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      ‘We’re Hungry’: The Liberty Aim High in a Bounce-Back Season

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      The Liberty had the worst record in the W.N.B.A. last year. But the return of Sabrina Ionescu and the addition of league veterans could turn things around.Liberty Coach Walt Hopkins and his staff reviewed last season’s film looking for answers beyond the box scores and advanced analytics. Why was their defensive rating so low? Who was getting burned on screens? It was a trying year for a first-year head coach and his team, which ended with the second-worst winning percentage in W.N.B.A. history and a 2-20 record.The Liberty were young and inexperienced, playing as many as six rookies. Sabrina Ionescu, the 2020 No. 1 overall pick, severely sprained her ankle in her third game and missed the rest of the season. Key contributors such as Rebecca Allen, Marine Johannes and Asia Durr opted out of playing.Wins weren’t everything for a franchise rebuilding without Tina Charles, the 6-foot-4 center who had led the team in scoring every season since 2014. The Liberty made strides reinventing their style of play. On offense, the focus was on spacing and 3-point shooting. On defense, players were instructed not to over-help on picks. The Liberty shot 41.5 percent of their field goals from 3-point range, the most in W.N.B.A. history, after shooting 28.2 percent of them from there the year before.While expectations were tempered then, the franchise will introduce four veterans new to the team in its debut season at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.Here’s what you need to know:Best Addition: Natasha HowardSpotlight on Offense: Sabrina IonescuSpotlight on Defense: Betnijah LaneyThe Rookie: Michaela OnyenwereBiggest LossesReason for OptimismCause for ConcernBest Addition: Natasha HowardNatasha Howard, acquired in a trade with Seattle, was a major off-season addition because of her defense and on-court leadership.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressThe Liberty tried to speed up their rebuild by trading the 2021 No. 1 pick, a 2022 first-round pick from the Phoenix Mercury and their own 2022 second-round pick to the Seattle Storm to acquire Natasha Howard. A 6-2 forward, Howard is a three-time W.N.B.A. champion and was a starter during the Storm’s 2018 and 2020 title runs, but her career year was 2019.With Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart sidelined with injuries, Howard, alongside guard Jewell Loyd, carried Seattle while notching career highs across the board. She averaged 18.1 points, 8.2 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 2.2 steals a game and won the Defensive Player of the Year Award after blocking 1.7 shots per game. She has proved she can lead a team. With the Liberty, she will have that opportunity again.Spotlight on Offense: Sabrina IonescuAll eyes will be on Ionescu, the 5-11 University of Oregon sensation. She will run a free-flowing offense designed around her passing ability and shooting range.In 80 total minutes before her injury, Ionescu scored 55 points on 19-of-42 shooting, including a highlight-filled 33-point game in which she sank six 3-pointers and had seven assists and seven rebounds. That was without running sets with a player as accomplished as Howard. How will teams guard their quickness and savvy in a pick-and-roll?“I don’t know,” the Liberty assistant coach Jacki Gemelos said. “How does one guard a pick-and-roll with other duos in the league like Chelsea Gray and Candace Parker, or whoever? You just kind of got to cross your fingers and: ‘Let’s hope they just don’t score this play. Let’s try and get the ball out of their hands.’ It’s going to be scary. And again, as a spectator, as a coach, I’m looking forward to it as well.”Spotlight on Defense: Betnijah LaneyBetnijah Laney, right, won the Most Improved Player Award with the Atlanta Dream last season.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressBetnijah Laney was the Liberty’s biggest free-agent signing of the off-season, which is an improbable designation for someone cut by the Indiana Fever eight months earlier.Over 22 games with the Atlanta Dream last season, Laney more than tripled her scoring average from the previous season in just 7.7 additional minutes. She posted 17.2 points per game on 48.1 percent shooting from the field and 40.5 percent shooting from 3-point range. She won the Most Improved Player of the Year Award and earned all-defensive first team honors.“I think Betnijah’s whole setup is going to be just so different from Atlanta,” Gemelos said. “I think she’s going to have more people setting her up. It’s going to make things a lot easier for her.”Gemelos was Laney’s teammate with the Chicago Sky in 2015.“To see how her game has developed from then until now, it’s just scary,” Gemelos said. “She’s just one of those players who can play multiple positions. She’s fearless offensively and defensively. I would let her guard anyone in the league, and I’d be completely confident that she’s going to get the job done.”The Rookie: Michaela OnyenwereMichaela Onyenwere, a rookie out of U.C.L.A., has the shooting touch to contribute from distance and the strength to get to the rim.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesForward Michaela Onyenwere, the No. 6 pick in this year’s draft, should find a place in the Liberty’s rotation. At U.C.L.A., she had 19.1 points and 7.2 rebounds a game in her senior season. She has the shooting touch to contribute from distance and the strength to get to the rim. If she can relieve Laney as a defensive stalwart who crashes the boards and stretches the floor, she’ll make a considerable first-year impact.Biggest LossesKia Nurse, Amanda Zahui B. and the No. 1 pickTwo Liberty mainstays won’t be at Barclays. Kia Nurse was traded to the Mercury, and Amanda Zahui B., who spent five years with the Liberty at center, signed with the Los Angeles Sparks in free agency.Nurse showed promise in a breakout sophomore campaign that included an All-Star selection. Zahui B. started 20 of the team’s 22 games last season, averaging career highs in points (9) and rebounds (8.5).Reason for OptimismThe roster is much improved.It’s reasonable for fans to doubt the franchise with the worst record last season will be able to rebound quickly, but the roster has drastically improved.Sami Whitcomb, a two-time champion with the Storm who was part of the Howard trade, is solid from 3 (38.1 percent last season). Even better is Rebecca Allen, who made 42.6 percent of her 3-pointers in 2019 and is back after opting out last season. Plus, Jazmine Jones, who was named to the all-rookie first team last season, can build off her stellar campaign. She averaged 10.8 points a game off the bench.Laney is confident that the inclusion of new veterans will make a difference.“We’re hungry,” she said, adding, “We’re not going to back down and roll over for anyone.”Cause for ConcernCan a franchise turn around this quickly?Though a significant roster overhaul can be a good thing, it won’t be an easy transition. Hopkins will have to teach his system to different groups in waves. Howard, Allen and Kiah Stokes, for example, are latecomers because of overseas commitments.Best OutcomeThe Liberty make the playoffs.If the new team gels, the Liberty could set its sights on the postseason.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressThe Liberty aren’t likely to compete for a championship, but if Ionescu can play consistently at the level she showed in her 33-point game last season, Laney can keep shooting well and Howard can thrive as a go-to scorer the way she did in 2019, the Liberty can be in the playoff hunt.Worst OutcomeToo many new pieces slow development, and the team returns to the W.N.B.A. basement.With players arriving late, and so much change from last season’s group, maybe the transition into a 3-point-heavy offensive system won’t go to plan. Precision is everything, and despite shooting so many 3-pointers last season, the Liberty made a league-low 27.7 percent of their looks from distance. They also scored the fewest points per 100 possessions by a mile, finishing 11.7 points per 100 possessions below the next-worst team, Atlanta.This offense isn’t foolproof.Ionescu for Rookie of the Year (Again)?Hopkins isn’t trying to start a fire over the discussion, but if Ionescu plays to her potential, she won’t have the chance to win the Rookie of the Year Award despite playing just two full games and leaving her third with an ankle injury.“She’s a rookie,” Hopkins said when asked. “I mean, she played two games and had to leave the bubble. She didn’t even get to spend the whole season with us. She’s by all accounts in her fourth week of being a W.N.B.A. player. Yeah, I feel strongly about that one. I don’t think it’s fair that she doesn’t get to be in contention.”Hopkins added: “So she never gets to be in contention for rookie of the year? What experience did she get? I don’t believe she was going to be on people’s ballots last year after playing two games. I don’t think anybody would have thought that was reasonable. So why do we think it’s reasonable that she doesn’t get to play her rookie year now?” More

