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      Victor Wembanyama Has Always Done Things Differently

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      NANTERRE, France — On a rainy fall afternoon in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, François Salaün sat outside a cafe in a suit taking drags from a vape pen. He once taught at a high school around the corner, where, three years ago, he taught a student named Victor Wembanyama, who had to duck to get into classrooms and knew an unusual array of facts about the world.Salaün recalled asking the students in his French class to write a short story about the realization of a dream. Some shared their hopes of becoming famous basketball players, but not Wembanyama, though he was well on his way to that dream.In fact, Wembanyama didn’t really follow the prompt at all. Instead, he and a friend wrote a tale titled “Alice et Jules,” about a married couple whose lives were upended when Jules drove while drunk, crashed, fell into a coma and woke up having lost contact with Alice. In the end, they reunited.Wembanyama liked to do things his way, and Salaün didn’t mind so much. He remembered Wembanyama as smart, polite and gifted in French literature. He said he also had a calming influence on the class.Victor Wembanyama dancing as he warms up before a French league game.James Hill for The New York TimesHis former teacher’s recollection surprised Wembanyama and resurfaced a memory: One day in class, Wembanyama had folded his lanky body in half, with his forehead resting on his desk, so he could stealthily play on his phone. Then Salaün asked the class a question.“I answered the question, like, out loud, while being on my phone, because I knew the answer,” Wembanyama said. “And I remember he was like, ‘Thank you, Victor, but what are you doing?’”Wembanyama started laughing as he finished telling the story. He had been a typical teenager on that day, at least for a moment. But at 7-foot-3, he has never really been typical, and perhaps he never will be. In eight months, he will almost certainly be the top pick in the N.B.A. draft as the most hyped teenager since LeBron James, who called him an “alien.” His play and potential have drawn comparisons to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo.When Wembanyama plays basketball, he does sometimes look otherworldly.Wembanyama dunking in the layup line before a French league game.His height — and his wingspan of about eight feet — often make it seem as though he’s in two places at once. He’s as smooth as a smaller player, but he barely has to leave the ground to block shots or grab rebounds.This month, dozens of scouts and N.B.A. team executives gathered in Las Vegas to watch his French professional team, Metropolitans 92, play two games against G League Ignite, the N.B.A.’s developmental team for top prospects. Wembanyama’s team lost the first game, but he scored 37 points, including seven 3-pointers, and blocked five shots. Two days later, Metropolitans 92 won the rematch; Wembanyama had 36 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 blocks.“I’ve always felt like I was on a different level,” Wembanyama said. “I was living a different life than everyone else in school, for example, even in elementary school. I was just thinking differently than everyone. I’ve always tried to be original in everything I do, and it’s really something that stays in my soul: Be original. Be one of a kind. It’s like, I can’t explain it. I think I was born with it.”The people who knew Wembanyama growing up sometimes affectionately joked that he was on his own planet.He was playing for a youth basketball team in his hometown, Le Chesnay, west of Paris, when Michaël Allard, a coach from a club in Nanterre, saw him in what the coach called “a beautiful coincidence.” Allard thought the 10-year-old Wembanyama was an assistant coach because of his height, though he soon took notice of more than that.“He’s competitive, he’s joyful and he wants to play all the time,” Allard said in French.In Nanterre, near the dormitory of the academy of Nanterre 92 basketball club on the outskirts of Paris.Michaël Allard, one of Wembanyama’s coaches at Nanterre 92.The Nanterre club has both youth and professional teams. When Wembanyama was 13, he won his first French championship. He’d always loved basketball, but that championship made him fall in love with winning.“I cried that day,” Wembanyama said. “That was my first big title, so I was so happy.”In middle school, Wembanyama began teaching himself English, knowing that to play in the N.B.A. he would need proficiency beyond the little he’d learned in school. He watched videos from American accounts on Instagram, along with English-language television shows.As he entered his teenage years, scouts and the news media began flocking to see him.“It was when he was 14 that I said to myself, ‘This one, he has to go to the N.B.A.,’” said Frédéric Donnadieu, speaking in French. Donnadieu was Wembanyama’s first coach at Nanterre and is now the president of the club.Wembanyama’s parents, Felix Wembanyama and Elodie de Fautereau, tried to keep his life as normal as possible.They made sure he kept up with his schoolwork. If he got bad grades, the coaches made him sit at the wooden scorer’s table in the gym and do his homework instead of practicing with his friends.