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      Rudy Gobert Wins Third Defensive Player of the Year Award

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      Gobert, the Utah Jazz center, won the honor for the third time in four years after leading the N.B.A. in total blocks.Rudy Gobert, the Utah Jazz center, won yet another Defensive Player of the Year Award, the N.B.A. announced Wednesday. It was Gobert’s third time winning the award in four years. He is the fourth player in league history to win the honor three times after the four-time winners Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace and the three-time winner Dwight Howard.The award was announced, appropriately enough, a day after the Jazz won the opening game of their semifinal series against the Los Angeles Clippers, in part because of a game-saving block by Gobert at the end of regulation.“I think it takes team effort,” Gobert said in an interview with TNT’s “Inside The N.B.A.,” moments after he was announced as the recipient. “It takes obviously toughness, mental toughness. It’s just hard work, dedication. It’s every single day, you’ve got to come in with that mind-set to try to make your team as good as it can be on that end.”Gobert, 28, anchored the Jazz, who had third-best defense in the league and its best record. He received 84 first-place votes and 464 total points. Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons, the runner-up, had 287 points and 15 first-place votes. A hundred members of the news media vote on the award, but The New York Times does not participate.As a tall center who does not shoot or pass well, Gobert is a bit of an anomaly in today’s N.B.A. His game is centered around protecting the rim and dunking. Even so, Gobert, a two-time All-Star, is one of the most impactful players in the league. He was fourth in the N.B.A. in win shares per 48 minutes — essentially a stat estimating how many wins a player contributes to his team. His 13.5 rebounds per game was second in the league behind Atlanta’s Clint Capela. According to league tracking numbers, Gobert defended the most field goal attempts at the rim (549) and was among the N.B.A.’s best in effectively contesting those shots.When Donovan Mitchell, the Jazz’s star guard, missed much of the second half of the season because of an injury, Gobert’s defense helped keep the Jazz afloat. Last year, there was friction between Mitchell and Gobert after Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, days after appearing to mock it. Gobert’s test set off the season’s postponement, followed by several other leagues doing the same.Gobert’s ascent in the league is a surprising one. He was drafted with the 27th pick of the 2013 draft by the Denver Nuggets out of France, and then was immediately traded to the Jazz, where he has surpassed the expectations of those typically drafted at the end of the first round. More

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      For Four Key Teams, the Off-Season Begins Early

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      The Lakers have to figure out how to regroup, the Mavericks need to support Luka Doncic. The Celtics are shaking things up and Portland is looking for a coach.No playoff team seeded seventh has won an N.B.A. championship. That did not stop oddsmakers from listing the Los Angeles Lakers behind only the Nets as title favorites when the playoffs began. Nor did it stop the second-seeded Phoenix Suns from ousting the Lakers immediately.The Atlanta Hawks’ five-game dismissal of the Knicks was the only surprise, based on seedings, among the eight series in the opening round of the playoffs, but you have probably heard my stance by now, via traditional or social media: Round 1 was bonkers even without results that could be classified as upsets.The rapid demise of the defending champion Lakers was merely one source of chaos. After detailing many of them in Sunday’s column, let’s zoom in on four teams that have already been ushered into the off-season.The first first-round exit of LeBron James’s 18-year career was an aberration on many levels.The Lakers slipped so far in the standings largely because James (27) and Anthony Davis (36) combined to miss 63 games. James had never previously faced a first-round matchup against the 82-game equivalent of a 58-win team.Losing early does come with a silver lining. With Davis ailing and little hope of a deep run, the Lakers were better off bowing out so their stars could have the longest recuperation period possible. To ensure that last season’s title at the Walt Disney World bubble is not the only one they win together, James and Davis clearly need the extra time to recover after the way they responded to the shortest turnaround from one season to the next (71 days) in N.B.A. history.The Lakers’ larger problem is that James, who turns 37 in December, and Davis, whose durability has never been questioned louder, are not assured of being surrounded by more reliable teammates next season. We detailed in early April how the ballyhooed off-season acquisitions of Dennis Schroder, Montrezl Harrell, Marc Gasol and Wes Matthews had not panned out. It got only worse after that for the Lakers’ role players; and the March acquisition of Andre Drummond proved even more ill-fitting.The Lakers promised Drummond a starting role to secure his commitment in free agency, according to two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. By Game 6, Drummond was rooted to the bench, receiving zero minutes in an elimination game. Worse, with such limited salary-cap flexibility to make changes, the Lakers likely must pay Schroder more than they’d like to in free agency — after Schroder turned down a four-year extension offer worth more than $80 million during the season — or lose him without the means to sign a suitable replacement.The refusal to surrender Talen Horton-Tucker in trade talks for Kyle Lowry will likewise linger as another source of regret if Horton-Tucker, 20, doesn’t blossom next season or figure in a helpful trade. He earned only 48 minutes of playing time across four games against the Suns.The Mavericks heard the best news they possibly could on the day after their first-round unraveling against the Clippers.Luka Doncic all but announced on Monday that he would sign a five-year contract extension in August.There was no grave concern in Dallas that Doncic wouldn’t sign a deal expected to exceed $200 million, which would be the richest rookie extension in league history, but the public reassurance won’t hurt given the daunting challenges the Mavericks face to put a better team around him.They owe Kristaps Porzingis, a former Knick, nearly $102 million over the next three seasons, which makes him incredibly difficult to trade after a postseason in which he had a marginal impact offensively and, of greater concern, was punished defensively. The Mavericks surrendered two future first-round picks to the Knicks and signed Porzingis to a five-year, $158 million contract before he ever logged a second for them in the belief he would mesh well with Doncic and provide elite rim protection. Neither is happening after Porzingis sustained the second serious knee injury of his career (a right lateral meniscus tear) in last season’s bubble.With limited flexibility to upgrade the roster, the Dallas Mavericks need Kristaps Porzingis to develop into the sidekick for Luka Doncic that they had envisioned. Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTim Hardaway Jr. unexpectedly emerged as Dallas’s more dependable former Knick, prompting cynics in Dallas and beyond to increasingly mock it as “the Tim Hardaway Jr. trade.” I reported on May 27 that there was confidence within the Mavericks’ organization that they could re-sign Hardaway in free agency, but doing so would leave them without any wiggle room to make another splashy signing.Mark Cuban, the team’s owner, made it clear he had no intention of making a coaching change despite Rick Carlisle’s sixth successive first-round exit since Dallas’s championship in 2011. As a result, there is a strong likelihood that the key figures in Doncic’s orbit next season will be mostly the same. Doncic’s conditioning and fourth-quarter freshness can certainly be nitpicked, but he averaged 35.7 points, 7.9 rebounds and 10.3 assists while being frequently hounded by the Clippers’ two-way menace, Kawhi Leonard. Can Dallas really ask for more?Short-term improvement for the Mavericks thus could hinge on whether they can salvage Porzingis, who, at 25, at least seems to understand that he has to adapt to what Doncic needs.“The game’s evolving,” Porzingis said. “The way I was playing in New York, a lot of post-ups, barely any teams do those kinds of things anymore, so my game has to evolve and I have to find ways I can be effective.”Danny Ainge coached the Phoenix Suns for three-plus seasons before returning to the team he was most associated with as a player and becoming one of the game’s most successful executives with the Celtics.Brad Stevens coached the Celtics for eight seasons and will now try to make the same transition Ainge did.The move makes sense only because Celtics management is known to love Stevens and dread change. Ainge had a successful N.B.A. career as a player, coach and broadcaster before he took over Boston’s front office in May 2003. Stevens has only ever been a coach at the highest levels and will have to overcome even more skepticism about his preparedness for the job than he did when he left Butler University for the N.B.A. in July 2013.Whispers in the past week that the N.B.A. coaching grind had begun to wear on Stevens, 44, are the most concerning aspect about the Celtics’ abrupt power shift. The front-office grind can be even more withering.It should help Stevens that the well-regarded assistant general manager Mike Zarren is expected to expand his responsibility and lend considerable guidance. Besides hiring his own replacement on the bench, Stevens has to overcome limited flexibility to improve a roster around Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown that Ainge said in a February radio interview was “not good.”I wondered at the time why Ainge was willing to put public pressure on himself to make in-season upgrades that he was ultimately unable to deliver. Chances are Ainge already knew, deep down, he would be stepping down at season’s end.Trail Blazers General Manager Neil Olshey said on Monday that he planned to evaluate “20 to 25 candidates” to replace Terry Stotts as coach.The expectation in league coaching circles nonetheless persists that Olshey already knows he wants to hire the former N.B.A. finals M.V.P. Chauncey Billups, an assistant to Tyronn Lue with the Los Angeles Clippers, to take over.Other opportunities could materialize for the in-demand Billups, but his path to the Portland job opened up considerably when Jason Kidd, an assistant coach to Frank Vogel with the Lakers and Damian Lillard’s preferred choice to succeed Stotts, withdrew from consideration before the search really started. Kidd wanted no part of Lillard pushing him on a resistant G.M.The onus, though, is on Olshey to mollify a frustrated Lillard, who is rapidly gaining on Washington’s Bradley Beal as the star some rival front offices want to believe they have a chance of pilfering. Referring to Lillard (or Beal) as a disgruntled star might be a step too far, but he appears to have begun questioning his well-chronicled loyalty to the franchise that drafted him out of Weber State. After Portland’s first-round exit to Denver, Lillard captioned a photo with a “How long should I stay dedicated?” reference borrowed from the rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle, who was fatally shot in 2019.Lillard averaged 34.3 points and 10.2 assists per game against Denver. It’s hard to imagine him delivering more — or the tension fading fast after Olshey insisted that the Blazers’ early exit and regular-season defensive rating of 29th were not “a product of the roster.” Olshey’s unwillingness to take any blame for Portland’s fourth first-round exit in five seasons had people buzzing leaguewide about his blame-free stance.The Scoop @TheSteinLineJune 7Luka Doncic on signing the looming $200 million contract extension he will be offered this summer: “I think you know the answer.”Early estimates have the rookie extension this off-season for Luka Doncic crossing the $200 million threshold over five years and the Mavericks, league sources say, naturally intend to offer it to Doncic once free agency begins in August.June 5The Magic have interest in former Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts, league sources say, after Orlando and Steve Clifford parted ways today.Stotts is also said to be drawing interest from Indiana as the Pacers decide whether to retain or replace Nate Bjorkgren after Year 1. Stotts coached Portland to eight straight playoff berths and one conference finals, exiting after a disappointing first-round loss to Denver.Corner ThreeLuka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks had a painful collapse against Paul George and the Los Angeles Clippers. How painful is a matter of opinion.Ashley Landis/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: This Dallas fan finds the 2007 first-round loss by the top-seeded Mavericks to No. 8 Golden State much more painful than the loss to Miami in the 2006 finals. How many upsets have we seen where No. 8 beats No. 1? — Mark CunninghamStein: I expected some Mavericks fans to quibble with my recent assertions, both in story form and on Twitter, that Dallas’s collapse(s) in its first-round series against the Clippers would land in the same ZIP code as the Mavericks’ fold in the 2006 finals against Miami after winning the first two games.You’ve surprised me, though. I haven’t received any other messages (to my knowledge) that dredged up the Mavericks’ first-round pratfall in 2007 against the We Believe Warriors — which put Dirk Nowitzki in the uncomfortable position of having to accept the league’s Most Valuable Player Award after Dallas had been eliminated from the playoffs — as their low point.It’s a good reminder that these sorts of sporting heartbreaks can hit everybody differently.I