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      Book Review: ‘Fly,’ by Mitchell S. Jackson

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      When I was growing up, there was a thing called “the ballplayer look.” It served two essential purposes: to show the world you were a hooper, and also that you were fly. It could be the way you rocked your socks and shorts, the sneaks you chose on the court, your haircut, the type of earring you wore. It all came down to a style that signaled basketball was your calling card.Michael Jordan at the N.B.A. All Star Slam Dunk Competition at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Ind., 1985.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesLeBron James in February 2023, on the night he became the highest scorer in N.B.A. history.Tyler Ross/NBAE, via Getty ImagesIn FLY: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion (Artisan Books, 221 pp., $40), the author Mitchell S. Jackson goes to great lengths to capture the evolution and meaning of that aesthetic. From Bob Cousy’s Rat Pack-inspired suits in the ’50s and ’60s, to Michael Jordan’s on-court style that ran the ’90s and LeBron James’s “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt in 2014, to Jalen Green’s masterful Louis Vuitton/Damier combination during this year’s Paris Fashion Week, the book traces the sartorial eras that have come to define the N.B.A.Dennis Rodman wears a custom wedding dress and makeup by Kevyn Aucoin at a book signing in New York City, 1996.Evan Agostini/LiaisonAllen Iverson sucking on one of his “trademark devil-may-care lollipops,” at the M.C.I. Center in Washington, D.C., 2001.Doug Pensinger/Getty ImagesDue credit is given to the fashions of Walt Frazier, Jordan, Allen Iverson and Russell Westbrook. Missing are the contributions of Pat Riley and the late designer Cary Mitchell, the Black-power influence of Earl Monroe, and any mention whatsoever of the current W.N.B.A. as the most fashion-forward league in all of sports. But those are misses, not bricks. Because what Jackson does with “Fly” is canonize the cultural impact the “ballplayer look” has had all along.Kobe Bryant poses for GQ in 2009.Peggy SirotaMagic Johnson arrives at the 1988 All-Star Game in Chicago in fur.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesRussell Westbrook, in Thom Browne, “epitomizes the redefinition of masculinity” at New York Fashion Week in 2022.Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC ImagesWalt “Clyde” Frazier in a leather-trimmed hat and cape in New York, 1970.Walter Iooss Jr./NBAE, via Getty Images More

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Future in Milwaukee Is Uncertain

