessions, beach workouts, sprints and laps at the track, and frequent film study to supplement specialized on-court work to master footwork concepts and defensive principles. Conditioning and strength training were prioritized. Practice and travel schedules were comprehensive. Bryant also made a point of asking his players to name the colleges they dreamed of attending and playing for to establish that as a formal goal.“He put his all into it,” Randolph said. “He ran it like a real organization.”MacKenly Randolph had become aware of Team Mamba and the basketball-crazed Gianna Bryant through Instagram. At MacKenly’s urging, Kobe Bryant was one of Zach’s first calls after the family left Memphis and took residence in Encino, Calif. Zach asked Kobe if he was open to coaching MacKenly.“We’ll see,” Bryant told Randolph. “Let’s get her here and see how she mixes with the other girls.”Zach Randolph said he’s still learning how to help his daughter MacKenly deal with grief from the deaths of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, and other friends and family in recent years.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMacKenly might have been the 6-foot-tall daughter of a former 6-foot-9 N.B.A. star, but Bryant promised nothing. She was not granted a starting spot right away — not even with Team Mamba in need of a center. Practices were often held Monday through Friday in Orange County, where most of the team’s players lived, meaning that MacKenly was expected to make the long commute from the San Fernando Valley. After practices, she had to run extra to “catch up to the other girls,” as Zach recalled Bryant saying.None of that, though, stopped Randolph from calling it “a perfect fit.”“Like a puzzle, man,” Randolph said. “My daughter was just so ecstatic. It’s all she talked about.”He said MacKenly was “mesmerized”; MacKenly said he was exaggerating. Though she said she was “super nervous” at first about being coached by Bryant, “After like a week it was, ‘Oh, he’s just a regular person.’ ” While some of the girls on the team called him “Coach Bryant,” MacKenly said she “really just called him Kobe.”Where father and daughter readily concur: Bryant helped MacKenly improve immediately.“I work with her a lot, but you could tell the difference with Kobe,” Zach said. “When Kobe was speaking, he didn’t have to say, ‘Pay attention.’ ”“He basically taught me how to play defense and how to rotate,” MacKenly said.Asked to describe Bryant’s coaching demeanor, MacKenly added: “You would know when he’s mad, or he’s not playing around, but he would never, like, yell at you.”The pandemic has delayed the start of MacKenly’s freshman season at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, Calif., but her game continues to develop. Even though MacKenly shoots right-handed and Zach is a lefty, comparisons to her father’s combination of strength, guile and a deft scoring touch inside are frequent. Such is MacKenly’s potential that she has received verbal scholarship offers from Louisville and Arizona before playing a single high school game.“She’s extremely talented,” said Alicia Komaki, Sierra Canyon’s coach. “She’s very mobile and agile and she’s really worked on developing her guard skills, because I think she’s been locked into the post as a youth and she really wants to expand on that part of her game.”MacKenly has been helped along by games of one-on-one against her father in which Zach permits her only three dribbles before shooting. She also trains occasionally with the former N.B.A. All-Star Gilbert Arenas, whose daughter Izela is another highly rated freshman at Sierra Canyon. (The school’s boys’ team received national acclaim last season with a roster that included LeBron James Jr., who is known as Bronny and is the eldest son of the Lakers star LeBron James. He’s now a sophomore.)Although strict Covid-19 regulations in California have restricted Sierra Canyon to just a handful of practices and individual workouts in recent months, Komaki already sees improvement in MacKenly’s 3-point shooting and ball handling.“You can tell she’s been working on those skills,” Komaki said.Less clear, Zach Randolph said, is how to coach MacKenly through the many layers of grief that have been mounting for the Randolphs in recent years. Mae Randolph, Zach’s mother, died in November 2016. Roger Randolph, Zach’s younger brother, was shot and killed in June 2018. Then, less than two years later, the helicopter crash.A week before the crash, MacKenly made the same helicopter trip with the Bryants from Orange County to Ventura County after spending the night at their house. She and Gianna had bonded quickly as teammates, MacKenly said, because Gianna, sensing the newcomer’s unease about joining an established team, went out of her way to help MacKenly fit in.Kobe Bryant, right, his daughter Gianna, left, and MacKenly Randolph, center, at the Mamba Academy as Bryant coached Team Mamba in tournament play on Jan. 25, 2020.Credit…Chris Costello, via MoPho/SplashNews.com“She was super nice,” MacKenly said.Team Mamba played two games on Jan. 25, 2020, on the opening day of the first Mamba Cup, which Kobe Bryant had organized to attract top teams from California and other states. MacKenly Randolph said she thinks often about how “three of my best friends were here one day and then the next day, they were gone.”“It was tough for my baby — still is — but I’m proud of her,” Zach Randolph said. “She’s 15, but she’s strong, man.”As the one-year anniversary of the crash approached, Randolph said he was still processing his own emotions. It has stuck with him that Kobe Bryant, anticipating years of working with MacKenly, said on more than one occasion: “Z-Bo, just wait until I get done with her.”On the morning of the crash, Zach Randolph was driving north on U.S. Highway 101 to get to Bryant’s academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., to watch MacKenly. She was already there with several teammates awaiting a noon tipoff against a team from Texas coached by Jason Terry, another former N.B.A. player.“When I got the news, I had tears in my eyes,” Zach Randolph said. “I looked around and everybody on the highway in their car was crying, too. It was like everybody got the news at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”A hint of comfort, Randolph said, came from having the chance to connect MacKenly with Bryant on Team Mamba like she wanted. He has been open about being raised without a father in Marion, Ind., how that might have contributed to some of the troubles and controversies he faced in his teens and his 20s, and “coming up in poverty.”Another bit of solace: Randolph said he did get to tell his old rival how grateful he was for all Bryant had taught MacKenly.“He loved them girls,” Zach Randolph said. “He loved my baby. He told me, ‘I love her, man.’ When he told me that, I told him, ‘We’re brothers for life.’ ”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Car Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCar Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.A surge in coronavirus cases and game postponements has led to tighter rules about player interactions, on and off the court. But it’s not always clear where the outbreaks began.The N.B.A. is working to keep players from shaking hands and hugging before and after games as virus infections persist.Credit…Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 20, 2021, 6:59 p.m. ETLast Tuesday, the N.B.A. and its players’ union tightened their coronavirus protocols — mandating that players spend at least the next two weeks almost exclusively at home or at their hotels on the road when not playing basketball.Three days later, the Washington Wizards held a news conference saying that six of their players had tested positive for the coronavirus and that the team did not have enough players to practice. That same day, Karl-Anthony Towns, the Minnesota Timberwolves star whose mother died of Covid-19, said that he, too, had tested positive.Almost one month into the season, the N.B.A. has struggled to contain the coronavirus while playing outside of the restricted campus at Walt Disney World in Florida where it finished last season. Stars have been sidelined. Several teams, including the Wizards, Boston Celtics and Phoenix Suns, have postponed multiple games. Some, like the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, have taken the floor with skeleton crews, missing most of their top players because of contact tracing. More than 40 players have tested positive since training camps began in early December — 27 of them in the past two weeks. Only nine of the league’s 30 teams have not had a game postponed at least in part because too many of their players could have been infected.And starting Wednesday, team security were to be stationed at midcourt before and after games to remind players not to hug each other.The protocol shifts signal the difficulty in trying to play a contact sport indoors during the winter, when health experts said the pandemic would be at its worst. The N.B.A. was praised for being among the first major sports leagues to stop play when the pandemic reared its head last March and for finishing its season in the summer. But now some are openly wondering whether the league should be playing at all.Even so, the league remains confident that its health and safety protocols are strong enough to withstand the outbreaks and that the postponements won’t threaten the integrity of its season. The players’ union declined to comment.“I think it’s in line with where we thought we could be given how serious the pandemic was getting,” David Weiss, a senior vice president of the league, said of the postponements in an interview.He added: “This exact time period is when we thought it was going to be difficult.”The N.B.A. only scheduled the first half of its season, which was shortened to 72 games from the usual 82, in part because it predicted some postponements. In nearly 160 pages of protocols sent to the league’s 30 teams before the season, the N.B.A. said it was “likely” that some players and personnel would test positive and that it “may be necessary” to later modify the guidelines.The Boston Celtics have played shorthanded and postponed games because of the virus and injuries.Credit…Maddie Meyer/Getty Images“Your protocol is only as good as the people are able to follow it,” said Dr. Cindy A. Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. She said not being in a bubble, as the league was during the summer, matters more than whatever the rules may be.“The protocols could be great,” she said. “They’re relying, though, on individuals again. But now they’re relying on individuals with a lot less oversight. And they’re relying on people to understand what puts them at risk in getting Covid. We’re not good at that. I think we’ve proven that as a country.”George Hill, a guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, told reporters last week in response to the tighter protocols: “I’m a grown man, so I’m going to do what I want to do. If I want to go see my family, I’m going to go see my family. They can’t tell me I have to stay in the room 24/7. If it’s that serious then maybe we shouldn’t be playing. It’s life. No one’s going be able to just cancel their whole life for this game.”The league’s contact tracing protocols, positive tests and injuries have at times left several teams without the minimum eight players required to compete. Those who test positive must isolate for at least 10 days or test negative twice more than 24 hours apart. Exposure to someone who has tested positive may also require a quarantine, depending on the setting and timing of the interaction. The N.B.A. uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines to define close contact as being “within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period” in the two days before a positive test or the appearance of symptoms.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      The Raptors Are New to Tampa’s Basketball Scene. The Titans Aren’t.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Raptors Are New to Tampa’s Basketball Scene. The Titans Aren’t.The N.B.A.’s Toronto Raptors are in Tampa, Fla., this season because of the pandemic, but they’re not the only pro basketball team in town. The Tampa Bay Titans say hello.Bassel Harfouch the owner, chief executive and starting guard for the Tampa Bay Titans.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesJan. 20, 2021, 4:42 p.m. ETBassel Harfouch was excited when he heard that the Toronto Raptors were relocating to Tampa, Fla., for an indefinite chunk of the N.B.A. season.“Maybe we can tap into some of the fans that get interested in the Raptors,” Harfouch said, “and kind of tell them, ‘Hey, when they’re gone, we’ll still be here.’”Harfouch, 27, owns another professional basketball team in the area: the Tampa Bay Titans. He is also their leading scorer. His teammates hold down day jobs — last season’s starting rotation included a car salesman, a financial analyst and a barber — while the team’s general manager, a former outfielder for the Yankees, motivates them with no-nonsense pep talks.“I’m that guy who makes sure they understand there is no tomorrow,” said Gerald Williams, who retired from Major League Baseball in 2005. “They can’t afford to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get ’em tomorrow.’ Tomorrow? What are you talking about? You’re going to get cut today!”The Titans are one of 35 teams in The Basketball League, a fledgling circuit for journeymen and dreamers whose part-time salaries range from about $1,500 to $4,000 a month. Before last season was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic, the Titans were drawing as many as 300 fans for home games at Pasco-Hernando State College, about 35 miles northwest of downtown Tampa. Harfouch was ecstatic when he got the team’s apparel onto the racks at a couple of Walmarts.