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      The Bucks Respond With a Star Performance of Their Own

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo helped force a Game 7 with 30 points and 17 rebounds.The Milwaukee Bucks looked wobbly for a moment in the fourth quarter of Thursday’s Game 6 against the Nets. A 15-point lead had been cut to 5 in a matter of minutes. Kevin Durant, coming off a marvelous Game 5 performance, looked primed for a repeat after scoring 12 third quarter points. Milwaukee’s offense was stagnant.But the Bucks’ top trio responded in a decisive and rather undramatic stretch. Khris Middleton was fouled shooting a 3-pointer and hit all three free throws. Jrue Holiday drove for a layup. Giannis Antetokounmpo hit two free throws, followed by an emphatic “and-1” to push the lead to back to 15.That stretch saved the season for the Bucks, sealed a 104-89 victory in Milwaukee and forced a winner-take-all Game 7 in Brooklyn on Saturday. It was a microcosm of the Bucks at their best: Middleton creating offense from the perimeter. Holiday being able to break down a defense. Antetokounmpo being unguardable near the rim. And the team defense not allowing easy baskets for the Nets. This was the kind of basketball that has been hard to come by for Milwaukee in this series, and it came at a necessary time.“They responded after every run we made,” Durant said after the game.Antetokounmpo finished with 30 points and 17 rebounds. Middleton carried most of the load offensively, with 38 points, 10 rebounds and five assists — with five steals for good measure. Holiday added 21 points, eight rebounds and five assists of his own. The three scored 89 of the Bucks’ 104 points.On Middleton, Nets coach Steve Nash said, “We just kind of let him out of the bag tonight.”When the team needed its stars, they responded from the start. The Bucks attacked the rim relentlessly from tipoff. Antetokounmpo, who has faced withering criticism for his penchant for taking too many jump shots, did not take a single 3-pointer the whole game. In one play, he went up for a jump shot, changed his mind midair and tossed it out to Middleton for an open 3.“I think there were was maybe one or two plays where I was open on the 3-point line that I could shoot it, but I still felt like I could go downhill. But you know, this game I didn’t shoot a 3,” Antetokounmpo said. “Maybe the next game I’ll shoot a couple. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I can’t predict the future. But what I know is that I enjoy the game when I’m aggressive.”He set the tone, scoring 11 points and grabbing seven rebounds in the opening quarter. The Bucks also put the Nets on their heels by pushing the ball in transition, often thanks to Antetokounmpo doing so himself. Milwaukee had 26 fast break points, compared to the Nets’ 4. The Bucks shot only 7 for 33 from deep (21.2 percent). They did their damage at the rim, a place where the Nets defense has been vulnerable all season.What has been seemingly lost in this series, particularly in the wake of Durant’s record-setting Game 5 performance, is that Antetokounmpo, for all his faults, is having an excellent series, one of the best of his career. He has reached 30 points in five of the six games. He is averaging 30.5 points and 12.8 rebounds a game on 56.5 percent shooting, all while the Nets defense has been designed specifically to get him away from the rim. More often than not, Antetokounmpo has been able to get to his spot regardless. And on Thursday, the Bucks did a better job of getting Antetokounmpo the ball on the move rather than with him standing in one place.It’s easy to focus on the missed jump shots, but technically, there haven’t been many. It’s just that the misses look terrible and are easy to fixate on.“Giannis, coming into the game, was in a good place,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said, adding that the team tried to get him into “multiple actions,” and to “just get him where he’s attacking, creating for his teammates and creating for himself.”The home team has won every game in this series, which bodes well for the Nets in Game 7. However, there are also some signs that may favor Milwaukee heading into the concluding game. For one thing, the Nets have been held below 100 points in three of the last four games — the three Milwaukee wins. Durant scored 32 points in Game 6, but it took him 30 shots to do it. He was only 2 for 8 from 3, and missed both of his free throws.By most other N.B.A. players’ standards, it was a productive game. But for Durant, that statline is him being contained — a plus for Milwaukee. The Bucks were able to slow the game down enough to force Durant into more isolations and difficult shots.Of course, the Bucks benefited from a hobbled James Harden, who was still clearly struggling with his hamstring strain on Thursday. He still managed to score 16 points and dish out seven assists, but his ability to accelerate seemed hampered, allowing Milwaukee to put more pressure on Durant.“We’re not expecting too much from him movement wise, but he’s going out there and giving it his all. And we respect that,” Durant said, referring to Harden.It didn’t help the Nets that usually reliable role players, like Joe Harris and Jeff Green, struggled with their shooting as well.Giannis Antetokounmpo had 30 points and 17 rebounds in Game 6.Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesThis will be Antetokounmpo and Middleton’s second Game 7 in their careers. The last one was a loss against the Boston Celtics in the first round of their 2018 series. Durant has played in four of them, the most recent one being the 2018 Western Conference finals with the Golden State Warriors against his now teammate, James Harden, who was then with the Houston Rockets. Durant has won three of those deciding games. His best performance came in a 2011 semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies, when he dropped 39 points. Harden was his teammate then on the Oklahoma City Thunder.Whoever wins Game 7 is likely to be favored to head to the championship over either the Atlanta Hawks or the Philadelphia 76ers. If the Bucks can’t win their first road game of the series, it will be yet another playoff disappointment for Milwaukee, and Budenholzer could be dismissed. There will be questions — once again — about whether Antetokounmpo can be the best player on a championship team. If the Nets lose, injuries or not, it will be a missed opportunity that the franchise mortgaged its future for.It was Harden who might have provided the elixir for either team wanting to break through and advance: “We’ve just got to go out there and hoop.” More

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      Was The NBA Season Too Much Too Soon After the Bubble?

