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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

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      It’s a New Series as the Injury Bug Returns to Bite the Nets

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      The Bucks tied their playoff series with the Nets, 2-2, as Kyrie Irving left with an injured ankle, joining James Harden on the Brooklyn sideline.MILWAUKEE — When the Nets settled into their hotel in the city’s Historic Third Ward last week, their 2-0 series cushion against the hometown Bucks looked especially cushy. A lead that reached as high as 49 points in the Nets’ Game 2 rout — without the injured James Harden — had the entire N.B.A. discouraged.By the time the Nets flew back home on Sunday night, after a second consecutive road defeat and the loss of another superstar, they were abruptly forced to contemplate the possibility that fielding a full-strength team is a luxury this season might never afford, no matter how lavishly the roster reads.Kyrie Irving’s right foot bent sharply in Sunday’s second quarter after he converted a layup and came down on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s right foot. Antetokounmpo had positioned himself for a rebound but left little landing space, and Irving was soon ruled out for the rest of the game with a sprained right ankle. It all meant that Kevin Durant would have to try to keep up with the emboldened Bucks alongside a rather limited supporting cast, while Harden stood throughout the game to shout instructions from the bench in street clothes.Nets guard Kyrie Irving grabbed his leg after being injured in the second quarter. Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMilwaukee predictably pulled away for a 107-96 Game 4 victory that evened this best-of-seven, second-round series at two games apiece and which, coupled with the uncertainty of Irving’s status, erased any notion of comfort that the Nets once felt. Irving left Fiserv Forum on crutches and with his right foot in a walking boot after X-rays were negative, according to a person briefed on Irving’s status but unauthorized to discuss it publicly.“It was a big adjustment tonight to play without him and James,” Nets Coach Steve Nash said, referring to Irving and Harden. “But we’ve had that type of year.”Even by the standards of this injury-laden Nets season, in which Durant, Irving and Harden have scarcely been able to play together since Harden arrived in a four-team trade in mid-January, Sunday afternoon’s events had the jarring feel of a new low. That was the unavoidable takeaway without even factoring in the fire alarm after the final buzzer that forced all arena occupants, including both teams, to be evacuated for what the Bucks termed “precautionary reasons.”The Nets’ original aim for this Milwaukee trip was to win at least one game and set up Game 5 on Tuesday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn as a closeout opportunity, enabling Harden to essentially take the series off after aggravating a right hamstring injury in the opening minute of Game 1. With the series now tied, in what was billed in many corners as a matchup that could well produce the N.B.A.’s next champion, Nash found himself fielding questions about the urge to restore Harden to the lineup on Tuesday.“I think it’s an independent case,” Nash said, swatting down the idea that Irving’s prognosis would influence Harden’s timetable. “I don’t want James to be rushed back.”The other factor, beyond Irving’s setback, that prompted such questions: Milwaukee had begun to cause problems even before Irving’s exit and looked a lot more like the team that swept the Miami Heat in the first round. Antetokounmpo had the standout box-score line with 34 points and 12 rebounds, but P.J. Tucker was the Bucks’ unquestioned spark, easing the pressure (at least temporarily) on the Bucks’ under-fire coach, Mike Budenholzer. After scoring just 9 points in the first three games of the series, Tucker sank three 3-pointers from the corner, his well-chronicled favorite spot, and finished with 13 points and 7 rebounds.He might have been even more effective at the other end, imposing his physicality on Durant in precisely the manner the Bucks envisioned when they acquired him from Houston in a March trade. Durant led the Nets with 28 points and 13 rebounds but needed 25 shots to reach his scoring total. When Tucker was the primary defender, Durant shot 3 for 12.Hounded by the Bucks’ P.J. Tucker, the Nets’ Kevin Durant led the Nets with 28 points but needed 25 shots to reach his total.Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersDuring a verbal confrontation between Tucker and Durant in Milwaukee’s narrow Game 3 victory, Antjuan Lambert, a personal security guard for Durant who was hired by the Nets when they signed him, came onto the court and shoved Tucker. The Nets were notified on Saturday that Lambert had been barred by the league office from any further on-court involvement in the series.Sunday actually brought a positive start for the Nets, with Jeff Green being cleared to make his series debut after missing the first three games with a left plantar fascia strain. Green immediately drew a charge upon entering the game late in the first quarter, putting Antetokounmpo in early foul trouble, but the Nets’ hopeful vibe was soon doused by the sight of Irving hobbling to the locker room after he spent several minutes on the floor recovering from the painful landing.When the Nets finally surrendered in the fourth quarter, pulling Durant with 4 minutes 28 seconds remaining and the hosts leading by 99-84, Milwaukee’s crowd, which included the Wisconsin native J.J. Watt of the Arizona Cardinals, broke into a “Bucks in six” chant.You’d have struggled to find anyone, with or without local ties, who believed that outcome would be possible after Milwaukee’s humbling 125-86 defeat at Barclays Center last Monday in Game 2. In these playoffs, though, injuries continue to wield the largest influence. Health woes for star players were unrelenting throughout the second half of a harried regular season conducted in pandemic conditions — and remain so.Remember the warning we got from Philadelphia 76ers Coach Doc Rivers at the start of the second round?“It’s going to be the battle of the fittest by the end of this thing,” Rivers said. He was unsure at the time how well his star center, Joel Embiid, would fare trying to play through a slight meniscus tear in his right knee in the 76ers’ second-round series against Atlanta.Embiid, for now, is thriving. For the Nets and especially Durant? Suddenly nothing is slight about their shortage of playmakers or the load he’ll have to carry. More

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      ‘I Surely Can Stand in Front of Men and Lead Them’

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      With women being mentioned for open head coaching vacancies, the N.B.A. seems primed to break one glass ceiling in sports.It’s about time.The N.B.A. sits poised to be the first American men’s professional sports league to hire a woman as a head coach.The bond is there, boosted by the league’s growing group of assistants who are women and its siblinglike connection to the W.N.B.A.The N.B.A.’s players have shown a clear willingness to be led by women. Just ask Michele Roberts, the head of their powerful union.Job openings are plentiful. There are head coach postings in Orlando, Indiana, Portland and Boston.This time around, there are women among the candidates, and that’s a sea change not just for the N.B.A. but for all of sport.It’s bound to happen. If not this year, then hopefully in the next few.Will a woman running an N.B.A. team from the bench shatter the glass ceiling? Not quite. Not until women are regularly hired for such positions.More than that, true advancement will come only if trailblazing in the men’s game is just one of many opportunities for women to coach at any level — including college basketball and the W.N.B.A.Still, think of the powerful message that would be sent by that first N.B.A. hire: The leadership of a billion-dollar franchise and some of the most famous male athletes on the planet entrusted to a woman.“It would be huge,” Dawn Staley said. “We just need the right situation.”She has the bona fides to speak up.Enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame after a stellar playing career, Staley, 51, is now the head coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic team and the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team, a perennial power. She is also one of the most prominent Black women in coaching.“There are a lot of women good enough” to lead an N.B.A. team, Staley said.Kara Lawson was an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics during the 2019-20 season before departing to become head coach of the Duke women’s basketball team.Michael Dwyer/Associated PressBecky Hammon is one. She’s got insider credentials, having spent several years as Gregg Popovich’s assistant in San Antonio. In the N.B.A., that’s like being at the right hand of God.Duke’s Kara Lawson is another. She was a favorite of Brad Stevens, the former coach of the Celtics and their current president of basketball operations, during her stint as an assistant in Boston, and is reportedly on the team’s radar.What about Staley herself? A bold tactician and motivator, she is more than capable of making the leap. That’s why I sought her wisdom.When we spoke, she made it clear she wasn’t campaigning for an N.B.A. job. She treasures her team at South Carolina, which she has led to three Final Fours since 2015 and a national title in 2017.“I come with a lot of credentials,” she said. “I surely have the confidence. I surely can stand in front of men and lead them. First-team All-Stars. M.V.P.s. I’m OK with that.”More than OK, given the firm tone in her voice as she said that.What about the absence of N.B.A. experience?“I haven’t coached in the league,” Staley said, forthright. “But you know what? I’m a quick learn. I’m a quick learn.”It’s a frequent jab when talk of great female coaches helming men’s teams gets too serious — as if there haven’t been plenty of men who have led N.B.A. teams without spending time in the league. (Case in point: Stevens, who took over the Celtics after a coaching career spent entirely in college.)That common criticism prompted me to wonder what other red herrings could be thrown in the path of a female hire. What will it be like, I asked Staley, for the first woman to break through in the N.B.A.?The first woman will no doubt have plenty of supporters, she said. But there will also be knuckle-draggers who still believe that no matter what the sport, a woman cannot effectively lead male stars.