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      Willis Reed, Hall of Fame Center for Champion Knicks, Dies at 80

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      He was beloved by New York fans for his willingness to play hurt, as memorably exemplified in the decisive Game 7 of the 1970 N.B.A. finals at Madison Square Garden.Willis Reed, the brawny and inspirational hub of two Knicks championship teams that captivated New York in the early 1970s with a canny, team-oriented style of play, died on Tuesday. He was 80.His death was confirmed by his former teammate Bill Bradley, the former United States senator. He said Reed had congestive heart issues. It was not clear where Reed died, but he had been under treatment at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, Bradley said.Reed was notably absent last month, for health reasons, when the Knicks celebrated their 1972-73 championship team during a 50th-anniversary halftime ceremony at Madison Square Garden attended by many former members of that squad, including Bradley, Walt Frazier, Dick Barnett, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas. Reed spoke to the crowd in a prerecorded video.In an era when Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain were the more celebrated big men, Reed was a highly skilled 6-foot-9 center with a resolute physicality that was much admired over a 10-year career, though it was marred by injury and ended at 31.It was Reed’s willingness to play hurt that brought him his greatest measure of respect and fame, and his grittiness was never more exemplified and celebrated than on May 8, 1970, in the decisive game of the National Basketball Association finals.Days earlier, he had torn a right tensor muscle, which originates in the hip and extends to the thigh, while driving to the basket on Chamberlain during the first quarter of Game 5 at Madison Square Garden — a game the Knicks rallied to win without him. Saving whatever he had left for a possible Game 7, he sat out Game 6 in Los Angeles, in which Chamberlain scored 45 points.When the Knicks went out to warm up before the start of Game 7, Reed stayed behind in the trainer’s room for treatment. As everyone in the packed Garden anxiously awaited word on whether he would play, he made his way stiff-legged through the players’ tunnel and emerged to a crescendo of cheers to join his teammates, who were already warming up.“You’re five stories above the ground and I swear you could feel the vibrations,” Reed said in 2009. “I thought, this is what an earthquake must feel like.”Limping noticeably, he hit his first two southpaw jump shots for his only points of the game. Frazier carried the Knicks from there, with 36 points and 19 assists, and the Knicks, with a 113-99 victory, clinched the franchise’s first title.In 1990, around the 20th anniversary of Game 7, Reed told The New York Times: “There isn’t a day in my life that people don’t remind me of that game.”Heroism Under DuressHis threshold for tolerating pain — however much dulled that night by pregame injections of carbocaine, a powerful derivative of novocaine — has for decades been invoked as a standard measure, a “Willis Reed moment,” for athletic heroism under physical duress.“It was the best example of inspiration by an individual in a sporting event I’ve ever seen,” Bradley once said.Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.After his playing days, Reed was a coach or executive for the Knicks, the New Jersey Nets and the New Orleans Hornets. He was part of the Nets’ front office when the team lost consecutive N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003. He also coached at Creighton University from 1981 to 1985, and was an assistant coach in the N.B.A. for the Atlanta Hawks and the Sacramento Kings.Reed, a Louisiana native, was an avid outdoorsman. His hobby fit his playing persona as a rugged, proud man whose patience wore thin with those who challenged or crossed him.The Knicks’ starting five after winning a playoff game against the Milwaukee Bucks in 1970. From left were Dick Barnett, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Reed. Dan Farrell/New York Daily News Archive, via Getty ImagesOn Oct. 18, 1966, at Madison Square Garden, the Los Angeles Lakers learned the hard way that Reed was no one to fool with. Beginning his third season with the Knicks, Reed was embroiled in a battle with the Lakers’ Rudy LaRusso, a bruising 6-foot-7 forward. Throughout the game, Reed had been complaining to the officials about LaRusso’s tactics, but when his pleas were ignored he acted on his own.Lined up at the free-throw line late in the third quarter, Reed elbowed LaRusso to the side of the head. On the way up court, LaRusso responded with a chopping punch. Reed, in a sudden fury, shook off Darrall Imhoff’s bear hug from behind and floored the 6-foot-10 Imhoff, cutting him near the eye; he broke the nose of John Block, a 6-foot-9 rookie, who had foolishly stepped into his space; and he finally chased LaRusso into the Lakers’ bench, throwing wild punches and sending several of the players fleeing from Reed’s range.A grainy black-and-white film of the melee surfaced in 2014 in an ESPN documentary on the Knicks teams of the early 1970s. In the film, “When the Garden Was Eden,” Reed sheepishly called it “a good fight.”He also recalled being upset that none of his teammates had joined the fray and noted their reticence in the postgame locker room. Barnett later said that he had remarked, “Man, you were winning.”A Gentle GiantOff the court, Reed was a much gentler giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Within the Knicks organization, he was known to be generous with teammates in an era when financial rewards in professional sports were not as substantial as they are today.“Willis would always take the rookies under his wing,” Frazier, a Hall of Fame guard on those championship teams, was quoted as saying in “Garden Glory: An Oral History of the New York Knicks,” written by Dennis D’Agostino and published in 2003. “He would loan you his car or money. That was his personality.”He was also recognized as a natural leader. Shortly after the brawl with the Lakers, he was named team captain — a role he had filled for his high school basketball and football teams and during his junior and senior seasons as a star at the historically Black Grambling College (now Grambling State University). He was just 24.Reed after the Knicks beat the Lakers on May 8, 1970. Off the court, he was a gentle giant, flashing an easy smile and typically extending a large hand to greet friends and acquaintances. Associated Press‘We Made the Best of It’Willis Reed Jr. was born on June 25, 1942, in Hico, La., the only child of Willis and Inell Reed. As a young boy, he lived on a 200-acre farm owned by his grandparents, Baptist teetotalers who preached commitment and hard work.When Reed reached school age, his parents moved about 10 miles away to Bernice, a town of three square miles in north central Louisiana that was then a thriving lumber and agricultural community. His father worked in a sawmill