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      Russia Says It Has American Basketball Player in Custody

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      The Russian Federal Customs Service said that its officials had detained an American basketball player after finding vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow.The Customs Service said in a statement that the player had won two Olympic gold medals with the United States, but it did not release the player’s name. The Russian news agency TASS, citing a law enforcement source, identified the player as Brittney Griner, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury. Griner won gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2021 and 2016.The Customs Service released a video of a traveler at the airport that appeared to be the 31-year-old Griner, wearing a mask and black sweatshirt, going through security. The video showed an individual removing a package from the traveler’s bag.According to the statement, a criminal case has been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, which can carry a sentence of up to 10 years behind bars in Russia. The basketball player was taken into custody while the investigation is ongoing, the officials said.Griner’s agent and spokespeople for the W.N.B.A. and the Phoenix Mercury did not immediately respond to requests for comment.The detainment comes amid the escalating conflict created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and high tensions between Russia and the United States. In recent years, Russia has been detaining and sentencing American citizens on what United States officials often say are trumped-up charges. The arrest of a high-profile American could be seen as Russia attempting to create leverage for a potential prisoner exchange with the American government.Many W.N.B.A. players compete in Russia, where salaries are more lucrative, during the American league’s off-season. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.Some American players began making plans to leave Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.“The few W.N.B.A. players who were competing this off-season in Ukraine are no longer in the country,” the W.N.B.A. told ESPN in a statement this week. “The league has also been in contact with W.N.B.A. players who are in Russia, either directly or through their agents. We will continue to closely monitor the situation.” More

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      The WNBA’s $20 Million Debate Over Charter Flights

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      Secret charter flights cost the Liberty a big fine, but players say they deserve them — and need them to be healthy. The league says they’re too expensive for now.The W.N.B.A. said charter flights were too expensive. The players said they did not have to be. The W.N.B.A. commissioner said she wanted them more than anyone. The players said that when they asked for them just two years ago, it felt like the answer was “a hard no.”Now, charter flights for players seem to be closer to a maybe. But that movement has come at a cost — a $500,000 fine for the Liberty, and a bruising of the league’s public image as fans, players and those attuned to drama question whether the W.N.B.A. is doing right by its players.And the cost for the flights? W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the league had estimated that it would cost more than $20 million for all 12 teams to fly by charter instead of commercial airlines for a full season, not accounting for the recent surge in fuel costs and variables such as routes. She has maintained that the league does not have enough revenue to cover the costs. Teams typically play more than 30 games, with half on the road.The players’ union said that it did not have a cost estimate, but that a change in travel accommodations was long overdue.“The league is young, but it’s old enough,” said Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director. “We can figure this out.”An article in Sports Illustrated on Tuesday revealed that the W.N.B.A. had fined the Liberty $500,000 in the fall for secretly using charter flights to travel to some games during the 2021 season. The collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union allows for premium economy seats, such as Comfort Plus from Delta, but charter flights are not allowed and their provision is considered an unfair competitive advantage. The league confirmed to The New York Times that the Liberty had been fined $500,000 for “multiple violations of league rules,” including taking eight charter flights toward the end of the regular season, sending players on a trip to Napa, Calif., and making unspecified “public comments about items that are collectively bargained.”The Liberty declined to comment. In October, Joe Tsai, who owns the Liberty with his wife, Clara Wu Tsai, tweeted about charter flights as an issue of “equity for women athletes.”The Liberty, owned by Joe Tsai, were fined $500,000 for eight charter flights and a trip to Napa, Calif., during the 2021 season.Corey Sipkin/Associated PressEngelbert said that she wanted players to have charter flights, but that until that was possible, the collective bargaining agreement had to be enforced and the fine “had to be big enough” to serve as a deterrent. She said Sports Illustrated’s report that the league had suggested a $1 million fine was “inaccurate,” but a spokesman for the magazine said it stood behind its reporting.The sentiment on social media this week has been largely against the league, including from players who are not on the Liberty.“We deserve nice things,” guard Lexie Brown, who won a championship with the Chicago Sky last season, posted on Twitter on Wednesday. A week earlier, Brown tweeted “the wnba” in response to a question about what was holding the league back.“What a joke,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu posted on Twitter with three crying-laughing emojis, in response to a tweet about the Sports Illustrated article.Josh Hart, who plays for the Portland Trail Blazers of the N.B.A., tweeted “This is trash and @WNBA yall got to get better.”Part of the blowback came in response to the assertion by Sports Illustrated that in September, team owners did not support an “unofficial proposal” from the Liberty to make charter flights the default. According to the article, “the Liberty said they’d found a way to get it comped for everyone in the league for three years,” but some owners were worried the players would get used to the flights and want them permanently.But the league was quoted in the article as saying that the Liberty did not make a proposal for the owners to consider, and, in an interview with The Times, Engelbert said a formal proposal “never happened.” She added that if such a proposal were to come, “it would be supported.”“This is a good thing that we have ownership groups that really care, that are investing and are having really good debates,” she said.Whether or not the team owners want charters, the players do. And, in a twist from even five or 10 years ago, they appear to have broad public support as female athletes speak up for themselves and women’s sports get more media attention. For some, the push for charters is about offering accommodations befitting professional athletes — “nice things,” as Brown said. But Jackson said it was mainly about players’ health and safety.“Their bodies are their craft,” Jackson said. They need time to rest, leg room because they are tall and access to nutritious meals to perform at a high level, she said. All of that is compromised by spending hours in airports traveling commercially, sitting in cramped seats and not having proper snacks, she said.It was worse just a few years ago, before the 2020 collective bargaining agreement went into effect with an allotment for upgraded seats. Liz Cambage, a four-time All-Star who is listed at 6-foot-8, tweeted last month that she had paid “out of my own pocket” to upgrade her seats. And yet, even now, players can find themselves stuck in coach.Jackson said teams and the league had blamed overwhelmed staff members struggling to arrange travel and airlines that won’t allow large groups to book upgraded or exit row seats. Bringing the complaints to the league has helped — “Some teams got it together,” Jackson said — but she said the next step would be to file a grievance. The union did not do so last season, but upgraded travel will be a “point of emphasis” this coming season, she said. The league said it was “made aware” of complaints last season and will be auditing teams this season “to assure full compliance.”How soon players can upgrade to charter flights — without teams incurring fines — is unclear because of the players’ and league’s conflicting views on how to pay for them, and when. Engelbert said the $20 million-plus price tag for full-season charters makes it unlikely that a sponsor will pick up the tab, though the league is open to that and the Liberty and other teams are exploring options.“I don’t want to do things that jeopardize the financial health of the league,” she said, adding, “We are trying to build revenue and financial models that support better things for the players in the long term, but this is not something that we can afford today.”Engelbert would not disclose the W.N.B.A.’s revenue or if any teams were profitable, but she said the league was valued at $475 million and at more than $1 billion with the 12 teams included. Last month, the league announced that it had raised $75 million from a group of investors, including Condoleezza Rice and Joe and Clara Wu Tsai. The league had been owned in a 50-50 split with the N.B.A., which founded the W.N.B.A. in 1996. Now the ownership split is 42.1 percent each for the W.N.B.A. and N.B.A. and 15.8 percent for the new investors, who do not have voting rights, as first reported by Sports Illustrated and confirmed by The Times.W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said she hoped the league would be able to have full-season charters eventually, but that was “not something that we can afford today.”Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesIn an interview with The Times last month, Engelbert said that the new money would not be used for charter flights but for marketing and upgrading the league’s digital products, such as its website and streaming service. The marketing efforts could generate additional revenue that might then enable the league to pay for flights in the future, she said.Jackson said even small changes to the flight rules now could have a big impact. When the union was negotiating travel accommodations for its contract, it didn’t start by asking for full-season charters, she said.“We didn’t go into negotiations to break the bank,” she said. “We care too much about this league. But we want to be supported. The players want to be supported and valued, not taken advantage of.”In addition to having sponsors cover some, if not all, of the cost of charters, Jackson said the union was open to discussing using charters for back-to-back games and the postseason — which Engelbert has permitted under special circumstances — and setting a maximum number of flights that teams could use per season and letting them decide when and whether to use them.“There are ways to do this,” Jackson said. “This is not an all-or-nothing.” More

