Basketball

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Basket

      LeBron James Has First 20-20 Game in Lakers’ Game 4 Win Over Grizzlies

      by

      A 22-point, 20-rebound game by James led the Lakers in Game 4 against the Grizzlies, a win that put Ja Morant and Memphis on the brink of elimination.LOS ANGELES — There are still milestones left for LeBron James to reach, as improbable as that seems.In a 20-year career in which James has powered three franchises to championships and become the league’s all-time scoring leader, James had never grabbed 20 rebounds in a game. Not in the regular season. Not in the postseason.Not until Monday. Until his Los Angeles Lakers needed his muscle, his experience and his intuition. Until it needed James to push a brash young opponent, the Memphis Grizzlies, to the brink of a first-round playoff elimination.“These are the moments that I love,” James said. “I love the postseason.”The 117-111 overtime victory James helped deliver on Monday night led the Lakers, a team that started the season 2-10 and seemed lost heading into the trade deadline, to a 3-1 lead over the Grizzlies, who spent all season as one of the best teams in the Western Conference.The Lakers are in this commanding position because James found a way to push through his exhaustion in the final minutes of Game 4 and add to his lore. He grabbed rebounds, he took charges, he made a driving layup through contact with 29.1 seconds left in overtime and screamed into the crowd as he pounded on his chest.“He understands the timing, the timing of everything,” Lakers Coach Darvin Ham said. “The known of what happened yesterday and the unknown of tomorrow, it makes him even more entrenched in today, into the moment.“All of his travels. All of the phenomenal things he’s accomplished — he still has that passion, that grit to want to be on top and to want to put his team in position, the right way, to be successful. That’s what you saw.”With 22 points and 20 rebounds, James became the first Laker to reach 20 points and 20 rebounds in a playoff game since Shaquille O’Neal in 2004. At 38, he became the oldest player in N.B.A. history to have 20 points and 20 rebounds in a game, beating a playoff mark set by Wilt Chamberlain in 1973.James’s presence is part of the reason it has been clear from the start of the series that the Lakers are no ordinary seventh seed. Their record didn’t reflect who they were once Anthony Davis and James were available, if not fully healthy. They also improved significantly after remaking their roster at the trade deadline.Conversely, the Grizzlies came into the postseason hobbled. Their starting center, Steven Adams, has been out with a knee injury, and Brandon Clarke, another player who lent size to their lineup, also has been injured.Memphis lost Game 1 at home. But, famous for their bluster, that early defeat did not humble them. One Grizzlies player, Dillon Brooks, went directly at James on the court and off it.During Game 2, Brooks said James called him “dumb” for acquiring his fourth foul.“I don’t care — he’s old, you know what I mean?” Brooks responded.“I was waiting for that. I was expecting him to do that Game 4, Game 5. He wanted to say something when I got my fourth foul. He should have been saying that earlier on. But I poke bears. I don’t respect no one until they come and give me 40.”Creating a rivalry with James can be an easy way for another player to siphon some of his spotlight. James knew that and wanted no part of it.After a practice last week, James was asked several questions about Brooks’s comments and sidestepped each one. He then ended his news conference early, before he was tempted to say anything that might escalate the feud. He said he preferred to speak through his play.In the minutes before Game 3, though, James approached Brooks. There was no audio, but cameras caught the interaction and the video circulated on social media.“There was nothing private about it,” James said after the game, giving away that he wasn’t actually ignoring all that Brooks had said. “It was very, very public. I like it that way.”The Lakers led by 35-9 after the first quarter of that game, driving their fans into a delirious frenzy and making Memphis’s bravado seem foolish. The Grizzlies never recovered from their poor start even though Ja Morant scored 45 points. Brooks was ejected in the third quarter for a flagrant foul assessed when he struck James in the groin, putting an early end to whatever battle might have been brewing between the two of them.Ja Morant, who scored 45 points in a loss in Game 3, was held to 19 on Monday.Gary A. Vasquez/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConStill, not everything came easily for the Lakers on Monday.They had a 15-point lead in the second quarter, but Memphis closed the first half with a 14-1 run and the Lakers led by just 2 at halftime. To end the third quarter, Morant wove through the paint to dunk the ball as time expired and gave Memphis a 2-point lead.Late in the game, however, the Lakers got important contributions from several players. Davis, after a quiet game through three quarters, made important defensive plays late. D’Angelo Russell made three 3-pointers within a one-minute span during the fourth quarter to pull the Lakers out of a 7-point deficit.But James’s contributions, as he fought through fatigue in the closing minutes, meant the most.“You just dig deep and understand that you’ll be able to sleep at some point, just not right now,” James said, looking drained after the game. “This is not the time to rest or forget about an assignment. You’ll have plenty of time after a game and the next day to kind of rest and decompress as much as possible.”Rest is hard to come by in the playoffs. Though the Lakers and the Grizzlies had a kinder schedule than some teams got, with two days off between each of the first three games, they are now playing every other day with increasingly high stakes. The Lakers’ first chance to finish off the series will come in Game 5 on Wednesday in Memphis.“The closeout game is always the hardest game of the series,” James said. “It’s the most tiring one.” More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      ‘Yoga for Jocks’ Keeps Golden State’s Kevon Looney Grounded