factory, and his mother worked as a domestic.Reed grew up with an acute sense of what Jim Crow law meant: separate but not really equal. “Didn’t have the houses the white folks have, didn’t have a car,” he said in 2009. “But the situation was what it was. We made the best of it in Bernice until it changed.”Still, Reed always maintained, he never harbored ill feelings for white people. He believed that attending an all-Black high school, Westside, a few miles from Bernice, provided role models for him he might not have had in an integrated school.Reed attempted to block a shot by Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics in a mid-1960s game at Madison Square Garden.Ken Regan/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMost prominent was the school’s basketball coach, Lendon Stone, who wore a jacket and tie to school every day and demonstrated to Reed that he could avoid the backbreaking work his father did.Reed majored in physical education at Grambling and planned on being a teacher until he became a dominant player, averaging 26.6 points and 21.3 rebounds per game as a senior. The Knicks drafted him with the first pick of the second round in 1964, after 10 other players had been chosen. With their first-round pick, the Knicks selected another big man, Jim Barnes, who had beaten Reed out for a spot on the 1964 United States Olympic team.Reed believed he was better than Barnes and most of the other first-round picks, and he was determined to prove it. When he was offered his first Knicks contract, for $11,000 with a $3,000 signing bonus, he told Eddie Donovan, the team’s general manager, that he wanted a bigger bonus. Told that the team wanted him to earn it on the court, Reed accepted the challenge and vowed to make Donovan pay him after the season.As team captain, Reed took his leadership responsibilities seriously, and Red Holzman, his coach, relied on him to motivate and police teammates as the Knicks improved dramatically from the middle to the late 1960s.They narrowly missed making the N.B.A. finals in 1969, losing a tough six-game series to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. With Russell retired by the next season, the Knicks reeled off 17 early-season victories in a row, equaling a record then held by Boston.Reed battled for the ball with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of the Milwaukee Bucks, then known as Lew Alcindor, in a 1970 Eastern Division playoff game.Associated PressTriumphs and ChallengesThey appeared to be a team of destiny. But along the way to the championship there were significant challenges, one of which was internal and demanded Reed’s exceptional leadership to quell a festering internal conflict.In mid-January of that season, Cazzie Russell, the Knicks’ best offensive substitute, was late to a practice on an off-day in Detroit. Driving out of Ann Arbor, where he was visiting with friends, Russell was pulled over by the police and ordered out of the car at gunpoint. When he produced a driver’s license, the officers apologized and explained that an African American male with a beard had broken out of prison. Russell, who was African American, had a beard.Upon arriving at practice, upset by what he considered to be a case of racial profiling, Russell began throwing elbows at the Knicks’ white players, in particular Bradley, a college rival at Princeton who had joined the Knicks after Russell and who eventually took his starting forward position.Reed halted the scrimmage, approached Russell and asked what he was doing. In “The Open Man,” a diary of the 1969-70 season, the Knicks’ Hall of Fame forward Dave DeBusschere recalled that Russell blurted out, “Be quiet, Uncle Tom.”For Reed, a child of the segregated South, it was deeply offensive to be spoken to in such a way, especially in front of his teammates. Russell quickly realized the risk he had taken. He had made his N.B.A. debut in 1966 on the night Reed brawled with the Lakers.Reed returned to Madison Square Garden in 2010 to join his former teammates in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Knicks’ first championship.Jason Szenes/The New York TimesBut when Reed was at Grambling in the early 1960s, his team occasionally competed against white teams in the national small-college tournament. His coach, Fred Hobdy, admonished his players about allowing the incendiary issue of race to infect their mental preparation and execution.“He used to say, ‘Listen, you guys are athletes, and you don’t need to be out there demonstrating — the best thing you can do is what you do best,’” Reed said in 2009.On the Knicks, which had Black and white players, Reed intuitively recognized the danger of the team splintering or Russell being emasculated if he overreacted to the insult.Reed stepped forward and issued a blunt warning to Russell: Be quiet, play the right way, or “this Uncle Tom will be kicking some ass.” Given a moment to gather himself, Russell apologized.The Knicks kept winning, and Russell helped them hold off the Baltimore Bullets in the decisive game of a first-round playoff series, on a night when Bradley played poorly and the team needed a fourth-quarter lift.Recalling the incident in 2010 when he was back in New York for a 40th-anniversary celebration, Russell called Reed “an amazing man.”Bradley said the incident with Russell captured the essence of Reed, whom he called “a strong and selfless leader, who was the heart of our team.“Even as the league’s M.V.P.,” Bradley continued, “he knew that the individual was never as important as the team, and that points were transitory, championships were forever.”Reed’s greatest triumphs were the two championships in New York, but his most deflating career moment also came at Madison Square Garden. On Nov. 10, 1978, he was summoned there by Sonny Werblin, the Garden’s president, and fired just 14 games into his second season as Knicks coach, despite having made the playoffs in the previous season.Reed did return to the Knicks in a nominal administrative role around the turn of the century. But he accepted an offer to join the New Orleans front office as vice president of basketball operations in June 2003. His widowed mother’s health was failing, and he relished the opportunity to be closer to the home he had built for her in Bernice.The plan went awry when Inell Reed died four months later.Reed’s survivors include his second wife, Gale Kennedy, and a daughter, Veronica, whom he had with his first wife, Geraldine (Oliver) Reed. A son, Karl, also from his first marriage, died in 2017 at 53. In 2005, the New Orleans franchise was temporarily relocated to Oklahoma City in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Two years later, approaching his 65th birthday, Reed retired from basketball.On a lush, sprawling property not far from Grambling, with oak trees and man-made streams, Reed built a home far from the bright lights of New York, where he could count on being recognized and extolled by baby boomers on sight.Upon his retirement, Reed told The Times, “Call me in Louisiana and my wife will tell you I’ve gone fishing.” More