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      ‘Winning Time’: When the NBA Went Pop

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      A new HBO drama chronicles the 1980s Lakers, whose fluid style and Hollywood flair changed the game and the culture. An N.B.A. writer takes account.When asked to describe the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, the actor DeVaughn Nixon, 38, paused for a moment. “Stylized,” he said. Then he rattled off more words: “Fast. Cool. Fun. Sexy.”That’s not how most sports franchises are typically described. But the Lakers of that era were built differently.The Showtime Lakers, as the team was known, set a new template for how professional basketball came to be viewed on and off the floor. The team crossed over into pop culture consciousness in a way no N.B.A. franchise had. It spurred discussions about the place of money, race, celebrity and sex in the game. With their brash new-money owner, Jerry Buss, the Lakers challenged what was then the status quo — which included poor attendance and ratings. They helped save the league.They also made for great TV, both in their time and as the basis for an equally flashy new HBO docudrama, “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” in which Nixon plays his own father, the point guard Norm Nixon. Episode 1 of the 10-part first season debuts Sunday.Created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, the series is based on the book “Showtime” by the journalist Jeff Pearlman. But the chatty, fast-paced, fourth-wall-breaking style of “Winning Time” is signature Adam McKay (“The Big Short,” “Don’t Look Up”), who executive produced and directed the pilot.“It was a story that I thought I knew the basics of,” McKay, a lifelong basketball fan who hosted a podcast last year about the N.B.A., said in an email. “I thought it was mostly about Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dr. Buss.”“I had no idea until I read that book what a complicated, layered story it was,” he added. “It was like ‘Brothers Karamazov,’ only about basketball.”DeVaughn Nixon, left, plays his father, Norm Nixon, in the series. He said he hadn’t truly understood the impact of the Showtime Lakers until he got a bit older.Warrick Page/HBO“Winning Time” isn’t the first chronicle of the 1980s N.B.A., a seminal period for the sport and the subject of numerous books and documentaries. Based on the eight episodes provided to journalists in advance, “Winning Time” tells the story in a tone befitting those Lakers teams. Cuts are frenetic, needles drop hard, and characters frequently deliver commentary and exposition straight to the camera. Grainy film and glitchy video mix with real and faux archival footage, adding to the vintage vibes.Much like the Johnson-era Lakers, it’s an unconventional show that doesn’t pretend to be subtle.The legendThe accomplishments of the Showtime Lakers have become the stuff of lore. The Lakers won five championships from 1980 to 1988, one of the most successful runs of any franchise in N.B.A. history. Their main rivals, the Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird, won three in that same period. (This N.B.A. writer grew up a Celtics fan and was exposed to the rivalry out of the womb.) Together, those teams produced some of the greatest basketball players the world had ever seen.DeVaughn said he hadn’t understood the importance of the Showtime Lakers until he was older and on a trip to Positano, Italy, well after his father had retired.“I come back from the bathroom and Michael Jordan’s sitting down next to us, and he’s just chopping it up with my dad,” Nixon said. Jordan, he recalled, called his father a “bad boy on the court.”Solomon Hughes, right, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics was in many ways a rivalry between opposing views on what basketball should be. Warrick Page/HBO“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, all right, cool.’” Nixon added. “He was a part of something.”Jordan wasn’t alone in his admiration. Eighties basketball, particularly the Lakers, had a cultural and political poignancy that has influenced the game and the world at large ever since. One could draw a straight line, for example, from the political activism of Abdul-Jabbar, who played for the Lakers from 1975 to 1989, to that of LeBron James. (Something that hasn’t survived: Abdul-Jabbar’s deadly skyhook, which has rarely been seen in this century.)And today’s fashion parades, sexy dancers and boisterous lineup introductions — with their pyrotechnics, laser light shows and T-shirt guns — owe a lot to Buss (played in the series by John C. Reilly), the transformational owner who purchased the Lakers in 1979.Buss helped usher in an era that put celebrities courtside and expanded the fan experience. Celebrities had long been connected to Los Angeles sports teams — Doris Day and Jack Nicholson were already frequent sightings at Laker games — but Buss ratcheted up celebrity attendance, a dynamic that still exists.Solomon Hughes, who plays Abdul-Jabbar, said that “the uniqueness of that professional sports team in the backdrop of Hollywood really just changed how we how we look at sports.”The Lakers were nicknamed “Showtime” was because of a nightclub called the Horn, which Buss frequented. There, a singer would start a show by saying, “It’s showtime,” and Buss adopted the phrase to describe his approach to the Lakers. A frequent guest of the Playboy Mansion who held a Ph.D in chemistry and sported disco lapels and an impressive comb-over, he was intent on marrying Hollywood glamour with high-quality basketball — a significant break from the standard mold of how N.B.A. teams operated.The rivalryThat standard was strongly influenced by the Celtics, who dominated the N.B.A. in the two decades before Buss bought the Lakers. Red Auerbach, the former coach and general manager of the Celtics (played by Michael Chiklis), detested, for example, the idea of cheerleaders at games; Boston didn’t have them until 2006. Buss was an interloper, wreaking havoc on the sanctity of basketball.But Buss wanted more than just a glitzy experience surrounding the game. He wanted the basketball itself to be flashy. That made Johnson’s availability in the 1979 N.B.A. draft all the more serendipitous. Johnson played the game with an eye for fast-paced showmanship, frequently whipping behind-the-back, no-look bullets to teammates as if he had a third eye.“He wanted to put on a show,” Quincy Isaiah, the 26-year-old who portrays Johnson, said. “But he definitely wanted to make everybody in that arena feel good while watching, including his teammates.”Not everyone felt good, especially outside Los Angeles. Chiklis, a native of Lowell, Mass., grew up a fan of the Celtics, a franchise with a diametrically opposed view on how basketball was supposed to be.“I had just about as much hate and ire for them as I did for the Yankees,” Chiklis said, adding, “You couldn’t be in Boston at that time and not get sucked into the vortex of that rivalry.”The rivalry had a racial component, too. Bird was a transcendent player like Johnson, but some wondered whether he would have received the same attention had he been Black. Dennis Rodman, one of the game’s greatest rebounders, said in 1987 that Bird won three straight Most Valuable Player awards “because he was white,” adding, “Nobody gives Magic Johnson credit.” Isiah Thomas, Rodman’s teammate on the Detroit Pistons, agreed, adding that if Bird “was Black, he’d be just another guy,” setting off a furor.As the Lakers and Celtics rivalry evolved, interest in the league grew and more games were shown live on TV. (The rise of ESPN, which debuted in 1979, also helped.) Johnson became a household name, especially as the Lakers kept winning.John C. Reilly, left, (with Isaiah, center, and Jason Clarke, as Jerry West) plays Jerry Buss, the flashy, new-money owner who helped usher the N.B.A. into a new era. Warrick Page/HBOThe celebrityBefore the 1980s, the N.B.A. was a struggling league with low ratings, and the networks wouldn’t give it prime slots. One Finals game in 1977 tipped off at noon Pacific. Many games were aired on tape delay.The Lakers helped turn the N.B.A. from a fringe sports league into a titan, which set the stage for Jordan and, later, Kobe Bryant to help make the game a global phenomenon. As McKay put it, the Lakers “changed fashion, music, the way people behaved, the way they spoke.”“It’s an explosion that just rarely happens in any form of culture,” he continued, “let alone sports.”Along with Bird, Johnson became a star unlike any basketball player before. He and Bird appeared in TV commercials together and clocked huge endorsement deals. When Johnson — a heterosexual athlete who was averaging 12.5 assists and 19.4 points a game — announced in 1991 that he had H.I.V. and was retiring, it sent shock waves around the world. Pau Gasol, a native of Spain, said he had been so inspired by Johnson’s news conference that he vowed as a boy to find a cure for H.I.V. Instead, he became an N.B.A. All-Star, who helped lead the Lakers to multiple championships.Some of the key figures in the story have said publicly that they aren’t happy with the show, including Johnson. (Neither the central figures portrayed nor the Lakers organization were involved in the production.) In an email, a spokeswoman for Abdul-Jabbar described the series as “based on a fictional account taken from a book” written by “an outsider,” adding that Abdul-Jabbar had not seen the show and that “the story is best told by those who lived it.”Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner of the Lakers and the daughter of Jerry Buss, who died in 2013, is executive producing a documentary series about the franchise for Hulu, set to debut this year. Johnson is developing one about his own life for Apple. (Spokespeople for Johnson and the Lakers declined to comment.)“If I was Kareem to Magic or any of those guys, and I looked at it personally, like they’re telling my story, it would probably feel weird to me, too,” Rodney Barnes, an executive producer and writer of the show, said. But the creative team wanted to tell a story about everything that period encompassed, he added — about not only the Lakers but also “America as a whole.”And their story would hardly be the last take on the Showtime Lakers, Barnes acknowledged.“There’s still a lot of meat on that bone,” he said. More