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      A rash of injuries leads LeBron James to question the league’s packed schedule.The Los Angeles Lakers will not play another game until October, but LeBron James was apparently not ready to stop dunking. Fresh off the maiden first-round playoff exit of his career, James responded to a cresting wave of injuries sustained by marquee stars with a social media scolding of the N.B.A.In response to a sobering bulletin about the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, who is out indefinitely after sustaining a knee sprain in the Clippers’ second-round series against the Utah Jazz, James took to Twitter. He offered commiserations to fans about the record-setting eight current All-Stars who have missed at least one game this postseason — and criticized league officials for not doing more in this pandemic season to “protect the well being of the players.”By more he meant less: James said he issued clear warnings about the increased injury risk attached to wedging a 72-game regular season between Dec. 22 and May 16, with the playoffs timed to end right before the Tokyo Olympics, compared with starting in mid-January and possibly playing fewer games. The 2019-20 season, remember, strayed into October and spawned the shortest off-season in league history after a four-month interruption imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote. “I knew exactly what would happen.”Self-serving? Yes. Vague? Yes again. There was an undeniable whiff of convenience to James’s remarks, as a rationalization for the swift end to the Lakers’ title defense, along with a lack of clarity. James did not specify to whom, when or where those warnings were registered. He was also surely aware that the 2020-21 schedule was mutually agreed upon by league officials and the National Basketball Players Association, and that starting later, as James had hoped, very likely would have cost both parties significant television revenue by falling shy of the 72-game threshold.Yet the soliloquy, above all, amounted to a loud and powerful “told you so” from James that drowned out the disclaimers. It carried more bite than his recent blasts about the N.B.A.’s decision to stage an All-Star Game in Atlanta in March, followed by protests against the playoff play-in tournament that his Lakers, after long-term injuries felled both James and Anthony Davis, had to win to make the playoffs after slipping to No. 7 in the West.Beyond the uncomfortable spotlight he brought to a dampened N.B.A. postseason increasingly known for who isn’t able to play, James said what so many of his fellow players have surely been thinking — using his biggest-in-the-game megaphone. The rant highlighted a prime concern in front offices and among medical staffs throughout the league: What cost, present and future, did the stacking of two pandemic seasons with such a short turnaround impose?The players’ union agreed to that timeline after learning that the N.B.A.’s television partners pushed for it. The players, who essentially split annual profits and losses evenly with team owners, were told that starting in December rather than January would result in a difference of roughly $500 million in revenue, after last season’s shortfall of $1.5 billion. No less important to the league office was the opportunity to wrap this season up in time to return to its usual October-through-June arc in 2021-22.In retrospect? It was a giant ask. The physical and mental toll of last season’s restart in the Florida bubble, combined so soon with the rigors of a season in home markets governed by strict Covid-19 protocols and daily testing that ate into rest and recovery time, had teams fearful from the start of a spate of soft-tissue injuries. Player stress and training time lost, with fewer practices and a second-half crush of games to make up earlier postponements, only increased those fears.As the number of injured stars became a dominant second-half story line, whether truly a byproduct of the compressed schedule or purely bad luck in some instances as seen with the ankle injuries sustained by James and the Nets’ Kyrie Irving, more questions surfaced. One of the biggest: How will the franchise cornerstones who shoulder such demanding loads rebound next season?“I don’t know if people do get the question you asked,” the Philadelphia 76ers coach, Doc Rivers, told me. “There’s so much stress on those guys. Some guys log heavier minutes — they have to do more.”Joel Embiid after falling hard in the fourth quarter of Game 5 against the Atlanta Hawks. Embiid has been playing through a meniscus tear in his right knee.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersRivers’s All-Star center, Joel Embiid, is one of those guys. Embiid has been playing through a small meniscus tear in his right knee and, after a roaring start to Philadelphia’s second-round series against Atlanta, was unable to prevent the top-seeded Sixers from falling into a 3-2 deficit entering a Game 6 on the road.Those eight All-Stars who have missed at least one playoff game include Embiid. The number will swell to nine if Phoenix’s Chris Paul, who this week entered the league’s health and safety protocols, has to miss any of the upcoming Western Conference finals.As I’ve been writing since April, there is little charm to be celebrated from the uncharacteristically wide-open nature of these playoffs when the suspense largely stems from game- and series-changing absentees.“Injury rates were virtually the same this season as they were during 2019-20, while starter-level and All-Star players missed games due to injury at similar rates as the last three seasons,” said Mike Bass, an N.B.A. spokesman, citing the league’s internal data. “While injuries are an unfortunate reality of our game, we recognize the enormous sacrifices N.B.A. players and teams have made to play through this pandemic.”While true that one of the sport’s eternal struggles is conclusively attributing an injury to overuse, and that no one on the outside can conclusively say a 60-game schedule would have kept stars safer than 72 games, internal data that isn’t made public has obvious limitations. Thanks to James’s blasts, much more attention has been placed on the numbers dispensed by the Elias Sports Bureau. It heaped the loudest pressure yet on the league to prove that 72 games across five months before the playoffs, even with reduced travel, wasn’t an injury accelerant.Kevin Durant uncorked a performance for the ages (49 points in 48 minutes) on Tuesday to haul the Nets to the brink of the Eastern Conference finals despite Irving’s absence and James Harden’s limited effectiveness on an injured right hamstring. Hours after the Clippers and Suns lost Leonard and Paul on a wretched Wednesday, Atlanta tried to bring the focus back to basketball with its remarkable Game 5 comeback against the 76ers — or, depending on your perspective, Philadelphia’s unfathomable fold.These are the things we should be dissecting. The Leonard-less Clippers’ Game 5 win in Utah, inspired by Paul George right after the Sixers squandered a 26-point lead to the Hawks, was another.Over and over, sadly, injuries have changed the conversation. They affect every postseason, true, but the intrusions have seemingly been a constant since March 20, when James (high ankle sprain after Atlanta’s Solomon Hill collided with him) and Charlotte’s newly named Rookie of the Year Award winner LaMelo Ball (fractured wrist after crashing to the floor) were hurt on the same day.Elias circulated last week that this season’s 27 All-Stars combined to miss a higher rate of games (13.7 games per player and 19 percent overall) than in any previous season. Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, declined to comment on Wednesday when asked if James had indeed raised his concerns about such developments in consultation with union officials before the season.“I speak for the health of all our players and I hate to see this many injuries this time of the year,” James said as part of his rim-shaking social media post.On this occasion, and this topic, they were comments heard — and felt — by an entire league. More