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      Yes, They Are Tall. No, They Do Not Play Basketball.

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      For the vertically gifted, every day of the year means standing out. But March can be particularly maddening.Dave Rasmussen has learned to deal with the small inconveniences that life lobs at him.He can tell you how much space — down to the inch — an exit row seat affords him on different commercial airplanes. Once, he needed a ceiling tile removed so that he could run on a treadmill. He scouts the roominess of potential rental cars by going to the Milwaukee Auto Show.And by now Rasmussen, 61, is ready for the strangers who gawk and take photographs and ask versions of the same question that he has fielded his entire life: Did you play basketball?For exceptionally tall people like Rasmussen, who is 7 feet 2 inches, March may be the worst month. The N.C.A.A. men’s and women’s basketball tournaments have captured the attention of office pool bracketologists. The N.B.A. playoff chase is heating up. And tall people everywhere, including those who have never attempted a jump shot, are swept up in the madness through no fault of their own. Rasmussen is a retired information technology specialist.“I always feel so bad for those people,” said Cole Aldrich, a 6-11 center who played eight seasons in the N.B.A. before he retired in 2019. “If you’re tall, there’s this belief that you should automatically be good at basketball. And if you aren’t, then what the hell is wrong with you?”Many tall people gravitate to basketball, which favors the vertically advantaged since they are closer to the hoop and their length helps them defend, block shots and score against shorter opponents. But there are also millions of people who spend their days ducking under doorways and cursing ceiling fans — and have nothing to do with the game.In any case, it gets old. Ask Tiffany Tweed (or maybe don’t ask her), a 6-4 hospital pharmacist from Hickory, N.C., who gets interrogated all the time. There are basketball questions, of course. But also: How tall is your father? How tall is your mother? And: Can you grab that book off the top shelf for me?Rasmussen, center, sat in on a string ensemble rehearsal in a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee classroom.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesTweed played basketball when she was younger, but she now tells people that she was a ballerina and does a twirl on her tiptoes to prove it. (She was not a ballerina.)“I decided that I was going to have some fun with it, because I’m sick of answering the same questions the same way,” said Tweed, 37, who has a popular TikTok account where she shares the joys and pains of, say, shopping for jeans with a 37-inch inseam. “I love being a positive role model for girls who are tall. But when I get home, I’m like, please leave me alone.”The average W.N.B.A. player, at a shade taller than 6 feet, towers over the average American woman (5 feet 3.5 inches). American men who are between 6 feet and 6-2 — significantly taller than the 5-9 average — have about a five in a million chance of making the N.B.A., according to “The Sports Gene,” a 2013 book by David Epstein about the science of athletic performance. But if you hit the genetic lottery and happen to be 7 feet tall, your chances of landing in the N.B.A. are roughly one in six. (There are 38 players on active rosters who are 7 feet or taller, according to N.B.A. Advanced Stats; the average height of an N.B.A. player is 6 feet 6.5 inches.)Still, most 7-footers are not pro basketball players, and instead are often unfairly burdened with being compelled to explain their life choices to strangers.Daniel Gilchrist, 40, played basketball briefly at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kan., before injuries forced him to call it quits. His father, Jim, had steered him toward the game for obvious reasons: Daniel was 7-7.“At the time, I kind of resented him for that,” Daniel Gilchrist said. “But now that I’m older, I kind of understand why he wanted me to play. And I’m glad I did it, but it was never something I was passionate about.”Gilchrist now follows his passion as an actor, appearing onstage at the Topeka Civic Theater. Last year, he played the role of Lennie in a production of “Of Mice and Men,” which he described as a lifelong dream. He has also been cast in an upcoming film — as a sasquatch. He acknowledged the long process of self-acceptance.“It did take me a while,” he said, “especially as a teenager. And there are still days when I wish I could blend in. But a long time ago, I figured that I could either accept it or become a hermit.”Rasmussen ducked into a parking garage stairwell. He is the tallest member of Tall Clubs International.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesSome tall people refer to other tall people as “talls.” But true talls tend to be wary of phony talls — women in stilettos, for example. Kimberly Schmal, a 6-foot utility biller from Oak Harbor, Wash., gets the urge to investigate whenever she spots a fellow tall.“So you go over and take a closer look: Is she wearing heels? No! She’s just tall!” said Schmal, 38. “And you strike up a conversation.”Growing up, Schmal was a cheerleader. She did not want to play basketball — or volleyball, a basketball-adjacent pursuit. The problem for Schmal was that the girls’ volleyball coach at her high school managed the local Burger King, and he desperately wanted her to come out for the team.“He would sit next to us at the booth and just be like, ‘Volleyball, volleyball, volleyball,’” Schmal recalled.John Stewart, 64, who is 6-6 and played basketball in high school and for two years at a trade school, never harbored any illusions about a future in the game.“I didn’t have any scouts following me around!” he said. “I just didn’t have the talent.”Stewart has since spent 46 years working at a rock quarry near his home in Burlington, N.C., where he has gotten used to people remarking on his height and asking the usual questions. And for a few fleeting seconds, he is happy to let them imagine that he played big-time college ball, or even in the N.B.A., until he tells them the truth.“It doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “It’s kind of like my 15 minutes of fame.”This summer, Stewart plans to attend the annual convention for Tall Clubs International aboard an Alaskan cruise. The organization includes 38 chapters in the United States and Canada. There are height requirements: 6-2 for men and 5-10 for women. But membership is otherwise open to all, said Bob Huggett, the organization’s 6-7 president.“The only thing we have in common,” Huggett said, “is that we’re tall.”Huggett has a pat response whenever someone asks whether he played basketball.“No,” he says, “did you play miniature golf?”In recent years, membership at many chapters has decreased — a symptom of a larger trend among social organizations. Nancy Kaplan, 55, a retired kindergarten teacher from Albany, N.Y., recalled how much fun she had as a member of the Tall Club of New York City in the 1990s. No one stared. No one pointed. And no one peppered her with questions about being 6-3.Nancy Kaplan, who is 6-3, tried basketball when she was younger but did not like it. She became a teacher.Cindy Schultz for The New York Times“It was just so lovely to walk into a huge dance hall and everybody was your height,” she said. “I could even wear heels. I mean, heels! I was the short one in a lot of those groups.”Kaplan has otherwise struggled with her height “every day of my entire life,” she said. As a young girl, she was teased and called names like Big Bird. The girls’ basketball coach at her high school hounded her about joining the team until she caved, though it was a short-lived experiment.“I hate running, and I hate sweating,” she said. “I would run up and down the court fixing my hair.”As a teacher, Kaplan said, she was scrutinized by colleagues.“It was never the kids who said, ‘Wow, you’re so tall,’” she said. “It was the other teachers and staff who would make comments: ‘You’re too big to teach kindergarten. How do you get down in their chairs?’ It’s very painful and hurtful that someone can come up to you and just comment on your height.”If nothing else, she can commiserate with her younger sister, Anita Kaplan, 49, who is 6-5 and described certain triggers in her own life, such as when she enters a public restroom.“The women, in their peripheral vision, will see you and give you that look for a fraction of a second,” Anita Kaplan said. “And you know exactly what they’re thinking: Why is this man in here?”Nancy Kaplan said the only time she felt fully seen as a woman was when she was pregnant.Anita Kaplan, unlike her older sister, was drawn into the vortex of basketball by her father, Allen, a 6-7 optometrist who sensed her potential. She worked at her game in the family driveway, where she sought to compensate for her lack of dexterity — “I am not athletic, not even a little,” she said — through sheer willpower. Her feel for the game grew along with her reputation.“They called me the Truck,” Kaplan said. “And I got to be around tall men. I had an ulterior motive.”Kaplan, right, took a customer’s order at Pearl’s Bagels and Bakery in Albany, N.Y.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesAnita Kaplan went up for a layup for Stanford against Southern Methodist in 1995.Otto Greule Jr./Allsport, via Getty ImagesShe landed at Stanford, where she was a decorated center, then played professionally for a few seasons. Now, as the mother of three teenage sons (two of whom are taller than 6 feet), she has nuanced feelings about her stature. She loved playing basketball, she said, but she also has the lived experience of always standing out, of never being able to hide. People, she said, approach her all the time to ask if she played hoops. She tells them no.Steve Dexter, 67, has gotten so tired of questions about basketball that he now tells inquisitive strangers that he once graced the hardwood for the University of Oklahoma. The twist is that Dexter, who is 6-7, never played basketball.“Athletes were not my crowd,” said Dexter, who lives in Laguna Beach, Calif. “I was kind of a nerd.”These days, as a real estate investor and author, Dexter considers his physical stature to be an asset, citing research that tall people are deemed “more trustworthy and authoritative.”Rasmussen, who at 7-2 is the tallest member of Tall Clubs International, recalled joining friends at a political rally in Milwaukee many years ago. Afterward, he was approached by Secret Service agents who gauged his interest in doing surveillance. It was a change of pace from the usual questions.“I think they figured that if I could dress like a schlep, nobody would suspect me,” Rasmussen said. “But I never followed up.”In retirement, Rasmussen has remained active. He swims, bikes and plays the violin and the viola in quartets and an orchestra.At rehearsals, he sits on a high stool in the back row, where he can enjoy being a part of something larger than himself. More