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      Brace Yourselves: The Knicks Are Going to the Playoffs

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      New York’s seven-year postseason drought ended when the Celtics lost on Wednesday.Let’s keep this simple: The Knicks — the Knicks! — are going back to the playoffs.When the Boston Celtics lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, the Knicks clinched a top-six seed in the Eastern Conference.That means the Knicks will avoid the N.B.A.’s play-in round. And while their final playoff seed is still to be determined, they know they will make their first playoff appearance in eight years.WE HERE.The New York Knicks are headed to the Playoffs. #NewYorkForever pic.twitter.com/kpp3Pu3RJr— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) May 13, 2021
      “Check it off the list. We not close to done #NYWEHERE,” Julius Randle, the Knicks star, said on Twitter on Wednesday.Immanuel Quickley, the team’s rookie guard, expressed his emotions in a single word: “CLINCHED!”This will be the Knicks’ first postseason trip since the 2012-13 season, when Mike Woodson was coaching the team and Carmelo Anthony was its franchise player. That was an outlier burst of competitiveness in which the team made the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. For most of the 21st century, the Knicks have been defined by the carousel of coaches, public drama, underachieving players and late-spring vacations. Since the 2000-1 season, the Knicks have made the playoffs only five times, including this season, and won just one series so far, after a decade of deep playoff runs led by Patrick Ewing.Returning to the playoffs is another step in a remarkable turnaround for the Knicks. Last season, they were one of the worst teams in the league and fired their coach, David Fizdale, after a 4-18 start, the worst one in team history. Once again, the Knicks were a punchline.But two months after Fizdale’s firing, the Knicks named Leon Rose as their team president. One of Rose’s first moves in the summer was to hire Tom Thibodeau as coach, and Thibodeau has established a competitive team culture in which effort on the floor is paramount.This year, the drama-free Knicks have a chance to host a playoff series in the first round, thanks in part to the growth of players like Randle and the second-year guard RJ Barrett. Rose has made several other savvy additions, including trading for guard Derrick Rose, who has offered a scoring boost, and acquiring Quickley in a draft-day trade.The Knicks’ playoff seed will be determined over the final three games of the regular season. At 38-31 entering Thursday’s games, they are battling with the Atlanta Hawks (39-31) and the Miami Heat (38-31) for the fourth, fifth and sixth seeds. Getting the fourth seed would mean the Knicks would not only have home-court advantage in the first round, but they would also avoid the Nets, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers — currently the conference’s top three seeds — in an opening-round matchup.But if the Knicks do meet Brooklyn, it will be the first playoff meeting between the teams since 2004, when the Nets, based in New Jersey at the time, swept the Knicks in the first round.The Knicks have been one of the hottest teams in the league over the last month of the season, going 13-4 in their last 17 games. More

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      W.N.B.A. Preview: The Mystics Get Their Stars Back in the East

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      Also: Much has changed for the Atlanta Dream since last season, and Candace Parker brings championship hopes to the Chicago Sky.The W.N.B.A. begins its 25th season on Friday with the returns of some big-name veterans and the debuts of promising rookies.“Rosters are stacked with incredibly talented veterans, and the last few rookie classes are bringing a whole new element to the fierce competition within the league,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times.Below, our reporters tell you what to expect this season in the Eastern Conference. (And here’s what to expect in the West.)Washington MysticsNatasha Cloud opted out of the 2020 season to focus on social justice.Jessica Hill/Associated PressThe Mystics are hoping to rebound from a forgettable 9-13 season, which they played without Elena Delle Donne, who won her second Most Valuable Player Award in 2019 as she led the team to a championship, and Natasha Cloud, who sat out to focus on social justice.This year, Delle Donne and Cloud are back and they will finally get to play alongside another former M.V.P. in Tina Charles, who went to Washington in a trade from the Liberty but opted out of last season for health reasons.“Even though we have some people out, we’ve lost some people to injury, we still have a really scary team on paper,” Cloud said during media day, adding: “I think we’re going to shock a lot of people in this league. You know me, that’s the underdog mentality, so we’re ready.”One positive from last season’s short-handed squad was the emergence of Myisha Hines-Allen, who averaged 17 points per game and shot 42.6 percent from 3-point range. She might not be relied upon as much this season, with a healthy Delle Donne and Charles in the lineup, but she is another reliable option on defense after averaging 8.9 rebounds per game last season.Hines-Allen could also fill in a gap in outside shooting: Alysha Clark, who signed with Washington as a free agent after winning a championship with Seattle last year, is out for the season after injuring her foot while playing overseas. Clark shot 52.2 percent from 3-point range last season.Atlanta DreamChennedy Carter missed time with injuries during her rookie season but could have a bounce-back second year.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated Press“I’ve got no idea what positions you play,” Mike Petersen, the Dream’s interim head coach, said he told his players. “But if I don’t know, the other team’s got no chance.”Atlanta’s off-season has been marked by change. Pressured by players, the Dream’s previous owners sold the team to a group that included Renee Montgomery, a former Dream player. Gone are Chris Sienko, the team’s former president and general manager who was fired in April, and Nicki Collen, the former head coach who left for a job at Baylor earlier this month. Now Petersen will exchange convention for creativity to get the best out of an eclectic roster.Calling it “silly” to follow the practice of assigning players numbered positions, Petersen said he will form lineups with the five best players, regardless of position. “Basketball players are basketball players,” he said. “Everybody has to be able to pass, dribble and shoot. And everybody has to play defense.”On the Dream, those bodies are small: Aari McDonald, the No. 3 overall pick in this year’s draft, is 5-foot-6; the veterans Odyssey Sims and Courtney Williams are both 5-foot-8; and Chennedy Carter, picked fourth overall in the 2020 draft, and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, in her first season with the Dream, each stand 5-foot-9.Petersen did not hesitate to play three guards during the team’s lone preseason matchup on May 5. And if these smaller players with big games execute what he envisions, perimeter shooting will spread the floor for the 6-foot-7 center Kalani Brown and the 6-foot-4 forward Cheyenne Parker, a free-agency acquisition, to operate in the paint.New York LibertyNew York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu underwent surgery for an injured ankle and is ready to return this season.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressAll eyes are on the Liberty this season for many reasons. Chief among them is the return of last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Sabrina Ionescu.Ionescu’s much-anticipated rookie season was cut short when she suffered a Grade 3 ankle sprain during the first half of the Liberty’s third game.Her season over before it began, Ionescu underwent surgery but is back and ready to go.