noted in the piece I wrote after the Mavericks lost Games 3 and 4 at home to the Clippers, probably better than I did in a subsequent tweet, that the pain inflicted by any first-round series outcome can’t really compare with a defeat in the N.B.A. finals. Yet I am holding firm on my contention that the leads Dallas just squandered against the Clippers amount to another all-timer collapse, no matter what round they occurred in, because it wasn’t just a 2-0 series lead that slipped.The Mavericks won the first two games of the series on the road, then took a 30-11 lead at home in Game 3 that had the Clippers’ Nicolas Batum feeling as though Los Angeles was “one or two plays away to almost get swept.” Then the Mavericks responded to their two home losses by winning Game 5 at Staples Center to set up a chance to close the series out at home with just one more win.For all the shortcomings of Luka Doncic’s supporting cast, which have become a frequent talking point given the Mavericks’ inability to capitalize on Doncic’s historic production in the series, Dallas should have been able to advance to the second round if it was capable of winning three games on the Clippers’ floor. It will go down as a slice of ignominy that I suspect will endure, even if Doncic goes on to reach the same sort of championship heights Nowitzki did.On the historical front: Golden State’s upset of Dallas in 2007 was the first upset for a No. 8 seed against the top seed since the N.B.A. instituted a best-of-seven format for the first round in the 2002-3 season. Memphis did it to San Antonio in 2011 and Philadelphia repeated the feat in 2012 against Chicago — but only after the Bulls lost Derrick Rose to a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in Game 1. Q: Don’t show interest in Terry Stotts unless you’ve let Nate Bjorkgren go. — Wes Johnson (Indianapolis)Stein: This Pacers fan responded with dismay to the reports over the weekend, including one from me, that Indiana had interest in Stotts after he was ousted by the Portland Trail Blazers — but before Indiana actually had an opening. I totally get the dismay, too. It can be a cold, cold league sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times.Bjorkgren has been in limbo since reports of friction in his first season as Pacers coach surfaced in early May. It was difficult to imagine then how Bjorkgren, as a rookie coach whose most notable prior head coaching experience came in the G League, could survive such open discussion of behind-the-scenes tumult.Kevin Pritchard, Indiana’s president of basketball operations, only added to the uncertainty in a virtual news conference on May 24 when he said he was “not committing either way” about bringing Bjorkgren back for Year 2. The working assumption in league circles since that statement was that the Pacers were trying to determine through back channels if they had a shot at hiring a proven coach, like Stotts, before determining Bjorkgren’s fate.The Pacers clearly don’t want to let Bjorkgren go and then strike out on top targets, which would only add to their drama while Nate McMillan, abruptly ousted by Indiana after last season, has the Atlanta Hawks unexpectedly competing for a spot in the Eastern Conference finals. It is not inconceivable that Bjorkgren could end up staying, perhaps with a reshuffled staff, but the optics are undeniably unseemly.Q: Cheers to all the N.B.A. intelligentsia who fooled us into thinking Nets-Bucks was going to be a series. — @yagofidani from TwitterStein: Count me among the guilty. I thought Milwaukee took a significant step forward by sweeping Miami in Round 1. I thought the Bucks, with the additions of Jrue Holiday and P.J. Tucker, were as well suited to guard the Nets as anyone. I certainly thought that losing James Harden to a hamstring injury in the opening minute of Game 1 would hurt the Nets more than it has.It’s too soon to write off the Bucks as the series shifts to Milwaukee for Game 3 on Thursday, but the prospect of the Nets losing four of five games — to anyone — is difficult to imagine when they are moving the ball the way they are. Ditto when Blake Griffin looks reborn as a role player and defender, and when the unheralded Bruce Brown and Mike James have been so solid.The lingering nature of hamstring injuries is such that the Nets have to brace for the idea that Harden could miss the rest of the series, or longer, but they are functioning as well as possible without him. I will leave it to someone else to predict that a loud home crowd is enough to inspire the Bucks to disrupt that.Numbers GameJaVale McGee, center, is tied with Danny Green for the most championship rings among current players still alive in this year’s playoffs. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images0None of the eight franchises remaining in the N.B.A. playoffs have won a championship since the league’s 16-team playoff format was instituted in 1983-84. Seventeen of the N.B.A.’s last 22 championships have been won by the Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio, Golden State and Miami, as neatly noted here by my former N.B.A. bubble neighbor Ben Golliver of The Washington Post.8Only eight players left in the playoffs have won an N.B.A. championship ring, according to my pal Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, but none with their current team. Philadelphia’s Danny Green and Denver’s JaVale McGee have won three rings each. The Nets’ Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard and Rajon Rondo of the Los Angeles Clippers have two rings apiece. The Nets’ Kyrie Irving, Philadelphia’s Dwight Howard and the Clippers’ Serge Ibaka are one-time champions.3The first round of this season’s playoffs was just the third time since the N.B.A. expanded to four playoff rounds in 1975 that both teams from the previous N.B.A. finals failed to reach the second round. It also happened in 2007 (Miami and Dallas) and 2015 (Miami and San Antonio), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.4-0Coach Tyronn Lue improved to 4-0 in Game 7s after the Los Angeles Clippers beat Dallas in Sunday’s series decider. The Clippers are just the fifth team in league history, in 31 tries, to win a best-of-seven series after losing the first two games at home, and Lue’s willingness to make major adjustments was a key factor. Lue essentially removed his starting point guard, Patrick Beverley, from the rotation after the first two games, and went small by installing 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum as his starting center in Game 4. Lue also restricted his original starting center, Ivica Zubac, to three minutes in Game 7 after Zubac had been repeatedly torched on defensive switches throughout the series by the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic.10,982The Clippers, who operated with the league’s smallest building capacity of the 16 teams that reached the first round of the playoffs, hosted a crowd of just 7,342 fans for their Game 7 win over Dallas. The Mavericks hosted the league’s biggest crowd of Round 1 for their Game 6 defeat on Friday night with a chance to close out the series: 18,324 fans (10,982 more than the Clippers).355The N.B.A. has announced that 355 players have applied for early entry into the N.B.A. draft. Only 60 players will be drafted on July 29.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      Denver’s Nikola Jokic Wins N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award