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      Across Town, Tony Bland Is Adjusting to a Different World

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      Bland, a former U.S.C. assistant coach arrested in 2017 as part of an F.B.I. investigation, is now coaching at a Los Angeles-area high school. He still hopes he can return to the college level.PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. — In an alternate universe, Tony Bland might have been a world away on Tuesday night, on the sideline at the University of Southern California’s sold-out Galen Center, coaching the home team in a nationally televised, high-stakes men’s basketball game against Arizona.Instead, Bland was in a well-worn high school gym about 20 miles away with the St. Bernard High School boys basketball team in a state playoff game.He is trying his best to, as he says, plant himself where his feet are, to think about where he is and not stew about what he once had — a college career that had him on the fast track to possibly becoming a head coach.Still, the reminders are hard to miss: After St. Bernard dispatched feisty Long Beach Poly, 52-40, Bland was congratulated by Wyking Jones, a University of Washington assistant recruiting one of his players. In the stands was the U.C.L.A. assistant Rod Palmer, whose son Joshua is a freshman at St. Bernard. One of his team’s leaders is Jason Hart Jr., whose father was on the U.S.C. coaching staff with Bland and now coaches in the N.B.A.’s G League.The triggers are particularly strong in March, when college basketball takes center stage in the American sports landscape and deep N.C.A.A. tournament runs, like U.S.C.’s to last year’s regional final, can be springboards for coaches with aspirations.“It’s the competitive itch,” Bland said. “The what if? Ascending the college coaching ranks to maybe soon be a head coach. How I would have done it. I remember when I used to do this. It’s the whole thing.”Everything changed for Bland on Sept. 26, 2017, when armed federal agents — their weapons drawn — stormed into his hotel room in Tampa, Fla., and arrested Bland as part of a nationwide college basketball corruption scandal. Bland was one of 10 people arrested that day as a result of an investigation that targeted some of the nation’s most prominent programs and that federal prosecutors boasted would expose the sport’s shady underbelly.“We have your playbook,” the F.B.I.’s William Sweeney thundered, sending a chill through the college basketball world when he added that the investigation, which had been fortified by wiretaps, was ongoing.Now, some four and a half years later, it has long been clear how empty those overinflated proclamations have been. (The same can be said for the breathless exclamations that a sea change in the sport was at hand.)The N.C.A.A. has done little more than slap a few schools on the wrist, and Rick Pitino is the only head coach who was fired in 2017 — a result less of his culpability than that the investigation was the latest in a string of embarrassing incidents during his tenure at Louisville. (Pitino now coaches Iona).Federal authorities fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State Coach Will Wade off the witness stand. Wade is in his fifth year at L.S.U.Jeff Blake/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAnd the Feds, rather than exposing top college coaches, went lengths to shield them. They fought in court in 2019 to keep Louisiana State’s Will Wade, Arizona’s Sean Miller — who was fired last year — and other coaches off the witness stand. They also fought to keep an undercover agent from testifying, the reasons for which became clear last week: An F.B.I. agent pleaded guilty to gambling with $13,500 in government money at a Las Vegas casino in late July 2017, dates and circumstances that coincide with the sting operation that nabbed Bland and others.So, the head coaches who were accused in court of having known about — or even having facilitated — payments to players have almost all continued to collect million-dollar salaries, and business has proceeded as usual. (Arizona, Auburn and Kansas — all implicated in the scheme — are ranked second, fifth and sixth, respectively, in this week’s Associated Press poll.)“If anyone thinks that there is such a thing as a clean big-time program, they need to wake up and smell the donkey” manure, wrote Merl Code, a former shoe company employee, in his recently published book, “Black Market: An Insider’s Journey Into the High-Stakes World of College Basketball,” using an expletive. “Somewhere along the line, even the so-called cleanest of programs has some dirt if you look close enough.”Code, like Christian Dawkins, an aspiring agent, was sentenced to prison for his role in shunting money to top high school prospects and/or their families — a practice that has long been against N.C.A.A. rules, but one that has looked far less illicit as schools have made millions off the backs of an unpaid, largely Black labor force.(Code said Pitino and Kansas Coach Bill Self knew about payments he facilitated to players; both have denied any involvement.)Lamont Evans, Emanuel Richardson and Chuck Person were all fired from their assistant coach roles for accepting bribes.USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe case has only underscored the racial dynamic that is coming under greater scrutiny in major college sports: Coaches and top administrators, most of them white, enriching themselves thanks to the athletes, largely Black, who power their team’s success. All but one of the nine people who have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the corruption case are Black.Chuck Person (Auburn), Emanuel Richardson (Arizona), Lamont Evans (South Carolina and Oklahoma State), Preston Murphy (Creighton), Corey Barker (Texas Christian and New Mexico State) and Bland were all fired as assistants for accepting bribes. Murphy and Barker were not charged with crimes because they had returned the bribes.All have also been hit with show-cause penalties ranging from two years to 10, meaning that any college that wants to hire them has to explain to the N.C.A.A. why it wants to do so.The penalties effectively serve as a ban, and so many of the coaches are working as trainers, running workouts and camps for anyone who will pay them. Bland seems to be the only one coaching at a school.“I’m not saying these guys did anything wrong,” Bland said of the head coaches. “But what the assistant coaches went down for, I don’t know if they anticipated something more coming from it. I don’t know if there was supposed to be a Part B. This whole scheme and TV and bust for that? I don’t understand it.”Bland pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery — accepting $4,100 from Dawkins to steer players to a financial adviser — and received two years probation.Bland said he accepted only $2,100 from Dawkins, a friend for about a decade who told him to enjoy a night out in Las Vegas as a thanks for meeting with the financial adviser. He said, though, that he had little choice but to accept the plea deal because, if his case went to trial, it would be lumped in with those of four other defendants. “It was a business decision,” said Bland, who said he was so traumatized by the arrest that he couldn’t sleep in a hotel room. “I had to protect my family.”Bland, 42, said his wife urged him to think beyond basketball and reminded him that he had much to offer, but a few decades ago, the game is what carried him from South Los Angeles to Westchester High, the powerhouse public school that’s just around the bend from St. Bernard. A state championship helped earn him a scholarship to Syracuse and San Diego State.Bland felt at home in those same Los Angeles gyms when he returned to recruit one of the nation’s most fertile talent grounds, first as an assistant at San Diego State and then at U.S.C. He volunteered at St. Bernard, then took over as coach before last season.“We had a team, but he’s building a program,” said Jamie Mark, the athletic director, who had spent most of her career working for a sports agency. “And I think Tony likes the idea of building something.”The opportunity to coach has meant something for Bland, too. He has not given up hope of returning to the college game and one day being a head coach. “The people in college basketball understand my situation,” he said, later adding that his former boss at U.S.C., Andy Enfield, remains one of his biggest supporters. (Enfield is recruiting one of Bland’s best players, Tyler Rolison, a junior guard.)But he also knows there is more to the equation. A college coach is going to have to sell his athletic director on hiring Bland, and the athletic director will have to explain it to the university president. And so, with two more years left on his show-cause penalty, Bland said he knew better than to look too far down the road — or even across town.“This right here,” Bland said Tuesday night, sitting on the bleachers of a nearly empty gym, “has been helping to rehabilitate my soul.” More

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      Los Angeles Lakers Fighting Just to Make N.B.A. Playoffs