“I’m excited for this season,” Ionescu said in a call with reporters. “I’m taking it one day and one step at a time.”Along with managing Ionescu’s return, the second-year head coach Walt Hopkins will have to handle the unexpected loss of guard/forward Jocelyn Willoughby, who is out for the season after tearing her left Achilles’ tendon. In 2020, her rookie year, Willoughby averaged 5.8 points and 2.4 rebounds per game while shooting a team-best 40.5 percent from 3-point range in 22 games, five of which she started.But here’s what should help: the off-season acquisitions of the three-time champion Natasha Howard and the two-time champion Sami Whitcomb from the Seattle Storm, and Betnijah Laney, who won last year’s Most Improved Player Award and was named to the All-Defensive team after a breakout season with the Atlanta Dream.The Liberty finished 2020 in last place with a 2-20 record and are still searching for an identity and footing.“Everyone wants to be here, they want to win, they want to support one another,” Hopkins said. “If we learned anything from last year it’s how to bounce back from a loss.”Indiana FeverIndiana Fever forward Lauren Cox, right, missed the beginning of last season after testing positive for the coronavirus.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressThe Fever finished last season with the lowest-ranked defense (111.8 points allowed per 100 possessions) and missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year. This season, the second-year Coach Marianne Stanley’s goal is to have a stronger defensive identity.“Each and every player on this team needs to buy in to the defensive end of the floor and make sure they’re doing everything they can to improve and make us a team that is stingy on defense,” Stanley said during her media day news conference.Indiana gets a shot in the arm with a healthy Lauren Cox, who missed the beginning of last season after testing positive for the coronavirus, and a positive outlook for Victoria Vivians, who last played a full season in 2018. Stanley said Vivians had been an early standout during training camp.Add to that the growing star power of Kysre Gondrezick, drafted fourth over all this year out of West Virginia, and the Fever are on the cusp of having not just a stronger defensive identity, but a concrete team identity as well.“She’s shooting the ball well,” Stanley said of Gondrezick. “She’s fitting in with her teammates. Just getting adjusted to the rigors. Just about as we expected. She’s a pretty well-rounded guard, and we really like what we’re seeing in her.”The Fever lost Candice Dupree to Seattle in free agency but added Danielle Robinson and the bigs Jantel Lavender and Jessica Breland.Chicago SkyChicago Sky guard Courtney Vandersloot set a single-game assist record last year with 18.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressArguably no other team had a better off-season than the Sky, who landed Candace Parker, the top free agent, champion and winner of last season’s Defense Player of the Year Award.Parker, who had spent her entire career with the Los Angeles Sparks, will add veteran experience to Chicago, a team two years removed from an unexpected playoff run and coach of the year honors for James Wade.The Sky’s star power continues with shooting guard Diamond DeShields and forward/center Azura Stevens, who are both returning from injury, and Courtney Vandersloot, who set a single-game assist record last year with 18.With a stellar roster headlined by Parker, and a high-scoring offense (ranked fourth last season) expectations for the Sky are, well, sky-high.“I think it creates expectations from outside,” Wade said. “My goal is to just get us better, that’s it. We’ll end up where we are going to end up.“Having the players we have, it puts us in a conversation where people think we can do better than a lot of other teams. I just try to get us in situations where we can win games and build some confidence around what we want to do.”Connecticut SunConnecticut Sun forward Jonquel Jones, left, battling for the ball against Washington Mystics center Emma Meesseman.Nick Wass/Associated PressIn 2020, the Connecticut Sun once again overperformed. Without the 6-foot-6 forward Jonquel Jones, who sat out the season, the Sun still managed to nearly knock off the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces in the playoffs. Their upset-filled run to the semifinals was fueled in large part by Alyssa Thomas’s tireless defense and consistent scoring; even after she dislocated her shoulder early in the Sun’s second game against the Aces, Thomas led the team to victory two days later with a double-double.Thomas won’t be with the Sun this season, though, meaning they once again will be short-staffed. She injured her Achilles’ tendon while playing overseas, and isn’t slated to return until 2022. Jones is back, though, and together with the veteran star DeWanna Bonner — 6 feet 4 inches — creates an unenviable matchup for even the league’s most elite bigs.The Sun have favored a slower, grind-it-out pace, averaging the third-least points per game in the W.N.B.A. last season. But without the defensive might of Thomas and with two forwards who can shoot 3s in Bonner and Jones, it seems possible they might favor a more offense-oriented style in 2021.Forward Brionna Jones reached a new level in 2020, more than tripling her points per game and becoming an important contributor on defense as well; now, she adds to the size and overall athleticism of the Sun. The veteran guards Briann January and Jasmine Thomas round out the starting lineup. More

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      W.N.B.A. Preview: Don’t Bet Against the Aces in the West

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      The return of Liz Cambage and Kelsey Plum makes Las Vegas even more formidable. Did we mention it still has A’ja Wilson, the reigning M.V.P.?The W.N.B.A. begins its 25th season on Friday with the returns of some big-name veterans and the debuts of promising rookies.“Rosters are stacked with incredibly talented veterans, and the last few rookie classes are bringing a whole new element to the fierce competition within the league,” W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times.Below, our reporters tell you what to expect this season in the Western Conference. (And here’s what to expect in the East.)Las Vegas AcesA’ja Wilson of the Aces won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2020 and led them to the finals.Mike Carlson/Associated PressA medical exemption (Liz Cambage) and torn Achilles’ tendon (Kelsey Plum) kept two of Las Vegas’s key players out for the 2020 season. In their absences, A’ja Wilson (Most Valuable Player Award) and Dearica Hamby (Sixth Woman of the Year Award) notched award-winning seasons. Angel McCoughtry, in her first season with the franchise, added playmaking and veteran poise, and the Aces made it to the finals.Cambage and Plum are back, along with JiSu Park, but little else is familiar.Kayla McBride, a fan favorite, signed with the Minnesota Lynx in free agency, and Las Vegas brought in the former Los Angeles Sparks’ guards Chelsea Gray, as a starter, and Riquna Williams, in reserve.Plum will come off the bench.Gray, who had been playing overseas, joined the Aces just 36 hours before the Aces’ preseason game against her former team, so there’s an acute need to develop chemistry. Coach Bill Laimbeer set forth simple goals heading into their regular-season start on Saturday: Get to know one another better, stay healthy and improve conditioning.Simple goals, but not easy ones.McCoughtry tore an anterior cruciate ligament on Saturday, and is expected to miss the season. McCoughtry’s absence will slow the chemistry-building process, as will Plum’s: A member of the U.S.A. Basketball 3×3 team, she will miss a week at the end of May while competing in an Olympic qualifying tournament.Dallas WingsDallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale was the league’s leading scorer last year, averaging 22.8 points per game.