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      N.B.A. All-Stars Set a Painful Record for Missing Playoff Games

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      Injury woes are not new, but they have been acute during the playoffs. Never before have eight All-Stars missed at least one postseason game in the same year.Sprained knees. Strained hamstrings. Twisted ankles. Shattered hopes.The N.B.A. playoffs have turned into a battle of attrition as the league grapples with a growing list of injuries to many of its biggest stars. No less an eminence than LeBron James, whose Los Angeles Lakers made a hasty first-round exit after his All-Star teammate Anthony Davis injured his knee (and then his groin), weighed in on Wednesday, blaming the league’s compressed schedule. Regular-season games began in December after an abridged off-season.“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James wrote on Twitter. “I knew exactly what would happen.”It is worth noting that the league and its players’ union agreed on the schedule.But injuries were a problem for many N.B.A. teams even before the start of the playoffs — the Denver Nuggets, for example, were left without Jamal Murray, their starting point guard, when he sustained a season-ending knee injury in April — and a fresh batch of injuries in the postseason has only amplified the issue. In fact, with two-plus playoff rounds remaining, the N.B.A. has already set an ignominious record: eight All-Stars (and counting, perhaps) have missed at least one postseason game.Here is a look at those players, and how their injuries and absences have affected their teams:Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles ClippersKawhi Leonard sat during the end of Game 4 against the Utah Jazz on Monday with knee soreness.Kevork Djansezian/Getty ImagesInjury: Leonard was huge for the Clippers on Monday in Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Utah Jazz, finishing with 31 points and 7 rebounds in a win that evened the best-of-seven series at two games apiece. But the Clippers’ victory proved costly: Leonard sprained his right knee.Impact: Leonard was expected to miss Game 5 on Wednesday night, and the Clippers did not offer a timetable for his return. One of the top two-way players in the league, Leonard is vital to the Clippers’ championship hopes. There is also a sense of urgency for the franchise, which has never made a conference final and had been banking on the star-studded pairing of Leonard and Paul George to help deliver its first title: Leonard can opt for free agency after the season. Another playoff disappointment could figure in his decision. The Clippers would prefer that they not have to find out.Anthony Davis, Los Angeles LakersAnthony Davis’s injuries hurt the Lakers’ quest to defend their championship this season.Harry How/Getty ImagesInjury: After helping the Lakers win it all last season, Davis stumbled through the 2020-21 regular season, missing about two months with a calf strain. It only got worse for him in the Lakers’ first-round series with the Phoenix Suns, as he injured his knee and his groin.Impact: Despite spraining his left knee in Game 3 against the Suns, Davis played through pain to deliver a win. But he strained his groin in Game 4, then missed Game 5. He limped through the early stages of Game 6 before heading to the locker room in pain, and the Lakers lost the game and the series without him. The Lakers had hoped to mount a stronger title defense. Davis blamed himself. “We just couldn’t stay healthy,” he said. “A lot of that is on me.James Harden, Brooklyn NetsHarden played with a strained hamstring in Game 5 against the Bucks. He scored just 5 points.Adam Hunger/Associated PressInjury: It took less than a minute for Harden, holding his hamstring, to leave Game 1 of the Nets’ second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks. Harden missed the next three games before making a last-second decision to play in Game 5 Tuesday night. Strain to the same hamstring caused Harden to miss most of the last month of the regular season.Impact: The Nets’ top three stars — Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving — played only eight games together during the regular season. Harden is one of the most productive scorers in N.B.A. history, and he was largely ineffective in his return on Tuesday night in Brooklyn, with just 5 points and one made field goal. Without Harden’s shooting and playmaking ability, and combined with the loss of Irving, the Nets’ path to a championship becomes much more difficult. Harden is, however, expected to play in Game 6 on Thursday in Milwaukee.Kyrie Irving, Brooklyn NetsKyrie Irving landed on another player’s foot and sprained his ankle.