“That annoyed him more than anything else,” said Amine El Hajraoui, a coach at Nanterre.Amine El Hajraoui of the Nanterre basketball club at their home stadium, where Wembanyama spent his formative years, showing the trophies won by the teams that he played for in their academy.Though Wembanyama’s parents asked for him not to have any special treatment, that was sometimes unavoidable.He moved to Nanterre at 14 to live in the dormitory where the club housed its players. It was a simple building with bright brick accents about a 15-minute walk from school, where Wembanyama slept on a bed that had been specially made in northern France to fit him.The Nanterre club’s training facility was next door to Wembanyama’s high school, where it installed a fridge for easy access to the five meals a day that a caterer prepared, according to recommendations from nutritionists, to help the growing Wembanyama fill out his frame. His coach had an office on the school’s campus. The principal helped manage his schedule. A group of 25 people were responsible for his physical and mental development.At home, basketball was not the first subject discussed, though Wembanyama’s mother had played and coached the game. His parents shielded him from some of the ever-increasing news media requests for interviews. They worried about thrusting him onto a set path too soon, afraid of the effect that might have on his growth as a person.“If one day he said to himself that he wanted to stop playing basketball because he was tired of it, that he said to himself, ‘I want to go out, to have fun,’ what would he have done?” said Donnadieu, his former coach. “Today it’s interesting, because his story is beautiful. But when he was 15, sometimes it was too much.”Michaël Bur, who coached Wembanyama in Nanterre, used to do a simple exercise with his players. He’d ask them to choose a meaningful word that started with the same letter as their first name. As usual, Wembanyama took the assignment in a different direction.“He said, ‘You know, Coach, my name is Victor,’” Bur recalled in French. “I said, ‘Well, yes.’ He said, ‘What letter does it start with?’ And I said, ‘the letter V,’ and he said: ‘V in Roman numerals means 5. My name is Victor because I can play all five positions.’ And I thought that was extraordinary for a 16-year-old.”Wembanyama standing in the center of the huddle with his teammates before a French league game in September.Wembanyama understood and embraced his uniqueness. But he also recognized that being part of a team meant needing to relate to his teammates.“Everybody is talking about him being a unicorn, being so different on the basketball court, but in real life he’s just a normal kid, having fun with friends,” said Maxime Raynaud, who transferred to Nanterre in Wembanyama’s final year there.In October 2020, Raynaud and Wembanyama were training one afternoon when two older French pros arrived — Vincent Poirier and Rudy Gobert. Gobert played for the N.B.A.’s Utah Jazz at the time and had won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award twice. The teenagers started trash-talking.“As soon as we turned from messing around talking about playing to actually playing two on two, there’s something that switches in his head and he just turns into a kill mode,” Raynaud said of Wembanyama.Video of the games went viral. Gobert, 30, who is 7-foot-1, chuckled recently at how excited people were to see Wembanyama shooting over him. Wembanyama, at 16, was already taller than Gobert.“In this era of social media, everything gets magnified,” Gobert said. “And you know, those young kids, it’s a lot of added pressure on them. I think what strikes me the most about him is his maturity.”After Wembanyama graduated from high school in 2021, he left Nanterre’s professional team, Nanterre 92, for ASVEL, a club based in a suburb of Lyon, France, and owned by the former N.B.A. star Tony Parker, who is French. Then, in July, Wembanyama chose to go home: Metropolitans 92 is based in Levallois-Perret, close to where his parents live.Fans in the city have sold out the 2,800-seat arena for the first three games of the team’s season.Wembanyama defending his team’s basket.A excited crowd watching Wembanyama and Metropolitans 92.“We come to see Victor Wembanyama, of course, before he goes to the U.S.,” said Jeremy Guiselin, 27, speaking in French before a game in late September. “It’s the last moment for us to see him before he becomes a superstar, before he becomes No. 1 in the draft, and before he becomes a bit unattainable.”A group of team employees meets once a month to discuss how to best help Wembanyama add strength to his still-lanky frame. They know opponents will use physical play as a weapon against him.“I told him that I’m not going to specifically try to get him the first position of the draft,” said Vincent Collet, the coach of Metropolitans 92 and the French national team. “We want to get prepared for the next goal, which is to dominate in the N.B.A.”There is a part of Wembanyama that will be sad to see this phase of his life end. He has spent his whole life in France, most of it around Paris.“I’m going to miss France, for sure,” he said. “But I’ve worked all my life for this, so I’m really just thankful and grateful.”Wembanyama and his teammates listened to coach Vincent Collet during the French league basketball match.In two exhibition games in Las Vegas, Wembanyama went toe-to-toe with the Ignite’s Scoot Henderson, who is expected to be drafted second overall behind Wembanyama next year. Henderson held his own before leaving with an injury early in the second game, but there was no question who everyone had been there to see.Amid all the commotion, Wembanyama still finds ways to unplug.The night between the games in Las Vegas, he sat on a tufted leather couch in the team hotel — his knees sticking up several inches past a coffee table — and spoke excitedly about his favorite fantasy and sci-fi stories. He said he was “the biggest” fan of “Star Wars” and shared books he’d been reading lately.“I’ve just finished the second book of, what’s the name? I read it in French,” Wembanyama said. He looked through his phone to remember the translation.Wembanyama dunking during a French league match between Metropolitans 92 and Le Portel.“‘The Royal Assassin,’” he said. “You know about it?“I read my first book in English a few months ago,” he added. “It was ‘Eragon.’ You know about it?”Every night before bed, Wembanyama sets an alarm on his phone then puts it away. He goes through his bedtime routine, then gets under the covers and reads.“I could read nonfiction, but the way I read is mostly to not think about anything I just did during the day,” Wembanyama said. “Not thinking about anything I’m going to do in the morning. Just disconnect from the world. And so fantasy is really what helps me the most in doing that. I just get absorbed by a book and just fly in another dimension.”He recently began reading the “Game of Thrones” novels, called “Le Trone de Fer” in French, a phrase that translates to “The Iron Throne.”“So far it might be the best thing I’ve ever read,” he said.He has already seen the television series, and his favorite character is Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage.“He’s just so complex,” Wembanyama said. “And the way he just settles into the story.”As he spoke about how much he loved the TV series, he was reminded about its ending, which was widely panned.“Ahhh, it’s OK,” Wembanyama said, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. “This is not about the way it ends. It’s about the journey.”Léontine Gallois More

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      Zion Williamson Is Finally Feeling Like Himself Again

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      Injuries have hampered the N.B.A. career of the Pelicans’ Williamson, but a grueling summer of early morning workouts has him back on track.MIAMI — At the start of the summer, as he waded into an off-season workout program that he hoped would build his body back into dynamic shape, Zion Williamson began setting his alarm for 4:30 a.m.For the first week or so, those early wake-up calls were unpleasant. Sure, he knew the forms of torture that awaited him in South Florida, where his personal team had set up shop: 400-meter sprints on the track, rep after rep in the weight room. But rolling out of bed before dawn?“Tough,” Williamson said. “But after that first week and a half, it was satisfying. Like, there was a purpose behind it. I would see 4:30 on my phone, and I knew it was time to go to work.”In the process, Williamson became a big nap guy. Ahead of his nightly workouts, he would sleep through the afternoon. There were times, he said, when he wound up feeling detached from the world, as if he had missed everything that had happened that day.For someone used to being the center of attention, the summer was a reprieve in a way — a chance to recalibrate his mind and restore his confidence. Now, armed with a new five-year contract extension worth about $190 million, Williamson is back with the New Orleans Pelicans, back as one of the presumptive faces of the N.B.A., and back to face the same question that has shadowed him since the team made him the top overall pick in the 2019 draft: Can he stay on the court?Since his days at Duke, when his dunks vaporized defenders, and through his celebrated debut with the Pelicans, when he scored on seven straight possessions after returning from knee surgery, Williamson, 22, has tantalized fans with his potential. So big. So powerful. And so seemingly susceptible to injury.Williamson is back to flexing his muscle (literally and figuratively) after a summer of tough workouts.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressA 6-foot-6 forward entering his fourth season, Williamson has appeared in just 85 games. After making his first All-Star team in 2020-21, he missed all of last season with a broken right foot. But Williamson considers it progress — for good reason — that he no longer thinks about his foot or the surgery he had on it. In fact, he said, he forgets that he broke it in the first place.“It’s only when someone mentions it,” he said, “and I’m like, Oh, yeah, I did break my foot.”Sure enough, there is cautious optimism in New Orleans, where the Pelicans showed themselves to be a resilient bunch without Williamson last season. In February, CJ McCollum was the centerpiece Pelicans acquisition in a big trade with the Portland Trail Blazers that helped jolt the franchise forward. The Pelicans closed the regular season by winning 13 of their final 23 games, and then defeated the San Antonio Spurs and the Los Angeles Clippers in the play-in tournament to make the playoffs.“I think we got a taste of what it can be like if we stay healthy and do the right things,” McCollum said.Even though the Pelicans lost to the top-seeded Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs, they pushed the series to six games, and several first-year players — Herbert Jones, Jose Alvarado, Trey Murphy III — played important minutes.“It was massive,” said Larry Nance Jr., a veteran forward who came to New Orleans as a part of the deal for McCollum. “When I was young, I didn’t get that type of experience. Now that they’ve been there, they’re just going to hunger for that level of basketball even more.”After spending part of the season quietly rehabilitating at Nike’s facilities outside Portland, Ore. — which caused no small amount of agita for fans wondering about his whereabouts — Williamson returned to New Orleans for the Pelicans’ late-season run. He enjoyed watching his teammates succeed, he said, especially after he had gone through so many of his own struggles.“It definitely mentally matured me beyond my age,” Williamson said of last season. “It made me accept that certain things are going to happen. I can’t control everything. So control what I can control.”At the start of training camp last month, Nance was immediately struck by what he described as Williamson’s “gravity,” by his ability to pull defenders into his orbit whenever he had the ball. His presence makes life easier for his teammates, Nance said, as long as they “learn to move around him.”Few players have that sort of outsize effect on opponents, Nance said. He cited “super superstars” like Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, both of whom Nance played alongside earlier in his career, along with Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks.