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      My Rick Pitino Story

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      A basketball coach’s persistence has a newly retired journalist reminiscing about newsgathering in a different era.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Of all the gym joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.That’s how I felt last spring, when I learned that Rick Pitino had become the head basketball coach at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., which happens to be my alma mater. The mere thought of Mr. Pitino, 70 years old and still strolling the sidelines as I watch basketball at home, newly retired, took me back to the most bizarre moment of my 38-year career at The New York Times.I’m referring to the first time Mr. Pitino and I crossed paths, in May of 1989, under the most unusual circumstances: at the beginning of a new day (2:30 a.m.) and the end of a long, winding driveway. A colleague and I could see Mr. Pitino through a large bay window. Clad in a bright red sweater, he was chatting on the phone, sitting on a sofa in what appeared to be his living room. The sound of car doors slamming behind us was enough to make Mr. Pitino whip his head around and rush out his front door to confront us.“Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?” I remember him asking.To be honest, we were sort of wondering the same thing ourselves. Several hours earlier, I had just finished a long clerical shift in the Sports department at The Times when Bill Brink, the weekend editor, summoned me and a colleague to his desk.It was late, and Bill told us he had just been on the phone with Sam Goldaper, our venerable basketball writer, who told him that Mr. Pitino, then the head coach of the New York Knicks, was about to resign and return to his first love, college basketball. It was rumored that Mr. Pitino had accepted a job offer from the fabled University of Kentucky, where he had always felt that the blue grass was greener.Sam didn’t have Mr. Pitino’s phone number, but had given the Sports desk the address of Mr. Pitino’s home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., in the upper reaches of the Westchester County suburbs. Neither of us had a vehicle, so Bill wrote out a transportation slip, which allowed us to use one of the cars The Times then kept for reporters in the parking lot next door.Before we left, Bill told us to try and get a quote from Mr. Pitino. Even if he wasn’t home, the reader would still know that The Times had tried to contact him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bought as an N.B.A. Team, the Mavericks Are Being Sold as Much More

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      Pro sports franchises are increasingly providing much of their value as anchors for larger business enterprises, including entertainment complexes.The sales of most professional sports teams are fairly predictable.They happen because owners die or cannot figure out how to pass the team on to their families. They run out of money, are more focused on other pursuits or are pushed out because of misconduct.Once the decision to sell is made, the process plays out in a relatively public way. Bankers are hired, potential purchasers register interest, an auction occurs, and weeks or months of reports in the news media follow.So it was a complete surprise last month when, with no warning, the families that control the Las Vegas Sands casino empire announced that they had reached a binding agreement to buy a controlling interest in the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban. The only thing that made sense was that the situation involved Mr. Cuban, who has long run the Mavericks in an unconventional manner.Still, more than two weeks later, the basic question surrounding the sale — Why did Mr. Cuban do it? — remains mostly unanswered. The reliably loquacious Mr. Cuban, who always seemed to be having more fun than any other owner, declined to speak on the record for this article. The Adelson and Dumont families, wary of getting ahead of an N.B.A. approval process that includes due diligence and a vote on the sale by other team owners, declined to comment beyond a statement expressing their excitement.But what is clear is that the sale represents a window into the rapidly changing nature of the business of sports.When Mr. Cuban bought the Mavericks in 2000, flush with cash from selling Broadcast.com just before the dot-come bubble popped, professional sports teams were still mainly just teams.Now they are anchors for larger business enterprises. Anchor tenants for arenas that are the beating heart of vast entertainment complexes, as in Sacramento. Anchor content for regional sports networks or other media conglomerates, as in Washington, D.C. Anchor brands for millions of fans newly allowed to bet on sports, as in Phoenix.Mr. Cuban is also many things — a dot-com billionaire, an owner of a company trying to reduce the price of prescription drugs and, for one more season, one of the main investors in the reality show “Shark Tank” — but what he is not is a real estate mogul, providing a possible motivation for the sale.The Dallas Mavericks partly own the American Airlines Center, where they play their games in the Victory Park development just north of downtown. But while the owners of their co-tenant, the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars, have invested in land near the arena, Mr. Cuban has mostly expressed annoyance that it takes away from fan parking. Now he is changing his tune.