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      LeBron James is defiant, but the fans are booing, and the season might be lost.LOS ANGELES — The Lakers are on the verge of missing the N.B.A. playoffs. Their fans are booing and heckling them at home. They haven’t won since the All-Star break. They’ve won only three games out of their last 13.After their most recent outing, a 109-104 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night, LeBron James sounded defiant.“Until you stump me out, cut my head off, bury me 12 feet under, then I got a chance,” James said, his voice echoing in a cavernous portion of the arena. He added: “As long as we’ve got more games to play, we still have a chance. So that’s my confidence. I hate losing. I feel like poop right now. But tomorrow is a new day and I’m going to be prepared and ready for the Clippers on Thursday.”How firmly James truly believes they have a chance is unclear, but what he said reflected perfectly the Lakers’ situation. At 27-34, with the ninth-best record in the Western Conference, they still have a chance to make the playoffs, and they have James, who has led unlikely groups to postseason success before. Technically, they can win another championship, however unrealistic that might be.They have no choice but to approach the rest of the season with that in mind. They have no choice but to make the best of their circumstances.“We’ve got a resilient group,” Coach Frank Vogel said. “We have two guys, three guys really, top 75 all time. We’re hoping to get the other one back. Young guys are playing their tails off and bringing great energy to our group. We’re doing enough in stretches to give us belief; we just haven’t been able to close out the last two games.”This is not what the Lakers envisioned for this season. A combination of injuries and a poorly constructed roster have led to their fighting to be seeded into a play-in game to get into the playoffs.After a first-round exit in last year’s playoffs, they traded for Russell Westbrook, who they thought would offer superstar caliber play. Instead, Westbrook, whose acquisition James supported, has struggled on a team that cannot constantly feed him the ball.His obvious bad fit caused the Lakers to lightly explore trading him before last month’s deadline, but without the assets to make his inflated contract appealing to another team, they opted to wait until at least the summer to make any moves.James, who has been known during his career to make coded remarks, raised eyebrows when he praised the Los Angeles Rams’ general manager, Les Snead, after the Rams won the Super Bowl, then praised the Oklahoma City Thunder’s general manager, Sam Presti, when asked an innocuous question about one of his players at an All-Star Weekend news conference. Some read his remarks as veiled criticisms of the Lakers’ front office.James then told The Athletic that he hadn’t closed the door on returning to Cleveland, leading to a mountain of speculation about whether the marriage between James and the Lakers was effectively over.In hindsight, it clearly isn’t. In the week after the All-Star Game, James insisted too much was being made of his comments. Vogel referred to them as “just noise.”James’s agent, Rich Paul, met with Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ vice president for basketball operations, and Jeanie Buss, the team’s governor and chief executive, to assure them James was committed to being a Laker, according to multiple people with knowledge of the meeting.As the agent for the most important current Laker in James and the second most important in Anthony Davis, Paul has built a close relationship with Pelinka and Buss. Their conversation last week helped to soothe potential rifts borne of the frustration that comes with such a disappointing season.In the week since, the Lakers and their biggest star have all presented a face of unity and harmony.What that meeting could not do, though, was change what was happening on the court.Davis has been out with a foot sprain since Feb. 16. In all, he has missed 24 games this season. James has missed 17. The last time James, Davis and Westbrook played in the same game together was in Brooklyn on Jan. 25.They won that game, but even together they have challenges. Westbrook has not played well enough to justify the more than $90 million he is owed over the final two years of his contract. What the Lakers have committed to him has also hamstrung their ability to build depth that might have helped weather the injuries they’ve faced.LeBron James tried to make something happen against Luka Doncic and the Mavericks.Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAnd so the Lakers have found themselves here.On Sunday night, they were booed loudly by a fed-up crowd watching a lackluster effort against the New Orleans Pelicans. They lost to the Pelicans, who went into their game on Wednesday night with a 25-36 record and tied for 10th place in the Western Conference.They heard boos on Tuesday against the Mavericks (37-25), mostly as they fell to a 21-point deficit in the second quarter. A third-quarter rally brought back cheers briefly, and an energy rarely felt in their home arena lately.Tuesday’s game was such an improvement over Sunday’s 28-point loss to the Pelicans that the idea of a moral victory was broached to James after the game. He found the words so repugnant he could not let them go uncontested.“No,” James said, then each subsequent word sounded a bit more urgent than the last. “No. No. No. No.”Without the ability to make any real changes, the Lakers can only cling to the hope that maybe they will be healthy in time to change their fortunes during the playoffs.Last year, the N.B.A. introduced a play-in tournament in which the seventh- through 10th-seeded teams competed for the seventh and eighth seeds in each conference’s playoffs. In the past, the league had just let in the top eight teams in each conference.James bristled last season that his seventh-seeded Lakers had to participate.This season, the play-in tournament might offer a lifeline. But only if they can get there.The Lakers have the ninth-best record in the Western Conference. Entering Wednesday night’s action, they were only two games ahead of the 11th ranked Portland Trail Blazers.“If we win games, it gets us in,” James said. “We’re going to prepare. We’ll be ready. But we got to try to win one basketball game right now.”All anyone involved with the Lakers can do now is make the best of their reality. More

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      How Wilt Chamberlain's 100-Point Game Changed the NBA

