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      What To Know About The Biggest W.N.B.A. Free-Agency Moves

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Biggest W.N.B.A. Free-Agency MovesCandace Parker is not the only one leaving Los Angeles, but Diana Taurasi is staying in Phoenix. W.N.B.A. free agency kicked off Monday with a shuffling of stars.Candace Parker, who had been with the Los Angeles Sparks since she was drafted in 2008, headlined Monday’s free-agency moves by signing with the Chicago Sky.Credit…Chris O’Meara/Associated PressFeb. 1, 2021, 6:34 p.m. ETA landmark collective bargaining agreement before last season increased top-tier W.N.B.A. salaries to $215,000 from about $117,500. But though the new pay scale was in effect ahead of the 2020 season in Florida, it’s only this year that a number of the league’s biggest stars are unrestricted free agents and in a position to cash in.Free agents were officially able to sign new contracts on Monday, and many did. Here is a breakdown of some of the biggest free-agency moves so far:Candace Parker to the Chicago SkyParker, who won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award with the Los Angeles Sparks last season, is moving on to be closer to her roots. A Naperville, Ill., native, she signed with the Chicago Sky on Monday.“This was a very difficult decision for Candace to make as Los Angeles is her home now,” Boris Lelchitski, Parker’s agent, said in an email on Monday.Although Parker and her 11-year-old daughter, Lailaa, have made Los Angeles home, Illinois is where Parker got her start. “It was just a decision based on where she thought she could most enjoy writing the last few chapters of her amazing career,” Lelchitski said.Parker had been with the Sparks since she was drafted No. 1 over all out of Tennessee in 2008.This is big get for James Wade, the head coach and general manager of the Sky, who has made two postseason appearances in two seasons with Chicago.“It’s an incredible story of a homecoming between a team striving to become a championship organization and one of the best players in basketball,” Wade said in a statement announcing the signing.Chicago immediately becomes a contender with Parker, a two-time Most Valuable Player Award winner, alongside young, athletic players like guard Diamond DeShields and forward Gabby Williams. Adding Parker as an option for the assist machine Courtney Vandersloot could mean trouble for post defenders.Alysha Clark to the Washington MysticsAlysha Clark averaged a career-high 10 points per game last season with the Seattle Storm.Credit…Octavio Jones for The New York TimesClark was a key factor for the Seattle Storm in their 2018 and 2020 runs to a W.N.B.A. championship. A nine-year veteran, she shot 55.8 percent from the field on the way to a career-high 10 points per game last season.Mike Thibault, Washington’s head coach and general manager, had sought Clark through free agency and trades with Seattle in the past. “We’ve offered them a trade at one point,” Thibault told reporters during a video conference call on Monday. “They were smart and didn’t do it.”With the Mystics, Clark looks forward to being challenged to become a more complete player before calling it a career. “It’s not that I have to be fancy in anything that I’m doing,” Clark told reporters on Monday. “I just want to be as well rounded and reach my full potential before I decide to hang them up.”Clark’s biggest asset is her ability to guard every position. It has been a staple of her game that has caught the attention of her peers.“She’s strong. She’s physical. It’s like having a little bodyguard wherever I go,” Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi said of Clark last season.Diana Taurasi Returns to the Phoenix MercuryDiana Taurasi, right, has been with the Phoenix Mercury since she was drafted No. 1 over all in 2004.Credit…Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTaurasi, who has missed significant time over the past three seasons because of a lingering back injury, has re-signed with Phoenix.“Diana has given her entire career to our organization and community, and we don’t take for granted her unrivaled impact on basketball,” Mercury General Manager Jim Pitman said in a statement on Monday. He added that the team was confident that she had “more All-W.N.B.A. days ahead of her.”Taurasi has been with the Mercury since they took her with the top pick in 2004.Taurasi’s return, keeping her alongside the 2020 free-agent acquisition Skylar Diggins-Smith, bodes well for the future of the Mercury. Diggins-Smith electrified fans with a game-winning buzzer beater against the Connecticut Sun last season after Phoenix had blown a double-digit lead.