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      Knicks Are a Playoff Threat After Years on the Sideline

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      When it comes to the playoffs, many Knicks fans are just happy to be here. But they can hope for more — like a first-round series win — because of Julius Randle.If you picked the Knicks before the season to have home-court advantage in the first round of the N.B.A. playoffs, you should probably head straight to Las Vegas because, as Bobby Bacala might note, not even Quasimodo could have predicted all this.For the rest of us, there is another opportunity not to underestimate this year’s Knicks. In the first round, they will host the Atlanta Hawks in the Knicks’ first trip to the playoffs since the 2012-13 season. The Hawks haven’t made the postseason since the 2016-17 season.Drawing the Hawks was a best-case scenario for the Knicks. Thanks in part to a three-game winning streak to close the season, they locked down the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference, and avoided the Milwaukee Bucks, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Nets, the top tier of the conference. This is not to say the Hawks should be overlooked. They will enter the postseason as one of the hottest teams in the N.B.A. after winning seven of their last eight.But this is a winnable series for the Knicks, and it would be just their second postseason series win in this century. Both teams were 41-31, but the Knicks had the tiebreaker, giving them the higher seed.Here is a look at the two teams heading into the postseason.What you need to know:How the Hawks made the playoffsHow they’ve played against each otherWhose back is hurting from carrying his team?“We didn’t expect that” candidatesWhat kind of games will these be?Why the Knicks will win the seriesWhy the Hawks will win the seriesHow the Hawks made the playoffsAtlanta had high hopes after adding Rajon Rondo, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Danilo Gallinari and Kris Dunn in the off-season and trading for Clint Capela toward the end of last season. But a combination of injuries and a lack of cohesion, particularly on the defensive end, kept the Hawks from being a top-tier team. Like the Knicks, the Hawks were inconsistent in the first half of the regular season, which prompted the firing of their coach, Lloyd Pierce, in March. Rondo was later traded to the Los Angeles Clippers for Lou Williams.Nate McMillan took over for Pierce as the interim head coach, and the Hawks finished the season 27-11 — the third best team in the N.B.A. in that span. The Knicks were the ninth best team in the league in that same period.The Knicks were also a good draw for the Hawks, since both teams lack playoff experience and are evenly matched.How they’ve played against each otherBarrett dunking against the Hawks at Madison Square Garden last month. Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 4: Knicks over Hawks, 113-108 (in Atlanta)Feb. 15: Knicks over Hawks, 123-112 (in New York)April 21: Knicks over Hawks, 137-127 (in New York; overtime)The Knicks had the Hawks’ number this season, beating them in all three of their matchups. There is no team that Julius Randle, the Knicks’ best player, was better against. He averaged 37.3 points in the three games — his highest average against any team this season — along with 12.3 rebounds and 6.7 assists.But the Hawks were missing key players in each game, such as Gallinari and Bogdanovic, and they were a much different team in the second half of the season, so it’s difficult to read too much into these results. With Pierce as coach, the Hawks were 12th offensively and 22nd defensively. Under McMillan, Atlanta was a top-10 offensive team and morphed into an above-average defensive one.Whose back is hurting from carrying his team?Julius Randle24.1 points/10.2 rebounds/6.0 assists/45.6 field-goal percentageRandle’s career year makes him a candidate for an All-N.B.A. team. He led the league in minutes and missed only one game. The Hawks will surely throw double teams at him early and often. And in theory, players like Capela, John Collins and De’Andre Hunter should be able to frustrate Randle, but Randle did just fine during the regular season. He is skilled at finding open shooters and evading double teams.The issue for the Knicks has been getting Randle consistent help on the offensive end, where they were 22nd in the league.Trae Young25.3 points/9.4 assists/3.9 rebounds/43.8 field-goal percentageYoung is one of the best scorers in the N.B.A. and the engine that spurs the Atlanta offense. Despite his small frame, he can create space and score whenever he needs to because of his ball-handling and shooting skills. He is also an exceptional passer, one of two players in the league averaging at least nine assists per game. (Russell Westbrook is the other.) Luckily for the Knicks, their defense is designed to stop a player who thrives in isolation in the way Young does. RJ Barrett is a solid defender, and the Knicks had one of the league’s best defenses.“We didn’t expect that” candidatesFrank Ntilikina, left, has become a key player for the Knicks on defense.Elsa/Getty ImagesDe’Andre Hunter gives the Hawks a scoring punch that could be tricky for the Knicks to counter.Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via ReutersKris Dunn and De’Andre Hunter (Hawks)Dunn made his debut for the Hawks in late April after signing as a free agent in the off-season. Because of a knee injury, he missed all but four games. Dunn is one of the best perimeter defenders in the league, and now that he’s healthy, he may cause problems for RJ Barrett, Derrick Rose and the rest of the Knicks’ guard rotation.In January, Hunter, a second-year forward, averaged 18.7 points and 4.9 rebounds in 14 games on 53.3 percent shooting. For the rest of the season, he played only five games because of a knee injury that required surgery. On Sunday, Hunter played 24 minutes. If he had stayed healthy all season, he might have been considered for an All-Star spot.Like Randle and Barrett, Hunter made a leap this season. If he is anywhere close to what he was in January, that spells trouble for the Knicks. The Hawks have been playing great basketball over the last month, and adding players as good as Dunn and Hunter at this stage of the season is a luxury most teams don’t have.Nerlens Noel and Frank Ntilikina (Knicks)Noel and Ntilikina aren’t flashy players. Noel has trouble catching the ball underneath the basket. Ntilikina barely gets on the floor. But Noel is one of the best rim protectors in the N.B.A., and Ntilikina is an excellent wing defender. The Hawks like to penetrate and create open looks or alley-oops. Having Noel at the rim may help limit opportunities for Young to connect with Capela and Collins, while Ntilikina may get more time on the floor to keep Young from getting into the paint, something Thibodeau said was a possibility on Wednesday. And really, Ntilikina should probably eat into some of Elfrid Payton’s minutes.What kind of games will these be?Slow and probably low-scoring. Both teams were near the bottom of the league in pace, and playoff games typically have fewer possessions as defenses lock down.There will also be fans! It will not be the same atmosphere the Garden had in the 1990s playoff runs, but about 13,000 fans will be allowed at Knicks’ home games. Vaccinated fans will have their own section, where social distancing won’t be required. Others who show negative results for an antigen or coronavirus test can sit in socially distanced sections.Why the Knicks will win the seriesImmanuel Quickley scored 5 points in a Knicks victory over the Hawks last month.Pool photo by Wendell CruzRandle will continue his dominance of the Hawks. The Knicks’ suboptimal offense will get help from Atlanta’s suboptimal defense. Doubling Randle will frustrate the Hawks because of his ability to create open looks for perimeter shooters. Also, the Knicks are an elite 3-point-shooting team.On top of all this, Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau is a master at developing schemes to slow players like Young. As great a coach as McMillan is in the regular season, he has had minimal success in the playoffs. In nine trips to the postseason, he has coached only one team to a series win (the 2004-5 Seattle SuperSonics).Why the Hawks will win the seriesYoung will establish himself as a top-level star by carving up the Knicks’ defense. A Hawks team that is almost entirely healthy for the first time all season will finally show the potential that many analysts saw before the season. The player who unexpectedly hurts the Knicks the most will be Bogdanovic, who doubled his scoring output after the All-Star break under McMillan, giving Young a dynamic backcourt partner.And Williams, the streaky scoring guard, will win one game almost single-handedly for Atlanta. More