      by

      SAN FRANCISCO — Early Sunday morning, Kevon Looney of the Golden State Warriors decamped to a quiet atrium on the fourth floor of Chase Center, where floor-to-ceiling windows offered an expansive view of San Francisco Bay. The sun was beginning to burn through a hazy sky as Looney propped his iPad against a small metal column, unrolled his black yoga mat and greeted one of the more important figures in his professional life.A voice emanated from the iPad. It belonged to Jana Webb, the creator of a self-styled brand of yoga known as Joga, which she originally conceived as yoga for athletes. Webb, 47, appeared on a video conference call from her home in Toronto wearing a backward baseball cap. She is in Looney’s phone as “Jana Joga.”“How’s the body feeling?” she asked.“Really good,” Looney said.Moses Moody, one of Looney’s teammates, was also on the call, dialing in from his apartment near the arena. It was 8:30 a.m., about four hours before Game 4 of Golden State’s first-round playoff series against the Sacramento Kings. Webb spent the next 40 minutes guiding both players through a series of movements designed to loosen their joints, activate their muscles and center their psyches.“Reach, reach, reach,” she said as Looney, who is 6-foot-9, stood on his toes and extended his arms, a small pool of sweat forming on the mat below. “Get that fascial tension like you’re reaching for the net. Awesome. Now, hold.”(Webb was referring to the fascia, which is connective tissue throughout the body — and not to the face, though Looney appeared to have some tension there, too.)Looney does a virtual session of Joga — described as “yoga for jocks” — before each of Golden State’s games.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesEarlier in his career, Looney could not seem to escape injury. But over the past two seasons, he has emerged as Golden State’s sturdiest player, appearing in every one of his team’s games. He practices Joga before every game, at home and on the road.After Sunday’s session, Looney delivered against the Kings, finishing with 8 points, 14 rebounds and 6 assists to help the Warriors win their second straight game at home and even the series at two games apiece. In Game 3 on Thursday, he finished with 4 points, 20 rebounds and 9 assists while helping compensate for Draymond Green’s absence because of a suspension.Game 5 is Wednesday in Sacramento.“He’s always locked into the game plan,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said of Looney. “He never makes mistakes. He rebounds like crazy. He makes the right decision. The game is much simpler when Loon is out there for our guys.”Looney, who has won three championships with the Warriors, said his work with Webb had helped him cope with the physical and mental rigors of the N.B.A. Those demands are only heightened in the postseason.“It’s pretty brutal,” Looney said. “Every possession is intense. After the game, you’re just drained.”Clara Mokri for The New York TimesClara Mokri for The New York TimesAt this late stage of the season, when players are tired and stressed, game-day routines take on added significance. Players are looking for whatever edge they can get, especially this year, when injuries to stars like Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Giannis Antetokounmpo are a factor in so many series. Some players prioritize their naps. Others lace up their lucky sneakers. Looney does Joga.“I love to have 30 minutes to be in my body and see how I really feel,” he said.Looney got a head start in yoga as a high school senior in Milwaukee. Lou Chapman, who was one of his early basketball trainers, introduced him to Bikram Yoga — also known as hot yoga — when a new studio opened up. Looney recalled that he had barely survived his first class.“I did a lot of laying on the mat,” he said. “I felt like I was a top athlete, but they destroyed me.”The competitive side of Looney kept him coming back. Also, Chapman had gotten them discounted memberships, and he wanted to make sure that they took advantage of the deal.“I think we went 90 straight days,” Chapman, 42, said.During his lone season at U.C.L.A., Looney succumbed to a busy schedule and drifted away from yoga. After Golden State selected him as the 30th pick in the 2015 N.B.A. draft, he missed most of his rookie year with hip injuries — he had twin surgeries to repair right and left labrum tears — and later dealt with chronic nerve pain. He broke his collarbone during the 2019 N.B.A. finals and then had core muscle surgery in 2020. He returned for the 2020-21 season but felt disappointed by his play.Looney goes through his pregame ritual before Game 4 at the scorer’s table.Clara Mokri for The New York Times“I wasn’t moving as well as I had in the past,” he said. “I didn’t have that same burst or coordination.”Following the season, Looney approached Dr. Rick Celebrini, Golden State’s director of sports medicine and performance, with a specific request: Did he know any yoga teachers?In fact, Dr. Celebrini had someone in mind. He connected Looney with Webb, a fellow Canadian who had worked with other athletes for years. Their first virtual session was a doozy.“I can’t say I loved it,” Looney said, “mostly because I stunk at it.”Webb was unsparing in an initial assessment that she sent to Kyle Barbour, Golden State’s head performance coach, citing several areas where Looney’s mobility was limited. But she saw potential, and Looney experienced the sort of post-session soreness — in his glutes and his abdominal muscles, specifically — that signaled to him that he had room for improvement.“We don’t do a lot of long static holds,” Webb said. “It’s really about duplicating the biomechanics of movement in sport.”Looney worked with Webb several times a week that summer and then paused their sessions at the start of the 2021-22 season. At the time, Looney thought that Joga might just be a part of his off-season routine.Jana Webb directing a yoga session.Rick Madonik/Toronto Star, via Getty ImagesLooney started doing yoga in high school in Milwaukee.Clara Mokri for The New York Times“But after six or seven games, I felt like my body was going back to how it was before,” he said. “My back was hurting, and different things weren’t moving as well. So I reached back out: ‘Can we do this on game days?’”By the middle of last season, Looney had become such a believer that he organized a Joga session for anyone in basketball operations — players, coaches and staff members — who wanted to learn more. As usual, Webb led the class remotely. Even from thousands of miles away, she could sense varied levels of interest.“Draymond clipped his toenails during it,” she said, laughing. “I was like, is this actually happening?”Moody’s prevailing takeaway was confusion. As a teenager in Little Rock, Ark., he had dabbled in yoga by taking classes at his local LA Fitness. But Webb might as well have been speaking a foreign language.“She was talking so fast about all these muscles we were supposed to be activating,” Moody said. “And I’m next to Loon, so I’m just trying to keep up with him, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”But Moody was also intrigued. After spending the next couple of weeks peppering Looney with questions about Joga and human anatomy, Moody called Webb. “She gave me the rundown,” he said.Looney has played in all 82 regular-season games for Golden State in each of the past two seasons.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesLooney invited Moody to join him at his next pregame Joga session and then paid for all of his classes for the remainder of the season. They have been inseparable Joga buddies ever since. If the team has a shootaround scheduled for 11 a.m., Looney and Moody will typically meet with their mats on the team’s practice court at 8:30 a.m. for 40 minutes of stretching, lunging, twisting and breathing.“I can really tell the difference when I don’t do it,” Moody said. “You just feel more fluid in your movements. When that ball comes off the rim, you kind of feel like Spider-Man a little bit.”After more than 200 remote sessions with Looney, Webb finally met both players for the first time when the Warriors were in Toronto in December to play the Raptors. “That was so special,” Webb said.On Sunday, Webb started their session by having them do a series of breathing exercises.“Relax your jaw for four,” she said. “Soften the ribs for three. Start to squeeze the lower belly for two. And now completely pull the breath and empty it there. Notice what you’re thinking about.”Before long, Webb had them working through dynamic movements, one after another. She reminded Moody to keep his fingers spread when he was in a plank position. She urged Looney to lift his “pelvic floor.” She referred to their hip joints and femur bones, their side intercostals and adductors.At the end of it, Looney lay flat on his back, closed his eyes and exhaled.Clara Mokri for The New York Times More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Basket

