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      Stephen Curry Scores 62 Points in Win Over Trail Blazers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStephen Curry Answers His Critics With a 62-Point GameA career-best performance against Portland reminded the league what the Golden State Warriors guard can do.Stephen Curry’s incredible night led to a win for the Golden State Warriors and a postgame interview that was interrupted when his teammate Damion Lee doused him with water.Credit…Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesJan. 4, 2021Updated 10:08 a.m. ETStephen Curry has heard the criticism. He is aware his legacy is being questioned, and he knows that any bad game will start again the reconsideration of his accomplishments. But after scoring a career-high 62 points for the Golden State Warriors in a 137-122 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night, Curry sent a clear message to his critics: Keep talking.“I like being talked about because there’s expectations,” he said.Curry’s career-best performance came in a matchup with one of his biggest on-court rivals — Damian Lillard of Portland — and on the heels of a storm of social media criticism in which his legacy as a team-lifting superstar was called into question.“Cue the Jordan meme: ‘I take all that personally,’” Curry said with a laugh, referencing a line by Michael Jordan in the documentary “The Last Dance.”Curry then explained that the performance — he had 31 points at halftime — came from a much simpler place than people might be assuming: “I had an opportunity to assert my will on the game early and create some energy.”Asserting his will included shooting 18 of 31 from the field, 8 of 16 from 3-point range and 18 of 19 from the free-throw line. Curry became the first player since Kobe Bryant on Dec. 20, 2005, to score at least 30 points in each half of a game, and he bettered his previous career high of 54 points, which was set in a road loss to the Knicks in 2013.His 62 points also were the most by any player this season and made him only the fifth player in franchise history to score 60 or more points, a feat last accomplished by Klay Thompson, who had 60 in 29 minutes during a blowout win over the Indiana Pacers in 2016. Rick Barry, Joe Fulks, Thompson and Curry have one 60-point game apiece for the Warriors, while Wilt Chamberlain had 27.“He came out looking like a man on a mission,” Draymond Green said of Curry, who scored 21 points in the first quarter.Thompson welcomed Curry to the 60-point club with a tweet, and Curry’s younger brother, Seth, who plays for the Philadelphia 76ers, took the opportunity to poke fun at Stephen’s critics, who seem to turn nearly every game into a referendum on his legacy.Curry said his brother’s tweet was the best one he’d seen so far and that criticism was just part of being a superstar.“I don’t get frazzled too easily and I’m very confident in who I am as a person and as a basketball player,” he said. “There’s not going to be anything you can say about me or to me that’s going to affect that. At the end of the day that’s how I got here.”While Curry has played well early this season, averaging 32.3 points and 6.2 assists through six games, there is no question that the Warriors are a far cry from the juggernaut once led by Curry, Thompson, Green and Kevin Durant. Golden State opened the season with blowout losses to Durant’s Nets and the Milwaukee Bucks, and looked inept in a loss to Portland on Friday. While their poor play has come mostly from newcomers like Andrew Wiggins and Kelly Oubre, a heavy share of the blame has landed squarely on the shoulders of Curry, the Warriors’ best player. His most persistent critics have questioned why a two-time winner of the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award can’t lift a lesser team to relevance in the way LeBron James has done.Green, who recently returned from an injury, rejected that premise.“Everybody is always going to try to find a reason to nitpick something Steph does, whether it’s that you haven’t won a Finals M.V.P. or you haven’t carried a team,” Green said. “If I’m not mistaken, he carried the 2015 team.”“To be honest, he’s carried every team, because he’s been the leader of the group since I’ve been here.”Many of Curry’s younger teammates were not with Golden State during the championship years. They were left struggling to describe such a dominant performance.In addition to his typical outside shooting, Curry was aggressive at getting to the rim, leading to a career-high in free-throw attempts. Credit…Tony Avelar/Associated PressJames Wiseman, the team’s rookie center, compared it to a video game. “It reminds me of 2K,” he said, “because I used to play with Steph all the time, and I used to drop like 60. So, just like actually watching in person, that was phenomenal.”Oubre, a veteran wing acquired during the off-season to help fill in for the injured Thompson, brought the perspective of having been one of Curry’s opponents, saying “I was just happy to be on the same side as him tonight, because I know it stunk for the other team.”Curry declined to predict if big-scoring games would become a regular occurrence. But he objected to a reporter’s saying he couldn’t score 62 points every game, playfully responding “Hey, why not?”And Coach Steve Kerr, who said he had lifted Curry in the game’s final minute “so the 42 people in the stands could give him a standing ovation,” said he was perplexed why anyone would criticize Curry in the first place.“I’m not playing dumb: Does he really take criticism?” Kerr asked. “I’ll check out Twitter later. I hope they are saying something good about him tonight.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Timeout for the N.B.A.’s Halftime Performers Is Costing Them Big

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Timeout for the N.B.A.’s Halftime Performers Is Costing Them BigThe pandemic has all but shut down the income streams for halftime performers, who typically make $1,500 to $5,000 a show. The emotional toll is high as well.Gary Borstelmann, who is better known as the Amazing Sladek, performed at halftime during the 2019 N.B.A. playoffs.Credit…Mark Sobhani/NBAE, via Getty ImagesJan. 4, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETSteve Max usually spends his winters telling big crowds at basketball arenas to put their hands up and to touch their shoulders and to cover their eyes. Max is a professional Simon Says caller who travels the country entertaining fans at halftime.Or at least that was his line of work until March, when the coronavirus pandemic emptied arenas and rendered his microphone silent. For the past nine months, Max has been at home in White Plains, N.Y., doing what he can to keep busy. In addition to updating his website, he has tried to adapt to these weird times with a nudge from his wife, Linda Harelick.After reading about how an animal sanctuary was making goats available for cameos on corporate video calls, she offered a suggestion: If those goats can make money, so can you.“So I turned my den into a Zoom studio,” Max, who was born Steve Harelick, said in a telephone interview. “I’ve got something on Thursday for Ernst & Young.”A backstage view of Steve Max’s new marketplace now that the pandemic has quieted his Simon Says shows.Credit…Steve MaxA niche industry for halftime entertainers like Max, 58, has disappeared during the pandemic. Though a few N.B.A. teams began the season with limited numbers of spectators — and some are allowing their dance teams to perform in the aisles — none are hiring halftime entertainers. Contortionists, acrobats, Frisbee-catching dogs — they are all biding their time, waiting for the show to go on.Gary Borstelmann, who does a handstand atop a teetering tower of chairs in his act as the Amazing Sladek, has been supplementing his daily hourlong workouts — lots of handstands, lots of stretching — by hauling a couple of his chairs out to the front lawn a few times a week. He knows he needs to stay in shape.