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      Even the Celtics Think the Nets Will Probably Win

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      The Nets would be heavily favored in the first-round playoff matchup even without Boston’s injury woes. “As a fan of the N.B.A., it’s hard to see those guys losing,” Celtics Coach Brad Stevens said.Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving spent about as much time on the court together with the Nets this season as it takes to watch a Martin Scorsese movie.The lack of reps is likely to have little impact as the No. 2 Nets face the No. 7 Boston Celtics, winners of Tuesday’s play-in game over the Washington Wizards, in the first round of the N.B.A. playoffs in the Eastern Conference.The Nets are assembled for the singular purpose of stacking 16 postseason wins, which add up to a championship. They enter the playoffs with all three stars available after Harden returned from a hamstring strain before resting the regular-season finale, which didn’t matter for the team’s playoff seeding.The threesome has the combined credentials for a special postseason. Durant is a two-time champion and won a finals Most Valuable Player Award with Golden State. Irving was a vital member of Cleveland’s 2016 championship. And Harden, a scoring champion and former M.V.P., once played in the finals with Durant in Oklahoma City.But for all their accolades, they were mostly absent from last year’s postseason. Durant was still recovering from his ruptured Achilles’ tendon. Irving dealt with a shoulder injury. And Harden’s Houston Rockets whimpered out of the playoffs, eventually triggering the seismic deal that landed him with the Nets.Individually, they do not have much on the basketball court to prove. Collectively, a successful postseason from the Nets could show that years of planning and plotting by other franchises can all be for nothing. The N.B.A. is a star-driven league and the Nets flex a stacked deck.Here’s what you need to know about their first-round series against the Celtics.The three biggest Nets stars, Irving, James Harden and Kevin Durant, spent only 202 minutes together on the court during the regular season because of injuries, coronavirus protocols and personal absences.Adam Hunger/Associated PressHow many games have Durant, Harden and Irving played in together?Eight games for a total of 202 minutes.Really?Yes, just four more quarters than a playoff series stretched to its max. Durant missed games because of coronavirus health and safety protocols and a hamstring injury. Irving missed time for personal reasons and for a facial contusion near the end of the season. And Harden, traded to the Nets from the Rockets in January, missed much of the end of the regular season with a right hamstring injury.How did the Nets still finish with the second-best record in the East?They can do video-game highlight plays, like Durant’s recent finishing with an alley-oop pass off the backboard.The Nets are not just any team with a rookie coach and an unsteady lineup. There is a reason Coach Steve Nash hasn’t sweated much this season. While Durant, Irving and Durant did not share the court often, Nash has often had a combination of the three at his disposal and they’ve all been sensational. Impressively, Harden did not need much time to familiarize himself with the Nets’ personnel.Irving capped one of the finest seasons of his career in becoming just the ninth player in N.B.A. history to shoot at least 90 percent from the free-throw line, 50 percent from the floor and 40 percent from behind-the-arc. He joined Durant and Nash in rarefied territory.Enough about those three. What about the rest of the roster?A team is stacked when the league’s leading 3-point shooter isn’t mentioned until this point. The sharpshooter Joe Harris paced the league by making 47.5 percent of his shots from deep, and he should be available after missing the final three games of the regular season with a gluteal strain.The Nets tried to upend the buyout market by obtaining former stars — Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge — hoping they still had a little mileage left in the tank. Griffin has showed the occasional spring in his step and had 20 points in a win over the Denver Nuggets. An irregular heartbeat abruptly forced Aldridge’s retirement from the N.B.A. in April at the age of 35.Jeff Green, a veteran with plenty of playoff experience and a member of the Durant-Harden Oklahoma City teams, has been a decent addition. Bruce Brown wiggled his way into the rotation following the Harden trade and never relinquished his opportunity. The Nets shouldn’t lack for scoring, but they will be without Spencer Dinwiddie, the capable guard, who is recovering from a knee injury.Harden’s trade to the Nets in January from Houston shifted the power dynamic in the N.B.A.Adam Hunger/Associated PressWhat’s an interesting Nets subplot?As a head coach, Mike D’Antoni revolutionized the league’s offense, ushering it into modernity by prioritizing space and 3-point shooting. His two main conduits for breathing life into the vision in his stops in Phoenix and Houston? Nash and Harden.For all of D’Antoni’s influence, he never won an N.B.A. championship. With the Nets, he is an assistant to Nash and working with Harden, who is also still vying for his first title.Anything juicier?How about Irving against his former coach, Brad Stevens, teammates and organization? In 2018, Irving told the die-hard Celtics fan base, “If you guys will have me back, I plan on re-signing here.” Then in July 2019, he signed with the Nets.How did Boston make the playoffs?Barely. Like the Nets, Boston (36-36) meandered through the regular-season, hindered by injuries and virus protocols. The Celtics needed the play-in game and Jayson Tatum’s 50 points against the Wizards to arrive at this matchup. They spent much of the season not looking like a franchise that had journeyed to the Eastern Conference finals three of the last four seasons.Unlike the Nets, Boston will not be at full strength at the right time. The All-Star Jaylen Brown is out after wrist surgery for a torn ligament. Center Robert Williams is uncertain after he aggravated a turf toe injury during the play-in game.“We’ll do our best to get ready for Brooklyn,” a realistic Stevens told reporters after defeating the Wizards. “They’re the best of the best. As a fan of the N.B.A., it’s hard to see those guys losing. We’re going to have to play great and play great together.”What’s a key matchup to watch?Durant and Tatum are two of the most prolific and innovative scorers on the planet. This will be Durant’s first postseason since he suffered his Achilles’ tendon injury in Game 5 of the 2019 N.B.A. finals with Golden State. As much of an offensive talent as Durant is, Nash has labeled him his team’s best defender and Durant will likely check Tatum often in the series.Jayson Tatum is Boston’s best hope for upsetting the Nets.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHow did the Nets and Celtics fare against each another during the regular season?The Nets swept the three games from the Celtics, despite having to mix and match their lineups.Why will the Nets win?See the above.Why will the Celtics win?Tatum and this recent photo of Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York dressed up in random Nets gear. De Blasio was posing to bring attention to the Barclays Center pop-up vaccination site, but it is not exactly a look that strikes fear in an opponent. More

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      N.B.A. Awards Picks: Why Stephen Curry Could Win M.V.P.