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesInjury: During the second quarter of Game 4 against the Bucks, Irving sprained his right ankle when he landed on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s right foot after a layup. He is out indefinitely.Impact: Losing just Irving, given the Nets’ depth, probably would be a storm the team could weather. But his loss combined with Harden’s problematic hamstring, makes the Nets much more vulnerable. It puts pressure on Durant to produce historic numbers like he did in Game 5 against the Bucks (49 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists). But even without Irving, the Nets, as they showed Tuesday night, may be deep enough to get by without him if role players like Jeff Green continue to show up.Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ersEmbiid has missed just one game with a small lateral meniscus tear, but the injury has also negatively affected him when he’s played.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesInjury: Sidelined with a left knee bone bruise for a couple of weeks during the regular season, Embiid sustained a small lateral meniscus tear in his right knee in the 76ers’ first-round series with the Washington Wizards.Impact: Despite the apparent severity of his injury, Embiid has been out only once — Game 5 against the Wizards, which the 76ers won to close the series. He was terrific at the start of their conference semifinal series with the Atlanta Hawks, averaging 35.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game as the 76ers took a 2-1 series lead.He struggled, though, in a Game 4 loss, shooting 4 of 20 from the field, including 0 for 12 in the second half. He acknowledged afterward that his knee was bothering him. “As far as being 100 percent, I don’t think that’s going to happen until the year is actually over,” Embiid told reporters. “I just got to go out and manage it.”Donovan Mitchell, Utah JazzUtah Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell (45) is helped off the court after injuring his ankle.Russell Isabella/USA Today Sports, via ReutersInjury: Mitchell missed the last 16 regular-season games and Utah’s playoff opener against the Memphis Grizzlies because of a sprained right ankle.Impact: The Jazz lost their first playoff game against Memphis without Mitchell. After Mitchell returned for Game 2, the Jazz dominated the series. Mitchell averaged 28.5 points and 5.8 assists in four games on 45 percent shooting. In Utah’s second-round match up against the Clippers, Mitchell has been even more dominant, with 37.3 points a game on 46.8 percent shooting through the first four games.Mike Conley, Utah JazzMike Conley’s absence leaves the Jazz without one of their key scorers beyond Donovan Mitchell.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressInjury: Conley has not played in Utah’s semifinal series against the Clippers because of a right hamstring strain. He also missed 20 games during the regular season because of injuries or rest related to that hamstring.Impact: Conley, when healthy, is the starting point guard for the Jazz. On a team that sometimes is too reliant on Mitchell to make plays, Conley is another player who can help break down defenses to take the pressure off Mitchell. During the regular season, Conley made his first All-Star appearance and averaged 16.2 points and 6 assists per game on 44.4 percent shooting, placing him firmly in the upper tier of N.B.A. guards.Jaylen Brown, Boston CelticsBrown had season-ending wrist surgery in May.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty ImagesInjury: The Celtics announced on May 10 that Brown would miss the end of the regular season and the entire postseason because of a torn ligament in his left wrist.Impact: Brown established himself as a star this season, with averages of 24.7 points and 6 rebounds per game. He also made his first All-Star team. But his presence likely would not have made much of a difference in the playoffs, where the Celtics lost to the heavily favored Nets in the first round in five games. More

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      Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball Named N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year