“Cuban probably wants to imitate what has worked, have the ownership control he doesn’t have in Victory Park, and push it to a new level with casino and resort integration,” said Robert Sroka, a professor of sport administration at Georgia State University and a sport venue development consultant.Mr. Cuban has publicly said he wants to build a resort destination in Dallas with Sands.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesLast year Mr. Cuban told The Dallas Morning News of his intention to team up with Sands on just that, a new arena and casino complex.“Partnering with the Sands Corporation, literally there’s no reason we can’t build a huge resort destination in the city proper of Dallas,” he said.A piece of a destination like that would mean a lot more money for Mr. Cuban than the sums generated by game tickets and arena concessions. The plan, however, faces a significant hurdle — besides acquiring land, obtaining financing when interest rates are high and receiving construction approvals. Almost all forms of gambling are illegal in Texas, and there is no clear sign of that changing.A bill that would legalize sports betting passed the Texas House this year, but Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, refused to bring it up for discussion in the Senate. Even if such a bill passed the Senate, Texas residents would still need to vote on it.A bill allowing casinos faced even fiercer opposition, particularly from influential conservative religious leaders, and never made it out of the House. And while sports betting, if it is legalized in Texas, can be lucrative for teams, it is really a casino bill that needs to pass if Mr. Cuban’s vision of a sports and gambling destination is to be realized. The Sands, which has a number of casinos in Macau and Singapore but currently none in the United States, has hired dozens of lobbyists to get one passed in recent years.Mr. Cuban owns about three-quarters of the Mavericks, with the rest held by a handful of minority owners. After the sale he will own about a quarter, and the Adelson and Dumont families nearly three-quarters, with the rest spread among some minority owners, according to two people familiar with the terms, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose them publicly.Some people believe the reported $3.5 billion valuation that Mr. Cuban is selling at is less than he could have received if the Mavericks had gone on the open market. Just last week, for instance, a small share of the Indiana Pacers was bought at a reported valuation of $3.47 billion. Indianapolis is a much smaller market than Dallas, and minority stakes are typically discounted. So, the thinking goes, the sale of a majority stake in the Mavericks should’ve been for much higher.But the sale to the Adelson and Dumont families includes an unusual stipulation: Mr. Cuban will continue to run the basketball operations of the team.Officially, Patrick Dumont, the son-in-law of Miriam Adelson and the late Sheldon Adelson, will be what the N.B.A. calls the team’s governor and vote on leaguewide matters. But Mr. Cuban will run its basketball operations. The bet, then, seems to be this: Mr. Cuban will earn billions from a team he paid $285 million for two decades ago; he will continue to participate in the part of team ownership he likes the most; and if the Adelsons and Las Vegas Sands can muscle through a new arena and casino complex, one day his quarter of the team might be worth as much as the three-quarters he used to own.This could also help make up for money Mr. Cuban expects to lose on the team’s local media rights agreement. The holder of those rights, Diamond Sports Groups, is going through bankruptcy.“I think a new arena, real estate area and hopefully a future resort casino can replace what we lose in media, and fund current and future Mavs,” Mr. Cuban said in an email to a local television station last month.Over a thousand miles west of Dallas, the sale has thrown the race to own an N.B.A. franchise in Las Vegas wide open, since the Adelson family was widely presumed to be a front-runner if the city got a team.Officially, there is no guarantee there will ever be an N.B.A. team in Las Vegas, but the league is widely expected to soon expand to 32 teams from 30. This summer, Adam Silver, its commissioner, said the league would turn to the issue of expansion after it completed new media agreements, sometime in 2024. He said it was not certain the league would expand, but named Las Vegas and Seattle as cities that would be considered.“A lot is happening behind the scenes,” said Steve Sisolak, a former governor of Nevada. “A lot of groups that have interest. It remains to be seen who is a front-runner.”Currently, the only arena in Las Vegas that has close to the required facilities for an N.B.A. team is the T-Mobile Center, which is co-owned by the arena developer AEG and MGM Resorts International, with Bill Foley, the owner of the N.H.L.’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, holding a minority share.But Oak View Group, another arena developer and operator, has announced plans for a $10 billion resort south of the Strip that would include an arena an N.B.A. team could play in. Intriguingly, the land that arena would be built on is owned by Scott Goldstein, the son of Rob Goldstein, the chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands. Sands is not currently involved in that project.Susan Beachy More

