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      The Biggest Dance Show in Town? At a Brooklyn Nets Game

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      Since February, the Brooklynettes have performed live at Barclays Center to crowds that are smaller than usual — but huge for dance.I found an immersive performance — really, a spectacle — at a place I never would have expected it: a basketball game.Since February, the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets dance team, have been a pandemic anomaly: They have been performing live, at games, for nearly 2,000 spectators. It’s not the same as it ever was — it’s better. Barclays Center, at reduced capacity, is more intimate. The ushers treat you like you’re a guest at a dinner party. The players come into sharper focus. And the dancers, whether performing their choreographed routines or reacting to an exciting shot, are vital to the whole.It used to seem that a Brooklynettes number had three characteristics: speed, power and hair. The strokes were broad. Were the dancers skilled and meticulous? Absolutely. But at the games, their hard work was obscured by the noise and the abundance of fans. The reality was that this wasn’t so much a dance team as a group of backup dancers for a basketball team.With the arena at reduced capacity, the Brooklynettes feel more vital to the whole.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThis season though, while the Brooklynettes’ focus is still hip-hop and street jazz, the look is different, more precise. At a recent rehearsal in the arena, Asha Singh, the Brooklynettes coach and sometime choreographer, put the brakes on the dancers, to clean up a routine. “What angle of left are we going?” she asked them. “Are we going to the corner? Are we stepping side?”Why would a position held for a millisecond during a sprint of a dance matter? When these six bodies move as one, they pull you in — not just to their dancing but into the arena, where their movement creates an invisible line of energy between the players and the fans.Even when they aren’t dancing, that vitality continues as they stand, hands on hips, looking like cutouts of Wonder Woman. It sounds strange, but now for the Brooklynettes, a position held for a millisecond in a sprint of a dance does matter, because whether or not you see the effect, you feel it.The Brooklynettes — along with a galvanizing drum line and Team Hype, a male dance crew that performs on the opposite stage — are no longer a decorative afterthought. In prepandemic days, they would perform right on the court; now two stages have been built to provide the necessary social distancing from fans and players. The dancers — there are six per game now, down from 20 — are present throughout. They stand out in a way that they didn’t before, even when they were front and center performing on-court routines during home games.Asha Singh, coach of the Brooklynettes, rehearsing with the team. Back, from left, Celine, Kia and Ashley.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAnd while there is reduced capacity at Barclays Center, the numbers are still staggering for dance. How many dancers do you know who are performing indoors for so many people? (The arena has been at 10 percent capacity, about 1,700 spectators, and will go up to 30 percent on May 19.)“It’s invigorating,” said the dancer Liv David, who added that for many months during the pandemic, “I was just dancing in my little apartment trying not to kick my cats in the face and trying to make the most of it. I almost had forgotten that feeling — that adrenaline.”Live indoor dance performances have been hard to come by in New York; when they do happen, audiences are kept small. The Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum started with audiences of 50; as state mandates changed, the number was increased to 75 and now tops out at 90. At the cavernous Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, capacity for “Afterwardsness,” a coming production by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, will be 118.The drum line and dancers during a game.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesDuring the 2019-2020 N.B.A. season, when arenas were at full capacity, all 30 teams featured performances with dancing. Now, in addition to the Brooklynettes, there are 10 other dance teams performing live. (The Knicks City Dancers do not; instead, recordings of past performances are played during games.)When fans were allowed back into arenas, Criscia Long, who oversees the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets Beats Drumline and Team Hype, was charged with figuring out how to bring entertainment back.“We’re in the crowd now — we’re right next to the fans,” Long said. “You get to engage with them; you get to actually feel their energy a little bit more during performances and when the ball is in play. It’s so much more connected now than even having the whole entire crowd there.”An experienced dancer, Long was formerly a captain of the Knicks City Dancers; she also performed with Lil’ Kim, who appeared in a number with the Brooklynettes this season. “She really wanted to be a part of the show,” Long said. “She rehearsed with us, and you know how hard it is with Covid protocols, but she wanted to be in it. It felt like we were on tour with her.”The Brooklynettes backstage in April.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThat was a special occasion. Even so, Singh said that if you took away the basketball team, what the Brooklynettes present is a version of tour-style concert performances. That is even more apparent now. “Very much tour, minus the artist in front,” she said. “Imagine all that crazy dope dancing that you would see around the artist: That’s kind of the energy that we like to provide the arena.”In the past, the Brooklynettes would sometimes share the court with Team Hype for combined routines. Now, though, the two groups perform on stages at opposite sides of the arena; during the games, they play off each other while members of the drum line appear with both groups.They’re all more in the moment. At times, the dancers react to a big play: short bursts of choreography that bloom quickly and disappear. Even those dances, unannounced yet galvanizing, draw attention. As David said: “I feel eyes on us. I feel like people are appreciating what we’re doing and performing for them. And that is very rewarding.”The Wonder Woman pose.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThe drum line has returned with the dancers.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAt the start of the pandemic, Singh moved into Zoom rehearsals, like most of the dance world, and found that she needed to focus less on fixing details like exact arm placement and timing — that would be attended to once they were onstage — and more on getting the choreography in their bodies. Dancers would record themselves and send her the videos for individual notes.The emphasis of the movement has also changed. “Before, we would do a lot of big arms,” Singh said. “It was like how do I make the steps as big as possible? How do I make my body look like it’s taking up space?”While they still do that, now, she added, “It’s more about the power behind the movement and less of ‘my arm has to be way up here’ for the upper-level fans to be able to see what we’re doing.”As always, Singh wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn,” she said. “My approach to anything, all Brooklynettes is you’ve got to do it right. At least try to do it right. The last thing I want anyone to say — and especially in our industry — is, ‘Oh it’s inauthentic. They’re appropriating culture. Or they’re not really Brooklyn.’”Asha Singh, the team’s coach, wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn.”Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAs for that Wonder Woman pose? “That’s literally our signature,” Singh said, laughing. “I told the ladies the other night, ‘You have to stand like you’re still performing and stay there.’ If your arms get tired, you can relax, but then always come back so it still looks like your body is energized and you’re present. If you’re not backstage, you’re performing. That’s always been my viewpoint — on any show.”It’s another instance of the Brooklynettes doing something that they never had to do. “Now we’re learning that we have to change — we have to tweak our show, the in-between moments,” Singh said. “It’s kind of exciting though because I’m a fan of a stage. I just love lights. I love haze. I love being elevated.”As for that stage in the stands? “It just looks so much more like a show to me,” she said. “So I’m kind of loving our stage moment. We’re not sure how long it’s going to last, but it’s been really fun so far.” More

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      Tamika Catchings Is Taking Her ‘Superpower’ to the Hall of Fame

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      Catchings, a 10-time W.N.B.A. All-Star, said her hearing loss helped her have greater court awareness and better anticipate her opponents’ moves.Over time, Tamika Catchings reached an understanding about her lifelong hearing impairment. If it had once led to childhood taunts and later to some communication breakdowns with her college basketball coach, Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, Catchings came to realize that her impairment wasn’t an impairment at all.Rather, it was her “superpower,” as she put it.She is certain she compensated for her “moderate to severe” hearing loss with a court awareness that was second to none — that she was more capable of discerning all that was happening around her and, crucially, more apt to anticipate what was about to happen. That was particularly true on defense, she believed, and who’s to argue? While her other career numbers — 16.1 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.3 assists per game — reflect all-around excellence, she won the W.N.B.A.’s Defensive Player of the Year Award five times in her 15 seasons with the Indiana Fever. Five years after her retirement, as she prepares to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday, she still holds the league’s career record for steals.So, yes, a superpower.Scientists have a name for it when a person deficient in one of the five senses sees the others sharpen: cross-modal plasticity. It happens automatically, not through any conscious effort. The body understands there’s a need, and adapts.In her 2016 book, “Catch a Star,” Catchings recounted a time in elementary school when she and her sister, Tauja, were engaged in a one-on-one game in the driveway of the family’s Illinois home. Things grew heated, as they often did.