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      This Time, the Cavaliers’ Revival Has Nothing to Do With LeBron James

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      Two All-Stars, a surprising rookie and savvy trades have Cleveland among the best teams in the Eastern Conference. “Everybody is doing something,” one veteran said.For most of the last two decades, the Cleveland Cavaliers could be defined by two things: LeBron James or irrelevance.James, a hometown hero, breathed new life into the city upon being drafted in 2003, and made the Cavaliers a must-see attraction. And then he devastated the fan base by leaving for Miami in 2010, before returning like Odysseus in 2014 and delivering one of the most storied championships in N.B.A. history in 2016. Two years later, he left again, leaving the franchise without a clear path forward.“Everybody felt a little bit weird after that year,” said Cedi Osman, a fifth-year guard for Cleveland.The Cavaliers were starting from scratch and staring into the abyss. They had past-their-prime veterans and no track record of luring top free agents. But a funny thing has happened. Fast forward through some quality draft picks, a savvy trade and a key player’s unexpected resurgence, and there is a basketball renaissance in Cleveland.Four seasons after James’s exit to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Cavaliers have confounded expectations to become one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference with one of the best defenses in the N.B.A. For the first time since James left in 2018, the Cavaliers will be represented in the All-Star Game, which is this weekend in Cleveland. Rajon Rondo, the veteran point guard traded to Cleveland from the Lakers last month, said the Cavaliers this season have “a chance to do something special.”Their status as a contender was cemented last week when they acquired Caris LeVert, a 27-year-old swingman and Ohio native, from the Indiana Pacers. LeVert told reporters the team seemed to have “such positive energy everywhere.”Positive energy has been in short supply in recent years. Over the past three seasons, the Cavaliers went 60-159. The rebuilding process post-James, helmed by General Manager Koby Altman, has been bumpy.Cleveland is on its fourth head coach in four years. One of them, John Beilein, apologized to his team of mostly Black players in 2020 for calling them “thugs” in a film session. He resigned later that year midseason with a dismal 14-40 record.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver chose Jarrett Allen, center, to replace James Harden in the All-Star Game as Harden recovers from an injury.Chris Szagola/Associated PressThere was also the trade for Andre Drummond, a slow and expensive center who rebounded well but didn’t fit with the team’s quick perimeter guards, and the extension for another center, Larry Nance Jr., who never quite lived up to a contract worth more than $40 million.“We’ve taken some time and had to be really patient through some difficult times to get to where we are,” Coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who replaced Beilein, said during a news conference last week. “And when you’re talking about legacy, I think those are discussions that you have after the season or, you know, two years from now when you can look back at a total body of work and see what you’ve truly done.”The core for the Cavaliers’ resurgence has come through the draft. Point guard Darius Garland, selected with the fifth pick in 2019, was a highly-touted but risky pick given that he played in only five games at Vanderbilt because of a knee injury. The Cavaliers had drafted point guard Collin Sexton only the year before, which made the selection of Garland raise some eyebrows.The team instead started Garland and Sexton as one of the more dynamic backcourts in the N.B.A. Now, in only his third year, the 22-year-old Garland is averaging 20.1 points and 8 assists per game as a deft floor general and earned an All-Star berth. (Sexton sustained a season-ending knee injury in early November.)With his passing skills and ability to create space for himself in the paint, Garland has outplayed at least two players drafted ahead of him (RJ Barrett and De’Andre Hunter), while the No. 1 pick from that draft, Zion Williamson, hasn’t taken the floor this season because of a foot injury.Brandon Knight, who was Garland’s teammate briefly during Garland’s rookie year in Cleveland, described him as “super, super, super unselfish.”“He scores a lot, but he also gets a lot of guys involved,” Knight, 30, said. “When you get guys involved and you get guys feeling good about themselves and feeling good about touching the basketball, I think it trickles down.”When a team isn’t traditionally attractive for free agents, hitting on high draft picks is crucial. Cleveland drafted Isaac Okoro fifth in 2020, and he has become a reliable defender and open-floor finisher. The draftee with the highest ceiling might be Evan Mobley, who was picked at No. 3 in last year’s draft. Mobley, 20, is averaging 14.7 points and 8 rebounds per game and is a contender to win the Rookie of the Year Award.Isaac Okoro, ground, has become a reliable defender and finisher in his second year. The Cavaliers drafted him with the fifth overall pick in 2020.Nick Wosika/USA Today Sports, via ReutersOne of Cleveland’s best moves was the trade for Jarrett Allen last season, part of a four-team deal that landed James Harden with Allen’s former team, the Nets. The 23-year-old Allen — a strong rebounder and finisher around the rim — is now one of the best centers in the N.B.A. and was selected as an injury replacement for Harden in this year’s All-Star Game. The Nets have a worse record than the Cavaliers and traded Harden to the Philadelphia 76ers last week. They’ve looked very much like a team that could use Allen.But this year’s success for Cleveland is not just because of the young players. Kevin Love, a five-time All-Star and the only James-era holdover besides Osman, has battled injuries for most of Cleveland’s rebuilding process. Love, a power forward, signed a four-year $120 million extension to remain in Cleveland entering the 2018-19 season, after James left the second time. Before this season, it looked like a mistake for Altman. When Love did play, his body language was sour. On multiple occasions, he openly showed displeasure with teammates.Deng Adel, who played 19 games for the Cavaliers in the year after James left for the Lakers, said the early stages of rebuilding were “kind of tough” for Love.“For the most part, he was still definitely a good teammate,” said Adel, who now plays for the Boston Celtics’ G League affiliate. He added: “It kind of gets frustrating, especially for where he’s at in his career. You know, you could kind of tell he kind of wants to win.”After the trade for Allen and the drafting of Mobley, it seemed that there wouldn’t be room for Love. But in the summer, his agent put a stop to chatter that Love would try to negotiate a buyout. Instead, Love came back to training and told reporters he would be a “positive force.” Now, this year is among the best in his eight seasons in Cleveland. He’s averaging 14.2 points and 7.3 rebounds per game off the bench and shooting 39.2 percent from 3. Love is fitting in instead of fitting out, just as James once publicly preached for him to do.“He’s a great mentor for us — for young players and especially the way he’s playing this year,” Osman said. “I mean, we’re really looking up to him. Offensively. Defensively. He’s crafty. He’s trying to help us. You know, everybody is doing something.”Kevin Love, center, is in his eighth season with Cleveland, and playing some of his best basketball in years off the bench.Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMentorship has also come from other sources. The veteran point guard Ricky Rubio came to Cleveland in a trade from Minnesota in the off-season and helped the team get off to a fast start with his steady hand in setting up the offense. But, in December, a knee injury ended his season, and he was traded in the deal for LeVert. Rondo has filled Rubio’s role.If the Cavaliers make a deep run this postseason, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. They have dynamic scorers (Garland, Allen), quality veterans with championship experience (Love, Rondo), and complementary shot-creators (Okoro, Osman). Especially this year, where there is no clear-cut favorite for the title, the Cavaliers have a real chance of making the N.B.A. finals. And they seem to enjoy playing with one another.“A lot of times you can’t predict this type of stuff, man,” Knight said. “So the ingredients just work and there’s really not an answer for it.”He added, “When you get a group of guys that are just unselfish and don’t care about which guy’s getting the points, all those type of things, I think it just works out.”Of course, the Cavaliers still have a lot of work to do. The Eastern Conference is tightly packed and one losing streak could mean being exiled to the play-in tournament — and, perhaps, out of the playoffs. But this year has been an undeniable step forward. If nothing else, Cleveland is shooting for something bigger, to be defined by more than a past association with LeBron James.“We’re trying to build something,” Osman said. “It’s all about these Cavs right now.” More