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      Fairleigh Dickinson Hopes to Be the Next March Madness Fairy Tale

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      It was quiet at the Fairleigh Dickinson University campus in New Jersey the day after its basketball team pulled off a stunning upset in the men’s N.C.A.A. tournament. But it’s often quiet there.TEANECK, N.J. — The jokes of “F.D.— who?” go back more than 30 years, to the last time Fairleigh Dickinson University played Purdue in the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament.Purdue fans held up signs with the slogan when the two teams faced off in 1988.Purdue won.F.D.U. faded back into obscurity.So, for alumni of the New Jersey commuter school who remember the old jab, F.D.U.’s shocking victory against No. 1 Purdue on Friday was especially sweet.On Friday evening, Marc A. Wolfe, who worked for the student newspaper in those days, reposted photos he took from the sidelines of the 1988 game, just before he watched his alma mater topple the Boilermakers, 63-58, in the first round of this year’s tournament.“I’m excited that F.D.U. has done what was not only unexpected, but now people will know more about what’s possible,” Mr. Wolfe said.F.D.U.’s basketball team has the shortest average height in Division I, while Purdue’s roster includes Zach Edey, who is 7 feet 4 inches. F.D.U.’s interim president, Michael J. Avaltroni, said that the David-and-Goliath win lined up with the legacy of the small university.“We have always really been about giving students a chance,” Mr. Alvatroni said, “oftentimes when they didn’t even know whether college was a good fit for them. And kind of transforming them along the way and giving them the opportunity to, in some cases, perform these very miraculous feats.”Anete Adul, who plays for F.D.U.’s golf team, watched the basketball game from the airport on the way back from playing in Florida this week. Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesThe university, which also has campuses in England and Canada, bills itself as a global institution. A few hundred international students are also enrolled at the two New Jersey campuses.But a vast majority of students there are in-state students and attend part time. The university’s Metropolitan Campus sits on the border of Teaneck and Hackensack, middle-class towns across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Seventy percent of the students at Metropolitan Campus commute, Mr. Avaltroni said. The other campus is in Madison, a small suburb further west.Metropolitan Campus’s utilitarian brick buildings include the Rothman Center, a building with a tent-like roof that is home to the school’s men’s basketball team, the Knights. But the morning after the big game, the revelry was muted, with students away on spring break and the campus nearly deserted.A thin banner spanned Teaneck’s main street, Cedar Lane. “Congratulations F.D.U. Men’s Basketball Team. Welcome to the N.C.A.A. March Madness Tournament,” it read.Mia Andrews, an F.D.U. student and a basketball player, celebrated her university’s win on Friday, even though the women’s team season had ended.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesStudent athletes who stuck around for practices over spring break watched the game together on campus on Friday. Liam Deep, who runs track for F.D.U., watched alongside softball players.Mr. Deep is from Toronto, but “I wasn’t from Toronto last night,” he said.Mr. Avaltroni, the interim president, said both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have done well this year. “There’s been an enthusiasm on campus that I have not seen,” he said, adding, “I’ve been at the university for 20 years.”The women’s team finished its season as regular-season champions, but lost in the first round of the Women’s National Invitation Tournament on Friday night to Columbia University. Mia Andrews, a guard on the women’s team, said her team “had mixed emotions because obviously, we had just finished our season.”But after the players found out that the men’s team had won, they broke into chants in the locker room. “It was a fun moment,” she said.Anete Adul was making her way back to Teaneck from Florida with the university’s golf team during the game. “We were in Orlando in the airport, and everyone was watching it, and it was so cool,” she said.Locals hope it could be another good basketball year for New Jersey. Last year, the state became the focal point of March Madness when another obscure institution, St. Peter’s University in Jersey City, made it all the way to the eighth round as a No. 15 seed.Watch parties for F.D.U.’s next game are planned for the Rothman Center as well as Hackensack Brewing Company, a craft brewery near Metropolitan Campus. This week, Princeton University also scored an upset when the Tigers, a No. 15 seed, beat No. 2 Arizona, 59-55. When Mr. Wolfe was a student, after F.D.U. won the N.E.C. championship and made it to the N.C.A.A. tournament, “we got on a bus, us and a bunch of other students and fans, and drove 15 hours to Indiana,” he said. (The game was held on the University of Notre Dame campus.)Mr. Wolfe lived on campus. He said it led to opportunities like working at the student newspaper and cemented his bond to the school.“I figured if you commute to a school, it’s not the same as if you live there,” he said. This year, the F.D.U. fans who had traveled to see the team’s first-round game — which was played at a stadium in Columbus, Ohio — were drowned out by the crowd that had turned out for Purdue. But Purdue’s team was gracious after the loss.Matt Painter, Purdue’s coach, put it simply: “They were fabulous.” More

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      Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown Talks Free Agency, Activism and Kanye West