“He still drives me crazy, every once in a while,” Catchings said of her father, Harvey, who played 11 years in the N.B.A. “But you know what? That’s my dad.”Wade Payne/Associated PressThat’s when their father, Harvey, not far removed from an 11-year N.B.A. career, emerged from the house and demanded that the girls relinquish the ball. While Tauja repaired to her room, Tamika remained in the driveway, dribbling and shooting an imaginary ball — just going through “a silent drill in her head,” her mother, Wanda, said.Harvey was incredulous. Tamika, he says now, “took it to a whole different level.”She would, in time, lead two different high schools to state championships. She would win a national title early in her college career and a W.N.B.A. title late in her professional career. She would win four Olympic gold medals. As a pro, she would win the awards for rookie of the year and most valuable player and be named to 12 all-league first or second teams.This weekend, in a ceremony postponed from last August because of the coronavirus pandemic, Catchings, now 41 and an Indiana Fever executive, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of a heavyweight class that also includes the N.B.A.’s Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant.She is the first women’s player from the University of Tennessee to be enshrined, news that gave her pause. Surely, she figured, another Lady Vol had made it, given Summitt’s success over a 38-year run that ended in 2012, four years before her death.But no. Maybe that shouldn’t be as big a surprise as it might seem.“I just had ‘it,’” Catchings told reporters after she learned of her induction in April 2020. “I had the drive, the passion, the determination, the focus, the attitude, the will.”Her story is a family story. It started with Harvey Catchings, a journeyman center who played for the 76ers, Nets, Bucks and Clippers before spending a season overseas.Harvey and Wanda Catchings’s children arrived early in Harvey’s career — a son, Kenyon, in 1975, Tauja two years later and Tamika not quite two years after that. Harvey taught them the game at a young age, regularly convening no-nonsense workouts. Kenyon and Tamika took to this approach. Tauja, not so much.“They tease me,” she said, adding, “Mika and our brother absolutely loved basketball, and I was kind of eh — I could take it or leave it.”Tamika was, in fact, “like an addict” when it came to the game, as her father once told The New York Times.She didn’t always appreciate her dad’s tutelage. As she put it in her book:For a lot of years, I couldn’t get Dad to hear me. His “coaching” made me feel, once again, like I didn’t fit in, that I wasn’t acceptable. I felt silenced. For a long time, I just took it all in and stuffed it, all the hurt and frustration and confusion about how to get him to see I could play the game well my own way.Ancient history now, in her eyes.“Yeah, it was a little crazy at times,” she says now, and laughs. “He still drives me crazy, every once in a while. But you know what? That’s my dad.”Catchings won four Olympic gold medals and the W.N.B.A. awards for rookie of the year and most valuable player.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesLooking back, she said he might have pushed her to “a level that I might not have been able to get to on my own.” When she was in seventh grade, she scrawled on a piece of paper that it was her intention to play in the N.B.A. — not the W.N.B.A., as it did not yet exist — and taped it to her bedroom mirror.As a sophomore, she combined with Tauja to lead Stevenson High School, in Lincolnshire, Ill., to a state title. But the next year the family reached a crossroads. Harvey and Wanda divorced after 22 years of marriage, and Wanda decided to move to Texas, where the family lived when Tamika was in elementary school. Kenyon was at Northern Illinois University, his promising basketball career having ended in high school because of a health issue.But what of the girls?“As much as we’d already moved, it’s my senior year — I’m not moving,” said Tauja, who later played at the University of Illinois and overseas. “And I wanted to stay with my dad, too.”It was another matter for Tamika, who reluctantly headed to Texas with her mother. She won her second state title, at Duncanville High School, near Dallas, in 1996-97, a tribute not only to her growth, but also to her burgeoning superpower.When she was young, she watched TV with the sound off to learn how to lip-read. But elementary school bullies targeted her because of her clunky hearing aids, and in third grade, she chucked them into a field, never to be found.It wasn’t until she arrived at Tennessee in 1997 that she resumed wearing hearing aids regularly. Summitt noticed early in Catchings’s freshman year that she wasn’t immediately picking up on instructions and recommended the devices — smaller ones this time.Catchings, right, with Coach Pat Summitt in 2000, is the first woman who played at the University of Tennessee to be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.Delores Delvin/The Nashville Tennessean, via IMAGNThat was the year Catchings helped deliver an undefeated 1997-98 season and the sixth of Summitt’s eight national titles. Two years later, Tamika was named Naismith College Player of the Year, setting the stage for all that followed: the Olympic golds, the individual honors and a W.N.B.A. championship in 2012.Her drive was like that of Bryant, whom she met in Italy when their fathers, once teammates on the Sixers, played there. But she was most like her father. After each of her professional seasons, she asked for his advice. He told her something he had been acutely aware during his career: that somebody is always gunning for your job, so it’s vital to stay hungry, to just keep pushing.In August 2019, the roles were reversed. Harvey Catchings was the one in need of support, and Tamika was the one offering it. By then, he was 68, had settled near Houston and had just undergone a heart transplant.At his bedside, Tamika Catchings said, she challenged him in much the same way he once challenged her.“I told him, ‘This is God giving you another opportunity to live life, so what are you going to do with it?’” she said.Harvey Catchings, who lost nearly 70 pounds during his hospital stay, soon regained most of the weight — and with it, his stamina. He’ll be at his daughter’s side when she is inducted into the Hall this weekend.Yet she wasn’t certain this day would come. She went for a drive the afternoon of April 3, 2020, the day the finalists for the Hall of Fame would find out if they were selected, “just to get all this angst out.”Then the call came from John Doleva, the Hall of Fame’s president and chief executive.“I started to scream,” she said. “I took my hands off and was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m driving.’”She quickly regained her composure, once again aware of where she was — and, as always, where she was heading. More

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      The Root of the Knicks’ Success? Caring When They Didn’t Have To.

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      In a season of uncertainty, the Knicks gave fans, and opponents, one thing to count on: “They were coming to play,” one observer said.Of all the postseason-ensuring victories across the Knicks’ grand reawakening of a regular season, none rose to the level of their most compelling, collective triumph. That would be the defeat of every team’s most formidable opponent: the coronavirus pandemic.Like most teams in all sports, they have had their brushes with Covid-19. But at least until a swing out West that always loomed as a caveat to their playoff seeding, the Knicks could be counted on to “show up every night,” to quote a dearly departed season ticket holder I long knew.Some N.B.A. teams did little to improve on borderline playoff rosters or gutted them completely. Others that figured to be measurably superior to the Knicks have wobbled under the weight of too many nights when they didn’t show up — physically or spiritually.The N.B.A. this season has experienced an acute blowout problem, on pace late last month for more games after the All-Star break decided by 20 or more points since 1967-68. Let Jeff Van Gundy, the loquacious network analyst and former Knicks coach, begin to explain.“In a trying season for everybody — with testing and Covid, injuries and load management — you just haven’t known who’s going to be there, night in and night out,” he said in a telephone interview. “But with the Knicks, you have known, for the most part, they were coming to play.”This is where the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as coach was seamlessly set to pandemic conditions. Especially for what Van Gundy called “the whole crowd thing,” meaning that because there were no fans in arenas for most of the season, there has largely been no external force helping teams hold on to the rope after falling behind.Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFrom no fans to some fans, these Knicks didn’t much need to be incentivized by a Madison Square Garden crowd. The coach’s baritone voice has been more than enough.Who among the emerging young players (RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley), veterans on expiring contracts (Reggie Bullock, Alec Burks) or reacquainted Thibodeau loyalists (Taj Gibson, Derrick Rose) was not going to be all-in with an old-school taskmaster, in his first year on the job?Van Gundy, who had Thibodeau on his Knicks staff two decades ago during the last multiseason period of Knicks relevance, mentioned an unnamed coach who told him that the higher the level of basketball you reach, winning during the regular season tends to “matter less and less to the players.” Maybe that’s an exaggeration, or simply not true. But with these Knicks, Van Gundy said, “the care factor has been exceptionally high.”Forgive the nostalgia, but their season has been reminiscent of 1982-83, when Hubie Brown rolled into town with a reputation much like Thibodeau’s, preaching defense and devotion, albeit in an exacting voice that over time grew discordant.Bernard King was the star of Hubie Brown’s 1982-83 Knicks team.Bill Kostroun/Associated PressBrown’s first Knicks team lost 26 of its first 40 games, then caught fire, won 24 of 30 and steamed into the playoffs to win a round (for the record, against the Nets).As with Julius Randle now, Bernard King was their lone star then, the one indispensable Knick, wearing the same No. 30. While other teams have required an Etch A Sketch to chart their stars’ nightly lineup availability, Randle has lost one game to injury and none to rest, leading the league in minutes played.Load management is generally for the established elite, not for a guy in the midst of a remarkable breakout season, and who began it with a partially guaranteed salary for 2021-22.Beyond Randle, Leon Rose, the team’s president, built a deep roster of interchangeable parts, ready for a condensed schedule promising to be marred by pandemic unpredictability. When the starting center Mitchell Robinson went down, the peripatetic young veteran Nerlens Noel stepped up. When Burks, a strong contributor to the team’s improved offense, was out because of virus protocols, Rose and Bullock picked up the scoring pace.