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo carried around a small, black portable fan, which looked minuscule as it whirred in his 12-inch-wide hands. He was trying to counteract the hot sun at a hillside mansion as he watched his youngest brother, Alex Antetokounmpo, pose for photos near a basketball hoop overlooking Los Angeles for an ad campaign.“Alex, the eyes,” Giannis said. “Eyes of the tiger right there, and then you mix it in with a smile.”Giannis turned and grinned at a group of about a dozen people watching. He has been coaching Alex for most of his life. When Giannis began his N.B.A. career with the Milwaukee Bucks at 18, he soon brought his family out of poverty in Greece to live with him. Alex was 12 years old.“Sometimes I think I get annoying to him,” Giannis, 28, said later, though Alex, 21, shows no signs that that might be true. Giannis added: “He could be doing idiotic stuff, stupid stuff, but he’s going through a path that I’m really proud of him.”As Giannis ascended to N.B.A. superstardom — he’s won the Most Valuable Player Award twice and is the best player on a championship team — he strove to bring his family along for his journey. Three of his four brothers have played professionally in the United States.But over the past three years, he has brought them along for what he hopes can be a more lasting endeavor: taking ownership of their money and his future. A few months ago, Antetokounmpo launched Ante, Inc. to house the brothers’ projects and investments. It’s about Giannis’s life beyond basketball, though basketball still matters to him — a lot. In a few weeks, he will be eligible for a three-year extension worth about $173 million, but he doesn’t plan to sign one just yet.“The real question’s not going to be this year — numbers-wise it doesn’t make sense,” Antetokounmpo said. “But next year, next summer it would make more sense for both parties. Even then, I don’t know.”He added: “I would not be the best version of myself if I don’t know that everybody’s on the same page, everybody’s going for a championship, everybody’s going to sacrifice time away from their family like I do. And if I don’t feel that, I’m not signing.”Giannis Antetokounmpo has begun focusing more on business endeavors over the past three years as he’s become a bigger basketball star.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesThis approach and an increased focus on business investments with his brothers are part of Antetokounmpo’s evolution as he has begun to understand his own ambitions and goals more deeply.“From 2020 to 2023, people think I’ve taken a large jump on the basketball court, but I think I’ve taken 10X jump off the court,” he said.‘I gave everything.’It started in the spring of 2020 when the world shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. It wasn’t clear what would happen to players’ salaries or endorsement deals with the season in flux. He began to think of ways to diversify his sources of income.“We were sitting in the house. OK, now what?” Antetokounmpo said. “Basketball is taken away, what do I have?” He downloaded a stock trading app and started investing on his own for the first time. He began to reach out to successful people from other industries for advice and mentorship.It was an eventful year for him, which may have contributed to his interest in growing his income. His oldest child, Liam, had been born that February, and he had won his second M.V.P. Award, for the 2019-20 season, which the Bucks finished by losing in the Eastern Conference semifinals at the N.B.A.’s quarantined campus at Disney World.A few months later, Antetokounmpo signed a five-year, $228 million extension with the Bucks. But something was not right. He felt numb, and did not know why. He told the Bucks that he did not want to play basketball anymore.He had felt that way before. During his rookie year, he missed his family so much that he had insisted that the Bucks figure out a way to get them to Milwaukee, even threatening to go back to Greece if the team would not do it. He and his brothers had shared beds growing up. When Antetokounmpo left Greece for the N.B.A. draft in 2013, he said his father, Charles, told him: “No matter where you go in this world, doesn’t matter, don’t worry about that, I’ll find you. I love you, my son. Go have a great season.”“And I remember my mom was crying,” Giannis said. “I left. And then when I came here it wasn’t the same. I was in the hotel. It was the first time I felt lonely in my life.”Alex said the siblings are “pretty much each other’s best friends.”When Giannis thought about quitting basketball in the 2020-21 season, his brother Thanasis, right, reassured him.Elsa/Getty ImagesWhen Giannis felt down during the 2020-21 season, he was reassured when he told his older brother Thanasis about his doubts. By then, Thanasis was playing for the Bucks, too, and said that if Giannis was not happy he would leave with him.“I would have walked away in 2020,” Giannis said. “I care about joy and happiness. I care about my kids.”The Bucks recommended he speak to a sports psychologist, so Antetokounmpo tried it. Doing so helped him find ways to cope with the stress and pressure he felt. He rediscovered joy in playing basketball, and the Bucks won a championship that season.“I think it’s the best feeling that I’ve felt so far in basketball,” he said.He wants it again.The Bucks lost in the first round of last season’s playoffs, winning only one game against the Miami Heat as Giannis worked through injuries.Milwaukee fired its coach, Mike Budenholzer, and hired Adrian Griffin, who had been an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors. That change, Antetokounmpo said, is part of why he is unsure if he’ll sign an extension.“You’ve got to see the dynamics,” he said. “How the coach is going to be, how we’re going to be together. At the end of the day, I feel like all my teammates know and the organization knows that I want to win a championship. As long as we’re on the same page with that and you show me and we go together to win a championship, I’m all for it. The moment I feel like, oh, yeah, we’re trying to rebuild —”He paused briefly before continuing.“There will never be hard feelings with the Milwaukee Bucks,” he said. “I believe that we’ve had 10 unbelievable years, and there’s no doubt I gave everything for the city of Milwaukee. Everything. Every single night, even when I’m hurt. I am a Milwaukee Buck. I bleed green. I know this.“This is my team, and it’s going to forever be my team. I don’t forget people that were there for me and allowed me to be great and to showcase who I am to the world and gave me the platform. But we have to win another one.”He is halfway to his goal of playing 20 N.B.A. seasons, and he said he would like to spend them with one team, the way Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan did.“But at the end of the day, being a winner, it’s over that goal,” he said. “Winning a championship comes first. I don’t want to be 20 years on the same team and don’t win another championship.”He didn’t mention any motivation for winning another championship outside of his competitive fire. But the cultural relevance that comes with winning can also elevate his growing off-court profile.‘We came from nothing.’Giannis couldn’t help but launch into a sales pitch as he sat in the living room of the home where he and Alex were doing the photo shoot. He was hyping a pain-relieving balm made by a company called Flexpower, which the Antetokounmpo brothers partially own. He has always considered himself to be a great salesman, back to when he was a child trying to help his parents sell sunglasses on the street in Athens.During the photo shoot, Giannis flitted around like a proud mother hen, beaming at Alex. Working with the company was Alex’s idea.“I knew you when you were a baby!” Giannis said, holding his hands out as if rocking a baby.Later, Giannis pondered when it was that he started thinking of Alex as an adult.“Might be today,” he said.Giannis and Alex shot photos for an ad campaign at the home of Jimmy Goldstein, an N.B.A. superfan, in the Beverly Crest neighborhood of Los Angeles.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesFour of the brothers are listed as co-founders on the Ante, Inc. website, but Giannis is the chairman. They have different roles, by virtue of their personalities. Alex describes Thanasis, 31, as very driven and bold in his style. Kostas, 25, has a quieter personality, but Alex said he excels at brainstorming.Giannis involved his brothers in discussions about his new Nike contract, which he said he negotiated himself this summer. One of his earliest investments was in the Milwaukee Brewers, in 2021. The brothers have invested in a candy company, a nutritional company and a golf team co-owned by Venus and Serena Williams and Serena’s husband, Alexis Ohanian. They have a production company in the works, like so many other N.B.A. players do.This year, Giannis became a co-owner of some funds with Calamos Investments, whose chief executive, John Koudounis, is of Greek descent. The joint venture donates 10 percent of its profits to financial literacy organizations.“He spent a lot of time talking about how he wishes that he had known about investing earlier,” said Jessica Fernandez, Calamos’s chief marketing officer. Antetokounmpo doesn’t manage the portfolios, but he does pepper those who do with questions about why and how they choose certain stocks.Earlier this year, the Antetokounmpo brothers joined the ownership group of Major League Soccer’s Nashville SC.“We came from nothing,” Antetokounmpo said. “And sitting in the owners’ suite with the other owners and enjoy the game, cheering for our team. Our team. Not just a team — our team. It’s insane.”Soccer was their first love; their father, who died in 2017, briefly played professionally. Their foundation, the Charles Antetokounmpo Family Foundation, seeks to help disadvantaged people in Greece, the United States and Nigeria, where their parents grew up.‘Protect the family.’The idea that someone with Giannis’s salary would worry about money might strain credulity, but he is thrifty — cheap, he’ll admit.“I need my kids to spend my money,” he said, smiling.He said he wants six children, and is almost halfway there. He and his fiancée, Mariah Riddlesprigger, have two sons, Liam and Maverick, and Riddlesprigger is pregnant with their third child, a girl.Antetokounmpo gets concerned when his children are pulled into the spotlight with him. In the United States, his fame is perhaps not as overwhelming as it would be were he playing in a bigger city. But in Greece things are different.“The way LeBron James is or Michael Jordan is for the States, the same way I am for Greece,” he said. “Maybe larger.”He has noticed people filming his children in their stroller and at a birthday party. He wants his children to be able to decide whether they want to live lives in the public. On social media, he typically covers their faces.When he thinks about growing his wealth, he is thinking about his children’s futures, too.The brothers try to make business decisions as a group, often on a messaging thread titled “Antetokounbros” (which is also the name of a store they have in Athens; they’re opening one in Milwaukee soon). They save personal texts for a different thread titled “F.O.E.,” which stands for family over everything.Giannis, left, with his brothers, left to right, Kostas, Thanasis and Alex in 2019 when Giannis won the Most Valuable Player Award.Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE, via Getty ImagesHe said he has felt taken advantage of in the past by some of the people hired to handle his life, money or off-court interests, and was confident that will never happen with his family.“I see it with my teammates, some of my teammates,” Antetokounmpo said. “‘Oh, my cousin did this. My mom did this.’ You see it. It’s public. Moms arguing with their sons, suing one another for property that doesn’t belong to them. You see it every day.”He added: “The way we were raised in Greece and the things that we went through every single day to provide for our family, all those moments brought us close. They knew that at all costs I would protect the family, take care of my brothers. And I did.”Mark Abramson for The New York Times More