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      Why Some Korean Basketball Players Love the Bank Shot

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      Banked free throws, an unorthodox technique, have a cult following in the Korean Basketball League.As the basketball player steps to the free-throw line, the crowd watches in hushed anticipation. With one sweeping motion, he bounces the ball off the backboard and through the net.Wait, he banked it in? On purpose?The fans erupt in celebration. The shot is no fluke — just another free throw, South Korean style.The free throw is supposed to be an easy point after a foul: a direct, unguarded shot 15 feet from the backboard. But there’s an art to it. The ball, most players and fans would say, should leave the fingers gracefully, make a wide arc, avoid the rim — and “splash” straight into the net, as the N.B.A. sharpshooter Steph Curry called it.With the help of analytics, other shots have evolved in pro basketball. But not the free throw, and over the past 30 years, its success rate in the N.B.A. has barely budged from around 77.The shot’s stagnation stems from the mockery that awaits any variation to the “nothing but net” technique in the United States. Bank shots — bouncing the ball off the glass before it falls through the net — are derided as amateurish for anything but layups.But a devoted group of players in the Korean Basketball League, or K.B.L., have embraced the unorthodox technique.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Johnny Green, Jumpin’ Knicks All-Star, Dies at 89

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      An All-Star forward — and an all-American at Michigan State — he was known as Jumpin’ Johnny, able to soar over taller opponents for 14 seasons in the N.B.A.Johnny Green, an All-Star forward for the Knicks in the 1960s who gained acclaim for his leaping ability and rebounding prowess through 14 National Basketball Association seasons, died on Thursday in Huntington, N.Y. He was 89.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Johnny Jr., who said his father had had heart and kidney problems for about a year.Jumpin’ Johnny, as he came to be known, was 6-foot-5 and about 200 pounds, but he often bested taller and huskier frontline opponents, snaring rebounds, blocking shots and hitting short-range baskets.He was durable as well; he avoided serious injuries and had some of his best seasons late in his career. He played in the N.B.A. until he was 39, retiring after the 1972-73 season.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Seeks to Nullify His Purchase of Toronto House

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      Irate investors looking for a bankrupt “crypto king” were regular visitors to the new Toronto-area home of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder.The six bedroom, 10,000 square-foot house on Lake Ontario that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a star player with the Oklahoma City Thunder, bought for just over 8.4 million Canadian dollars, or $6.1 million, should have been a dream home.But in May, two days after Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander, 25, moved into the house, near Toronto, with his partner, it became a nightmare, according to a lawsuit seeking to nullify the sale. A menacing visitor appeared looking for a previous occupant. The couple left the next day and haven’t returned.The young N.B.A. player’s house, described in the real estate listing as an “elegant, resort-like estate,” had been the home of Aiden Pleterski, a self-styled “crypto king” who declared bankruptcy in 2022, while owing 26.8 million Canadian dollars to more than 150 investment clients.Court records show that the home received a steady stream of angry visitors seeking to talk to Mr. Pleterski while he was living there and after he moved out.Last December, court documents show, Mr. Pleterski was kidnapped by one of his aggrieved investors and four other men, then beaten and tortured over three days.Testimony in the bankruptcy case reveals that Mr. Pleterski had a security guard to ward off angry investors and was eventually moved out of the house for his own safety. Another resident also fled, fearing for his safety after angry visitors continued to turn up every day.A holding company owned by Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander is now asking a court to reverse the purchase of the Burlington, Ontario, house because the seller did not disclose its link to Mr. Pleterski and the home’s potential security threat.Aiden Pleterski was beaten by his kidnappers, according to court records.CBC NewsCiting the kidnapping, the holding company, in its filing, said the