Basketball

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      LeBron Fandom, and the Making of a Friendship in ‘King James’

      by

      Rajiv Joseph’s new play, which chronicles the bond between two LeBron James fans over 12 years, is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf in Chicago.CHICAGO — When the actor Glenn Davis talks about his new play, “King James,” he gets some variation on this question: “So, are you playing LeBron James?”Not quite.“I’m 5-10,” Davis said, laughing. “He’s 6-9.”And there’s also this: James, the basketball superstar who broke hearts in Cleveland when he left to play for Miami 12 years ago, is not the protagonist of Rajiv Joseph’s “King James.” Rather, the play, which is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theater Company here, tracks the friendship between two young men in Cleveland, Shawn (played by Davis) and Matt (Chris Perfetti of “Abbott Elementary”), over a dozen years.Told in four quarters that span James’s rookie season to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016, “King James,” directed by Kenny Leon, explores how fandom can create a lifelong connection between two people who otherwise have little in common.“Rajiv’s first draft had a lot of basketball in it,” said Davis, 40, a longtime friend of Joseph’s and for whom the role of Shawn was written. “But as each new draft came in, the specifics about basketball began to disappear because Rajiv wanted to make sure this play was about friendship.”“Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them,” said Rajiv Joseph, the playwright.Lyndon French for The New York TimesKenny Leon is directing his first Steppenwolf production, and said he’s cherishing the opportunity to help develop Joseph’s work.Lyndon French for The New York TimesThe play, which is in previews and will open March 13, was originally slated for Steppenwolf’s 2019-20 season before the pandemic forced its postponement. It now arrives at the same time as several basketball-themed TV projects, including Adam McKay’s HBO mini-series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” about the team led by Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1980s, and the upcoming Apple TV+ documentary mini-series “They Call Me Magic,” about Johnson’s life on and off the court.In “King James,” Joseph uses James’s career as a window to examine the emotional nature of fandom, and how it can facilitate relationships and increased openness among people, particularly young men.“At least in the sort of heteronormative world in which I grew up, it was a struggle for young American men to communicate emotion,” Joseph, 47, said over coffee at Steppenwolf’s Front Bar before a recent rehearsal. “Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them.”Growing up in Cleveland in the 1980s and ’90s, Joseph was surrounded by passionate sports fans.“We were a Cleveland family — we watched the Cavs, we watched the Indians, we watched the Browns,” he said. “And all of our moods fluctuated accordingly.”In the play, LeBron James’s infamous “Decision” announcement looms large for two fans of the Cavaliers.Lyndon French for The New York TimesHe began writing “King James” in the summer of 2017, a year after James had led the Cavaliers to the championship, making them the first Cleveland team to win a major championship in 52 years. He drew from his experience as a Cleveland native inundated with the reactions of friends and family to “The Decision” — a live prime-time special in 2010 in which James, a free agent after seven seasons with the Cavaliers, announced he was leaving his hometown team to “take my talents to South Beach,” as James infamously put it.“I thought this would be an interesting way of exploring my own relationship with LeBron,” said Joseph, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.” (He previously collaborated with Davis on that production, which ran on Broadway in 2011.) “This play is a sort of alchemy of stories I’ve heard, conversations I’ve had with people and the general sense of being a young person in Cleveland Heights and those heightened emotions that come out when you start arguing about sports.”The cast and creative team of “King James” had widely varying basketball knowledge — and loyalties. Davis, who was a high school basketball player in the Chicago area but gave up the sport to pursue a theater career, is a lifelong Bulls fan. Leon, who grew up in Florida, has been a Los Angeles Lakers fan for 35 years. Perfetti, 33, who is from upstate New York, grew up in a home “where there was always some sports game on television,” but he didn’t begin following basketball seriously until about six months ago.They watched James’s announcement together — which was Perfetti’s first time seeing it. But, for Joseph and Davis, the special was a reminder of a milestone moment in the basketball world, one in which every fan remembers where they were and what they were doing when they found out.