“In the regular season, you can’t be top-heavy, you need depth, which Leon did a great job with,” Van Gundy said. “In the playoffs, you need greatness.”Watching the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic dismantle the Knicks in Denver last week may well have been a playoff preview. But wherever the Knicks’ season goes from here, it has been all the more astonishing when considering how little they have to show for their last five lottery picks, all top 10.Julius Randle colliding into Nuggets forward Paul Millsap in Denver on Wednesday.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBasically, it’s the ever-improving Barrett, at least until Obi Toppin gets to prove he is more than the second coming of Kenny Walker, better known as Sky. Kristaps Porzingis? Long gone. Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox? Might as well be.Here, again, is where the Thibodeau hiring has been a timely blessing. You may have argued last fall that this would be the perfect season to sacrifice achievement for player development, with few paying customers to please. I know I did. Why not find out once and for all about Ntilikina and Knox? Why not turn Toppin and Quickley loose from Day 1?Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Peter Roby, a childhood friend of Thibodeau’s, who in 1985 hired him for the coaching staff at Harvard, likes to playfully remind people of how Thibodeau, the acclaimed defensive guru, was known in his “knucklehead” youth for never passing up a shot. But in a recent telephone interview, he brought up Thibodeau’s age, 63, old enough to have been introduced to the pro game by the Knicks’ early 1970s championship team.Those Knicks were all about ball sharing and defense, the kind of championship DNA, Roby said, that Thibodeau associates with the franchise, even if it hasn’t won a title since the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.“Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley — those are his Knicks,” Roby said.His father’s Knicks, as well. Thibodeau wanted this generation-connective job too much to embark on a five-year plan that could easily disintegrate, given the organization’s trademark volatility under the ownership of James L. Dolan.Even with few or no fans, the Knicks have played hard.Pool photo by ElsaHe also knows how easily an N.B.A. head coach his age can overnight be downgraded from outstanding to outdated with one twist of fate — what befell Brown after King tore up a knee at the height of his scoring prowess in 1985.Chasing pickup games with Thibodeau while growing up in New Britain, Conn., a border town where sports passion is split between Boston and New York, Roby also chose the Knicks over the Celtics. As a former athletic director at Northeastern and current interim athletic director at Dartmouth, he’s long been closer to Boston but is a bigger Knicks fan than ever, thanks to his old pal.“Can you imagine what it would be like if they were playing in front of a full Garden house?” Roby said.We can, but perhaps we shouldn’t. Not yet. Because who knows what comes next, when the high-achieving role players, Derrick Rose included, will demand their free-agent rewards. When road games — such as Friday night’s in Phoenix, where the Knicks faltered late in front of 8,063 fans — may again require competing with a full-throated cacophony. When expectation will become part of the equation and, yes, when Thibodeau’s voice could begin to grate.Stirring to life a long-slumbering franchise, the story of the season has been harmony for coach and players, all while withstanding, even foiling, the daunting challenge of a pandemic. More

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      Why Yuta Watanabe's Viral Moment Brought Cheers From Japan

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      Going viral because you got dunked on? Yikes — unless you’re Yuta Watanabe, whose effort has endeared him to a growing wave of basketball fans in his home country, Japan.Toronto Raptors forward Yuta Watanabe ended up on the wrong end of a viral moment when Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards dunked on him during a game in February.Photos and videos of Watanabe hopelessly coming up short in his attempt to stop the dunk made their way across social media, including the Instagram feed of the actor and basketball fan Kevin Hart, who shared a photo of the dunk with his 100-million-plus followers, saying: “This defender has to be thrown out of the league immediately….there’s no coming back from this.”But Watanabe is still here, and in his third N.B.A. season he has captured the imagination of basketball fans in Japan, his home country, while earning a rotation spot with the Raptors.Takeshi Shibata is the manager of basketball business for Nippon Bunka Publishing and has been a writer and editor with the company in Tokyo since 2010. A Tokyo native, he grew up watching the Showtime Lakers on satellite television in the 1980s, learning English by listening to the famed play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn.This season, he is one of the dozens of Japanese reporters covering Watanabe, whom he has followed since Watanabe was in high school playing for Jinsei Gakuen in the Kagawa Prefecture in Japan.“What I saw was an unbelievably athletic player,” Shibata said. “He was a man of energy, a man of effort.”Watanabe, then with the Memphis Grizzlies, exchanged jerseys with Washington Wizards forward Rui Hachimura, left, in 2019.Brandon Dill/Associated PressWatanabe has the best-selling N.B.A. jersey in Japan this season, ahead of Golden State’s Stephen Curry, the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and Rui Hachimura, the Washington Wizards forward who in 2019 became the first Japanese player ever drafted in the first round.Hachimura has more name recognition and better odds of becoming a star in the league, but Watanabe’s story — going undrafted in 2018 after four seasons at George Washington University, then signing a two-way contract with the Memphis Grizzlies — has appealed to a large audience in Japan.“He took more of a humble path,” said Ed Odeven, who grew up in the Bronx and has covered basketball in Japan since moving there in 2006. “The Japanese culture places a value on sticking with it and working hard to reach your goals. They see that in Yuta, and it resonates with them.”The pandemic curtailed Shibata’s plans to travel to Toronto — where he honeymooned with his wife, Ayako, in 1994 — to cover Watanabe in person this season. Instead, he wakes up at 5 a.m. and covers the Raptors from his home in Chiba, Japan, publishing up to four basketball stories daily on the company’s website. (The Raptors aren’t in Toronto, either; because of Canada’s health restrictions, they have spent the season in Tampa, Fla.)Shibata appreciates the flexibility of working from home, and has developed a rapport with Toronto Coach Nick Nurse, who has answered questions from Japanese reporters at the end of his virtual news conferences.“I enjoy talking to him and getting responses from him,” Shibata said. “He knows my English is shaky, and I’m trying my best to communicate with him. He’s been really inclusive to someone like me.”Through Toronto’s first 66 games, Watanabe has appeared in 47 and is averaging 4.2 points in 14.2 minutes.“I’m pretty sure I could come up with a good story even if Yuta played five seconds on the court,” he said. “Because every second means a lot to the basketball fans in Japan.”Shibata was hired by Nippon Bunka Publishing in 1992 as an advertising associate at what he believed was the start of a golden era of basketball in Japan.He joined the company shortly after watching Michael Jordan and the Dream Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which ignited interest in the game globally. That coincided with the publication of a popular Japanese basketball manga written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue and named “Slam Dunk.” It ran from 1990 to 1996, sold over 120 million copies in Japan and helped inspire millions of children — including Hachimura and Watanabe — to play the game.Two local leagues eventually emerged. The Basketball Japan League began in 2005, and the Japan Basketball League, which became the National Basketball League, followed in 2007. Having two domestic leagues running concurrently violated FIBA’s general statutes, and the Japan Basketball Association, which oversaw both, was suspended from international competition in 2014.The N.B.A. held a pregame between the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors at Saitama Super Arena near Tokyo before the 2019-20 season.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press“There’s been so many roadblocks along the way,” Shibata said.Things have started to change in the past several years. The FIBA ban was lifted in 2015. The B. League — a new local pro league featuring 47 teams across three divisions — launched in 2016 and has been a success through the first five years, attracting local fans and major sponsors.Hachimura and Watanabe have inspired a new generation not only to watch the game, but also to see themselves playing at the highest level. (Yuta Tabuse became the first Japanese-born player to play in the N.B.A. in 2004, but lasted only four games with the Phoenix Suns.)In Japan, basketball is watched much less than baseball, soccer, tennis and sumo wrestling. Local newspapers will publish the occasional basketball story, such as the news last month that the Raptors had converted Watanabe to a standard N.B.A. contract. But N.B.A. games are available only online, through a streaming partnership between the league and Rakuten.To find basketball coverage in Japan, you must actively seek it out.For the longest time, the news media reported only traditional game stories, which was an adjustment for the former Lakers center Robert Sacre, who played professionally in Japan for three seasons.“They’re way more respectful,” he said. “They just want to know what happened during the game. It was never about trying to find a story. They want to know why you guys won or why you guys lost. It was unique in that sense.”There’s now a growing number of social media accounts, YouTube channels and podcasts, and they’re helping to provide the kind of off-the-court, personality-driven stories that reflect how basketball is covered in North America.