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      Denver’s Nikola Jokic separated himself early with historic play. Then Curry, who has won two Most Valuable Player Awards with Golden State, went on a historic run of his own.The N.B.A.’s 75th season began on Dec. 22 — and the chatter about individual award races began soon after. Some things, even in pandemic times, never change in this league.The New York Times does not participate in balloting for such awards in any sport, but breaking down each of the six major races and who I would have chosen is always a good way to take stock of what we just saw.Most Valuable PlayerDenver’s Nikola Jokic increased his scoring average by nearly 7 points per game from last season.David Zalubowski/Associated PressNikola Jokic, Denver NuggetsRest of the ballot: 2. Stephen Curry (Golden State); 3. Chris Paul (Phoenix); 4. Joel Embiid (Philadelphia); 5. Giannis Antetokounmpo (Milwaukee).Preseason prediction: Luka Doncic (Dallas)Jokic averaged 26.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 8.3 assists per game and shot 38.8 percent on 3-pointers to deliver dreamlike statistical diversity for a big man, and rightfully ranked as the M.V.P. favorite for some time. He was also one of just 11 players this season to appear in all 72 games, dodging the injury hex and coronavirus intrusions that affected so many fellow stars, including the Nuggets’ Jamal Murray, in a season rife with postponements and challenges.With Embiid missing 21 games, and Paul having a dramatic impact on a team that had missed the playoffs for 10 consecutive seasons but without the accompaniment of gaudy statistics, Jokic appeared well positioned to become the lowest-drafted (No. 41 overall in 2014) M.V.P. in league history.Then, in the season’s final days, I and many others got swept up in Curry’s remarkable ride to a scoring title (32 points per game) that made him the oldest player, at 33, to win one since Michael Jordan at 35 in 1997-98. Without the injured Klay Thompson on an otherwise offensively challenged team, Curry was swarmed by defenses like never before but still managed to sink a league-best 337 3-pointers and lead the Warriors to a 37-26 record (equal to a 48-win pace in a typical 82-game season) when in uniform.If he prevails in the real-life M.V.P. race, Curry would be just the second player since Moses Malone in 1981-82 to win the award on a team that fell shy of 50 wins (or the shortened-season equivalent). Russell Westbrook was the last to do it in 2016-17, when he averaged a triple-double for the first time for 47-win Oklahoma City. Chances are Curry won’t finish higher than second because of Golden State’s struggles, but this race is as complex and layered as the season itself.The list of worthy candidates is so long that Doncic, Portland’s Damian Lillard, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard, Miami’s Jimmy Butler, Utah’s Rudy Gobert and the Knicks’ Julius Randle are bound to be left off many ballots since there are only five openings.Coach of the YearTom Thibodeau turned the Knicks into a defensive force in his first season as coach.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressTom Thibodeau, KnicksRest of the ballot: 2. Monty Williams (Phoenix); 3. Quin Snyder (Utah)Preseason prediction: Steve Nash, NetsPhiladelphia was the East’s No. 6 seed last season. The 76ers hired Doc Rivers as their head coach and, with a few notable roster tweaks, posted the best record in the conference for the first time since the Allen Iverson-led Sixers did so in 2000-1.Rivers isn’t the only one responsible for Philadelphia’s rise, but the utter lack of buzz he is generating in this season’s coach of the year race shows the depth of the field. Thibodeau, Williams and Snyder all have tremendous cases, with Williams named on Monday as the National Basketball Coaches Association coach of the year in balloting by his peers.I expect Thibodeau to (narrowly) beat Williams in the news media vote after achieving one of the hardest things in coaching in Year 1 at Madison Square Garden — changing the Knicks’ culture with his relentless drive and attention to defensive detail. Thibodeau backers like to amplify their support by pointing out how much the Knicks overachieved with such a star-shy roster, finishing fourth in the East, but Williams’ bid shouldn’t be downgraded, as some say, because he could lean so hard on Chris Paul. I contend that it strengthens Williams’s bid that his presence helped persuade Paul to push to be traded to Phoenix from Oklahoma City, rather than to the Knicks, so that he could reunite with Williams, who coached him in New Orleans.There isn’t even room on the three-spot ballot to recognize the jobs done by Rivers, Memphis’s Taylor Jenkins, Atlanta’s Nate McMillan and Nash, who had his three best Nets (Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving) together on the floor for a whopping 202 minutes in his first year.Rookie of the YearLaMelo Ball helped solidify his case for the Rookie of the Year Award when he returned for the final 10 games of the season after breaking his wrist.Jared C. Tilton/Getty ImagesLaMelo Ball, Charlotte HornetsRest of the ballot: 2. Anthony Edwards (Minnesota); 3. Tyrese Haliburton (Sacramento)Preseason prediction: Deni Avdija (Washington)Ball’s all-around play, for a team that unexpectedly contended for a top-six spot in the Eastern Conference until losing Gordon Hayward to injury, was the clincher. He averaged 15.7 points, 5.9 rebounds and 6.1 assists per game and, amid great skepticism regarding his shooting stroke, proved passable from the field (43.6 percent) and 3-point range (35.2 percent).Ball then addressed the biggest hole in his résumé by returning from fracturing his right wrist on March 20 to play in Charlotte’s last 10 games, ultimately taking part in 71 percent of the Hornets’ season. Had he not returned, Ball would have played in only 57 percent of Charlotte’s games, which would have been the lowest availability rate ever for a rookie of the year. Patrick Ewing’s 60 percent (50 out of 82 games) for the Knicks in the 1985-86 season is the lowest.The extra games can only help Ball in his bid to hold off Edwards. In the second half of the season, when the Timberwolves went 16-20 after a dreadful a 7-29 start, Edwards averaged 23.8 points per game and shot 45.4 percent from the field, inspiring loud support from fans who felt Ball was prematurely anointed the winner.Most Improved PlayerJulius Randle became a solid 3-point shooter in his seventh season.Pool photo by ElsaJulius Randle, KnicksRest of the ballot: 2. Michael Porter Jr. (Denver); 3. Jerami Grant (Detroit)Preseason prediction: Christian Wood (Houston)This is our one layup. Randle is unlikely to receive enough All-N.B.A. or M.V.P. votes to satiate rabid fans who suddenly see him as Knicks royalty, but he should be a runaway M.I.P. selection. He and Jokic were the only players to amass at least 1,600 points, 700 rebounds and 400 assists this season.As covered in our recent piece on Randle, his jump to 41.1 percent on 3-pointers this season from 27.7 percent in 2019-20 — in his seventh pro season — has no N.B.A. precedent. Randle has likewise flourished as a playmaker whose decision-making and versatility have lifted those around him and enabled the Knicks to be just functional enough offensively to make the most of their fourth-ranked defense.Porter Jr., Grant, Wood and Dallas’s Jalen Brunson made telling leaps, too, but the Knicks could have not have become as unexpectedly viable as they did if Randle didn’t first transform himself so dramatically.Sixth Man AwardJoe Ingles gets the edge in an unexpectedly tight, and packed, race for the Sixth Man of the Year Award.Randall Benton/Associated PressJoe Ingles, Utah JazzRest of the ballot: 2. Jordan Clarkson (Utah); 3. Derrick Rose (Knicks)Preseason prediction: Caris LeVert (Indiana; began the season as a Nets reserve)In yet another anomaly in a season oozing with oddities, Utah (Clarkson and Ingles) and Dallas (Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jalen Brunson) each have two top reserves — possibly the four best reserves beyond Rose — to make settling on a top three trickier than usual.Clarkson averaged a