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      A’ja Wilson’s 53-Point Game Ties the W.N.B.A. Record

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      Wilson, of the Las Vegas Aces, became just the third W.N.B.A. player to score at least 50 in a game.Fifty-point games in the N.B.A. can almost be ho-hum: There were 25 last season alone, and they are increasing in frequency. But in the W.N.B.A., they are nearly unheard-of.A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces didn’t just score 50 on Tuesday night in Atlanta; she made four free throws in the last minute to reach 53, tying the league record.Wilson’s is just the third 50-point game in W.N.B.A. history, following a 53-point game by Liz Cambage of the Dallas Wings in 2018 and a 51-point game by Riquna Williams of the Tulsa Shock in 2013.There have been only 33 games in which a player has scored 40 points or more in the league’s history, which dates to 1997. But as in the N.B.A., the trend line is upward. A third of those games have come this season.After her heroic individual effort, Wilson chose to spread the credit. “I didn’t do this alone,” she said. “My teammates get all the glory because without them I don’t even get the basketball.” Chelsea Gray had 12 assists, and Kelsey Plum had seven for the Aces.Wilson, a 6-foot-4 forward, shot 16 for 23 from the floor with one 3-pointer and made 20 of 21 free throws. Defensively, she found time to record a game-high four blocks. The Aces defeated the host Atlanta Dream, 112-100.When it comes to putting up high-scoring totals, N.B.A. players have the distinct advantage of playing 48-minute games, rather than the 40-minute games of the W.N.B.A.N.B.A. teams also score more efficiently, averaging 114.8 points per 100 possessions last season, compared with 103.8 in the W.N.B.A. this season. (Or looking at it another way, W.N.B.A. players are more efficient defensively.) And N.B.A. teams also play at a slightly faster pace, averaging 2.06 possessions per minute compared with 1.98 in the W.N.B.A.That all adds up to higher scoring games: 114.7 points per team in the N.B.A. versus 82.5 in the W.N.B.A. in the most recent seasons.Looking at it that way, Wilson’s 53 points amounted to 64 percent of an average W.N.B.A. team’s point total. The equivalent percentage in the N.B.A. would be a 73-point game, something that has happened only six times in N.B.A. history and only once in the years since the W.N.B.A. was founded.The game was an outlier even for Wilson, a two-time league M.V.P. and an Olympic gold medalist in Tokyo. Her previous career high, 11 days before, was 40 points, and she has only 10 games of 30 points or more in her six-year career.Wilson also has the advantage of playing for the Aces, the league’s best team, with a gaudy 29-4 record, and the defending league champions. If they could win all of their remaining seven games, their 36-4 mark and .900 winning percentage would match the record set by the 1998 Houston Comets, who were 27-3 in a shorter season. More

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      James Harden Did Not Start the Problems for the Philadelphia 76ers