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      Jokic set career highs in points, rebounds and assists, and kept the Nuggets afloat after Jamal Murray, their second-leading scorer, went down with a knee injury.Nikola Jokic was an afterthought in 2014. A pudgy center from Serbia, he was a role player for a club in the Adriatic League when the Denver Nuggets took a low-risk gamble in the second round of the N.B.A. draft and selected him with the 41st pick — then promptly stashed him in Europe for another season. There was no guarantee that he would ever appear in an N.B.A. uniform.On Tuesday, Jokic reached the pinnacle of individual achievement by winning the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award.Basketball is a global game, and Jokic, 26, who had an exceptional season for the Nuggets, became the second straight foreign-born player to win the award after Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is from Greece, won the last two.Jokic, whose Nuggets trail the Phoenix Suns 1-0 in a Western Conference semifinals series, set career-bests in the regular season by averaging 26.4 points, 10.8 rebounds and 8.3 assists per game.In an interview with TNT, Jokic said he “didn’t even think I would be in the N.B.A.” after he had begun to play the sport in his native Serbia. He credited his rise to “a lot of luck” and the trust he received from various coaches and the Nuggets as he developed. “And I put some work, too,” Jokic said.“I think this was my best season of my life and the cherry on the top is probably the trophy that I got,” Jokic said.Despite his industrial-size bulk at 6 feet 11 inches tall and 284 pounds, Jokic is a nimble, multidimensional player who can shoot from the outside, bang in the paint and pass with flair. His ability to operate at the high post and one-handedly sling passes to cutting teammates opens the floor and causes mayhem for defenders. During the regular season, he shot 56.6 percent from the field and 38.8 percent from 3-point range.“He’s what basketball players should look like in the future,” Ognjen Stojakovic, the Nuggets’ director of player development, said in a recent interview. “‘If I need to shoot it, shoot it. If I need to dribble, dribble. If I need to post up, I will post up because I am capable of doing everything.’ That is modern basketball.”Jokic received 91 of the 101 first-place votes and had 971 total points, with 10 points awarded for each first-place vote. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, who is from Cameroon, finished second in the voting with 586 points after averaging 28.5 points and 10.6 rebounds per game for the East-leading 76ers.Golden State’s Stephen Curry, who won back-to-back M.V.P. awards in 2015 and 2016, finished third in the voting. Curry, who led the league in scoring and dragged a depleted team to the brink of a playoff berth, had the second-most first-place votes with five. Antetokounmpo finished fourth. Members of the news media vote for the award, but The New York Times does not participate.The race was, in some ways, a battle of attrition in a disjointed season that was marred by a host of injuries and coronavirus-related absences. LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers was a front-runner to win the award for a fifth time — and for the first time since 2013 — before he sprained his ankle in March and missed 26 games. Embiid was also sidelined for about three weeks with a bone bruise in his left knee.Jokic, on the other hand, was an ironman, appearing in all 72 of his team’s games, and he kept the Nuggets afloat after Jamal Murray, their starting point guard and second-leading scorer, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in April. Without Murray, the Nuggets closed the season as the No. 3 seed in the West by winning 13 of 18 games as Jokic shouldered even more responsibility.When Jokic joined the Nuggets as a rookie ahead of the 2015-16 season, he was fresh off his first M.V.P. campaign — in the Adriatic League. It did not take long for his coaches in Denver to recognize his versatility. They encouraged him to do what he does best, which is a bit of everything.“If you have a chef and you put him in McDonald’s flipping burgers, he will feel terrible,” Stojakovic said. “But if you give him a chance to be a chef and create, he can do his magic.”Calvin Booth, the team’s general manager, recalled joining the Nuggets’ front office before the start of the 2017-18 season. Jokic was beginning to establish himself as a young player full of promise, and Booth had seen clips and highlights of his handiwork. But Booth found that being around Jokic every day was a different experience altogether.“I knew he was good,” Booth said, “but I didn’t know he was that good.”Among his peers this season, Jokic was deemed the very best.Marc Stein More

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      Nets Brush Aside the Bucks to Lead Series, 2-0

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      A 39-point drubbing sends the series back to Milwaukee, and the Bucks back to the drawing board.One can easily call the Milwaukee Bucks’ performance against the Nets on Monday night an embarrassment.It was, after all, a 39-point drubbing, and gave the Nets a commanding 2-0 lead in their Eastern Conference semifinal series. The 125-86 win was the largest in the Nets’ playoff history, and their biggest margin of victory all season.Kyrie Irving hit a 3-pointer to open the game. Soon, the Nets’ lead was 10 points. By the end of the first quarter, it was 17. And then the floodgates opened. At one point, the lead grew to 49.The Bucks had no answers. Their fans couldn’t even blame the referees for letting the game get out of hand: The Nets shot only seven free throws. They simply scored whenever they wanted.