“When they play well, we play well, and that’s what you need from your best players” Mercury Coach Sandy Brondello said of her backcourt duo of Taurasi and Diggins-Smith during a postgame media session in September.But the chemistry is still building, as was evident during the 2020 playoffs when Phoenix lost to the Minnesota Lynx, 80-79, despite having possession in the waning seconds of the game.Chelsea Gray to the Las Vegas AcesChelsea Gray celebrated after scoring a 3-point basket in front of Washington Mystics.Credit…Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressGray’s move to Las Vegas from the Sparks began last off-season. As a restricted free agent then, Gray wanted to test the waters. A California native, she knew being close to family was one of her priorities, so if she wasn’t going to remain in Los Angeles for the long term, Las Vegas was the next best option. The media company Uninterrupted posted a video on Monday documenting Gray’s trip to Vegas last off-season. The 25-minute video showed how Gray and the Sparks worked out a one-year deal for the 2020 season so she’d be eligible for the maximum contract in 2021, per the new collective bargaining agreement.The video concluded with the announcement that Gray had signed a deal with the Las Vegas Aces this time around. Despite making deep playoff runs in 2019 and 2020, the Aces lacked experience at the guard position. Gray has proved to be more than capable as a floor general for a team with frontcourt talent.Instead of Parker and Nneka Ogwumike, who had been central players for the Sparks, Gray will now facilitate an offense with A’ja Wilson, the reigning M.V.P., and Liz Cambage, who is expected to be back this season after receiving a medical exemption last year because of the pandemic.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The N.B.A. Misses Klay Thompson

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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 storyThe N.B.A. Misses Klay ThompsonThompson, the Golden State Warriors’ All-Star guard, is a great shooter, for sure. But his absence, for a second consecutive season because of injury, leaves a hole that goes beyond basketball.Because of injuries, Klay Thompson hasn’t played in a game since the 2019 N.B.A. finals. Warriors General Manager Bob Myers described Thompson as a “corner piece” of Golden State’s puzzle.Credit…Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressFeb. 1, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETKlay Thompson could have re-entered the game for the Golden State Warriors, but he knew his work was done. It was Jan. 23, 2015, and Thompson had spent the third quarter scoring a record 37 points without missing a shot against the Sacramento Kings.Early in the fourth quarter, after finishing with 52 points for the game, he grabbed a box score and a seat on the bench.“He probably could’ve broken even more records,” James Michael McAdoo, one of Thompson’s former teammates, recalled in a telephone interview. “But it wasn’t even a thought for him: ‘Nah, man. I’m cool.’ And he treated the rest of the game like he would any other: always engaged, cheering for guys like me when I was getting those garbage minutes.”At the time, the Warriors were just beginning to assert their dominance. They were still a few months from making the first of five straight appearances in the N.B.A. finals, a run that produced three championships. But while Warriors guard Stephen Curry was scripting drama on nearly a nightly basis, it was Thompson and his molten third quarter against the Kings that seemed to signal to the basketball-watching world that the Warriors — officially, undeniably — were different.“It was ridiculous,” Bob Myers, the team’s general manager and president of basketball operations, said in a telephone interview. “Honestly, it’s a blur. That whole season, man, that’s the one where I should’ve just ridden off into the sunset. That’s the one where you’re saying to yourself, ‘Wow, this is a dream.’ Everything was perfect.”Clips of that perfect quarter in that perfect season recently circulated on social media, marking the game’s sixth anniversary while offering a reminder of Thompson’s absence. It has been nearly 20 months since he last appeared in uniform for the Warriors, who have won 26 games without him.After tearing up his left knee in the 2019 N.B.A. finals, Thompson experienced a calamitous setback in November, when he tore his right Achilles’ tendon in an off-season workout. All told, Thompson is expected to miss two full seasons. And in this strange, largely spectator-free period for the league, an endlessly drab atmosphere somehow feels just a bit gloomier because of his absence.