“It’s become different in the last decade,” said Detroit Pistons Coach Dwane Casey, who coached in Japan from 1989 to 1994 and visits regularly. “You can see the younger generation getting more excited about basketball, and they’re covering it now. They’re into all the same things that get the younger generation’s attention in North America.”N.B.A. teams are recognizing this new appetite for digital content. The Raptors featured Watanabe in an episode of “Open Gym,” their behind-the-scenes video series, in February. It is the season’s most-viewed episode. And in 2019, the Wizards hired Zac Ikuma, a bilingual sports reporter in Japan, as a digital correspondent. The team has a dedicated Japanese Twitter account, and Ikuma hosts a Japanese-language podcast for fans overseas.Shibata has also ventured into telling different kinds of stories online. One of his most popular features was about a group of female Raptors fans in Toronto who nicknamed themselves “the Watana-baes.” The story, an explainer on the term “bae,” was picked up by a Japanese television network.Photos and videos of this dunk, by Timberwolves forward Anthony Edwards over Watanabe in February, made their way across social media.David Berding/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe digital activities of younger basketball fans are also helping give the North American audience a better idea of how the game is perceived in Japan.A few weeks after video of the Edwards dunk against Watanabe went viral, a Japanese reporter asked Watanabe about the play. The interview was translated into English by the Twitter fan account @RaptorsInfoJPN.“In a situation like that, most people avoid it these days for fear of it going viral on the internet,” Watanabe said. “I think, if I do so, I shouldn’t be here anymore and I shouldn’t get any playing time.”For Shibata, the play exemplified Watanabe’s work ethic, which has opened the door for a new generation of basketball players in Japan to dream of one day following the same path to the N.B.A.“It was only two points,” Shibata said. “We were proud of him for sacrificing his body to try to stop the dunk. To be an N.B.A. player, you have to stop these guys in the air. To do that, you can’t hide.” More

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      Oscar Robertson Wants Westbrook to Break His Triple-Doubles Record

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      “There’s no doubt about it,” Robertson said. “I hope he gets it.” And he hopes people will stop criticizing Russell Westbrook, the Wizards guard, for not yet winning a championship.In his first N.B.A. game, in October 1960, Oscar Robertson registered 21 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists for the Cincinnati Royals against the Los Angeles Lakers. In his second N.B.A. season, Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists per game for Cincinnati.Such numerical assemblages — reaching double figures in those three categories — are known in basketball parlance as triple-doubles. Yet Robinson established a league record, with his 181 triple-doubles across 14 seasons, without any fanfare. The term was not coined until the early 1980s, when the Lakers’ Magic Johnson began routinely posting Oscar-esque lines in box scores.“Honestly, I was totally unaware of it,” Robertson said this week.Nearly 50 years removed from Robertson’s final season with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1973-74, there is a hyperawareness of triple-doubles, thanks largely to Russell Westbrook of the Washington Wizards. In 2016-17 with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Westbrook became the first player since Robertson to average a triple-double for a full season, prompting Robertson to travel to Oklahoma to personally congratulate Westbrook.Robertson was traded to Milwaukee from Cincinnati in 1970, and won a championship with the Bucks the next season.Manny Rubio-USA TODAY SportsWestbrook has amassed 178 triple-doubles in his career and, with seven games left on Washington’s schedule entering Wednesday’s play, has a chance to surpass Robertson this season. In a phone interview with The New York Times, Robertson, 82, said he was rooting for Westbrook to do so and discussed the criticism that he, like Westbrook, faced in his Royals days until he teamed up with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Milwaukee to lead the Bucks to their only championship, in 1971.This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.So if they didn’t call them triple-doubles, what did people say about your big statistical performances?Not very much. In those days, they focused on scoring and the blocking of shots. There wasn’t much publicity associated with it. It wasn’t thought of until they went back into the archives and saw what I had done. I was even surprised myself.Over the first five seasons of your N.B.A. career, you averaged a triple-double (30.3 points, 10.4 rebounds, 10.6 assists). Did you personally look at those numbers with any added reverence?I never thought about scoring. I never thought about rebounding. I never thought about assists. I only thought about winning. And we didn’t have such a great basketball team at Cincinnati, so we struggled a little bit. They were waiting on me to, I guess, save the franchise. But you need a team to do those things.What was the secret to being a good rebounder at 6-foot-5?In high school, I played inside and outside. So when I got into the college ranks, I went to the forward position. I just had the fundamentals to be able to play in or out. I always thank my coaches from high school for helping me build those attributes. I just knew how to box out. For me, it was just playing basketball.Cincinnati’s Robertson juggling for possession of the ball against Detroit’s Gene Shue and Chuck Noble in 1961. Bettmann/Getty ImagesWestbrook gets a lot of criticism because he hasn’t been part of a championship team in the N.B.A., and I imagine you faced something similar during your time in Cincinnati. What do you remember about the years before you won a championship with Milwaukee?I think this happens with great basketball players, like Westbrook and myself. I was with Cincinnati for many years, but we never made any notable trades to get better players. If you look back through the history of basketball — and I always tell people this — every team that’s won a championship has made key trades. Boston got Bill Russell. Red Auerbach was very astute at getting older starters from other teams to play off the bench for him. A lot of the teams I played for, they didn’t want to do that.When you look back, how jarring was it to be traded from Cincinnati to Milwaukee in 1970?It was fine. I just resented the fact that the Cincinnati basketball family felt that I hadn’t done anything in 10 years, and all I had done was make All-Pro 10 straight years. But they wanted to trade Oscar Robertson. I just did not want them to try to destroy my credibility and what I had done for the city of Cincinnati. When I went to Milwaukee, I assessed my situation, and I’ll never forget, I told my wife, “I’m not going to be the scorer I was in Cincinnati.” And she said, “Why?” I told her I have to get these other players involved in the game. For us to win, we’ve got to get the other players to make a contribution offensively.Is it accurate to classify you as a Russell Westbrook fan?I totally enjoy the way Westbrook plays. He’s a dynamic individual. They’ve moved him around to different teams and I don’t know why, because I think he’s one of the star guards in basketball. I guess they thought that when he went to Washington that he would not be that effective, but, man, he’s done a tremendous job.“I think he’s one of the star guards in basketball,” Robertson said of Westbrook.Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty ImagesAnd you’re rooting for him to break your record for career triple-doubles?There’s no doubt about it. I hope he gets it. I think he’s one of the elite guards in basketball, and I think it’s ridiculous that some sportswriters criticize him because he has not won a championship. Players don’t win championships by themselves. You’ve got to have good management. You need to get with the right group of players.Look at Brooklyn: Who could have done this years ago? How things have changed. It seems now that what’s happening in basketball, and I haven’t seen it happen in football yet, is players will get together and say, “Let’s go and play for this team so we can win.” Years ago, you wouldn’t have thought of doing that.Who else do you enjoy watching in today’s N.B.A.?I like to watch a lot of players, really. LeBron [James], of course. [Stephen] Curry. I like [James] Harden. There are so many great basketball players — including the kid out of Portland: [Damian] Lillard. Curry is probably one of the finest shooters ever, but so is Lillard. He can really shoot the basketball from far out. It’s almost effortless.Long-distance shooting has taken over the modern game. You’re OK with that?It’s a different type of basketball. It’s a players’ game. And it’s a fans’ game — they love this. I’ve always said this: 3-point shots are like 7-footers used to be — they can get a coach fired. If you have 3-point shooters and they don’t make those shots, “That’s it, Coach.” The name of the game is to outscore your opponents. That’s what it’s about. If you can shoot 3-point shots and you can win the basketball game, it’s great. If you start missing those shots and you don’t make the adjustment and start doing some other things, you’re going to be in trouble. More

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      The N.B.A.’s Play-In Tournament Isn’t the Problem