“It was traumatic,” Joseph said. “But when you watch LeBron from then, you realize he was such a different person than he is now — like we all are. If any of us look back at when we were 25, I bet we’d kind of wince at some of the things we did and said.”“Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon (above left, with Joseph) said, referring to August Wilson. “Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesThis is Leon’s first time directing at the Steppenwolf Theater. When he was contacted last October, Leon, a Tony-winning director whose most recent Broadway production was “A Soldier’s Play” in 2020, already had about a half-dozen projects in the works, including upcoming Broadway productions of Adrienne Kennedy’s “The Ohio State Murders,” starring Audra McDonald, and a revival of “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 musical. (Leon, 66, also runs the True Colors Theater Company, which is based in Atlanta.)But he said he jumped at the chance to oversee the production after its previous director, Anna D. Shapiro, resigned as the Steppenwolf’s artistic director in August. (Davis and Audrey Francis, both Steppenwolf ensemble members, replaced Shapiro as artistic directors.)“You don’t get a lot of opportunities to work with a living playwright on a new play that you think is beautiful and will have a great life,” Leon said as he nursed a cocktail after a rehearsal late last month. “The last time was when I worked with August Wilson on his last play, “Radio Golf,” leading up to the Broadway production [which opened in 2007].”The value of having Joseph in the room for rehearsals, Leon said, was that if he didn’t understand a character’s motivations for doing something, he could ask.“A lot of Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon said. “I can tell him what I feel. Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”And there were plenty of nips, tweaks and tucks to the script in the month leading up to the first performance. It was especially helpful, Joseph said, to have Perfetti’s perspective as an N.B.A. outsider in a play with some deeply insider references. (The Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s use of Comic Sans font in his letter to Cleveland fans after James’s departure, in which he lambasted James for his “disloyalty,” gets a shout.)“There’s lots of lines in the play where he was like, ‘Why am I saying this?’,” Joseph said of Perfetti. “And some of those lines were cut because of that.”“King James” plays out in four quarters, from LeBron James’s rookie year to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016. After Chicago, the play will have a run in Los Angeles.Lyndon French for The New York TimesBut audience members don’t need to be basketball fans to understand the larger points. The play’s first quarter, for instance, ends with Matt and Shawn — who to that point had been strangers — making plans to attend a season of Cavaliers games together. The action then picks up six and a half years later, when the two men are best friends.“With my best friend, the first and second quarter in our relationship feels like it went by that quickly,” Davis said. “That’s how it happens, you know?”Though Matt is white and Shawn is Black, Joseph decided not to make race a focal point of the show — at least, not right away. It eventually factors into their reactions to James’s return to Cleveland in the third quarter, but Joseph said that, having grown up in the diverse suburb of Cleveland Heights — where the play takes place — it “just made sense to me, before I even knew what the play would be about, that it would be a Black guy and a white guy.”“I didn’t anticipate any kind of racial tension in the play,” he said. “But the more I thought about what I was writing about, it just comes out and you allow for the story that wants to be told.”Following its five-week run here, “King James,” commissioned by Steppenwolf and the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, will transfer to the Mark Taper Forum there in June, with Davis and Perfetti reprising their roles, and Leon again as director. Both Leon and Joseph are hoping for an eventual Broadway transfer, too.It will be special, everyone involved agrees, to present the show in the city where James currently plays. But Leon said it’s important to remember that “80 percent of the audience will be the same,” referring to the audience members who will not be passionate fans of the local team. “We’re going to try to strike those universal chords,” he said. “That’s what makes the play work. Somebody has to be able to say ‘Oh, that’s how I treat my friend’ or ‘That’s how it was when I didn’t see my mother for 10 years.’”Joseph, who has never met James, said he would be “thrilled” if James were to see the show during its Los Angeles run, which will coincide with the N.B.A. finals.“But, on the other hand, I hope he can’t come because he’s still playing,” he said. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Basket