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      Discontent is not new for star players, but it has become very public for the Philadelphia 76ers at a moment when their fans are running out of patience.For Philadelphia 76ers fans, this is The Bad Place.“Disgust among Sixers fans is at one of the highest levels I have ever seen here in Philadelphia,” Joe DeCamara, a Philadelphia radio host, said in a recent interview.A confluence of misfortune and bad strategy has almost left the team where it was in the mid-2000s at the end of the Allen Iverson era: adrift with no path to contend for a championship. Whatever plans Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, had when he took over in 2020 seem to have unraveled.“We feel like people are underrating the Sixers right now,” Morey told reporters at his introductory news conference, “but we need to go out there and prove it.”What has been proved, in fact, is quite the opposite, punctuated recently when James Harden, the team’s second-best player, publicly trashed Morey as part of his quest to force a trade to another team.Discontent is not new for star players, but in the Sixers’ case it has become very public at a moment when their fans are at their wits’ end. The broader public has developed an appetite for this brand of superstar drama because it pops up every summer, but the Sixers, perhaps more than other N.B.A. teams, are poorly positioned to plea for patience because the organization has put its fans through a decade of stops and starts, including the rebuilding plan known as The Process.Harden is one of the most talented offensive players in the N.B.A., but he has come up short in the playoffs.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConHarden’s relationship with the Sixers became a Good News-Bad News situation this summer. The Good: Harden, a 33-year-old guard, opted into the last year of his contract. The Bad: It was on the condition that the Sixers trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers, according to two people familiar with the request but not authorized to discuss it publicly. To make matters worse, videos that emerged on social media this week appeared to show Harden disparaging Morey while speaking to reporters at an Adidas event in China.“Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of,” Harden said in the videos. Harden’s agent and Adidas did not respond to requests from The New York Times seeking to confirm the authenticity of the videos. A Sixers spokesperson declined to comment.The exact nature of Harden’s anger at Morey is unclear, but his displeasure is an extraordinary setback nonetheless. Harden is one of the greatest offensive players ever, and few defenders can guard him alone because of his combination of ball handling and size. He is one of a small number of players who can will a team to victory by themselves — when he chooses.Harden and Joel Embiid, the star center who is Philadelphia’s best player and the reigning Most Valuable Player Award winner, share some of the responsibility for the Sixers’ lack of success. They often underperform at crucial moments in the postseason, and did so again this spring, when the Sixers lost to Boston in the second round.This has brought even more pessimism to Philadelphia, where sports-related despair is as essential to the city’s identity as the hoagie.“As a fan, it’s simple: I want the team to win,” said Amos Lee, a folk singer-songwriter and avid Sixers fan. “I want them to spend all of the money and get all of the best players and put the coolest people on the team and that’s it. But I don’t know what this franchise is.”Lee added, “It has been for a long time really poorly managed.”Daryl Morey, the president of the Philadelphia 76ers. He traded with the Nets for James Harden in February 2022.Matt Slocum/Associated PressThe Sixers have not made it to the Eastern Conference finals since 2001, and Doc Rivers, who was hired as head coach a few weeks before Morey joined the team, had a history of falling short in the playoffs. Still, Morey kept him for three seasons. And after Ben Simmons, the star point guard drafted two years after Embiid, demanded a trade out of Philadelphia, Morey resisted before swinging a trade for Harden, who was trying to force his way off his second straight team. Now Philadelphia is his third.According to a person familiar with Morey’s thinking, the plan remains to bring Harden back after the Sixers ended trade negotiations with the Clippers when they could not reach what they believed would be a suitable deal.That is not a plan — that’s unjustified hope. Harden has shown that he is willing to hold out or loaf on the floor if he does not get the trade he wants. And even if Harden returns, the team did not make any real improvements this off-season and, in fact, lost several rotation players to free agency. If the 76ers could not get out of the second round last year, how will they do next season with a less-talented team and an unhappy Harden?If Harden does go, he will be the latest in a string of Sixers stars who have left the team under acrimonious circumstances, stretching back to Charles Barkley in 1992. Before Simmons and Harden, Iverson was frustrated with the franchise when he was traded in 2006, as was Andre Iguodala when he was traded in 2012.Morey has long shown little interest in fielding a struggling team. When he was an executive in Houston in 2019, he traded Chris Paul and multiple first-round picks for Russell Westbrook after the Rockets lost in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. Before that, Morey dismantled a middling Rockets team that included a young Kyle Lowry. Those moves allowed the Rockets in 2012 to acquire the star who would push them toward true contention: Harden.If Morey decides to hit the eject button on the Embiid and Harden era in Philadelphia, after less than two full seasons, he has shown a willingness to make hard choices. But that requires patience Sixers fans do not have, and asking the team’s ownership to accept a near-term regression and financial hit while they are planning for a new arena.Joel Embiid won his first Most Valuable Player Award in the 2022-23 season.Winslow Townson/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConBut the clock is not just ticking on what to do about Harden. It is also ticking on Embiid. He said recently that he wanted to win a championship whether it was in Philadelphia “or anywhere else.” He later suggested that he was not serious, though that has not eased the anxiety of some Sixers fans.On one hand, fans could understand his restlessness. He has endured several different front office heads, a coaching carousel and unhappy stars without even a conference finals appearance to show for it. But on the other hand, those same coaches, executives and teammates have had to endure his disappointing playoff performances, too.“They have not done a great job around him,” said Spike Eskin, co-host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast that is unaffiliated with the team. “The organization has been a mess for the entirety of his career. But he is as much to blame for their lack of success in the playoffs as anybody is.”But for now, Morey does not have many options. That is partly on him. The best option in a sea of bad ones may be to engage in some wishful thinking: Maybe Harden shows up to camp in great shape and reconsiders his desire to leave. Maybe Embiid puts together another M.V.P.-level season and does not get hurt, as he so often has.Maybe they can even get out of the second round. More

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      Dwyane Wade Talks Hall of Fame Induction and a Political Hopes