“I was like, ‘How’d you do that?’” David Magley, the league’s president, recalled in a telephone interview. “And he goes, ‘Well, I went and asked.’”A galaxy or two removed from the glitz of the N.B.A., the Titans are rooting for the Raptors this season, hoping for a trickle-down effect. Though the city has produced its share of good players — and was home to the Tampa Bay Thrillers of the now-defunct Continental Basketball Association — the region has seldom been known as a hoops hotbed.“I know there’s a market for basketball here,” said Harfouch, who said he once sold his Mercedes-Benz to help keep the franchise afloat.A shooting guard who played briefly at Alcorn State and for a pro team in Lebanon, Harfouch got his passion project off the ground in 2019, one year after the league’s launch. His playing career, he said, was hindered by injuries, and he wanted to create opportunities for other thwarted strivers.“I’ve been through it all, man,” said Harfouch, who went to high school in Tampa. “I wanted to give guys a platform to try to achieve their dreams.”After a touch-and-go first season — “I was knocking on doors, looking for sponsors,” Harfouch said — the Titans found more of a niche last season, before the coronavirus pandemic forced a shutdown. Harfouch said community outreach was critical to the team’s growth: lots of meet-and-greets, lots of involvement with charities and schools.“The N.B.A. does huge TV deals,” he said. “We’re not on that level.”Merchandise for the Toronto Raptors is sold at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla., where the N.B.A. team is based for the 2020-2021 season.Credit…Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesThe annual operating budget for the league’s teams ranges from about $125,000 to $250,000, Magley said — or about half of what the Nets’ Kyrie Irving forfeited for each game that he recently missed after violating the N.B.A.’s coronavirus protocols. Eventually, Magley said, he hopes to have 64 franchises across North America. The former N.B.A. players Steve Francis and Jerome Williams recently bought teams that are set to make their debuts this coming season.“We’re really trying to get these players jobs,” Magley said. “You can come play in our league, do well and get noticed by other teams around the world.”The plan is for this season to run from April through June, with the playoffs scheduled for July. Some of that depends, of course, on the state of the pandemic, but Magley said he was optimistic that a steady increase in vaccinations, along with ongoing preventive measures like masks, would make a season feasible by then.Magley has a soft spot for Harfouch — “I know his story seems a little Jackie Moon-ish,” Magley said, referring to the Will Ferrell character from the film “Semi-Pro” — and for Tampa. Toward the end of his own playing career, Magley filled in for the Thrillers “for a couple of weekends,” he said, when the team was short-handed.He later became even more familiar with the area’s basketball scene, spending 11 years coaching at Bradenton Christian School, just south of Tampa.“It’s shocking how many wonderful athletes there are in Florida,” Magley said. “But most of them are channeled to football.”In their own way, the Titans are eager to change some of that. The team practices in the evening so that players can work during the day.“It’s not a league for you to come in and say, ‘I’m quitting my job,’ ” Harfouch said. “It’s a steppingstone for guys.”He has leaned on Gerald Williams, 54, whom he met about 10 years ago when they were working out at the same recreational center. Harfouch recognized Williams from his days with the Yankees, and Williams took him under his wing. Williams, who spent 14 seasons in the majors, said he could sense that Harfouch was an oddly determined young man.“I wouldn’t really be involved in sports anymore if it weren’t for Bassel,” Williams said. “I wanted to enjoy retirement.”Williams, who played high school basketball, has kept in shape since retiring from baseball, and he said that had come in handy with the Titans. He picks his spots to mix it up at practice.Williams played baseball in Tampa Bay in 2000, when the team was known as the Devil Rays.Credit…Chris Covatta/Allsport, via Getty Images“In order to teach,” he said, “sometimes you must be able to demonstrate. Not always. But it’s good when you can.”Said Harfouch, “He’ll come out and dunk in his Cole Haans.”Williams has a direct management style. He likes to remind the players that good practice habits are the foundation of success, and that each person on the roster is easily replaceable.“If you’re not hungry, trust me — we’ll make an adjustment,” he said.He has also compared notes with another Florida-based sports executive: Derek Jeter, one of his closest friends and a former co-worker in the Bronx. Jeter is the chief executive of the Miami Marlins, who are coming off a postseason appearance. “He is locked in over there,” Williams said.With the Titans, Williams has big goals of his own. He said he was hoping to persuade the Raptors to give Harfouch a tryout. But timing is everything, Williams said, and he wants to wait until the Titans start their season, so that Harfouch has a fresh body of work. “You want to have him be on fire this year,” Williams said.Malcolm St. Louis, a 26-year-old forward, recalled hearing about the Titans not long after he moved to Tampa.“I put my last $150 on the tryout,” he said.The team’s first season, St. Louis said, was full of “extreme highs and extreme lows.” The adrenaline from a couple of early road wins against the Owensboro Thoroughbreds was quickly offset by a long losing streak. But the Titans also had a West Coast trip, which included a stop near Las Vegas for games against the Mesquite Desert Dogs.“Being a small-town kid and getting to see the world at that scale just by playing a game — I’ll have that moment forever,” St. Louis said.He is itching to return for his third season with the team, he said. Everything that Harfouch promised him about the future of the league, he said, has come to fruition.In the meantime, St. Louis has kept busy with his job at a moving service — “Have you heard of College Hunks Hauling Junk?” he asked — and has a fashion line, Meticulous Threads, that league officials are helping him promote. But these days with the N.B.A. in full swing and the Raptors nearby, basketball has been foremost in his mind.“I just want to prove myself,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Harden Trade Should Work Out — but Maybe Not for the Nets

