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      Should You Get Back With Your Ex? In the N.B.A., Maybe.

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      The reunion of Russell Westbrook and Coach Scott Brooks on the Washington Wizards shows the ups and downs of top stars’ working with their former coaches.Scott Brooks was having a “get to know you” dinner at a sports bar in Los Angeles with Russell Westbrook’s father, who is also named Russell. This was years ago, before Westbrook, then a promising player on the Oklahoma City Thunder, had made an All-Star team. Brooks was his coach.“I remember him telling me, ‘Russell will be M.V.P. one day,’” Brooks said. “I don’t know if my jaw dropped or whatever. I’m thinking to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, this thing is not going the way I want it to go.’ He has these unrealistic expectations of his son, which I can appreciate, having a son.”Brooks said he told the senior Westbrook: Let’s make him into an All-Star first.“He obviously knew the inner drive that Russell had, more than I knew,” Brooks said.Westbrook did end up making the All-Star team (nine times, in fact) and winning the Most Valuable Player Award, although under another coach, Billy Donovan. But Brooks and Westbrook developed a close relationship in their seven seasons together in Oklahoma City, when the team regularly made deep runs in the playoffs, and went to the N.B.A. finals in 2011-12.Brooks said that Westbrook was among the first people to call him after he was fired in 2015 and that they had remained in touch. More than a decade after that meeting with the elder Westbrook, Brooks finds himself reunited with the younger one, this time as head coach of the Washington Wizards.“Usually, the sequel is not as good,” Brooks said. “But I knew it would be really good for us, because I knew what we needed.”So far, the results in Washington have been uneven, to put it charitably. The Wizards are 14-25 and on course to miss the playoffs. But Westbrook is averaging 21.2 points, 9.3 rebounds and 10.1 assists per game — star numbers but also inefficient, coming on a below-average true shooting percentage of 49.5 percent. His teammate Bradley Beal is also having one of the best offensive seasons in the N.B.A. Yet the partnership hasn’t led to many wins.Even so, Brooks insisted that Westbrook has been an asset, particularly as a mentor to younger players, and that he has seen a different side of the guard in their second professional pairing. In their first run together, Westbrook was 20 to 26 years old. Now, he’s 32.“I’ve grown with him, and I love this version of him,” Brooks, 55, said. “Married with three kids. He’s gotten to see me raise my kids. Now I get to see him raise his kids. I love the first version because that was fearless: ‘Only thing on my mind is basketball. I can’t wait to practice. It’s Game 7 today, guys,’ and he would be salivating during practices.”Westbrook, Brooks said, is more well-rounded today.“There’s so many times that mask is just covering my smile when I see him say things to the group as a leader, or talk to him and he’ll say things about his wife and kids,” Brooks said.Westbrook, who declined to comment for this story, told NBC Sports in December of their previous time together: “We were young, Scotty was young, he was learning. I believe he’s become a great coach.”Brooks with Westbrook and Kevin Durant in 2014, during their Oklahoma City Thunder days.Stephen Dunn/Getty ImagesM.V.P.-level players rarely have just one coach their whole careers, as did Tim Duncan, who played only for Gregg Popovich on the San Antonio Spurs. Bob Cousy and Bill Russell came close, playing only for Red Auerbach on the Boston Celtics — when they weren’t directing themselves as player-coaches. Most M.V.P.s cycle through several head coaches: LeBron James has had seven. Shaquille O’Neal had 11. Brooks, Donovan and Mike D’Antoni have been Westbrook’s coaches over 13 seasons. Whether it happens because of aligned circumstances or mutual affection, it is also rare for a former M.V.P. in his prime to reunite with a coach, as Westbrook has done with Brooks.The closest example might be Moses Malone, who played for Tom Nissalke twice, as a rookie on the 1974-75 Utah Stars in the A.B.A., and then on the Houston Rockets from 1976 to 1979. He won the first of his three M.V.P. awards playing for Nissalke in the 1978-79 season.Kevin Garnett won the 2003-4 M.V.P. award under Flip Saunders in Minnesota, then was traded to Boston before the 2007-8 season. He would find his way back to Minnesota to play for Saunders again during the 2014-15 season as a veteran mentor for a young roster.Wes Unseld was named M.V.P. his rookie season, 1968-69, when he played for