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      The Nets Were to Be a Team of Destiny. But Not This Kind.

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      The collapse of the Nets’ superteam of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving echoes the falls of other starry groupings. But they had a chance to be different.WASHINGTON — Nets Coach Steve Nash gave a pained smile in the barren hallway leading to the court at Capital One Arena. The Nets were in the middle of an implosion, having lost nine straight games, soon to be 10. He was asked about his unequivocal statement just days before that James Harden, the Nets’ All-Star guard, wouldn’t be traded.“I still feel the same way,” Nash said. “Nothing’s changed.”When pressed, Nash said, “He’s not told me he doesn’t want to stay, so I’m working off our conversations, which is he wants to be here and we want him here.”It seemed like wishful thinking Thursday morning, the day of the trade deadline. Within hours, Harden was gone, breaking up one of the most highly touted so-called superteams in N.B.A. history. The Nets traded Harden, the former Most Valuable Player Award winner, to the Philadelphia 76ers for a package centered on Ben Simmons, a three-time All-Star who had not played all season for personal reasons.Call it an extraordinary ending, but not a surprise. Harden has played with Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Russell Westbrook — all likely future Hall of Famers he encountered in their relative primes. None of those pairings worked out. Then just over a year ago, he forced his way off the Houston Rockets to team up with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in Brooklyn. He had shown up to Houston’s training camp late and out of shape, then showed such little interest in games that he was told to stay home. The message to the Rockets from Harden was clear: Trade me or I’ll make myself a spectacle.The Nets knew who they were getting in Harden when they gave up so much to get him. They did it anyway. Live by player empowerment. Die by player empowerment.“I’ve been in a situation too where I’ve asked for a trade and I understand it,” Irving said to reporters, referring to his demand to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017 with two years left on his contract. “So I’m not here to judge him. I’m not here to talk bad on James.”Late Thursday, the Nets’ Twitter account posted an image of Harden with the caption, “Thank you for everything.”“Make no bones about it: We went all in on getting James Harden and inviting him into the group,” Nets General Manager Sean Marks said at a news conference Friday. “These decisions to move on from a player like that of that caliber are never easy ones.”The SuperteamWhen Harden came to the Nets, he had established himself as one of the best scorers ever, a man who could single-handedly power an offense with layups, step-backs and a torrent of free throws.Harden is a brilliant scorer who is frustrating to defend. But in his last game with the Nets, against the Kings on Feb. 2, he made just two shots.Thearon W. Henderson/Getty ImagesHe had become known for wearing down defenders with his penchant for hooking their arms so quickly that it seemed as if he were being held — drawing fouls and annoying opposing coaches and players to no end. His tactics were becoming so prevalent across the league that the N.B.A. shifted its officiating emphasis this season to stop them. The change slowed him down for a few weeks, but then he adapted and looked, again, as if he might become the third superstar of a championship team.But it’s worth remembering that the Nets didn’t need him.If any player can match Harden’s offensive firepower, it’s Durant — a virtually unguardable forward too quick for defenders his size and too big for guards at his speed. His lanky frame and extended reach often make opponents look feeble as they put their hands up to try to block his shot. Durant is easily one of the three best players in the N.B.A. every year.Not to mention Irving, who is also an elite scorer who operates with the ball seemingly on an invisible string, and who can change directions at any second with either hand. Defenders have to guess which way Irving will drive — and most of the time, they guess wrong. If they guess right, Irving, with a herky-jerky hesitation dribble, can easily reverse. Either way, defenders are left in the dust.With Irving, Durant and Jarrett Allen, the center whom the Nets traded away with Caris LeVert and draft picks to get Harden, the Nets still would have been the most talented team in the league last season. Allen was clearly on his way to becoming the double-double anchor he now is for Cleveland. And since trading for Harden, the Nets have piled on more big names including Blake Griffin (six All-Star games), LaMarcus Aldridge (seven), Paul Millsap (four) and Patty Mills, one of the best backup point guards.The only modern precedent for a core group at the level of Harden, Irving and Durant was when Durant went to the Golden State Warriors, where he won two championships alongside Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. With Harden, it should’ve been déjà vu. It ended up being a repeat, just not the one the Nets wanted.In 2013, with the franchise struggling to attract fans in its new home of Brooklyn, the Nets acquired Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from the Boston Celtics to team with Deron Williams and Joe Johnson. On paper, it was a brilliant move, giving the Nets a roster of All-Stars ready to compete for a championship, at the cost of lots of draft picks — one pick which became Jaylen Brown, a Celtics guard who was an All-Star last year — and cap space. (Sound familiar?) They won one playoff series before the team fell apart. (Again: Sound familiar?)How It Fell ApartIt’s unclear why or when Harden became so disenchanted with the Nets that he wanted another change of scenery. Marks said that trade discussions began in earnest in the last couple of days. Just a week ago, Harden posted a picture on Twitter of himself on the court with Irving and Durant with the caption “Scary Hours!”The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Covid boosters. More