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      HOUSTON — Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown was around 7 years old when he asked his grandmother Dianne Varnado for a new Xbox. Varnado, a longtime public-school teacher and social worker, made him write a paper about it.“‘If you want something, you’ve got to be able to explain why,’” Brown, 26, recalled her telling him.His wants are different now: to win an N.B.A. championship; for players to share in more of the league’s profits; to see an end to anti-Black racism in policing and school funding.Brown has used his celebrity platform to explain why he is passionate about issues like income inequality. Derek Van Rheenen, one of Brown’s former professors at the University of California, Berkeley, described him as “intellectually curious” and “politically invested, socially conscious.”But Brown’s growing profile has meant more pressure to explain himself: for working with the rapper Kanye West, who goes by Ye, after he made antisemitic comments, and for a misstep while supporting Kyrie Irving, who faced backlash after promoting an antisemitic film when he played for the Nets.While basketball has been Brown’s primary focus, it has never been the only one. Brown said his family is full of educators, who laid the foundation for his activist focus on education inequality. Varnado, whom he said recently died “peacefully,” also helped him develop his voice by teaching him to argue for what matters to him. (He got the Xbox.)Brown is averaging career highs in points per game (26.8), rebounds per game (6.9) and shooting percentage (49 percent). This is his seventh season.Mitchell Leff/Getty ImagesBrown sat down with The New York Times at a Four Seasons hotel in Houston on Sunday to talk about his career and his life, including the controversies. He had just come off a flight from Atlanta, where the Celtics had won the night before. Brown has firmly established himself as one of the elite guards in the N.B.A. on one of the top teams, averaging career highs in scoring and rebounding in his best season yet.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Work and Life in BostonHow important is making an All-N.B.A. team to you?You want me to answer honestly?I don’t want you to lie to me.I think it would be deserving. We’ve been pretty dominant all season long.Whether I’m in an All-Star Game, All-N.B.A., or whoever comes up with those decisions, is out of my control. I think I’m one of the best basketball players in the world. And I continue to go out and prove it, especially when it matters the most in the playoffs.You and Jayson Tatum have pretty much played your entire careers together at this point. How would you describe your relationship today?I would say the same as it’s always been. You know, two guys who work really hard, who care about winning. We come out and we are extremely competitive. People still probably don’t think it’ll work out.But, for the most part, it’s been rarefied air.The Celtics drafted Jayson Tatum, left, one year after they drafted Brown. Together, they led Boston to the N.B.A. finals last season but lost to Golden State.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesCeltics center Al Horford recalled that the speed of the N.B.A. game was “really, really fast” for Brown during his rookie season in 2016-17. But now, “he just completely understands the things that he needs to do on the floor,” Horford said.Brown made his second All-Star team this season, and his career-best 26.8 points a game places him among the top guards in scoring. He could be a free agent after next season, but he said he isn’t thinking about that yet. “I’ve been able to make a lot of connections in the city, meet a lot of amazing families who have dedicated their lives to issues about change,” he said.Brown, who is Black, has spoken publicly about racism in Boston, where about half the population is white and about a quarter is Black. In 2015, a jolting study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston estimated that the Black households in the Boston area had a median wealth of close to zero, while the figure for white households was $247,500. “The wealth disparity in Boston is ridiculous,” Brown said.What has your experience been like as a Black professional athlete in Boston?There’s multiple experiences: as an athlete, as a basketball player, as a regular civilian, as somebody who’s trying to start a business, as someone who’s trying to do things in the community.There’s not a lot of room for people of color, Black entrepreneurs, to come in and start a business.I think that my experience there has been not as fluid as I thought it would be.What do you mean by that?Even being an athlete, you would think that you’ve got a certain amount of influence to be able to have experiences, to be able to have some things that doors open a little bit easier. But even with me being who I am, trying to start a business, trying to buy a house, trying to do certain things, you run into some adversity.Other athletes have spoken about the negative way that fans have treated Black athletes while playing in Boston. Have you experienced any of that?I have, but I pretty much block it all out. It’s not the whole Celtic fan base, but it is a part of the fan base that exists within the Celtic nation that is problematic. If you have a bad game, they tie it to your personal character.I definitely think there’s a group or an amount within the Celtic nation that is extremely toxic and does not want to see athletes use their platform, or they just want you to play basketball and entertain and go home. And that’s a problem to me.ActivismErik Moore, the founder of the venture capital firm Base Ventures, mentored Brown in college after Brown interned at his company. He said Brown was always focused on social justice. “It’s not new or shocking or weird,” Moore said. “It’s just who he is.”In April 2020, Brown wrote an op-ed for The Guardian decrying societal inequalities exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. The next month, he donated $1,000 to the political action committee Grassroots Law, which, according to its website, fights “to end oppressive policing, incarceration, and injustice.” Weeks later, Brown drove 15 hours to Atlanta from Boston to protest the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis.Brown spoke about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before a game against the New Orleans Pelicans in January 2022.Adam Glanzman/Getty ImagesDo you think things are better for Black Americans when it comes to dealing with police than they were three years ago when you went down to protest?I have not seen it, to be honest. I think the issue is more systemic. I think what I learned about policing is that it’s not like the N.B.A., where everybody has these kind of rules that they kind of follow. How a police station in Memphis runs their police station is different from how they might run it in the New York Police Department. I don’t want to say it’s like the Wild West, but it’s different, you know?I read an interview where you said “Educational inequality is probably the most potent form of racism on our planet.” What do you mean by that?There’s different forms of bigotry or racism or inequalities. Directly confrontational still happens to this day, where people come up to you and just tell you their distaste for the way you walk, the way you talk, your skin color. And those are all extremely emotionally detrimental.There’s other forms of hegemonic racism that are subliminal, such as the inequalities in the education system: the lack of resources and opportunities through local elections and people voting on how much money or resources should go in this area versus this area.What about those kids who are extremely talented? What about those kids who are gifted who have contributions to make to society? But they’re stumped because of lack of opportunity.I’ll forever fight for those kids because I’m one of them.Ye and IrvingBrown first received widespread attention for his political views in 2018 when he told The Guardian that President Donald J. Trump was “unfit to lead” and that he had “made it a lot more acceptable for racists to speak their minds.” He also said sports were a “mechanism of control.” It was an unusual degree of outspokenness for a young, unestablished player.So Brown raised eyebrows in May 2022 when he became one of the first athletes to join Donda Sports, the new marketing agency of a well-known Trump supporter: Ye.“I think people still are loath to believe that Kanye really is a Trump fan,” said Moore, Brown’s mentor, adding, “So it might be easy to compartmentalize those things for Kanye specifically and say he’s a marketing phenom and he’s an amazing artist and he’s got that side of the world first and be OK with that.”Brown was one of the first athletes to sign with the marketing agency of the rapper Kanye West, who goes by Ye, left. Jed Jacobsohn/NBAE via Getty ImagesAs Ye spiraled with a series of antisemitic comments and social media posts in the fall, Brown initially defended his association with Donda Sports before apologizing in October and cutting ties.Months after your interview in The Guardian in 2018, Kanye goes to the White House and very publicly aligns himself with President Trump. When you decided to sign with Donda, how did you reconcile those two things?You know, just because you think differently from somebody, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with them. I don’t think the same as [the Celtics owners] Steve Pagliuca or Wyc Grousbeck on a lot of different issues. But that doesn’t mean we can’t come together and win a championship.What are the things you aligned with Donda on specifically?One, education. Donda was his mother’s name and she was an educator, similar to my mom. And she was an activist and they had a different approach to how they looked at agency, how they looked at representation through marketing and media.Everybody kind of follows the same script, especially in sports. They hire an agent. And that approach never really absolutely worked for me.Look, I’m a part of the union. I see the statistics every day. Over 40 to 60 percent of our athletes, 10 years after they retire, go broke or lose majority of their wealth. Our athletes silently suffer. Nobody’s helping them manage their money, and [the agents] just get a new client once the oil has run dry. Nobody looks at that model and that approach as an issue.Trying to be an example for the next generation of athletes.You described Kanye as a role model in the past. How do you feel about him now?Go to the next question. I’m not going to answer that.You got in a little bit of hot water in November for sharing a video of the Black Hebrew Israelites [an antisemitic group] outside of Barclays Center in support of Kyrie Irving. You said that you thought it was a fraternity. Did that incident make you rethink how you want to use your platform?At that time, being the vice president of the players association, Kyrie Irving was being exiled, so I thought it was important to use my platform to to show him some love when he was being welcomed back. And people took it with their own perspective and ran with it. That’s out of my control. I’ve always used my platform to talk about certain things, and I will continue to. But the more you make people uncomfortable, the more criticism you’re going to get. And that’s just life.Brown, right, was one of several players who expressed support for Kyrie Irving, left, as he faced strong public backlash for promoting an antisemitic movie. Irving denied that he was antisemitic.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesBrown is one of seven vice presidents in the N.B.A. players’ union. Chrysa Chin, a union executive, recalled meeting Brown before his rookie year. She said he told her he wanted to be president of the union one day. “I thought it was very unusual,” Chin said.The N.B.A. and the union are negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement, with the players seeking a “true partnership” that lets them tap into more of the league’s revenue streams that would not exist without their labor, Brown said.“We’d like to see our ethics, morals and values being upheld internationally and globally,” Brown said, “and we would like to have a say-so with the partners and the people that are being involved with the league, because our face, our value, our work ethic, our work, our labor is attached to this league as well.” More