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      OAKLAND, Calif. — On Sunday afternoon, Al Attles eased onto his living room couch next to his friend Tom Meschery, and they soon found themselves transported to March 2, 1962.They were listening to an old radio broadcast, Meschery for the first time. For a few blissful minutes, Attles’s home in Oakland was filled with the smoky baritone of Bill Campbell, who was the play-by-play voice for the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia Warriors when Attles, 85, and Meschery, 83, were teammates.“I remember thinking in the third quarter that something special was happening,” Meschery said.That something special was Wilt Chamberlain, Philadelphia’s dominant center, scoring 100 points in a 169-147 win over the Knicks in Hershey, Pa., where Attles reveled in his role of shuffling the ball to Chamberlain as often as possible and Meschery helped make history amid a haze produced by the nearby candy factories.“I can’t tell you how much the aroma of chocolate disturbed me for years,” he said.On the game’s 60th anniversary, it lives on as a part of the country’s cultural fabric — a touchstone for a transcendent athlete when the N.B.A., by design, was predominantly white. Gary M. Pomerantz, whose book, “Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era,” offers the definitive account of the game, said Chamberlain’s performance marked an important shift.“We remember Wilt’s 100-point game in part for its symbolism,” Pomerantz said in a telephone interview. “It symbolically exploded the racial quota N.B.A. owners had that limited opportunities for Black players. If this wasn’t the intended effect, it was the ultimate result: The N.B.A. would be a white man’s enclave no more.”Attles, who was one of Philadelphia’s three Black players at the time, spent his entire 11-year career with the Warriors as a player and player-coach, then stayed with the franchise as its head coach, guiding the team, which had by then moved to California, to its first championship in 1975. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Al Attles, left, and Tom Meschery, right, were teammates during the game Wilt Chamberlin scored 100 points.Jason Henry for The New York TimesMeschery had 10 productive seasons in the N.B.A. before he embarked on a long second career as a high school English teacher. A published poet, he is the only former N.B.A. All-Star who has been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.Yet for all their varied accomplishments, Attles and Meschery understand that their legacies are tied, in some small measure, to that night in Hershey, where Chamberlain shot 36 of 63 from the field, made 28 of 32 free throws, then caught a ride back to New York — he lived in Harlem at the time — with a couple of players from the woebegone Knicks.“He was trying to sleep in the back, and he could overhear them talking about dropping him off by the side of the highway,” Meschery said, laughing.The Great ReadMore fascinating tales you can’t help but read all the way to the end.Disney World’s new “Star Wars” hotel incorporates role playing, live interactive theater, rides and gaming. But it will cost you.A Broadway conductor caught Covid in the first wave. Two despairing years later, he is finally reclaiming his old life, breath by breath.A violent brawl that involved several biker gangs in Waco, Texas, left nine dead and led to nearly 200 arrests. Why was no one convicted?The game was, in many ways, unremarkable. It was staged at Hershey Sports Arena, an impersonal concrete shell where the Warriors played a few games each season. For their game against the Knicks, the building was only half full. The wooden court was originally designed for roller skating. The game was not televised, and only a couple of newspaper reporters made the two-hour trip from Philadelphia.Even now, the radio broadcast is not made available for public consumption without prior approval by the league. (The Warriors provided Attles and Meschery with a copy of the fourth quarter so they could listen to it.)But the game produced unexpected magic, and it has continued to be mythologized — fitting for a figure like Chamberlain, who did little to dispel the stories, real or imagined, about his life. Even to teammates, Pomerantz wrote, Chamberlain could seem detached and “beyond their reach,” though Attles was closer to him than most.“Just a terrific person once you got to know him,” Attles said.To Meschery, Chamberlain was more of a looming presence — at least at first. In 1957, as a high school senior in San Francisco, Meschery appeared on NBC’s “The Steve Allen Show,” along with the rest of the country’s high school and college all-American selections. As they gathered onstage, Meschery glanced over his shoulder.“And Wilt is standing right above me,” Meschery recalled.Chamberlain, who was dominating college defenders for Kansas, eventually left school early to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, then joined the Warriors in 1959. Attles, who thought he was bound for a teaching job at a junior high school in Newark, made the Warriors as a fifth-round pick in 1960, crafting a reputation as a defense-minded guard. (His nickname? The Destroyer.) A scrappy forward, Meschery joined the Warriors the following season.“I was in Wonderland,” he said. “I was just this kid from the West Coast, and there I was, playing with Wilt Chamberlain for God’s sake.”Meschery was prone to mixing it up with opponents. He recalled one game when Zelmo Beaty, a 6-foot-9 center for the St. Louis Hawks, lost his patience with him. They were about to brawl, Meschery said, when the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain wrapped his arms around Beaty and hauled him away as if he were a sack of potatoes.“Wilt saved my life,” Meschery said.Meschery has a memoir in the works, and he recently finished a short chapter on Chamberlain’s 100-point game. But Meschery said he had never heard the radio broadcast until Sunday, when he was transfixed by the soundtrack of a game from another era.Fans and teammates rushed the court to congratulate Chamberlain after he scored his 100th point against the Knicks.Paul Vathis/Associated PressFor Meschery and Attles, the broadcast stirred dusty memories. They remembered the way in which Dave Zinkoff, the team’s public address announcer, would enunciate Chamberlain’s nickname, the Big Dipper, in his hallmark Philadelphia drawl: “Dippah dunk!” They remembered the team’s exhaustive preseason schedule — 15 games or more in “Podunk towns,” Meschery said — as the N.B.A. sought to expand its reach. They remembered traveling by train to St. Louis from Philadelphia, long before the era of charter flights.“Wilt played cards the whole time,” Meschery said.They remembered how the team had arrived early for its game against the Knicks in Hershey, and how some of the players occupied themselves at a nearby penny arcade. Chamberlain was predictably the star attraction as he monopolized a target-shooting game.“I don’t think he missed,” Meschery said.And as they listened to Campbell’s call of the game, Meschery could even picture Frank McGuire, Philadelphia’s coach, patrolling the sideline in his crisp suit.“Frank’s out there with his cuff links, looking good,” Meschery said.McGuire had floated the idea that Chamberlain could score 100 points in a game. After all, Chamberlain had already poured in a record 78 points against the Los Angeles Lakers a few months prior, and he was averaging 50.2 points per game — while playing virtually every minute of every game.“Wilt would get ticked if he got taken out,” Meschery said.And when he was in, passing to him was usually the best option for his teammates. “If you were going to shoot, you better make it,” Attles recalled.By the early minutes of the fourth quarter for this special game, Campbell’s voice grew expectant with each possession.Chamberlain with a jumper from the circle — good!“That jumper was not really Wilt’s strength,” Meschery said. “It was sort of a miracle. But the whole game was a miracle in a way.”The kids are hollering out, “We want 100!”“If you got the ball to Wilt, you stayed in the game,” Attles said.Chamberlain in the locker room after he scored 100 points.Paul Vathis/Associated PressA game ball trophy gifted to Al Attles by Chamberlain.Jason Henry for The New York TimesHappy to be with you on this historic occasion. The big man of the Warriors, and the big man of the league, has 92 points.“Wilt loved to set up on the left block and then use that finger roll when he came across the lane,” Meschery said.And then, finally, a few minutes later: He made it! He made it! He made it!“One hundred points,” Attles said.“Astounding,” Meschery said.The Warriors relocated to San Francisco the following season. The league, of course, began to change, too. Players like Chamberlain, Attles and Meschery helped create the foundation for what the N.B.A. has become — a global enterprise and a revenue-generating colossus.Yet Chamberlain’s record remains intact, and neither Attles nor Meschery thinks anyone will break it. Kobe Bryant came the closest when he scored 81 points — with the benefit of the 3-point shot — for the Lakers in 2006.When Chamberlain died of a heart attack in 1999, he was just 63. Attles called Meschery to share the news.“I just couldn’t believe that he could die,” Meschery said. “I know that sounds very strange, but he always had that aura around him, that he was larger than life.”Now, Attles and Meschery are the only surviving members of the Warriors who played in Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Meschery, who has multiple myeloma, said he had two weeks left of treatment.“And then I’m going to live another 10 years,” he said.On Sunday, he was simply happy to be with his friend as they revisited a chapter from their past, back when anything seemed possible.“That,” Meschery said, “was an awful lot of fun.”Jason Henry for The New York Times More

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      N.C.A.A. Tournament: South Carolina Is Locked at No. 1 Ahead of Shuffling