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      Though stars like LeBron James and Luka Doncic have complained about the pre-playoff hurdle, the stress of the play-in matters less than injuries and the compressed season.The Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James, who lashed out about the All-Star Game staged in Atlanta in March, has a new source of league office ire. James said on Sunday that the forces behind the N.B.A.’s forthcoming playoff play-in tournament “should be fired.”Weeks before James voiced his displeasure, it was Mark Cuban, after voting for the play-in as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who blasted the concept as an “enormous mistake.”I say they’re both wrong, and see the race to set up the N.B.A.’s play-in round from May 18 to 21 as the most invigorating aspect of a dour, draining, pandemic-skewed season.The idea here, though, is not to dwell on James or Cuban, two of the league’s most outspoken figures. They were offering emotional reactions to their teams’ increasingly unpleasant circumstances in the standings. Both surely know how self-serving it sounded to attack the play-in format only after their teams faced an acute risk of having to participate in it.Zoom in on what’s happening among the top 11 teams in each conference, and you will see that the format change is doing its job — and promisingly so. More teams are playing more games that mean something than we’re accustomed to with just under two weeks left in the regular season. A system that gives the No. 9 or 10 seed a last-ditch pathway into the playoffs — but only if one of those teams can win two play-in games in a row — has spawned new levels of jockeying for seeding position. That’s good for the game at large, even if it has, in Year 1, complicated matters for the injury-ravaged defending champions in Los Angeles.Adam Silver, in his seven-plus years as commissioner, has emphasized finding ways to make the regular season matter more. He has also sought to discourage teams from shifting into the familiar late-season mode of resting veterans and focusing on youth development to foster losing and improve draft position, better known as tanking. The combination of the play-in and changes to the lottery odds starting in the 2018-19 season is making a difference on both fronts. Before the 2019 draft, the team with the lowest winning percentage had the highest odds to get the No. 1 pick. The three worst teams now share an equal shot at the top spot.Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks said he didn’t “see the point” of playing the whole season if a play-in tournament could keep a team out of the playoffs.Nelson Chenault/USA Today Sports, via ReutersEntering Tuesday’s play, 24 of the league’s 30 teams were still in playoff contention because of the added play-in slots, although the chances seemed unrealistic for Chicago in the East and Sacramento in the West. In both conferences, in addition to the usual grappling for the No. 1 seed, there are fevered races to secure a top-six seed and avoid the play-in round, as well as crowded races to clinch a spot in the 7-to-10 range to extend the season.The play-in scenario calls for the No. 7 seed in each conference to play one game against No. 8 at home, with No. 9 playing No. 10 at home. The winner of 7 vs. 8 claims the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game plays the winner of 9 vs. 10 at home for the No. 8 seed, with the loser of 9 vs. 10 eliminated. The seventh- and eighth-seeded teams in each conference thus have to win just once to clinch a playoff berth. No. 9 or No. 10 must win two games in a row to advance.The Mavericks’ Luka Doncic lamented last month that he didn’t “see the point” of playing an entire season if “maybe you lose two in a row and you’re out of the playoffs.” That was what prompted Cuban’s “enormous mistake” comment, but on Monday he said that he had “no problem” with the play-in and that he welcomed the competitive boost it could lend to a standard 82-game season. Cuban’s dismay, he said both last month and Monday, is contained to this season because of the stress it heaps on already stressed teams. He contended that additional games with seeding implications compound the burden on teams chafing from cramming 72 regular-season games into five months while coping with daily coronavirus testing and extensive league health and safety demands.But the benefits, at least for fans, have been plentiful. There is a newfound incentive for teams to finish no lower than sixth, both to avoid the play-in and to gain several days of additional rest before the first round of the playoffs. The seeding scramble also features highly watchable players vying for play-in berths: Washington’s duo of Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook, New Orleans’s Zion Williamson, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball and, most of all, Golden State’s scorching hot Stephen Curry. The prospect of stars like Curry, Portland’s Damian Lillard and maybe even Williamson headlining bonus high-stakes broadcasts presumably excites network executives as much as the possibility of an early Lakers exit scares them.In Washington’s case, Beal and Westbrook have been at the forefront of a 13-3 surge that has enabled the Wizards to overcome a 17-32 start and compete for something after a coronavirus outbreak in January essentially shut down the franchise for two weeks. As a counter to Cuban’s complaint, San Antonio’s bid to stay alive for a playoff berth despite a second-half scheduling crunch has been boosted by the play-in path. The Spurs must play 40 games in 67 days in the season’s second half, but they have clung to 10th in the West, ahead of Williamson’s Pelicans.Young players like New Orleans’s Zion Williamson, left, and Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball, right, have added intrigue to the races for lower seeds.Derick Hingle/Associated PressTanking has not been eradicated by the play-in chases, but there is certainly less of it. The numbing regular-season discourse about individual awards (and little else) has been mercifully balanced by a heightened focus on the playoff ladders and how meaningful, just to give one example, Boston’s regular-season finale against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on May 16 could be. Even fears that adding play-in berths would lead more teams to stand pat and thus chill the trade market proved mostly unfounded; deadline day on March 25 delivered a record number of trades (16).The most compelling argument against the play-in tournament is the one Cuban raised — that this wasn’t the season for such experimentation. I suppose, for some, it’s a step too far after the tight turnaround from last season, which carried into October, and all the virus-related demands that cut into players’ rest, rehabilitation and practice time.Yet the bulk of the additional stress is a byproduct of the league’s decision, in conjunction with the players’ union, to start this season on Dec. 22 and play 72 games in a compressed period. The rising concern among teams’ medical staffs about increased injury risk because of game density and scheduling logjams caused by game postponements would probably have manifested with or without the play-in wrinkle.As for suggestions that the East and West No. 7 seeds deserve more protection than the play-in system affords, based on their season-long body of work, let’s push back. The lowest seed to win a championship since the league adopted a 16-team playoff format in 1983-84 was sixth-seeded Houston in 1994-95 — when the Rockets were defending champions and traded for Clyde Drexler at midseason. The playoffs do not revolve around No. 7 seeds. If they can’t win one play-in game at home, when given two chances, how much playoff damage were they going to do, anyway?What no one envisioned was three of the four teams that reached last season’s conference finals tumbling into play-in territory, which is why the issue has caused so much angst. Miami (No. 6) and Boston (No. 7) in the East, among the teams that have been hit hardest by Covid-19 disruptions, might have to go the play-in route just to get back to the playoffs. The Lakers began the season as overwhelming championship favorites and duly started 21-6, but their subsequent struggles have played out in the most daunting way. James and Anthony Davis, as we warned, have not been able to make seamless returns from their long-term injuries.The Lakers will not look capable of a lengthy playoff run, even if they can avoid the indignity of a play-in game or two, until the health of their two stars improves. For all the attention on James’s harsh critique of the play-in games, he said something else on Sunday to suggest he had a firm grasp of the Lakers’ larger seeding plight.“If I’m not 100 percent, or close to 100 percent, it don’t matter where we land,” James said.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeA reader writes in with the hottest of hot takes: Stephen Curry isn’t that good.Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle, via 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: To answer the question posed by last week’s newsletter, Russell Westbrook is not appreciated because he does not win. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson could have averaged 15 points, 15 rebounds and 15 assists per game every season if that was their goal. Westbrook is a pretty amazing player, and a deserved All-Star, but teams looking to win it all don’t seem to be interested in him. — Noel MacDonald (Petaluma, Calif.)Stein: This is a popular sentiment about Westbrook, and there are some minds he will probably never change until he is part of a championship team, no matter what he achieves statistically.That Westbrook has been traded twice since winning the league’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2016-17 only amplifies the argument. Yet when Westbrook has gotten triple-doubles, his teams have won handily, so I would dispute the blanket statement that Westbrook “does not win.”Westbrook has 178 career triple-doubles in the regular season and a 134-44 record in those games, good for a winning percentage of .753. That equates to a 62-20 record in a typical season.Oklahoma City, Houston and Washington, then, have clearly benefited from his triple-doubles. Detractors are bound to say Westbrook could be chasing them in every game and hurting his team when he doesn’t achieve them, but I don’t think Westbrook is motivated by triple-doubles above all else. Teammates probably wouldn’t respect him the way they do if that were happening.All of these layers, and everything we covered last week, are why I’m so curious to see the reaction when Westbrook breaks Oscar Robertson’s career record for triple-doubles (181). Maybe this will be the moment that the league at large stops to appreciate someone who plays as ridiculously hard as Westbrook does, season after season after season, even if his résumé lacks a championship. Or maybe not.Q: Stephen Curry is great, but he’s the third-best Warrior ever. He’s not better than Rick Barry, and he’s not better than Wilt Chamberlain. Unless Curry adds another dimension to his game, he will not crack the top 10 or 15 all time. — @michaelbookit from TwitterStein: This is another bold opinion (or you were just trying to get a Twitter rise out of me). Whether or not I can persuade you to reconsider your stance, I strongly disagree.Chamberlain’s greatest successes as a player were as a 76er and as a Laker. Although the statistics he posted as a Warrior remain difficult to fathom, like the 50.4 points per game he averaged as a Philadelphia Warrior in 1961-62, his time in the Bay Area lasted less than three seasons. The Warriors even missed the playoffs in Wilt’s first San Francisco season.Barry has long been one of the game’s underappreciated stars, and his all-around excellence in leading Golden State to an unforeseen championship in 1975 cemented him as one of the game’s greats, but Curry’s résumé has it all. Three championships, five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals, back-to-back M.V.P. awards, longevity with one franchise, massive popularity with fans and seemingly limitless shooting range that changed the game — Curry really has no peer here.Q: I have assumed that teams that qualified for the playoff play-in round but did not advance further would not be considered teams that reached the playoffs this season. Then on Friday, according to the league’s official standings, Philadelphia was shown to have clinched a playoff berth when the 76ers had 10 games left on their schedule — but only an 8½-game lead over No. 7 Miami. Didn’t that mean that the Sixers conceivably could have still slipped to seventh?