heady 18.4 points per game, but Ingles nudged into my top spot because of his combination of excellent shooting (48.9 percent from the field and 45.1 percent on 3-pointers), offensive versatility and success as a fill-in starter when Utah faced injuries.Rather than trying to choose between the two Mavericks for one remaining spot, I went with Rose at No. 3 in a nod to the Knicks’ 24-11 record with Rose in uniform after acquiring him from Detroit. That also gave him the edge over the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kyle Kuzma, Chicago’s Thaddeus Young and Indiana’s T.J. McConnell.Defensive Player of the YearThe Jazz needed Rudy Gobert’s defense this year to offset the reduced firepower in the offense because of injuries.George Frey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRudy Gobert (Utah)Rest of the ballot: 2. Draymond Green (Golden State); 3. Ben Simmons (Philadelphia)Preseason prediction: Anthony Davis (Los Angeles Lakers)Perhaps I am falling prey to recency bias, but I can’t remember a season when even the D.P.O.Y. ballot was teeming with this many options. Maybe it’s a function of how much attention league observers and curators of advanced statistics are paying to defensive matters these days, judging by the lobbying in recent weeks for Green, Simmons, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Miami’s Bam Adebayo, Atlanta’s Clint Capela and Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday.Yet this, once again, is Gobert’s domain; look for him to be named D.P.O.Y. for the third time in four seasons. While Coach Quin Snyder was revamping the Jazz’s offense to commit more to 3-point shooting, Gobert kept them in the league’s top three in defensive efficiency.He also missed only one game in a season in which Utah, because of long stretches without Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley, needed his durability to finish with the best record in the league for the first time.The Scoop @TheSteinLineThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeRobert Horry hit a clutch 3-pointer for the Spurs against the Pistons in Game 5 of the 2005 N.B.A. finals.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesYou 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 condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: Good player, many clutch moments, seems like an awesome guy — and incredibly fortunate to have played with great players and for great coaches. All that can be true, while still recognizing that Robert Horry is not a Hall of Fame player. — @MikeMcCullochAZ from TwitterStein: During his Hall of Fame induction on Saturday night, the longtime Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich lobbied for Robert Horry’s enshrinement. I posted Rudy T’s plea on Twitter and there was no shortage of resistance to the idea, because Horry averaged just 7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game in his 16 N.B.A. seasons.Horry’s case, though, cannot be so readily dismissed. He amassed seven N.B.A. championship rings, with three franchises, as one of the finest role players in league history. Those who played with and coached him, like Tomjanovich, insist that he delivered so much more than the two mammoth 3-pointers he is best known for, which essentially made two of those titles possible: a buzzer-beater for the Lakers in Game 4 of the 2002 Western Conference finals against the Sacramento Kings that kept Los Angeles from a presumably fatal 3-1 series deficit; and a 3-pointer for the San Antonio Spurs in overtime of Game 5 of the 2005 N.B.A. finals to seal a series-turning victory against Detroit.After that masterpiece against the Pistons, I wrote a column proclaiming Horry to be the No. 1 role player in league history. He hadn’t scored in the first half but finished with 21 points, mitigating the damage from the six consecutive free throws that Tim Duncan, who just entered the Hall of Fame alongside Tomjanovich, clanked in the fourth quarter.Almost every year, there’s a discussion about how Rajon Rondo becomes Playoff Rondo after sleepy regular seasons. Although he has his own catchy moniker, Big Shot Rob, Horry was Playoff Rondo years before anyone was clever enough to use a nickname to spotlight the tendency. In 1994-95, he averaged 10.2 points per game during the regular season but 17.8 points and 10 rebounds per game in Houston’s four-game finals sweep of Shaquille O’Neal’s Orlando Magic.Ben Wallace, announced on Sunday as a member of the Hall’s 2021 class, won the Defensive Player of the Year Award four times but was passed over for induction until his fifth year of eligibility, likely because of his minuscule career scoring average of 5.7 points per game. Apart from a spot on the 1992-93 all-rookie team, Horry’s Basketball Reference page is far more barren than Wallace’s when it comes to individual honors. Perhaps he will never overcome the pedestrian nature of his career statistics to get that Hall of Fame call, but know this: Tomjanovich is far from the only one of Horry’s former colleagues who thinks he belongs in Springfield.Q: If more than one team finishes the season with the same record, do they have the same odds in the draft lottery? For example: If four teams tied with the league’s worst record, would they all have the same odds to land the No. 1 overall pick? — Chezky Krasner (Jerusalem, Israel)Stein: No. The league conducts tiebreakers, via a drawing overseen by a representative from Ernst & Young, when teams finish with identical records. The winner of the tiebreaker gets the higher draft pick or the higher placement in the lottery standings. The draft is July 29.There are several ties that the league will need to break in this manner, most crucially between Cleveland (22-50) and Oklahoma City (22-50) to see which team will have the fourth- and fifth-highest odds in the June 22 draft lottery. The Cavaliers and the Thunder will each get 115 number combinations, with one chosen at random to break the tie.Also to be decided in tiebreakers that are scheduled for May 25:Chicago (which owes its first-round pick to Orlando as part of the Nikola Vucevic trade) finished in a three-way tie for the No. 8 overall selection with New Orleans and Sacramento at 31-41.Charlotte and San Antonio (33-39) will have a tiebreaker draw if both teams lose this week in the play-in tournament.The Knicks and Atlanta (41-31) will need a tiebreaker to determine the Nos. 19 and 20 picks.There is a three-way tie for the No. 21 draft slot between the Los Angeles Lakers, Portland (which owes its first-round pick to Houston as part of the Robert Covington trade) and Dallas (which owes its first-rounder to the Knicks as part of the Kristaps Porzingis trade).Denver and the Los Angeles Clippers (47-25) will need a tiebreaker to determine the Nos. 25 and 26.Q: Your recent commentary on the play-in round almost persuaded me, but I can’t help but be very sympathetic to No. 7 teams whose records are quite a bit better than the other teams in the play-in round. Your point about how No. 7 seeds don’t win N.B.A. championships doesn’t change the fact that fans of those teams deserve to see their teams in the playoffs even if they have minimal hope of winning it all. — Simon Rosenblum (Toronto)Stein: This is a common retort to those, like me, who love the play-in concept. It’s an eye-of-the-beholder thing, but I just don’t see the No. 7 seed in either conference as some sacred thing we have to protect.The No. 7 seed, even in a scenario like you describe with a record far superior to Nos. 8 to 10, gets two chances to win one play-in game to claim a playoff spot. The system still skews heavily in No. 7’s favor, while also making the regular season infinitely more interesting and competitive as teams strain to finish no lower than No. 6.As for this season, injuries are the only reason that the defending champion Lakers slipped to No. 7. Anthony Davis missed 36 games, and LeBron James missed 27 after the shortest off-season (71 days) in N.B.A. history. I expect no one outside of Phoenix will pick the Suns, one of just two 50-win teams in this 72-game season, to beat the Lakers in the first round if the Lakers beat Golden State on Wednesday to get the seventh seed.Judging by what