“If you saw me practicing, you’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s only balancing on two chairs,’” he said. “But the intensity of six chairs is in my face.”Simon Arestov and Lyric Wallenda Arestov, a husband and wife team that does a balancing routine on a circus prop called the rolla bolla, have had to explain some hard realities to their 3-year-old son, Alex, who often participates in their act’s grand finale.“He sees our costumes because I’m repairing them and making sure everything is ready to go whenever we get the call,” Wallenda Arestov said. “And he’s like: ‘Mom, that’s my costume! When are we going to do a basketball show?’ And it breaks my heart, because he misses it, too.”Beyond the financial impact — halftime entertainers typically make $1,500 to $5,000 a show — the effects of the pandemic have been felt within their community. David Maas, who had a popular act called Quick Change with his wife, Dania Kaseeva, died of Covid-19 in November.“My heart goes out to all my friends who are in this business,” said Jon Terry, a booking agent for halftime performers who is based in Oklahoma. “These are creative people, and in many cases, it’s their sole income. Some of these guys were making six-figure incomes, and you drop that out and there’s no place for them to do anything else.”And they all can recall in vivid detail the day that everything changed.On March 11, Arestov and Wallenda Arestov, who are both 36, were at home in Sarasota, Fla., preparing to travel to New York so they could perform at the Big East Conference men’s basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden — one of about 30 halftime shows they do for the N.B.A. and the N.C.A.A. each year. But that night, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the coronavirus before a game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the phone call soon came from a conference official: The tournament was going to limit attendance. It was soon canceled altogether.Simon Arestov and Lyric Wallenda Arestov, a husband and wife team that does a balancing routine on a contraption called the rolla bolla, often include their 3-year-old son, Alex, in their act.Credit…Courtesy Madison Square GardenAt the time, the couple had a long list of N.B.A. halftimes lined up for the rest of the season. They were also planning to bounce among festivals and circuses during the summer months in their 43-foot recreation vehicle, sometimes performing two or three times a day. On average, they do about 400 shows a year.Since March, the couple has performed exactly four times. Their return after a six-month hiatus came in September at the Juniata County Fair in Port Royal, Pa. They both cried.“I forgot what it was like to be in front of an audience,” Arestov said.They have since performed at a circus in Indiana, at a private event for a hotel and at a Toys for Tots fund-raiser. They have mixed feelings about doing their act at all. They have wanted to do their part during the pandemic, they said, which has mostly meant staying home. Maas of Quick Change was distantly related to Lyric through marriage.For a couple who typically spend about 300 days on the road a year, it has been an adjustment.“I think we’ve watched everything on Netflix,” said Arestov, who estimated they had lost about 95 percent of their income for the year. “We’re trying to stay positive. We can see a light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines, but we’ve been juggling our finances because there hasn’t been a lot of help from the government for our industry.”Borstelmann had long thought he would retire at 65. At 62, he already considers himself — and take a deep breath, here — the country’s oldest daredevil acrobatic hand balancer. There is an element of physical risk that Borstelmann takes every time he does his handstand about 25 feet above center court.“I’m the only one of the halftime performers who actually risks his life, you know?” he said. “If I fall, I’m probably not getting up.”But the pandemic has altered his timeline — and in a surprising way.“Now,” Borstelmann said, “I want to go until I’m 70. I’m not letting the pandemic retire me.”After doing a halftime show at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix on March 7, Borstelmann packed up his Chrysler minivan and made the four-day cross-country drive to Greensboro, N.C., where he was scheduled to perform during the Atlantic Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament. About 15 minutes after he checked into his hotel on March 11, he got the news that conference officials were canceling the tournament. Borstelmann sat on his bed watching ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and tried to digest what it all meant.“I lost my last 12 contracts,” Borstelmann said. “That hit me hard. My gosh. That’s probably the money that I’m able to save from a whole season after expenses and everything else.”Basketball is Borstelmann’s bread and butter. He does about 40 halftimes a year, hopscotching across the country in his minivan. (He does not trust airline baggage handlers with his custom-built chairs.)But for the past nine months, Borstelmann has been at home in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., with his 90-year-old mother, Grace, and his 33-year-old daughter, Kerri Grace, who returned to Florida after leaving her teaching job in Hong Kong.“I’m a real family guy,” Borstelmann said, “so that’s been a silver lining.”Borstelmann with his parents in 2015.Credit…Sarah Beth Glicksteen for The New York TimesIn his 40 years as an acrobat, Borstelmann says, he has never fallen. He did tear a hamstring in his left leg while doing a forward flip as he made his entrance at an Orlando Magic game in 2017, but he went ahead with his routine anyway — and finished out his season without missing any of his scheduled performances.“I was in so much pain, bro,” he said.He realizes that he cannot do this forever. He will know it is time to step away, he said, when he loses his nerve or his strength and he no longer feels safe. But the pandemic, in its own way, has offered a glimpse at life without the bright lights, and he cannot see himself packing up his chairs any time soon.“For five minutes,” he said, “I’m at center court and I’m connecting with the crowd and I’m the Amazing Sladek. When I can’t do this anymore, I’m just Sladek, man.”In that sense, Max said he felt fortunate. He can do his Simon Says act for another 20 years.“I’m not flipping off tables or pulling any muscles,” he said. “For me, the only exercise is if I have a tight connection in Phoenix, and I have to run from Terminal A to Terminal D.”As a teenager in New Jersey, Max learned to juggle and worked the local circuit doing magic shows. “I would balance stuff on my face — chairs and tables,” he said.The appeal, he said, was bringing joy to people — making them smile, making them laugh. And video calls cannot fully replicate the experience of interacting with a live audience.“I’ve been missing it desperately,” Max said. “I miss hanging out with the mascots. It’s not just a business arrangement with the teams. These people are my friends.”Max has big plans for his post-pandemic return. He wants to break the world record for the largest group of people playing Simon Says at the same time.“I think that’s the perfect time to do it,” he said, “when people are back together.