“A lot of people would be out there, just waiting for you to make a mistake, waiting for you to be wrong,” she said. “There’s a whole dynamic that men, white or Black, just don’t have to think about. It’s a female thing. The expectation will be so much greater than the male coach. So much greater.”Female coaches at every level and in every sport are used to unfair scrutiny of everything from their looks to the way they speak to their strategies. The trailblazing coach will face obstacles that bring to mind those of other “firsts” who broke down barriers in sports.The city and fan base will also need to be prepared to embrace change — particularly, given the tangle of racism and sexism in America, if the coach is a Black woman.Being the first has a deep resonance that can spread far and wide, but there’s nuance to the battle for equality that women are fighting on all fronts.We can take a cue from Staley, who in our conversation noted repeatedly how happy she is at South Carolina. She sees herself in women’s college basketball for the long haul, teaching, cajoling and “getting young women ready to go to the W.N.B.A., so our W.N.B.A. can be around for another 25 years.”And a cue from the recently retired Muffet McGraw, the other Hall of Famer I spoke with last week.Muffet McGraw, center right, said women leading N.B.A. teams is “not something I even care about.” Late in her 33-year career at Notre Dame, she decided to hire only assistants who were women.Jessica Hill/Associated PressWomen leading N.B.A. teams, she said, is “not something I even care about.”“I want women coaching women,” she added. When it comes to men’s pro basketball, “I want to see those women going off to the N.B.A. and being great assistants and then coming back and taking over women’s jobs in college and the pros.”Her candor was no surprise.In her 33 years of coaching women’s basketball at Notre Dame, McGraw won a pair of national championships and turned her team into a venerable power. She also gained a reputation for speaking out about the need to have women in positions of leadership and for backing it up: As her career evolved, she decided to hire female assistants only.McGraw pointed out how much work remained to be done. In 1972, at the dawn of Title IX, the landmark law that created a pathway for gender equality on college campuses, 90 percent of the head coaches in women’s college sports were female. Then, slowly but surely, as the fame in women’s sports increased, along with the pay, men began taking over.By 2019, the numbers had dipped to around 40 percent in the highest division of college sports overall — and around 60 percent in Division I women’s basketball.It’s hardly better in the W.N.B.A. Despite its reputation as a bastion of empowerment, the 12-team league has only five female head coaches.There are too few female coaches at all levels and all sports, from elementary age through high school and beyond. “Why is it,” McGraw wondered, “that when your kid goes out to play soccer and they are age 5 and 6, it’s so rare to see someone’s mom coaching the team? And then you get older, it’s almost always a guy. So it’s no wonder that there’s a stereotype in there. You’re led to believe that when you think of a leader you think of a man.“That has to change.”Glass ceilings are everywhere for women. Shattering them in men’s professional basketball would be an important start in shattering them all. More

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      Bucks Slow Down Nets to Trim Series Lead to 2-1

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      A grinding game of defense allowed Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton to shine in a 86-83 win over the Nets.To get a much needed win on Thursday, the Milwaukee Bucks did the opposite of what got the team so far in the playoffs: They slowed down their play.It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t terribly efficient. But it was enough to let their stars, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, break through.In a throwback game that would have seemed at home in the 2000s, the Bucks squeezed out a victory Thursday night over the Nets, 86-83, and narrowed Brooklyn’s lead in the Eastern Conference semifinal series to two games to one.For the Bucks, it was an admirable recovery from their Game 2 performance, when the Nets thumped them by 39 points.This time, the Bucks crawled to victory.During the regular season, the Bucks were fast — second in pace only to the Washington Wizards. On Thursday night, the Bucks generated offense by giving the ball to Antetokounmpo and Middleton. They either isolated them one-on-one or created shots through grinding screen-and-rolls to get near the basket. Throughout the game, the Bucks had only seven fast break points. During the regular season, they averaged 14.5, good for fourth in the N.B.A.