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      Memphis Grizzlies Guard Ja Morant Suspended 8 Games for Gun Video

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      The N.B.A. said it was “irresponsible, reckless and potentially very dangerous” for Morant to livestream video of himself holding a gun in a nightclub near Denver.The N.B.A. suspended Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant for eight games without pay for conduct detrimental to the league after he appeared in an Instagram live video early on the morning of March 4 “holding a firearm in an intoxicated state” while visiting a nightclub near Denver, according to a league statement.Morant, 23, has not played since March 3, when the Grizzlies lost to the Denver Nuggets, and the five games he has missed will count toward the suspension. He will be eligible to play again in the Grizzlies’ game on Monday against the Dallas Mavericks.“Ja’s conduct was irresponsible, reckless and potentially very dangerous,” N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “It also has serious consequences given his enormous following and influence, particularly among young fans who look up to him. He has expressed sincere contrition and remorse for his behavior.”Silver and Morant met at the N.B.A.’s office in New York on Wednesday. According to the league’s statement, the league’s head of basketball operations, Joe Dumars, who oversees player punishment, and Tamika Tremaglio, the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union, also attended the meeting.The league said that it had investigated the video and “did not conclude” that Morant owned the gun or that he brought it to the club. The N.B.A. also said in its statement that it did not determine that Morant had traveled with the gun or taken it to an N.B.A. facility. The league’s collective bargaining agreement prohibits players from having firearms and deadly weapons at N.B.A. facilities or when traveling on league business. Players who violate that policy can be suspended indefinitely by the commissioner and fined up to $50,000.Morant had been away from the Grizzlies since March 4, though the Grizzlies did not say whether he had been suspended. By that afternoon, his Twitter and Instagram accounts had been deactivated.That same day, the agency that represents Morant, Tandem, released a statement from Morant in which he said he took “full responsibility for my actions last night.”“I’m sorry to my family, teammates, coaches, fans, partners, the city of Memphis and the entire Grizzlies organization for letting you down,” Morant said. “I’m going to take some time away to get help and work on learning better methods of dealing with stress and my overall well-being.”The incident at the nightclub happened three days after The Washington Post reported that Morant had been involved in two incidents last summer in which police were called. In one, Morant was accused of threatening a mall security guard. In the other, he was accused of punching a teenage boy during a pickup game at his home. Morant said he was acting in self-defense.Morant is one of the league’s brightest stars, known for his acrobatic dunks and brash trash talk. He has led the Grizzlies to playoff berths in the past two seasons after a three-year drought for the franchise. He won the league’s Rookie of the Year Award in 2020 and is a two-time All-Star.This season, Morant has averaged 27.1 points, 8.2 assists and 6.0 rebounds per game, leading the Grizzlies to the second-best record in the Western Conference. In his absence, Memphis has held on to the No. 2 seed in the West, having gone 3-2 without Morant. More

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      Top N.B.A. Prospects Skip College, but Not Stardom