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Paul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPaul Westphal, N.B.A. Hall of Famer and Coach, Dies at 70Drafted in the first round by the Celtics, he played for 12 seasons before leading teams in Phoenix, Seattle and Sacramento.Paul Westphal, left, drives past Bobby Wilkerson during a game against the Denver Nuggets in 1978.Credit…Mark Junge/Getty ImagesJan. 2, 2021Updated 6:58 p.m. ETPaul Westphal, the Basketball Hall of Fame guard who played for the Boston Celtics’ 1974 N.B.A. champions, became a four-time All-Star with the Phoenix Suns and coached them to the league playoff final in 1993, died on Saturday. He was 70. Westphal, whose death was confirmed by the Suns, was found to have brain cancer in the summer of 2020.Westphal was an outstanding shooter with both hands and a fine playmaker and defensive player. He played in the N.B.A. for 12 seasons, also with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Knicks. He was a head coach for all or part of 10 seasons, with the Suns, Seattle and the Sacramento Kings, and an assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks and the Brooklyn Nets.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., as a player in 2019.The Celtics selected Westphal in the first round of the 1972 N.B.A. draft, the 10th player chosen over all.One of his finest games with Boston came in the 1974 N.B.A. championship finals against the Milwaukee Bucks.Westphal scored 12 points in Game 5 and played stifling defense against Oscar Robertson, one of the N.B.A.’s greatest players, who made only 2 of his 13 shots. The Celtics won, 96-87, on the Bucks’ court and captured the series, four games to three.But Westphal was mostly a reserve in his three seasons with the Celtics, since they had outstanding guards in Jo Jo White and Don Chaney. They traded him to the Suns in May 1975 for Charlie Scott, the future Hall of Fame forward, and draft picks.Westphal was back in the playoff finals in 1976, this time playing for Phoenix against Boston. He scored 25 points in Game 5, though the Suns were beaten, 128-126, in triple overtime in what has been called “the greatest game ever played.” The Suns lost the series, 4 games to 2.Westphal played for the Suns from 1975 to 1980 and again in his final season, 1983-84. He played with the SuperSonics in 1980-81, when he gained his fifth All-Star selection. The Knicks signed him midway through the 1981-82 season, though he was still recovering from a stress fracture of his right foot incurred when he played for Seattle.Westphal was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Credit…Elise Amendola/Associated PressIn November 1982, Westphal got a taste of the New York-based television world when he had a small role as a police officer on ABC’s daytime drama “The Edge of Night.”“I’ve never had any acting experience, except for trying to draw fouls during basketball games,” he told The New York Times. But, as he put it, “since basketball players and actors are both pampered and spoiled, I think I would have no trouble making the change to acting.”He never did pursue an acting career, but he won the N.B.A.’s Comeback Player of the Year Award for 1982-83, when he helped take the Knicks to the second round of the playoffs, appearing in 80 of their 82 games and averaging 10 points a game, having recovered from his injury with Seattle.Westphal averaged 20.6 points a game in his six seasons with the Suns and had career averages of 15.6 points and 4.4 assists per game. He won 318 games and lost 279 as an N.B.A. head coach.After his playing days, Westphal coached at several western colleges, including Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, taking the school to the 1988 NAIA national championship.He was an assistant coach with the Suns for four seasons before he was named head coach in 1992-93, when they posted the N.B.A.’s best regular-season record at 62-20, led by Charles Barkley, the league’s most valuable player, along with Dan Majerle, Kevin Johnson and Danny Ainge. But the Suns lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in a six-game championship final.Westphal coached several outstanding Suns team afterward but was fired in January 1996 when the Suns, riddled with injuries, were playing poorly.He coached the SuperSonics and the Kings for all or parts of three seasons each and closed out his coaching career as a Nets assistant from 2014 to 2016.Paul Douglas Westphal was born on Nov. 30, 1950, in Torrance, Calif., a son of Armin and Ruth Westphal. His father, an aeronautical engineer, and his older brother, Bill, shot hoops with him in the family’s driveway when he was a youngster.He was a basketball star at Aviation High School in Redondo Beach, then played for the University of Southern California for three seasons. He averaged 16.4 points a game and was voted as a second-team all-American in The Associated Press poll for 1971.Westphal’s survivors include his wife, Cindy; their daughter, Victoria, and a son, Michael. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.“In training camp, he told us his greatest asset would be his ability to relate,” Kevin Johnson told The Seattle Times in February 1999 when Westphal was in his first season as the Sonics’ coach. “He was a rookie, he was an All-Star, he was a free agent, he got waived, he was traded, he got old. He’s been through every possible experience.”“I hoped to be a player, but always planned on being a coach,” Westphal said. “I was able to play for 12 years and postpone my coaching career.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Blake Griffin on Life as an NBA Elder: ‘I Feel Ancient’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBlake Griffin: Thriving Away From the Rim and Feeling ‘Ancient’At 31, Griffin is a Detroit Pistons elder who still knows how to entertain, even if soaring dunks are no longer his specialty.Blake Griffin made his name with high-flying dunks with the Los Angeles Clippers but is reinventing himself as a versatile, modern-day big man in Detroit.Credit…Brian Sevald/NBAE, via Getty ImagesJan. 2, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETThere must be some mistake. There is no way Blake Griffin, the star forward for the Detroit Pistons, is in his 11th N.B.A. season. Wasn’t he just soaringover the hood of a Kia to win the slam dunk contest? Being schooled in “dunkology” by Jeff Goldblum? That was almost a decade ago?It’s true. Griffin has entered the 2020-21 season as the third oldest player on the Pistons, behind Derrick Rose and Wayne Ellington.“It’s just happened so fast,” Griffin, a six-time All-Star, said in a recent phone interview, adding later: “I saw on our roster, I was seeing the birth dates and it was like, some guys were born in 2001. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh. I feel ancient.’”Griffin, 31, is a year removed from one of the best seasons of his career and a dozen years older than two of his rookie teammates, Killian Hayes and Isaiah Stewart. Griffin has plenty of games left, he said. But in basketball years, in a league in which the best players seem to get younger every season, he is akin to middle-aged.Entering his fourth season in Detroit, with a franchise that is embracing a youth movement, Griffin has had to transition from high-flying phenom to locker room sage, while still being expected to deliver All-N.B.A. performances. Five Pistons players were born in 1999 or later.“I’ve also just really enjoyed it, especially this group of rookies that we have now,” Griffin said. “They’re great players, but great kids. They want to learn. They come. They ask you questions.”As publicly accepting of Detroit’s path as Griffin has been, he is still a competitor and an N.B.A. star with a glaring hole in his résumé: He has never made a conference finals.