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      When the Miami Heat selected Dwyane Wade with the fifth pick of the 2003 N.B.A. draft, the league was in dire need of star players to carry it out of the Michael Jordan era.Wade’s draft class — which also featured LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Carmelo Anthony — ended up fitting the bill and then some. Wade immediately became one of the league’s most popular players, and his Miami teammate Shaquille O’Neal gave him the catchy nickname Flash. It was apt — Wade routinely attacked the rim with snazzy spin moves and finished with highlight-reel dunks and layups on his way to winning three championships.This weekend, Wade will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, a feat that seemed inevitable as he piled up accolades over a 16-year career. He made 13 All-Star teams, led the league in scoring once and was named the most valuable player of the 2006 N.B.A. finals, which Miami won over Dallas.“To be able to be one of those select few out of an entire generation of people who have tried to play the game of basketball and to be able to walk into the Hall of Fame, it doesn’t matter if I knew 10 years ago or I just got the call yesterday — it all feels surreal,” Wade said in a recent interview.Since retiring in 2019, Wade has acquired an ownership stake in the Utah Jazz and the W.N.B.A. team in his hometown Chicago, the Sky. In the spring, Wade revealed that he had moved his family out of Florida to California because of state laws that negatively affect the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Wade’s teenage daughter, Zaya, is transgender, and Wade has been outspoken on her behalf.Wade recently spoke to The New York Times about his basketball career and potentially running for political office.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.Dwyane Wade’s jersey is lifted into the rafters during his jersey retirement ceremony at American Airlines Arena in 2020.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesYou grew up in the South Side of Chicago without very much. When you retired, the former President Barack Obama taped a tribute video to you. How do you reflect on that journey?My dad and I talk about it. We still can’t believe it. We still can’t believe the N.B.A. career happened and it’s gone by. I got a call from President Obama on my birthday when I turned 40, and it was like: “Hey, pick up the phone at this time. There’s going to be a call coming.” I’m like, “OK.” Once I got on, I heard, “You’re waiting for the president of the United States.” I was like: “What? This is my life, right?”Your first N.B.A. game was against Allen Iverson. You’re having a bit of a full-circle moment this weekend by having him induct you. Why did you pick him?Michael Jordan was my favorite player. But as I was growing up as a kid, as Michael Jordan decided to retire from the game, Allen Iverson became the hero of our culture. I think a lot of people know I wear No. 3, but a lot of people don’t know why I wear No. 3. And so I just wanted to take this moment as an opportunity that is supposed to be about me, and I wanted to be able to shine light and give flowers to individuals that allow me and help me get here. My family, of course. My coaches, of course. My teammates, of course.But what about those individuals that gave you the image of what it looks like and how it can be done? And Allen Iverson gave me the image of how it looks like, how it could be done coming from the broken community that I came from. So I want to give him his flowers in front of the world because he deserves it.Wade and Allen Iverson attend the Stance and Dwyane Wade’s Spade Tournament at The One Eighty in Toronto in 2016.George Pimentel/WireImage, via Getty ImagesYou’re being inducted alongside Dirk Nowitzki, with whom you had, let’s call it a tense relationship at points. What’s your relationship with him like now?I respect Dirk as one of the greatest players that ever played this game of basketball. It’s funny to have something with someone and we’ve never guarded each other. We played totally different positions, but as I’ve always said, if I’m going to have any words with anyone, I want them to come in the finals.Dirk and I have played in the finals against each other twice. His team won once. My team won one. So I call it a wash. And I’m thankful to be able to be a part of the class that I’m a part of. And Dirk to me — and there’s no shade on anybody who’s ever played — but I think Dirk will probably be looked at as the greatest international player that we’ve ever seen.You’ve talked at length about your advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, especially with your own child. What was your reaction to the Orlando Magic donating $50,000 to the super PAC affiliated with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida? (DeSantis has supported legislation such as what opponents deemed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a law signed last year that limits what instructors can teach about sexuality and gender in classrooms. The Magic’s donation was dated May 19, just days before DeSantis announced a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.)I have so many things that I’m focused on and there’s so many, so many battles to fight, in a sense. That’s one that I’m not choosing to fight, with so many other things where my voice is needed. People are going to do what people want to do. And there’s nothing that you’re going to be able to do to stop them, per se. And so I’m trying to help where the need is and where I can.There were some reports in the spring that Florida Democrats were recruiting you to run for Senate.[Laughter] I heard that.Have you ever been approached to run for office?Yes.“I’ve been able to be a star,” Wade said. “I’ve been able to be Robin.”Ike Abakah for The New York TimesSo describe to me what that approach was like.I mean, it’s just conversation. “Hey, you would be good for,” “Hey, we can see you in,” “We would love to have you in.”It’s things that I’m passionate about that I will speak out on and speak up for. And so I don’t play the politician games. I don’t know a lot about it.But I also understand that I have a role as an American citizen and as a known person to be able to highlight and speak on things that other people may not be able to because they don’t have the opportunity to do this.So you’re running.[Laughter]Let me see if I can get you to be a little spicy. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the comments Paul Pierce has made comparing the two of you. He’s said a couple of different things. But one of the things he said — I’ll read the quote — “Put Shaq on my team. Put LeBron and Bosh with me. I’m not going to win one? You don’t think me, LeBron and Bosh, we’re not going to win one? We’re not going to win a couple?”What was your reaction to seeing what Paul said about you?I’m living rent-free right now.I got so many things going on in my life. Comparing myself to someone who’s not playing or someone who is playing is definitely not on my to-do list. Listen, Paul Pierce was one of the greatest players that we’ve had in our game. And I think, you know, when you are a great player and you don’t get the attention that you feel like your game deserved, sometimes you’ve got to grab whatever attention where those straws are. And Paul believes he’s a better player than me. He should believe that. That’s why he was great. That’s not my argument, and I didn’t play the game to be better than Paul Pierce. I played the game the way I played it, and I made the sacrifices that I made. Everybody doesn’t want to sacrifice.Wade shot against Paul Pierce in 2012 in Miami.Scott Cunningham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesI’ve been able to be a star. I’ve been able to be Robin. I’ve been able to be part of the Larry, Curly and Moe, like, whatever. I’ve been able to be successful and great in all those areas.It’s easy to say what you would do if you have a certain talent on your team, but you have to play with that talent. And that’s the hardest thing to do — to play with talent in different generations and different styles, which I was able to do.What is it like to watch old highlights of yourself now that you’re 41?I just got done watching a 2005-2006 edit. I think it was 45 minutes. I watched about 15 minutes. I walked away from that edit, and I was just looking at the way I played the game and I hooped.Nowadays, we’ve got the kids. And I love what development is going on, but kids are working on their moves. I just reacted to defenders. My moves came from just reacting, and those are the moves that are being worked on and are being highlighted now. I just played the game of basketball just like I was back in Chicago playing with my uncles and my dad and my family.So I love watching old highlights of myself because, just being honest, I haven’t seen a lot of people with my game and with my style. And so it was unique. And I’m thankful to have one of those games that no one can really understand how good I really was.Ike Abakah for The New York Times More

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      Union Work Runs in the Family for the N.B.A.’s Jaren Jackson Jr.