“We didn’t play very well overall,” Mike Budenholzer, the Bucks coach, said in a stone-faced understatement. “First quarter. The whole game. Yeah, so, I think we’ve got to play better from start to end.”Keeping the score closer might have been merely a cosmetic gesture, though. The Nets are the superior team, both in talent and in execution. And they have dominated both games of this series while missing James Harden, one of the best offensive players in the league. Unlike most teams the Nets play, the Bucks have a counterpoint for Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Harden: a dominant former most valuable player of their own in Giannis Antetokounmpo. Antetokounmpo played well in the opening game of this series, scoring 34 points on 24 shots and grabbing 11 rebounds. The problem for Budenholzer and his team is that the Nets just brushed it off. It is not a great sign when a team’s star plays like a star, when the opposing team loses one of theirs to injury, and the games are still not competitive.Little went right for P.J. Tucker and the other Bucks.Elsa/Getty ImagesThe Bucks have been vexed by Durant in particular, their inability to stop him traced to one important advantage: Durant has no weak spots as an offensive player. Defenders can’t force him left or right for a more advantageous position because he can score from anywhere on the floor.P.J. Tucker is stronger than Durant. Antetokounmpo might be taller. Jrue Holiday is quicker. All three are excellent defensively, and all three have taken their turns trying to guard him. Durant had counters for all of them. When he is single-covered, he easily got around bigger defenders with his exceptional ball handling. Against smaller ones, he merely shot over them. When the Bucks double-teamed him, Durant slipped passes to teammates like Joe Harris or Irving.On Monday, Durant finished with 32 points and 6 assists in 33 minutes. He was mesmerizing. Unguardable.All is not lost for the Bucks. If there is one way for them to keep these games close, it could be by hitting their 3’s.The Bucks have been dismal from deep so far, shooting 24.5 percent combined in the first two games of the series — almost 15 points lower than their regular-season average.Meanwhile, the Nets shot a whopping 50 percent on 3-pointers on Monday night, after making 38.5 percent in Game 1.If Milwaukee can find something approximating its regular-season form, it will open up the paint for Antetokounmpo. This may require more minutes for Bobby Portis and Bryn Forbes, bench players who can shoot, and starting Antetokounmpo at center, to allow for more perimeter quickness.And the Bucks can take some lessons from the Nets’ only postseason loss so far: Game 3 of their first-round series against the Boston Celtics. The overmatched Celtics stole a win that night, even as Durant and Harden had strong games, because they shot 16 of 39 (41 percent) from behind the arc, which allowed them to keep pace late in the game.Of course, Jayson Tatum, the Celtics star, helped quite a bit by scoring 50 points. Milwaukee is going to need nights like that from Antetokounmpo, who had difficulty getting into an offensive rhythm on Monday. The Bucks are not going to win many games with Antetokounmpo, their best player, shooting only 15 times.“I’ve got to be more aggressive and get to my spots more,” Antetokounmpo acknowledged after the game. “That’s pretty much it.”James Harden, left, was missing, but Kevin Durant and the other Nets were more than enough.Elsa/Getty ImagesNot quite. It’s not necessarily only a question of aggression. There were far too many possessions Monday on which Antetokounmpo put his head down and tried to drive into a wall of defenders. Aggression without a Plan B leads to 39-point losses. Antetokounmpo needs to get the ball in different spots and not just bring it up as the team’s de facto point guard.But all the adjustments in the world won’t close the talent gap between the two teams. It’s not just that Durant and Irving are outclassing the Bucks’ top players. It’s that the rest of the Nets roster — even role players like Bruce Brown and Mike James — are playing some of their best basketball of their season at the right time. And to make matters worse for Milwaukee, the Nets might get the injured Harden and Jeff Green back for Game 3.Short of the Nets forgetting what time that game is on Thursday, the Bucks could be in for more of the same. More

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      N.B.A. Fans Wanted a Show. They’re Also Getting a Reckoning.

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      The entertainment of the playoffs has been coupled with a pressing message from players that fans have disrespected them for too long.Isaiah Thomas finally felt a conversation was in order.Thomas, a member of the Washington Wizards in 2019-20, was playing in Philadelphia against the 76ers. A fan had been cursing at him, while holding outstretched middle fingers from both of his hands.After it happened a third time, Thomas walked into the stands — calmly, he said — to talk to the fan.“I’m not going to go in there by myself, trying to raise havoc,” Thomas said. “But in my situation, I needed to say something to that man and let him know that that was not right.”The fan, Thomas said, quickly apologized, saying he was upset that a free throw Thomas had made prevented him from cashing in on a promotion for a free Frosty.“That means you don’t respect me as a human being,” Thomas said. “I think that’s why players are so upset now. It’s like: ‘Are you looking at us like human beings? As people? Or just somebody you’re coming to watch?’”The N.B.A., moving into the second round of the playoffs, has given fans plenty to watch, from the stunning play of Phoenix’s Devin Booker, the quick exit of the Los Angeles Lakers, and the aligning of the Nets’ stars to the battles of one-upmanship between Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Portland’s Damian Lillard.But the playoffs have also been defined by unruly fan behavior as N.B.A. arenas started opening to near capacity in time for the playoffs. The last time there were this many fans in arenas, it was before the N.B.A. was at the center of the protests for social justice and equality that roiled the country in the fall. Fans are returning to watch many of the same players — but the players are not the same. The message from athletes, especially those who are Black, is that they want to be respected.In New York, a fan spat on Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young. In Utah, the family of Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant was targeted with racist and lewd remarks while watching in the stands. In Boston, Nets guard Kyrie Irving had a water bottle hurled in his direction. In Philadelphia, a fan dumped popcorn on Washington’s Russell Westbrook as he left the floor after an injury.Knicks fans cheered before Game 1 in the first round of the 2021 N.B.A. playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks.Seth Wenig/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“What if he would’ve ran into the stands and put his hands on that fan?” Thomas said. “Everybody would’ve said he was wrong. But in any other setting in life, if I’m walking down the street and somebody pours popcorn on me, what do you think is going to happen?”In some ways, raucous behavior is another indicator of a return to prepandemic life. Sports is often a bellwether for society, and to a point, extreme behavior is ingrained in fandom — hence the term fanatic. As the country reopens, airlines are experiencing boisterous conduct and people are fighting in stands at baseball stadiums.In basketball, fans are stimulated by the charged atmosphere of the playoffs and some are spurred by liquid courage. The intimacy of the sport allows fans to be in proximity to players, and while players are in postseason form, security forces are not yet back in the rhythm of hosting this many fans for the first time in more than a year.