Gene Shue, who left the franchise but returned and coached Unseld’s final season. Steve Nash won two M.V.P. awards as the engine of the D’Antoni-led Phoenix Suns. They reunited on the Los Angeles Lakers at the end of Nash’s career — a disappointing stop, in part because of Nash’s injuries. Now they’re together again, although in a different sort of partnership: Nash is the head coach of the Nets, and D’Antoni is his assistant. And the Nets’ reunions don’t stop there: This season, the team acquired James Harden, who won an M.V.P. award while playing for D’Antoni on the Houston Rockets.The most famous and unusual example of an M.V.P. and coach reuniting involved Michael Jordan, whose two highest-scoring seasons came when he played under Doug Collins from 1986 to 1989. Jordan handpicked Collins to be his coach in Washington when he came out of retirement (again) to play for the Wizards after selling his ownership stake in the team. In the book “When Nothing Else Matters” by Michael Leahy, Jordan was repeatedly described as toxic and Collins as too deferential to him.“It was clear that Doug Collins was there to really make M.J. look good and have the most chance for success,” Etan Thomas, who was Jordan’s teammate in Washington, said in an interview. “He wanted for M.J. to go out on a positive note, and that was really his focus.”Sometimes, star-coach reunions can be both awkward and successful. Kobe Bryant won five championships with the Los Angeles Lakers under Phil Jackson. A tumultuous 2003-4 season, with locker-room infighting and Bryant facing a criminal rape charge, led to a split after three titles. Jackson then lambasted Bryant in his book “The Last Season,” but returned a year later, and the pair patched things up. They would go on to win championships in 2008-9 and 2009-10.Phil Jackson, left, and Kobe Bryant, right, won five championships together with the Los Angeles Lakers, the last two coming after their relationship fractured.Chris Carlson/Associated PressDerrick Rose is the only former M.V.P. to reunite with a coach twice, as he has done with Tom Thibodeau. Rose won the award in 2010-11 in Chicago, during Thibodeau’s first tenure as coach, when Rose led the Bulls to the conference finals. Injuries derailed Rose after that, but he resurrected his career in Minnesota, spending parts of two seasons under Thibodeau, and now he is a reliable veteran role player trying to help Thibodeau’s Knicks reach the playoffs.“They’re very aggressive in the way they approach their craft,” BJ Armstrong, Rose’s agent and a former player, said of Thibodeau and Rose, adding that their biggest similarity is that they “are very expressive in how they communicate with their body language.”For Brooks and Westbrook, a warm relationship has come full circle. In Oklahoma City, Brooks used to try to motivate his players at shootaround by asking them when the game started. After the players would respond with the tip-off time, Brooks would tell them that, no, the game started right then with preparation.This season, during a preseason shootaround, Brooks overheard Westbrook using that same tactic with the Wizards.“I trademarked that and he didn’t even give me credit,” Brooks said.Brooks said he doesn’t coach Westbrook the way he used to. Because Westbrook is older, the job is more about managing physical expectations and less about teaching the game.“I’m smart enough to realize that he’s no longer 25, and he’s smart enough to realize that he’s no longer, either,” Brooks said.Brooks’s biggest evolution as a coach, from his own telling, is in becoming more even-keeled.“When I first started coaching in Oklahoma, every loss was gut-wrenching and every win was the greatest one ever,” he said.Has Westbrook made the same evolution?“No,” Brooks said. “That guy is still crazy as heck.” More

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      Jeremy Lin Talks N.B.A. Comeback and Anti-Asian Racism

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      Lin, who exploded to fame with the Knicks in 2012, said he has learned to embrace his basketball journey and his platform to speak out amid a wave of attacks on Asian-Americans.It was Room 3296 at Coronado Springs Resort, inside the gates of Walt Disney World in Florida. Jeremy Lin said he had memorized every aspect of its layout.