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      Ball, 19, made the Hornets one of the most exciting teams to watch during the regular season.LaMelo Ball of the Charlotte Hornets won the N.B.A.’s Rookie of the Year Award on Wednesday, joining Larry Johnson and Emeka Okafor as players in the franchise’s history to receive the honor.Ball, who before this season bypassed college ball to play professionally in Australia and had a stint in Lithuania while still in high school, received 84 of 99 first-place votes to beat out Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards despite Edwards’s second-half surge. Tyrese Haliburton of the Sacramento Kings finished third.Selected with the No. 3 pick in the 2020 draft, Ball moved into Charlotte’s starting lineup in the 21st game of the season and, in tandem with the former All-Star Gordon Hayward and guard Terry Rozier, unexpectedly led the Hornets into contention for a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference. That push was derailed by a fractured right wrist Ball sustained on March 20 that forced him to miss 21 games, and Hayward was knocked out of the lineup on April 2 by a sprained right foot that sidelined him for the rest of the season.Ball, who turns 20 in August, averaged 15.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game. He also shot a respectable 43.6 percent from the field and 35.2 percent from 3-point range, after worrisome showings in both categories in the preseason (26.2 percent shooting overall and 27.3 percent on 3s in four games) amplified skepticism about his shooting ability as he made the transition to the N.B.A.Most of all, Ball has come to be known for his court vision and passing, especially as he regularly connected with Miles Bridges for alley oops and long-range assists.The Hornets’ chance to draft Ball arose only because they fortuitously moved up to No. 3 in the draft lottery from their No. 8 projection. After Charlotte landed a top-three pick, word began to spread in league circles that Michael Jordan, the Hornets’ majority owner, was a Ball fan.“He’s got a long way to go, but he’s got a chance to be a heck of a player,” Mitch Kupchak, Charlotte’s president of basketball operations, said of Ball in a phone interview with The New York Times recently.Ball was a runaway favorite to win the award before the wrist injury, which the Hornets initially feared would be season-ending. He returned to play in Charlotte’s final 10 regular-season games but, with Hayward still sidelined, could not prevent Charlotte’s lopsided loss at Indiana in a playoff play-in game after the Hornets had finished with the East’s 10th best record.Edwards, who also turns 20 in August, quickly gained a reputation for highlight-reel dunks after the Timberwolves selected him with last year’s No. 1 overall pick. He made the awards race closer than anticipated with his strong play while Ball was injured. Edwards averaged 23.8 points per game and shot 45.4 percent from the field during the season’s second half, helping Minnesota go 16-20 after a treacherous 7-29 start.Ball’s comeback enabled him to play in 71 percent of Charlotte’s games. Had he not made it back from injury, Ball would have appeared in only 57 percent of Charlotte’s games — a lower percentage than anyone who had gone on to be named rookie of the year. Patrick Ewing’s 60 percent (50 out of 82 games) for the Knicks in the 1985-86 season stands as the lowest.Johnson won rookie of the year honors for the Hornets in 1992, and Okafor won in 2005 when the franchise was known as the Bobcats. Recent winners of the award include Ja Morant (2020) of the Memphis Grizzlies, Luka Doncic (2019) of the Dallas Mavericks and Ben Simmons (2018) of the Philadelphia 76ers.Ball and his brother Lonzo Ball, who was drafted No. 2 overall by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2017 and now plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, are the first brothers in N.B.A. history to both be selected among the top three picks. More

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      Chris Paul Out Indefinitely Because of Coronavirus Protocols