the oddsmakers in Las Vegas are saying, they will be the scariest No. 7 seed in N.B.A. history, rather than a team at risk for an unjust early exit this week. Only the Nets have shorter championship odds.Numbers GameHaving fewer fans may have contributed to home teams’ increased losses this season.Christian Petersen/Getty Images54.4Home teams won 54.4 percent of the time this season, going 293-247 (.543) in the East and 294-246 (.544) in the West. It’s the lowest success rate for home teams in league history, dipping below last season’s 55.1 percent.8This was the eighth consecutive season in which home teams won less than 60 percent of the time, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.84The empty arenas and reduced crowds mandated by league health and safety restrictions have been regularly cited as contributing factors in the further erosion of home-court advantage this season. But as the season progressed, home teams gradually got better at dealing with the baseball-style series in which teams hosted the same opponent in two consecutive games to reduce travel.Home teams won both games 27 times in 84 such series, lost both games 16 times and settled for a split 41 times, according to Ben Falk of Cleaning the Glass. Of the 41 splits, home teams won the first game and lost the second 17 times, and won the second game after losing the first 24 times. Additional time in one city and the increased familiarity resulting from two consecutive games against the same foe were expected to greatly help visiting teams in this scenario.2Two teams posted a losing record at home and a winning record on the road: Indiana (13-23 at home; 21-15 on the road) and San Antonio (14-22 at home; 19-17 on the road). Memphis nearly joined them but rallied to win its last four games at FedEx Forum to finish 18-18 at home compared to 20-16 on the road. The Toronto Raptors, in their temporary home in Tampa, Fla., because of Canada’s pandemic restrictions, were in a category by themselves. They were 16-20 in Tampa, and 11-25 on the road.27-11Phoenix fell one game shy of the league’s best record, going 51-21 to Utah’s 52-20, but the Suns went 27-11 against .500-or-better opposition to lead the league. Seven other teams had winning records against .500-or-better foes: Utah (24-14), the Nets (23-13), Dallas (22-16), Denver (21-17), the Los Angeles Clippers (21-17), Philadelphia (19-17) and Milwaukee (19-17).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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      Sabrina Ionescu's First Triple-Double Leads Liberty Over Lynx

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      The Liberty star’s big night was a rarity in the W.N.B.A., but it was par for the course for her.Sabrina Ionescu was hailed as a savior for the moribund Liberty when New York’s W.N.B.A. team drafted her No. 1 overall last year. And why not? At the time, Ionescu was the college player of the year, the record-setting star of one of the best teams in the country.That made her a strong candidate to resurrect the Liberty, who were coming off two straight losing seasons and still chasing — more than two decades after becoming a founding member of the league — their first W.N.B.A. title.But Ionescu’s transition from college stardom to professional basketball was anything but smooth. Her career at Oregon ended in disappointment when the N.C.A.A. tournament was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, and then her rookie year with the Liberty ended in her third game when she injured her ankle.Now she is making up for lost time. In her third game of the new season on Tuesday night, Ionescu put up her first career triple-double: 26 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists in a win over the Minnesota Lynx.In the N.B.A., triple-doubles have become increasingly common. There were 142 this season alone, 38 of them by Washington’s Russell Westbrook. But in the W.N.B.A., they remain a rarity. There have only been nine, in fact, in the league’s 25-year history.Ionescu’s was only the second that included 20 points. In 2004, Lisa Leslie of the Los Angeles Sparks had 29 points in a triple-double that included 15 rebounds and 10 blocks.Ionescu, 23, also became the youngest player and the first Liberty player with a W.N.B.A. triple-double, but the feeling was hardly new. She had 26 triple-doubles in college, an N.C.A.A. record.“Obviously getting a triple-double in a win is important,” she said after Tuesday’s game. “It’s definitely pretty cool.”Should Ionescu do it again — and why wouldn’t she? — she would set the record for regular season W.N.B.A. triple-doubles, with two, although Sheryl Swoopes once had one in the regular season and another in the playoffs in the same year.Ionescu’s season is just three games old, but she is already matching or exceeding the hype that marked the start of her career. Going into Wednesday night’s games, she leads the league in assists, with 9.0 per game, and ranks fifth in scoring at 21 points. As a 5-foot-11 point guard, she even ranks third in defensive rebounds.Outside of the triple-double stats, Ionescu also leads the league with 10 3-pointers, and is making them at a .526 clip. She ranks first in both free throws and attempts, hitting 19 of 21 so far.And one could argue that Tuesday’s game was only her second most memorable night of the season. Last week, she hit a game-winning 3-pointer to beat the Indiana Fever in the Liberty’s season opener.When a team is as bad as the Ionescu-less Liberty was last year — they finished a league-worst 2-20 — improvement is expected. It doesn’t always come so fast. But now the Liberty are off to a 3-0 start for the first time in 14 years, and it is not absurd to see a healthy Ionescu lead the team to the playoffs.She isn’t afraid of the rising expectations.“The expectations I have for myself are always higher than anyone else’s,” she said last fall, “regardless of what level I’m playing at.” More

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      Ja Morant Is Showing How Much Better He Can Be

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      Morant, who won last season’s Rookie of the Year Award, avoided a sophomore slump. Still, amid his high-flying dunks and fearsome drives, there is room for him to grow.The ball found Ja Morant behind the 3-point line in the third quarter of Sunday afternoon’s game against Golden State. Recognizing that his closest defender was stationed in the paint and did not seem to be in any hurry to throw a hand in his face, Morant, the Memphis Grizzlies’ second-year point guard, launched a 29-footer that caromed off the back of the rim.Morant got a second look a few seconds later following an offensive rebound but with roughly the same result: another errant 3-pointer, another missed opportunity, another haggard expression.“I have to be better as a player,” Morant said after the Grizzlies’ 113-101 loss.Second-year players sometimes get overlooked by the basketball-viewing public. The novelty that greeted them as rookies is gone. (Remember when Zion Williamson’s games were appointment viewing?) At the same time, they are graded on a harsher scale: Have they improved? And if not, why not? The honeymoon is over. It is time to produce.But the lessons never stop, even for the gifted. Morant’s instructor over the weekend was none other than Golden State’s Stephen Curry, who seemed to go out of his way to illustrate the gulf that exists between prodigies and potentates by securing the league’s scoring title with another tour de force: 46 points, nine 3-pointers and a win that gave the Warriors the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference’s play-in round.With the loss, the Grizzlies were sent to the brink of elimination. As the No. 9 seed, Memphis will need to a win pair of games in the play-in round, starting Wednesday night against the San Antonio Spurs, in order to advance to face the top-seeded Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. There is no margin for error, not anymore, and the spotlight — for better or for worse — will be back on Morant, last season’s rookie of the year.Morant defended Curry for parts of Curry’s 46-point performance.