— Jeff Pucillo (Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.)Stein: You are correct that teams that get to the play-in round will not be considered playoff teams unless they win the last playoff spot in each conference.The standings, though, did not convey the full picture of Philadelphia’s situation. The Sixers clinched a playoff berth as of Friday because No. 6 Boston and No. 7 Miami still had two games against each other — and the results of those forthcoming games, no matter what they are, will ensure that either the Celtics or the Heat can’t catch the Sixers.Numbers GameThe Sixers are 32-6 when Ben Simmons, center, and Joel Embiid play together.Darren Abate/Associated Press57It’s not your imagination: Major blowouts have been increasingly common this season. A record six games in April were decided by margins of at least 40 points, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, and Indiana promptly drubbed Oklahoma City by 57 points, 152-95, on Saturday, the first day of May.50When Utah scored 154 points in a 49-point rout of Sacramento last week, it was the eighth time over the past two seasons that an N.B.A. team had scored as many as 150 points in a non-overtime game. Over the prior 20 seasons, from 1999-2000 to 2018-19, it happened only four times, according to Elias.32-6Philadelphia is 32-6 this season when Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are both in uniform. The 76ers’ .842 winning percentage in those games shows the team’s tremendous potential when the two stars are healthy, but their 38 games together mean Embiid and Simmons have been available as a duo for only 58 percent of Philadelphia’s schedule.8Of Utah’s 18 losses this season, eight were inflicted by three teams: Phoenix, Washington and lowly Minnesota. The Suns and Timberwolves went 3-0 against the Jazz, who also absorbed a 2-0 season sweep from the Wizards. In another quirk, Sacramento is 10-1 against Denver (3-0), Dallas (3-0), Boston (2-0) and the Los Angeles Lakers (2-1). The Kings are 17-36 against the rest of the league and will most likely soon miss the playoffs for the 15th consecutive season.96Golden State’s Stephen Curry sank 96 3-pointers in April to establish a league record for a single month. It was not until the ninth season of existence for the 3-point line in the N.B.A. that a player reached that total over 82 regular-season games; Boston’s Danny Ainge (148), Denver’s Michael Adams (139), Seattle’s Dale Ellis (107) and Ainge’s Celtics teammate Larry Bird (98) were the first to get there, in 1987-88.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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      Eric Collins, Voice of the Hornets, Is Creating His Own Buzz

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      Eric Collins, the TV play-by-play announcer for the Charlotte Hornets, has gained new fans this season with his high-energy broadcasts showcasing the rookie LaMelo Ball.Some basketball pairings sync seamlessly. Think Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, Bill Russell and Red Auerbach and Eric Collins and LaMelo Ball.That last tandem might not be the first to come to mind. But Collins, the Charlotte Hornets’ television play-by-play announcer, has served as the ideal conduit to introduce Ball and his dynamic play to a wide N.B.A. audience.“He’s seeing the game five seconds ahead of everyone else,” Collins said.Collins calls games with an energy and exuberance that seem impossible to sustain over 48 minutes. “Here comes LaMelo Ball with his hair on fire!” he exclaimed during one otherwise mundane fast break.Collins has been widely appreciated among N.B.A. League Pass watchers who have tuned into the Hornets to watch Ball and have discovered Collins as a bonus. He’s just as excited for a Miles Bridges dunk — “Oh my goodness! Hum diddly dee! — as a 3-point attempt by center Bismack Biyombo.He is in his sixth season as a broadcast partner with Dell Curry, the former longtime Hornet and the father of Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Philadelphia’s Seth Curry. He was a sideline reporter when Michael Jordan, who owns the Hornets, won a second “three-peat” as a guard with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s.Collins, who described his style as “quirky” and maybe “a little bit scary at some point,” recently spoke to The New York Times about his high-energy broadcasts and why he doesn’t listen to other announcers.This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.What has it been like watching Ball, who recently returned from a fractured wrist, progress this season?I understood that he had a following, but I didn’t understand that he had a game that actually merited the following. And he’s just been unbelievable. I got a high bar. I’m always looking for greatness and looking for joy and looking for wonder and sometimes it’s hard to meet what I want. And he met it basically Day 1 with just the distinctiveness that he has.But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before. He just plays with flair and élan, and I love it. And at age 19, he plays the game like his game is smiling, but then when he’s not on the floor, his body shows you that he’s smiling. He’s someone you want to be around.Have you noticed more interest in the Hornets this season and more people being introduced to your broadcasts?I’ve got a daughter who’s in high school, and for the first time in her life, she’s noticing that basketball actually exists here in Charlotte. She’s got friends who wear Hornets gear and talk about the Hornets and do what kids do on social media about the Hornets. And so, yes, it started hitting me more. But I don’t know if it’s just ’cause I’ve got a 15-year-old daughter in my house or because there’s actually a real phenomenon going on.And that’s partly because you don’t use social media, correct?I’ve always been a broadcaster that believes in the old school of “I want to broadcast to you.” And when you start broadcasting back to me, that changes everything that I’m about. I put in the time. I put in the thought, and I put in a lot of the man-hours to get my brain and my skill level to the point where I feel like I can broadcast outward with a certain amount of authority. And I don’t want to take any of that broadcast back in toward me because that affects how I do a game. I want to be in my own Eric Collins bubble.I don’t want to give people what they like, I don’t want to give people what they don’t like — I want to give people what’s me. And if they like that, then that’s great.“I don’t look like anyone else. I don’t have the same demographics as anyone else. I’m biracial, and that’s a huge part of who I am as a broadcaster”, said Eric Collins, left.Scott Cunningham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThat goes in line with you also not listening to other announcers. Why did you start that policy?I was a sideline reporter for six years in the N.B.A. and I also used to dabble. I would be a sideline reporter and in-game reporter for the Chicago White Sox. And I started to do more and more play-by-play, and I was realizing that I was sounding like other announcers that were in my ear when I was doing games. And I said, “This is the absolute death of me.”I don’t look like anyone else. I don’t have the same demographics as anyone else. I’m biracial, and that’s a huge part of who I am as a broadcaster. I look different than everyone else, and I think it’s important for me to not shy away from that. And I don’t want to look like anyone else and I don’t want to sound like anyone else.So yeah, I haven’t listened to anyone since probably the late ’90s. I watch sports, and I don’t do pregame shows. I won’t watch a halftime show. I watch a highlight show. I form my own opinions. That’s what I believe in.How are you able to sustain your energy throughout the lengthy season?I just think it’s the way that I was born and the way I was raised, what’s in my body. To me, it’s easy to get excited and to be full of wonder at a basketball game, at a sporting event, at a baseball game, at a women’s volleyball game. I’m a competition junkie, and if people are putting in the amount of effort that it takes to get ready for a game and play the game, I always put enough energy and thought to get ready for that game. And once the ball is thrown up, I’m ready to go.You also did a stint as a news reporter, correct?I spent a year of my life at the CBS affiliate in Rochester, and I was doing news. I was going to City Council meetings. I was doing arsons. I was doing homicides. I was waiting out in blizzards telling people not to go outside. It was really tough. I got so much respect for people who can do that long-term because sometimes it’s not very bright.I think there’s a lot of young broadcasters who spend a lot of time worrying, ‘OK, I can’t say this’ or ‘I can’t go here,’ because they’re not confident about what journalistically they can do. I had that down. The amount of years that I spent getting into the business, I understood journalism, the rules, the ethics, all that kind of stuff. And that freed me for when I actually got a microphone and was able to start doing play-by-play, to just concentrate on being me because I understood the basics.The Hornets have put together a lot of highlight-worthy plays this season. Do you have a favorite call?I guess maybe the tail end of the Golden State game that the Hornets won. The one that Steph actually didn’t play. Terry Rozier hit a nice shot. And that’s one of the things that I liked just because play-by-play isn’t always about the exact words that you use. It’s about the way that you’re able to use your voice, and use the moment. Without fans, I think, sometimes that’s one of the things that I like to play with a little bit more this year — is just my voice and how I can bring it up and bring it down and staccato, and just the rhythm of what I’m trying to do. And I thought that we did a good job for that game winner by Rozier, just using the voice in an empty arena to make it as exciting as it was. More

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      Russell Westbrook Makes Triple-Doubles Look Easy. They’re Not.