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      Paul, the Phoenix Suns guard, could miss at least a part of the Western Conference finals.After leading the Phoenix Suns into the Western Conference finals, Chris Paul is in danger of missing at least part of the series after entering the N.B.A.’s coronavirus health and safety protocols.How soon Paul can return to the Suns was not immediately known. The Suns announced Wednesday that Paul was “currently out” because of the protocols and that they would next provide an update about his status on Saturday.Among the factors that will determine how long Paul, 36, will be away from the Suns are his vaccination status and whether he tested positive for the coronavirus. Players who test positive are typically placed in isolation for 10 days, but isolation time, depending on the circumstances, can be reduced if a player is vaccinated.The team did not say why Paul was in the protocol. It could mean that he tested positive, but it also could just indicate that he was in close contact with someone who did. The N.B.A. announced Wednesday afternoon that one player tested positive for the virus within the past week but, as per usual, did not name the player. It’s not clear whether Paul has been vaccinated.The prospect of Phoenix’s losing Paul, after landing a spot in the conference finals on Sunday by completing a four-game sweep of the Denver Nuggets, was the latest blow to an N.B.A. postseason rocked by a string of health-related absences for star players.With the Los Angeles Clippers announcing on Wednesday that forward Kawhi Leonard would be out indefinitely with a sprained right knee, Leonard was poised to become the eighth All-Star to miss at least one playoff game this year because of injury. That is the most in league history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Leonard hurt his knee in the fourth quarter of the Clippers’ Game 4 victory against the Utah Jazz.The seven other All-Stars on that list: the Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Boston’s Jaylen Brown, Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley, and the Nets’ James Harden and Kyrie Irving. The Clippers said Leonard would miss Wednesday night’s Game 5 against the Jazz. Paul would be the ninth All-Star to miss time this postseason if he is not cleared to rejoin the Suns before the conference finals, which will begin Sunday or Tuesday.Paul secured just the second trip to the conference finals of his 16-year career with perhaps the best series of his career. He averaged 25.5 points per game, shot 62.7 percent from the field and committed just five turnovers against 41 assists in the four games against Denver.Paul’s only previous appearance in the N.B.A.’s final four came with the Houston Rockets in 2018 and was marred by a series-turning injury. A hamstring issue sidelined him for the final two games against Golden State after Houston had taken a 3-2 series lead. Golden State capitalized on Paul’s absence to win those two games without Paul and went on to win its third championship in four years.A shoulder injury plagued Paul through the first several games of the Suns’ first-round series against the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. But Paul recovered to help the Suns capitalize on Davis’s limited availability and eliminate the Lakers in six games, the earliest playoff exit in LeBron James’s career.When asked about the shoulder after the Suns’ sweep of the Nuggets, Paul said, “I’m good now.”The N.B.A. began the season in December in each team’s home market rather than in another restricted-access bubble environment like the one it engineered last summer in Florida to complete the 2019-20 season because of the pandemic. During the first half of the regular season, the league postponed 31 games because of coronavirus intrusions that left at least one team in each matchup without the minimum of eight players in uniform. But all 30 teams managed to complete their 72-game regular seasons in May, and Commissioner Adam Silver told Time magazine in April that more than 70 percent of the league’s players had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.The N.B.A. has issued weekly updates on the number of positive coronavirus tests leaguewide and, before Wednesday, had announced three successive weeks with zero positive tests since the playoffs began on May 22. More