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketballThe Harden Trade Should Work Out — but Maybe Not for the NetsGoing big brought championships home right away for the Lakers (Anthony Davis trade) and the Raptors (Kawhi Leonard). The Nets’ bet on James Harden might not pay off so soon.The four-team trade sending James Harden to the Nets from the Rockets is bound to be a big win for someone. The question is for which team.Credit…Adam Hunger/Associated PressJan. 20, 2021, 12:55 p.m. ETIn the midst of an opening month marked by game postponements, depleted rosters and ragged basketball, four teams intervened last week to deliver a blockbuster James Harden trade.It was a rousing (and welcome) diversion as the N.B.A. strained to play through a pandemic, but a few days of reflection hasn’t changed my initial reaction. Even with so many options, clear winners in this deal do not jump off the scorecard.The daunting truth for the Nets and the Houston Rockets, who drove this whopper transaction, is that the Cleveland Cavaliers — for now — look best positioned of any team in the quartet to come away satisfied after the Cavaliers paid a modest price to acquire the Nets’ highly rated center Jarrett Allen.The Indiana Pacers should join them in celebrating the deal, provided that Caris LeVert can return safely from the scary disclosure that he is out indefinitely after a small mass was discovered on his left kidney. The Pacers entered the trade as the fourth team by shipping a potentially expensive free-agent-to-be, Victor Oladipo, to Houston so they could acquire the promising former Nets forward LeVert and his team-friendly contract. Kevin Pritchard, Indiana’s president of basketball operations, said the Pacers are “super confident” about LeVert’s recovery.Indiana and Cleveland, despite their lesser roles as trade facilitators, got most of the early kudos for the deal. The Nets and Rockets might not care about that, but reservations for the headliners persist because:The Nets had to surrender control of their first-round pick in their next seven drafts (yes, seven) to acquire Harden and partner him with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.The Rockets collected all that draft capital in return but did not come away with the young franchise player that they had indicated for weeks they were holding out for in any Harden swap.The Nets only have their new star trio under contract for the rest of this season and next season, while facing many questions about their sudden defensive shortcomings and how they plan to keep three volume scorers content now that Irving has rejoined the team after an extended absence. Irving participated in a full practice Tuesday after missing seven games for what began as “just a pause” that he said he needed because of “family and personal stuff.” Yet as good as Durant and Harden looked together Monday night in crunchtime of a home win over Milwaukee, mixing in a third star who wants and needs the ball changes the dynamic dramatically.The Rockets have unexpectedly embraced a rebuilding strategy more associated with a front-office alumnus not named Daryl Morey. Stockpiling future first-round draft picks, remember, is Sam Hinkie’s trademark. Of course, for the strategy to be successful, Houston will have to turn those picks into at least one cornerstone player more talented than Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons. Houston chose the Nets’ trade offer and a trial run with Oladipo, who is still recovering from his own injury woes, over the 76ers’ Simmons-centric pitches. It’s a call that has some around the league wondering if the Tilman Fertitta-owned Rockets, at closing time, dealt with the Nets because they could not bring themselves to send Harden to Morey’s new team.It should be noted that there is some scattered praise out there for the Nets and the Rockets that has been drowned out by the conspiracy theories and news media skepticism. One Western Conference executive, for example, chided me for focusing too much on Harden’s various acts of sabotage that fast-tracked his Houston exit and too readily dismissing what his distinct offensive talent can do for the Nets.Harden got what he wanted in the end after some of the worst trade-forcing behavior ever seen. He showed up late to training camp, flouted the league’s health and safety protocols on camera, let his level of play and conditioning decline and, finally, cemented his newfound villainy by publicly criticizing the collective quality of his now-former Rockets teammates. The executive nonetheless described Harden, if only for the moment while he’s taking such heat, as the league’s most underrated player.Another executive in the West asked me why I was so quick to scoff at Houston’s return for Harden when the Nets are being openly questioned for possibly trading away too much to get him. Along with the 2022 first-round pick it acquired from Cleveland (via Milwaukee), which the Cavaliers shrewdly tossed into the trade to nab Allen, Houston will receive the Nets’ unprotected first-round picks in 2022, 2024 and 2026, as well as the right to swap first-round picks with the Nets in the 2021, 2023, 2025 and 2027 drafts.Perhaps one or both of those executives will be proven right. If the Nets win a championship this season or next, or if Houston can construct an enviable new core with its replenished trove of assets, no shortage of scribes like me will face told-you-so recriminations.You just wouldn’t dare at the outset to, especially in the Nets’ case, throw a lot of support behind the risk-taking.The Los Angeles Clippers surrendered a fistful of draft assets to Oklahoma City in July 2019 because they knew trading for Paul George would also clinch the free-agent signature of Kawhi Leonard. The Los Angeles Lakers made a similar move earlier that same month to acquire Anthony Davis from New Orleans and flank LeBron James with the most talented teammate of his career. Those were N.B.A. no-brainers.Milwaukee’s gambit in November to part with three future first-round picks and the rights to swap first-rounders in two other drafts to pry Jrue Holiday away from the Pelicans is in a tier of its own. The Bucks endured a nervy wait that lasted almost a month after the Holiday trade until Giannis Antetokounmpo agreed to a five-year, $228 million contract extension. Persuading Antetokounmpo to stay, on some levels, equated to a championship in itself for the small-market Bucks, but they’ll surely need a major contribution from Holiday to shed their label of playoff underachievers and keep Antetokounmpo content.Then the Nets’ trade realistically falls into a tier below that, since Milwaukee’s move was fueled by the understandable desperation to please and then re-sign Antetokounmpo.As swiftly as Durant’s 30.6 points-per-game brilliance has made so many forget that he is only in the nascent stages of a comeback from the most dreaded injury in the sport — no one in the