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      Lakers Pass N.B.A. Trade Deadline Unchanged and Uncertain

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      For a team still searching for cohesion around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the buyout market may not be enough to vault into title contention.The Los Angeles Lakers were not in a great place ahead of the N.B.A. trade deadline on Thursday. They had disgruntled stars, a losing record and a general air of dysfunction a couple of months before the playoffs were scheduled to start.The bad news? Nothing changed once the trade deadline passed. Same disgruntled stars. Same losing record. Same general air of dysfunction.As some stiff winds of change swept through the N.B.A. on Thursday, the Lakers continued hobbling forward as constructed, which does not bode well for their future. It is an indictment of a franchise that still employs LeBron James and Anthony Davis, two stars who are part of a hodgepodge cast of aging and ill-fitting pieces.Exhibit A: Russell Westbrook, whose inconsistent play at age 33 has landed him on the bench in crunchtime situations. If the Lakers were looking to trade him this week, there was an obvious problem: Who would take him and his contract? He is making $44 million this season, with a player option worth $47 million next season.In a post-deadline conference call with the team’s beat writers, Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka did not offer specific details but said he was “aggressive in a lot of conversations trying to improve this team.” Nothing panned out.As for Westbrook’s future?“Russ is a big-hearted individual. He wants to win,” Pelinka said. “And he knows that with players as impactful and influential as Anthony and LeBron are, it’s going to require sacrifices in his game and how he plays.”On Wednesday night, Westbrook sat out the Lakers’ loss to the Portland Trail Blazers with what the team described as a stiff back. Afterward, Lakers Coach Frank Vogel said Westbrook had been engaged with his teammates on the bench. That might have been the only bright spot for the Lakers, who are 26-30 ahead of their game against Golden State on Saturday.“I do know this has been an extremely difficult and challenging season for all of us,” Vogel said, “so there is a toll.”Those words preceded a dizzying trade deadline for a whole bunch of teams not named the Lakers. At the top of that list: The Nets agreed to send James Harden to the 76ers as part of a deal for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry and Andre Drummond. Other big names were on the move, including Kristaps Porzingis, whom the Dallas Mavericks traded to the Washington Wizards for Spencer Dinwiddie. The Boston Celtics beefed up their backcourt by trading for Derrick White. The Charlotte Hornets acquired Montrezl Harrell from Washington for a late-season push.While the Lakers could still be active in the buyout market, it seems impossible to envision a way in which they could reinvent themselves as a realistic championship contender. They were limited at the trade deadline after having already sacrificed so many assets, including future draft picks, in their deals for Davis and Westbrook.On Wednesday night, the eve of the trade deadline, James said he was tired.“I just want to get some wine and get up tomorrow,” said James, who helped deliver a championship to the Lakers just two seasons ago. “I feel good about what tomorrow has in store, and we’ll see what happens.”He added: “But other than that, I’m kind of just focused on what we can do to be better.”It is a long list. Entering Thursday, the Lakers ranked 17th in defensive rating, 22nd in offensive rating and 26th in turnovers. Westbrook has committed 224 turnovers this season, more than any other player in the league.Russell Westbrook leads the N.B.A. in turnovers.Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIt was only August when the Lakers acquired him from the Wizards in exchange for Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Harrell and draft picks. While James seemed to acknowledge his role in recruiting Westbrook to the Lakers — “It was exciting helping put this team together this summer,” James said before the start of the season — Westbrook seemed thrilled about returning to Los Angeles, where he grew up and played in college at U.C.L.A. He went so far as to call it a “blessing.”It was not difficult, though, to anticipate problems before the experiment began. The Lakers, with the oldest roster in the league, were built to compete for championships — eight years ago. In fairness, James said it would be a process to form chemistry. (It would not, he famously said, be “peanut butter and jelly” right away.) But a process usually leads to some form of improvement, and the Lakers, if anything, have regressed recently, having lost six of their last eight games.James and Davis have been limited because of knee injuries — Davis missed a huge chunk of the season, and there are broader concerns about the state of James’s 37-year-old body — but Westbrook is a shadow of the player who won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Award with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2017.In 55 games with the Lakers, Westbrook is averaging 18.3 points per game — the fewest he has averaged since his second season in the league in 2009-10 — while shooting 43.5 percent from the field and just 29.8 percent from 3-point range.At the same time, he has started to gripe about his diminished role.“You never know when you’re coming in, you never know when you’re coming out,” he said this week.On Wednesday, James compared the trade deadline to being in a fog.“We’re all trying to see what’s on the other side of it,” he said.On Thursday, the fog dissipated. The view was unpleasant. More