“The individual awards and these things are fine, and I’m appreciative of them, but I just want to win,” Griffin said. “Not making it to a conference final, yeah, it does gnaw at me. Not to the point where I’m losing sleep over it. But that’s the main goal — I want to win.”A native of Oklahoma City, Griffin has basketball in his DNA. His father, Tommy Griffin, was a decorated high school coach in the area. His older brother by nearly three years, Taylor Griffin, had a short spell in the N.B.A. and played overseas.Taylor, now Blake’s manager, was also his teammate at the University of Oklahoma, where they would occasionally get into physical confrontations during pickup games.Blake, left, and Taylor Griffin at a practice when they were teammates at the University of Oklahoma.Credit…Steve Sisney/The Oklahoman, via Associated Press“There’s points in middle school and elementary school where it didn’t matter what we were doing — it ended in a fight,” Taylor said. “Tears, maybe some blood. It could be a race to the car. It could be a board game.”After two seasons at Oklahoma, Blake Griffin was drafted with the first overall pick by the Los Angeles Clippers in 2009. He missed his first year because of a knee injury.After his N.B.A. career officially began in 2010-11, Griffin was known mostly as an electrifying dunker. That alone was enough to turn him into a force and to help revitalize an ignored Clippers franchise. A decade later, Griffin has adapted to the modern N.B.A.: He is one of the best passing forwards in the league and has developed an accurate 3-point shot. In 2018-19, Griffin shot seven 3-pointers a game and made an above-average 36.2 percent.He went 0 for 5 from 3-point range in his first game this season, against Minnesota, but responded with eight 3-pointers in his next game, against Cleveland. He missed Friday’s game against the Boston Celtics because of concussion protocols.Elite big men known for playing in the paint historically have not developed jump shots later in their careers. To those who watched Griffin during his early years as a pro, like his former coach Vinny Del Negro, Griffin’s willingness to evolve was expected, given a strong work ethic.“I saw how much Blake was determined to become a consistent shooter and a consistent player, from that standpoint,” said Del Negro, who coached Griffin for three seasons with the Clippers. “But at the end of the day, there’s really nothing physically Blake can’t do on the basketball court.”Griffin’s evolution has come off the court, too. He, along with fellow N.B.A. stars Trae Young and Russell Westbrook, has been campaigning for clemency to be granted to Julius Jones, who was convicted in 2002 of first-degree murder and is on death row in Oklahoma. Jones, who was 19 when he was arrested, has maintained his innocence. He used to play basketball for Griffin’s father.In recent years, Griffin has also started a production company and a podcast, while delving into stand-up comedy. He has long been known for his charisma, which translated into amusing commercials and a larger-than-life personality in the locker room.“I walked in one time, and he was doing me in the locker room,” said Caron Butler, who played with Griffin for two seasons in Los Angeles, said, adding: “I walked in, and he looked at me and I was like, ‘Bro, you nailed it.’ It was an awkward moment. Crazy. But at the same time, that’s who Blake is.”Griffin takes his comedy seriously. He has performed at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, which is known as a sort of comedy Shangri-La, and has said that he can see comedy as a “second career” after basketball.“With comedy, I never want to go to The Store and take somebody’s time slot,” Griffin said, referring to The Comedy Store, the famed Los Angeles club. “I prefer to do something where I’m hosting a show and I get to bring people on.”He added, “I don’t want to do that thing where I show up and maybe lean on my name a little bit and try to skip the line, because it’s a process and I want to respect that.”Griffin hosted Comedy By Blake, a comedy night for his youth charity, Team Griffin Foundation, in 2017.Credit…Dustin Snipes/Red Bull Content Pool, via Associated Press ImagesGriffin’s first priority, though, he said, is basketball. He sees himself playing for at least another five years, hoping to win that elusive championship. And this brings us back to Detroit.When Griffin entered the N.B.A., star players weren’t as likely to switch teams through free agency or to demand trades as they are today. Now the environment has shifted, but Griffin, who can opt out of his contract after this season, insisted he is happy with the Pistons, despite their uncertain championship prospects. Griffin said that the organization has been “nothing but unbelievable” and “very supportive.” He demurred when asked about the possibility of free agency.“It’s not a decision that I have to make in the immediate future,” Griffin said. “And I know, I’m sorry, I’m just kind of running around that question, but it’s just true. Things can change.”Change can happen quickly for organizations too, as Griffin found out when he was unexpectedly traded to the Pistons in 2018 shortly after signing an extension with the Clippers.But for now, Detroit seems committed to making the Griffin-Pistons marriage work. Troy Weaver, who was hired in June to be Detroit’s general manager, said that at their first meeting he told Griffin that he was “what I wanted the Pistons to be all about.”Butler, a two-time All Star, had to make a transition similar to Griffin’s during his 14-year playing career. He said Griffin was “well rounded” enough to make it work.“I think that the way you can be an asset to a team and to organizations, it comes in a variety of ways,” said Butler, now an assistant coach with the Miami Heat. “Sometimes it’s just your production. And then the older you get, all the little things become big things. It’s mentorship. It’s conversations. It’s your wisdom of being battle tested and long in the teeth to help navigate those young players through that stage. A lot of people aren’t able to do it, because sometimes guys are just good at the one specific thing, whether it’s scoring or defense.”Much of Griffin’s future will rest on his production this year. He has struggled with injuries, missing most of last season because of knee soreness. He had extended time off after the coronavirus pandemic delayed this season’s start, and Griffin said he “can’t remember a training camp where my body felt better.”And this means a decade later, he thinks he can still pull off his most famous act: the Kia dunk.“Yeah, I think I can clear the hood still,” Griffin said. “But I don’t know that I’m willing to try it now.”Griffin said he is happy in Detroit, even though the team’s prospects for winning a championship are uncertain.Credit…Tim Fuller/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Becky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. Game