people who had been showing up at the upscale home “were not making idle threats.”The property’s former owner, the head of a Toronto real estate company with holdings that include apartments, retirement homes and hotels, hid the information about alarming visitors from potential buyers because “any purchaser who could afford to spend in excess of $8 million on a luxury home would value privacy and would also in any case want no part of a property that had a history of threatening visits to the past two occupants.”Through his lawyer, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander declined to comment.The Halton Regional Police, which has authority over Burlington, declined to provide any more information and a spokesman refused to say if Mr. Pleterski was the target of a criminal investigation.A banking analysis by a bankruptcy trustee shows that Mr. Pleterski was not the investment prodigy many of his investors believed him to be.It found that of the 41.6 million Canadian dollars he took in, just 1.6 percent of the money was actually invested. He used about 38 percent of the money to repay redemptions — supposed investment gains — to some clients and spent about the same percentage on private jet travel, a fleet of luxury cars, watches, including one costing more than $300,000, and a lease on the Burlington house.The trustee concluded that “the extravagant lifestyle that Pleterski lived, which was funded by his investors,” had “ultimately led to his bankruptcy.”During a sworn 2022 interview with lawyers for the trustee, Mr. Pleterski said he first became interested in cryptocurrency after using it to make purchases for video games and began trading it when he was still in high school.He started out with money from his family and his earnings as a part-time baseball umpire. His knowledge of trading and financial markets, he said, came from “YouTube videos, Google, quick Google searches.”The business, Mr. Pleterski said, operated through his personal bank accounts until December 2021, when he set up his company at the suggestion of a former landlord.His only record keeping, he said, consisted of his texts and WhatsApp messages with customers. While Mr. Pleterski did create spreadsheets for a handful of customers who demanded them, he acknowledged that the investment return they showed was just “a general ballpark figure” he came up with after looking at his bank accounts.The home that Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander bought was located between Toronto, where he was born, and Hamilton, Ontario, where he was raised. It came fully furnished and included a gym, three car garage and a home theater. The bedrooms, reached by an elevator, offered sweeping lake views, including the property’s private dock.In his lawsuit, Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander said that two days after he moved in a man appeared demanding to see someone he had never heard of — Mr. Pleterski. Rather than leave when told that no one by that name was there, the uninvited visitor looked around the property and then sat in his car in the driveway.Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander’s partner, Hailey Summers, called the nonemergency number for the police and was told that the agency “had received several reports about threats to the property, including that there was a threat to burn the home down,” the lawsuit said.In the spring of 2021, Mr. Pleterski agreed to lease-to-own the Burlington house from a company controlled by Ray Gupta, who also controls the Sunray Group real estate holding company in Toronto. But when Mr. Pleterski’s trading business began collapsing, he stopped making his monthly 45,000 Canadian dollar rent payments and moved to a hotel owned by Sunray, where he wasn’t charged rent.In a response to Mr. Gilgeous-Alexander’s complaint, Mr. Gupta’s company downplayed the frequency and potential danger brought by the uninvited visitors and argued that it had no obligation to disclose the persistence of the unwelcome guests.“Notwithstanding the fact that Aiden was abducted, any visit to the Property by an individual inquiring about its former occupant would be viewed as an entirely normal occurrence,” it said.But during a sworn interview for Mr. Pleterski’s bankruptcy case, Sandeep Gupta, Ray’s son, who handled all the dealings with Mr. Pleterski, painted a different picture.“People were coming up to the house every single day, looking for Aiden,” Mr. Gupta said.He said the unwanted visits continued when a Sunray employee moved in to keep the furnished home occupied and the employee asked for a security guard. “His wife refused to stay there,” Mr. Gupta said. “It was a very bad situation.” More

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      Walter Davis, Basketball Star With a Velvet Touch, Dies at 69