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      Why Kevin Durant Was Unstoppable as the Nets Beat the Bucks

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      The Bucks could not contain Kevin Durant on Tuesday.Elsa/Getty Images Kevin Durant’s performance on Tuesday night was a Pantheon Game, one that gets talked about for years to come and elevates a star player’s legacy. With Kyrie Irving out because of an ankle injury, and James Harden clearly hobbled, the Nets needed Durant to carry […] More

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      The Atlanta Hawks’ Secret Weapon Says He’s Always Been This Good

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      Bogdan Bogdanovic said he keeps improving, but he’s had these shooting skills. People are only noticing now, he said, because he’s winning.Imagine, for a second, how different the N.B.A.’s second-round Eastern Conference playoff series would be if, say, Giannis Antetokounmpo had Bogdan Bogdanovic spreading the court and opening space for him.Or where would the Atlanta Hawks be in their resurgence without the sharpshooting skills of Bogdanovic?The Milwaukee Bucks jumped a bit early during free agency in trying to secure Bogdanovic in a sign-and-trade-deal from the Sacramento Kings, after Bogdanovic was already frustrated over the Kings’ dismissal of their general manager, Vlade Divac.The rules-breaking act cost Milwaukee the deal for Bogdanovic, and a future second-round draft pick. Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent, ended up signing an offer sheet from Atlanta that Sacramento did not match. The turn of events became part of a significant overhaul that paid quick dividends for the Hawks.A bout with the coronavirus limited Bogdanovic before the season, and a knee injury forced him to miss 25 games. But his return coincided with the Hawks’ decision to elevate Nate McMillan to interim head coach from his assistant role and the team resuscitating its season by winning eight straight games. Bogdanovic has averaged 16.4 points per game in the Hawks’ playoff series against the Knicks and Philadelphia 76ers, matching his regular-season figure.Now, the fifth-seeded Hawks are improbably even at 2-2 with the 76ers, the No. 1 seed, in the best-of-seven East semifinals.Bogdanovic, 28, recently spoke to The New York Times about his exit from the Kings, his bond with his teammate Trae Young and how he became a fan of Kobe Bryant. His responses have been edited for length and clarity.Bogdanovic is averaging 16.4 points per game during the playoffs, consistent with his regular-season production.Brynn Anderson/Associated PressWhat was your perception of the Hawks before you signed your deal in Atlanta?Before everything started, before free agency, before everything, I had the conversation with the Kings and I wanted to stay, because I liked the culture and stuff and I was good with teammates. I feel like they liked to play with me. And I feel like we built something over there.But then, when they fired Vlade on my way back to Serbia, because there was an exit meeting and I’m talking with everyone, everything looks fine and I’m like, “I’m not even thinking about moving out.”So now, I’m not saying I’m there because of Vlade, but at the exit meeting, you hear something and then boom, no one says nothing and the changes are going.And I said already, “Something is going on.” But I got the call from the owner and he told me, “Hey, we still want to keep the team, but maybe we just need to change something, just so the players feel like a new staff, new beginning, blah, blah, blah.”But then, I got traded. I was in Serbia. I was working out. I didn’t talk with anyone during the summer and I talked only with my guys from the Kings and my teammates. And I didn’t know what’s going to happen and the Kings traded me overnight. And from that point, I decide, when they wanted to trade me I was like, “OK, they don’t want me there.” Like, “Why I’m even thinking about it?”So, I just wanted to leave and find the best situation for me and my family that I can go to the next level.And I said, “The Hawks were the perfect fit for me.”In the past, you’ve said that you were afraid of losing your competitiveness after losing a lot in Sacramento.Yes.Was that something that you did lose and then found this season again?No, I feel like I didn’t lose it, but I just didn’t have enough credit for it because I wasn’t winning. Because if you’re making the winning plays in a losing team and you’re still losing, that’s not a winning place. Even if I think like, “OK, that play, it doesn’t have to be a scoring play”— there is a lot of things on the court that you can influence the game to win the game.And I feel like that’s something that the regular people, they cannot see, the fans cannot see. But when you’re not winning, you’re losing the credit for it.One of the most difficult things to do in the N.B.A. is to develop a winning culture. How did the Hawks accomplish one midseason?When you’re losing, you see that very often in the league, everyone is become more selfish and they don’t care about others. And that’s what players do, trying to save their job.When you’re winning, everyone is willing to sacrifice.It seems like you and Trae Young developed a quick connection.I’m a competitor and he’s competitor, simple as that. He wants to win. He wants to work, first of all, and he knows in his life, everything he got wasn’t easy. He has to prove it every single time he has to do it. He has to work for it, and I feel the same way in my story. So, I feel like it’s easy to communicate with a guy like that.Bogdanovic silences the crowd in Philadelphia during Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesWhat was going through your mind when you held up your finger to quiet the Philadelphia crowd during Game 1?I missed a couple of shots, they were louder and louder and I made that one. It just went out of me. It’s just momentum. It’s natural, and I feel like it’s fun as well.How do these playoff environments compare to those in Europe?I feel like the culture here is fans follow the players, the superstars and individuals. In Europe, because of the so many countries, so many different cultures, they’re more team-oriented and they’re more team-sensed.Growing up, why did you choose basketball above other sports?The 2002 World Cup, everyone was talking about it, kids in school. We were shooting 3s and repeating Peja Stojakovic or some big names of Serbian basketball.And hopefully, we have now kids that they can do the same thing with our last names. And it feels good to be in that position.Were you able to watch those Kings-Lakers series with Divac and Stojakovic back in the early 2000s when you were growing up?Yeah, that was huge. I remember Dallas was a tough match for Kings all the time in the playoffs and Lakers of course. I couldn’t catch the whole series because the TV rights and all that, but whenever the game was on the TV, we would watch. I think most of the games when the Kings had the home-court advantage, they had that broadcast in Serbia. I was so young. I was 10 years old, 9 years old.But aren’t you a Kobe Bryant fan? How did you reconcile rooting for the Kings when the Lakers had Bryant?I became Kobe fan when he dropped that 81 points. That was something crazy, something impossible.So, since then I started following that guy and I liked his passion. And then a couple of years later, he won a championship then he won it again. So I was like, “Damn, this guy’s really, really good.”What does it mean for Serbian basketball that Nikola Jokic won the Most Valuable Player Award?It will take a while for him to understand what he became this year. That M.V.P. award is something that I can compare with the gold medal that our Serbian team won with the national team back then when we had our idols like Peja Stojakovic, Vlade Divac, Sasha Djordjevic.So, I feel like he can be for sure, one of the kids’ idols there and he can be the next generation motivator for the kids in Serbia. It means a lot. He is the first ever and he still has a lot of game. More