“I know where the scratch marks on the wall are,” Lin said. “I know where the spider webs were.”Lin spent 43 days and 42 nights in that room as a member of the Santa Cruz Warriors, playing in the N.B.A. G League bubble in a bid to make it back to the best league in the world for the first time since the 2018-19 season. After a season of gaudy statistics and rock-star treatment with the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association, Lin bypassed millions of dollars in China to play for $35,000 in the N.B.A.’s developmental league and give scouts ample opportunity to study him.Lin, 32, finished the G League’s abbreviated season at 19.8 points per game on 50.5 percent shooting and with strong, 42.6 percent shooting from 3-point range, but missed six of the 15 games with a back injury. While he waits to see if he did enough for an N.B.A. team to sign him, Lin once again finds himself in the spotlight as a leading voice in the Asian-American community.After another G League player called him “coronavirus” on the court, Lin, who is Taiwanese-American, has been speaking out against the racism and bigotry that numerous Asian-Americans have faced since former President Donald J. Trump began referring to the coronavirus as the “China virus” last year.Lin spoke about his N.B.A. comeback bid and his activism in a wide-ranging phone conversation on Monday.(The highlights of the interview have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)On his willingness to play in the G League as a nine-year N.B.A. veteran:The more that we talked to teams, they were telling my agent: “Hey, we want to see if Jeremy’s healthy, and we want to see if Jeremy can still go. No offense to some of the leagues overseas, but we would love to see him here in front of us, in an N.B.A. system, playing under N.B.A. rules.”I know I’m an N.B.A. player. I know I’m a better shooter. I know I’m a better defender. I know I’m more well rounded as a basketball player. I know these things, but I just needed a chance to show it.Lin, with Santa Cruz, going against the Toronto Raptors’ G League team.Juan Ocampo/NBAE, via Getty ImagesOn how he was received by fellow G Leaguers:There were two instances where a player said to me, “I grew up watching you play.” I’ve never had another player tell me that, but then I was like, “OK, well, you’re 18 or 19 years old, so I understand that.”On facing younger players still trying to establish an N.B.A. foothold:Ever since I was out of the league, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get back in. Now you can put your money where your mouth is and compete against all these hungry players. It’s the ultimate competitors’ den where everyone in there is just going at each other.I’ve been a target my whole life. Since I was a kid, I was either a target because people look at me and they’re like: “Oh, he’s not that good. I’m going to take his head off. He’s lunch meat.” Or they don’t want to be embarrassed by me. Now you add on the whole “Linsanity” thing, and I have an even bigger target, and if you watched the games, I was commanding a lot of attention from opposing teams. But it’s fun.Fans hold up New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin photos during a game against Sacramento in his Linsanity run in New York.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressOn initially not wanting to discuss Linsanity, his run with the Knicks in February 2012 that landed him on Sports Illustrated’s cover two weeks in a row:That’s how I felt about it for a few years after. But at this point I’ve come around now to really appreciating and embracing it. For a while it was kind of this phenomenon, or this shadow, or this expectation, or this ghost that I was chasing — sometimes chasing, and sometimes trying to run away from. Now it’s more like a badge of honor that I’m really proud of and what it meant to so many people.At the same time, there’s a lot more basketball left in my body. I definitely appreciate everything about Linsanity and what it taught me, but I really believe I’m a better player now than I was then. The G League validated a lot of what I felt like I was doing in my training but I hadn’t shown yet.On revealing the on-court incident in which he was called “coronavirus” and speaking out to support the #StopAsianHate campaign:With everything happening recently, I feel like I needed to say something. The hate, the racism and the attacks on the Asian-American community are obviously wrong, so that needs to be stated and that’s part of my role. I also feel like part of my role is to bring solidarity and unity, so I need to educate myself and continue to learn more and also support other groups, other movements and other organizations while also bringing awareness to the Asian-American plight.And then another part is to play basketball and play well, because I think there’s a lot of underlying stuff about Asian-Americans being quiet and passive and just, “Yeah, we’ll tell them what to do and they won’t talk back.” So for me to play basketball at the highest level is going to do more than words themselves can say.On working with the G League to handle the incident internally without naming