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      “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period,” one coach said of Davis, a standout in both college and the N.B.A. “Then he becomes a great shooter.”Walter Davis of the University of North Carolina in action against Duke in 1976. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons there.Harold Valentine/Associated PressWalter Davis, whose smooth shooting propelled him to basketball stardom with the University of North Carolina and the Phoenix Suns, but who late in his career struggled with drug addiction, died on Thursday while visiting family in Charlotte, N.C. He was 69.The university announced his death but did not specify a cause.Davis, a 6-foot-6 forward, played at North Carolina from 1973 to 1977 for Dean Smith, one of the most successful coaches in college history. He averaged 15.7 points a game over four seasons on Tar Heels teams that also included Bobby Jones, Phil Ford and Mitch Kupchak.In one of Davis’s signature games, in March 1974, North Carolina was losing to Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds left. After North Carolina closed the deficit to two points with time expiring, Davis tied it with a shot from a distance estimated at between 30 and 35 feet. (The basket would have counted for three points and won the game today, but the three-point shot was not officially introduced by the N.C.A.A. until 1986.) North Carolina went on to win in overtime, 96-92.“I wasn’t trying to bank it in,” Davis, then a freshman, said afterward. “It wasn’t a desperation shot. I was just trying to do my part, that’s all. I didn’t allow myself to think about anything. I just told myself it could only do two things, go in or come back out.”In 1976 he was a member of the United States team, also coached by Dean Smith, that won a gold medal at the Olympics in Montreal. A year later, he led North Carolina with 20 points — and 10 of his team’s last 12 — when it lost to Marquette, 67-59, in the final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.He was twice selected for all-Atlantic Coast Conference teams.His nephew Hubert is currently the North Carolina coach.Walter Davis was born on Sept. 9, 1954, in Pineville, N.C. His high school in Charlotte won three state titles in basketball before he left to attend prep school in Delaware. He arrived at North Carolina in 1973.In 1977, Davis had surgery on a broken finger after North Carolina won the A.C.C. tournament in his senior year. “Before they put me out, I remember looking up and Coach Smith was right there,” he told Ken Rosenthal for his book “Dean Smith: A Tribute” (2001). “I remember seeing him and having the screws drilled into my finger.”Davis was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the 1977 N.B.A. draft. After averaging 24.2 points a game — the highest average of any season in his career — he was voted the league’s Rookie of the Year. He remained a steady performer throughout his 11 seasons with Phoenix, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Davis was a steady performer in his 11 seasons with the Phoenix Suns, averaging 20.5 points a game as a small forward and shooting guard.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesDuring a game in 1983, he set a league record by scoring 34 points (on 15 field goals and four free throws) against Seattle before missing a shot.“I don’t remember a sweeter shot,” Alvan Adams, one of his teammates, told NBA.com in 2015. “He was a feared shooter. The other team knew it, too.”Chuck Daly, then the Detroit Pistons’ coach, told The New York Times in 1987: “Walter is a good shooter until the fourth period. Then he becomes a great shooter.”Davis had two nicknames: Sweet D and Greyhound.In his later years in Phoenix, Davis dealt with drug problems. In 1986, he spent a month in a drug rehabilitation center to treat cocaine and alcohol dependency. Early the next year he told The Times, “The scariest part is knowing that it is a disease that I will have to work on for the rest of my life.”When he relapsed in 1987, Davis was suspended by the league and once again entered a drug rehabilitation facility. He also received immunity from prosecution when he agreed to testify against several current and former Suns teammates, who were indicted on drug charges.In his testimony, The Arizona Republic reported, Davis said that he had first used cocaine in his second season in the league after being introduced to it by a teammate, Gar Heard. When asked by a prosecutor who else was there, he said, “Pretty much the whole team.”Later that year, Davis said that prosecutors had forced him to testify against his teammates.“I had no choice,” he told Sports Illustrated. “The last thing I wanted to do was get my teammates and friends indicted. If I’d known I was going to do that, I’d have probably gone to jail instead.”Davis left the Suns in 1988 to sign as a free agent with the Denver Nuggets. He was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers in 1991 and then re-signed with Denver, where he played in the 1991-92 season before retiring.Davis was honored by the Suns and the Black Chamber of Arizona during a Black History Month celebration in Phoenix in 2016. Barry Gossage/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDavis averaged 18.9 points a game for his career and played in six All-Star Games.After his retirement, he worked as an announcer and community ambassador for the Nuggets and a scout for the Washington Wizards.Information on survivors was not immediately available. More

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      Need a Restaurant Recommendation? Ask an N.B.A. Player.