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      James Harden Traded to Sixers for Ben Simmons

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      Harden has been with the Nets since January 2021, when Houston traded him to Brooklyn. Simmons has not played in Philadelphia this season for personal reasons.The Nets traded James Harden, a former Most Valuable Player Award winner, to the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday for a package centered on Ben Simmons, the three-time All-Star point guard who has not played this season for personal reasons.“The decision to trade James was a difficult one,” Nets General Manager Sean Marks said in a statement, “however after recent discussions with him and his representatives we felt that this move would be best for all involved, as it better positions us to achieve our goals this season and in the years ahead.”The stunning trade brings about a sudden and unexpected end to the superstar grouping of Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and Harden, who were, on paper, leading one of the most talented N.B.A. teams ever. But the three stars had rarely played together — only 16 games — since Harden was acquired from Houston in a trade last season, in part because of injuries and in part because of Irving’s refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, which has made him ineligible to play in home games in Brooklyn. The Nets had also barred Irving from road games and practices until mid-December.The Nets will also receive Seth Curry, a sharpshooting guard; Andre Drummond, a backup center and one of the best rebounders in N.B.A. history; and two first-round picks. The Nets are also trading Paul Millsap, a four-time All-Star forward who hasn’t played much this season.“I’m excited for our team,” Durant said in an interview Thursday on TNT. “Looking forward to finishing the season out with this new group and these new players.”He added: “I think everybody got what they wanted.”Simmons has yet to take the floor for the 32-22 Sixers this season. Coach Doc Rivers and the All-Star center Joel Embiid criticized Simmons after a poor showing in last season’s second-round playoff series against the Atlanta Hawks. In November, Simmons’s agent, Rich Paul, told The Athletic that the tension had taken a toll on Simmons’s mental health, and that he wasn’t ready to play basketball.If he is able to play now, the Nets could use him. They have been in a free fall, losing nine games in a row entering Thursday night’s game — dropping them to eighth place in the Eastern Conference. Durant hasn’t played since Jan. 15 because of a knee injury, and said on TNT that there was no timetable for his return but he was “doing better, for sure.” Harden had been out with a hamstring injury since Feb. 2, when he turned in a listless 4-point performance in a loss to the Sacramento Kings. Irving has appeared in only 12 of the Nets’ 54 games.The trade will reunite Harden with Daryl Morey, the president of basketball operations for Philadelphia. They last worked together in Houston, where Morey was the general manager. Morey resigned from the Rockets on Nov. 1, 2020, and joined the 76ers one day later. Houston traded Harden to the Nets in January 2021.After finishing the regular season in first place in the Eastern Conference last year, the 76ers are now in fifth place in the conference, two and a half games behind Miami.Because Simmons hadn’t played yet, trade speculation has been constant. As that intensified in the past few days, the 76ers lost three out of their last four games. To give his team a break, Rivers canceled practice on Thursday.“It was just so much stuff going on,” Rivers told reporters. “So many rumors. I just thought the human thing to do, instead of the coaching thing, was just be very straightforward with our guys. Tell them I get it.”Although Philadelphia has so far not been among the league’s elite this season, the team has reason for optimism.The Sixers still have one of the best players in the league in Embiid, who leads the league in points per game with 29.4, and ranks ninth with 10.9 rebounds per game.The second-year guard Tyrese Maxey has also played well in his extensive minutes — he’s led the 76ers in minutes per game this season, and averaged 16.9 points per game. He will be part of the league’s game for the top first- and second-year players at All-Star Weekend next week.Evan Easterling More

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      Overlooked No More: Ora Washington, Star of Tennis and Basketball