“It’s the freaks,” Nance said. “You know who they are.”Asked what separates those players from everyone else, Nance said: “They do what they want with the ball. They’re a threat to score. They’re a threat to pass. They’re a threat to dunk on three guys’ heads if you don’t give them the defensive respect they deserve.”In recent weeks, Nance has regularly matched up with Williamson at practice, a role that Nance said he embraced. He wanted to make Williamson work for baskets. He wanted to be physical with him. He wanted to help prepare him for the regular season.“The only thing I want from him is to see him become the Zion Williamson he wants to become, and I think I can help him with that,” Nance said. “Honestly, there are times when we’re like, ‘Are you sure he didn’t play last year?’ You can see his timing coming back, his handle coming back.”Williamson has played in just 85 games over the past three seasons, but he has looked strong during the preseason.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesIn a preseason game against the Heat on Wednesday, Williamson offered up a bit of everything — some highlights, some rust and another injury. In the process of cramming 11 points and 4 assists into 11 minutes of playing time, he rolled his left ankle on a drive to the basket in the second quarter.With a noticeable limp, Williamson remained on the court for several more minutes. And he produced, shoveling a pass to McCollum for a 3-pointer before sizing up Nikola Jovic, a 19-year-old forward for the Heat who, on a subsequent possession, found himself defending Williamson on the perimeter. Williamson treated Jovic as if he were a soggy paper towel, busting through him for a layup while drawing a foul. Williamson soon left the game and did not return for the second half.At a Miami-area high school the next day, he was a spectator at an afternoon practice as he received treatment on his ankle. It was another setback — albeit a minor one — in a young career full of them. His availability for the Pelicans’ season opener against the Nets on Wednesday is uncertain.“A little sore,” he said. “Just kind of turned it over a little bit.”Ankle injury aside, Williamson said, he is honing his timing and his rhythm. He said that he could get to his preferred spots on the court, but that finishing around the rim was a work in progress.“Shots that I usually kiss off the glass, I just sometimes feel like I don’t have the right touch,” he said. “With some shots, it’s there. But that’ll come with time.”For a player long accustomed to imposing his will, and using his size and strength to hammer dunks, draw defenders and create for teammates, Williamson has had to develop in new ways over the past year and a half, by being resourceful and patient and determined.It was the only way he could get back to being himself again. More

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      Draymond Green Won’t Be Suspended for Punching Jordan Poole

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      Green, the Golden State forward, punched guard Jordan Poole during a practice last week. The team decided that a fine, but no suspension, would be the best way to move forward.Golden State’s Draymond Green will not be suspended for punching his teammate Jordan Poole last week, even though Coach Steve Kerr described the situation as “the biggest crisis that we’ve ever had.”Kerr said that Green would be fined an undisclosed amount and that he was expected to play in the season-opener at home against the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday. Green has been kept out of practices and preseason games since the incident on Oct. 5, but Kerr said he would be back at practice on Thursday. Kerr announced the decision after a preseason game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday.“This feels right,” he said, adding that criticism of the punishment would be “fair.”Kerr said “everything was on the table” for punishment, including a suspension, but the team talked to key players, including Poole and Stephen Curry, and decided that the fine would be the best way to move forward.Green, 32, punched Poole, 23, after they exchanged words during practice last week. Two days later, TMZ published a leaked video of the fight that went viral. Green is shown approaching Poole, coming chest to chest. Poole shoves Green then moves backward, but Green moves toward Poole and punches him. Green said he apologized to Poole and the team, then he apologized publicly during a news conference Saturday.Green is a four-time All-Star entering his 11th N.B.A. season, a span that has included many displays of his fiery nature. He has channeled that energy into tenacious defense, earning the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2017, but he has also received scores of technical fouls and many flagrant fouls. He was suspended for a game in 2018 after getting into a dispute with his then-teammate Kevin Durant.When Kerr was asked why Green was not suspended this time — especially after Kerr called the incident the team’s “biggest crisis” in his tenure — Kerr said each situation was different. He said that Green “lives on the edge,” but that he trusted him not to go further. He acknowledged that Green had crossed the line a couple of times in his career, including in the situation with Durant.Kerr said Green and Poole had spoken over the past week. He described Poole as an “incredibly mature young guy.”