N.B.A., frankly, has ever looked better than Durant after an Achilles’ tendon tear — so many unknowns nag at the Nets.Who in this trio will embrace third-wheel status like Chris Bosh so crucially did in Miami beside James and Dwyane Wade, or like Ray Allen did in Boston alongside Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce? Who among Durant, Harden and Irving has the personality to lead the way to a pecking order? How can the Nets play passable playoff defense against offensive monsters like Antetokounmpo and Davis when Durant, Harden and Irving share the floor? How much can the Nets even count on Irving after his messy exits in Cleveland and Boston and this season’s bumpy start?Don’t forget that the Nets are asking a rookie coach, Steve Nash, to steer this group to the answers to those questions — without a training camp on top of Nash’s lack of experience. Don’t forget, furthermore, that it took the James/Wade/Bosh Heat more than a season to figure a lot of this out.Winning a championship is not the Nets’ only motivation here. If the Harden trade persuades Durant to sign a second contract with them, and if Harden sticks around, those would be significant triumphs.The Nets, though, will not be graded on the ancillary benefits, or merely their success in ensuring that Harden didn’t land with the division-rival Sixers. They went all in believing that a change of scenery for the unhappy Harden will lead to a title in Year 1 — like it did for Leonard in Toronto and for Davis with the Lakers.As much as we relished an actual basketball debate, temporarily hauling us away from the N.B.A.’s mounting coronavirus concerns, there are simply too many holes in that script to buy into it playing out three seasons in a row.Corner ThreeKyrie Irving is expected to be back with the Nets on Wednesday. He hasn’t played since Jan. 5.Credit…Adam Hunger/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.)Q: Just wanted to mention that, while two-game series aren’t primary on the baseball schedule, they do happen all the time, even in nonpandemic years. The Yankees, for example, played five scheduled two-game series in the first half of the 2019 season. So “baseball series” does work as a name for the two-game sets in the N.B.A. this season. Stick with it. — Joe Sheehan (joesheehan.com)Stein: Appreciate the perspective, Joe. I answered a question in Corner Three last week that suggested two-game sets never happen in baseball without properly challenging it.That probably stems, at least in my fading memory, from them seeming much rarer in the 1970s and 1980s when I followed baseball more closely. I should have vetted the question with my ace New York Times baseball colleagues Tyler Kepner and James Wagner.As for sticking with the term “baseball series” for the N.B.A.’s two-game sets featuring the same two teams playing consecutive games at the same arena, you might get your wish. Better alternatives have yet to materialize.In last week’s newsletter, I asked for reader suggestions, which has proved to be a useful tactic in the past when I’ve gotten stuck on something. I regret to report that I have yet to receive what I would classify as an inspiring nomination.Q: Instead of “baseball-style series,” how about “doubles” as the new term? I know it belongs to tennis, but it works: “The Lakers are playing a double against the Rockets in Houston. The second game is tonight.” — George FullerStein: You made a passable case, George, compared to the other submissions received. But I can’t co-sign this.Not only am I a huge tennis fan, as I’ve mentioned often before, but I am one of the world’s biggest doubles fans. I have campaigned for doubles to get more coverage from the tennis press since I was a teenager.So I can’t bring myself to try to transform one of the pillar concepts of one of my three favorite sports into niche basketball lingo.Q: Why did Kyrie Irving lose 1/81.6 of his salary for two games if there are 72 games this season? — @Alvaro32LA from TwitterStein: The league office, after recent negotiations with the players’ union, adjusted the per-game penalty for players who miss a game because of a violation of the N.B.A.’s health and safety protocols. I’m told that the penalty went from 1/72 of the player’s salary to 1/81.6 of the salary for each game missed; Irving missed two games during the five-day quarantine he received from the N.B.A. after he was caught on video maskless at a family birthday party.The league and union calculated the 81.6 figure by adding four postseason games and a league average of 5.6 playoff games to the 72-game total. For the first three games that Irving missed, which the Nets attributed to “personal reasons,” Nets officials had the option to fine Irving at the higher rate of 1/72 of his $33,329,100 million salary for each game missed, which would have totaled more than $460,000 per game.Numbers GameLeBron James is on pace to average the fewest minutes per game of his career this season, at age 36. The Lakers have the N.B.A.’s best record.Credit…Wade Payne/Associated Press42James Harden’s first game in Houston as a member of the Nets is only 42 days away on March 3. The game is expected to have 4,500 fans in attendance, too, with the Rockets on the short list of five N.B.A. teams allowing reduced crowds for home games.7Seven players have posted a triple-double in their first game with a new team, according to Stathead. Two of the seven — Harden and Washington’s Russell Westbrook — did so this season. Harden had 32 points, 12 rebounds and 14 assists (and 9 turnovers) in his Nets debut on Saturday in a victory over Orlando; Westbrook had 21 points, 11 rebounds and 15 assists in his Wizards debut on Dec. 23 in a loss to Philadelphia.13Harden is going ahead with plans to operate a steakhouse in midtown Houston. Thirteen, named for Harden’s jersey number, is scheduled to open by month’s end, according to Sherrie Handrinos, a spokeswoman for the restaurant. Kevin Durant owned a 25 percent stake in a restaurant in Oklahoma City, Kd’s Southern Cuisine, which filed an application to change its name to the Legacy Grill just days after Durant’s decision in July 2016 to leave the Thunder for the Golden State Warriors in free agency.56The Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James awoke Tuesday ranked 56th in the league at 32.2 minutes per game. It’s on pace to be the lowest average of his 18-season career by design, with James now 36 years old and coming off the shortest off-season in N.B.A. history. Only 72 days elapsed between the Lakers’ Game 6 finals victory over Miami to clinch the 2019-20 championship and their opening night loss to the Clippers on Dec. 22.37Only four players are averaging at least 37 minutes per game, and the Tom Thibodeau-coached Knicks have two of them. Indiana’s Domantas Sabonis leads the league at 37.5 minutes per game, followed by the Knicks’ duo RJ Barrett and Julius Randle and the Nets’ Harden, all of whom are tied at 37.1 minutes per game.