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      She was dominant in both sports over two decades and was in all likelihood the first Black star in women’s sports in the United States.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.Ora Washington, a dominant two-sport champion over two decades, was so good at basketball and tennis that she was hailed in the Black press as “Queen Ora” and the “Queen of Two Courts” — and for good reason.In the 1920s through the 1940s, long before female athletes like Serena Williams, Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka became immensely influential sports figures, Washington was in all likelihood the first Black star in women’s sports the United States had ever seen.In one basketball game, she sank an improbable basket from beyond midcourt. In another, she scored 38 points when entire women’s teams normally didn’t score that many in a single outing. Washington “can do everything required of a basketball player,” the sports columnist Randy Dixon wrote in 1939 in the Black weekly newspaper The Pittsburgh Courier. “She passes and shoots with either hand. She is a ball hawk. She has stamina and speed that make many male players blush with envy.”Washington, the team’s center and captain, did it all without even warming up before competitions, coolly saying that she preferred to warm up as she went along. Her remarkable basketball skills were “flashy and aggressive,” as The Courier said in 1931, and brought spectators rushing to see her decades before the women’s game became popular in mainstream society.On the tennis court, Washington was perhaps even more spectacular. Beginning in 1929, she won seven straight national singles championships — and eight in all — as part of the American Tennis Association, a league that welcomed all comers at a time when the world’s top league, the United States Lawn Tennis Association, allowed only white players to compete. Washington also won 12 consecutive A.T.A. doubles titles from 1925 to 1936, including nine with her partner Lulu Ballard, and three mixed doubles titles.With a searing serve and an unconventional way of holding the racket halfway up its neck, Washington won her matches “with ridiculous ease” and “walloped opponents into the also-ran columns” with her “flying feet, keen sight, hairline timing and booming shots,” The New York Age, another Black newspaper, wrote in 1939. The Age likened Washington, who was square-jawed, muscular and about 5-foot-7, to the boxing champion Joe Louis because both won with “deadening monotony.”“If you’re looking at Black women’s sports in the pre-integration era, she was the star,” Pamela Grundy, a historian and a pre-eminent source of Washington’s life and career, said in an interview.“She did things her own way,” Grundy added. “I think that made a lot of people nervous.”Washington once made news when she boldly wore pants, not a skirt, on the tennis court. She rarely wore makeup, and she never married; her closest relationships were with other women, said Grundy, who has interviewed several of Washington’s relatives.After matches, Washington wouldn’t hobnob at social events that often surrounded big tennis matches. Instead, she quietly went home or back to her job as a housekeeper for wealthy white families, work she continued throughout her sports career, Grundy said.“Ora wasn’t girly girly,” she added. “And she didn’t pretend to be girly.”Washington was known for her physical, intimidating style of play, which opponents didn’t soon forget.“Competitors — 60 years after the fact — had quite vivid memories of her skills and style,” said the sports historian Rita Liberti, who has interviewed several of Washington’s opponents. Ruth Glover Mullen, who played against Washington in the 1930s, told Liberti that facing Washington “was just like playing a Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan.”Washington, right, in 1939 after winning the Pennsylvania Open. With her was the runner-up, Dorothy Morgan, whom Washington beat, 6-2, 6-1.John W. Mosley/Temple University Libraries, Charles L. Blockson Afro-American CollectionYears went by without Washington losing a single match. But white Americans did not notice because Washington had been relegated to a segregated corner of the sports world. And that was their loss, the tennis champion Arthur Ashe asserted decades later, “because Washington may have been the best female athlete ever,” he wrote in The New York Times in 1988.Some said her dominance had made tennis boring.“It does not pay to be national champion too long,” Washington told The Baltimore Afro-American in 1939. “It’s the struggle to be one that counts. Once arrived, everybody wants to take it away from you and you are the object of many criticisms.”She retired from her singles career in 1938 but came out of retirement briefly in 1939 to play Flora Lomax, the reigning A.T.A. national champion, whom the Black press had referred to as the sport’s glamour girl. There had been speculation that Washington had retired to avoid playing Lomax, prompting Washington to tell The Afro-American that she “just had to” prove somebody wrong after “they said Ora was not so good anymore.”Washington proceeded to beat Lomax with relative ease.Washington won her last A.T.A. mixed doubles title in 1947, when she was in her 40s. She and her partner, George Stewart, beat R. Walter Johnson and Althea Gibson, the Black athlete who was on the cusp of greatness.Washington then retired for good, just as the sport was beginning to be integrated. Had she stayed, “Ora would have beaten Althea,” Johnson was quoted as saying in Florida Today in 1969, and had she been a little younger, she could have become an international star.It was Gibson who became the first Black player to win a major tournament, the 1956 French Open singles; she went on to win five Grand Slam singles titles in all.Dixon, the columnist at The Pittsburgh Courier, said in 1939 that Washington might have become better known had she not shied away from the limelight. She had, he wrote, “committed the unpardonable sin of being a plain person with no flair whatever for what folks love to call society.”Ora Belle Washington is believed to have been born in the late 1890s in Caroline County, Va. (The state didn’t keep birth records at the time.) She was the fifth of nine children of James and Laura (Young) Washington, who owned a farm in the small town of File, about midway between Richmond and Washington.As a teenager, Ora left the increasingly violent segregated South for Philadelphia, where she picked up tennis at the Y.W.C.A. in the Germantown section of the city. She was a natural.At an A.T.A. regional tournament in 1925, just a few years after she had started playing tennis, Washington signaled that she had arrived when she upset Isadore Channels, the league’s reigning national champion. She also started her doubles winning streak with Ballard that year.After moving to Chicago, where she worked as a hotel maid, Washington won her first national singles title in 1929, and for seven straight years there was no stopping her. “Her superiority is so evident,” the Black paper The Chicago Defender wrote in 1931, “that her competitors are frequently beaten before the first ball crosses the net.”But with no avenue available to gauge her talents against white players, she turned to basketball. The timing was perfect; the sport was on the rise in the Black community, which embraced women ballplayers as celebrities.In 1930, Washington joined the Germantown Hornets, which played out of her local Y.W.C.A., and they lost only one game on the way to a Black women’s national championship.She later played for the Philadelphia Tribune Girls, a semiprofessional squad sponsored by a local Black newspaper, and the team became an all-star outfit that traveled throughout the South and Midwest for sold-out games. The team drew more than 1,000 fans when it played Bennett College, an all-Black women’s college in North Carolina, according to The Greensboro Daily News in 1934.The Newsgirls, as the Tribune Girls were also known, won 11 straight Colored Women’s Basketball world championship titles, in part because no opposing player could handle Washington and no coach could devise a defense to contain her.Even the mainstream press called Washington an “outstanding star” or the “famous colored girl athlete.” She remained with the team until 1943, when it disbanded.Washington then slipped nearly completely off the national stage. When she was inducted into the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in 1976, the organizers were surprised that she did not show up for the ceremony.They were even more surprised to learn that she had died five years earlier, on May 29, 1971, in Philadelphia, according to her death certificate. Grundy learned from an interview with Washington’s nephew Bernard Childs that Washington had been ill for some time.Washington was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, Mass., in 2018, partly through the efforts of Claude Johnson, the executive director of the Black Fives Foundation, a nonprofit group that promotes awareness of African Americans who played basketball before the N.B.A. was integrated.“When Ora Washington played, there had never before been greatness at that level,” Johnson said in an interview. “We should honor that.” More

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      Bill Fitch, Who Coached Celtics to the ’81 Title, Is Dead at 89