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      Jeff Green, the N.B.A.’s Roving Role Player, Hopes to Settle Down in Brooklyn

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      The Nets’ Jeff Green has played for 10 teams, two shy of the record. “It confuses me, but it isn’t frustrating,” Green said, adding, “I go out and just do the work.”Jeff Green has not played basketball everywhere, but it’s on his list. The Nets are the 10th N.B.A. team he’s played for since he was drafted in 2007, two shy of the record shared by Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, Tony Massenburg and Joe Smith.Green, 34, is one of 18 players in N.B.A. history to play for at least 10 teams. He is now in the playoffs as a core member of the Nets — one of his seven postseason teams.During the regular season, he played some of the best basketball of his career, posting a career high in offensive efficiency, while starting for more than half the season filling in for the All-Stars Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. On one of the most loaded teams in N.B.A. history, Green has carved out a niche for himself, averaging 11 points and 3.9 rebounds per game, with the occasional highlight-reel dunk.Because of a plantar fascia strain in his left foot, Green missed six straight playoff games before returning on Sunday for Game 4 of the Nets’ second-round series against Milwaukee, a Nets loss that left the best-of-seven series tied at two games apiece. Now, the Nets find themselves in an unexpected dogfight against the Bucks. And with Irving having sprained his ankle and Harden’s hamstring ailing, Green will be called upon once again to play a significant role.But Green’s career has been an especially odd trek, even in a league where players are moving around more than ever. Green has been productive but has not cashed in with long-term deals: He has joined seven of his 10 teams since the 2014-15 season. His last five contracts — with the Nets, Houston Rockets, Utah Jazz, Washington Wizards and Cleveland Cavaliers — were for one year or less, at the minimum rate. One of those was a 10-day contract with the Rockets.Green has routinely averaged around double digits in scoring and outperformed the expectations for someone with his pay. In Game 7 of the 2018 Eastern Conference finals, he had 19 points and 8 rebounds for Cleveland against the Boston Celtics, helping the Cavaliers advance to the championship round.But instead of landing him a substantial contract, that performance, after a strong regular season, only led to another minimum contract — the kind of status often reserved for players who are on the fringe of the N.B.A. or at the end of their careers.“It confuses me, but it isn’t frustrating,” Green said in a recent interview. “You know, this stuff, that’s out of my control. I go out and just do the work. And I let my agent handle the logistics of the contract terms, but it is confusing to the point of, ‘What else do I need to do to prove that I’m not a minimum guy?’”Green said that he would like to stay with the Nets past this year.“I’d love to settle down in one place,” Green said. “There’s Brooklyn. I’d love to settle down in Brooklyn. I’m not too concerned with the N.B.A. record or how many teams. When you think about it, if I was to play 22 years, played on 15 teams, what does that say? It has no teeth behind it.”Green defending Jayson Tatum during the Nets’ first-round series against Boston.Kathy Willens/Associated PressGreen’s lack of multiyear offers hasn’t gone unnoticed. After he agreed to yet another minimum deal, with the Jazz in 2019, Dwyane Wade said in a viral Twitter post: “I do NOT understand how and why Jeff Green keep signing these 1 year deals for the minimum. This is now 3 years in a row. He’s never injured, He’s never been a problem in the locker room, He’s athletic, he can shoot the 3, he can guard multiple positions and he’s not old.”DeAndre Jordan, Green’s friend and Nets teammate, called it “a little unfair,” but added, “Obviously, teams want him because he continues to get signed.”For a year.So instead, Green has settled for life as a professional basketball nomad.Green, a native of Cheverly, Md., began his N.B.A. journey in 2007 after three years at Georgetown. He was drafted fifth overall by the Boston Celtics and immediately traded to the Seattle SuperSonics in a package for Ray Allen. The Sonics had already drafted Durant at No. 2 overall. Because of Green’s athleticism and scoring ability, there was hope that Green would become a star next to Durant.That never materialized. At his best, Green has showed a talent for scoring, but not much else — which helps explain why he hasn’t been able to settle with one franchise. And while in some cases an N.B.A. player might bounce around because of concerns about locker room presence, Green has a positive reputation off the court.Kevin Ollie, a teammate of Green’s in Oklahoma City after the Seattle franchise moved, said Green’s personality was “bubbly,” but “detail-oriented” on the floor. “You see the hard work, but then you see love behind the hard work,” he said.Ollie knows what it’s like to move around: He played for 11 teams, one more than Green. He is one of around 200 teammates that Green has played with in his N.B.A. career. Ollie said one of the challenges of playing for so many teams was constantly having to uproot his family, particularly his children. Green said his wife, Stephanie, “makes it very easy.”“I just live in the moment,” Green said. “I’ve enjoyed each city that I’ve been in, each team, teammate, that I’ve been with.”Ish Smith, now a guard for the Washington Wizards, his 11th team, said playing for so many franchises means locations that should be familiar are not: the grocery store, the arena, the practice gym.“The difficult part is when you leave one team and go to another team, you’ve got to pick up all your stuff,” Smith said. “All your belongings. Get traded to a new team and get acclimated to a new system and a new area. New everything. And then that’s just the off-the-court stuff. The on-the-court stuff is, playing-wise, knowing what each team wants from you.”He added, “But the blessing is you’re in the N.B.A.”Asked if he was going to get the record for most teams played for, Smith said, “For sure.”Green supplemented LeBron James’s 35 points in Game 7 of the 2018 Eastern Conference finals with 19 points of his own.Elise Amendola/Associated PressOne of the players that Smith would have to overtake is Jackson, who played for 12 teams from 1992 to 2006. Jackson said he was able to more easily adapt to that many franchises because he could play multiple positions.“Each person’s journey is a lot different,” said Jackson, who is now an analyst for Turner Sports. “With Jeff, and kind of like mine, you perform a role which the organization asks you to, and you perform it to the best of your ability. After that, there’s nothing you can do. If they choose to go in a different direction, whether contract-wise, they’ve got a younger player that comes in, or they can move you for an asset, it’s really out of your control.”That Green is even still in the league is surprising. In January 2012, when he was 25 and playing for the Celtics, he had surgery for an aortic aneurysm that was discovered in a routine physical. The heart surgery likely saved his life. He missed the 2011-12 season.A decade later, Green said he never doubted that he would play again.“I reflect on it by being grateful and blessed to wake up and still be able to play. That’s my reflection,” Green said. “My goal after the surgery was to go out and play as hard, and have people forget that I even had surgery. And I think that was the goal and I think I succeeded.”Instead, Green talks about playing into his mid-40s, like his former teammate Vince Carter, who played for eight teams. But either way, Green said he is satisfied with his career plight.“You can’t take this career, these opportunities for granted,” Green said. “Regardless of how many teams that I’ve been on, the end of the day, my goal was to play in the N.B.A. and I’m still doing that.” More