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“Hopefully, we all come out fresh, ready to go,” he said.Some players say they ignore their critics. And then there is Morant, 21, who not only acknowledges his Twitter critics but sometimes responds to them. Last season, after the Grizzlies snapped a losing streak, Morant famously called out “this guy who tweeted” some harsh words about him. “That game right there was for him,” Morant said in a postgame interview.But Morant is also demanding of himself, and after Sunday’s game, he glanced at a box score and observed that he had shot 7 of 21 from the field, including 1 of 6 from 3-point range. “Very unacceptable,” he said.It was the final game of a regular season in which Morant was the focus of every opponent’s defensive game plan. Jaren Jackson Jr., the Grizzlies’ starting center, was sidelined until April 21 after knee surgery, and his absence meant that opposing teams could pay Morant even more attention. Morant saw waves of defenders, every night, and he still produced at a high level, averaging 19.1 points and 7.4 assists per game while leading Memphis to a 38-34 record.“If you only watch clips on social media and the highlights they show on TV, then you’ll have a narrow scope of what type of player he is,” said Brevin Knight, a former point guard who now works as an analyst for the Grizzlies’ television broadcasts. “But for those of us who watch him on a regular basis, the question before the season was: How much better can you make everyone else? You already knew he was faster and more athletic than most people.”Knight has seen an improvement in Morant’s willingness to penetrate, then stop and knock down short jumpers. Last season, Knight said, Morant seemed to attack the rim whenever possible, to rise above a flotilla of post defenders and dunk (or at least try to dunk) over the top of them. In fact, 45.5 percent of his shot attempts last season came from within the restricted area of the paint. In the process, Knight said, Morant was absorbing an awful lot of contact.“You’re starting to bring injury into play when you’re trying to get all the way to the basket every time,” Knight said.Morant has since become more selective about when to elevate for potential highlight-reel plays. This season, a more modest 38 percent of his shot attempts came from within the restricted area. And Morant’s ability to get into the lane and then exercise greater discretion about what he wants to do with the ball has created a more nuanced set of problems for defenders.Morant shooting a floater over Pelicans’ defenders.Justin Ford/Getty Images“They don’t know if he’s going to go all the way to the basket or stop short,” Knight said. “If guys move up a step to defend him, now he can explode by.”Or drop a pass off to a teammate. When Morant assembled one of the finest games of his career earlier this month, finishing with 37 points and 10 assists in a 139-135 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, he practically lived in the paint, attempting just three shots from beyond 10 feet. In a sign of the times, he was still nearly outshone by one of this season’s most compelling rookies, Anthony Edwards, who had 42 points while shooting 17 of 22 from the field.Morant recently described himself as one of the top five point guards in the league. He has a lot of competition. He does not lack confidence.He also has room for growth, especially on defense, Knight said, where he tends to look for a window to catch his breath — a common tendency for any young player who handles the bulk of his team’s offensive load.But the biggest hole in Morant’s game remains his outside jumper. He was a slightly worse 3-point shooter this season (30.3 percent) than he was last season (33.5 percent). And while he has been able to compensate, to some extent, for his struggles on the perimeter, imagine the possibilities if he did not need to compensate for them at all. He could drive past defenders who press up against him and shoot over the top of those who give him too much space. He needs to become just a bit more proficient.There is only one Stephen Curry in the world, but Morant caught a glimpse of what it looks like when opponents have no choice but to track an all-world scorer from the moment he steps across half-court.After Sunday’s game, Morant was back on Twitter — this time to campaign for Curry as the league’s most valuable player.“No debate,” he wrote. More

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      Marv Albert, Hall of Fame N.B.A. Sportscaster, Is Retiring

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      Albert, who turns 80 in June, will call his last game in the Eastern Conference finals.Marv Albert, whose rapid-fire coverage became an N.B.A. soundtrack for almost 60 years, will retire from sportscasting after the 2021 postseason, his employer, Turner Sports, announced on Monday.Albert, who will turn 80 in June, called 25 N.B.A. All-Star Games, 13 N.B.A. finals, the 1992 gold medal men’s basketball victory for the United States and dozens of other major sporting events for several networks in a long career that earned him recognition in several halls of fame.Though Albert called games in a variety of sports, including professional football, hockey and baseball, he is most recognized for his work in basketball. He was the Knicks’ lead play-by-play voice for much of four decades starting in 1967, and became the primary N.B.A. voice for NBC Sports in 1990, where he worked from 1977 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2002. He has worked for Turner Sports for 22 years, 19 of them as an N.B.A. play-by-play announcer.“There is no voice more closely associated with N.B.A. basketball than Marv Albert’s,” Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said in the announcement. “Marv has been the soundtrack for basketball fans for nearly 60 years,” he added.Albert registered his first signature “Yes!” call in 1968, when Knicks guard Dick Barnett hit a jump shot during the playoffs.On-air, he was “as warm as they come,” David Halberstam, a former play-by-play announcer for the Miami Heat who publishes the Sports Broadcast Journal, said in a phone interview. But off-air, Albert was on the quiet side. Born and raised in Brooklyn, his obsession with basketball started early. He worked as a ball boy for the Knicks as a teenager and then returned as a college senior and developed a close relationship with Marty Glickman, the famed broadcaster who called the team’s games for WCBS radio at the time. Sometimes, Glickman would hand Albert the microphone to announce statistics.Albert called his first game on Jan. 27, 1963, filling in for Glickman as the Boston Celtics beat the Knicks. He was 21.“He called the game with such a great flair and such great descriptiveness that he had learned from Glickman, and it was riveting and gripping,” Halberstam said of Albert’s early years. “You’d never want to turn that radio off.”Albert’s coverage of the first five of Michael Jordan’s six N.B.A. championship titles solidified his household name. But his career was interrupted by a highly publicized trial in 1997 that exposed a series of lurid sexual encounters. Two women testified that Albert had attacked them, and Albert pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor account of assault and battery.After pleading guilty, he resigned from the MSG Network, which broadcast the Knicks and the Rangers of the N.H.L., and was fired by NBC. He did not serve jail time but attended court-mandated therapy.Less than a year later, though, he returned to broadcasting by covering Knicks games on the radio and as host of the nightly “MSG Sportsdesk.” In 1999, he rejoined NBC. Albert left NBC in 2002, after the network lost its N.B.A. coverage, and he was let go as the voice of the Knicks in 2004 after criticizing the team’s play on air.“He made you love basketball more because of his style and because of his voice, his tone and his rhythm and his pace,” Mike Breen, who took over doing television play-by-play for the Knicks from Albert, said in a phone interview. “It was perfection.”Albert was named to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2015, and was recognized by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997.His final series will be the Eastern Conference finals; Philadelphia is the top seed in the East, and the Nets are No. 2. The No. 4-seeded Knicks will make their first postseason since 2013.Albert said in a statement that his 55 years in broadcasting had “flown by.”“Now, I’ll have the opportunity to hone my gardening skills and work on my ballroom dancing,” he said.Richard Sandomir contributed reporting. More