“Personally, I enjoy fast paced, finding my teammates for a lot of 3’s, high-scoring game, obviously. But at the end of the day, it was a very low-scoring game,” Antetokounmpo said.The slower pace allowed the team to get the ball to Antetokounmpo and Middleton, who have seven All Star appearances between them, and get out of the way. They combined to score 68 of Milwaukee’s 86 points. The duo played almost the entire game. Antetokounmpo shot 14 for 31 from the field (45.1 percent) and Middleton was 12 for 25 (48 percent).Most of their damage was done in the opening period, when the Bucks led by as many as 21 points, with the home arena at the Fiserv Forum at their backs. Antetokounmpo and Middleton scored all of the Bucks 30 points in the first period, and Milwaukee entered the second period leading, 30-11.“I think there was a little bit of setting the tone,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said after the game. “Those two guys having a big first quarter, they’re our leaders. They’ve been here a long time. They’ve been through a lot together.”He added: “It doesn’t matter how you do it at this time of year. You just have to find a way to get it done.”Yet the Nets quickly recovered in the second quarter. The Nets even took the lead in the fourth period on a Kevin Durant 3-pointer with 1:23 left in regulation. But a Middleton layup stanched the bleeding, and his free throws with 2.1 seconds left didn’t leave much time for the Nets to get a quality shot to tie the game. (Durant’s desperation 3 still almost went in.)This was the kind of game where Antetokounmpo’s considerable strengths and weaknesses were on full display. In the first quarter, Antetokounmpo attacked the rim relentlessly, and was able to get himself multiple dunks in the way that has made him a star. He got his primary defender — Blake Griffin — into early foul trouble.But after the opening quarter, Antetokounmpo’s flaws began to manifest. The Nets left him wide open from the perimeter, and Antetokounmpo obliged the Nets by shooting lots of 3’s. He was 1 for 8 from deep, and those missed shots helped the Nets, who are still missing James Harden, climb back in the game. It was Antetokounmpo’s career high in 3-point shots in a postseason game.Giannis Antetokounmpo took eight 3-point shots, a career playoff high. He made just one.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesAsked about his shooting, Antetokounmpo seemed to be taken by surprise at first: “I took eight 3’s tonight?”“They’re back. You’ve got to shoot it,” Antetokounmpo said, referring to how defenders play off him. “Not necessarily, you’ve got to shoot, but you’ve got to make the best decision.”Antetokounmpo further defended his willingness to take jumpers by saying that his instinct told him to do so and that basketball is a game based on instinct.“Like everybody, if you wake up in the morning and you think you’ve got to drink a cup of coffee, and that’s what you want to do — instinct is telling you, that’s what your soul is telling you — whatever the case might be, that’s what you do. It doesn’t even matter what happens next,” Antetokounmpo said.It is also possible that Antetokounmpo strayed to the perimeter to avoid the risk of initiating contact under the basket and getting fouled.He was only 4 for 9 from the free throw line, and also had a rarely called 10-second violation. Defensively, the Bucks held the Nets to 36.2 shooting from the field. Durant was only 11 for 28 from the field. Kyrie Irving was 9 for 22.One offensive liability the Nets have — a rare one — is that they are predominantly a jump shooting team. They’re based on finesse, rather than on attacking the basket in the way Antetokounmpo does. The Nets only went to the line eight times on Thursday, as opposed to the Bucks’ 19. Six of those free throws were shot by Durant, who missed many midrange shots he usually makes.This means the same looks that fell for the Nets in the first two games didn’t fall on Thursday. That happens sometimes with jump shooting teams. There is a high amount of variance and at some point, usually a regression to the mean.Joe Harris, one of the best 3-point shooters in the league, missed several wide open chances and finished 1 for 11 from the field. And if jump shots aren’t falling for the Nets, they have trouble scoring. (During the regular season, the Nets were second in the league in 3-point percentage at 39.2 percent. On Thursday night, they were 8 for 32 for 25 percent.)Which means a slow, low-scoring slugfest could benefit Milwaukee in the long-term. But it’s unclear Antetokounmpo wants that.“We could play better,” Antetokounmpo said. “We could play faster. We could play more together. We can move the ball better so we can get back to our scoring 110, 120 points like we usually do.” More

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      In Jae Crowder, the Suns Have an Enforcer With Some Flair