“It’s too bad for the league, for us, for everybody,” Myers said. “But mostly, for him.”Thompson, who will turn 31 on Feb. 8, has yet to play a game since re-signing with the Warriors for five years and $190 million in July 2019. The psychological toll has weighed on him. Two seasons of his prime: gone. His teammates hurt for him, too. Curry told The Undefeated that he cried when he learned that Thompson had been injured again. “A lot of tears,” Curry said.Thompson, center, Stephen Curry, right, and Draymond Green, left, were the core of Golden State’s team as it made five straight trips to the N.B.A. finals.Credit…Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe jarring part, McAdoo said, was that Thompson had seemed fairly indestructible, rarely missing games through his first eight seasons.“I don’t think I ever even saw him getting therapy,” said McAdoo, who spent three seasons with the Warriors, from 2014 to 2017, and now plays in Japan. “Dude was a tank.”McAdoo, though, recalled how Coach Steve Kerr would often say that teams needed to be good, and they also needed to be lucky. Thompson is coping with his share of bad fortune.“He has faith that he’s going to come back 100 percent,” his father, Mychal Thompson, said in an interview. “He knows he needs to be patient.”Mychal Thompson, a former N.B.A. center, added that his son had been encouraged by the high-level play of the Houston Rockets’ John Wall and the Nets’ Kevin Durant, both of whom missed significant time because of Achilles’ tendon injuries before returning this season. The Warriors are planning/hoping/yearning for Thompson’s return before the start of next season.On Saturday night, Thompson made his first public comments of the season when he joined the NBC Bay Area’s broadcast crew for a stretch of the Warriors’ 118-91 win over the Detroit Pistons.“Just a little bored at times,” Thompson said. “But I’m feeling good. I’m happy to be back with my teammates. Unfortunately, I’m not playing. It kills me every day, but I plan on playing for a long time, and I don’t want to have any mishaps come this rehab.”Thompson, who remains in a walking boot, added that he had been reluctant to make his cameo, but then he saw that the network had produced a branded “Reporter Klay” backdrop for him to use.“Someone went through great lengths to make that happen,” he said, deadpan, “so I felt bad not fulfilling my end of the deal.”Myers likened his job as general manager to assembling a jigsaw puzzle: Say the puzzle is missing a random piece toward the right. Though the missing piece might be noticeable, Myers said, the general idea of the puzzle would still be intact.Now say the puzzle is missing one of the corners.“If you walked into the room and looked at it, you’d say, ‘Where’s the corner piece?’” Myers said. “And I’d say, ‘Well, I can’t find it.’ And you’d say, ‘Well, the puzzle looks screwed up.’ And I’d say, ‘It didn’t come in the box!’ But I know it stands out. Klay is a corner piece.”The Warriors were missing two corner pieces last season. Curry was sidelined for all but five games because of a broken left hand. Thompson split his time between San Francisco and Los Angeles as he focused on rehabilitating his knee. He watched from a remove as the Warriors finished with the worst record in the league.“It’s pretty abrupt to go from five straight finals to just out for the season,” Myers said, “and I think he was just working through how to manage that mentally. I can’t speak for him, but I think he was trying to figure out where to be, and it was challenging.”This season, Curry has returned to his familiar form, and the Warriors — with multiple new pieces — have been mostly competitive after a rocky start. At the same time, Thompson has been a much more consistent presence around the team, taking up residence on the bench at home games — something he did far less often last season.“I think it’s much better for him to be around the guys and feel like you’re a part of it,” Mychal Thompson said. “It helps the time go by faster.”Klay has picked his spots to counsel teammates, like the first-year center James Wiseman, who received several tips from Thompson during a recent game against the Minnesota Timberwolves: Stay aggressive, take care of your body and be a great teammate.“I just love to listen,” Wiseman said in a conference call, “and he can tell.”Thompson was electric against the Sacramento Kings on Jan. 23, 2015, scoring 37 points in the third quarter and 52 points for the night.Credit…Ben Margot/Associated PressThompson has long kept his approach simple. He loves his dog, a bulldog named Rocco, spending time by the water, playing chess and shooting a basketball. His demeanor has not changed since he entered the league in 2011, which is no small feat. He is as popular among his peers as he is with fans. Few players, if any, are less polarizing.“I think what’s most endearing about Klay is that what you see is what you get,” Myers said. “And that is so hard in the N.B.A. It’s such a hard place to not be affected by the money, by the celebrity, by social media, by the fans — who the heck knows? But he’s always put himself and the N.B.A. in the proper place. He’s maintained his center.”The public got a quirky glimpse of that in 2017, and it had nothing to do with his 3-point shooting or his defensive prowess. The Warriors were in New York to play the Nets when Thompson was randomly stopped on the street by a television news reporter who was interviewing people about the dangers of faulty scaffolding. Thompson proceeded to do an on-camera interview in which he explained his mental calculation about whether he walks under scaffolding or around it.