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      After Helping Her Husband Gain Freedom, Maya Moore Savors Her Own

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      Moore, the 2014 W.N.B.A. M.V.P., is reveling in married life and continuing a fight for criminal justice reform alongside Jonathan Irons, whom she married after helping him win his release from prison after 23 years.When you speak with Maya Moore and her husband, Jonathan Irons, a single word comes up with drumbeat constancy.Freedom.“It’s everything to us,” Moore said during an interview last week.She wasn’t talking just about the fact that Irons is out of prison after serving 23 years for a crime he always insisted he did not commit. She was talking about how, after struggling to overturn his conviction, she has more time and energy to fight for criminal justice reform.“There is life we want to live, things we want to do, things we feel called to do together to help make our world a better place,” she said. “This sense of freedom is huge for both of us now.”Here’s the shorthand version of their journey — part love story, part against-the-odds battle to right a terrible wrong. Still in the prime of a brilliant career, Moore left the Minnesota Lynx, the W.N.B.A. team she helped lead to four championships, before the 2019 season. Burned out, she wanted to focus her energy on helping Irons.Irons was Inmate No. 101145 at a maximum-security prison in Missouri. He had been locked up since his teens, when he was sentenced in 1998 to 50 years for a robbery and assault that he denied committing.After getting to know him through a prison ministry, Moore and her family believed in Irons’s innocence. They investigated his case on their own, hired lawyers to help and stood behind his last-ditch appeal. In March 2020, a Missouri judge vacated the convictions, citing evidence that was “weak and circumstantial at best” and flaws in how the case was investigated and tried.Prosecutors fought the decision, but three months later, Irons walked out of prison with Moore and her family there to whisk him away. A day later, at a hotel near the prison, he proposed. Weeks later, they married.“It’s a miracle that we’re sitting here together,” Moore said as she and Irons spoke to me over a video call. “I mean, there’s no glass between Jonathan and me, no chains, no security guards walking around. A miracle.”They were inside their suburban Atlanta home, discussing their life together and her future in basketball. I had a question, the one asked most often by people who have followed their story.I detailed Moore’s quest for justice in a series of articles. I interviewed Irons in a bare-walled prison conference room and spent days with Moore. Throughout that time, they described their relationship as a nearly familial bond.So why didn’t they admit there was more to the connection?“It would have been too much to navigate telling a love story on top of Jonathan’s fight for freedom,” Moore said.She is exceedingly careful in all she does. She answers questions with a measured cadence that lets you know she’s considering the weight of every word. She has rarely opened up her private life to the world.“We felt like it was best to wait before we talked about that part of our story,” Moore said. “He was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The urgency of Jonathan’s fight took precedence over everything else.”Life since Irons’s release has been full of emotion, exploration and discovery.Moore, center, celebrating as Irons greeted family and friends after his release from prison in July 2020.Julia Hansen for The New York TimesThere was much to learn — about each other, about a life full of freedom. You have to remember, he said, “our relationship had consisted of phone calls, letters and prison visits.” He noted that he and Moore could barely hug during those visits, which were rare and held in a large, heavily guarded room full of other inmates and their loved ones.Irons, now 41, grew up in stifling poverty. He had never ventured far from the St. Louis area, where he was born. Now he is married to a globally renowned basketball star and living with her in a recently purchased home. Everything is new. How do you use an A.T.M.? Where do you go to buy clothes? What’s it like to have a driver’s license or fly on a plane?He has been dogged by internal agony, the result of being stuck for years inside a prison that could turn violent in a second. He has endured sleepless nights, tossing and turning, his mind working to cope with the past. He has struggled to relax around people he doesn’t know.“The trauma is very real,” Moore explained. Her goal is no longer winning championships. It’s being present emotionally, physically and spiritually, “to help my husband through that pain.”In January, Moore lost her 84-year-old great-uncle, Hugh Flowers, after a long illness. It was Flowers who, while teaching music to inmates at the Jefferson City prison, first took Irons’s claims of innocence seriously. Without Flowers prodding other family members to get to know Irons and start investigating, Irons might still be in prison.Moore and Irons remember the tears they shed as they held each other tight after hearing that Flowers had died.Life, though, has also been stuffed with joy. Their faces lit up as they spoke of simple pleasures. Playing Frisbee. Hiking. Exploring Atlanta in Moore’s 2006 Honda Civic. Flying to the West Coast, where Irons saw a desert for the first time and they kayaked in Santa Barbara.Another highlight: Watching the Connecticut women’s basketball team, which Moore led to national titles in 2009 and 2010, play in this year’s N.C.A.A. tournament.“Oh man, she’s into it!” Irons said. “She’s up there shouting, calling the players by their nicknames!”Moore leaned toward him, a look of embarrassment spreading across her face. “Nobody needs to know that!”They laughed.As we spoke, I could see their closeness. Sometimes he rested his head on her shoulder. Sometimes she touched his arm, light and reassuring.“I still can’t believe I get to spend time with him every day,” she said.“And I get to kiss her 100 times a day,” he added.What about the future?They plan to use storytelling to inspire change. Podcasts, speeches, films. Anything to “shine a light on injustice,” Moore said, starting with their own story. An ESPN documentary will feature their battle for Irons’s release and their life together.They want children. When? Moore, a Christian, says she will leave that up to God.What about basketball? Moore is 31. Though her game these days is limited to occasional driveway shootarounds with friends, she could return to the W.N.B.A. and play for years. But she won’t commit to that. Not now.“The first year of marriage requires a lot,” she said. “It’s a whole big thing. I know right now my priorities are where they need to be. I’m in a place where I can actually enjoy life and my husband’s freedom without the burden of being in a fight for his freedom.” More

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      For Jrue Holiday, It’s a Good Game When His Wife Says So