      Brittney Griner’s WNBA Impact Is Clear As Fans Await Word from Russia

      by

      Griner, one of the world’s best basketball players, was believed to have been detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges. Fans are worried.When Brittney Griner is on the basketball court, everyone knows. At 6-foot-9, she towers over most other players. She snatches rebounds over her opponents’ outstretched arms, and her teammates know the surest way to score: Deliver the ball to her.Since the Phoenix Mercury drafted Griner No. 1 overall in 2013, she has become one of the most dominant players ever: a seven-time All-Star, a W.N.B.A. champion and a two-time Olympian with matching gold medals.But now Griner, 31, has become entangled in a geopolitical quandary. Instead of preparing for the W.N.B.A. season that’s less than two months away, she is believed to be detained in Russia on what customs officials described as drug charges, with little word on her case or her well-being during the war in Ukraine.“With all the problems with Russia and them attacking Ukraine, has Brittney become a political bargaining chip?” said Debbie Jackson, Griner’s high school basketball coach. “Is this part of politics? So much of it doesn’t make any sense to me that I find it hard to believe that this is really the true thing that happened.”Griner was in Russia playing for a professional basketball league, a common off-season practice for W.N.B.A. players, who can earn salaries in overseas leagues well beyond what their American teams pay. The date and circumstances of Griner’s potential detention were not known, and the W.N.B.A. said all of its players except for Griner were out of the country by Saturday.Griner is said to be facing up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the drug charges, based on accusations that she had vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The Russian authorities, who said Saturday that they had detained an American athlete on these drug charges, did not name Griner, but the Russian news agency Tass did.On Monday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said she had seen reports about Griner but that federal privacy law prevented the U.S. government from discussing a person’s detention without their written consent. American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens on pretexts.Representatives for Griner have declined to comment on Griner’s status beyond a statement that they were working to get her back to the United States. The uncertainty has caused an outpouring among fans and supporters of Griner, a groundbreaking player known for her unmatched blitz of dunks and her standing as one of the most prominent gay athletes.A congresswoman in Houston, Griner’s hometown, has demanded her release. W.N.B.A. players have posted “Free Brittney” messages on Twitter.“There are no words to express this pain,” Brittney’s wife, Cherelle Griner, wrote on Monday in an Instagram post addressed to Brittney. “I’m hurting, we’re hurting. We await the day to love on you as a family.”‘Nobody can do what she can do’Griner (42) during the 2012 N.C.A.A. national championship game against Notre Dame. Griner played for Baylor for four seasons.Justin Edmonds/Getty ImagesGriner was a 5-foot-8 freshman on the volleyball team at Nimitz High School in Houston when Jackson approached her about playing basketball.Griner initially laughed at the thought of trying out for a sport she’d never played and knew little about. But she quickly fell in love with it, Jackson said. It helped that she grew nearly a foot, to 6 feet 7 inches tall, by her senior year.“She wasn’t like a clumsy tall person that had to grow into her body,” Jackson said. “She was really quite gifted as far as coordination.”Griner earned a basketball scholarship to Baylor University, where for four years she performed with a combination of size, skill, fluidity and speed unlike any other women’s basketball player in the country. She could score at will under the basket, and highlight-reel dunks made her mesmerizing.“Nobody can do what she can do,” Nancy Lieberman, the first woman to play on a professional men’s team, said during Griner’s freshman season at Baylor. “Not Cheryl Miller. Not Lisa Leslie. Not Candace Parker.”Griner led Baylor to an undefeated record during the 2011-12 season, which the Bears capped with a win over Notre Dame in the national championship game. She won the Big 12 Player of the Year Award three times and made 18 dunks at Baylor. Before her, few women had dunked in a college game at all.