“We know that he’s fine,” Kerr said. “We know that he’s willing to move forward.”He declined to add more about how Poole was feeling, saying that he would let him speak for himself. Poole has not spoken publicly since the incident.Poole was the No. 28 overall pick in the 2019 draft and is entering his fourth season with Golden State. He played a critical role last season as the team dealt with injuries, averaging 18.5 points and 4 assists per game and starting in 51 of the 76 games he played in. He led the N.B.A. in free-throw shooting at 92.5 percent.Golden State will end its preseason run with a game against the Denver Nuggets on Friday. Kerr said Green was expected to play.Green, in his public apology on Saturday, said he knew he had to regain the trust of his teammates. On Tuesday, two of Golden State’s youngest players — Moses Moody, 20, and James Wiseman, 21 — said they would welcome him back. Moody said he had a “real strong relationship” with Green; Wiseman said Green was a “huge piece” of the team.Golden State won its fourth championship under Kerr last season and has its eyes on a title defense this year. But Kerr said the team’s culture of joy had been “damaged” by the incident with Green.“You don’t win championships on talent alone,” Kerr said. “It takes chemistry. It takes a collective will and a trust, and that has to be rebuilt right now.” More

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      Draymond Green Apologizes for Punching Jordan Poole

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      Green, the Golden State forward, said he was a “flawed human being.” A leaked video of the fight between the teammates went viral Friday.Golden State forward Draymond Green said that he was in a “very bad space mentally” when he punched his teammate Jordan Poole during a practice Wednesday but that there was no excuse for his actions.“I failed as a man,” Green said during a news conference Saturday in his first public comments about the situation. “I failed as a leader.”Word of an altercation between Green and Poole first emerged Wednesday, but on Friday, TMZ posted a leaked video of the fight. The team said it was investigating how the video became public.Green said it was “embarrassing,” both for him and for Poole, that the incident was seen by their families. He would not say what prompted the punch, adding that he was not looking for sympathy or to change public opinion about what he did.“What I did was wrong,” he said, adding that the altercation looked worse than he thought when he saw the video.Some media reports said that the fight was related to the players’ contract situations. Green and Poole are eligible for pricey extensions, and it is possible that the team will not extend offers to both of them. But Green said the contracts had “absolutely nothing” to do with the fight.In the video, Green and Poole appear to be exchanging words as Green comes chest to chest with Poole, who then shoves him and moves backward. But Green keeps coming toward Poole and punches him.Green said he apologized to the team and to Poole but did not know how Poole felt about the situation. He said he wanted to give Poole space.The team said it would handle punishment for Green internally, and Green has not practiced with the team for the past several days. He said he expected to play in the team’s season-opener at home against the Los Angeles Lakers on Oct. 18, but Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said there was no set date for his return. Kerr said the team and Green mutually agreed that he should be away from the team right now.Kerr would not say what it would take for Green to be allowed to rejoin the team, and he responded “no comment” when asked if this situation had affected his trust in Green.At the season-opener, Golden State’s players and staff members will receive rings for winning the 2022 N.B.A. championship in June. It was the fourth title for the team’s championship core of Green, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala.Green said he did not think his fight would affect the team’s success, though he acknowledged that he had “splintered” the brotherhood and needed to rebuild trust with his teammates.“I am a very flawed human being,” he said, adding that he looked forward to “doing the work” to improve himself. When asked what that process would entail, he did not go into specifics.Green has become known for his fiery energy on the basketball court, which sometimes manifests as arguments with referees and other players. But the punch at practice was an unusual escalation. Green said he liked to keep his emotions bottled up but that he needed to work on releasing them in better ways.“I hurt someone because I was in a place of hurt,” he said. More

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      Video of Draymond Green Punching Jordan Poole at Practice Goes Viral

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      Green, known as a fierce player, turned on teammate Jordan Poole during a practice and ended up in a viral video.Draymond Green, part of Golden State’s championship core, roams the basketball court with the energy of a lit fuse.But his intensity has also caused problems. On Friday, TMZ posted a video of Green punching Jordan Poole, one of his teammates, at a practice this week.Bob Myers, Golden State’s general manager, acknowledged that there had been an “altercation” between the two players when he spoke at a news conference Thursday, adding that any disciplinary action against Green would be handled internally.“Look, it’s the N.B.A.,” Myers said. “It’s professional sports. These things happen. Nobody likes it. We don’t condone it. But it happened.”A spokesman for the team said Golden State was investigating how the video got to TMZ.Green subsequently apologized in a team meeting that included the players and the coaching staff, Myers said. Green did not practice with the team on Thursday.Golden State opened its preseason by traveling to Japan for two games against the Washington Wizards. The Warriors are scheduled to host the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday.“I’ve actually seen a really good group,” Myers said. “For the people who went to Japan with us, it’s actually one of the best vibes we’ve had in my 12 years here as far as camp and health and mental health and camaraderie. But it’s unfortunate, and I’m not going to deny it. It’ll take some time to move through it, but we’ll move through it and move forward and I’m confident that we will.”Green, battling Denver Nuggets guard Monte Morris for the ball in April, has said he knows only how to play aggressively.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersGreen, 32, is a four-time All-Star and one of the N.B.A.’s more polarizing figures. A 6-foot-6 forward, he is a ferocious defender with unique passing abilities for someone his size. He also screams at referees, taunts opposing fans and collects technical fouls like they are baseball cards.Green, who has spent his entire career with Golden State, has often said that he knows how to play only one way — with force, by pushing acceptable limits. That was certainly the case in June, when he tussled with various Boston Celtics in the N.B.A. finals. By the end of the series, Green was a champion for the fourth time.At times, Green’s aggressiveness has caused issues. Most famously, he was suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 N.B.A. finals after he collected too many flagrant fouls. (The last straw was striking LeBron James in the groin.) Golden State lost that game and then the next two as the Cleveland Cavaliers came back to win their first and only championship.In November 2018, he had a well-publicized squabble with Kevin Durant, who was then one of his teammates, that led to Green’s being suspended for a game. During a game the following March, Coach Steve Kerr was filmed in a candid moment telling one of his assistants that he was tired of Green’s antics.Poole, a 23-year-old shooting guard, was one of Golden State’s breakout stars last season, averaging a career-best 18.5 points a game while emerging as a multidimensional scoring threat next to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Poole is in the final season of his rookie contract and is in line for a huge extension.In the video posted by TMZ, Green appears to approach Poole on one of the baselines at Wednesday’s practice before going chest-to-chest with him. Poole pushes Green, who responds by punching Poole in the face and knocking him to the ground. Several others rush in to break it up. There is no audio.“It’s a situation that could’ve been avoided,” Curry told reporters Thursday. “But there’s a lot of trust in the fabric of our team, who we are, who we know those two guys to be and how we’ll get through it and try to continue to make it about playing great basketball.”During his N.B.A. playing career, Kerr was involved in a notable fracas of his own. In a heated practice with the Chicago Bulls before the start of the 1995-96 season, Michael Jordan punched him in the face.The fight was recounted in “The Last Dance,” an ESPN documentary series about the Jordan-era Bulls. Kerr said in the documentary that standing up to Jordan was probably “the best thing that I ever did.”“From that point on, our relationship dramatically improved and our trust in each other, everything,” Kerr said. “It was like, ‘All right, we got that out of the way. We’re going to war together.’”The Bulls went on to win the N.B.A. championship after setting a regular-season record with 72 wins.At a news conference on Thursday, Kerr declined to comment when asked about his fight with Jordan.“We had a documentary about that,” he said. “Watch ‘The Last Dance.’” More

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      Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka Rose Fast and Fell Hard

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      Weeks after the Celtics abruptly suspended Udoka for the season, it’s still not entirely clear why. Some who have known him are struggling to make sense of the situation.Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka is at the center of one of the most perplexing situations in the N.B.A.Only a few months after he led his team to the brink of a championship, the Celtics suspended him for a year under mysterious circumstances, leaving the team in turmoil just weeks before the start of a new season. An interim coach has taken over, but confusion has taken hold: No one is saying publicly what happened, and people who know Udoka are wondering how he — a well-respected former player who used to work for FedEx — could be in this much trouble.“It’s unfortunate,” said Martell Webster, one of Udoka’s former N.B.A. teammates. “But rules are rules, and when you sign a contract and you’re on salary, you’re saying that you agree to the rules.”The Celtics have said only that they were suspending Udoka for the 2022-23 season for unspecified “violations of team policies.” According to two people with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly, Udoka had a relationship with a female subordinate.After the suspension was announced Sept. 22, Udoka, 45, released a statement to ESPN that said, “I want to apologize to our players, fans, the entire Celtics organization, and my family for letting them down.”The actress Nia Long, with whom Udoka has a young son, asked for privacy in a statement to TMZ.Udoka, center, coached the Celtics to the Eastern Conference’s second-best record last season after they struggled for several months.Nick Wosika/USA Today Sports, via ReutersUdoka’s influence in basketball goes far beyond the Celtics, and even beyond the N.B.A.The youngest of three siblings, Udoka grew up in Portland, Ore., where financial hardship was a way of life for his family. His father, Vitalis, was a Nigerian immigrant who worked long hours as a laborer. His mother, Agnes, would huddle with her children around a gas oven to keep them warm whenever the electricity was shut off at their apartment, according to the Boston Globe.One constant for Udoka, though, was basketball. He hopscotched around as a college player, enrolling at Eastern Utah junior college and the University of San Francisco before he spent his final two seasons at Portland State, where he was known for his stout defense before a knee injury ended his senior year. He developed a reputation for tenacity and a strong work ethic.