“The fans are emboldened and lessen the value of these athletes as human beings when they engage with them in this way,” said David West, a retired forward who won two championships with Golden State.Emerging from the pandemic may have created a reckoning between N.B.A. fans and players. Some fans may have pent-up frustration from being isolated for so long. Kevin Durant, Irving’s Nets teammate, said pandemic quarantining had “got a lot of people on edge.” The incidents involve only a minuscule fraction of the thousands of fans who have returned to N.B.A. arenas. The egregiousness of the behaviors cannot be defined under a singular classification.But some travel beyond the traditional heckling of, say, Spike Lee at Madison Square Garden taunting an opposing player. They involve subtle and overt racism — “underlying racism and just treating people like they’re in a human zoo,” Irving said. And while the interactions are not new, the infractions are being documented through social media and arena cameras, and players seem more willing to speak out against them.“In general, it seems like this is what happens when people haven’t been outside for a year and a half,” said Louis Moore, an associate history professor at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “Specifically, it’s part of who we are as fans. It’s fandom. It’s rowdyism. And then it’s even more specific when it looks like these N.B.A. incidents are targeted at Black athletes. That’s part of American sports.”Before Irving, a former Celtic, returned to Boston, he asked fans not to be belligerent or racist. Black athletes in multiple sports, including the Celtics legend Bill Russell, who once had someone break into his home and defecate on his bed, have spoken about the racism they’ve experienced in Boston. The treatment dates all the way back to George Dixon, who was the first Black man to win a boxing world title and fought in the United States during the post-Civil War era.The police in Boston arrested Cole Buckley, a 21-year-old from Braintree, Mass., on suspicion of throwing the water bottle toward Irving. Buckley pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.Buckley being arrested after the game.Elise Amendola/Associated Press“I’ve had situations so often throughout my career where we don’t really talk about it, because we want to be mentally tough,” Irving said after the incident. “We want to be tough-minded. We don’t want to be called soft or we’re not man enough to deal with boos.”As in Boston, opposing players have also spoken out against the treatment they’ve received in Utah. In 2019, two fans at Vivint Smart Home Arena were barred for using racist language toward Westbrook.“You felt this sense of angst that exists with some of the fans,” West said of playing in Utah, adding, “I just never let it affect me, but it also never got physical with me.”The fans involved in the first-round incidents were barred indefinitely from the arenas.“There is zero tolerance for inappropriate and disrespectful fan behavior at our games,” Commissioner Adam Silver of the N.B.A. said in an interview. “Fans engaging in acts like that in our arenas will be caught and banned from attending. The safety of players, officials and all attendees is our top priority, which is why we have worked diligently with our teams and law enforcement to increase security presence at our arenas throughout the remainder of the playoffs and will pursue all legal remedies against anyone who violates our fan code of conduct.”In Utah, the Jazz owner Ryan Smith provided Morant’s family with courtside seats for Game 5. Tee Morant, Ja’s father, praised the organization and Jazz players for their response, although his wife, Jamie, decided against returning to Salt Lake City.“It was a nice gesture from the Jazz,” Tee Morant told ESPN. “It was unfortunate. It was just a few fans — most of them were great and cheering right alongside with us.”Durant told reporters after the Irving incident that fans needed to “grow up” and treat players with respect. “These men are human,” he said, adding that players are not “animals” and “not in a circus.”In 2019, Thomas received a two-game suspension after the Frosty incident, and two fans — the one who had held up his middle fingers toward Thomas and another heckler — were barred from Wells Fargo Arena for a year.“The consequences, I don’t know what it should be,” Thomas said, “but I think it should be a little bit more so fans would think twice about what they do before they do it or what they say before they say it. But I don’t think the arena ban is scaring anybody off.”He continued: “I don’t have the answer to what they could possibly do. I know the N.B.A. is on top of everything for the players, but something’s got to change for sure.” More

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      Even LeBron James Isn’t Eternal

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      At 36, with his team’s future in doubt, James faces basketball mortality.His season was not finished — not yet, anyway — when LeBron James grabbed a seat at the far end of the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench on Tuesday night in Phoenix. He would occasionally approach a teammate or an assistant so that he could lean in close for a one-sided conversation. But he otherwise seemed resigned to the reality of the situation.The Lakers were getting routed by the Suns in Game 6 of their first-round playoff series, and James — such an indomitable force throughout his 18-year-old career, but now facing an early summer — was oddly powerless to stop it.Perhaps there was hope, in some distant corner of Lakerland, that he could muster more of his familiar magic to help the team avoid elimination two days later in Los Angeles. Instead, the Lakers were bound for more of the same: more offensive fireworks from the Suns, more disappointment, more questions about their future.The surprise was not so much that the second-seeded Suns won the best-of-seven series, clinching a trip to the Western Conference semifinals with their 113-100 victory in Game 6 on Thursday night. Rather, it was the way in which they did it — by winning the final two games of the series against the defending N.B.A. champions so convincingly.For the Lakers, it was a gloomy coda to their brief reign atop the league.“It’s been draining,” James said, referring to the past 18 months. “Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally draining.”Devin Booker of the Suns is one of the younger players threatening James’s throne.Harry How/Getty ImagesBy any objective measure, the Lakers faced their share of obstacles. Their run to last season’s championship came in the middle of a pandemic and stretched into October. The 2020-21 season started about two months later. Despite the short break, the Lakers got off to a strong start, going 21-6 before injuries slowed them down. They eventually slipped into the playoffs as a No. 7 seed, and only after playing their way in.