‘She was absolutely a force’Griner has been one of the W.N.B.A.’s best scorers throughout her career. She averaged 20.5 points per game in the 2021 season.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThe Mercury drafted Griner in 2013, in the hope that she would rejuvenate their franchise. The turnaround was swift with Griner playing alongside Diana Taurasi, the W.N.B.A.’s career scoring leader. The Mercury made the playoffs during Griner’s rookie season and won a championship in her second. Last season, she was key to the Mercury’s run to the W.N.B.A. finals, where they lost to the Chicago Sky.“In terms of talent, she was absolutely a force and continues to be a force,” said Pamela Wheeler, a former head of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “I think that everyone was looking for her to help guide the league, which she did, into a new era.”The year Griner was drafted, the league rebranded, changing its logo and focusing on promoting three rookies: Griner, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Elena Delle Donne.Griner seemed to be a good fit, with an engaging personality, a willingness to laugh at herself and a passion for calling out bullying. She was also open about being gay, which has become more common in sports, in part because of her.“I’m up for the challenge,” Griner said at the time about being part of the rebranding. “I changed stuff in college basketball, I guess you could say, so I’m up for it. I never shy from anything. Whatever’s thrown at me, I’m ready for it.”As she elevated her game domestically, Griner also made a name for herself in international basketball. She won two Olympic gold medals with the United States women’s national team, in 2016 and 2021, and started playing for teams in Russia and China during W.N.B.A. off-seasons.‘For the money’ and ‘For the love of the game’Griner has played for UMMC Ekaterinburg, a professional women’s basketball team in Russia, for several years during the W.N.B.A. off-season.Erdem Sahin/EPA, via ShutterstockNearly half of the W.N.B.A.’s 144 players were believed to be playing for international teams this off-season, including more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.“While a number of players are doing it for the money as well,” said Wheeler, the former union leader, “they’re also doing it for the love of the game and continuing to be able to play and continue to keep themselves in playing shape.”The maximum base salary for W.N.B.A. players is about $228,000, but international teams have been known to pay several hundred thousand dollars, and even more than $1 million. Griner is set to earn just under the W.N.B.A. max in the 2022 season. With the W.N.B.A.’s minimum salary around $60,000, many players earn the bulk of their income by playing abroad.But playing overseas is not a “tourist opportunity” for most players, said Courtney Cox, an assistant professor at the University of Oregon, who said she traveled to Russia in 2018 to do research for a book about women’s professional basketball around the world.“There’s this whisper network of where is it safe to play, where players are sharing information: where you get paid on time, where they look out for you, the better trainers, all this information,” Cox said. “There’s kind of a trauma bond, I think, that happens, when you play in some of these spaces where you might be one of the only American players, depending on the policies of the league.”After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, W.N.B.A. players in both countries fled.‘She pushes back on gender roles’Griner kissed her wife, Cherelle Griner, in the stands after the Mercury defeated the Las Vegas Aces in the semifinals of the 2021 W.N.B.A. playoffs.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesPlaying in the United States can come with its own issues. In her memoir “In My Skin,” Griner wrote about her time at Baylor, a Baptist-­affiliated school that had an official policy against homosexuality at the time. In the book, Griner said that Kim Mulkey, her coach, had warned Griner to “keep your business behind closed doors” and told her to cover her tattoos and delete social media posts about her girlfriend and L.G.B.T. issues.What to Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in RussiaCard 1 of 4What happened? More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      Tissot Celebrates the N.B.A.’s 75th With Team Straps