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      The N.B.A.’s biggest stars often make their names during the N.C.A.A. tournament. But this year’s top draft picks may be players who found the spotlight elsewhere.As children, the twin brothers Amen and Ausar Thompson adopted their father’s favorite sports teams. That made them Cleveland Cavaliers fans, then Miami Heat fans, then Cavs fans again as they followed LeBron James’s journey through the N.B.A. But when it came to men’s college basketball, there was no wandering around. They rooted for Kentucky.When they were 12, they were especially attached to the Wildcats’ 2014-15 team, which had the twins Aaron and Andrew Harrison and entered the N.C.A.A. tournament with a 34-0 record. The team was so talent-laden that Devin Booker, a future All-N.B.A. guard, had to come off the bench.In the Harrisons, the Thompson twins saw a model for forming a ferocious college backcourt on their path toward their dream of playing in the N.B.A. They could even imagine that path threading through Lexington, Ky. That April, Amen cried when Wisconsin wrecked the Wildcats’ perfect season by beating Kentucky in the Final Four.But the Thompson twins, now 20, never went to Kentucky — or any college. Instead, they signed lucrative deals to play with Overtime Elite, a semiprofessional basketball league for N.B.A. prospects based in Atlanta. For the past two years, Amen and Ausar have been two of the program’s premier stars. They recently finished their final season by winning O.T.E.’s playoffs with their team, the City Reapers.“The games were so intense,” Ausar said, “it felt like the N.C.A.A. tournament. I feel like O.T.E. got the first March Madness of 2023.”Amen Thompson had been a fan of the University of Kentucky since he was a child, but the lure of O.T.E. took him away from the traditional college path to the pros.Adam Hagy/Overtime EliteWhen the first round of the Division I men’s basketball tournament tips off on Thursday, the brothers will be back home in Florida. They’re taking a week off before diving into training ahead of the 2023 N.B.A. draft in June, when they’re expected to be among the first 10 players picked. And they won’t be the only top-tier prospects missing out on the real March Madness.In some mock drafts, the top four predicted picks are Victor Wembanyama of France, Scoot Henderson of the N.B.A.’s G League Ignite and the Thompson twins. If those predictions are right, it would be the first time since 2001 — and only the second time in N.B.A. draft history — that a college basketball player wasn’t selected among the top four picks.“It really shows how many options are available to players now,” Ausar said. “There’s not just one way to make it to the league. You don’t have to do the same thing that everyone else is doing to get where you want to go.”During the N.B.A.’s so-called prep-to-pro generation, dozens of players were drafted out of high school, including Kevin Garnett in 1995 and Kobe Bryant in 1996. In 2001, three of the first four picks were plucked out of the high school ranks: Kwame Brown (No. 1), Tyson Chandler (No. 2) and Eddy Curry (No. 4). Pau Gasol, the No. 3 pick, was selected out of Spain. None of the projected top four picks in this year’s draft had even been born.While the prep-to-pro generation lasted only a decade before the N.B.A. added an age limit to the draft, these new alternative paths look more permanent. The N.B.A. has invested heavily in developing amateur talent, from its international N.B.A. Academy program with outposts in Australia, India, Mexico and Senegal, to the Ignite team, which is part of its developmental G League in the United States. O.T.E. is also well funded and backed by top N.B.A. players. And the N.B.A. may reopen the draft to high school players in 2024 as part of a new collective bargaining agreement that is being negotiated now.For the foreseeable future, most prospects will still come from N.C.A.A. Division I basketball, but the pool for the top of the draft may continue to tilt toward the alternatives.Drafts are notoriously difficult to predict, but one near certainty has emerged this year: Wembanyama will be the first pick. A 7-foot-3 center with an eight-foot wingspan and the ball-handling skills and shooting range of a guard, Wembanyama is considered a generational talent. His grandfather and his mother were professional basketball players in France, and he has been involved in French developmental leagues since he was 7.Victor Wembanyama of France is widely expected to be the No. 1 pick in June’s draft because of his unusual combination of size and guard-like skills.James Hill for The New York Times“I’m going to miss France, for sure,” he told The New York Times in October. “But I’ve worked all my life for this, so I’m really just thankful and grateful.”Wembanyama’s route to the N.B.A. was most likely never going to include a pit stop at an American college. But the roster of his current team, Metropolitans 92 in France’s top league, includes five former Division I players. Although the team was composed primarily to help develop and showcase Wembanyama’s N.B.A. skills, it has made a surprising push to second place. Wembanyama — who is averaging 21.7, 9.3 rebounds and 3.2 blocks a game — is why.In October, Wembanyama got his first taste of playing pro basketball in America when Metropolitans 92 faced off against the G League Ignite team in a two-game exhibition series in Henderson, Nev., where the Ignite play their home games. In the first game, Wembanyama finished with 37 points, 5 blocks, 4 rebounds and 1 steal. Henderson, an aggressive guard, scored 28 points and added 9 assists, 5 rebounds and 2 steals en route to an Ignite win. But in the second game, the collision between the draft’s top two prospects took an all-too-literal turn when they ran into each other near the 3-point line.Henderson left the game with a knee injury, and he has been hobbled by other injuries this season, but he has been a force on the court. In 19 games with Ignite, he has averaged 16.5 points, 6.8 assists and 5.3 rebounds per game.Growing up in Georgia as a two-sport athlete, Henderson had only one rooting interest at the college level: football. He could have played for any college basketball team in the country and considered signing with Georgia or Auburn before ultimately inking a two-year, $1 million deal with Ignite.“Playing with Ignite allowed me to get the grown-man bump,” Henderson said. “I’m going up against guys who have been up in the league and want to get back up again. They know pro basketball inside and out. They know all the angles. I wouldn’t have learned how to play against guys like these if I’d gone to college.”Henderson has three sisters who played Division I basketball, but none of them made the N.C.A.A. tournament. He said he’s never filled out a bracket, but he always enjoys watching the games. He even remembers jumping around in his living room when Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beating, game-winning shot in the 2016 national championship against North Carolina. But he joked that his only regret about college now is that he didn’t get a chance to play for the back-to-back national champion Georgia football team.Scoot Henderson in action during the Rising Stars Game as part of the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend in February.Alex Goodlett/Getty Images“This is the future, man,” Henderson said. “Coming to the N.B.A. from overseas. Coming to the N.B.A. from O.T.E. Coming to the N.B.A. from Ignite. All the guys at the top this year bet on themselves and took their own paths. I commend everybody for doing their own thing.”Ignite’s regular-season schedule doesn’t end until the second weekend of the N.C.A.A. tournament, but the team has shut Henderson down so that he can focus on training for the draft. He said he’ll tune into the tournament when he can — partly to enjoy the games and partly to scout the other top prospects who will be playing in it.With his season wrapped up, Henderson will move back to Georgia, where his family owns a gym, Next Play 360. That will put him just a 25-minute drive away from the Thompson twins, who will be training at O.T.E. in hopes of overtaking him in the draft order.“I like that we get to train before everyone else,” Amen said. “Some of the guys playing are going to be our competition next year, and I get to see what they do. We’re not rooting for any teams, but I hope we get to watch some good basketball.” More

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      Ja Morant’s Impact Can Be Bigger Than Basketball