“I usually observe if the piping and stuff is new,” he said.When Thompson was later asked about his cameo on the local news, he told reporters that he had wanted to offer his thoughts as a “concerned citizen.”“There are a lot of layers to Klay,” Myers said, “and all of them are good. When you peel them back, you just get more authenticity with him.”McAdoo said he was always struck by Thompson’s pregame ritual of reading the newspaper at his locker. (Thompson has said that it helps him relax.)“And he actually reads it,” McAdoo said. “I just found it so odd: ‘Bro, who still reads the newspaper?’”Myers daydreams about Thompson’s eventual return, he said, and about what it will mean for Thompson and for his teammates. In the meantime, another season lurches along without him. The wait continues.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      John Chaney, Hall of Fame Temple Basketball Coach, Dies at 89

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn Chaney, Hall of Fame Temple Basketball Coach, Dies at 89He won more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships with Temple, and he took his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s regional finals five times.John Chaney, the longtime Temple University basketball coach, in 1999. He insisted that his players show discipline on the court and that they pursue their studies.Credit…Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesJan. 29, 2021Updated 5:54 p.m. ETJohn Chaney, the famously combative Hall of Fame coach who took Temple University to 17 N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments, largely recruiting high school players from poor neighborhoods who were overlooked by the college game’s national powers, died on Friday. He was 89.His death was announced by Temple. The university did not say where he died or specify the cause, saying only that he died “after a short illness.”Chaney was 50 when Temple hired him, giving him a chance to coach major-college basketball after 10 seasons and a Division II championship at Cheyney State College (now Cheyney University), outside Philadelphia.He coached at Temple, in Philadelphia, for 24 seasons, winning more than 500 games and six Atlantic 10 tournament championships and taking his teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament’s regional finals five times. He did that despite having only one consensus all-American, the guard Mark Macon, who led the Temple team that was ranked No. 1 at the close of the 1987-88 regular season.Chaney was voted the national coach of the year in 1987 and 1988 and elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2001.His tie often askew as he shouted in his raspy voice at his players and the referees, Chaney was a consummate battler. He insisted that his players show discipline on the court — he regarded turnovers as basketball’s greatest sin — and that they pursue their studies and conduct themselves properly, however chaotic their lives might be.Having grown up poor in the segregated Depression-era South and in Philadelphia, Chaney viewed himself as a mentor to young men who often came from broken homes.“Sometimes I’m a little nasty,” he once told The Orlando Sentinel. “But underneath I still carry with me a strong feeling of concern for youngsters. I’ll do just about anything to convince a youngster he can be a winner, and not just a winner in basketball but a winner in life. I want players to take up my value system.”Macon, who later played in the N.B.A. and became an assistant to Chaney at Temple, said in an interview with Comcast SportsNet that Chaney was “my mother and my father,” adding, “He’d tell me the right thing to do and not to do.”But Chaney’s outrage at what he perceived as injustice sometimes raised questions about his own standards of behavior.Incensed by what he saw as an effort by John Calipari, then the coach of his Atlantic 10 rival Massachusetts, to intimidate referees, he charged at Calipari after Temple had lost to his team by one point in a 1994 game, shouting “I’ll kill you” as onlookers held him back.On the eve of a 2005 game against St. Joseph’s, Chaney said he would send “one of my goons” after the team’s players, whom he accused of using illegal screens to free up shooters. The next night he inserted a 6-foot-8-inch, 250-pound bench warmer, Nehemiah Ingram, into the game. Ingram committed a flurry of fouls, one of which leveled a St. Joseph’s senior forward, John Bryant, breaking his arm.Chaney was suspended for one game over