      by

      The line includes a Wilson strap, made from the same leather as the league’s basketballs.For those who want to wear their basketball passions on their wrists, Tissot has created a line of leather straps for its Supersport watches to mark the N.B.A.’s 75th anniversary season.“Our partnership with the N.B.A. serves as inspiration for our watches and we are proud to be able to create models that channel that free spirit and street style that illustrates the N.B.A.,” Sylvain Dolla, chief executive of Tissot, wrote in an email. Since 2015, the brand has been the league’s official timekeeper.The 23 strap designs were inspired by the uniforms of 11 teams, including the Miami Heat, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Chicago Bulls and the New York Knicks (its straps are to debut this month). The range also includes the Wilson strap, crafted from the same leather used to make the N.B.A.’s basketballs. The straps are 22 millimeters (almost nine-tenths of an inch) wide and sell for $45 each on the Tissot website and the brand’s three New York City boutiques.Sports has long been a popular theme for watch and watch accessory brands. In February, Hublot introduced the Big Bang e Premier League, a limited edition of the brand’s connected watch with the league’s lion logo in its signature purple color. In 2020 the strap company Everest suggested a series of watch band-and-face combos that paid homage to Major League Baseball teams. And since 2019 Invicta has partnered with the N.F.L. on a series of watches featuring team logos on the dials and straps in team colors. At the lower end of the market, there are a wide variety of licensed silicone straps for Apple watches that are designed around sports logos and uniforms.Tissot said it planned to release three new models in the Supersport line this year, including a black version with a yellow second hand, and another with blue and silver features, all of which would be able to accommodate the N.B.A. straps.“You can keep the steel bracelet for business occasions and switch it up for the weekend,” Mr. Dolla said. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      As the N.B.A. Turns, the Phoenix Suns Keep Chugging Along