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBecky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. GameShe took over coaching the San Antonio Spurs after Gregg Popovich was ejected from a game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday night.Becky Hammon took over as head coach of the Spurs.Credit…Eric Gay/Associated PressDec. 31, 2020Updated 9:53 a.m. ETThough 2020 is nearly over, it keeps turning out sports milestones. On Wednesday night, for the first time, a woman served as head coach in an N.B.A. game.When Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was ejected after arguing with a referee in the second quarter of a game with the Los Angeles Lakers in San Antonio, he turned to his assistant, Becky Hammon, and indicated that she should take over the team.“He officially pointed at me,” Hammon said. “That was it. Said, ‘You’ve got them.’ Obviously, it’s a big deal. It’s a substantial moment.”“It was business as usual,’’ she added. “They’re used to hearing my voice in practice. In practice, Pop will put us in two teams and we’ll each have a team. So they’re kind of used to hearing me out there, seeing me draw a play on the board or whatnot.”Although not much was made of the milestone during the game, which the Lakers won, 121-107, reaction poured out afterward and on social media.“It’s a beautiful thing just to hear her barking out calls, barking out sets,” said LeBron James of the Lakers. “She’s very passionate about the game. So congrats to her, congrats to our league.”Hammon, 43, played for 16 years in the W.N.B.A., where she was a six-time All Star. After being passed over for the U.S. Olympic team, she represented Russia, where she had also played professionally, in the 2008 and 2012 Games.In 2014, she becoming the first full-time female assistant coach in the league. At the time, she said of Popovich: “Honestly, I don’t think he gives two cents that I’m a woman. And I don’t want to be hired because I’m a woman.” She was head coach of the Spurs’ Las Vegas Summer League team three time, winning the title in 2015.Hammon’s trailblazing in the league has prompted speculation that she will one day be a head coach, and she has been reported to be a candidate for several top jobs in the past, most recently the Indiana Pacers.“The future is bright for her,” said Dejounte Murray of the Spurs after the game. “I hope she just sticks to it and doesn’t give up. One day it may happen, it may not happen, who knows, but she’s definitely on the right road.”Hammon sought to keep the focus on her duties.“I’m just in the moment with the guys,’’ she said. “Trying to figure out what’s the best way to help them.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Julius Randle Is Causing Something Rare: Excitement for the Knicks

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKeeping ScoreJulius Randle Is Causing Something Rare: Excitement for the KnicksAfter the Knicks’ seven consecutive losing seasons, Randle’s strong play is fueling a good start — and hope among fans.Julius Randle, who had a triple double against the Cavaliers on Tuesday night, ranks in the top 20 in the N.B.A. in points, rebounds and assists per game after four games.Credit…Tony Dejak/Associated PressDec. 30, 2020Updated 1:01 p.m. ETYou can count the games each N.B.A. team has played so far on a single hand. But since when has a small sample size ever stopped fans, especially Knicks fans, from being excited?The Knicks, coming off seven consecutive losing seasons, have started this one 2-2 after defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers, 95-86, on Tuesday night. Before the season started, New York was widely considered one of the weakest teams in the league, if not the weakest. While no one is talking playoffs yet, there is plenty of early excitement, especially because of Julius Randle.A 6-foot-8 power forward, Randle had a triple double against the Cavaliers, his first since 2018. And it wasn’t an outlier. Randle ranks in the top 20 in the league in points, rebounds and assists per game (14th, 12th and 10th). The only other player to do so is Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets. Only one player did it last season, Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks, a leading candidate to be this season’s most valuable player.Randle is also ranking in the top 20 in a host of other categories, but two of those do give pause. He ranks third in turnovers with 20, including an ugly nine against the Cavaliers on Tuesday. And he ranks third in 3-point percentage at .692.Wait, he’s hitting his 3s? How is that a problem? Because that gaudy percentage is, of course, unsustainable — the N.B.A. record for a season is .536. And unless Randle has miraculously become a long-distance sharpshooter, his percentage is likely to tumble quite a bit. In his career, he has shot only .304 from distance, and last season he shot .277. Once the 3s start to clang, as they must, some of Randle’s other numbers will start to slip.The Knicks as a team lead the N.B.A. in 3-point percentage at .459; that’s after ranking 27th in that category last season. And their opponents’ 3s have not been falling. The Knicks have surrendered a 3-point percentage of .244, best in the league. While some of that must be credited to New York’s defense, some again is most likely a result of bad luck for opponents.Under their new coach, Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks are still not taking many 3s; they rank next to last in the league at 27.3 attempts per game, about the same as last season. But they are doing much better at steering clear of the most dreaded shot in the league, the long 2: Last season, they ranked third in 2-point shots taken from 16 feet or more; this season so far they rank 21st.The Knicks are also leaning on Randle quite a bit so far, maybe too much. He leads the team at 37.8 minutes per game. That is sixth in the league, and five more minutes than his career high.Caveats aside, Randle is indisputably producing so far. His win shares per 48 minutes, a statistic that endeavors to sum up all of a player’s contributions, is 0.194, according to Basketball Reference, comfortably ahead of last season’s 0.062.Randle was taken seventh over all by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2014 out of Kentucky, and played with them for four seasons, gradually coming into his own. He left as a free agent and averaged 20 points a game for the first time in his one season with the New Orleans Pelicans, then moved on to the Knicks for 2019-20.If the Knicks are to have a breakthrough season, as their most fevered supporters are already hoping, they will need more than just Randle and a shower of successful 3s. So far the other Knicks seem to be on board, with shooting guard RJ Barrett, point guard Elfrid Payton and swingman Reggie Bullock all averaging a few points more per game than last season.The team also added the veteran Alec Burks, and though he missed Tuesday’s game with an ankle injury, he is averaging what would be a career high of 21 points, helped by an impressive 10-for-15 mark on 3-point attempts.Before this season, oddsmakers predicted the Knicks would win about 21 of their 72 scheduled games. Say what you want about sample size, but the team is almost 10 percent of the way there.