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      The best basketball players on the planet travel regularly, embrace local cultures and have deep pockets — making them very credible reviewers of restaurants across the country.Pick a city, any city, on the National Basketball Association’s 30-team circuit, and Kelly Olynyk, a forward for the Utah Jazz, has deep knowledge of the local restaurant scene.If you are searching for top-tier sushi in Boston, where he spent his first four N.B.A. seasons, he recommends Fuji at Ink Block in the South End. In Charlotte, N.C., he will most likely suggest the smoked wings at Rooster’s Wood-Fired Kitchen. Whether you are craving the best Italian in San Francisco or in pursuit of tasty treats in Indianapolis — Mr. Olynyk knows a place. He is a 6-foot-11 human version of Yelp.“You have spots in each city that you love and know you can count on,” said Mr. Olynyk, 32, after eating at thousands of restaurants over the 10 years he has played professionally on five N.B.A. teams. “But part of having an interest in different cultures and cuisines and restaurants is trying new ones.”In a league that consists of 28 cities, roughly 450 players and 1,230 regular season games each year, N.B.A. business travel is frequent and first-class. Teams fly private and stay in five-star hotel chains like the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton. But they also eat, a lot, and by embracing local culture and institutions with their deep pockets, they have become very credible restaurant authorities.Karl-Anthony Towns, of the Timberwolves, at Fratelli’s Pizza & Cafe in his hometown, Piscataway, N.J. Mr. Towns grew up eating Fratelli’s pizza. When they started dating, he told his girlfriend: “‘All you need is a cheese slice and I promise you it will change your life.”via Karl-Anthony TownsN.B.A. players are larger-than-normal humans (average height is 6-foot-6) with equally large salaries (average annual pay is $8.32 million), a combination that results in voracious appetites and often in reservations at the country’s most renowned restaurants. Each player also receives a $133 food per diem for days on the road.“Sometimes, if we’re only in a city one night, I’ll go to two dinners,” admitted Mr. Olynyk.The 2023-24 N.B.A. season just tipped off on Oct. 24, and in a typical season, each team plays 41 games on the road, visiting each opposing market (that includes 27 U.S. cities and Toronto) at least once. There are additional preseason and playoff games also to consider. The Golden State Warriors, for example, traveled to Los Angeles — home of the Lakers and Clippers — seven times last season. That means many meals and time to bond.“We travel so much around the country that going out to restaurants has always been the greatest way to bring everyone together,” said Karl-Anthony Towns, a three-time N.B.A. All-Star center with the Minnesota Timberwolves.Regardless of which teammates or coaches they choose to dine with, players take notice of the food, service and settings: Word-of-mouth recommendations between players are a major part of N.B.A. restaurant culture.“We’re a brotherhood, so you’re going to definitely have some honest reviews from your 449 brothers,” said Mr. Towns, 27.Rudy Gobert, a Timberwolves teammate, frequent gives Mr. Towns tips on lesser-known eateries with little fanfare on Yelp, Tripadvisor or other recommendation websites. Mr. Olynyk, of the Jazz, enjoys introducing his younger teammates to top restaurants in different cities (and picking up the bill), much as his former teammate Rajon Rondo did for him, treating Mr. Olynyk to Strega Italiano in Boston when Mr. Olynyk was a rookie with the Celtics.“It’s kind of like a rite of passage,” Mr. Olynyk, a native of Toronto, said.Kevin Love, a veteran forward for the Miami Heat, grew up in Portland, Ore., a city known for its creative dining scene. As his basketball career — one that has included five All-Star selections and a championship ring with the Cleveland Cavaliers — has advanced, his food knowledge has improved and his network of fellow food lovers has expanded (The Times documented his passion for travel in 2019).“Having a love for food, as well as wine, has brought me into a number of circles where I’ve made really good friends with restaurateurs, chefs and people who have similar interests,” said Mr. Love, 35, who is a partner (along with his former teammate Channing Frye) in Chosen Family Wines, a wine brand based out of Willamette Valley, Ore. “That’s a fun world to be in.”He has leveraged connections in the restaurant industry to organize team dinners, key to building team camaraderie. Before the Heat visit New York City, Mr. Love will call area restaurants and design unique dining experiences for his teammates.