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      Jaren Jackson Jr. is active in the N.B.A. players’ union. His mother, Terri, works for the W.N.B.A. players’ union. When he was elected vice president, she did her best not to embarrass him.The National Basketball Players Association is the union for N.B.A. players, a group of adult millionaires, most of whose mothers don’t attend unit meetings.But Terri Jackson is no ordinary N.B.A. mom. She is also the executive director for the W.N.B.A. players’ union, and, in February, she was invited to the N.B.A. players’ union’s winter meeting. As she put finishing touches on the presentation she was about to deliver, her son, Jaren Jackson Jr. of the Memphis Grizzlies, was nominated to be one of the union’s vice presidents.He gave a short, impromptu speech, telling his colleagues he wanted to bridge the gap between established players and younger ones like him. He said he felt it was time for him to take on that responsibility.When he finished, Terri Jackson said, she wanted to get up and cheer; she was so happy to see the maturity he showed. Instead, she squeezed her fists tightly and kept them hidden behind her laptop screen, so as not to embarrass her 23-year-old son. When he was elected, she raised her arms in celebration.In becoming a union vice president, Jackson Jr. extended a family tradition of being involved in player unions and the future of the game. His father, Jaren Jackson Sr., a journeyman N.B.A. player from 1989-2002, was also a players’ union member.Jackson Jr., right, and his father, the former N.B.A. player Jaren Jackson Sr., traded jerseys after the younger Jackson played in a game in March.Darren Abate/Associated PressFive years into his career, Jackson Jr. has already exceeded what his father accomplished on the court. Last season, he was named the N.B.A.’s defensive player of the year, and he helped lead the Grizzlies to one of the best records in the Western Conference.“If you love the game, that’s what you’re really doing it for,” Jackson Jr. said of his union activity. “I want kids growing up, whether it’s my kids or other people’s kids, when they grow up and they want to play in the league, they’re going to have a good foundation.”Practically since birth, Jaren Jr. was destined to care about labor issues. He was born while his father, who had most recently played for the San Antonio Spurs, was going through a work stoppage during the N.B.A. lockout in 1999.Jaren Sr., whose father was also a union member as a longshoreman in New Orleans, was a free agent during the lockout, waiting for the Spurs to re-sign him.He would sometimes fly to New York to attend bargaining meetings, joining elite players like Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning and Mitch Richmond.“This was a tough time for me,” Jaren Sr. said. “I wasn’t sure about my future and I sat there and listened to these guys, you know, drop F-bombs all over the place and talk about these players getting paid and owners making this money.”Terri Jackson also has a family history of support for unions. She remembers a story about her father, who was a lawyer, speaking for better pay for teachers at a school board meeting.“When I think about getting to be the executive director for the W players, I just, you know, I think a little bit: ‘Wow. You know, my dad would be so proud of this’ — or he is so proud,” Terri Jackson said. “And that his grandson is a union rep? That’s amazing.”Terri Jackson spoke in support of the W.N.B.A. player Brittney Griner when Griner was imprisoned in Russia last year.Max Herman/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesShe and Jaren Sr. both went to college at Georgetown University, where she also attended law school. She has taught classes about women in sports and worked at the University of the District of Columbia as a legal counsel and later assistant general counsel.The family moved to Indiana in 2012 when Terri began working for the N.C.A.A; she eventually became the organization’s director of law, policy and governance. In 2016, when Jaren Jr. was in high school, she became the executive director of the W.N.B.P.A., where she has led initiatives for improved maternity benefits and better pay for players.His parents’ careers meant Jaren Jr. moved often, and that he had to learn to adapt to new people quickly.The Jacksons said they raised him to participate, to be comfortable in front of people he didn’t know.He was always bigger than the other children, and he learned early how to make his peers feel comfortable. At age 4, that meant sharing toys in a sandbox, and, as he got older, it meant speaking up for them in class or running for student council.“Given all that your life has been blessed with, all the opportunities that you have, there’s an expectation that you participate in the lives of others,” Terri said.His classmates elected him to student government, which taught him how to relate to his peers and to help them feel heard.He also learned how to perform in front of groups, a skill that transferred to his professional basketball career. At summer camps growing up, he would perform dances with friends. A hip-hop performance when Jaren Jr. was about 14 or 15 years old remains etched in Jaren Sr.’s memory.“I’m not allowed to share the video with anyone,” said Jaren Sr. “But he did a magnificent job.”Jaren Sr. reached the N.B.A. as an undrafted player and cobbled together a long career in pieces, making stops in lesser leagues and finding smaller roles with N.B.A. teams, including one championship season with the Spurs.Jaren Jr. was a highly regarded recruit coming out of high school, already nearly seven feet tall.This year, Jackson Jr. was an N.B.A. All-Star and the defensive player of the year.Petre Thomas/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHe played one season at Michigan State before the Grizzlies selected him fourth overall in the 2018 draft.Injuries have interrupted his first few years, but Jackson’s talent has been undeniable. On an exceptionally young Grizzlies team, Jackson has quickly become one of the leaders.He missed the first 14 games of the 2022-23 season while recovering from surgery, but he was still voted the league’s defensive player of the year.He learned the news when the TNT analyst Ernie Johnson announced it during a broadcast. Jackson sat back on a couch at home with a basketball between his knees. As soon as Johnson said his name, Terri, who was standing near him, started shouting in celebration.“WOOOOOOO! Yes! Yes! Yes!” she said, as Jaren Jr. smiled and put his hands over his eyes.“I just like to chill be quiet and relax,” Jaren Jr. said, “but she’s — you let your mom enjoy those moments.”This time, she didn’t have to hide her joy behind a laptop.When his peers elected him as an N.B.P.A. vice president, Jaren Jr. made sure they knew that he understood he had a lot to learn. He tries to keep his teammates abreast of how to take advantage of collectively bargained benefits, he said.He has worked with his teammate Ja Morant as Morant navigates the league’s punishment for a series of social media videos that resulted in a 25-game suspension. Jaren Jr. declined to give specifics, saying “that’s his business.”He had tried to be involved in the union even before joining the executive committee, he said, but having an official role means longer meetings and more responsibility.“It’s a lot,” Jaren Jr. said. “You have to look after the league — you’re like a big brother.”Jackson Jr. and his mother at the FedEx Forum in Memphis.Whitten Sabbatini for The New York TimesThe veteran players in the union’s leadership roles are helping him as he learns the league’s business machinations, he said.In his parents, he also has two more veterans of sports league union work to rely on if he needs them. But these days, Jaren Jr. doesn’t often do that. Their time together tends to be more family focused, the lessons of the past having been imprinted long ago. More