      Houston Rockets to Hire Ime Udoka After Suspension by Boston Celtics

      by

      Udoka took the Celtics to the N.B.A. finals last season, but he was abruptly suspended in September for violating team policies.The Houston Rockets plan to hire Ime Udoka, the former Boston Celtics coach who was suspended for workplace misconduct, according to a person who was familiar with the discussions but not authorized to discuss them publicly.The news was first reported by ESPN.The Celtics abruptly suspended Udoka for the 2022-23 N.B.A. season in late September after an investigation into his conduct by an independent law firm. According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Udoka had a relationship with a female subordinate. The Celtics have declined to release details about Udoka’s conduct, other than to say that he had violated “multiple” team policies. In February, the Celtics fired Udoka, one of the people said.Udoka had taken the Celtics to the N.B.A. finals last season in his first year as a head coach, after spending nine years as an assistant.Since his suspension, Udoka has been linked with several teams for potential head coach openings. In particular, reports that Udoka was a front-runner for the Nets job surfaced within hours of Steve Nash’s dismissal in November. Udoka had been a Nets assistant in the 2020-21 season. Instead, the Nets hired Jacque Vaughn, one of Nash’s assistants, as their coach.Udoka would succeed Stephen Silas, who went 59-177 in Houston.Darren Abate/Associated PressWith the Celtics, Udoka developed a reputation for being willing to hold players accountable. His approach gained him the respect of the team, and some of the top players continued to publicly support him after his suspension. Forward Jayson Tatum told reporters in February that Udoka was “probably like my most favorite coach I’ve had and that’s not a knock on anybody.” Guard Jaylen Brown told The Ringer in an interview published in March that he was “a little bit shocked” by Udoka’s suspension.“So, whether you stood on this side or this side, they was going to find wrong from a coach that I advocated to bring here to Boston,” Brown said. “I wanted to see him back on his feet here, no matter what it was. I don’t think that’s the wrong thing to feel.”The Celtics replaced Udoka with one of his assistants, Joe Mazzulla, and finished the regular season with the second-best record in the league. The team leads the Atlanta Hawks, 3-1, in their first-round playoff series.The Rockets were one of the worst teams in the N.B.A. this season at 22-60. They ranked near the bottom of the league in both offense and defense. In three seasons as Houston’s head coach, Stephen Silas went 59-177. On April 10, the Rockets declined his option for next season.The Rockets have several talented young players, including Kevin Porter Jr. and Jalen Green. In addition, the Rockets are projected to have enough salary cap space to sign at least one star to a maximum contract this summer, and they have a bevy of future draft picks. Houston, Detroit and San Antonio each have a 14 percent chance to land the No. 1 pick in June’s N.B.A. draft. Victor Wembanyama, the highly rated French prospect, is widely expected to be picked first overall. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Basket