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      Hailed for reviving sagging teams, he was voted one of the top 10 coaches in the N.B.A.’s first half century and was twice named coach of the year.Bill Fitch, who gained a reputation for reviving the fortunes of dismal N.B.A. teams and took the Boston Celtics to the 1981 league championship in a pro coaching career spanning 25 seasons, died on Wednesday in Lake Conroe, Texas, north of Houston. He was 89.His death was announced by Rick Carlisle, the coach of the Indiana Pacers and president of the N.B.A. Coaches Association, who said he had been contacted by Fitch’s daughter Marcy Ann Coville. No other details were provided.A strong-willed figure who preached unselfish play, Fitch ran demanding workouts and did not spare the feelings of even his best players.“I believe in discipline and I think it’s the cornerstone of world championship teams,” Fitch once said.He was an innovator in taping games and practices to analyze his players and their opponents, shrugging off a nickname circulating around the league in its pre-high-tech years: Captain Video.Fitch was a two-time N.B.A. coach of the year and chosen as one of the top 10 coaches in league history in 1996-97 balloting that marked the N.B.A.’s 50th anniversary.He received in 2013 the National Basketball Coaches Association’s Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, named for the coach who won two league championships with the Detroit Pistons.When Kevin McHale coached the Houston Rockets in 2012, he recalled the lessons he had absorbed as a Celtic rookie during Fitch’s sometimes intimidating reign.“Coming out of college, I had never been around a coach that talked the way Bill did to you,’’ McHale told The Houston Chronicle, “but he really pushed you hard, and I thought Bill did a great job.”Fitch on the Celtics bench during a game in Philadelphia in December 1982. From left were the forward Larry Bird and the center Rick Robey. Fitch resigned after four seasons with Boston. Peter Morgan/Associated PressLarry Bird, who joined with McHale and Robert Parish on Fitch’s championship Celtic team, told Sports Illustrated in 1997 that Fitch “was the best in terms of motivation, getting you to really lay it on the line for each other.”Bird thought, however, that Fitch, who resigned as the Celtic coach after four seasons, moved on to other teams so often because “he really got under the skin of some guys after a while.”Fitch made his N.B.A. coaching debut in Cleveland, watching his 1970 expansion-team Cavaliers lose their first 15 games.But in his sixth season, the Cavaliers won the Central Division title, going 49-33, and made it to the second round of the playoffs, bringing Fitch his first Coach of the Year Award.Fitch was hired as the Celtics’ coach in 1979 after they had missed the playoffs for two consecutive seasons. He received his second Coach of the Year Award in 1980, when the Celtics, in Bird’s rookie season, went 61-21 and reached the playoffs’ second round.Fitch’s Celtics won the N.B.A. title the following season, defeating the Houston Rockets in a six-game playoff final, the deciding victory coming in Houston. It was Boston’s 14th National Basketball Association championship and their first since 1976.Taking the Rockets’ coaching post in 1983 after they had fallen on hard times, Fitch developed the Twin Towers, Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, as the core of a team that he coached to the 1986 N.B.A. finals, where the Rockets lost to the Celtics in six games.Fitch got the New Jersey Nets’ coaching post in August 1989, succeeding Willis Reed, who became a team vice president after a 26-56 season.The Nets won only 43 games in Fitch’s first two seasons in New Jersey, but he coached them to the 1992 playoffs, their first postseason appearance in six years, though they were eliminated in the first round.Fitch had nearly failed to survive that season. A Nets minority owner wanted to hire Jim Valvano, the former North Carolina State coach, in December 1991. Though it didn’t happen, Fitch had other problems, having clashed with several of his players.He resigned after that season, then became coach of the floundering Los Angeles Clippers in 1994. He never produced a winning team with the Clippers but got them to the playoffs in his third season with them.Fitch was born on May 19, 1932, in Davenport, Iowa, and grew up in Cedar Rapids. His father, a former Marine drill sergeant, was a disciplinarian, shaping a trait his son would bring to the basketball court.“I was 14 years old before I found out I wasn’t in the Marine Corps because I lived like a Marine,” Fitch told The Los Angeles Times in 1994. “I had nobody to share that razor strap with. I was an only child.”Fitch played basketball at Coe College in Cedar Rapids and got his first head-coaching post there in 1958. He later coached at North Dakota, where Phil Jackson was one of his players, and then at Bowling Green and Minnesota before getting the Cavaliers’ head-coaching post.He retired from pro coaching after the 1997-98 season with 944 victories and 1,106 losses. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2019.Fitch during his enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2019. Annette Grant/NBAE via Getty ImagesIn addition to his daughter Marcy Ann, his survivors include two other daughters, Tammy Fitch and Lisa Fitch.Fitch retained his zest for basketball gamesmanship long after he retired from coaching.“I never really thought being known as Captain Video was a bad deal,” he told the N.B.A.’s website in 2013. “Other people could laugh and tease all they wanted. The truth is I was glad that nobody else was doing it because I thought it always gave our teams a big advantage.”“If you could see my closet today,” he said, “it’s crammed full from floor to ceiling with old tapes and now with DVDs, and I’m still doing film for different people. I still love the competition and the strategy.” More

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      W.N.B.A. Raises $75 Million With Hopes of Business Model Revamp