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      Westbrook, the Washington Wizards guard, is on track to average a triple-double for the fourth time in five seasons, making it seem almost routine. So why doesn’t everyone do it?Russell Westbrook and Scott Brooks huddled by phone late Sunday. After the Washington Wizards’ eighth consecutive victory, and with the second half of a back-to-back looming Monday night against San Antonio, Westbrook wanted to do some extra strategizing with his coach.It was only a few months earlier that six consecutive Washington games were postponed because the Wizards had been ravaged by a coronavirus outbreak. Their U-turn has been so dramatic, with Westbrook’s play reminiscent of his Oklahoma City best, that Brooks couldn’t resist interrupting the serious tone by needling his star guard.“I told him: ‘You’ve got to start rebounding the ball — only five tonight?’” Brooks said. “Just busting his chops.”Those five rebounds Westbrook managed in Sunday’s victory over Cleveland, to go with 14 points and 11 assists in 36 minutes, were indeed an anomaly. In nine of his previous 10 games, 13 of the previous 15 and 16 of the previous 20, Westbrook reached double figures in points, assists and rebounds.In his first season as a Wizard, at age 32, Westbrook is averaging 21.8 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists per game — with a league-leading 29 triple-doubles to hike his career total to 175. Denver’s Nikola Jokic, with 15 triple-doubles, is his closest pursuer this season. With seven more triple-doubles, Westbrook will pass Oscar Robertson as the N.B.A.’s career leader.This is where it’s important to note that Westbrook, who is on a course to average more than 10 rebounds per game for the fourth time in five seasons, stands 6-foot-3.The official stance of this newsletter is that Westbrook’s forthcoming achievement should be celebrated heartily, at the very least for his relentless rebounding at that size, but it’s hard to say how much fanfare awaits him when he eclipses the Big O. This isn’t even a record that Robertson knew he set at the time, since the term “triple-double” didn’t come into vogue until the 1980s.Another tricky variable: In my 28 seasons of full-time N.B.A. reporting, Westbrook is right there with Allen Iverson when it comes to the most polarizing players I have covered. Because of Westbrook’s ball-dominant style, fickle jump shot, high turnover rate, occasionally brusque demeanor and, most of all, zero championships, it is often easier to find his critics than his admirers.Westbrook is averaging 11 assists per game this season, the most of his career.Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAs Westbrook closes in on Robertson, there is also a rising tendency to dismiss triple-doubles as empty calories because they happen so frequently in the wide-open modern game. (Example: On March 17, Westbrook was one of six players to record a triple-double that day.) Westbrook’s triple-doubles in particular tend to be discounted in a way that others aren’t, which he brought up in a video session with reporters after Monday’s overtime loss to the Spurs.“I think it’s very interesting that it’s not useful now that I’m doing it,” Westbrook said.As covered in a recent piece by my colleague Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, there were only 18 triple-doubles leaguewide as recently as the 2011-12 regular season. This season’s total has already topped 100, for the fifth season in a row, pointing to the various offensive advantages enjoyed in today’s N.B.A. The faster pace of play creates more possessions, and thus more statistical opportunities, and restrictions on defenders have been designed to promote more freedom of movement on offense. Players are likewise encouraged to shoot 3-pointers at record rates, boosting scoring numbers and leading to more long rebounds. Old schoolers resistant to the 3-point revolution, in response, are prone to scoff at some of the gaudy stuff we see in box scores these days.Yet this is where I feel compelled to repeat that part about Westbrook standing just 6-3. He is the only player in league history at that size or smaller to average at least 10 rebounds a game over a full season.“It’s a lot harder at 6-3,” said Lafayette Lever, who went by the nickname Fat and amassed 43 triple-doubles from 1982-83 through 1993-94.Lever understands Westbrook’s challenge as well as anyone. He was a 6-3, 170-pound guard who rang up a league-leading 16 triple-doubles in 1986-87, ahead of both Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and he didn’t have Westbrook’s explosion.“Russell is so much more athletic than I was at any point in time,” Lever said in a phone interview, “probably from the day he was born.”Lever, though, had an exceptional knack for rebounding, which he credited to playing on a high school team with no one taller than 6-3. He still ranks 10th in career triple-doubles. It wasn’t until Johnson joined the Lakers, five seasons after Robertson’s retirement, that triple-doubles were seriously tracked and discussed, but among my N.B.A.-obsessed high school friends in the 1980s, we associated triple-doubles with Lever as much as with Magic or Bird, since he seemed like such an unlikely source for them.Lever accrued all 43 of his triple-doubles in a six-season span with the Denver Nuggets from 1984-85 to 1989-90 as one of the driving forces on a team that, like Westbrook, wasn’t always appreciated. Detractors at the time took issue with the freewheeling style those Nuggets played under Coach Doug Moe — and the wild scores and stats their games produced.Fat Lever, who led the league with triple-doubles for one season while he was with the Denver Nuggets in the 1980s, said what Westbrook is doing now is a “big deal,” even if people don’t appreciate it.Mike Powell/NBAE, via Getty ImagesTurbocharged statistical lines are a staple now in a league where 13 teams out of 30, entering Tuesday’s play, were attempting at least 40 percent of their shots from 3-point range. Cries of stat padding became commonplace in Westbrook’s later years with the Thunder, and the hyper-awareness of triple-doubles — and a corresponding urge to chase them — is another perceived advantage for the Westbrook generation. But Lever insisted that achieving the consistency of Westbrook’s board work is far harder than it looks.“It’s still a big deal,” Lever said, “because not everyone is able to do it.”Westbrook made similar statements after the Wizards’ winning streak was snapped by the 146-143 loss to the Spurs. Asked about his latest triple-double, which included 22 points, 13 rebounds and 14 assists — albeit on 9-for-26 shooting — Westbrook said: “I honestly believe there is no player like myself. And if people want to take it for granted, sorry for them. But I’m pretty sure if everybody could do it, they would do it.”It’s difficult to argue with that logic, although many try. In 2016-17, Westbrook became the first player since the 6-5 Robertson in 1961-62 to average a triple-double for an entire season. That feat helped Westbrook, starring for the 47-win Thunder, become the N.B.A.’s first Most Valuable Player Award winner from a sub-50-win team since Moses Malone in 1981-82.With a boost from his recent surge, Westbrook is on a course to average a triple-double for the fourth time in five seasons, which in theory should position him as an M.VP. candidate. The reality is much colder: Westbrook has seemingly normalized averaging a triple-double and has been traded twice during that run, suggesting to some that triple-doubles aren’t especially valuable. Or, worse, that he is not a player to build around.Washington acquired him from Houston on Dec. 2 in a swap of disgruntled backcourt stars that sent John Wall to the Rockets. In January and February, Westbrook’s play was alarmingly inefficient and turnover-laden, with noticeably fewer rushes to the rim. Since the All-Star break, Westbrook has consistently played at a top-30 level, and Washington has a net rating of plus-4.4 points per 100 possessions with both Westbrook and Bradley Beal on the floor.Concern persists over Westbrook’s five turnovers per game, and his curious slippage at the free-throw line to a career-low 62.8 percent from 76.3 percent last season, but the constant thrust Westbrook plays with has made the Wizards hard to guard. His presence has not hindered Beal’s scoring, as some surmised when the trade went down; Beal is locked in an almighty battle with Golden State’s Stephen Curry for the league’s scoring title.In March and April, Westbrook became the first player to register at least 300 points, 150 assists and 150 rebounds in consecutive calendar months since Wilt Chamberlain in February and March of 1968, according to research from the statistician Justin Kubatko. Westbrook will never be for everybody, especially without a ring, but Brooks couldn’t have lobbied harder for the Wizards to reunite them when the trade opportunity arose. He coached him through nearly all of Westbrook’s first seven seasons in Oklahoma City,“The rebounding is the most incredible thing,” Brooks said. “He goes and gets them. He just has that knack. It doesn’t matter who’s in front of him; he always has one more step on his ladder. The will, the athleticism the competitive drive — I knew what our team needed.