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      From Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketballFrom Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.A year that began with the deaths of two N.B.A. icons could not end soon enough, marked by heartache along the way but also small moments worth celebrating now.Kobe Bryant and LeBron James dominated a year of tragedy and triumph in the basketball world.Credit…John McCoy/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETThe longest and possibly saddest year in pro basketball history is almost over. From this world that plays out on hardwood, as with so many other wings of society, there will be few fond farewells to 2020.The basketball public has been losing and grieving since the first day of January, when David Stern, the N.B.A.’s former longtime commissioner, died at age 77. Soon after, a helicopter headed for a weekend youth tournament with nine aboard, among them Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, Calif. There were no survivors.Mere weeks later, the country was gripped by the coronavirus. Inside and outside of the sport’s sphere, life did not get easier and, as 2021 dawns, it still hasn’t.Yet there was some undeniable good along the way, most of all the N.B.A.’s leadership in coping with the coronavirus, and how its players, in tandem with their longtime activist peers from the W.N.B.A., lent many loud and influential voices to a year of profound social reckoning. The N.B.A. was the first major professional sports league to shut down in response to the pandemic, completed its 2019-20 season by engineering an ambitious protective bubble, and amplified the fight for racial justice and equality.Those were real-world triumphs that will be long-lasting.So let’s celebrate them. In the final edition of Year 3 for this newsletter, I have singled out a few of the far smaller victories, too, as opposed to rehashing a frequently dispiriting 12 months in detail. For all the natural Year In Review instincts that kick in for all of us every December, I’d rather reach back for some smiles, thin as they might be, than recount all the tumult and tragedy.Allow me to rewind to All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February, when the much-maligned dunk contest, and a competitive All-Star Game crunchtime enhanced by the use of the Elam scoring system, generated a level of tension and watchability that many skeptics no longer thought possible.Derrick Jones Jr. won the dunk contest during a revitalized All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February.Credit…Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere were five uplifting Sundays in a row during the mostly lonely (and scary) days of April and May when a basketball documentary about Michael Jordan, “The Last Dance,” delivered the sort of shared experience and sense of community — through sports — that was otherwise unavailable.Michael Jordan captivated millions each week this spring with his recollections of his Chicago Bulls glory days.Credit…Jon RocheThe recent sports trading card renaissance extended to basketball, and led to rookie cards from LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo fetching $1.8 million — each — at auction.The creative forces behind the acclaimed animated series “Game of Zones” served up one final season that, to my great shock and pride, managed to work in a few lucky sports scribes.The seventh season of the animated show “Game of Zones” by Bleacher Report includes characters inspired by Marc Stein, right, and the former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade, left.Credit…Bleacher ReportAnd when it comes to something that really matters: Delonte West, the former N.B.A. guard, was back in Maryland to spend Christmas with his family after years of struggling with bipolar disorder and drug use. A video surfaced in late September that appeared to show West, a former Dallas Maverick, homeless in Dallas. That led Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, to track him down and help West enter a drug rehabilitation facility in Florida.The dunks and trading cards and M.J. memes, to be clear, were mere footnotes at a time even sports struggled to provide its usual escape, but one suspects we will keep coming back to the bigger headlines from basketball’s intersection with a global health crisis.“This will go down as the most remembered year in N.B.A. history,” said Jared Dudley, the veteran forward and frequent unofficial team spokesman for the Los Angeles Lakers. “They will be making movies about 2020 for years to come.”He’s probably right. Tales from the bubble are bound to hold considerable long-term interest, particularly after Dudley’s Lakers emerged from the grand experiment as champions.Hollywood’s team is back on top for the first time since 2009-10, and the ending did include a surprise element: James and Co. have not been subjected to as much asterisk talk as the curmudgeons among us (like me in April) envisaged.My original view stemmed to some degree from fears that the N.B.A. postseason would be truncated from its usual four rounds of best-of-seven series, and thus not constitute a representative championship run. Critics could have also seized on the absence of travel, arenas without fans, and how much living and playing at the same address might have benefited the Lakers, so I still wanted to give it some time to see how their 17th championship would be received.LeBron James said he has won “the two hardest championships” in N.B.A. history, including the 2019-20 title.Credit…Harry How/Getty ImagesThe response has been encouraging. Occasional jabs about James and his supposed “Mickey Mouse” ring haven’t really stuck.Perhaps James went too far the other way with his recent assertion on the “Road Trippin’” podcast that he had won “the two hardest championships” in league history: Cleveland’s comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the 2015-16 N.B.A. finals against the 73-win Golden State Warriors, and the Lakers’ bubble crown. Historians haven’t exactly rushed to endorse those claims, but there is an no shortage of appreciation for what the Lakers did overcome during their 95-day bubble stay, cut off from the outside world.There was a mental toll from essentially living at work. There was isolation. There was an internal conflict to manage, as James and many of his peers would explain, for athletes playing a game and feeding the entertainment industry at a time of so much social unrest in their home communities.The truth, of course, is that you could slap an asterisk on just about anything that happened in 2020, sports or not, since we strayed so far from normalcy in too many precincts to count. Or did so much change get foisted upon all of us that nothing in 2020 should be sullied by the asterisk treatment?Maybe we’ll have that figured out by next year’s final newsletter.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThe league’s free agency investigation of the Bucks ruined Milwaukee’s chances of signing Bogdan Bogdanovic, who landed with the Atlanta Hawks.Credit…Brett Davis/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.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: It is vital that it be explained why this was the “line in the sand” for the N.B.A. There have clearly been other examples of tampering. Why were no draft picks rescinded in those cases? — @Wanediggity from TwitterStein: I know Bucks fans are upset, but I don’t think the league’s decision to strip their team of a second-round pick in 2022 in the wake of Milwaukee’s failed attempt to court Bogdan Bogdanovic is such a mystery. For all the league’s shortcomings in policing and curbing tampering, it has been consistent in dishing out penalties when violations were blatant. The violations, in this case, were pretty blatant.These were not mere rumblings or assumptions about the sort of free-agent conversations that many of us suspect are happening leaguewide before they are supposed to. The league opened an investigation in response to a detailed news report about a five-player deal involving the Bucks and Sacramento Kings that had Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent, landing in Milwaukee — nearly four days before free agency was scheduled to start.The league took action again on Monday when it fined Daryl Morey, Philadelphia’s new president of basketball operations, $50,000 for a seemingly harmless tweet congratulating James Harden on a statistical milestone he hit when Morey was still his general manager in Houston. It doesn’t matter if the social media post was automated or accidental, as ESPN