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      Cathy Engelbert, the league’s commissioner, said the investment could help fund marketing, improve digital products and fan outreach to increase revenue.The W.N.B.A. has raised $75 million from more than two dozen investors in a bid to revamp its business model as players call for expansion, higher salaries and better benefits.The funding includes investments from Nike, Condoleezza Rice, Laurene Powell Jobs, Pau Gasol, N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. team owners, and other sports and business figures.“We’re going to take a huge step forward in transforming the league and getting us an economic model that is worthy of players on the court,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in an interview.This was the first time that the W.N.B.A. raised money from investors. The league, which was founded by the N.B.A. in 1996, held its first season in 1997. Financial struggles have been a constant, and stark disparities in revenue, media attention and player pay distinguish the women’s league from the N.B.A. The W.N.B.A. is betting that with the right investments it can generate enough interest in its players to create a sustainable business model.“Part of it is exposure,” Engelbert said. “It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill.”The W.N.B.A. is currently owned half by the 30 N.B.A. teams, and half by the 12 W.N.B.A. teams. Ownership on both sides will be diluted as part of the deal. Engelbert declined to disclose the size of the stake the new investors are taking in the company, the valuation of the deal or the league’s annual revenue.The league has no current plans to raise further money but would consider doing so if it is “successful with deploying this capital for sustainable growth in a few years,” Engelbert said.The league is open to ideas from the players’ union about how to use the new money, she added, but it plans to prioritize marketing and improving its digital products, including its website, app and league pass, which allows fans to watch games that are out of market and not on national television.Revenue from these efforts could then be used to fund key requests from players, such as chartered flights, Engelbert said. Unlike in the N.B.A., where team members travel on private flights, W.N.B.A. players fly commercially. It’s long been a sore issue for players; on Tuesday, Elizabeth Cambage, a four-time All-Star, wrote on Twitter about having to pay “out of my own pocket” to upgrade her seats on flights to games.When asked about Cambage’s Twitter post, Engelbert said: “People get emotional. People tweet things. We all want the best travel conditions for our players. But the reason why it’s there for the men’s league is because they get these big valuations. They get media rights of their assets.”The W.N.B.A. began to raise money in January 2020, after it signed a new collective bargaining agreement with its players, though the latest fund-raising had been sidelined by the coronavirus pandemic. (The goal shifted to “let’s make sure we survive,” Engelbert said.) As the year edged closer to 2021, the league began to see “some growth” in sponsorship revenue and social media engagement — and began to try again.Investors, flush with capital, have increasingly parked their money in sports teams and leagues, which have in turn looked to outside funds to stem the losses from the pandemic. Streaming wars have created new appetite for sports rights as services look for distinguishing ways to fight for eyeballs. A wave in state legalization of sports betting has created a multibillion-dollar industry.The W.N.B.A.’s new backing could pave the way for any number of investments, spanning sports betting and online virtual experiences, Engelbert said. Top of the list of priorities: “We need more fans,” she said.Engelbert, center, said the capital investment could help the league generate enough revenue to pay for players’ requests, like chartered flights.Norm Hall/Getty ImagesEngelbert said the fan base skews young and female, but the league’s digital strategy to connect with that group has been underfunded. Last year, the W.N.B.A. struck a multiyear deal with Google, which helped sponsor the airing of 25 regular-season games on ABC and ESPN. It also signed a multiyear streaming deal with Amazon Prime and has streamed games on Twitter over the past five seasons. But the league, which holds its season over the summer, is competing with other sports that have more and more prominent TV exposure, such as the N.B.A. playoffs and Major League Baseball.Engelbert said she wanted to “market players into household names” both in the United States and abroad. That could help generate revenue to increase player salaries, which, like chartered flights, have long been a source of friction.The minimum player salary for the 2022 season is about $60,000, and the maximum is $228,094, with a team salary cap of just under $1.4 million. With just 12 roster spots on each of the league’s 12 teams, it can be difficult for even talented players to find a place in the league. But as players call for expansion, with fans eyeing Oakland, Calif., and Toronto for new teams, Engelbert has maintained that the league must increase revenue before it could expand.Other investors include Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Inc., and his wife, Susan; Joe and Clara Tsai, who own the W.N.B.A.’s Liberty and the N.B.A.’s Nets; and Swin Cash, the vice president of basketball operations for the N.B.A.’s New Orleans Pelicans. More

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      New Friends and Secret Keepers: They Make N.B.A. Families Feel Welcome