the player who directed the slur at him — and Lin’s talks with the player:Everything’s good. It was a really cool conversation. I felt like it was handled the best way. At the end of the day, that’s what it comes down to. We were able to just discuss everything.I wanted to share that everybody is susceptible to these types of things and to racism, but to me that’s not the main focus. The goal isn’t like: “Woe is me. Look at this situation.” The real issues right now are the people that are dying, the people that are getting spit on, the people that are getting robbed, the people that are getting burned, the people that are getting stabbed. That’s where the attention needs to be.Lin won a championship with the Raptors in the 2018-19 season, though he hardly played during the finals.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesOn his time in Toronto and winning a championship — but playing only one minute in the 2019 N.B.A. finals:On one hand, I came out of it with a ring. I was the first Asian-American to win an N.B.A. championship, so there’s something super special about that. Even just being in Toronto, to see how the city, how the country, rallied around that team, to go to a parade with two million people — it was incredible, man.At the same time, honestly, it’s what I needed. I had a 10- to 12-game stretch where I could try to break into the rotation. I didn’t play the way I needed to play, but I learned what I needed to learn. I came off two years of injury and I realized after that stretch that I had to get surgery on my shooting arm that nobody knew about. I never said anything to anybody.It was already starting when I first got to Toronto where something didn’t feel right. It got to the point where, in the playoffs, I couldn’t even shoot a 3-pointer because there was a small bone spur in my shooting elbow. During the playoffs, no one knew, but by the end of the finals I could only shoot out to the free-throw line.So I had to do the surgery and I was struggling with that a lot, but also mentally I had a lot of trauma and fears from my prior injuries that I hadn’t appropriately resolved. And that’s what Toronto and part of the season in China last year really showed me: You’ve been approaching the injuries like it’s physical rehab that you need. You are already physically beyond where you were before you got hurt. You have to rehab the mental side.On his confidence that one more N.B.A. call will come:I’ve done what I needed to do. I took on the challenge. I went to the G League when some people thought it was crazy for me to go. I think it’s just a matter of time, and I believe it’s going to happen. We’ll see. I know I belong.The Scoop @TheSteinLineJalen Green of the G League Ignite team averaged 17.9 points per game in the shortened season.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeThe Malice at the Palace on Nov. 19, 2004, left the Indiana Pacers especially shorthanded the next night against Orlando.Getty ImagesYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Responses may be lightly edited and condensed for clarity.)Q: Is there anything the league can do to encourage more stars to participate in the dunk contest? It stinks for fans that the biggest stars refuse to even try. — Andrew Brotherton (Atlanta)Stein: The reflex answer here has always been for the league and its sponsors to arrange a seven-figure, winner-take-all prize for the dunk champion to persuade the biggest names to risk whatever street cred they think they’d lose by competing. I’m so pessimistic in general about the state of the dunk contest that I’m not even sure that would do it at this point.Would the fallout from a dunk contest flop really be so long-lasting in our short attention span world? It’s evident that many more players than not think that participating comes with some sort of grave risk if they perform poorly.I got my hopes up when New Orleans’s Zion Williamson was so cryptic about joining the dunk field. I thought he was just trying to build up the suspense before he entered — especially since this All-Star Game was so dependent on this year’s All-Stars filling up the individual skills competitions to reduce the number of players traveling to Atlanta. Gullible me.I think I’ve mentioned before that in my high school days, no annual event was bigger in my circle than the Saturday night every February commandeered by the dunk contest. What’s so frustrating for dunk devotees is that the 3-point contest field only seems to get stronger every year. The prospect of a poor shooting performance and the potential embarrassment apparently doesn’t trouble vaunted shooters as it does dunkers.Q: The league has been postponing games all season if a team has fewer than eight players available to