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      The high-flying Memphis Grizzlies star has excited N.B.A. audiences with his play. But accusations of violent behavior have troubled the communities that need him most.Mary Wainwright does not know Ja Morant, but she prays for him, worries about him and wishes she could sit down with the troubled young N.B.A. star to help “set him straight.”Wainwright, a 64-year-old grandmother, is a community stalwart in Smokey City, the gunfire-strafed neighborhood in north Memphis. It is a short jog from FedExForum, the arena where Morant has worked magic during his four remarkable N.B.A. seasons starring at point guard for the Grizzlies.Over that stretch, Morant has risen to the upper reaches of the N.B.A. firmament with little turbulence — until recently.With his team battling for playoff position, Morant, 23, has been exiled for troubling off-court behavior that crested two weeks ago with the emergence of a video posted to social media that showed him brandishing what appeared to be a handgun at a Colorado strip club.When will he return? The Grizzlies said he could be back on the court against the San Antonio Spurs on Friday, though N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver, rightfully protective of his league’s image, may have other plans.Among the clutch of young stars touted as future faces of the league, few, if any, have Morant’s daring on-court vibe — the jigsaw dribbling past stunned defenders; the shimmying, vaulting, dreads-flying dunks. The way he plays and his cocksure, beat-all-odds manner has led to a budding popularity in all corners of society.That is why Morant’s situation is so important to think of in ways that go beyond hot takes about games missed or how his team will now fare in the playoffs. Gun violence touches every part of American society. But it has an outsize impact in Black and brown communities where Morant’s influence runs deepest.And that is also why I reached out to Wainwright, a Black citizen deeply rooted in her community.“Now you got young kids out there who are stirring up trouble, and they see him flashing a gun, and that just does more to convince them doing that is cool,” said Wainwright, who goes to church daily, keeps a watchful eye on the goings-on in Smokey City and attends two or three Grizzlies games a year, mainly to cheer Morant.Mary Wainwright, a community stalwart in north Memphis attends two to three Grizzlies games a year and roots for Morant.Whitten Sabbatini“We’ve just been through so much in this city,” she said, referring to the way violence continues to poison the streets and the January killing of Tyre Nichols by a group of Memphis police officers. “Ja and the Grizzlies have been something good to hold onto. But now this….”Her voice trailed off.In case you haven’t been paying close attention, the Colorado contretemps was the latest misstep to tarnish Morant’s reputation over the last several months.A heated February game between the Grizzlies and the Pacers was marred by verbal confrontations between some of Indiana’s players and Morant’s father and friend. After, an allegation arose that someone in Morant’s vehicle trained a red laser, potentially from a gun, toward the Pacers’ bus.The Washington Post detailed reports of a run-in with a security guard at a Memphis mall and of a fight with a teenager during a pickup game at Morant’s home. The fight ended, the teen told police, with Morant leaving and coming back with a gun. Morant denied the accusation and told police that the boy shouted the following threat as he fled: “I’m going to come back and light this place up like fireworks.”None of this is good, of course. Not the message conveyed, normalizing aggression with guns. Not the optics for Morant, his team and the N.B.A.“I’m going to take some time away to get help and work on learning better methods of dealing with stress and my overall well-being,” Morant said in a written apology last week.Thinking about this column, I shuddered, recalling the way violence has left scars on my extended family. I recalled my years as a city reporter gumshoeing some of the most distressed communities in America. I have witnessed more than my share of bullet-riddled bodies and interviewed more than my share of families shortly after a loved one had been murdered. I have watched the San Quentin execution of a man who shot and killed a housewife and a store owner.Anyone brazenly flashing a gun angers me in a very personal way.Searching for nuance about Morant, I reached a remarkable Memphis pastor, the Rev. Earle Fisher, of Abyssinian Baptist Church. We spoke of how some have branded Morant in the most unsparing terms possible. In some corners, he is now called a thug — and worse.“For so many observers, it’s all one-dimensional,” Fisher said. “You are either a thug or an athlete, performing at the highest levels, with no bad days or mistakes.“Fans celebrate Ja for that brashness on court, that chutzpah, that edge,” he added. “But the idea that somehow this 23-year-old with millions of dollars is supposed to polish that edge in a short span of time and present himself, always, as some distinguished gentleman who never shows signs of his age, how does that make sense?”Morant has been among the clutch of young N.B.A. stars touted as future faces of the league. Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIt cannot be overlooked that to be young, Black and famous these days is to be ever aware of danger. There have been plenty of recent stories about young athletes being robbed at gunpoint. The former Celtics star Paul Pierce recently admitted he’d carried a gun, as is his right, because he felt he needed the protection after nearly being stabbed to death in a Boston nightclub.Over the past few years, bright young rappers have been felled by bullets, including Young Dolph, who was shot to death at a cookie bakery four miles from the FedExForum last year.To Morant, acting rough, tough and brazen may not have been just a form of pressure release, but a form of pre-emptive “don’t mess with me” self-defense.I am not seeking to absolve Morant, but it is important to show a bit of the complexity of the situation he finds himself in, and the impact his choices can have on people who look like him.Last week, I spoke with Mike Cummings, a former gang member better known in Watts as Big Mike and now heralded for his work to bring peace to his community. Big Mike gave it to me straight.“What Ja did in Colorado makes my job much more difficult,” he said. “A lot of these young people I’m trying to reach, they see Ja, and they say: ‘See, Mike? He still got the hood in him, and he made it as a pro ballplayer. Mike, see? I don’t have to change. Why can’t I keep my gun?’”I hope Morant reads that quote, just as I hope we extend him grace, and just as I pray he comes to grips with the fact that what he says and does carries deep weight, however heavy and burdensome. More

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      Shawn Kemp, Former N.B.A. Star, Released From Jail After Shooting

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      Mr. Kemp was arrested following reports of a shooting in a parking lot. Prosecutors decided not to file charges on Thursday.The retired N.B.A. star Shawn Kemp was released from jail on Thursday after prosecutors decided not to pursue immediate charges against him in connection with a shooting.The police in Tacoma, Wash., had arrested Mr. Kemp, 53, on Wednesday and accused him of being involved in a drive-by shooting. The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said in a statement that it would not file charges against Mr. Kemp on Thursday, while noting that it could do so later pending further investigation by the police.The Tacoma Police Department said on Twitter that the occupants of two vehicles had an altercation and shots were fired in a parking lot just before 2 p.m. Wednesday. One car fled the scene, no injuries were reported and a gun was recovered, the police said. An unnamed 53-year-old man was booked into jail for a drive-by shooting, according to the police department’s post. Booking logs for Pierce County Corrections showed a 53-year-old man named Shawn Travis Kemp had been booked into jail on Wednesday on suspicion of a felony drive-by shooting charge.In a statement to ESPN on Thursday, a lawyer for Mr. Kemp said some of his personal belongings had been stolen from his vehicle earlier in the week and that Mr. Kemp was able to track his iPhone to a vehicle in a parking lot. Mr. Kemp had gone to retrieve his property, the lawyer said, when people inside the vehicle shot at him and Mr. Kemp “returned fire in self-defense.”The lawyer called Mr. Kemp’s actions “reasonable and legally justified.”A state statute on drive-by shootings criminalizes the reckless discharge of a firearm in a way that “creates a substantial risk of death or serious injury to another person.” The statute applies to people who shoot from a vehicle or near one that was used to transport a shooter or a weapon.Mr. Kemp’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Over a 14-year N.B.A. career, Mr. Kemp was a six-time All-Star who went by the nickname the Reign Man. He came to star for the Seattle SuperSonics, where he played eight seasons, leading them to the 1996 N.B.A. finals with point guard Gary Payton.Mr. Kemp has lately been pursuing a second career as a cannabis entrepreneur in Washington state, where recreational use of the drug was legalized in 2012. Last month, he celebrated the opening of a second cannabis dispensary in Seattle that bears his name.April Rubin More