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      The pressure is on as the Bucks head to the N.B.A. playoffs, but Holiday has somebody at home who understands competition: his wife, Lauren, who faced high expectations on the U.S. national soccer team.It was not until May, which the Bucks began with back-to-back victories over the Nets, that Milwaukee loudly announced it was still an N.B.A. championship contender. Jrue Holiday scored 14 points in the first quarter of the second win, and in a contented home locker room, one of the league’s foremost defensive players let his guard down.As he made his usual postgame scan of his phone for messages, he was greeted by a text from his wife, Lauren. It included the words that will get any spouse’s attention: “We need to talk.”“You could have done more,” Lauren Holiday wrote.After his productive first quarter, Jrue Holiday scored only 1 point in nearly six minutes in the second quarter. Lauren Holiday, who won two Olympic gold medals and the 2015 World Cup as a bustling midfielder with the United States women’s national soccer team, did not regard the sweep of the Nets or her husband’s play as a significant statement. She said she “felt like he took the quarter off.”“It’s not that I think he did poorly,” Lauren Holiday said. “I just wanted to know what his thinking was — just help me understand. At first he said, ‘I took what the defense dictated,’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t agree.’ Those are the conversations he has to have just because I’m also a competitor.”The Holidays have been a tandem since they were athletes at U.C.L.A., and only grew closer after doctors found she had a brain tumor in June 2016, six months into her pregnancy with their daughter, Jrue Tyler. They have two children now, and maintain deep rooting interests in each other’s sports. They also oversee a seven-figure social fund that supports Black-led nonprofit organizations and Black-owned businesses, after deciding last year that they could be doing more as a couple, too.They relocated to Milwaukee from New Orleans in November. The Bucks viewed Jrue Holiday as the sort of marquee addition whose arrival would persuade Giannis Antetokounmpo to make a long-term commitment to the small-market franchise, so the Bucks surrendered the veteran guards George Hill and Eric Bledsoe, three future first-round draft picks and the rights to swap two more first-round picks to get him as part of a four-team trade.After a nervy wait for Bucks fans, Antetokounmpo signed a five-year, $228 million contract extension, the so-called supermax, 21 days after the trade, only for Holiday to quickly discover that business matters were merely a part of the burden.The Bucks have not won a championship since the 1970-71 season. Antetokounmpo shoulders the weight of expectations more than anyone in town, after winning back-to-back Most Valuable Player Awards and last season’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, but Holiday is next in line. He was billed as the Bucks’ missing piece who, despite just one All-Star appearance and 31 playoff games on his 11-year résumé entering this season, would lift them to a new level. And that talk began months before he signed a four-year contract extension in April worth at least $134 million.“It is something that you don’t get used to but you have to accept if you want to be in this line of work,” Holiday said.Lauren Holiday celebrated with teammates after defeating Japan in the final of the 2015 Women’s World Cup.Michael Chow/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLauren Holiday agreed. She played in four major competitions in her eight-year career with the national team, helping the United States win three of them. Although the 2011 World Cup final slipped away on penalty kicks against Japan, she said she only ever imagined going four for four.“The N.B.A. is like a different world,” she said. “They try to manage their bodies. That part of basketball, how they rest, that’s all foreign to me. I’m 110 percent all the time. That’s all I know. That was instilled in us on the national team: ‘You are winners. We win. We don’t lose.’”Lauren Holiday’s expertise in coping with lofty expectations makes her a helpful sounding board for her husband as he heads into a postseason in which the Bucks will be immediately confronted by some demons, thanks to a first-round matchup against the Miami Heat. Milwaukee was dominated by Miami in five games last summer in a second-round series in the N.B.A. bubble at Walt Disney World, crashing out early after posting the league’s best regular-season record for the second consecutive year.She was also the primary source of counsel when Jrue, still with New Orleans, gave strong consideration to skipping the N.B.A. restart. Their JLH Fund was inspired by her suggestion that he finish out the Pelicans’ season and donate the remainder of his 2019-20 salary ($5.3 million) to help Black communities ravaged by the pandemic and a summer of social turmoil after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.The initial focus of the grants were the cities closest to the Holidays: New Orleans, Indianapolis (her hometown) and Los Angeles (his hometown). On Monday, they will donate an additional $1 million to the fund to begin a second round of grants and add Milwaukee to the list of featured cities.“I’m not going to lie: I didn’t really want to go to the bubble,” Jrue Holiday said. “It didn’t feel like it was the time for basketball. My wife was pregnant. I just felt like me leaving my family wasn’t the best for my family. I also wanted to go out and protest, but I couldn’t do that because I had to protect my family from Covid. I felt like I needed something to motivate me to go.”The new season, in a new city, predictably brought fresh challenges. Hendrix, the Holidays’ son, was 5 weeks old when the trade to Milwaukee went through. They chose a house, Lauren Holiday said, largely by scrolling through “pictures on Zillow.” It was the first house Jrue has lived in with a basement — which proved a vital utility when he had Covid-19 in February and missed 10 games.He said he moved into the basement for nearly two weeks of “isolation in my house.” Contact with the children peaked with FaceTime calls and pictures that 4-year-old J.T., as her parents call her, drew for her father and left at the top of the basement stairs.“I got to at least hear my kids,” Jrue Holiday said.He said he had “all the symptoms — chills, fever, headache, body aches, and I lost my taste and smell.” Yet Jrue, who will turn 31 next month, has recovered to assemble the best season of his career. He was shooting a career-high 50.3 percent from the field and 39.2 percent from the 3-point line entering Sunday’s season finale against Chicago, while only adding to his reputation as one of the game’s top two-way players. Respected veterans like Portland’s Damian Lillard and Miami’s Andre Iguodala have anointed him as the N.B.A.’s best individual defender. His strength, anticipation and aggression enable him to guard four positions on the floor, despite standing at just 6-foot-3.Jrue Holiday, guarded by Kevin Durant, during one of Milwaukee’s matchups against the Nets this season.Stacy Revere/Getty Images“He’s special on that side of the ball,” the Nets’ Kevin Durant said.Lauren Holiday said: “He’s playing with such freedom. And I feel like that was what he needed. I think change can be good sometimes, and this change has been just tremendous for him.”External judgment will naturally depend on how much Holiday can help the Bucks in the playoffs. After dominating the past two regular seasons and then having humbling playoff eliminations inflicted by Toronto in 2019 and Miami last year, Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer heeded calls to experiment offensively (more screening) and defensively (more switching). The target was increased versatility, in support of a more top-heavy roster after relying for years on depth around Antetokounmpo, but the experimentation came with a cost.Sinking to No. 3 in the Eastern Conference means the Bucks’ path, just to earn a berth in the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1974, could require them to eliminate Miami, the Nets and top-seeded Philadelphia in succession. Holiday’s presence theoretically eases pressure on Antetokounmpo and the sharpshooting Khris Middleton, but the trade assets and contract he commanded require Holiday to deliver All-Star production — whether or not he ever formally regains the All-Star status he achieved in 2012-13 with Philadelphia.An undaunted Holiday insisted that he was “ready to go,” and that he wished the playoffs “were here already.” Welcoming more pointed postgame critiques from Lauren, he added, is wrapped up in that readiness.“She’s literally the athlete and the winner in our family,” Jrue Holiday said. “Getting that from her means a lot to me. It’s real, and she backs it up.” More