“I’m going to take these guys out and show them great food and introduce them to maybe a different cuisine,” Mr. Love said.He still considers Portland one of his top food destinations, naming Kann and RingSide Steakhouse (he strongly suggests the onion rings) as his hometown favorites. In New York City, where he lived in the off-season before recently moving to Long Island, Mr. Love lists as favorites Carbone, Sadelle’s, Hometown Bar-B-Que, Fini Pizza and Misi (Sean Feeney, the restaurateur, is a good friend of his), and Eleven Madison Park (Daniel Humm, the chef and owner, is also a friend).Kevin Love, a veteran forward for the Miami Heat, has leveraged his connections in the restaurant industry to organize team dinners.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“It’s one of the most unbelievably beautiful kitchens I’ve ever seen,” Mr. Love said of Eleven Madison Park.For many N.B.A. players, supporting minority-owned businesses can be as important as finding establishments with Michelin stars. Mr. Towns, of the Timberwolves, will also approach local residents to seek restaurant recommendations.“I’ve always been intrigued by people and cultures,” said Mr. Towns, who has Dominican and African American roots. “And the best way to learn about people and cultures is to sit down and enjoy their food.”In Minneapolis, Mr. Towns recommends Soul Bowl, a soul food and Caribbean-inspired restaurant in the city’s North Loop. But it was Fratelli’s Pizza Cafe, in his hometown, Piscataway, N.J., where he took his girlfriend when they first started dating.“‘I got to take you home to a pizzeria that I grew up on,’” Mr. Towns recalled saying. “I said, ‘All you need is a cheese slice and I promise you it will change your life.’”“She agrees with me,” he said with a laugh.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023. More

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      Tug-of-War Over N.B.A. Rights Provides Glimpse of Media’s Future

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      The league’s longtime television partners, including ESPN and Turner, are undergoing major changes, which could alter how games are watched.The National Basketball Association’s season tipped off on Tuesday with stars like LeBron James and Nikola Jokic beginning the long quest for a title. But the action that will have longer-term ramifications for the league, and the media and entertainment landscape, is happening off the court.The companies holding the rights to show N.B.A. games — Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of TNT — are collectively paying the league $24 billion over nine years for that privilege. But their contracts expire after next season, and the N.B.A. hopes to more than double the money it receives for rights in the next deal, according to several people familiar with the league’s expectations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.It won’t get that without a fight. After decades in which sports leagues garnered ever bigger piles of money for the rights to show their games, there are signs that media and technology companies are under increasing pressure to justify the exorbitant amounts they spend on broadcast rights. Interest rates are high, Wall Street is demanding profitability over growth, and streaming has reconfigured the entertainment industry.The result of the N.B.A.’s negotiations will say a lot about the future of broadcast networks, the cable bundle, streaming services and the sports media ambitions of technology companies.“I think in this era that we’re coming out of, this is the last of the big deals,” said John Kosner, who advises sports media and tech start-ups after a two-decade career as an executive at ESPN.The National Football League, the most valuable sports league in the world, did not quite double its rights fees when it signed new agreements in 2021. And that was before the stock market declined, interest rates rose and wars began in Europe and the Middle East.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery, which have televised N.B.A. games for more than two decades, aren’t necessarily in positions to shell out lots of cash, either.Disney has carried out extreme cost-cutting and layoffs this year, and its chief executive, Robert A. Iger, has said the company is considering “strategic options” to sell equity in ESPN. Warner Bros. Discovery has also cut costs, and said in August that it had a debt load of nearly $50 billion following the merger of the two companies last year.The most likely scenario, according to the people familiar with the negotiations, is that Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery will sign new agreements with the N.B.A. to televise fewer games. The N.B.A. declined to comment for this article.The two companies together show about 160 regular-season games each year, as well as the playoffs and N.B.A. finals. Most games are shown on cable (ESPN and TNT), with a handful on ABC.For both companies, N.B.A. broadcast rights still represent a valuable bargaining chip in negotiations with their biggest customers: cable and satellite companies. Those distributors pay billions of dollars to Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery for the rights to show their cable channels, including TNT and ESPN, based in part on the expectation that those channels will air sports like N.B.A. basketball.An N.B.A. package would also help both companies shift to a streaming future. Warner Bros. Discovery recently added a live sports package to its streaming service, Max, while ESPN has been vocal about having a stand-alone streaming offering for its flagship channel in the near future.