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      The Gamecocks have only one loss, but parity across the Power 5 leagues, especially the Big Ten and Big 12, should make for intense jockeying ahead of the tournament.As the spring approaches, women’s college basketball is inching closer and closer to a symbolic milestone. It’s one many people might never have noticed, and one that won’t have any impact on the quality or intensity of games.But for the first time since its debut 40 years ago, the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball tournament will be officially called “March Madness” — the popular term that, until last fall, the N.C.A.A. had technically reserved exclusively for the men’s tournament.The start of the first official women’s March Madness is just a few weeks away. Many of the teams at the top of the heap are familiar, yet plenty of questions remain.Can anyone — besides Missouri, which managed to hand South Carolina a loss, by a single point — challenge the Gamecocks? Will Connecticut, long the front-runner, emerge in the postseason after its worst regular season in recent memory? Will the reigning champions, Stanford, earn longtime coach Tara VanDerveer her first repeat?As the regular season draws to a close, here’s what we know — and what’s next.Aliyah Boston is the front-runner for player of the year.Aliyah Boston has recorded 20 consecutive double-doubles, breaking a Southeastern Conference record set by Sylvia Fowles.Tracy Glantz/The State, via Associated PressSouth Carolina has been the top-ranked team in The Associated Press poll since the preseason thanks in large part to the efforts of the 6-foot-5 junior forward Aliyah Boston. Despite being the focus of every opposing team’s defense and getting persistently double-teamed by their most physical players as she fights to get in the paint, Boston has been nearly unstoppable. She leads the nation in win shares, according to Her Hoop Stats, and has recorded a double-double in points and rebounds in 20 consecutive games, breaking a Southeastern Conference record set by the highly decorated W.N.B.A. star Sylvia Fowles at Louisiana State.A top recruit out of high school, Boston has been a contender for national honors since she was a freshman. Last year, though, her stellar sophomore season was overshadowed by the prolific scoring and preternatural talent of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, whose national player of the year awards as a freshman were unprecedented.This year, Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, who in January became the first Division I player to record back-to-back 30-point triple-doubles, has drawn some attention away from Boston’s dominance — and that of her own team. Clark’s gaudy point totals and splashy hot streaks — she’s hit at least four 3-pointers seven times this season — make for irresistible highlight reels and have sparked conversation about her place in the player of the year race.Boston, though, has the numbers with 16.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game, and South Carolina (26-1, 14-1 Southeastern Conference) has the wins.“It’s hard for me to imagine not having her and her contributions in so many different areas outside of the stat sheet,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley told reporters last week. “She’s a communicator, she’s a captain, she’s a leader, she’s a great teammate, she’s a great competitor on top of the stats.”Some top seeds could have a particularly tough road to the Final Four.With Paige Bueckers, second from left, set to return from an injury, UConn could have a more complete team and a quasi-home-court advantage during the N.C.A.A. tournament. Jessica Hill/Associated PressBarring a massive upset loss in the SEC tournament, the Gamecocks appear to be firmly in control of the top overall seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament. They’re better poised than ever to win Staley’s second national championship, with the South Carolina faithful — who have posted Division I’s best home attendance since 2015 — ready to pack the stands should they end up in the Greensboro, N.C., region.The most recent top-16 reveal from the N.C.A.A. Division I Women’s Basketball Committee, on Feb. 10, projected that the rest of the No. 1 line would fill out with familiar faces. After losing to South Carolina in December, Stanford (23-3, 14-0 Pac-12 Conference) has cruised through conference play with relative ease — only Arizona, its championship game foe last season, and Oregon stand as other Pac-12 teams ranked in The Associated Press poll.The Cardinal are currently projected as the No. 2 overall seed. That would likely place them in the Spokane, Wash., region, close to home and with limited upset potential.With the third and fourth overall seeds, the action is concentrated in the Atlantic Coast Conference. North Carolina State (25-3, 16-1) and Louisville, who have both been top seeds in recent tournaments, are neck and neck. The third-ranked Wolfpack are holding onto a narrow edge over the fourth-ranked Cardinals (24-3, 15-2) in the conference. One will likely play in the Wichita, Kan., regional, and one in the Bridgeport, Conn., regional.What both of those teams are hoping to avoid is something of a perfect storm brewing in Bridgeport. If UConn, projected as a No. 3 seed, is assigned to Bridgeport, either North Carolina State or Louisville — which has already beaten the Huskies once this year — could face what will essentially be a fervent home crowd at a purportedly neutral site.But even if UConn (20-5, 14-1 Big East Conference) winds up in Wichita, it will likely be playing with its healthiest team since the start of the season. Bueckers, who was sidelined after suffering a tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear in her left knee on Dec. 5, is expected to return to the court on Friday against St. John’s.The Big 12 and Big Ten are deeper than ever.Caitlin Clark, left, had 32 points in a win over Rutgers on Thursday. Clark has gotten some national player of the year consideration along with Boston. Greg Fiume/Getty ImagesThis season’s parity has been remarkable, especially across the Power 5 conferences, where upsets have kept even the top teams from going on cruise control. Nowhere has that been more apparent than in the Big Ten and the Big 12, which are crowding the national rankings and positioned for exciting conference tournaments.In the Big Ten, where Maryland has won five of the past seven tournaments, the top teams — No. 6 Michigan, No. 17 Ohio State, No. 21 Iowa, and No. 13 Maryland — are separated by just a win or two, and their position is still changing by the day. Seven of the league’s teams are projected by ESPN to make the N.C.A.A. tournament, a group that now includes Northwestern, which fought to a double-overtime win over Michigan this month.In the Big 12, Baylor’s grip on the conference has been even tighter: The Bears have won nine of the past 10 tournaments. Yet right now, the fifth-ranked Bears (22-5, 12-3) are fighting for the top spot with No. 9 Iowa State.Close at their heels are No. 20 Oklahoma, which is second in the country in points per game with 84.9; No. 11 Texas, which managed one of the N.C.A.A. tournament’s biggest upsets last year by knocking off Maryland in the round of 16; and Kansas, which is in the mix despite landing 10th in the conference’s preseason poll.The last week of the regular season will be a tightly contested window into March.Louisville’s Hailey Van Lith, left, scored 13 points in a win Thursday against Pittsburgh. Van Lith leads the fourth-ranked Cardinals in scoring.Rebecca Droke/Associated PressThe final matchups of the regular season should offer some intrigue as teams jockey for seeding in conference tournaments and the national tournament.On Friday night, an overperforming No. 10 Indiana (19-6, 11-4) faces an underperforming Maryland at home (8 p.m. Eastern time, Big Ten Network).The Hoosiers beat Maryland in January, and now are just one win behind the Terrapins in a crowded field at the top of the Big Ten. If Maryland wins, there’s a chance it’ll be able to eke out its fourth-straight regular-season conference title and the top seed in the Big Ten tournament; if it loses, it’ll fall to the middle of the pack.On Sunday, Louisville and North Carolina State will each close the regular season against ranked opponents whom they have already beaten. The Cardinals will face No. 14 Notre Dame (noon, ESPN2), and the Wolfpack will take on No. 23 Virginia Tech (6 p.m., ACC Network). An upset loss for either team could take them out of the top four overall seeds and create a steeper road toward the A.C.C. title.In the Southeastern Conference, South Carolina’s stranglehold on the top spot has quieted some of its usual competitors. But new-look Louisiana State has sneaked into the top 10 for the first time in 13 years with Kim Mulkey at the helm, and is looking to make a run in the N.C.A.A. tournament despite not having qualified since 2018.On Sunday, the eighth-ranked Tigers will play No. 16 Tennessee (2 p.m., ESPN2), a team that started strong but has been bullied recently, losing four of six — albeit to a difficult group of opponents that included Connecticut and South Carolina — before winning Thursday.Mulkey’s former team, Baylor, is hardly languishing in her absence, though. The Bears will play Iowa State on Monday (7 p.m., ESPN2), with NaLyssa Smith, one of the best players in the country, center stage as she tries to pull the Bears atop the Big 12. More