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      She Thought the Grizzlies Wanted Hiring Advice. They Wanted Her.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyShe Thought the Grizzlies Wanted Hiring Advice. They Wanted Her.Sonia Raman had spent years studying N.B.A. games as she coached Division III women’s basketball at M.I.T. Then the Memphis Grizzlies called about an opening for an assistant coach.Sonia Raman on the bench this season for the Memphis Grizzlies.Credit…Joe Murphy/NBAE, via Getty ImagesJan. 18, 2021, 3:12 a.m. ETThe women’s basketball team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology knew something was up when Sonia Raman, the coach with the most wins in the program’s history, organized a video meeting on short notice in September. Most of the players figured it had to do with the coming season, and with complications stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.They were completely unprepared for the news Raman delivered — that she was joining the Grizzlies as an assistant coach.“At first we were like, ‘Grizzlies? What college is that?’” Kylie Gallagher, a senior forward, recalled.Raman quickly clarified that she was headed to the N.B.A.’s Memphis Grizzlies, then worked off prepared notes — she knew she would be emotional — as she thanked her players and her staff, and offered more details about the unexpected opportunity that had come her way.“Oh, they were shocked,” Raman, 46, said in a recent interview. “But those players are a part of me, and my experiences with them has made me the coach I am now.”In recent years, the N.B.A. has been more progressive than most men’s sports leagues in hiring and promoting women to coaching and front office positions. Raman, though, was a thoroughly unconventional hire.A former lawyer, Raman had spent 12 seasons at M.I.T., shaping the Engineers — real-life rocket scientists — into a regional power. Within the tight-knit world of Division III women’s basketball, Raman had developed a reputation as a smart, dedicated and resourceful coach. But Division III women’s basketball is not the usual pipeline to the N.B.A.“If you’re really, truly going to find the best people, you have to be open-minded,” Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins said. “Great coaches exist everywhere.”About four months after joining the Grizzlies, Raman does a bit — or rather a lot — of everything: scouting opponents, player development and analytics, an area of particular interest. In the preseason, Jenkins said, Raman seemed to have her laptop cracked open to game film every time he walked past her office.“I don’t have these thick folders on every team in the N.B.A. like I did in the N.E.W.M.A.C.,” she said, referring, of course, to the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference.Lucia Robinson-Griggs, the Vassar College coach who was a longtime assistant under Raman, said she had already felt the effects of Raman’s jump to the N.B.A.“I’ve gotten a lot of calls from coaches who are just like: ‘How did this happen? How’d she wow them?’” Robinson-Griggs said. “And a lot of it was just Sonia being Sonia. The idea of being a student of the game gets thrown around a lot, but that’s Sonia and everything that she embodies.”Growing up in Framingham, Mass., Raman loved basketball. She rooted for the Boston Celtics. She played with her friends. Her parents, both computer programmers, supported her interest in sports, she said. She went on to play college basketball at Tufts, where she came off the bench as a high-energy guard.“I was not very good,” she said. “I just worked hard and tried to be a good teammate.”After graduating from Boston College Law School, Raman worked for the federal Labor Department and later for an investment firm, in the risk and compliance division. She had only recently started that job when Kathy Hagerstrom, who was then the basketball coach at Wellesley College, asked if Raman would be interested in volunteering as an assistant.“I always knew that I was going to find a way to coach,” Raman said. “It just wasn’t a part of my life plan to make it career. I thought it would be something that I did after work, or on weekends — maybe coach a youth team.”For six seasons, Raman kept her day job as a lawyer while moonlighting as one of Hagerstrom’s assistants. Raman finally left the law behind in 2008, when she went to M.I.T.“It’s a very nontraditional career path for someone of South Asian descent,” she said. “My parents are both immigrants from India, so coming here and working hard and providing me with so much opportunity — I don’t think it was on their radar that their daughter was going to become a basketball coach.”She added, “But I think they saw where my passion was all along.”She embarked on an extensive rebuild at M.I.T., which had scuffled through five consecutive losing seasons. It was not an instant turnaround.“There were times where it was like: ‘Oh, did you see this person running around in P.E.? Would she be interested in playing?’” Robinson-Griggs said. “We needed numbers.”Raman was not especially demonstrative during games or even at practice. But she was methodical in her approach. “Preparation is everything for her,” said Meghan O’Connell, a former assistant and now the team’s interim coach.Raman would go so far as to workshop conversations with her assistants.Raman coaching the M.I.T. Engineers during the 2018-19 conference championship game.Credit…Ben Barnhart, via DAPER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology“She’d say, ‘OK, this is going to be your role today, and this is going to be Meghan’s role, and this is how we’re going to push people and get to where we need to be,’” Robinson-Griggs recalled. “She would anticipate questions that our players would have for us, and we’d talk about our responses.”She also would attend Celtics practices whenever the team opened them up to area coaches. A voracious consumer of late-night N.B.A. broadcasts, Raman would mine random midseason games for fresh material.“She’d show up to practice the next day, like, ‘Guys, I have a new end-of-the-game play for us to run,’” Gallagher said.Raman doubled as the athletic department’s assistant director of compliance — “lots of stuff with the Division 1 rowers,” Griggs-Robinson said — and learned to navigate the admissions department’s rigorous standards when she recruited players for her own team. Even prospects who were academically qualified sometimes needed convincing that M.I.T. was the right place for them.