suit up, but I seem to remember Indiana playing a game after the brawl in Detroit with only six players. This has probably happened on other occasions besides my Pacers example, right? — Jeff Moye (Bogota, N.J.)Stein: Even in the game you’re thinking of, Indiana had eight players in uniform. Two of them (Scot Pollard and Jamaal Tinsley) were injured and couldn’t play, but the Pacers still had to have them dressed to avoid forfeiting the game.It was Indiana’s first game after the brawl that spilled into the stands at Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills on Nov. 19, 2004. The Pacers had a home game against Orlando the next night — without the suspended players Metta World Peace (then known as Ron Artest), Jermaine O’Neal and Stephen Jackson. With Reggie Miller sidelined by a broken hand and facing suspension for leaving the bench, Fred Jones and Eddie Gill each played 48 minutes as the Pacers’ lone available guards.There have been other games in which an N.B.A. team used only six players: According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Portland was the last to do so in a win over Sacramento on April 10, 2019. But the league’s requirement to have eight players has been in place for decades.Leave it to my tireless historian pal Todd Spehr from Australia to inform me that the New Orleans Jazz may have been the last team to play a game with fewer than eight players in uniform on March 18, 1977. Elgin Baylor, then the coach of the Jazz, was granted special permission to dress seven players rather than the required eight because five of his players had been injured in a taxi accident that afternoon. Led by 51 points from Pete Maravich, the seven-man New Orleans Jazz beat Phoenix.Q: Has there ever been a team that had three of the league’s top 20 scorers, as the Nets do? — Meet Kachly (Mumbai, India)Stein: It’s rare, but it has happened in the modern era. Some examples are provided here even though Kevin Durant has dropped out of the top 20 because he doesn’t qualify for the league leaders now that he has played in just 19 of the Nets’ 40 games.2018-19: Golden State’s Stephen Curry (No. 5 at 27.3 points per game), Durant (No. 8 at 26) and Klay Thompson (No. 18 at 21.5).2013-14: Rudy Gay did not start the season in Sacramento, but his arrival in a December 2013 trade from Toronto gave those Kings a third top-20 scorer alongside No. 9 DeMarcus Cousins (22.7 points per game) and No. 17 Isaiah Thomas (20.3). Gay was 19th at 20 points per game.1990-91: The “Run TMC” Warriors had three players among the league’s top 11 scorers: No. 8 Chris Mullin (25.7 points per game), No. 10 Mitch Richmond (23.9) and No. 11 Tim Hardaway (22.9).1986-87: Seattle had No. 8 Dale Ellis (24.9 points per game), No. 13 Tom Chambers (23.3) and No. 15 Xavier McDaniel (23).1982-83: Denver had the league’s top two scorers — Alex English at 28.4 points per game and Kiki Vandeweghe at 26.7 points per game — with Dan Issel (21.6) at No. 18.Numbers GameCarmelo Anthony is averaging 14.2 points per game this season with Portland as he climbs toward the top 10 in career scoring.Steve Dykes/Associated Press6Only six teams had winning records against teams that were .500 or better entering Tuesday’s games. Philadelphia (13-6) and the Nets (17-3) are the lone East teams that qualify; Utah (17-8), Phoenix (13-5), the Los Angeles Clippers (11-10) and Denver (11-10) represent the West.41The Houston Rockets have not won a game for 41 days, dating to their Feb. 4 victory at Memphis. That was also the last time Christian Wood played for the Rockets before injuring his ankle. He’s averaging 22 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.343Portland’s Carmelo Anthony needed 343 more points to pass Elvin Hayes (27,313 points) for 10th place in N.B.A. regular-season scoring heading into Tuesday’s game. The only players above Anthony on the league’s scoring charts who are not in the Basketball Hall of Fame are not yet eligible: No. 3 LeBron James (35,211) and No. 6 Dirk Nowitzki (31,560).28.8With his recent Most Valuable Player Award-winning performance in Atlanta, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo improved his scoring average in the All-Star Game to a record 28.8 points per game.11Another interesting history reminder from the aforementioned @ToddSpehr35: Active rosters were reduced to 11 players from 12 for the 1977-78 season through 1980-81. The league voted to go back to 12 for the 1981-82 season. Including two slots for two-way players, teams can have rosters of 17 players and, in this pandemic season, list 15 as active for each game.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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      Sports Are Returning to Normal. So Is Their Role in Political Fights.