      The Lakers, Clippers and Kings, and an L.A. Court in Constant Motion

      by

      LOS ANGELES — Jorge Mendez waited impatiently as the Los Angeles Kings’ fate hung in the balance late Friday night.Their N.H.L. first-round playoff game against the Edmonton Oilers had already gone into overtime, robbing Mendez’s crew of several precious minutes they would need to get Crypto.com Arena ready for the Clippers’ N.B.A. playoff game on Saturday afternoon. And now there was another delay. Officials were trying to determine whether a would-be game-winning goal by Kings forward Trevor Moore should count.Mendez, the venue’s assistant conversion manager, had a crew of about 20 people waiting to transform the chilly arena. They would be working all night and had to finish by 7 a.m. Saturday. They had never missed a deadline, and weren’t about to start now.“With the referees we don’t know,” Mendez said. “They could say they deny that one and it goes longer. And the more longer they go, they’re going to take more time from me.”The Kings had a playoff game Friday night, and the Clippers and Lakers hosted postseason games Saturday, creating an eventful weekend for arena workers.The goal stood and the Kings won. Fans celebrated and left the building, then Mendez’s crew got to work: The nets and glass surrounding the ice rink came down; the penalty boxes and benches were disassembled and moved; the ice was cleaned and covered by insulation so it wouldn’t melt during the next day’s basketball games; and the modules containing seats were shifted into new configurations.They finished well before 7 a.m. and Mendez drove home at 6:30 a.m. At that time of day there is little traffic, so it took him just 10 minutes. When he works overnight, he sleeps during the day, and his wife tries to stop his 9-year-old daughter from bursting into his room to ask if he wants to bike with her. But Mendez’s weekend was long from over.Like dozens of others, Mendez worked tirelessly to make sure the arena could handle its frenetic week. The busiest time came in the 36 hours after the Kings game Friday, when the building turned over from the Kings to the Clippers to the Lakers and back to the Kings. All three teams have called the arena home since 1999, when it opened as Staples Center.“My favorite part of this is when they’re done,” said Lee Zeidman, the president of Crypto.com Arena; the nearby Microsoft Theater; and the surrounding entertainment district, L.A. Live. “It’s like a puzzle. These men and women they’re the best in the business.”Mendez was back at 1 p.m., ready to flip the arena from the Clippers’ array of red, blue, black and silver to the Lakers’ purple and gold.Joe Keeler usually drives the Zamboni that maintains the ice during Kings games, but he sometimes helps transition the arena to basketball.The ice gets cleaned and covered with insulation so it does not melt during basketball games. Then the court and basketball hoops get changed in accordance with which team is playing.‘Organized chaos’Between Thursday and Monday night, Crypto.com Arena will have hosted four basketball playoff games and two hockey playoff games.“It’s chaos,” said Darryl Jackson, an event operations assistant manager for the arena. “But it’s organized. Organized chaos.” He began his career working on conversions, but now helps to make sure the baskets during basketball games and the glass during hockey games stay in good condition.Minutes after Game 4 of the first-round series between the Clippers and the Phoenix Suns finished Saturday, Loreto Verdugo backed a forklift down an aisle between the court and the first row of grandstand seats. He had just a couple of inches of space on either side of him. After years of doing this task, he wasn’t nearly as nervous as he was the first time he did it.“You don’t want to hit the floor because the floor’s the most important thing out there,” Verdugo said. “But you don’t want to hit anybody else either.”He had quietly left his home in North Hollywood at 4 a.m. (“I’m like a mouse,” he said) to be at the arena in time to begin supervising maintenance work.As soon as the Clippers’ game ended, just before 3 p.m., and all of the people had been cleared from the court, a bustle of expertly choreographed activity began. By the time the Clippers’ players began their postgame interviews, workers had bagged fans’ trash, and the player and logo banners the Clippers hang in the rafters had been rolled up to reveal the gold-colored championship banners for the Lakers and the W.N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Sparks, who have also shared the arena for much of the past two decades.The Kings won in overtime Friday against the Edmonton Oilers before the Clippers lost to the Phoenix Suns and the Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies.The Clippers’ court was already being uprooted from the floor, piece by interlocking piece, and loaded onto pallets that Verdugo and two other forklift drivers would pick up and deposit in a storage area that doubles as a news conference room.It was the 251st midday conversion in the history of Crypto.com Arena.About an hour after the Clippers’ game ended, their court had been replaced by the Lakers’ floor.Joe Keeler, who normally drives the Zamboni that cleans and builds the ice during hockey games, joined a group of people folding the baskets with white stanchions that the Clippers use and rolling them out to the storage area. They replaced them with the yellow-stanchioned baskets the Lakers use.