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      A network of N.B.A. staffers helps players and their families find homes, hairstylists and everything else when they move to new cities.Desireé LeSassier’s phone wouldn’t stop chiming. She had landed in Minneapolis about an hour before, on the Los Angeles Lakers’ plane, and people needed things.She apologized as she returned text messages and emails. A player called to ask if she could reserve him some time on the court so he could shoot the night before the game.“This is literally …” LeSassier said, before trailing off to answer another message. “It’s definitely nonstop.”LeSassier, the Lakers’ manager of player services, helps players with anything they need, off-court and nonmedical. Except when she reserves court time for them. And when she reminds them of appointment times for coronavirus testing.She arranges tickets for players’ guests at home and on the road. She helps them get acclimated to Los Angeles. Also, she —Her phone rang again and she answered it without waiting for a greeting.“Hey, you’re confirmed,” LeSassier said. “I told them 7:30, but they’re ready for you. I’ll see what time I’m finished here.”She paused.“Why, you want me to rebound for you or something?” she laughed. “All right, I’ll think about it.”Desireé LeSassier juggles a bevy of requests from Lakers players and their families.Los Angeles LakersLeSassier and her colleagues around the N.B.A. don’t have uniform titles or backgrounds, but they have a knack for making players and their loved ones feel cared for and special. As players and their families bounce around different cities where they might not know anyone, people like LeSassier become crucial to their comfort and mental health. They help players focus on basketball without worrying too much about handling everything else. They can become part of a team’s competitive edge.“If you talk to guys on different teams, they can always tell you that person,” said Ayana Lawson, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s vice president of community and lifestyle services. “There’s a genuine sense of: ‘Man, this person looked after me. This person took care of me.’ ‘Hey, can I call them when I’m in trouble?’ And trouble can just mean: ‘Hey, I’m having a bad day. Can I talk to you?’ Or, ‘Hey, I’m having Thanksgiving by myself.’”Before teams began hiring people to do this job, there were those who filled the unspoken need.One was Kathy Jordan, who worked for the Indiana Pacers for 25 years starting in 1983. Jordan, whom Lawson called the “godmother of player development,” had married a man who eventually played in the N.B.A. She knew how hard it could be for families to adjust to life in the league. When a player and his wife moved to Indianapolis from New York, she offered help navigating the new city, even though it wasn’t part of her work as a promotions assistant. She didn’t tell her bosses what she was doing.“The front office staff, we weren’t supposed to be commingling with the team — especially females,” Jordan said.She helped players and their families find homes, schools for their children, doctors and hair stylists.“Being African American in Indianapolis, we weren’t the most diverse city at that time,” Jordan said. “There were just a few places that did African American hair.”The Pacers eventually made her work with players more official. Then, in the late 1980s, then-N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern called on her for more information about her efforts. Now most teams have someone like Jordan, and many have departments with multiple employees dedicated to helping players and their families acclimate.In Philadelphia, there is Allen Lumpkin, the 76ers’ senior director of logistics and team relations. He began working for the 76ers in 1977 as a teenage ball boy, a position now referred to as team attendant.One day while Lumpkin was working the opposing bench, a Washington Bullets player named Rick Mahorn sat down next to him and said he planned to foul Julius Erving as hard as he could. Years later, when Mahorn was traded to the 76ers, he asked Lumpkin, a familiar face, where to live.In the old days, Lumpkin would go out on the town with Mahorn, Charles Barkley and Manute Bol. “We did everything together,” he said. He is still close with current and former Sixers and their families. Markelle Fultz FaceTimed him recently. Allen Iverson calls him regularly. Mahorn and his wife are godparents to one of Lumpkin’s children.“You’re entrusting your loved ones to a team,” Lumpkin, 60, said. “They want to make sure, as any parent would, that their child is taken care of. If the players have families with kids, they want to make sure they’re taken care of.”Lumpkin began officially leading player development for the 76ers in 2000, around the time the N.B.A. began prioritizing it.Allen Lumpkin began working for the 76ers as a ball boy in 1977.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesNow the league office has a staff of 13 people dedicated to helping players with off-court interests. Leah Wilcox, the league’s player family liaison, is well known for her work with families. That group provides resources for players’ financial literacy, education and social justice initiatives.Together with team employees, they form a network that shares information when players change teams. When Kentavious Caldwell-Pope signed with the Lakers, his wife, Mackenzie Caldwell-Pope, and LeSassier became close.“She had a friend that knew L.A. and worked for the team,” Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “It was helpful.”In Dallas, Kristy Laue became such a part of the fabric of the Mavericks in her development role that when she became pregnant with twins, Rick Carlisle, then the coach, announced it during practice.That season the Mavericks won the N.B.A. championship. During the playoffs, as players ran out onto the court before the game, some would stop to mime high fives toward her belly.“I feel like a lot of them are family,” Laue said.Sashia Jones, the vice president of player development and social engagement at Monumental Sports Group, which owns the Washington Wizards, just began officially working with families this year. She’s been offering that support to players for 18 years.“She’s just an amazing person, amazing human being,” said Otto Porter Jr., who spent five and a half seasons with the Wizards.Jones helped Porter organize a Thanksgiving breakfast for people without homes. When his uncle wanted to bring a high school basketball team from Australia to a game, Jones arranged their visit.Her relationship with players doesn’t mean always saying yes. It can mean telling players things they don’t want to hear — like that she can’t get involved in certain personal matters.“Sometimes you’ve just got to stay out of it,” she said.Lawson, with the Thunder, has grown more comfortable with delivering unwelcome news over the years, and players, like Serge Ibaka, respect her for it.Ibaka was 19 when he joined the Thunder and had never lived in the United States.“She was taking me like I was her little brother,” said Ibaka, who is from the Republic of Congo and a naturalized citizen of Spain. “She was making sure I was right, even learning my English. I remember we used to argue because she used to force me to do English classes early on a game day. I used to be like, ‘We have game!’ She said, ‘No, you have to do it.’”Thirteen years later, he still calls her his big sister.Players trust that she won’t tell their secrets, and Thunder General Manager Sam Presti trusts that she’s helping even when she can’t say with what exactly.“It’s hard to go to your G.M. and be like, ‘Hey, I kind of need this unlimited budget for this project that I can’t really tell you about,’” Lawson said.One of her proudest moments was when she helped Deonte Burton buy a house. A two-way player for the Thunder who didn’t have much money growing up, he was the first of his siblings to be able to own a home, she said.The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way teams approach player services. It’s meant less in-person interaction. The Toronto Raptors had the additional challenge of international travel restrictions, so they spent the 2020-21 season in Tampa, Fla.“We basically started from scratch and built a network in Tampa,” said Teresa Resch, the Raptors’ vice president of basketball operations, who oversees the Raptors’ player services staff.The Raptors had also spent the end of the 2019-20 season in Florida, when the N.B.A. finished its season at a restricted-access site at Walt Disney World near Orlando because of the pandemic.Danny Green and Blair Bashen Green invited LeSassier to their wedding in 2021.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesFor the Lakers’ large family contingent in Florida that year, LeSassier organized an outdoor movie night, a karaoke night and a pizza party. The adults did wine tastings. They made tie-dye shirts with the children. Blair Bashen Green, then the fiancée of guard Danny Green, was part of the group.“Obviously, we were stuck there and couldn’t go anywhere,” said Bashen Green, who married Green in 2021 and invited LeSassier to the wedding. “She just made the whole bubble experience — it was almost like a vacation for us.”Poolside yoga classes gave LeSassier a mental break, too.“As you can see, my phone goes off constantly,” LeSassier said. “So that moment of yoga — I was there with the families, but it was also time for me to just have an hour to myself.”Bashen Green remembered attending her first Laker game after Green signed with the team in 2019. She felt like a student at a new school, unsure whether anyone in the room for players’ families would talk to her.“You always have a little bit of anxiety,” Bashen Green said. “Will people be nice? Do they introduce themselves? Do you introduce yourself?”LeSassier, as usual, was there to help. More