reported Morey told the league office. The mere fact that Morey publicly “discussed” another team’s player put him in line for a fine.Bucks fans have asked me: What about all the teams that have tried to recruit Giannis Antetokounmpo behind the scenes? My retort: Do we have proof? If there was a detailed news report in circulation about a specific team doing so — or if text messages Antetokounmpo has reportedly received from players on other teams were turned in to the league — I’m quite sure penalties would be imposed on the offending clubs. But no such evidence has surfaced in the public domain. It’s not that the Bucks are the only ones breaking the rules. Other teams have just been better at hiding it.Whether or not Milwaukee or Sacramento wanted this stuff to be out there, it got out. Both were operating as if they had a deal even though Bogdanovic insisted he never agreed to anything. The league wasn’t going to let that go.Even though the league announced in September 2019 that it would institute a new set of anti-tampering regulations to crack down on the practice, there is clearly still much to fix, given how many deals we still saw coalesce in the early hours of free agency on Nov. 20. But the league’s stance on this one, in the words of its general counsel Rick Buchanan, is that Milwaukee had to be sanctioned for “gun-jumping” the start of free agency.There is plenty of skepticism regarding Commissioner Adam Silver’s claim that the punishment “will act as a clear deterrent” to other teams, since the whole episode technically only cost Milwaukee a future second-round pick. Yet it’s also true that the league’s decision to investigate essentially snuffed out any chance the Bucks had of resurrecting a deal for Bogdanovic — someone, by all accounts, Antetokounmpo badly wanted to play with.So losing the ability to pursue Bogdanovic was Milwaukee’s real penalty here, while Sacramento wound up losing Bogdanovic without compensation after electing not to match Atlanta’s four-year, $72 million offer sheet. The Kings did not receive any formal penalty from the league office, but they would have acquired a player they coveted from the Bucks (Donte DiVincenzo) had the original sign-and-trade plan been resuscitated.Q: Any word on the status of Jeremy Lin getting his FIBA Letter of Clearance yet? Many fans want to know! — Tom GardnerStein: To catch up those who weren’t following this saga as it played out on Dec. 19, Golden State needed a clearance letter from the Beijing Ducks, Lin’s last team in China, to sign and then immediately release him before 11 p.m. Eastern time that day. That would have allowed the Santa Cruz Warriors to secure Lin’s G League rights.In part because FIBA’s office is closed on weekends, Golden State couldn’t obtain the letter in time. The rush to get the clearance letter pretty much ended then, because it initially appeared that subsequently obtaining Lin’s G League rights would require some complicated (and more costly) roster gymnastics for the Warriors.It has since emerged that the Warriors will have a new pathway to steering Lin to their G League affiliate that wasn’t apparent then — provided that the G League goes ahead with a 2020-21 season that will be at least partly played in a bubble environment. The N.B.A. is instituting a rule that will enable N.B.A. parent clubs to recruit players to fill one G League roster spot with an N.B.A. veteran who has at least five years of service time. The Warriors will thus have a mechanism to guarantee that Lin can play with Santa Cruz, their G League affiliate, should he decide to sign with the league.Neither the Golden State Warriors nor the Santa Cruz Warriors would sign Lin. He would have to sign with the G League first and then be allocated to Santa Cruz via the new rule, which some G League observers are even calling “the Jeremy Lin rule.” Yet there is no frantic need for the clearance letter now with the G League still trying to resolve some outstanding issues and commit to a season.If Lin decides he wants to go the G League route in hopes that it can boost his chances of an N.B.A. comeback at age 32, and if Santa Cruz is where he wants to play, it will happen.Q: Knowing James Dolan, do you think that the Knicks want to trade for James Harden? I’m sure Dolan is already tired of the Knicks playing second fiddle to the Nets. — Frank AlecciStein: After skipping the opening week of training camp and forcing the league to hit him with an additional four-day quarantine last week, while repeatedly violating the league’s health and safety guidelines in both instances, Harden made his season debut Saturday and promptly uncorked 44 points and 17 assists in Houston’s overtime loss to Portland.As my Houston Chronicle colleague Jonathan Feigen put it, Harden quickly reminded us that, yes, he is worth the trouble on a lot of levels.This would be especially true for a Knicks team that doesn’t have anything close to a certifiable franchise player at the moment. I imagine that Harden would hold appeal throughout the organization — not just with Dolan — despite being under contract only for the rest of this season and next season before he has the right to become a free agent in July 2022.The harsh reality of the Knicks’ current roster, though, is also a problem when it comes to getting into the Harden sweepstakes, since Houston has made it clear that it wants a player like Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons to headline the package it receives for Harden. If there is a combination of Knicks players and draft picks that would entice the Rockets, I don’t see it.Numbers GameKevin Durant (7) and Kyrie Irving (11)Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty Images7-11In one of the better quotes from the season’s opening week, Kyrie Irving said he and his Nets teammate Kevin Durant had “introduced the world to 7-11” with their scoring outbursts in the Nets’ first two games. Irving, of course, was referring to their jersey numbers, not the famed convenience store chain.23.2The average margin of victory from the league’s five Christmas Day games was a whopping 23.2 points. Only the first game (Miami over New Orleans by 13) and the last one (Clippers over Denver by 13) could be classified as competitive. Not what the N.B.A. was hoping for when it pushed up the start of the season at the behest of the league’s television partners, who badly wanted a Christmas week launch.107There were 107 international players from 41 countries on opening-night rosters, including a record 17 players from Canada and a record-tying 14 African players. It’s the seventh consecutive season that opening-night rosters included at least 100 international players; 113 at the start of the 2016-17 season is the record. France (nine), Australia (eight) and Serbia and Germany (six each) are the countries with the most players after Canada.5K.C. Jones earned enshrinement to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1989, but his coaching résumé is perhaps even more H.O.F.-worthy. Jones coached three teams in the N.B.A. across 10 seasons (Washington, Boston and Seattle) and made five trips to the N.B.A. finals in that short span, winning championships with the Celtics in 1983-84 and 1985-86. Jones died on Christmas at the age of 88.4,500There is a strong argument to be made, as a matter of fairness, that fans should not be in N.B.A. buildings until all 30 teams were allowed by local health regulations to do so, because it is a competitive advantage to have a crowd of any size. Yet it’s worth noting just how varied the maximum crowd sizes are for the six teams currently admitting fans. At the low end: Cleveland (300 fans maximum), New Orleans (750) and Utah (1,500). At the high end: Toronto (3,800 fans maximum in Tampa, Fla.), Orlando (4,000) and Houston (4,500).