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      The N.B.A. and Its Owners Fight for Change. But Not Necessarily the Same Change.

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      The league embraces progressive causes supported by players. But some team owners pull in the opposite direction, as apparent in the Orlando Magic’s donation to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.In June 2022, on the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, released a statement jointly with the W.N.B.A.’s commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.Silver and Engelbert said the leagues believed “that women should be able to make their own decisions concerning their health and future, and we believe that freedom should be protected.”Less than one year later, one of the N.B.A.’s teams, the Orlando Magic — as an organization — wrote a $50,000 check to Never Back Down, a super PAC promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, financial disclosures revealed this week. The Magic are owned by the DeVos family, well-known conservatives. Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of the former Magic chairman Richard DeVos, who died in 2018, was former president Donald J. Trump’s education secretary.The check was written on May 19, according to a team spokesman. That was weeks after DeSantis signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, prohibiting the termination of pregnancies after six weeks, but days before he had officially declared he would run for the Republican presidential nomination.The donation “was given as a Florida business in support of a Florida governor for the continued prosperity of Central Florida,” the team said in a statement.The Magic’s donation to DeSantis, who is in his second term as governor, was not the first time an N.B.A. team had put its name on a political donation. In the 1990s, the Phoenix Suns, then owned by Jerry Colangelo, donated tens of thousands to the Republican National Committee. But the Magic’s check appears to be the first direct donation from an N.B.A. team to a group directly allied with a presidential candidate — or one, like DeSantis, who was widely expected to run.The N.B.A., under its commissioner, Adam Silver, has supported causes supported by players.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe donation was also a reminder that for all of the N.B.A.’s professions of support for progressive causes that its players believe in, several billionaire team owners — whose interests Silver represents — have deployed their own power to fight those very causes. (The N.B.A. declined to comment.)Owners like Dan Gilbert (Cleveland Cavaliers), Tilman Fertitta (Houston Rockets) James Dolan (Knicks) and the DeVos family have donated large sums to Republican politicians who oppose abortion rights, gun control, voting rights and police reform — all issues the N.B.A. has supported, either in public statements or through its Social Justice coalition.“Any time I have noticed in my research where the N.B.A. has responded to player activism and player demands, they’ve always been forced to do so,” Theresa Runstedtler, a history professor at American University and the author of “Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the N.B.A.,” said in an interview.She continued: “It’s always been something that they’ve been pushed into by the more vocal and militant players in the league.”In the summer of 2020, several N.B.A. players protested the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by police in Minneapolis, and the Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out for a playoff game against the Orlando Magic after the shooting of another Black man, Jacob Blake, by police in Kenosha, Wis. In response, N.B.A. owners agreed to form the Social Justice Coalition, which would emphasize voting rights, police reform and criminal justice reform — all areas that disproportionately affected Black people.On paper, the N.B.A. was moving beyond traditional philanthropy. The Bucks’ walkout compelled the league to shape public policy, a goal far beyond what other professional sports leagues intended to do.“Our goal is really simple,” James Cadogan, the coalition’s executive director, said in a social media clip introducing the group. “We want to take moments of protest, moments of people power like we saw last year, and turn them into public policy. We want to change laws.”In recent years, the N.B.A. has taken up the cause of Clean Slate initiatives, an effort in states to seal some records of those who had been incarcerated. Weeks ago, DeSantis vetoed a Republican-backed bill in Florida concerning the expunging of criminal records.The Social Justice Coalition has endorsed several bills in its nascent existence, though with limited success: The EQUAL Act, a move to end sentencing disparities in cases involving the sale of crack and powder cocaine, is not yet federal law. The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, a police reform bill that passed the House in 2021, languished in the Senate.Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors warmed up for a game in 2022. He made a video urging fans to support the Freedom to Vote Act.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter the 2020 election, Republicans made a significant push to tighten election rules at the state level, after which the Golden State star Stephen Curry made a video for the coalition imploring fans to connect with lawmakers to pass the Freedom To Vote Act. Separately, the coalition supported a voting rights bill named after the former congressman John Lewis. Both bills were blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster. The N.B.A. has not called for the filibuster to be removed.The N.B.A. is hardly to blame when a hot-button bill fails to pass a divided Congress. But it is harder for the league to effect change when some of its team owners have made it their mission to elect people who oppose that change.At the end of 2015, with Silver still relatively new to the commissioner job, the league partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety on an advertising campaign about gun safety. Stars like Curry and Carmelo Anthony spoke in personal terms about the effects of gun violence in commercials that aired during Christmas Day games, when the N.B.A. traditionally has a big national audience. The commercials didn’t call for specific legislation, but partnering with a political figure like Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who founded Everytown, was an unusual move for an American sports league.The next year, the N.B.A. moved the All-Star game from North Carolina to protest a state law that critics said targeted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Silver’s pulling the game had consequences for the local economy and embarrassed politicians that sports leagues typically want to mollify.The Republican governor of the state, Pat McCrory, blasted the N.B.A., saying that the league, and other critics, had “misrepresented our laws and maligned the people of North Carolina simply because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present.”Silver would later tell an audience that the law was “inconsistent with the core values of the league.” (A frequent donor to liberal politicians, he is open about his own political beliefs.)Now, a franchise has written a large check to DeSantis, who has signed bills that critics say target L.G.B.T.Q. communities — which would go against what Silver would call the “core values of the league.” DeSantis has also been in a feud with Disney — which the N.B.A. does business with as a broadcast partner of ESPN. Disney is a sponsor of the Magic, though Disney did not respond to a request for comment on whether that partnership would continue. And the league is choosing to stay silent for now.What the N.B.A. should and should not campaign for isn’t an easy question. But since the league loudly stood up for transgender people in one instance and abortion rights in another, its silence is noteworthy when a franchise owner, using the team name, supports a politician with opposing views.The N.B.A. is, in the end, a business whose primary goal is to make money. If it is also genuinely interested standing up for some social issues, it will need to stand up to its owners too. More