“Ime was incredibly driven to excel at basketball,” said Derek Nesland, one of Udoka’s teammates at Portland State. “He only knew one way to play. And that was really with everything he had.”Nesland met Udoka as a teenager but became close with him in college. He kept in touch with Udoka after they both left the program, as did other teammates. Even from a distance, the news that Udoka had become a head coach in the N.B.A. was something to celebrate, even though it wasn’t a surprise.“We actually had a group text chat with a lot of our guys that played with him,” Nesland said. “And you had a lot of players who had never rooted for the Celtics in their lives were now all of a sudden Celtic fans, just for Ime. And we all wanted to see him succeed.”Udoka was not selected in the N.B.A. draft after college and joined the Fargo-Moorhead Beez, a minor league team in North Dakota. A few weeks into the season, he hurt his knee again. He spent months doing odd jobs that included loading boxes for FedEx, then toiled for several years on pro basketball’s periphery in the N.B.A.’ s developmental league and on European teams.Toward the end of the 2005-6 season, Udoka signed with the Knicks and appeared in eight games — enough time for him to impress Isiah Thomas, then the team’s general manager: Thomas told Udoka that he would make a good coach someday.Kumbeno Memory, one of Udoka’s closest friends, said in an interview last season that Udoka told him about the conversation with Thomas. “And he was like, ‘I know I’m being a good mentor to some of the younger guys, but am I really cut out to be a coach?’ ” Memory said.The following season, Udoka signed with the Portland Trail Blazers and got similar feedback from Nate McMillan, then the team’s coach. Webster, one of Udoka’s teammates that season, said in an interview last week that Udoka was a total pro: early to practice, always prepared.“He was really like a coach on the court,” Webster said. “He wasn’t spectacularly athletic or anything like that, but he always knew how to play the game, and he knew that his mind for the game needed to supersede having athletic ability.”Udoka spent the next four seasons with the San Antonio Spurs and the Sacramento Kings. He was also moonlighting as an A.A.U. coach in the Portland area with Memory and another childhood friend, Kendrick Williams.In an interview last season, Udoka said he learned to coach players as individuals at the A.A.U. level. The job, he said, was not one size fits all. Gregg Popovich, Udoka’s coach in San Antonio, also drove that message home.“How you could coach one guy and what you could say and how you could say it was totally different,” Udoka said. “Pop would talk about the relationship part, and that was what it was — especially at that age. Gaining their trust and showing how much you care about them.”By 2012, Udoka was out of the N.B.A. and playing in Europe again. After a few months with UCAM Murcia, a club in Spain, he joined some friends in Las Vegas to watch the N.B.A.’s summer league. He was about to turn 35 and wondering whether he wanted to go back overseas for another season.One afternoon, Popovich called to offer him an assistant coaching job with the Spurs.“I remember it being a really hard decision, and we’re sitting there talking for hours about it,” Mike Moser, who came to know Udoka through his A.A.U. team, said in an interview last season. “Finally, he decided: ‘I’m going to take it. I’m going to do it. I’m going to coach.’ And I remember being so surprised. But I’ll never forget it.”Udoka spent seven seasons as an assistant in San Antonio. One of those seasons resulted in a championship. Udoka also had one-season stints with the Philadelphia 76ers and the Nets before the Celtics hired him in June 2021 to his first head coaching job.Many of his A.A.U. players have remained loyal to him, and vice versa. Two of them, Moser and Garrett Jackson, now work in player development for the Celtics. Jackson was among Udoka’s earliest hires last season, and Moser joined the Celtics this season.Now it’s unclear whether Udoka will return to the team.Celtics guard Marcus Smart, right, expressed support for Udoka during the team’s media day last month. Smart was named the defensive player of the year last season.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesHe had surprising success in his first season, leading a team of rising young stars to the N.B.A. finals, where they lost to Golden State in six games. And though several players have supported him while expressing uncertainty about what led to his punishment, the team’s ownership has been less reassuring. Wyc Grousbeck, the Celtics’ majority owner, said the team had not decided if — or under what circumstances — Udoka would be welcomed back.With so little publicly known about why he was sent away in the first place, it’s difficult for fans, and even those who have known him, to make sense of the situation. A representative for Udoka did not respond to a request for comment. Joe Mazzulla, 34, one of Udoka’s assistant coaches, will be the interim head coach this season.“There are certain people you run across in life where you could expect this to happen,” said Nesland, Udoka’s college teammate. “I didn’t with him. I can’t imagine what’s going on behind the scenes.” More

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      ‘The Redeem Team’ Review: Squad Goals