“Everybody helps where they can,” said Keeler, who also helped pick up the Clippers’ floor and lay down the Lakers’.Red Clippers drapery was replaced by purple, and a purple carpet had been rolled out in the tunnel the Lakers use to go onto the court.It is a little easier when the conversion is from one basketball court to another. Doubleheaders involving the Kings are more challenging. When the building first opened, Zeidman gathered the vendors for the basketball courts, the seats and the plexiglass for hockey games and asked them how long they thought it would take to convert the hockey arena into a basketball arena. They told him at least four hours.“Unacceptable,” Zeidman said.Robbin Dedeaux, a seasoned usher, worked his section during the Clippers’ game before the changeover. The court and banners, like the Lakers and Sparks’ championship banners, are adjusted accordingly.‘How can I work here?’The first conversion for a doubleheader was an event in itself. Fans were allowed to watch from a designated area. Arena workers watched from a break room upstairs.“It was amazing,” said Juanita Williams, 57, an usher who has worked right behind the home benches during basketball games since the building opened. “To see it for the first time, we were like there’s no way they’re going to change this over in two and a half hours. It happened.”Williams started as an usher 25 years ago at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where the Lakers and the Kings played from 1967 to 1999. She called to find out how much Lakers season tickets cost.“I said: ‘OK, I cannot afford those tickets. So how can I work here then?’” she said.In the daytime she works from home as a buyer for a washer and dryer company that she has been with for 34 years. Her daughter briefly took a job as an usher, too, while going to cosmetology school.By Monday night, Williams will have worked in all six playoff games since Thursday.The merchandise available on arena concourses must be refreshed, too.Robbin Dedeaux, 65, will have too. He works at the top of the lower bowl in aisle 14, checking tickets and greeting customers. He is stationed right next to where the Lakers’ radio broadcasters sit.Dedeaux also started this work as a second job to get out of the list of chores his wife, Ricca Dedeaux, was always asking him to do. He started with ticket-taking in 1999 and then became an usher. He has been asked if he’d like to work down on the floor, but he thinks he might get sleepy if he got to sit down.“The fans are the best part of the job,” Dedeaux said. “You get to see them from all over the world. They come in from Italy, they come in from France, they come in from Germany. You have fun with them.”He added: “When the fans that come here from different arenas, I have fun with them. I tell them to get out.”He laughed.Dedeaux and his wife have been married for 40 years. He said she misses him during basketball and hockey season when he is working so many hours.“That’s just marriage,” Dedeaux said. “She knows I love her, she knows I love what I do. She tolerates it.”He added, “Then I make up for it.”After the Lakers game, Darryl Jackson and his crew convert the arena back into an NHL venue.‘It has to be done’Ignacio Guerra’s first job in the events world came in the early 1990s. He was a high school chemistry and biology teacher and coach, and he would park cars at the Hollywood Bowl in the summers. When Staples Center opened, Guerra worked for the contractor parking cars there, before finding a job working for the arena. Saturday was his 21st anniversary with the arena.In 2019, he took over as the head of the arena’s operations department. He is now the senior vice president of operations and engineering. He has worked hundreds of events and has two large frames in his office displaying credentials for everything from Taylor Swift concerts to N.B.A. All-Star Games.He shepherded the building through coronavirus shutdowns and the return of fans. During the shutdown, many of his workers took other jobs and didn’t come back, which meant starting over with new people at some positions.Kings and Lakers fans celebrated victories while the Clippers fell further behind in their playoff series.At least a handful of the remaining people have worked at the arena since the beginning, including the man who builds the penalty boxes for hockey games. Guerra often stands in the middle of the floor supervising all of the activity.“They’re the heart and soul of this,” Guerra said of the operations staff.He said the crew has never missed a conversion.“You can’t wait up at 7 in the morning and say, ‘Hey, sorry we couldn’t get the Laker floor down.’” Guerra said. “It has to be down, and there’s a no-fail mentality.”The Lakers played at 7 p.m. Saturday. By 10 p.m. another conversion had begun. More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in Basket