the outburst at Calipari and for five games after the St. Joseph’s incident.Always outspoken, he railed against what he perceived as culturally biased and racist standardized academic testing requirements imposed by the N.C.A.A. for basketball eligibility. He expressed disdain for the administration of President George W. Bush and spoke out against the Iraq war.Chaney was surrounded by his players after Temple beat St. Bonaventure on Jan. 28, 2004, for his 700th career victory. He finished his career with a total of 741.Credit…George Widman/Associated PressJohn Chaney was born on Jan. 21, 1932, in Jacksonville, Fla., and grew up in a low-lying house that often flooded. His stepfather, seeking work in a defense plant, brought the family to the Philadelphia area during World War II.Chaney was voted the most valuable player of Philadelphia’s public high school basketball league in 1951, but his family was too poor to buy a suit for him for the award ceremonies. He wore his stepfather’s suit, its sleeves and pants hanging down.He became a small-college all-American at the historically Black Bethune-Cookman College in Florida, then played briefly for the Harlem Globetrotters and played for teams in Sunbury and Williamsport, Pa., in the semipro Eastern League, where he was named the most valuable player.Chaney was the first Black basketball coach in Philadelphia’s Big Five — Temple, Penn, Villanova, St. Joseph’s and La Salle. His first Temple team went 14-15, but that was his only losing season with the Owls. His 1987-88 squad finished with a 32-2 record and went to a regional final. But Chaney’s teams were barely above the .500 mark in his last four years at Temple.He had a record of 516-253 at Temple from 1982 to 2006 after posting a 225-59 record at Cheyney State from 1972 to 1982.Information on survivors was not immediately available.While Chaney’s temper memorably got the best of him at times, he apologized for the Calipari and St. Joseph’s incidents.But even after his retirement, he seemed to enjoy reprising his provocative image. In a 2010 interview with The Temple News, a student newspaper, Chaney was asked if he had any regrets.“The only regret I have is that I exposed so much of myself to the media,” he said. “Certainly, I regret the language I used with Calipari. I should have waited until after the game was over and then took him outside and beat the hell out of him.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Sekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySekou Smith, Award-Winning N.B.A. Reporter and Analyst, Dies at 48Mr. Smith, the creator and host of NBA.com’s “Hang Time” blog and podcast, covered professional basketball for more than two decades. He died of complications of Covid-19.Sekou Smith, a reporter for NBA-TV and NBA.com, had a long career covering basketball.Credit…Turner SportsJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:58 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.For much of his journalism career, you would never see Sekou Smith in a sport coat. Not at the N.B.A. games he covered, not in the newsroom.“Wearing a tie? No, never happened. Wearing a suit? Oh, you can forget about it,” said Arthur Triche, who used to work in public relations for the Atlanta Hawks and regarded Mr. Smith as his best friend.That was until Mr. Smith started working as a multimedia reporter and analyst for NBA TV and NBA.com in 2009, when he became “the fashionista,” Mr. Triche said.Mr. Smith’s bold clothing choices matched his reporting style: authentic, fair and unafraid, said Michael Lee, a sports reporter for The Washington Post who met Mr. Smith almost 22 years ago. While he was tough on teams, they knew it was always merited, Mr. Lee said.“He can make enemies his friends,” he said.Mr. Smith died of complications of the coronavirus on Jan. 26 at a hospital in Marietta, Ga., where his family lives, according to Mr. Triche and Ayanna Smith, one of Mr. Smith’s sisters. He was 48.Sekou Kimathi Sinclair Smith was born on May 15, 1972, in Grand Rapids, Mich., to Estelle Louise Smith, an information technology specialist, and Walter Alexander Smith, who was a teacher and a school principal. His parents were often present at Mr. Smith’s sporting events, of which there were many: He played basketball, tennis, soccer and football and wrestled.Ayanna Smith said Sekou had especially liked riding his bike up and down Auburn Avenue, the street where they lived as children and a continuing reference point for their family’s group text messages in more recent years.“We were the ‘307 Auburn’ chat,” Ms. Smith said. “Every morning, whether it was Dad or Sekou or one of my brothers and sisters, one of us would text in there about the weather or whatever was going on.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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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