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      Review: ‘Flex’ Hits the Right Rhythms on the Court and Off

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      The writer Candrice Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz show a mastery of the game in this play about a girls’ basketball team in rural Arkansas.Their knees are bent, palms outstretched, eyes darting and alert.The young women of Lady Train, a high school basketball team in rural Arkansas, are training for every possibility on the court — which, in the beloved tradition of sports-powered coming-of-age stories, also means preparing for adult life.Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that in the first scene of “Flex,” which opened at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse on Thursday, all of the players appear to be pregnant. As this tip-off to a slam-dunk New York debut makes clear, the playwright Candrice Jones excels equally in sly, sitcom humor and in the swift-tongued rhythms of teenage and athletic talk.The lumpy bumps beneath Lady Train’s various fly-casual printed tees (it’s 1997, and the spot-on costumes are by Mika Eubanks) are obviously fake, contraband from a home-ec class. But for April (a tender Brittany Bellizeare), the prospect of childbearing is no joke; she’s been benched since the team’s zero-nonsense coach (Christiana Clark) learned of her pregnancy. The bumper-belly drills are both a protest and show of solidarity.Threatening that bond is the requisite rivalry between two top players: the scrappy and headstrong team captain, Starra (a glowering Erica Matthews), who is trying to prove her mettle to her late mother, and Sidney (Tamera Tomakili, delightful), an eye-rolling, hair-flipping transplant from Los Angeles who talks smack with a smile. There’s a delicate romance, too, between the even-keeled Donna (Renita Lewis, the show’s subtle M.V.P.) and Cherise (Ciara Monique), a youth minister whose faith is at odds with her desires, and with April’s consideration of an abortion.Jones and the director Lileana Blain-Cruz (both former high school basketball players) demonstrate a dexterous mastery of the game, not only in narrated action sequences on the blond-wood, half-court set (by Matt Saunders), but also in the pass-or-shoot dynamics that bind these friends and teammates.The teammates bond while driving around in a dusty-blue Chrysler convertible and singing along to Aaliyah.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThere’s even an alchemy to “Flex” that conjures ardent home-team affinity from the audience (whoops and applause escalated in enthusiasm throughout the performance I attended). Maybe that’s inspired by Lady Train’s spelling-bee cheers (“big,” “bad” and “boss” are prominent), or their Aaliyah singalong with the top down on Donna’s dusty-blue Chrysler convertible (another impressive feat of design).But the special sauce is also in the careful economy of Jones’s character development, which offers just enough detail to inspire curiosity about who these women could become without claiming to know exactly who they are. (They’re teenagers, after all.) Whether Starra ascends to the W.N.B.A., she’ll have to wrestle with her ego. And Cherise doesn’t seem likely to let go of God, but what will happen if her devotion comes to feel like a trap?That “Flex” manages to garner such interest in its characters’ potential is a testament to the extraordinary synergy among Jones, Blain-Cruz and the cast members, who are as present and engaged in dialogue as they are nimble at the net.Tropes of the sports genre trotted out here — a betrayed purity pact, competition for scouts’ attention — are attended by the broader considerations that make young people and team sports such fraught and fertile ground. What do we owe ourselves, and at what cost to one another? Why learn the meaning of fairness when life is so unfair? To rebound when it knocks you down, and to savor the moments when it delivers on your wildest dreams.FlexThrough Aug. 20 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More