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      A documentary looks at the 2008 U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team and its mission to bring back gold after a humiliating loss.As narratives of national uplift go, the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball consortium, known as the “Dream Team,” was one of the most shamelessly contrived. Once international players started to get the hang of hoops, how was America to maintain hegemony? Blitz them with the cream of the professional crop. This strategy wasn’t foolproof. A humiliating loss to Argentina in 2004 deprived the United States of the gold. This aggression would not stand.“The Redeem Team,” a documentary about the 2008 squad that was charged with getting the Americans back to the top spot, is smart in not asking the viewer to feel too bad for the 2004 group. The Argentine player Pepe Sanchez nailed the issue right after the match: “This is a team sport. You play five on five, not one on one.”Taking charge for the 2008 run is the Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, a figure both respected and despised (the team member LeBron James is frank: “Growing up in the inner city, you hate Duke”). Krzyzewski makes teamwork the priority, and he holds to that even when he brings aboard Kobe Bryant, then a notorious lone wolf.The movie, directed by Jon Weinbach, offers several eye-opening mini-narratives on the way to a rematch with Argentina. Doug Collins, a member of the U.S. team in 1972, speaks to the 2008 players about his painful experience in a game arguably stolen by the Soviet Union. Bryant softens up his old friend Pau Gasol, a member of Spain’s team, the better to execute a shocking “who’s the boss” move on the court. The intimidating presence of Argentina’s ace shooter Manu Ginóbili causes no small concern. While no realistic observer of American sports could call this movie inspirational, these sequences definitely make it engrossing.The Redeem TeamNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Tiffany Jackson, Texas Star Forward and W.N.B.A. Veteran, Dies at 37

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      She was an All-American in college and spent nine years as a pro. “I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive,” her college coach said.Tiffany Jackson, an All-American forward for the University of Texas women’s basketball team who went on to play nine seasons in the W.N.B.A., died on Monday in Dallas. She was 37.The cause was cancer, the university said.Jackson noticed a lump in one of her breasts in 2015 while she was playing overseas in Israel during the W.N.B.A. off-season. She put off being tested until she returned to the United States and, even then, not until after the start of the season for the W.N.B.A.’s Tulsa Shock.“I didn’t let my teammates know until the playoffs,” she told ESPN in 2016, “because I knew I was going to have to go back to Dallas, after Game 2, win or lose, to start treatment. I ended up telling everybody via mass text, because I was afraid if I did it in person, I would just break down.”Jackson was a powerhouse player at the University of Texas, where she was the only women’s basketball player in the school’s history to score at least 1,000 points, grab 1,000 rebounds and have 300 steals and 150 blocks. She is ranked fifth overall in points with 1,197.“What made her stand out was her versatility,” Jody Conradt, who coached the Texas women’s team from 1976 to 2007, said in an interview. “She was 6-3, very mobile and could play multiple positions. But that was secondary to her competitiveness — I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive as Tiffany.”In her four years at Texas, Jackson averaged 15.6 points and 8.4 rebounds a game. As a freshman she helped lead the team to the Sweet 16 round of the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament in the 2003-4 season.Her 2004-5 season was her strongest: She averaged 18.3 points and 8.7 rebounds a game.Tiffany Jackson was born on April 26, 1985, in Longview, Texas. Her mother, Cassie Brooks, had played basketball for the University of New Mexico; her father, Marques Jackson, had been a tight end at the University of Tulsa.At Duncanville High School, near Dallas, Tiffany led the Pantherettes to a state title in 2003, scoring a team-high 16 points in the championship game, shortly after being named a McDonald’s All-American.Jackson was recruited vigorously by more than 60 colleges. One coach said that the school that signed her would become an instant championship contender.“That’s a big statement to make, and I feel good that people think that much of me,” Jackson told The Austin American-Statesman in 2003. “It makes me want to work harder to prove them right.”While the Longhorns never won a national title, Jackson’s star was undiminished. Drafted by the New York Liberty with the fifth overall pick in the 2007 W.N.B.A. draft, she played with the team until she was traded to the Tulsa Shock (now the Dallas Wings) in 2010. She played a final season with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2017.She averaged 6.2 points and 4.5 rebounds a game over her career. She was at her best in 2011, with career highs of 12.4 points and 8.4 rebounds a game.Jackson took off the 2012 season to give birth to her son, Marley. She sat out the 2016 season for breast cancer treatment, which included radiation and a mastectomy.“After that first month, never in my mind did I think I wasn’t going to play again,” she told USA Today in 2017. “So throughout my entire treatment, I was always working out. It was something that kept me going.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.After retiring as a player in 2018, Jackson became an assistant coach for two seasons at the University of Texas. This year, she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. She died before she could coach a game for the team. More