“Eleven rebounds a game for guy 6-3? We’ll never see a player like him ever again, not in my generation or my kids’ generation.”Corner ThreeJulius Randle has been big for the Knicks this season, and so have RJ Barrett, left, and Immanuel Quickley, right.Matt Slocum/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: The Knicks have overperformed this season. The front office did not make any splashes at the trade deadline. Jeff Van Gundy recently mentioned on television that the Knicks were “still incredibly limited” talent-wise. Their best player is Julius Randle, but the N.B.A. has been a perimeter-based league for some time. How will Leon Rose address this? — Wallace Leeth (Paterson, N.J.)Stein: April has been a month for Knicks fans to savor. Genuine optimism and joy are tangible at Madison Square Garden for the first time in years. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would inject a sober dose of pragmatism into the conversation, but it’s also difficult to quibble with the patient approach — so far.The Knicks are ahead of schedule and well positioned to pursue signings and trades to bolster an offensively challenged roster, with considerable salary-cap space and two first-round picks forthcoming in the off-season. Team officials know they still have plenty of work to do to upgrade the overall talent, but that wasn’t imperative at the trade deadline in March. It’s not like there was a difference-maker they missed out on.It’s true that this front office will ultimately be judged on its ability to sign or trade for at least one certifiable star to pair with Randle, which means persuading an established player to embrace the challenge of playing in New York as heartily as Randle did. Rose and his management team also have to brace for ongoing second-guessing about their first draft pick if the rookie guard Tyrese Haliburton continues to blossom in Sacramento, since they could have drafted Haliburton at No. 8 rather than Obi Toppin.The Rose regime, though, has done many good things in its first year. The Knicks appear to have hired the right coach in Tom Thibodeau, helped usher Randle to All-Star status and can point to promising development from RJ Barrett and the rookie Immanuel Quickley to offset the injuries that have derailed Mitchell Robinson’s third season.There have been whispers for weeks that the Knicks’ flirtation with the East’s No. 4 seed has helped restore their reputation to the point that star players are finally prepared to consider them a destination franchise again. If that proves true, they will have multiple pathways to address the concerns you raised, whether it’s by trying to sign a savvy former All-Star like Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan on a short-term deal as a bridge to free-agent classes more star-laden than this summer’s, or by using future draft picks (perhaps packaged with Toppin) to construct a meaningful trade.Things could always go askew if the Knicks rush into the wrong deal, as they have been known to do over the years, or if the team’s owner, James L. Dolan, decides he needs to get involved after abiding by the organization’s plan to let Thibodeau and on-court results do all the talking. But I would say that the Knicks have certainly earned a grace period through the end of this surprising season. This is a time for Knicks fans, surely, to revel in what’s going right.Q: Do they really get the Oscar itself? Kobe Bryant was very involved in co-creating his film, which is why he was given an Oscar. Executive producers frequently provide financing and aren’t involved as hands-on producers. In any case, good for them. — @FromMeadows from TwitterStein: In my exuberance Sunday night, I tweeted that Kevin Durant, Mike Conley Jr. and Rich Kleiman, Durant’s business manager, joined Bryant as Oscar winners from the N.B.A. because they were listed as executive producers for “Two Distant Strangers,” which won the best live action short film category at Sunday’s Academy Awards. That’s incorrect.They were part of an Oscar-winning film, but did not get awards themselves. Kobe took home an Oscar trophy in 2018 for the animated short film “Dear Basketball,” which was based on a poem Bryant wrote in 2015 to announce his retirement at the end of the 2015-16 season.Q: I’ve never seen so many tweets and stories about a team signing a guy to a 10-day contract. We’ve seen posts about Mike James about 50 times over the past week. — @MrWright1218 from TwitterStein: There are some good reasons for that.It’s partially a function of where we are on the regular-season calendar. There just aren’t as many roster moves happening this close to the postseason, especially involving title contenders, so the ones that do happen generate extra coverage.Yet it’s also a byproduct of the circumstances. James was one of the most prominent Americans playing abroad, with a high-profile European club (CSKA Moscow), and he had a complicated contractual situation to negotiate — as well as six days’ worth of health and safety protocols to complete — before he could actually join the Nets on Friday. The fluidity of James’s status led to more frequent updates.Numbers GameThe Denver Nuggets are holding on, even with Jamal Murray out for the season, because of Nikola Jokic.Steve Dykes/Associated Press50Recording 50 wins in an 82-game season is a traditional marker for N.B.A. excellence. Winning 50 games in a 72-game season is obviously harder, but six teams still have a chance to do so with 19 days remaining in the regular season: Utah (44-17), Phoenix (43-18), the Los Angeles Clippers (43-20), the Nets (42-20), Philadelphia (40-21) and Denver (40-21). Of those six, only the Jazz (52) and the Suns (51) are currently on a pace to do so.61Nikola Jokic’s M.V.P. case will undoubtedly be bolstered by his durability in this pandemic season. Jokic has played in all 61 of Denver’s games and has led the Nuggets to a 6-1 record since Jamal Murray’s season-ending knee injury on April 12. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, widely regarded as Jokic’s closest pursuer in the M.V.P. race, has played in 42 of the 76ers’ 61 games.9Monday’s home loss to the Suns, the No. 2 seed in the West, brought a halt to the Knicks’ nine-game winning streak. The Knicks have had only one longer unbeaten run in the 21st century, winning 13 consecutive games late in the 2012-13 season, which featured the club’s last playoff berth.37.5The Knicks’ Julius Randle leads the league at 37.5 minutes per game. Coach Tom Thibodeau has faced criticism for years about overplaying his best players; Thibodeau most likely would counter that Randle, at 26, is young enough to handle the workload.13This is Seattle’s 13th season without an N.B.A. team. The W.N.B.A.’s Seattle Storm have won three championships in that time, but the wait for a new franchise to replace the SuperSonics will soon take on a new dynamic when the Seattle Kraken join the N.H.L. next season. We’re less than three months away from the Kraken’s expansion draft on July 21.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More