      by

      The uncertainty surrounding the Lakers and interpersonal dramas among the Sixers, Nets and others have obscured the Suns’ steady pursuit of the N.B.A.’s best record.Think about how the N.B.A. is consumed these days. Think about what draws buzz and eyeballs, and social media clicks.The league doubles as a soap opera and a business transaction wire. For many fans, that’s the allure: All the hype about who hates whom, what star player wants to force his way to another team, which front office executive has the boldest plan to resurrect a franchise and is willing dish to reporters — without attribution, of course.Hence this year’s fascination with James Harden’s trade demands, Joel Embiid’s beef with Ben Simmons, Zion Williamson’s injured foot and eating habits, and whether Mayor Eric Adams will allow unvaccinated Kyrie Irving to play home games in Brooklyn.Hence the speculation about every member of the Los Angeles Lakers, the parsing of each utterance by LeBron James, the job security of Coach Frank Vogel. What’s wrong with Russell Westbrook and Jeanie Buss? At this rate, it will not surprise me to see television hype merchants frothing about whether the Lakers should trade the team’s cook.In a sports ecosystem that places such a high value on sizzle, where does this leave the Phoenix Suns? The N.B.A. is currently investigating allegations of racism and misogyny against the team owner Robert Sarver, a high-stakes conflict that seems to have been lost beneath the churn of minor dramas.Amid all that, Phoenix’s fuss-free players and coaches have been impeccable. And underappreciated.The Suns have compiled the N.B.A.’s best record despite losing Chris Paul to a hand injury and playing without Devin Booker, who has been in Covid-19 protocols.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesIt would not have seemed odd if Phoenix had struggled to shake last season’s N.B.A. finals meltdown against the Milwaukee Bucks. Coughing up a two-game lead on the sport’s biggest stage isn’t exactly easy to put in the past. But Phoenix — led by the head-down coach Monty Williams, the unrelenting will of Chris Paul and the grit and grace of his mentee, Devin Booker — has done just that.After hammering the Portland Trail Blazers by 30 points last week, the Suns became the first team in the league to reach 50 victories, which shouldn’t be a surprise since they’ve had winning streaks of 18 and 10 games this season and were undefeated in November.Their 51-13 record through Sunday is eight and a half games better than the Eastern Conference-leading Miami Heat.In the West, they stand seven and a half games better than the second-place Memphis Grizzlies.Even with Paul sidelined most likely through the end of the month with a broken thumb, even with their leading scorer, Booker, out with Covid-19 — and even after a rare, stumbling loss on Sunday when the Suns were defeated, 132-122, by the Bucks — there appears little chance Phoenix will lose its grip on the top seed and home-court advantage when the playoffs begin in April.But unless you’re a die-hard N.B.A. watcher, you probably are either unaware of how the Suns have dominated this season or you see them as a plucky team of overachievers with no way on earth to actually walk off with a championship.We’re just over a month away from the start of the N.B.A. playoffs, where we’ll find out if the Suns can puncture the public consciousness.During Tuesday’s game against the Trail Blazers in Phoenix, the Suns honored their longtime radio announcer, Al McCoy, the dean of N.B.A. broadcasters, who at 88 has been calling Suns games since 1972. Think of all the memorable Suns players whose on-court brilliance he has witnessed: Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson, Paul Westphal and Alvan Adams, Steve Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire on the “Seven Seconds or Less Suns,” who helped revolutionize the modern game.Phoenix has come startlingly close to a championship, making the N.B.A. finals three times, beginning with the “Shot Heard Round the World” series against the Boston Celtics in 1976. (If you’re too young to remember, check YouTube for a treat.)What other N.B.A. franchise boasts Phoenix’s pedigree while lacking championship hardware? They are pro basketball’s version of the N.F.L.’s Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings, destined always to come oh-so-terribly close to winning it all.Coach Monty Williams’s even-keeled approach has helped the Suns bounce back from a collapse in last season’s N.B.A. finals.Morry Gash/Associated PressBut this version of the Suns can write a new chapter. This squad has a special mojo. “These guys all like one another and they just enjoy having fun playing the game together, and you just don’t see that in sports anymore,” McCoy said when we spoke last week. “A lot of teams, there’s always one or two guys that are upset about something — salary or playing time or something else. But these guys just hang together, and that’s the way they play.”It’s the sports world’s natural order: Winning can undoubtedly draw attention even in today’s hype-besotted world, but that means winning it all. That’s part of the reason we know more about the Lakers this season than the Suns: 17 championship trophies can make a franchise important to people.The same is true of Golden State, a titan of the 21st century grooved into our collective synapses on the strength of three N.B.A. titles and five straight trips to the finals. (It doesn’t hurt to have must-see stars like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and a walking hype machine like Draymond Green, three players whose every other move and machination seem ready to go viral.)Those championship squads each had a discernible style that each member seemed to uphold. To win it all, the Suns will need to stay true to theirs: a team-first style that Williams, a former Spurs player who learned to coach under the watchful eye of Gregg Popovich, could’ve cribbed straight from San Antonio’s glory years.Like those Spurs, everyone on the Suns has a role, everyone follows the script. The ball moves and moves and moves some more. Seven Suns are averaging double digits in scoring this season. Two others are scoring 9 points per game.Those Spurs of old weren’t flashy and filled with angst, drama and uncertainty. There was no soap-opera narrative.They just got the job done. Tellingly, the Spurs’ last championship was a stunning win over the Miami Heat in 2014. It came the season after losing a heartbreaker to the Heat in the finals — courtesy of Ray Allen’s miracle step-back 3-pointer.The Suns are now trying to do something similar to those title-winning Spurs. Capturing an N.B.A. championship after suffering a searing loss is as tough a task as there is in sports.Should the Suns finally win it all, don’t expect them to receive the attention and respect they are due. More likely, a week later, fans will talk more about Zion Williamson’s weight, James Harden’s nightlife and whether LeBron James will soon be taking his talents back to Cleveland. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Basket