“My parents really wanted me to visit M.I.T., and I was hesitant,” Gallagher said. “Because at first, you’re like, if you go to M.I.T., you’re a nerd.”It was the human touch, Gallagher said, that swayed her — the immediate sense she got that Raman cared for her players, and that the players were normal people.The Engineers eventually turned into perennial winners, claiming back-to-back N.E.W.M.A.C. championships in 2018 and 2019.The Grizzlies’ interest in Raman was rooted in a relationship she started developing a couple of years ago with Rich Cho, the team’s vice president of basketball strategy, when he was looking for student intern recommendations.Last August, Cho called while the Grizzlies were still playing in the league’s bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Raman knew that Niele Ivey, one of Jenkins’s assistants, had left the Grizzlies to become the women’s coach at Notre Dame, and Raman figured that Cho wanted to pick her brain about potential replacements.“But then he said that the organization might be interested in interviewing me,” she said, “and that was not something that I had on my radar at all.”Raman spent the week before her initial three-hour interview watching a stream of Grizzlies games. She also listened to Memphis sports-talk radio and had her partner, Milena Flores, prep her with potential interview questions.“She is the true basketball mind in the family,” Raman said of Flores, a former player and coach, most recently at Princeton.Jenkins, 36, said he had no qualms about hiring a relative unknown, citing his own unorthodox path from San Antonio Spurs intern to N.B.A. head coach. He said he was “blown away” by Raman. “It was clear that she’s someone who can teach the game at a high level,” he said.Still, Raman’s colleagues had to process the news.“If she had said: ‘I have a coaching opportunity. Guess where?’ I mean, I would’ve named every women’s program in the country before I got to the N.B.A.,” O’Connell said. “It’s incredible to think that people in the N.B.A. are going to hear what Sonia thinks about basketball.”After taking the job, Raman called Ivey, who spoke highly of the team and told her that the players would be welcoming.“She’s already got handshakes with the guys,” Jenkins said.In many ways, Raman is simply doing more of what she has always wanted to do: coach basketball. She feels lucky that she gets to spend most days in a gym, she said. The spotlight may be brighter, but the game is the same.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Harden Reunites With Durant, Far from the Hearts of Sonics Fans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of The TimesHouston, Seattle Feels Your LossWith whipsawing trades and other player movement routine in the N.B.A. these days, it’s hard to be loyal to teams and players.Kevin Durant, then of the Seattle SuperSonics, scoring off the Knicks in 2007 during his rookie season.Credit…Barton Silverman/The New York TimesJan. 15, 2021Updated 7:39 p.m. ETSEATTLE — If you’re a fan of the Seattle SuperSonics, jilted long ago despite decades of loyal love, you’re seriously happy for the last great talent from your team.That would be Kevin Durant.After a year spent rehabilitating a torn Achilles’ tendon, Durant now seems to be living his best life in Brooklyn as the leader of the Nets. His odds of winning a third N.B.A. title received a significant boost when a blockbuster trade reunited him this week with James Harden, his close friend and former Oklahoma City Thunder teammate.Durant, Harden and Kyrie Irving on the same team? Scintillating, so long as they end up on the same page.But if you’re a die-hard Sonics fan — and yes, count me in that group — the happiness felt for one of basketball’s transcendent superstars comes with a flip side.We see Durant and are forced to reckon with all the unfulfilled possibilities.Recall that the slim, do-everything forward spent his rookie season in Seattle. He was only 19, but he led the team through a dreary and uncertain 2007-08 season. He wasn’t just good, he was prodigiously good; so full of talent and joy that watching him made the doomsday talk of the Sonics’ possible relocation drift away.Then reality hit. April 13, 2008. The last game played at the old KeyArena: a win sealed by a Durant jump shot.Soon the team moved to Oklahoma City, where it began anew as the Thunder. (Pardon the crankiness, but they’ll always be the Tumbleweeds to me.)It’s been 12 years, but the stinging questions remain.What would have happened to Durant and our team if the Sonics had never left?And how much should fans expect their devotion to be mirrored by professional sports leagues, team ownership and the players we most admire?I’m typical of many in Seattle. The Sonics will always be in my blood. I’m comfortably middle-aged, but I can close my eyes and remember my first N.B.A. game: the bright colors and sharp sounds and even the smells of buttered popcorn and roasted peanuts in the old coliseum nestled near the Space Needle.I was 6, and the Sonics were playing Jerry Sloan and the Chicago Bulls. I can still feel my father’s humongous hands as he led me to our seats.A few years later, when my parents divorced, my father kept our connection close through the Sonics. We went to dozens of games, seated almost always near the rafters. We saw Julius Erving’s first appearance in Seattle — all that grace and power and coolness.We were there in 1978 when the Sonics lost to the Washington Bullets in the N.B.A. finals.In 1979, we watched Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, Dennis Johnson and my dad’s friend Downtown Freddie Brown as the team won its only league championship.Years later, Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton formed a powerful, legendary duo, but our hearts were always with those 1970s teams.One more memory, this one bittersweet. When my father was dying, far too early at age 75, we rode together in an ambulance to a nearby hospice. I held his hand again as he spoke of our most cherished times. “The Sonics,” he said. Then he recalled, one last time, the glorious, arcing accuracy of Fred Brown’s jump shot.That’s love.I know I’m hardly alone. We bond over teams, over remarkable wins and searing losses and athletes who remain ever young in our mind’s eye.Fans all over the country, who root for all kinds of teams and players, know that love. It is steadfast, faithful and rooted deep into our souls.We also know the risk. There are no guarantees that devotion will be rewarded with loyalty in return. (Just ask the Houston fans who have stood behind Harden since 2012.)Two years after my father’s death, the Midwestern ownership group that had bought the Sonics moved Seattle’s first big-time professional sports team of the modern era to Oklahoma.The fact that the team had been a vital part of one of America’s greatest cities for 41 years did not matter. Nor did the fact that Seattle was known to have one of the most passionate fan bases in sports.Nothing mattered but the bottom line. The N.B.A. wanted a fancy new stadium, and taxpayer money to fund a big chunk of it. Seattle’s political