      A Decade After Sacramento Showed Up for the Kings, the Kings Return the Favor

      by

      The surprising Kings are pushing Golden State in their first-round N.B.A. playoff matchup. Sacramento fans have waited a long time for a team that matched their fervor.The long-term fate of the Sacramento Kings was still unclear. In 2013, Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento and N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern persuaded a new owner to buy the team, a last-minute change that kept it from moving to Seattle.But the Kings’ home was still a dumpy suburban stadium that no longer fit the modern N.B.A. Without a new arena, leaving would always be in the cards.A year later I flew to Sacramento as the City Council convened for a tense vote on whether the city should pay roughly half the cost, $255 million, for construction of a new downtown arena now known as the Golden 1 Center.Kings fans showed up in force, as they always do, despite the team having just skidded to its eighth consecutive losing season. They held aloft placards imploring the Council to say yes. Angry critics were also on hand, dead set against spending taxpayer funds on a sports team’s arena.The Council voted to allocate the money. The Kings stayed put, with the new owner, Vivek Ranadive, promising fans that the team was in it for the long haul. “This is your team, and it is here to stay!” he said.Nine years later, and after a league-record 16 seasons without being in the playoffs, Sacramento’s team is finally making waves in the N.B.A. postseason. Who knew it would take this long?And who could have guessed that the young and suddenly transformed Kings would be going toe to toe against dynastic Golden State, which now calls its home San Francisco, a city that has always viewed Sacramento as a cow town.The Kings of 2023 brim with fast-break speed and precision that conjure memories of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson a decade ago, at the start of a run that brought Golden State four N.B.A. championships and six N.B.A. finals appearances.Of course, the Kings look like the Warriors’ doppelgängers: They have been molded by Mike Brown, who was Steve Kerr’s consigliere for years at Golden State, poached by Sacramento last May.After calling a timeout when there wasn’t one left in Game 4 on Sunday, Stephen Curry was consoled by Golden State Coach Steve Kerr.Darren Yamashita/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConIn playing the Warriors to a 2-2 series standoff so far, Sacramento has been so competitive and irritating that it pushed Draymond Green into giving a retaliatory stomp to Domantas Sabonis’s chest in a Game 2 loss from which Green was ejected (and for which he was suspended from Game 3, which the Warriors won).Game 4 — a 126-125 Warriors victory on Sunday that the Kings could have won on their final possession — was so tight that Kerr left Curry in for 43 of the game’s 48 minutes, including the entire fourth quarter. When was the last time Curry was so pressed in the first round?Kings fans have showed up with a fervor that matched that of Sabonis, Malik Monk and De’Aaron Fox. They rushed to defend home court, purchasing nearly every available seat at Golden 1 Center, then set out to invade on the road. At Chase Center, in San Francisco, the Warriors barred Kings fans from bringing in the clanging cowbells that hark back to Sacramento’s agrarian roots and became a sanctified symbol of the Kings’ success in the early 2000s.As the series heads back to Sacramento, think about how long Kings fans have waited to show up in the playoffs. Much has been made of the franchise’s streak of 16 seasons without a playoff appearance. But it has been 19 since the Kings came out on top in a playoff series and 21 seasons, since early in the George Bush the Younger administration, when the team was a genuine playoff threat.Ask Kings die-hards about the loss to the Lakers in seven games in the 2002 Western Conference finals, and you will soon see the bugging of eyes and curses aimed at Robert Horry, who is to Sacramento what Bucky Dent is to Boston. The fans possess two qualities in spades: remarkable loyalty and plenty of pent-up frustration.The crazy cool part of this Kings season is how stunningly surprising it has been.In the long, hard seasons after Ranadive saved the team, Sacramento kept journeying into the dark corners of the N.B.A. wilderness.The team churned through coaches and was run by a revolving door of upper management, which seemingly had no clue. (The decision to draft Marvin Bagley III over Luka Doncic with the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2018 characterized the head-scratching moves.)Critics frothed against Ranadive, claiming he was a meddling owner in over his head. The N.B.A.’s best practice says you hire basketball executives and let them choose the coach. The Kings did it the other way around.Among all the hoopla about the upstarts from California’s capital city, remember this: It was just last year when the Kings won only 30 games while losing 52, yet another season of frustration, and one that prompted the city’s largest newspaper to run an article with a headline that blared:“Basketball Hell: How Vivek Ranadive Turned Sacramento Kings Into N.B.A.’s Biggest Losers.”Now, the series heads back to the Kings’ home arena for what promises to be a madhouse Game 5 on Wednesday night, the vision conjured at that City Council meeting all those years ago finally fulfilled.Now, the only hell connected to the Kings is the one they are giving the Warriors. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Basket