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressAs the first W.N.B.A. team ever to have the top two picks in the draft, the Dallas Wings had a unique opportunity to fortify an already young, developing group.They added Charli Collier of Texas, who was the consensus No. 1 pick, and Awak Kuier, a 6-foot-4 center from Finland. One of Dallas’s biggest weaknesses last season was interior offense. Wings Coach Vickie Johnson told reporters last week that Collier’s scoring in the paint had stood out, and that should earn her playing time.She will be a good scoring punch alongside forward Satou Sabally, last year’s No. 2 overall draft pick, and guard Arike Ogunbowale, who almost led Dallas to the playoffs last season as the league’s leading scorer, averaging 22.8 points per game.Moriah Jefferson played just nine games a year ago but will be a part of the regular rotation this season now that she’s healthy, and Tyasha Harris earned valuable experience overseas and is expected to contribute more than her 6.9 points per game from last season.Then there’s the fifth-year veteran Allisha Gray, who may be the glue for the roster of third- and second-year players.Los Angeles SparksWith the departures of Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray, Nneka Ogwumike, right, is expected to fill a leadership role.Mike Carlson/Associated PressFor the first time since 2007, the Los Angeles Sparks will be playing without Candace Parker, who led the team to their third championship in 2016. Parker, a free agent, signed with her hometown Chicago Sky in the off-season, but the Sparks have a fair amount of star power on deck to attempt the unenviable task of replacing her. The sisters Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike will be joined by the free agency acquisitions Amanda Zahui B — whose job will be to help fill the Parker-size hole in the paint — Erica Wheeler and Kristi Toliver, both veteran guards.Beyond that, the Sparks will look to make the most of what seems like a transition season. Young guards like Te’a Cooper and the second-round draft pick Arella Guirantes will undoubtedly find strong mentorship in Toliver, a W.N.B.A. champion and recent N.B.A. assistant coach. Nneka Ogwumike will be compelled to step into a leadership role with the departure of not only Parker but the Sparks’ 2020 second-leading scorer, Chelsea Gray, and fourth-leading scorer, Riquna Williams. Guard Brittney Sykes will also be returning to the team as one of just a few familiar faces to help ease the transition, but Ogwumike is the centerpiece of the new-look Sparks.Third-year Sparks Coach Derek Fisher hasn’t been able to capitalize on his team’s impressive regular-season records in the postseason. With so much change on this year’s roster, it seems unlikely that Los Angeles will make a deep run in 2021. But the Sparks have the talent — both veteran and up-and-coming — to challenge any team in the league.Minnesota LynxSylvia Fowles is returning to the Lynx lineup this season after being sidelined by a calf injury last year.Chris O’Meara/Associated Press“She just looks like a coach that knows how to win,” forward Rennia Davis said of Lynx Coach Cheryl Reeve. That assessment will be put to the test right away, though Reeve is used to challenges early in the season.Jessica Shepard, picked 16th overall in 2019, was clicking beautifully with Napheesa Collier, that year’s sixth overall pick, when Shepard went down with a knee injury six games into her pro career. Now Davis, the ninth overall pick in this year’s draft, is out indefinitely with a foot injury.But after missing the rest of the 2019 season and all of 2020, Shepard is back.Sylvia Fowles is back, too.After setting the career rebounding record in 2020, Fowles was sidelined by a calf injury that forced her to miss most of the season. Yet the Lynx persevered, nearly upsetting the Seattle Storm in Game 1 of the semifinals before losing the series in a sweep. Reeve said she will restrict Fowles to roughly 24 minutes per game and diversify offensive schemes so that her title-winning veteran doesn’t have to carry the load.But with Collier and Kayla McBride, who signed on as a free agent, arriving late from playing overseas, Reeve will have to improvise once again. So far, forward Natalie Achonwa, who joined in free agency, has made herself irreplaceable to a team seeking to shore up its defense beyond Fowles. Aerial Powers, who won a championship with the Washington Mystics in 2019 and averaged 4.9 rebounds per game last season, is expected to help that effort.Seattle StormBreanna Stewart is hoping to lead the Seattle Storm back to the W.N.B.A. finalsChris O’Meara/Associated PressThe reigning champions had a surprisingly eventful off-season, headlined by their decision to trade their starting center Natasha Howard to the Liberty for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 draft. They then flipped that pick to the Dallas Wings in exchange for the third-year forward Katie Lou Samuelson and a 2022 second-round pick. They also lost starting guard Alysha Clark, who, along with Howard, was key to Seattle’s success on defense during their 2018 and 2020 title runs. Clark signed with the Mystics in free agency.But the finals M.V.P. Breanna Stewart, the star shooter Jewell Loyd and perhaps most impressively Sue Bird have all returned to the Storm to compete for the W.N.B.A.’s first back-to-back titles since the Sparks won in 2001 and 2002. Bird will be in her 18th season, a feat of longevity unmatched by any of her peers currently competing — although Candice Dupree, who signed with the Storm in the off-season, also has double-digit seasons under her belt.With Stewart, the Storm don’t need to find another once-in-a-generation player among their young talent. They do, however, need to figure out who in that pool will best recreate the alchemy of their title teams, positioning Jordin Canada as the point guard of the future and finding a go-to center in either Mercedes Russell or Ezi Magbegor. If they can do that and keep Stewart, Loyd and Bird healthy, the Storm have a better chance than most teams to make history as the only five-time W.N.B.A. champions by the end of this season.Phoenix MercuryThe Phoenix Mercury have the triple threat of, from left, Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressBrittney Griner’s back. Skylar Diggins-Smith is back. And Diana Taurasi, often referred to as the GOAT, is too.Sprinkle in teammates like Brianna Turner and Bria Hartley, and newcomers like Kia Nurse and Megan Walker, and the Phoenix Mercury are focused on returning to their championship-winning ways.“You just see all these pieces,” Taurasi said, adding, “And if we can all get on the same track and on working toward the same goal, I think we can do some special things this summer. But that’s just all nonsense if we don’t come in and put the work in every day.”The Mercury finished with a 13-9 record last season, losing to the Minnesota Lynx in the second round of the playoffs. With an eye toward a deeper playoff run, they acquired guard Nurse and Walker in an off-season trade with the Liberty. Hartley, an eighth-year guard, is working her way back after a knee injury, and more offense could come from Turner.But the biggest impact is likely to come from the Big 3 — Griner, Diggins-Smith and Taurasi — who accounted for much of the Mercury’s scoring last season. Taurasi averaged 18.7 points and 4.5 assists per game; Diggins-Smith averaged 17.7 and 4.2; and B.G. averaged 17.7 points and 7.5 rebounds in 12 games.“We have pretty good chemistry,” Coach Sandy Brondello said. “We grew a lot together as a team last year. Hopefully we can continue to build on that.” More

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      How Kevin Garnett Made His Case for the Hall of Fame

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      Garnett was widely doubted before he was drafted, but over more than 20 years in the league he reset the limits for N.B.A. big men and made a case for the Hall of Fame.“Does the N.B.A. have no shame?” a Dallas Morning News columnist wrote in 1995 about the prospect of Kevin Garnett going right into the league from high school.Soon after, a Washington Post columnist chimed in, “If Kevin Garnett winds up leaving childhood for the N.B.A. without first going to college, then a whole lot of adults who claim to have his best interests at heart will have failed him.” That same columnist added, “The kid isn’t physically ready to play under the basket in the Big Ten, much less against Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson.”“It’s preposterous,” Marty Blake, a veteran N.B.A. scout, told The New York Daily News.It’s hard to envision now, but before Garnett was chosen by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth pick of the 1995 N.B.A. draft, he was viewed by many — including The New York Times — with a great deal of skepticism. The conventional belief was that a teenager could not adapt to the rigors of professional basketball. A columnist for the Detroit News even scoffed at rumors that Garnett was interested in playing for the University of Michigan, saying: “Michigan doesn’t need the huge headache Garnett would bring. Sorry. This is an easy call.”We all know what happened next. Garnett starred in the N.B.A. for more than two decades and retired in 2016 as one of the greatest players to ever take the court. He made 15 All-Star Games, his first coming during his sophomore campaign. He won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2004 and the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2008. And last year, Garnett was selected for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside the journalist Michael Wilbon, who is now with ESPN but was at The Washington Post in 1995, when he wrote that Garnett was not ready for the N.B.A.In an interview, Wilbon said that Garnett was “one of the great players of the last 25 years,” but that he also wished Garnett had gone to college. Wilbon said that he still felt there were too many people who said “education was an impediment to success.”