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      Prospects Get a Taste of N.B.A. Life During All-Star Weekend

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      Members of a developmental team, the N.B.A. G League Ignite, some still in their teens, participated in the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend.Amauri Hardy sat in the stands during the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, watching his little brother, Jaden, on the court with the best young players in the league. He thought about the work Jaden had put into his game and the guts he showed in leaving home as a teenager to follow a nontraditional path into professional basketball.“I’m not sure if he actually realizes how big of a moment it is, but I did because I grew up watching this game a lot,” Amauri Hardy said, proudly. “Just to see him out there with the jersey on with our last name on it, just representing for our whole family.”He added, “He’s been making the best of these moments.”Jaden Hardy, 19, does not play in the N.B.A., though he believes he could have been drafted last year, right out of high school, if the rules had allowed it. Instead, he signed with the N.B.A. G League Ignite, a developmental team in Northern California which allows elite prospects to play professionally in the United States before they are eligible for the N.B.A. draft.This season, playing for the Ignite offered another perk. The N.B.A. included players from that experimental team in their festivities surrounding the All-Star Game. It was a chance for the league to showcase the Ignite, a project now in its second year. It also gave the players, many of them teenagers, an incomparable experience.Four players from the Ignite — Jaden Hardy, Scoot Henderson, MarJon Beauchamp and Dyson Daniels — joined 24 first- and second-year N.B.A. players, 12 from each conference. The players were split into four teams, each with six N.B.A. players and one Ignite player, for a mini-tournament on the Friday of All-Star Weekend. The Ignite players Fanbo Zeng and Mike Foster were scheduled to participate in a shooting competition during the tournament, though Zeng couldn’t participate because of an injury.“I was nervous before the game before I even got out there, but when I got out there it was kind of relieving,” Beauchamp said. He watches the All-Star events every year, he said, “so just seeing myself on the screen is pretty amazing.”While league rules prevent players from going straight from high school to the N.B.A., playing for the Ignite can be a lucrative path for prospects when compared with playing in college — Ignite players can make up to $500,000 for the season. It can be a more familiar one than playing overseas, which some have tried.Scoot Henderson, 18, passing during the Rising Stars Challenge. Because of his age, he is not eligible for the N.B.A. draft until next year.Emilee Chinn/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThey first heard that a few of them would get to participate in All-Star Weekend while at a practice in New York.“I just thanked God, honestly,” Henderson said. “I was very excited. The first thing I did was call my parents and share the moment with them. They were just saying they were proud of me and what I’ve done through my year.”The rest of their teammates attended Friday night’s events, as did family members and friends. Amauri Hardy was both a family member and a teammate — he plays on the Ignite along with his brother. Daniels’s father traveled from the family’s home in Australia and saw his son for the first time in months.This is the second season the Ignite has existed. The team was designed to play a schedule that includes games against other G League teams and international exhibitions. Last year’s team produced two top-10 draft picks — Jalen Green, by Houston, and Jonathan Kuminga, by Golden State.It is made up of prospects and veterans who serve as mentors. They practiced in Cleveland on Thursday and Saturday in preparation for a Sunday afternoon game against the Cleveland Charge, the Cavaliers’ G League affiliate.Practices include competition and camaraderie for this group. They’re all trying to become lottery picks, most of them in this year’s draft.“It’s a little tense in practice sometimes,” Foster said. “They’ve developed into brothers. We got that brotherly fight.”On Friday morning, they sat for the Rising Stars media day. That’s when Jaden Hardy started to really feel part of the weekend.“It was just fun to be able to be out there on the court with those young stars really and just being able to go out there and just laugh and compete,” he said.One of those young stars was guard Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers, a second-year N.B.A. player who met Hardy at a camp a few years ago.“I think him being around us, seeing us young guys who are thriving in the N.B.A., I think he’s getting a little bit of a taste of that,” Haliburton said. “And his future is bright, so I’m excited for him to get to the league.”Hardy’s team played against Beauchamp’s in the semifinals, and Hardy’s team won.Beauchamp caught two lobs for dunks from Cole Anthony, a second-year guard for the Orlando Magic.MarJon Beauchamp, left, and Jaden Hardy at the Rising Stars Challenge.Emilee Chinn/NBAE, via Getty Images“I’m sure it had to be a surreal experience,” Anthony said. “Not even playing in the N.B.A., being at N.B.A. All-Star, that has to be one of the dopest experiences a kid can experience. I wish I could’ve been there when I was in college just that year before going into the draft.”Among the players Henderson was most excited to play with Friday night was LaMelo Ball, the N.B.A.’s 2020-21 rookie of the year.When Henderson thought about his path to pro basketball, Ball was one of his role models. Ball left high school after his sophomore year to play professionally in Lithuania.In his rookie year, Ball was very confident, noted Henderson, who joined the Ignite after his junior year of high school.Henderson was part of Ball’s team for the Rising Stars Challenge, and thrilled for an opportunity to play with him. Conversely, Ball appreciated Henderson’s interest in his path.“My whole journey I felt like it was going to help the younger generation, which I feel like it’s doing,” Ball said. “So just having kids do what they want, I feel like it’s great.”“I was nervous before the game before I even got out there, but when I got out there it was kind of relieving,” Beauchamp said.Brian Sevald/NBAE, via Getty ImagesBut restrictions remain on players as they attempt to enter the N.B.A. Henderson, for example, will not be eligible for the draft until 2023.“If I had the opportunity and that chance, I would definitely love to play in the N.B.A. next year,” Henderson said.Henderson added that he had found the environment with the Ignite helpful given the mentorship opportunities and the chance to play against N.B.A. talent.Beauchamp was a little nervous backstage on Friday before he was introduced as a participant in the Rising Stars Challenge to a bigger audience than he had ever played for.But the butterflies dissipated by the time he arrived for introductions.His appearance was an honor normally reserved for players in their first or second N.B.A. seasons, not those, like Beauchamp, preparing for the draft. Between his accomplished teammates and the N.B.A. veterans he saw sitting courtside, he looked around and thought about what he wanted for his future.“I feel like it motivates me to want to be here,” Beauchamp said. “Again and again and again.” More