      NHL and NBA Playoffs Give New York Fans a Lot to Celebrate

      by

      All five professional winter season teams in the New York metropolitan area made the playoffs for the first time since 1994.For four consecutive days, people in sports jerseys of various colors moved in, out and around Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. For some, it was their destination. For others, it was a changing point. But for fans of five teams in two sports in one metropolitan area, it was a hub for that incomparable and captivating springtime buzz: the playoffs.Across the United States and Canada, many cities are hosting playoff games in professional basketball and hockey. But nowhere was the action more abundant than in the New York metropolitan area, where all five professional winter season teams were in the postseason.It was the first time the five local teams had been in the playoffs at the same time since 1994, the year Madison Square Garden was the pulsating star at the core of the sports universe. The Rangers and the Knicks traded nights at the Garden from April to June that spring, right through to the finals of the N.H.L. and N.B.A. playoffs, and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. Along the way, all five teams played dates in that one arena during the playoffs.This year, by Sunday, three of the teams had played at the Garden, but all five — the Islanders in Nassau County, N.Y.; the Nets in Brooklyn; the Knicks and the Rangers in Manhattan; and the Devils in Newark, N.J. — competed somewhere in the relatively condensed metro area in first-round playoff games.“There’s a buzz in the area, for sure,” Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock said after his team pounded the visiting Carolina Hurricanes, 5-1, on Friday.It was the first playoff game held at two-year-old UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., about a 35-minute ride from Penn Station on the Long Island Rail Road. The same night, basketball fans could ride that rail line (or the subway) to Penn Station, walk upstairs, and see the Knicks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 99-79, at the Garden in Game 3 of that series.The crowd and the building were ready for the moment, and Knicks guard Jalen Brunson called the atmosphere “unreal.”“Being in this environment, there is no other replica,” he said. “There is nothing that comes close to it.”Rangers fans flocked to New Jersey for the first two playoff games against the Devils.Bruce Bennett/Getty ImagesThese playoff runs for the New York area’s teams, which have been germinating for a couple of years, began on Thursday, when the Devils and the Rangers played in Newark for Game 2 of that series. Some fans from New York hopped on a New Jersey Transit train from Penn Station, including many Rangers fans who infiltrated the Prudential Center, home of the Devils. At the same time, barely 14 miles away, the Nets, who once shared an arena with the Devils in East Rutherford, N.J., hosted the Philadelphia 76ers at Barclays Center, and lost Game 3.The basketball playoffs continued in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon, but they came to an end for the Nets, who were eliminated in a first-round sweep by the 76ers.But anyone looking for more playoff action could have taken the No. 2 train back to Penn Station to see the Rangers welcome the Devils in Game 3 on Saturday night at the Garden, where the Devils won in overtime, 2-1, cutting the Rangers’ lead in that series to 2-1. On Sunday, the Knicks beat the Cavaliers, 102-93, at the Garden to take a 3-1 lead in that series. At UBS Arena on Sunday, the Islanders lost to the Hurricanes, 5-2, and now trail in that series, 3-1.Eight playoff games in four arenas in four days involving five local teams: It’s a New York-New Jersey playoff bonanza.“It’s awesome for local fans,” Islanders winger Kyle Palmieri said. “I grew up as a local fan, and I watched all these teams.”He also played for two of them. Palmieri was born on Long Island, in Smithtown, N.Y., and moved with his family to Montvale, N.J., as a boy. He played for the Devils from 2015 until he was traded to the Islanders in 2021, just in time to participate in the Isles’ last game at the old Nassau Coliseum — a 3-2 overtime win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on June 23, 2021.Now, even with his focus on his own club’s series against Carolina, he can marvel at all the local teams playing at once.“It’s a special thing to have everyone involved,” he said. “It doesn’t happen too often.”More than 140,000 attendees were expected through Sunday’s playoff games. One of them was Lucas Whitehead, 27, a Canadian who was in the area to attend a conference at the United Nations. He bought an Islanders jersey and marveled at the atmosphere for the UBS Arena’s first playoff game.“The energy in here was like nothing I’ve seen before,” he said after Friday’s game. “I’ve been to a lot of arenas. We went to M.S.G. and the Prudential Center, and I’ve been to a lot in Canada. This was the craziest.”But the Garden came to life again on Saturday, for the Rangers-Devils game. The Rangers fans made their presence felt in Newark, but at home, when their team scores and the crowd sings their goal song and the walls vibrate, it can create a swell of momentum for the team.“It’s amazing — it’s one of the cooler experiences you’ll have,” Rangers center Mika Zibanejad said after practice on Friday, about two hours after the Knicks practiced at the same building in Westchester County, N.Y. “It’s hard to explain it to someone who’s not on the ice and doesn’t get to be part of it in that moment.”As the playoffs move into May, the number of local teams will dwindle. But there could be more excitement ahead. If the Rangers and the Islanders win their series, the two rivals, whose fan bases generally loathe each other, would meet in the second round, their first postseason encounter since the Rangers swept the Islanders in that fateful spring of ’94.That would suit Filip Chytil, the Rangers center who is originally from the Czech Republic. Before joining the Rangers in 2017, Chytil played one year professionally for the Czech team PSG Zlin and said its rivalry with H.C. Kometa Brno was fiery. But playing the Islanders in New York would be even more intense.“That would be great,” Chytil said Friday. “It’s a big ‘if’ at this moment. But we wouldn’t have to travel very much. Just take a bus.”Or, if the team prefers, there are plenty of trains in and out of Penn Station. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      Golden State Warriors Win at Home, Which Is Part of Their Problem