“I just think the whole thing was a challenge, to play all the way into October and start the season as quickly as we did,” Coach Frank Vogel said. “It was going to be an uphill battle.”There is a big “what if,” of course: What if Anthony Davis, the Lakers’ All-Star power forward, had remained healthy against the Suns? The Lakers had a 2-1 series lead when Davis strained his groin in Game 4. Sensing weakness, the Suns pounced to even the series. Davis was in street clothes for Game 5, which the Suns won by 30 points, and then spent only 5 minutes 25 seconds on the court in Game 6 before he left in pain, done for the night and for the season.Davis is extraordinarily talented and helped fuel the Lakers’ championship, but nobody is accusing him of being the sturdiest player in the league. Prone to injuries for much of his career, he missed about two months this season with a calf strain, and his problems in the playoffs cost the Lakers at the worst time.“We had the pieces,” Davis said. “We just couldn’t stay healthy. A lot of that is on me.”James, 36, was not immune to injury, either. He sprained his right ankle in March and missed a total of 26 games before the playoffs. On Thursday, he tried to tow the Lakers back from a 29-point deficit, helping cut it to 10 in the fourth quarter. He finished with 29 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists, but acknowledged that his ankle was still bothering him. He said he was looking forward to a full off-season.“It’s going to work wonders for me,” he said, indicating that he would not play in the Olympics.The brightest star in the series was the Suns’ Devin Booker, who, at 24, has officially arrived as one of the league’s premier players. On Thursday, he scored 47 points and shot 8 of 10 from beyond the 3-point line. When James made his first trip to the playoffs, with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2006, Booker was 9 years old. After Thursday’s game, James autographed his jersey and gave it to him.“I love everything about D-Book,” James said. “He continues to make the jump.”While the Suns go about preparing for the Denver Nuggets in the next round, the Lakers will begin the hard work of addressing where they go from here.Just five players — James, Davis, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and Marc Gasol — are under contract for next season, and Montrezl Harrell has a player option. (In a contractual quirk, the Lakers also owe Luol Deng, who last played for the Lakers in 2017, $5 million.) The big earners, though, are James, Davis and Caldwell-Pope, who, combined, are due nearly $90 million — a sum that, because of salary-cap restrictions, will limit the Lakers’ ability to make significant moves in free agency. The Lakers are unlikely to undergo any extreme makeovers. And they could wind up paying a hefty luxury tax if they re-sign some of their own free agents.James said he had faith in Rob Pelinka, the team’s general manager.“I will have some input,” James said, “but he always asks my input.”No one is about to feel sorry for the Lakers. Davis forced his way to Los Angeles. James is starring in a major motion picture this summer. And the Lakers, with all the inherent advantages as a big-market franchise, won it all last fall. So spare the tears.But the road does seem a bit uncertain for them, and for James in particular. One of the game’s great competitors, he was the sixth-oldest player in the league this season. (Worth noting: The two oldest players, Udonis Haslem and Anderson Varejao, combined to appear in six games and score 17 points.) In two of the last three seasons, James sustained serious injuries after avoiding them for most of his career. No athlete is immortal.Now James is fighting the inevitable effects of age while trying to ward off a group of up-and-comers like Booker — “Young guns,” James called them — who are determined to seize their rightful share of the stage. Perhaps they already have. James was asked whether their presence would motivate him to come back stronger.“I don’t need motivation from anybody in this league,” he said. “I motivate myself.” More

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      Lakers Eliminated from Playoffs With Game 6 Loss to Suns

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      The Los Angeles Lakers, the defending N.B.A. champions led by LeBron James, struggled with injuries all season.The Los Angeles Lakers’ brief reign is over.The Phoenix Suns eliminated the Lakers from the N.B.A. playoffs on Thursday night with a 113-100 victory in Game 6 of their first-round series, ending LeBron James’s hopes of hauling the Lakers to back-to-back championships.It is the first time that James, 36, has exited the playoffs in the first round — and it was a young, up-and-coming team that hastened his departure.The second-seeded Suns, who are making their first postseason appearance since 2010, leaned on the inside-outside combination of Devin Booker, 24, and Deandre Ayton, 22, throughout the series.“I just know they wanted to be in these types of games,” Monty Williams, the Suns’ coach, said before Thursday’s game. “And I think they haven’t run from the moment, run from situations.”Both players, Williams said, got a taste of the spotlight last season, when the Suns won eight straight games in the league’s bubble — a run that left Phoenix short of qualifying for the postseason but made the team’s young core eager to achieve more.The Suns will now face the Denver Nuggets in the conference semifinals. The Nuggets eliminated the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday.Devin Booker led the suns with 47 points.Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Lakers, who were hindered by injuries throughout the regular season, seemed to come unglued against the Suns after Anthony Davis, their All-Star power forward, strained his groin before halftime of Game 4. The Suns went on to win that game and then crushed the Lakers on Tuesday in Game 5 to seize momentum.Frank Vogel, the Lakers’ coach, said before Thursday’s game that Davis “very much” wanted to play. Davis tried: He was in the starting lineup but was running gingerly from the tip and appeared to aggravate his injury while trying to block one of Booker’s layups early in the first quarter. Davis promptly went to the bench and never returned to the game.The Suns, meanwhile, were volcanic, shooting 10 of 13 from beyond the 3-point line in the first quarter en route to a 22-point lead heading into the second. Booker finished with 47 points and shot 8 of 10 from 3-point range.Since joining the Lakers before the start of the 2018-19 season, James has experienced highs and lows. His first season with the team unraveled when he injured his groin on Christmas Day, and the Lakers missed the playoffs. Last season, he engineered a resurgence, joining Davis to lead the Lakers to their 17th championship. For James, the run was a crowning achievement: his first title with the Lakers, and his fourth overall with three teams.As expected, the Lakers entered this season with big goals but struggled. After a strong start that seemed to position him as a candidate to win his fifth N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award (and his first since 2013), James missed a total of 26 games after he sprained his ankle in March. And Davis, who has been hobbled by injuries throughout his career, was sidelined for about two months with a calf strain.The result was that the Lakers, who had been considered among the preseason favorites to win another title, were seldom whole, and they limped into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed in the West.Still, the Lakers were not an ideal first-round matchup for the Suns — and the task became even more challenging for Phoenix when Chris Paul, the team’s starting point guard and veteran leader, injured his right shoulder in the first game of the series. Paul played through the pain, though, and was terrific in Phoenix’s Game 4 win, a turning point for a franchise on the rise. More