“That’s not on Kevin or Kobe,” he said. “That’s on the system.”Wilbon added later: “I look at what these things have done to Black Americans and all the kids who think that they’re going to play pro basketball at 18 or 19, and they’re not.”In 1995 Kevin Garnett went directly from Farragut High School in Chicago to the N.B.A Todd Rosenberg/ALLSPORT via Getty ImagesOver his career, Garnett disproved the predraft doubts and disrupted the conventional wisdom about how someone who is nearly 7 feet tall should play.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an early critic who once told The Hartford Courant that Garnett was “in for a rude awakening,” now describes Garnett as “a consistent offensive threat and a great rebounder and defender.”“He was able to play and lead at both ends of the court,” Abdul-Jabbar said in a statement emailed by his manager. “It was like that from Day 1 until he retired, and that’s why I consider Kevin a Hall of Famer.”Garnett’s impact on the league went far beyond his on-court accomplishments. He showed that a 19-year-old could thrive in the N.B.A., and he influenced the thinking of scouts and executives, most likely easing the transition for others who were drafted immediately after high school, such as Kobe Bryant (1996) and LeBron James (2003).“He’s paved the way for a lot of players,” said Thon Maker, a fifth-year center who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers this season and has worked out with Garnett. “A lot of young bigs in the league like myself, the first thing I learned from him is to drown out the noise and let your basketball do the speaking.”Garnett became one of the country’s top high school prospects after playing for three years at Mauldin High School in South Carolina and his senior year at Chicago’s Farragut High School. He was compared to players ranging from Shaquille O’Neal and Abdul-Jabbar to Bill Walton and Shawn Bradley. His 220-pound frame made him difficult to assess, as did the paucity of prior high school draftees.One of them was Moses Malone, who was drafted in 1974 out of Petersburg High School in Virginia by the N.B.A.’s competition, the A.B.A. Malone would, like Garnett, have a Hall of Fame career, and in some ways, Garnett’s debut represented a passing of the torch. Malone’s last season was the year before Garnett’s first.“Garnett has more skills than Moses, but he doesn’t always come to play every night,” Tom Konchalski, an N.B.A. scout who died this year, told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1995. “He takes nights off. Emotionally, he isn’t ready to handle the N.B.A. lifestyle. He still is a kid. Moses was a man.”Kevin Garnett was chosen by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth pick of the 1995 N.B.A. draft.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThere was also Bill Willoughby, who spent eight seasons as a role player for six teams from 1975 to 1984. He struggled in his transition and lost much of his money. (He called Garnett to offer advice as Garnett prepared to make his decision to enter the league.) Darryl Dawkins had a productive career from 1975 to 1989 after being drafted fifth over all. Both Dawkins and Willoughby entered the N.B.A. through a hardship waiver.Shawn Kemp enrolled at the University of Kentucky but left without playing and briefly went to a junior college instead. He did not play there either before becoming the 17th overall pick of the 1989 draft and joining the Seattle SuperSonics.There was a downside to Garnett’s brilliance: His immediate triumphs in the N.B.A. set a lofty bar that few players coming out of high school could meet. In his rookie year, he averaged a productive 10.4 points and 6.3 rebounds, while starting roughly half of Minnesota’s games.“His legacy is as one of the greatest players, one of the greatest two-way players,” said Danny Ainge, the president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics. Ainge traded for Garnett in 2007, revitalizing the franchise and helping it win its first championship in more than 20 years.Garnett was, Ainge said, “a guy that was all about winning and gave great energy night in and night out. The ultimate teammate.”Before entering the N.B.A., Leon Powe, part of Boston’s 2007-8 championship team, was on an A.A.U. team called the Oakland Soldiers along with a future Celtics teammate, Kendrick Perkins, and LeBron James.“LeBron, me and Kendrick, everybody, we all wanted to go out of high school,” Powe said, referring to the N.B.A. “Especially because we knew what happened with Kobe, K.G., everybody that came before us. That just inspired us.”Like James, Perkins made the leap in 2003, becoming a late first-round pick who would have a 14-year career in the N.B.A. If not for an injury, Powe might have jumped too, he said. Instead, he attended the University of California, Berkeley.There were more high school players who did not meet expectations in the N.B.A. — such as Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair — than those who did. The result was a rule in the mid-2000s that said a player had to be a full year removed from high school before he could be eligible for the N.B.A. The last high school player to be drafted into the N.B.A. was Amir Johnson in 2005.But the clamor to reverse the rule has grown larger with every passing season. In 2019, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said that it would probably be eliminated within a few years, and in March he told reporters that it would be discussed as part of the next collective bargaining agreement. So soon enough, the craving will start anew for another Garnett: a worldbeating talent whose prime might last 15 years. That’s still a lofty bar to clear, but he was the one who, as he might say, made it so that “anything is possible.” More

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      What Rudy Tomjanovich Learned by Coaching the Greats

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      Tomjanovich led the Houston Rockets to two championships (Hakeem Olajuwon), briefly coached the Lakers (Kobe Bryant) and oversaw an Olympic team (Kevin Garnett).Even as a noted players’ coach, Rudy Tomjanovich had a hunch Kobe Bryant would need some time to embrace their new partnership.After five years and three N.B.A. championships under Phil Jackson, and having thrived in the read-and-react triangle offense Jackson championed, Bryant was suddenly playing for a lifelong Houston Rocket with different sideline sensibilities.“It was an adjustment for him because I was a play caller,” Tomjanovich said.What Tomjanovich shared with Jackson, if not an offensive philosophy, was a gift for reading superstars and ultimately connecting with them. His time with Bryant was short during the 2004-5 season, when Tomjanovich quickly deduced that the stress of coaching had become damaging to his health, but at least one Laker urged him not to walk away.“Kobe tried to talk me out of it,” Tomjanovich said in a telephone interview, reflecting on his resignation, as well as how he meshed with Bryant, after just 43 games.In the buildup to this weekend’s pandemic-delayed inductions for the Basketball Hall of Fame’s class of 2020, Tomjanovich, 72, has been telling old stories often — most of them, naturally, from his 32-year run as a player, scout and coach in Houston. The class is headlined by Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Bryant, who will be presented by Michael Jordan and inducted posthumously. Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020, that grief-stricken fans and peers, all of the honorees included, are still struggling to process.Tomjanovich coached Bryant and the Lakers for 43 games before stepping down for health reasons.Brian Bahr/Getty ImagesTomjanovich, after twice being named a finalist but not in 2019, earned his place among the 2020 inductees for his coaching achievements in Houston — particularly his championship partnership with Hakeem Olajuwon. The Rockets won back-to-back titles in 1993-94 and 1994-95, first with Olajuwon as the lone All-Star, then as a lowly No. 6 seed after a midseason trade reunited Olajuwon with Clyde Drexler, his college teammate from the University of Houston’s men’s basketball teams known as Phi Slama Jama.Those Rockets teams were routinely dismissed as champions of circumstance, branded as beneficiaries of Jordan’s 18-month hiatus from the N.B.A. to try to transform himself into a Chicago White Sox outfielder. We’ve since learned, through “The Last Dance” documentary series, that Jordan’s iconic Chicago Bulls were not a lock to handle Houston without a big man anywhere near Olajuwon’s level.“I heard it from the horse’s mouth — and that’s Michael,” Tomjanovich said.He said that Charles Barkley, in his first season as a Rocket in 1996-97, arranged a dinner at his home in Phoenix for the Rockets’ coaching staff. There were two very special invited guests: Tiger Woods and Jordan.