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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      K.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro BasketballK.C. Jones Never Got His Due in Boston. Race Played a Part.Jones, who was Black and won eight championships as a player and two as a coach with the Boston Celtics, was underappreciated as one of the N.B.A.’s most successful coaches.K.C. Jones head coach, of the Boston Celtics talks with his team during a timeout an NBA game in 1986.Credit…Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDec. 29, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETIn early December 1990, K.C. Jones sat in a hotel suite overlooking the New Jersey Meadowlands before a game with the Nets, trying to explain why a coach who won 75 percent of his games and two N.B.A. titles with Boston, and who reached four league finals over five seasons, had been shoved upstairs into a toothless front-office position before ultimately departing his beloved Celtics to coach in Seattle.His new team, whose roster featured the very young Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, had lost the previous night by 33 points to Larry Bird and the Celtics, with eight Celtics scoring in double figures. On the bench, Jones pointed out the opponents’ superior ball movement, hoping his players might learn something from the drubbing.“See that — there’s no N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E,” he recalled telling the Seattle wannabes, who may or may not have appreciated that Jones’s selfless, unpretentious approach to the game was still as much a part of the Celtics as their parquet floor.Teachable moments, those obvious or subtle, were not to be wasted. At one point during the hotel interview with two reporters, Jones excused himself to dial another room. “Quintin, what time is the bus tonight?” he asked. After a pause, Jones replied, “OK, see you there.”The two reporters looked at each other, confused. What kind of coach needed to call Quintin Dailey, a player known for, shall we say, poor conformity habits to ask about when the bus would be leaving for the arena? Then it hit them — this was classic K.C., tactfully checking on Dailey, purposefully understated.Jones returned to his seat and said, “Where were we?”He was, as it turned out, nearing the end of a decades-long love affair with the game that was best defined by championship celebrations.With Bill Russell, he won two N.C.A.A. titles at the University of San Francisco and an Olympic gold medal. With Russell in Boston, as a point guard specializing in defense, he won eight N.B.A. titles. As an assistant coach to his former Celtics teammate Bill Sharman in Los Angeles, he sprinkled championship dust on the Lakers in 1971-72. He won another ring in 1980-81 as Bill Fitch’s assistant in Boston and two more as the head coach during the prime years of the Bird era.Sad to say, to the day he died at 88, on Christmas last week, Jones never got the credit he deserved.Or put it this way: In a sport that defines its champions by the superstars who drive them, Jones never had the self-promotional skills or ego-driven desire to muscle his way onto a pedestal. He never overcame the news media stereotype of him as some hybrid shepherd/spokesman for the collective genius he sent onto the floor each night.Consider that in the five years Jones coached the Celtics to a higher winning percentage, regular season and playoffs, than Red Auerbach, Russell, Fitch or anyone else, Jones never was voted coach of the year. His 1985-86 team won 67 games and went 40-1 at home — that wasn’t good enough.“People saw him as this nice, quiet guy,” Danny Ainge said after Jones left the Celtics. “But he’s so intense, so competitive.”It wasn’t as if Jones hadn’t played a winning coaching hand before replacing Fitch on the Celtics bench in 1983-84 (and promptly beating Pat Riley’s Lakers in the finals): In 1974-75, he coached Washington to a 60-22 record, a 13-game improvement over the prior season, beat the Celtics in the playoffs and made the finals. He lost the coach of the year vote to Phil Johnson and his 44 wins in Kansas City.Of course, racial typecasting was part of this. Just one Black head coach won the Coach of the Year Award in its first 28 years — none in the 1980s. In those days, the N.B.A. was only marginally better at developing and honoring Black coaching talent than other professional sports. The most reliable path for a Black man to the hot seat was, by and large, being a brand-name star in his playing market — a Russell in Boston, a Willis Reed in New York, a Lenny Wilkens in Seattle.K.C. Jones, right, wasn’t given as much credit as he deserved for coaching the Boston Celtics to four N.B.A. finals and two championships in five seasons during the 1980s.Credit…Mike Kullen/Associated PressJones was certainly no headliner as a player — an unreliable shooter who averaged 7.4 points and 4.3 assists per game over nine years. He was a Celtics loyalist, however, and that got him the job, in part because Fitch sometimes objected to Auerbach’s heavy front-office hand. Jones was hired with such fanfare that he learned of the appointment from a flight attendant. Auerbach confirmed it later and told him: “Come in tomorrow — and don’t bring an agent.”That made Jones something of a precedent-setter, for this was how the network served so many white journeymen players, even Riley, who, like Jones, was handed a team that had already won a title (under Paul Westhead). And while Riley didn’t win coach of the year until the 1989-90 season, his last in Los Angeles, he parlayed his excellent work with the Lakers into best-selling motivational books and lucrative banquet speaking fees.Before long, rare was the assertion that all Riley had to do was hand the ball to Magic Johnson, enjoy the view from the bench, as was the case with Jones and Bird in Boston.Jones was no doubt obscured by the rise of the celebrity coach, on the pro and college levels. By men who had polished nightly monologues and celebrated systems. If they won, they were hailed as brilliant. If they lost, the players didn’t fit the system. Some wise old heads considered this to be self-serving nonsense. Red Holzman was one of them. While Hubie Brown lectured the world with a bullhorn (on his way to a sub .500 career record) as Holzman’s replacement with the Knicks, Holzman quietly admired Jones’s work in Boston.Jones’s teams, he would say, played beautiful situational ball, exploiting the weaknesses of their opponents. His players weren’t fast, but they ran perfect positional fast breaks. Like Holzman with the championship Knicks of the early 1970s, Jones was good with them getting all the credit. He was a company man who accepted, without public rancor, the front-office plot to replace him with Jimmy Rodgers, a longtime Celtics assistant.Jones’s last season in Boston, when injuries and age were taking a toll, produced 57 wins and a conference-finals loss to the rising Detroit Pistons. It was his first failure there to make the finals. Letting the reporters come to their own conclusions in that New Jersey hotel, he said, simply: “And here came Jaws.”Under Rodgers, the Celtics didn’t make it out of the first round for the next two years. But sharks leave reputational scars, too. Though Jones made the playoffs in his one full season in Seattle, he was fired in early 1992 with an 18-18 record, as management brought in George Karl as its preferred teacher for Payton and Kemp.Draw your own conclusions on that.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More