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      The Knicks Enter a Summer of Tough Calls

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      Their transformation into a playoff team was one of the more remarkable stories of the season. But keeping the momentum going will require some more good calls.As the dejected Knicks wound down the closing minute of their season on Wednesday night, the near-capacity crowd at Madison Square Garden rained cheers on them.It didn’t seem to matter that the Knicks had been thumped once again by the Atlanta Hawks, or that they had lost their first playoff series since 2013 in a surprisingly noncompetitive fashion, four games to one. It didn’t seem to matter to the fans that one of the best defenses in the league was carved up by Trae Young, or that much of this team is unlikely to be back next season, since many are set to be free agents.Asked what the biggest difference was between this season and last, RJ Barrett, the Knicks guard, put it succinctly: “A lot more winning. Winning was fun.”This team’s overnight turnaround from 21-45 to 41-31 was one of the more remarkable stories of a turbulent N.B.A. season. And even though the Knicks collapsed in the playoffs, raising some new questions entering the off-season, this iteration was one that their fans could enjoy watching again. In the 21st century, that was something Knicks aficionados could only rarely say.The Knicks team that made the playoffs could be headed for a makeover.Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I’m proud of what our team accomplished this year,” Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Obviously, disappointed with the result tonight, and hopefully we can learn and get better from it. But I thought our guys gave us everything they had all year long.”The Knicks confounded preseason expectations by earning the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference after many observers wrote them off even before the season began. But it wasn’t just that they won more games this season. It was the way they did it.The Knicks were rarely the most talented team on the floor. They won on the back of a tough defense and cast of scrappy players who reflected their coach, Thibodeau. Their best player, Julius Randle, had been underwhelming a year ago, renewing questions about whether the three-year, $63 million contract he had received in 2019 was just the latest in a long line of ill-fated Knicks signings.Instead, the 6-foot-8, 250-pound Randle reinvented his game under Thibodeau and adapted to the modern N.B.A.: He developed his 3-point shot while also improving his passing and defense. Doubts about Randle faded as he morphed into an All Star.“We’re bringing a brand of basketball back that the city can be proud of,” Randle said, adding, “We have something to build on for the future.”That is the most important takeaway from this season. The Knicks are a coveted ticket again, which means they may be more successful at attracting top free agents, a task at which the team has struggled for most of the last two decades. That change in perception alone could make this season a success, regardless of how the series against the Hawks ended.The Knicks finally have something they have craved for years: They have built the ground floor of something. Under the team president Leon Rose and the coaching of Thibodeau, there appears to be an organizational direction and a sincere — at least, for now — commitment to long-term development over short-term thinking. There are promising young players like Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin. There are building blocks like Barrett and Randle. The Knicks also have multiple first-round picks in this year’s draft.And, because of a handful of expiring contracts, the Knicks will have a great deal of cap flexibility. Several of this year’s Knicks, including Derrick Rose, Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel, Reggie Bullock and Elfrid Payton, will be free agents this summer — the result of a strategy in recent years to stack their rosters with short-term contracts.To be sure, the Knicks have some important decisions to make. In many ways, the season that just ended was supposed to have been a bridge year. Instead, the team overachieved by making the playoffs, and then underachieved once it got there.One of the first big calls will be deciding what to do about Randle, who turns 27 in November. As strong as he was in the regular season, Randle was abysmal against the Hawks in his first postseason, shooting 29.7 percent. This was his seventh N.B.A. season, but which is the real Randle: the one who grew into an All-Star during the season, or the one who vanished against the Hawks? And what now?The Knicks must decide whether to tie up a large portion of their salary budget with a long-term extension for Randle and build the team around him, or to sell high as they did with Kristaps Porzingis, the last Knicks All-Star who excited the fan base.It was a promising season for Knicks fans.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I told him I still do believe in him,” guard Derrick Rose said. “I’m going to ride with him to the end just like everybody on the team. Like, he got us here.”The calculations only get more complicated from there. Should the Knicks give Mitchell Robinson, their shot-blocking center, an enormous extension, or go shopping in a thin free-agent year? DeMar DeRozan, who just finished a successful run with the San Antonio Spurs, and Kyle Lowry of the Toronto Raptors are two players who do seem to fit the Thibodeau mold. Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers could opt for free agency if the Clippers lose to the Dallas Mavericks in the first round.Committing lots of money to the wrong players, though, is the surest way for a team to keep itself in N.B.A. purgatory, a fact that Knicks fans know as well as anyone. Draft picks can be squandered. Signings can go wrong. Injuries might derail a run.But those worries can wait a day or two. For the moment, this season can be viewed as a refreshing change in direction for the Knicks. For most franchises, making the playoffs would be a small step. For the Knicks, it was a giant leap. They are back in the discussion.“Who wouldn’t want to play for the Knicks or be in New York?” Rose said Wednesday night.When was the last time the Knicks, or their fans, could say that and mean it? More