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery are not likely to be the only companies showing N.B.A. games, though. If those companies end up showing fewer games in the new deal, the league may create a third rights package, perhaps even a fourth, of the games no longer included in the first two packages, as well as the league’s new in-season tournament.The most likely buyers for those packages of games are Amazon and NBC, according to the people familiar with the negotiations.Top executives at Fox, CBS and the Google-owned YouTube have said that they are unlikely to put in serious bids for broadcasting rights. The intentions of Netflix and Apple are less clear, but Netflix has long said it is uninterested in paying the kind of prices the N.B.A. is looking for. Apple has largely committed itself to a sports strategy of buying up all of a league’s domestic and international rights, like in its recent deal with Major League Soccer. That isn’t possible with the N.B.A.Amazon and NBC are attractive partners to the N.B.A. for very different reasons.For a generation, most N.B.A. games have been watchable only with a cable package. But the collapse of the cable bundle — from around 100 million households with a cable package a decade ago to around 70 million today — has made old-school broadcast networks, the most widely distributed television channels, more attractive. With CBS and Fox as unlikely bidders, the league could want games to be shown on NBC’s broadcast channel.As for Amazon, it is seen as highly unlikely that the N.B.A. — a league that is proud of being forward-thinking regarding technology — would sign a new rights agreement with only traditional media companies, according to some of the people familiar with the negotiations. Amazon has long been interested in broadcasting the N.B.A., according to a person familiar with the league’s negotiation history, and it has won plaudits for how it has handled Thursday night N.F.L. games.The media and technology companies declined to comment for this article. CNBC, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal have all previously reported on parts of the N.B.A.’s media-rights negotiations.The league has a number of other media assets it could leverage. Most N.B.A. games are not shown nationally. Instead, they are broadcast in their local markets, with individual teams controlling the rights to sell those games. Teams have traditionally sold those rights to regional sports networks, but those are collapsing, leaving teams looking for alternatives.If Diamond Sports, which is in bankruptcy proceedings, collapses, the N.B.A. could suddenly regain control of the local rights for about half the teams in the league. If that happens, it might sell some of those rights to a national partner. But that would require the league to work with its team owners — as well as current rights holders — for the complicated task of navigating roughly 30 different local agreements.It would also leave out a number of high-profile teams, like the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers, which have long-term local rights agreements with successful regional sports networks.The N.B.A. could also sell some international rights. The rights to show N.B.A. games in some basketball-mad countries like China could be extremely valuable, especially as domestic streaming companies seek new markets. But the league — unique in American sports in that it sells all its international rights directly rather than working with third parties — is seen as more likely to sell those rights country by country to the highest bidder.The real wild card if the N.B.A. looks to do something groundbreaking could be its old stalwart: ESPN.Disney and ESPN executives have spoken in recent months with private equity firms, tech and mobile companies and sports leagues, and have concluded that if they are to give up equity, it should be to a league, or leagues, as part of a long-term partnership, according to two people familiar with ESPN’s plans.Analysts have valued ESPN at $25 billion to $50 billion, meaning a potential partner would have to trade billions in value for even a small stake. While a partner could pay Disney for a stake in ESPN, what the company is really looking for is exclusive content, some of those involved in the negotiations said.Disney executives have spoken with a number of sports leagues, including the N.B.A., about selling them equity in ESPN and what the company would want out of such an arrangement. According to one of the people, the benefits sought by ESPN in a partnership could include more closely integrating a league’s social media operations with the network’s, content like documentary rights and more in-game audio from players, distributing games it does not have the broadcast rights to within its apps and working together on marketing. More