      What We Know About Brittney Griner’s Detention in Russia

      by

      The W.N.B.A. star was stopped at an airport outside Moscow and accused of carrying hashish oil in her luggage. But much about the case remains unclear.As tensions rose between Russia and the United States, Russian authorities detained Brittney Griner, a W.N.B.A. star, on drug charges. The Russian Federal Customs Service announced Ms. Griner’s detention on Saturday but said she was stopped at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow last month.The detention of Ms. Griner, 31, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury and a key figure in two champion Olympic teams, comes during an inflamed standoff between Russia and the United States over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pulls the player in the middle of the most acute crisis between the two countries since the Cold War.Here is what we know so far about Ms. Griner’s detention.Russia is talking about potentially serious charges.The Russian Federal Customs Service said that a sniffer dog had prompted it to search the carry-on luggage of an American basketball player at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow, and that it had found vape cartridges containing hashish oil. A state-owned Russian news agency then identified the player as Ms. Griner.Hashish oil is a marijuana concentrate that has a high concentration of the psychoactive chemical THC, and it is commonly sold in cartridges that are used in vape pens. The Russian Federal Customs Service said that customs officers had noticed vapes after scanning the traveler’s bag.The customs service said that a criminal case had been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, a charge that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.It released a video of a traveler who appeared to be Ms. Griner going through airport security with a trolley suitcase and a small backpack, followed by footage of someone examining a package that appeared to be from the traveler’s suitcase.“Brittney has always handled herself with the utmost professionalism during her long tenure with USA Basketball,” U.S.A. Basketball said on Twitter.The timing of the detention remains murky. Its political implications do, too.The screening at the airport occurred in February, according to the Customs Service, raising the possibility that Ms. Griner had been in custody for at least several days. She last posted on Instagram on Feb. 5. The timing provided leaves open the possibility that the case could have been underway in secret for weeks before Russian authorities chose to draw attention to it.It is still unclear whether Russia might have targeted Ms. Griner as leverage against the United States, which has led a widespread effort to impose harsh sanctions on Russia and its elite.Citing privacy constraints, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken did not comment on the detention on Sunday at a news conference in Chisinau, Moldova, and did not respond to a question about whether Russia had announced her arrest as retaliation for the economic, military and diplomatic pressure the United States has leveled against Russia in recent days.But American officials have repeatedly accused Russia of detaining U.S. citizens on doubtful pretexts.“This follows a pattern of Russia wrongly detaining & imprisoning US citizens,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, wrote on Twitter on Saturday, citing the case of Trevor Reed, a former U.S. Marine whom a Russian court sentenced to nine years in prison in 2020 on charges of violence against police officers that his family and supporters described as fraudulent.On Saturday, the State Department released an updated advisory urging American citizens to leave Russia immediately given the “potential for harassment against U.S. citizens by Russian government security officials.”Ms. Griner was in Russia to play. Many W.N.B.A. stars rely on income from overseas leagues.Ms. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years during the W.N.B.A. off-season.Many American players compete with high-paying Russian teams: about 70 W.N.B.A. players have decided to play with international teams instead of resting during the off-season this year, with more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine.A W.N.B.A. spokeswoman said on Saturday that all the others had already left Russia and Ukraine.The financial incentives are compelling. W.N.B.A. players make a fraction of what their male counterparts do, with their maximum salary in 2022 at $228,094 while the top N.B.A. players are paid tens of millions of dollars.International female teams, which tend to have more government and corporate financial support than those in the W.N.B.A., can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a season, and sometimes more than $1 million.Some observers criticized the gender pay gap in American basketball in connection to Ms. Griner’s detention.The public statements are cautious, but supporters are rallying around Ms. Griner.Mr. Blinken said the State Department would “provide every possible assistance” to any American held by a foreign government.“Whenever an American is detained anywhere in the world, we of course stand ready to provide every possible assistance,” Mr. Blinken said. “And that includes in Russia.”The W.N.B.A. said in a statement that Ms. Griner “has the W.N.B.A.’s full support and our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States.”The Mercury also released a statement saying that they “love and support Brittney” and that their main concern was her safety, her physical and mental health and her safe return home.“Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me regarding my wife’s safe return from Russia,” Ms. Griner’s wife, Cherelle T. Griner, posted on Instagram on Saturday, adding, “We continue to work on getting my wife home safely.”Lara Jakes More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Basket