      by

      Golden State beat Sacramento to earn its first win of the playoffs, but in doing so reinforced a troubling trend from the regular season.SAN FRANCISCO — Stephen Curry got up from the floor quickly after being fouled, looked toward the fans in the crowd — clad in yellow T-shirts with the words “gold blooded” written on them — and must have thought they were not as excited as they should have been.He waved his arms and yelled — then screamed twice more for good measure — and the white-knuckled Warriors crowd responded with a roar, accepting his direction unquestioningly, an orchestra following its conductor.Curry’s Golden State Warriors had entered Thursday night’s game, the third of their first-round playoff series against the Sacramento Kings, in an uncomfortable spot. They were facing their first 2-0 playoff deficit since Steve Kerr began coaching them in 2014. They were without Draymond Green, their defensive anchor and do-it-all forward, whom the N.B.A. had suspended for stepping on the chest of Kings forward-center Domantas Sabonis in Game 2 on Monday.But as they have all season, the Warriors figured it out on their home floor, holding the league’s highest-scoring offense under 100 points for only the fifth time this season in the 114-97 victory. The Kings still lead the series, 2-1. Game 4 is Sunday. But it, too, is at Golden State, and for that reason alone the Warriors were feeling the series was far from over.“We always play great at home,” Klay Thompson said. “We got to get one on the road; we understand. But we know what we’re capable of in this building. We won a championship here. We’re capable of anything.”Pick any of Curry’s baskets on Thursday night — the six 3-pointers, the various layups and jumpers that made up his game-high 36 points — and notice that shortly after each score he seemed to hold the crowd in his hands: posing, dancing, directing.It was a luxury Curry did not enjoy in the first two games of this series in Sacramento, when the Warriors had the look of a team in trouble. After the victory, Curry had pointed to the Warriors’ shortcomings on the road in the first answer of his news conference.“We’ve shown that despite our self-inflicted wounds with turnovers and giving up offensive rebounds, that we are capable of beating that team any night,” he said. “It’s just nice to have something to show for it now.”Whatever momentum the Warriors created may propel them to another win in Game 4. It remains puzzling, though, how that momentum seems to disappear as soon as they step off their home floor.The Warriors were 33-8 at San Francisco’s Chase Center in the regular season, a home record bettered this season only by the Denver Nuggets (34-7) and the Memphis Grizzlies (35-6), the top two teams in the Western Conference. On the road, however, Golden State was a dreadful 11-30.Struggles on the road are typically reserved for young and inexperienced teams. The fact that the Warriors’ championship-tested core — Thompson, Curry, Green and Kerr — has performed so poorly on the road might have been the season’s most curious contradiction.Golden State’s Kevon Looney, front, exploded for 20 rebounds in Game 3, more than he had in the first two games combined.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThe statistics offer a clue: The Warriors simply don’t play good enough defense on the road, where they allowed more than 10 points a game (122.4) more than they did at home (111.7). No other team has more than a 6.9 differential. (Offensively, the Warriors don’t seem to miss a beat away from home, where their scoring averages on the road (119.7) and at home (118.2) are only fractionally different.)The issue is not a secret inside the Warriors’ locker room.“If you’re poor defensively, it’s really hard to win on the road,” Kerr said in November. “You need to be able to string together stops to get momentum and keep the home crowd out of it. If you’re trading baskets, the other team’s feeling good, it’s just really hard to win that way.”He returned to the point in March, saying of his team’s middling record, “We know that the answer to all this is in our defense.”On Thursday night, there were three prevailing chants inside of the Chase Center: “boos” for Sabonis; roars of “Looon” for forward Kevon Looney; and chants of “M-V-P!” each time Curry approached the free-throw line. Kerr said the design of the arena, which opened in 2019, makes for a more “intimate crowd.”“The roof is not sky high like a lot of the new arenas,” Kerr said, adding: “You can feel the crowd. They are right on top of you.”Eventually, though, the Warriors, the No. 6 seed in the West, are going to have to win a game on the road to progress in this postseason, including out of the first round. “Until someone wins a road game, everyone’s just holding serve,” Kerr said.Trading home wins is math just as unforgiving as the Warriors’ record. Kerr and his players will know they need to find a way to change it. Fast.Scott Cacciola More

    • 175 Shares129 Views

      in Basket

      Joel Embiid Says He Can ‘Do Anything’ on the Court. Let Him Show You.

      by

      The Philadelphia 76ers center is one of the best big men in the N.B.A., but with his dribbling skills, he may be coming for the jobs of the guards.Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers took a half-beat to assess the situation during a late-season game against the Boston Celtics. As is often the case, he sensed an advantage.Embiid, a 7-foot, 280-pound center, cradled the ball near the top of the key as he faced up against the Celtics’ Grant Williams, a 6-6 forward who crouched into a defensive stance as he waved his left hand in Embiid’s face. It might as well have been an act of surrender.Embiid had a lot of extraordinary feats during the regular season to position himself as a favorite to win his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award. In addition to leading the league in scoring for a second consecutive season, with a career-high 33.1 points per game, he averaged 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks.But there was one thing he did more often than anything else, an underrated skill for him that destabilized opposing defenses and helped lift the 76ers to the third-best record in the N.B.A.: He took 5,526 dribbles.Embiid driving against Boston’s Grant Williams in a late-season game.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDuring that possession against the Celtics, Embiid needed just two of them — a pair of hard dribbles to his right as his teammates cleared out to the 3-point line, dragging their defenders with them. Embiid pulled up in the paint, then created space against Williams with a double pivot before he sank a short fadeaway jumper over him.“How are you going to stop that?” Ian Eagle, TNT’s play-by-play voice, said during the television broadcast.The short answer for the Celtics was that they weren’t. Embiid finished with 52 points in a narrow win.Not so long ago, N.B.A. centers made their lunch-pail livings by camping out near the hoop. A between-the-legs dribble out near the 3-point line would have probably landed them on the bench.But the game has changed, of course, and the plodding big man is a relic. The modern N.B.A. is teeming with huge players who can launch 3-pointers, run sets from the high post and, in some cases, stretch defenses by dribbling like their Lilliputian teammates. More