leaders balked. There was no compromise.The city lost the Sonics and the one player everyone imagined as a franchise cornerstone. The one player who could have brought another title and forged more remarkable seasons, maybe for a decade or longer.We have never relinquished our passion for Durant. He matured during an era of constant player movement that seemed to be foretold by the uprooting of the Sonics. He came to personify the modern superstar. He bounced from team to team to team, winning an M.V.P. and world titles and never quite content in one place. But to us he’s still the wide-eyed teen who conjured our last flash of basketball brilliance. We can’t let go.It helped that he never forgot the city that birthed his N.B.A. career. When his Golden State Warriors came to Seattle for an exhibition in 2018, he wore a vintage Shawn Kemp jersey and gave the sold-out crowd all they could ever want to hear. “I know it’s been a rough 10 years,” he said. “The N.B.A. is back in Seattle for tonight, but hopefully it is back forever soon!”Will that ever happen? To pine for it is to be whipsawed between hope and despair.Whenever N.B.A. commissioner Adam Silver utters a single sentence that could be divined as giving a nod toward the Sonics’ return — as he did recently when he spoke of league expansion as “Manifest Destiny” and gave a tip of the hat toward Seattle — the local news goes into overdrive with stories about a possible return.Contractors are rebuilding the old KeyArena, soon the home of the N.H.L.’s Seattle Kraken, an expansion team. They have gutted the old structure. Close to $1 billion will go toward increasing its size and prepping it for multiple sports — pro basketball included. The whole endeavor is led by Tim and Tod Leiweke, brothers connected to the N.B.A. and Silver for decades who make no secret of their desire to have an expansion team playing in their gleaming new edifice.Does all this mean the Sonics are coming soon? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.So Sonics fans keep holding tight to the one last superstar to have played for our team.He’s doing his thing in Brooklyn now.And we’re still dreaming of the future.I can see it now, in two years or maybe five, the SuperSonics back at long last. The first big free-agent signed to herald their return? Kevin Durant.Sorry Brooklyn, there’s no such thing as loyalty in the N.B.A., but at least you would still have your team.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      After Frosty Houston Split, Harden Says He’s an ‘Elite Teammate’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter Frosty Houston Split, Harden Says He’s an ‘Elite Teammate’James Harden, who was traded to the Nets this week, had been called “disrespectful” by his former teammates in Houston, who he said were “not good enough” to win a championship.In his introductory press conference with the Nets on Friday, James Harden said he was an “elite” player, teammate and leader.Credit…Toshifumi Kitamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 15, 2021, 5:04 p.m. ETDays after telling reporters he did not think the Houston Rockets were talented enough to be competitive, James Harden said on Friday that he is an “elite player, an elite teammate” and an “elite leader,” in his first comments as a member of the Nets.He also responded to critical barbs by his former Rockets teammates, including the former All-Stars John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins. Cousins, in particular, referred to Harden’s behavior leading up to this week’s trade to the Nets as “disrespectful.”“I wasn’t disrespectful to anyone,” said Harden, who had been the cornerstone of the Rockets since 2012-13. “Those guys had just got there, Houston. I’ve been there for a very long time. I’ve been through all the ups and downs with that organization and I wasn’t disrespectful toward anyone. I just made a comment that the team, as a whole, wasn’t good enough to compete for a title, and at the stage of my career where I am now, that’s what I would love.”In postgame comments Tuesday night, following a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Harden said that he did not think the Rockets had the talent or chemistry to be competitive and added, “It’s something that I don’t think can be fixed.” This came months after Harden, who showed up late to training camp, privately requested a trade from the Rockets. The Nets topped the list of his preferred teams.When asked Friday if he regretted how things ended in Houston, where he played more than eight seasons and won a Most Valuable Player Award, Harden said: “Yeah, I regret because I’m not the type of guy who — I don’t need the attention, especially the negative energy, the negative attention. Like, I’ve never been that guy. There were some things, I feel like, out of my character, but the ultimate goal was to get somewhere where I can compete.”Harden developed into one of the N.B.A.’s marquee players in Houston and in recent years has had some of the league’s best offensive seasons ever. However, he has also developed a reputation for clashing with teammates and for having less-than-desirable conditioning. (On Friday, when asked to describe his conditioning, Harden smiled and said “Great!”)In Wednesday’s blockbuster trade, the Nets gave up a bevy of draft picks and talented young players such as Jarrett Allen and Caris LeVert. Coach Steve Nash said on Friday that Harden should be available to play Saturday against the Orlando Magic.Harden publicly detailed for the first time why he wanted to leave Houston. He cited the off-season departures of Daryl Morey, who resigned as Houston’s general manager and became president of the Philadelphia 76ers, and Mike D’Antoni, who left the Rockets and is now an assistant coach for the Nets. Harden said he began rethinking his future in Houston immediately after losing to the Lakers in the second round of the playoffs last season.“You look from top to bottom: the general manager leaving to Mike D’Antoni leaving to re-evaluating our personnel and seeing if we had enough to compete with the best teams in the league,” he said. “And as time went on and free agency and things like that started to go on, it was like, well, I felt like we didn’t have a chance.”He added, “As much as I love the city of Houston and I loved being there, I think I’m at the point in my career where it’s not about money. It’s not about anything else but having a chance at reaching the ultimate goal, which is winning at the highest level.”Harden said he had not spoken with his new teammates Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant about how they would coexist on the floor.“For us, it might take a little time,” Harden said. “It might not. I think all of us are very smart, are very unselfish, and we know what’s at stake.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More