      Why Brittney Griner and Other W.N.B.A. Stars Play Overseas

      by

      Competing for international teams during the W.N.B.A.’s off-season is common for players. The chance to earn extra money is just one of the draws.Brittney Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury, has been detained in Russia in connection with a drug investigation. She had been there playing for the professional basketball team UMMC Ekaterinburg during the W.N.B.A. off-season. The news of her detention on Saturday prompted questions about safety and politics but also about logistics — namely: Why was one of the W.N.B.A.’s best players competing in Russia anyway?Griner is a seven-time All-Star, and she won a W.N.B.A. championship in 2014 alongside Diana Taurasi, who has also played in Russia. Trading off-season rest for international competition is common among W.N.B.A. players for many personal and professional reasons, but often the most pressing motivation is financial.Here is a quick look at what drives W.N.B.A. players to play internationally.Questions You May HaveWhich players compete overseas?How much money do W.N.B.A. players earn?How much do players make overseas?So, is it just about money?If they play in the season and the off-season, when do they get a break?Which players compete overseas?It could be anyone, from the W.N.B.A.’s best veterans to young players hoping to get extra playing time. About 70 players are believed to be playing for international teams this off-season, with more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine. There are 144 roster spots across the 12 W.N.B.A. teams. In past years, some W.N.B.A. teams had posted trackers showing players who were competing in China, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Australia and several other countries.Connecticut Sun forward Jonquel Jones, who won the Most Valuable Player Award last season, had been playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia but left after Russia invaded Ukraine. Jones posted on Twitter about airspace restrictions on Wednesday as she was flying out of Russia and said: “Just landed in Turkey and all I want to do is cry. That situation was way more stressful than I realized. Thank you God for always watching over and protecting me.”Other big-name stars, like Liz Cambage, Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Sue Bird and Arike Ogunbowale, have played internationally.How much money do W.N.B.A. players earn?The maximum salary for the 2022 season is $228,094; the minimum is $60,471.It’s hard not to notice how small those numbers are compared with salaries in the N.B.A., where even little-used bench players can earn millions. Top players like Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant earn more than $40 million per year. Their seasons are longer (82 regular-season games compared with 36 in the W.N.B.A.), and the men’s league brings in significantly more revenue than the women’s. But the stark disparity has been a constant source of debate in recent years as gender and pay equity have become hot-button topics.W.N.B.A. players have pushed for higher pay, and in 2020 their union, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, signed a new collective bargaining agreement that the league said would increase the average salary to six figures — almost $130,000 — for the first time. The year before, in 2019, a player could earn as little as $41,965 and no more than $117,500.The new contract also created opportunities for players to earn additional money through a marketing program and an in-season tournament.How much do players make overseas?It varies among countries, leagues and teams, but players can make several hundred thousand dollars and even more than $1 million. For many players, the bulk of their income is not earned in the W.N.B.A.Cambage, a four-time All-Star who is from Australia, said recently on “NBA Today” that her pay for overseas teams was five to eight times as much as she earned in the W.N.B.A. Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier, who won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2019, said going overseas is essential for many players because of the lower W.N.B.A. salaries.“For a lot of people, it’s not like you make enough to live off that for the rest of the year,” Collier said on her podcast in August, according to the website Just Women’s Sports.In 2015, UMMC Ekaterinburg reportedly paid Taurasi, the Phoenix Mercury guard, $1.5 million to play for it and not to play in that year’s W.N.B.A. season. “It was a very personal choice,” Taurasi told The New York Times at the time. “My agent said it would be financially irresponsible not to do it.”International teams tend to have more government and corporate financial support than those in the W.N.B.A., which helps explain the higher salaries.So, is it just about money?No, not for everyone.Playing time is a key incentive for many players. With just 144 roster spots and easy-to-cut contracts in the W.N.B.A., it can be difficult for even talented players to stay on rosters and in the game. Last month, forward Lauren Manis told The Times about signing with teams in Belgium and Hungary after the Las Vegas Aces waived her in 2020 and again in 2021. She has yet to appear in a W.N.B.A. game — the Aces waived her about a month after drafting her in 2020 — but she recently signed a training camp contract with the Seattle Storm.The W.N.B.A. also draws players from all over the world, so the off-season gives many of them an opportunity to play in their home countries in front of their families and friends. But playing year-round can mean that players are tired when it’s time to return to the W.N.B.A.Connecticut Sun forward Jonquel Jones was one of several W.N.B.A. players who left their international teams in Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine.Ashley Landis/Associated PressIf they play in the season and the off-season, when do they get a break?Sometimes they don’t.This can be a problem for the players — little rest can lead to injuries — and for the W.N.B.A. The league and its teams have been supportive of the players’ international careers, with notes about their accomplishments included in their website bios, but the new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 added steep financial penalties to discourage overseas play.Many players are not finished with their international seasons before W.N.B.A. training camp begins in April and the start of the season in May. Last season, 55 players were late to training camp, and about a dozen missed their season-openers, according to The Hartford Courant. Players can be fined up to 20 percent of their salaries for missing regular-season games because they are playing in other leagues, and starting next season, they may not be allowed to play at all if they are not back by the start of the regular season. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Basket

      Russia Says It Has American Basketball Player in Custody

      by

      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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Basket

      The WNBA’s $20 Million Debate Over Charter Flights

      by

      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