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySports of The TimesSports Are Returning to Normal. So Is Their Role in Political Fights.American society is redrawing cultural norms and protections for citizens’ rights. It shouldn’t be a shock that sports is the most visible battleground.On March 11, Stephanie Marty demonstrated against a proposed ban on transgender girls and women from female sports leagues outside the South Dakota governor’s mansion in Pierre, S.D.Credit…Stephen Groves/Associated PressMarch 15, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETThe end of the terrible coronavirus pandemic seems, at long last, within reach. President Donald J. Trump is gone and America has just endured a withering year of death and protest.In times like these, sports can be a cultural touchstone expected to comfort and heal.But as we dream of a return to normalcy, what will we now expect from the games we love? A return to the mythical notion that sports should operate at arm’s length remove from the important issues of the day?Or an understanding that sports provide much more than a forum for entertainment and the exploration of human potential?Searching for guidance, I called Harry Edwards last week. There’s no one better to offer perspective. The sociologist has been on the front lines of athlete protest dating to the 1960s. He started off with a broad stroke: “Sports does not so much mirror society — it is integral to the functioning of society,” Edwards said.How true.Then he zeroed in. We both did. We agreed that sports have become society’s prime cultural battleground for every hot-button social and political issue. No matter the subject — race, religion, sexuality, patriotism, the role of the police — the sports world is more powerful than ever as a venue for the often harsh hashing out of opposing views.Consider the recent push by conservatives to open a new flank in our divisive wars over social progress. Mississippi’s Republican governor just signed a law that will bar transgender athletes who identify as female from participating on girls’ or women’s sports teams. A flurry of similar, Republican-backed bills is moving through at least 20 statehouses, all under the guise of ensuring the rights of athletes who were born biologically female.Never mind that such legislation is unnecessary. If it fires up a base fearful of expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights, well, purpose served. The drive for restrictive laws also shows how sports will continue to be used as a litmus test for conservatives and progressives alike.In this new world, with its fraying social bonds and lack of historical memory, nothing packs the power of sports as a platform for battles over change. Not popular music. Not the clout that springs from our universities. Not Hollywood. “No matter how great the hero in a movie,” Edwards said, “you are not going to see people fighting over movies.”Trump provided a powerful accelerant. He stoked the flames amid his ardent supporters who view sports as a last bastion for the good old days and their gauzy myths. The pandemic forced us inside and limited our lives — and also helped give activist athletes and their supporters more time to think and organize. (Hence the walkouts led by the N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. last summer.) All the while, the ubiquitous, hyperbolic power of the internet and social media continued to grow at breakneck speed.Take the case of Greg McDermott, the Creighton men’s basketball coach, who posted an apology on Twitter to get ahead of a story about the terrible language he used while addressing his players after a recent loss to Xavier. “I need everybody to stay on the plantation,” he admitted telling his team. “I can’t have anybody leave the plantation.” Needless to say, words like that were a gut punch to his Black players, who produced and publicly shared a video to express their pain.Creighton guard Shereef Mitchell was among a group of players who read statements about their reactions to comments from Coach Greg McDermott that led to the coach’s suspension.Credit…Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald, via Associated PressThe incident quickly became headline news and the subject of widespread discussion about the power of words and white leaders’ responsibility to understand the Black experience.As all of this unfolded, a clip went viral of a Miami Heat reserve player, Meyers Leonard, spewing an anti-Semitic slur while playing a video game on a public livestream. Criticism came hard and swift. The N.B.A. suspended Leonard and fined him $50,000. Heat coaches and players expressed dismay. “We can’t tolerate that here,” said Udonis Haslem, the team’s