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      Crowder does a little bit of everything for Phoenix. He’s a key defender, a 3-point specialist and if the need arises, a solid salsa dancer.The Phoenix Suns had a growing lead on Wednesday night when Aaron Gordon of the Denver Nuggets tried to move toward the 3-point line on an offensive possession. He definitely tried. The problem was Jae Crowder had blocked Gordon’s path with his 6-foot-6, 235-pound frame. There was shoving and arguing, then a flurry of whistles and a mild tussle appeared in danger of turning into a full-blown fracas.It was no surprise, of course, that Crowder, a forward who moonlights as the Suns’ resident enforcer, was in the middle of it. Crowder and Gordon were assessed technical fouls.“Honestly, it comes at me, I don’t seek it,” Crowder said of his extracurriculars. “Other teams just try to be physical with me, try to get me riled up. I don’t know if they know it, but I like that style of play. I like to trash talk. I like all of that because it definitely gets me going, and I think my team definitely feeds off it a little bit, the energy of it.”The Suns are roughing up the Nuggets — and Nikola Jokic, the N.B.A.’s freshly minted most valuable player — in their Western Conference semifinal series, cruising to a pair of lopsided wins ahead of Game 3 on Friday in Denver.And while the Suns are powered by their backcourt tandem of Devin Booker and Chris Paul, Crowder has added an extra layer of feistiness and playoff experience. Most of the time, he does his work in the game’s quiet corners: defending, rebounding, screening. But when the need arises, he will surface to hit a 3-pointer or get in the face of an opposing player. It was no accident that TNT stuck a microphone on him for its broadcast of the Suns’ 123-98 win in Game 2 in Phoenix.“Jae is never fazed by anything,” Paul said.Crowder does not lack for confidence and he has quickly made himself popular in Phoenix. Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesIn five straight playoff wins for the Suns, dating to the middle of their first-round series against the Los Angeles Lakers, Crowder has averaged 13.8 points and 5 rebounds a game while shooting 50 percent from the field and 46.2 percent from 3-point range. On Wednesday, he did not put up gaudy numbers — he scored 11 points — but picked his spots. He made the team’s first two field goals, then opened the second half with a 3-pointer that seemed to signal that a blowout was brewing.“That’s just how we try to play,” Crowder said. “We try to impose our will early.”The son of Corey Crowder, a former N.B.A. player for the Utah Jazz and the San Antonio Spurs, Crowder, 30, grew up outside of Atlanta (where he was a lightly recruited high school prospect). He attended two junior colleges before he landed at Marquette, where he was the Big East Player of the Year as a senior. His nomadic basketball life continued when the Cleveland Cavaliers traded him to the Dallas Mavericks shortly after they selected him with the 34th pick in the 2012 draft.Crowder has played for seven teams in nine seasons, though he may stick around in Phoenix for a while. He signed a three-year deal worth about $29 million as a free agent in November after leaving Miami, and his value is clear: He does a bit of everything, which includes defending multiple positions and stretching the floor as a 3-point threat. And for a young team with big goals, he provides a level of physicality that comes only with experience.Crowder struggled to keep his composure in the first three games against the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round. He recovered well to help his team win the series.Sean M. Haffey/Getty ImagesConsider the Suns’ series with the Lakers, which featured something of a telenovela starring Crowder and LeBron James. Through the first three games of the series, Crowder struggled with his jumper (which can happen), shooting 7 of 27 from the field, and James went straight at him in the latter stages of the Lakers’ Game 3 win as James’s teammates egged him on.Other players might have folded like origami. Instead, Crowder returned for Game 4 and scored 17 points — in front of a jeering crowd at Staples Center, no less — as the Suns evened the series.In the Suns’ closeout victory in Game 6, Crowder scored 18 points on 6 of 9 shooting from the 3-point line (he did not attempt any shots inside the arc). During a break in play with less than a minute remaining, Crowder salsa danced directly in front of James — a homage of sorts to a dance that James performs in a commercial for Mountain Dew — and was ejected. Crowder, who is seldom boring, sprinted to the locker room like Usain Bolt.Afterward, he posted a couple of photos of himself doing the salsa on his Instagram account (@Bossmann99), along with a caption: “AINT NO FUN WHEN THE RABBIT GOT THE GUN.” As if to make it abundantly clear that he had crafted the post himself, he signed it, “Big 99” — a reference to his uniform number.“I felt like we got disrespected a little bit in Game 3 or whatever,” Crowder said, “so I did what I had to do in the closing game.”While he pledged to do the salsa with fans in Phoenix if the Suns win the championship, Crowder said he was trying to exercise a bit more restraint with opposing players at this stage of the playoffs. He has already paid his share of fines.“I’ve got to be smart,” he said. “I can’t always bite the bait and keep giving money back to the league.”Against the Nuggets, the Suns are winning with balance. In both wins, all five starters have scored in double figures. They are passing the ball and operating as a collective whole, a high-speed machine with synchronized parts. Crowder is one among many, but important in his own way.“It makes the task that much more difficult for our opponent when everybody’s rolling,” Crowder said. More