“It was the first time I really got a chance to talk to Michael,” Tomjanovich said. “Nobody can ever know who would have won, but he said they were concerned that they couldn’t stop Hakeem. It was great to hear it from him.”Bladder cancer brought a cruel halt to Tomjanovich’s three decades in Houston after the 2002-3 season. Yet the way he managed an array of big personalities across 12 seasons as the Rockets’ coach helped Tomjanovich emerge as the Lakers’ choice to replace Jackson — after some flirtations with Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and an attempt to lure Miami’s Pat Riley back to Hollywood. Tomjanovich, then 56, signed a five-year, $30 million contract to coach the Lakers, who traded Shaquille O’Neal to Riley’s Heat four days later.Hakeem Olajuwon was the cornerstone of Houston’s back-to-back title teams in the 1990s under Tomjanovich.Noren Trotman/NBAE via Getty Images“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” Tomjanovich said. “First of all, I was excited that the cancer was gone. I thought, ‘I can’t pass this thing up,’ but then I just felt like I was hurting myself and I had to let it go. I love to coach good players, and Kobe was great. I thought I could do it, health-wise and body-wise, but I couldn’t. People said it was a lot of money to give up, but what good is money if you’re going to make yourself sick?”It was the rare Tomjanovich comeback story without a happy ending. As a player, he survived a vicious on-court punch from Kermit Washington in December 1977 and recovered to reach his fifth All-Star Game in 1978-79. As a coach, Tomjanovich steered the Rockets to playoff upsets of the teams with the league’s top four records (Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio and Orlando) in the 1995 playoffs to win title No. 2, including a second-round rally against the Suns after Houston fell into a 3-1 series deficit.“That’s how we got one of the greatest quotes ever in basketball,” Robert Horry, one of Tomjanovich’s Houston stalwarts, said on Monday. “Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion.”That defiant rebuttal to Rockets skeptics, from a beaming Tomjanovich after Houston completed a 4-0 N.B.A. finals sweep of O’Neal’s Orlando Magic, became his signature line.He is still working in the league, hired in December by the Minnesota Timberwolves as a front-office consultant. He referred to his induction as “the cherry on top of it all” and said that coaching gave him what he craved most other than championships in his final years as a player.A new identity.“I heard that for a while and it was getting old — ‘Oh, you’re the guy who got punched,’” Tomjanovich said. “It was really good to push that in the background.”Tomjanovich didn’t coach Duncan, but said he would never forget the dread he felt upon seeing him as a rookie in San Antonio, teaming with David Robinson. “The first time they threw him the ball, I watched how he caught it and where he positioned it under his chin and how he looked to the middle,” Tomjanovich said. “I got sick to my stomach.”He did briefly coach Garnett and, not surprisingly, clicked with another star. Tomjanovich coached the United States at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. Garnett was one of his loudest leaders. Two scares against Lithuania, including a semifinal that the Americans easily could have lost, will surely stay with members of that team, since U.S.A. Basketball, to that point, had not lost with N.B.A. players.“I’m telling you, that was a big, big boulder that you’re carrying around,” Tomjanovich said. “You don’t want to be the first.”Perhaps he and Garnett will have a chance to share a relieved laugh about it at some point during Saturday’s festivities. Every moment of levity is bound to be relished on what figures to be, at various points, an unavoidably somber evening.From left, Robert Horry, Clyde Drexler and Tomjanovich won a championship with the Houston Rockets in the 1994-95 season as the No. 6 seed.Scott Halleran/Getty ImagesHorry, the role player supreme, has as much reason to watch as anyone. He won two of his seven championships alongside Duncan in San Antonio and regards Tomjanovich as “the best coach to play for.” He also played for Jackson and Gregg Popovich, but rates Tomjanovich at the top “because he had a feel for the players and a feel for the game.”“I only still talk to one of them,” Horry said, referring to Tomjanovich.Yet Horry added that he was unlikely to tune in, as much as he wanted to celebrate Rudy T’s big moment, and it was clear why. For all we anticipate with this starry class — what sort of speech we get from the spotlight-shy Duncan is one prime example — it’s still so hard to get past the unjust and unfillable hole in the whole occasion without Bryant able to take his rightful turn on the podium.Bryant joined the Lakers at 17, grew up over the course of 20 seasons in Los Angeles on the biggest of N.B.A. stages and, after such a long and prosperous career, had his life cut tragically short. As a regular analyst on Lakers broadcasts, Horry said he feels that sting every time the team’s network runs what it calls “Mamba Moment” highlight tributes to Bryant, his teammate on the Lakers’ three-peat championship teams from 1999-2000 to 2001-2.Horry’s daughter, Ashlyn, had a rare genetic condition and died at 17 in 2011. He said he thinks often about Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s wife, and “having to talk about not just losing a daughter but a husband, too.”“It’s too sad,” Horry said.The plan here is to revel as much as possible in Saturday’s joys, like the overdue recognition for a decorated coach like Tomjanovich, while bracing for the sadness we will all understand.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThe Miami Heat had a shorter off-season than any other Eastern Conference team after their run to the 2020 finals stretched into October.Steven Senne/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 condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: In last week’s newsletter, you wrote that no one foresaw that three of last season’s final four teams would be in danger of landing in the playoff play-in tournament. That is demonstrably untrue. I am no N.B.A. prophet, but I was published in your newsletter before the season started saying that it was tremendously unfair to ask the four best teams from the season before to return to play after as little as 71 days off. I can only assume that many other voices expressed similar concerns. — Avary Mitchell (McKinney, Texas)Stein: I have never disagreed for one second with what you wrote in December. The truncated turnaround from last season to this season was always going to be roughest on the Lakers, Heat, Celtics and Nuggets — and, yes, unfair in a lot of ways.But I don’t remember anyone saying that they expected any of those teams to slip all the way to No. 7 in its conference.I reread your letter, and the same holds for you. There’s a difference between denouncing the disparity in teams’ off-seasons and predicting that the defending champion Lakers would finish seventh in the West.Injuries and Covid-19 disruptions have been a major factor for the Lakers, Heat and Celtics, on top of the unfairness, but all have still managed to slip further in the standings than any of the worst-case-scenario pundits were projecting when the season began.Q: You have been writing a lot about the Nets’ recent signing of the former CSKA Moscow guard Mike James. I want to ask you about the guard from my country who recently joined CSKA: Gabriel Lundberg. He does not have a Luka Doncic pedigree, but he was the driving force behind Denmark’s upset of Lithuania in November. Does he have an N.B.A. future? — Martin Ronnow Lund (Denmark)Stein: Thank you, Martin, for what (I think) will be recorded as our first question from Denmark.I’ve done some checking on Lundberg, since I admittedly don’t have much of a file on him, and it’s fair to say that N.B.A. teams are well aware of him now. At 26, he has made a storybook progression from playing in the Spanish second division as recently as the 2017-18 season to emerging as a force with a European powerhouse like CSKA. The performance (28 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists) you referred to against Lithuania certainly registered in front offices here, even though Lithuania didn’t have access to its N.B.A. players.There will be questions about his size (6-foot-4) as a shooting guard and his one-on-one skills, but I am told he plays with great confidence — to go with his great back story. Perhaps he can be the first Dane to really break through in the N.B.A.; helping a James-less CSKA reach the EuroLeague final four ensures he will be well scouted.Lars Hansen was the first Danish-born player to be drafted and had a brief stint with Seattle in the late 1970s, but he moved to Canada at a young age and represented Canada in the 1976 Olympics. David Andersen, who had a Danish father, had stints with Houston, Toronto and New Orleans in the N.B.A., but he was born in Australia and played internationally as an Australian. The Nets drafted the Copenhagen-born Christian Drejer with the 51st overall pick in 2004, but Drejer never played in the N.B.A.Q: I read your recent newsletter on the play-in games format and, as a fan, I love it. I also love the Knicks. The last several years have been rough, but I want to know: Is Tom Thibodeau going to win the Coach of the Year Award? — (Peter Thurlow, Ridgewood, N.J.)Stein: My official unofficial ballot, which I publish every season just for posterity, will headline next Tuesday’s newsletter. As a reminder: The New York Times does not participate in league award voting in any sport, but I still like going through the exercise of breaking down each race just for discussion purposes.While saving my extended commentary on coach of the year and the other categories until then, I can share that I was indeed leaning toward Thibodeau entering the final week of the regular season because of his unquestioned influence in establishing the Knicks as this season’s foremost overachieving team. To actually win it, though, he’ll have to beat out the league’s only two coaches (Utah’s Quin Snyder and Phoenix’s Monty Williams) likely to wind up in the 50-win club in this 72-game season.Numbers GameCarmelo Anthony keeps climbing the career scoring leaderboard, at a time when many thought he would be out of the league.Steph Chambers/Getty Images5Since Portland’s Carmelo Anthony made his debut in the N.B.A. in 2003-4, five players have moved into the N.B.A.’s top 10 in career scoring: No. 3 LeBron James (35,318), No. 4 Kobe Bryant (33,643), No. 6 Dirk Nowitzki (31,560), No. 8 Shaquille O’Neal (28,596) and No. 10 Anthony (27,337). The five players displaced from the top 10 in that span, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, were John Havlicek, Dominique Wilkins, Oscar Robertson, Hakeem Olajuwon and Elvin Hayes.30Russell Westbrook is the N.B.A.’s new career leader in triple-doubles in the regular season, after surpassing Oscar Robertson’s record 181 on Monday in Atlanta, but he still has some ground to make up to match Magic Johnson’s record of 30 postseason triple-doubles. Westbrook has 10 playoff triple-doubles — two more than Robertson’s eight. LeBron James, with 28, is Johnson’s closest pursuer on the postseason list.2In April 1970, after successfully blocking a trade to Baltimore, Oscar Robertson was dealt to the Milwaukee Bucks from the Cincinnati Royals for the modest return of Flynn Robinson and Charlie Paulk. Robinson and Paulk spent only one season each in Cincinnati, and the Royals, just two seasons after the trade, moved out of Ohio to become the Kings and a team with two home cities: Kansas City, Mo., and Omaha.15Dallas’s Luka Doncic and Philadelphia’s Dwight Howard lead the league with 15 technical fouls each, followed by Russell Westbrook (14). Doncic and Howard each remain one technical away from a one-game suspension, but there would be no carry-over if a 16th tech was accrued in the final game of the regular season. Slates are wiped clean for the playoffs, with seven technicals in the postseason resulting in a one-game suspension.22-9Since Damian Lillard’s debut season in 2012-13, Portland has won 22 of its 31 games against the Los Angeles Lakers, according to Elias. It’s the Lakers’ second-worst record against an opponent in that span, better only than a 7-28 mark against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Trail Blazers’ home win Friday over the Lakers gave them a huge edge in the race to secure the sixth seed in the Western Conference and to avoid the playoff play-in round next week.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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      W.N.B.A. Braces for ‘Fierce Competition’ in New Season

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      A wave of talented rookies could make for tense battles as new faces like Aari McDonald and Charli Collier take on perennial All-Stars like Diana Taurasi and Candace Parker.Buzzy rookies, reshuffled stars and new interest in women’s basketball after a thrilling N.C.A.A. tournament have positioned the W.N.B.A. to open its 25th season this week with a captive audience as it continues to lead in social justice efforts among professional sports leagues.Put it all together, W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told The New York Times, and “the future of the game is bright.”“Rosters are stacked with incredibly talented veterans, and the last few rookie classes are bringing a whole new element to the fierce competition within the league,” she said.Fresh off N.C.A.A. tournament highs and lows, Charli Collier, Kiana Williams and Aari McDonald are among a class of rookies who are set to make waves against longtime contenders like Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart and Candace Parker. And they are hungry for it.McDonald, who led the Arizona women’s basketball program to its first N.C.A.A. title game appearance last month, will make her W.N.B.A. debut with the Atlanta Dream on Friday night against the Connecticut Sun. Her eyes are on the W.N.B.A.’s career leading scorer.“Diana,” McDonald said of the Phoenix Mercury’s Diana Taurasi. “I can’t wait to play against her.”Taurasi has spent her entire career with one team, and until this season Parker could have said the same. But her move from the Los Angeles Sparks to the Chicago Sky as a free agent in the off-season is one of the biggest story lines of the new season.Another is the transformation of McDonald’s team, the Dream.Chennedy Carter and the rest of the Atlanta Dream are under new management this season.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressMike Petersen, the interim coach who took the helm when Nicki Collen left for Baylor this month, said McDonald was “a part of what will allow this team to play in a very nontraditional way and have some success.”The Dream are also under new management, with players having spent last season protesting against the team’s previous owner, the former Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler, after she spoke out against the Black Lives Matter movement. The team was sold in February.That protest was one of several that defined the 2020 season in a bubble environment — known as the “wubble” — at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The season was dedicated to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by the police in Louisville, Ky., in March 2020. Players wore shirts bearing her name as part of the Say Her Name campaign, which focuses on police violence against Black women and girls, and the league launched its Social Justice Council, which coordinated cross-league initiatives.The W.N.B.A. is continuing its social justice efforts from last season, when it focused on Breonna Taylor.Chris O’Meara/Associated Press“I think they’ll take the themes that they’re going to be focused on, around health equity and civic engagement and voting rights, into their communities and feel a little more connected to it this year,” Engelbert told reporters recently, “whereas last year being in Florida in one place they might not have felt connected to the community as closely as they would have liked to.”Players and officials said that the emphasis on social justice would carry over to this season, with a particular focus on health equity, L.G.B.T. issues and voting rights.“Similar to the Say Her Name campaign, these issues directly affect literally who we are,” Layshia Clarendon, a Liberty guard who is one of the leaders of the league’s Social Justice Council, said this week. “We’ve been young Black girls who grew up, who are often underrepresented in our communities.”Seattle’s Breanna Stewart, left, and the Liberty’s Layshia Clarendon, right, were two of the more vocal players last year on social justice issues. Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressClarendon said the health focus encompasses vaccines and public health and safety topics like policing. “All of these issues overlap because they’re all intersectional,” they said.Allison Barber, president of the Indiana Fever, said teams were trying to help players be both “amplifiers of a message” and “advocates of a mission.”“You need both things to change the world,” she said. “But our players want to both be amplifiers of messaging around social justice and also really roll their sleeves up and dig in deep and take action to be advocates for the mission.”Among those messages will be inequities between men’s and women’s sports, a topic recently highlighted by differences between the setups of the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments. The men initially had significantly better weight rooms, meals and facilities than the women, and more advanced coronavirus testing.Coverage of the tournament drew a wide audience, something that players expect to continue through to the professional league. The W.N.B.A. draft was one of the most viewed in the past 15 years, and the N.C.A.A. women’s championship game between Arizona and Stanford, which was played on Easter Sunday, garnered the most viewers since 2014.Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said she was looking forward to playing in front of fans this season. She missed all but three games last year with an ankle injury.Phelan M. Ebenhack/Associated PressTeams will play 32 games this season, 16 at home and 16 away, in front of a limited number of fans, depending on guidance from local health officials. The league will also go on hiatus from July 15 to Aug. 11 for the Tokyo Olympics. The season begins Friday when the Liberty host the Fever at Barclays Center, in front of a reduced-capacity crowd.Whether they were returning to defend their titles or new to the league, players said they were looking forward to real fan noise.“It definitely feels different being in New York and playing in front of fans or families being in attendance,” said Sabrina Ionescu, the Liberty guard whose rookie season last year was cut short because of a severe ankle sprain in her third game. “It kind of feels like my first season — it basically is.”And all in new uniforms that center on stories from teams’ home states, including a “Stranger Things” theme for Indiana and a glass-ceiling shattering Space Needle for Seattle.“It was fun to see how a uniform could really draw in a whole new group of fans,” Barber said. “Even our governor was like: ‘I want my jersey. I love this show, and this jersey is awesome.’”For the Storm, this season is also about trying to repeat as champions. They have a rematch at home on Saturday with the Las Vegas Aces, whom they beat in three games for the 2020 title. Bird and Stewart will be up against A’ja Wilson, who won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2020.“We have the same expectations that we always have,” Stewart told reporters this week. More

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      LaMelo Ball Talks Wild Passes, Rookie of the Year and ‘Space Jam’

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      Ball, the Charlotte Hornets guard, is one of the season’s standout players, and not just among rookies. The secret to his shot? “Just shoot it with confidence.”A fractured wrist is about the only thing that has stopped Charlotte Hornets guard LaMelo Ball. The injury cut 21 games from his rookie season. He recently picked up where he left off, lobbing a nearly full-court, pinpoint underhand pass in his first game back, against the Detroit Pistons.At just 19, Ball has long been a celebrity, even before making his N.B.A. debut. Steered by his father, LaVar Ball, he was playing professional basketball overseas and starring in reality shows when most teenagers were focused on prom. His oldest brother, Lonzo, helped pave the road by spending a season at U.C.L.A. before becoming the second overall pick of the 2017 N.B.A. draft.Now in the N.B.A. as well, LaMelo Ball has proved worthy of the commotion. His Hornets are in the chase to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2015-16. He is averaging 16 points, 6.2 assists and 5.8 rebounds a game, and has come to be known for his passing and joyful play.Though much has been written and said about him, Ball doesn’t say much. So The New York Times sat down with him, in a video chat, to ask him about his game, his life off the court and those wild passes he makes to Miles Bridges.This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.At what age do you think you could have reasonably competed in the N.B.A.?Reasonably competed? I would say, my thought process, I was 14 at the time when I thought I could have been.Your father has drawn a lot of headlines over the years. What types of lessons have you learned from your mother, Tina?Pretty much just everyday life stuff growing up: how to treat people right, how to go on with your day, have respect for people. Just all the stuff you need to get through life, for real, and just be who you are.LaMelo Ball said his favorite pass was one he made to his oldest brother, Lonzo, when they were younger.Nell Redmond/USA Today Sports, via ReutersDo you have a favorite pass that you’ve made?Yeah, probably a long time ago. One of my friends passed away and we had a game and then my brother [Lonzo Ball] just went for a lob. And I remember he was playing that game real hard because his man had just passed. So I was at halfcourt, he act like he was going to draw a play, and I just threw it like this with my left from halfcourt. And it was a lob, and he caught that, cocked it back, it was over. That was A.A.U., so it was hard.Your coach, James Borrego, was a longtime San Antonio Spurs assistant and recently said your game reminded him of Manu Ginobili’s. What do you think of that comparison?I don’t really do too much on the comparisons. I like to compare myself to myself pretty much. But I think I know why he did that one. I know he loves that Spurs team. So probably that’s a good answer for him, I guess.If you had gone to college, where would you have played?At first, I was going to U.C.L.A., and then they went to Under Armour or something. I decommitted. I was going to go to U.S.C., though. For sure, would have been up there.What’s your favorite color?Orange.Favorite movie?I’m hoping it’s going to be this “Space Jam” 2, because I follow “Space Jam” 1 heavy. So, yeah, “Space Jam” 2 looks dope.Ball said he was looking forward to the “Space Jam” sequel starring LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers that is coming out later this year.Harry How/Getty ImagesFirst song that really caught your attention growing up?First one that I really liked? Honestly, I don’t even know, but just thinking back that far, type of music that my pops had playing. It definitely probably would be like a Lil Wayne song or a DMX. He always had that on.Morning person or night person?Definitely night.Is there a country left that you’d still like to most visit?Even when I was traveling, I ain’t ever even keep up. I just live in the moment. It’s wherever I’m at, I’m at. That’s how that goes.When you’re coming down the court with the ball, do you feel like the game is in slow motion for you?It’s just how I played basketball my whole life. So I was coming down when I was 3, same how I feel at 19.How often do you see a pass that’s there and you can make it, but you don’t because you’re not sure that the recipient is ready for it?That’s just where the chemistry comes. The more you play with me, the more you start understanding. That’s just all where that comes from. It’s honestly just our first year, whole team coming together. First time ever playing together. So I feel like it’s going well, but once you like really get to know me, then you’re going to know all the little passes and stuff like that.The combination of Miles Bridges, rear, and Ball has made for some heart-stopping alley-oops.Nell Redmond/Associated PressBall is averaging a team-leading 6.2 assists per game.Nell Redmond/Associated PressHave you ever tossed the ball to Miles Bridges higher on purpose, just to see how high he can go?Never on purpose, just wherever I feel like it needs to be.The secret to shooting a perfect floater?Just to shoot it with confidence.You’ve said that you try to learn at least one new thing every day. Where does that mind-set come from?Just being me. I mean, it’s something I grew up trying to do every day. My pops always says, “It’s always room for improvement.” You can learn every day and always just take something from somebody else and learn. You could take a negative and turn it into a positive or a worse situation and always just get something out of it.Was obtaining the Rookie of the Year Award a goal for you entering this season?Nah, not really. I ain’t really look at it as a goal. I just knew I was going to go out there, just had to be me. And if chips fall where they fall, you get the rookie of the year or you don’t. You still just got to play, though. It’s more of a team game. I’m trying to go to the playoffs, trying to go on a deep run, stuff like that.Ball missed 21 games after breaking his right wrist during a game against the Los Angeles Clippers on March 20.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWhat were you able to learn while out with the wrist injury?Pretty much just learning how the whole body works, how you can get your knee, everything right. I mean your whole body, just how it all works together. One thing moves, something could be hurt. And it can be totally different things that’s actually hurting than what’s actually hurt.Was there anything you picked up while watching the games?Seeing our players more, seeing where we can be on the defense, seeing just stuff like that.Have you ever been nervous on a basketball court?Nah. More