veteran forward, sending a clear signal from a league full of activist players on standards for speech and rooting out hate. “Right is right, and wrong is wrong.”In years gone by, there’s a good chance none of this would have received such a public airing. A decade ago, in a world with different expectations and less connectivity, McDermott’s rant and Leonard’s online slur probably would not have become public. And that would mean no apologies, no condemnation, no chance for a wide-open discussion on acceptable speech.Smartphones and the internet have utterly changed the dynamic. Edwards recalled leading an anti-discrimination protest in 1967 by Black football players on the campus at his alma mater, San Jose State, and trying to spread the word across the country by making over 100 calls from a rotary phone.“The principal difference between what we did in the 1960s and what we see today is technology,” Edwards said. “The rapidity of communication, the way everyone now can hear the message, make their own message, and experience it all in real time.”We love sport not only for its drama but also for its precision and certainty. Games almost always end with clear winners and losers. We can measure the speed of a sprinter down to the millisecond. We know the exact batting average of the best hitter in baseball and, these days, the speed of the swing and the angle at which hits loft toward the outfield.But when mixed with the drive for change and the demand for new protections of rights, our sports get messy. Fights over power are always that way.So what will the future hold?“The struggle will continue,” Edwards said. “And sports will be where it all plays out.” He ticked off the names of today’s most prominent athlete activists — LeBron James, Maya Moore and Colin Kaepernick — and said they and others of their ilk are more astute than the players of old at “dreaming with their eyes open, working for justice, cultivating the tools to make those dreams happen.”Then the wise professor stopped for a moment, before reminding me that the battles are not only fought by progressives.“Remember,” Edwards said, “for every action, there is a reaction. Expect the other side to operate in direct opposition to what these athletes are pushing for.”Conflict is inevitable. So is change.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Meyers Leonard Fined $50,000 and Suspended for Using an Anti-Semitic Slur

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMeyers Leonard Fined $50,000 and Suspended for Using an Anti-Semitic SlurLeonard, a reserve center for the N.B.A.’s Miami Heat, said the slur while playing a video game on a public livestream.Meyers Leonard of the Miami Heat used an anti-Semitic slur while playing a video game on a livestream on Monday. Credit…Lynne Sladky/Associated PressMarch 11, 2021, 3:28 p.m. ETMeyers Leonard, a reserve center for the Miami Heat, has been fined $50,000 and suspended for one week after a viral clip showed him using an anti-Semitic slur while playing a video game on a public livestream.“Meyers Leonard’s comment was inexcusable and hurtful and such an offensive term has no place in the N.B.A. or in our society,” Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, said in a statement announcing the punishments. “Yesterday, he spoke to representatives of the Anti-Defamation League to better understand the impact of his words and we accept that he is genuinely remorseful.”The statement continued, “We have further communicated to Meyers that derogatory comments like this will not be tolerated and that he will be expected to uphold the core values of our league — equality, tolerance, inclusion and respect — at all times moving forward.”Leonard, a 29-year-old gaming aficionado, was playing “Call of Duty: Warzone,” a popular multiplayer video game, on Twitch, a livestreaming platform, when he said the slur. He also said a sexist vulgarity in his comment, after another player tried to kill his character in the game. The video was recorded Monday, but the clip did not spread on social media until Tuesday.The condemnation of Leonard was swift, with the Heat suspending him indefinitely on Tuesday and the Anti-Defamation League saying in a statement on Twitter that it was “shocked and disappointed” to see Leonard use the “ugly, offensive” slur.Leonard apologized Tuesday in a statement posted to Instagram.He said he was “deeply sorry” for using the slur, and that he did not know what the word meant at the time.“I acknowledge and own my mistake and there’s no running from something like this that is so hurtful to someone else,” Leonard said. “This is not a proper representation of who I am.”On Wednesday, further criticism came from within the Heat organization.Erik Spoelstra, the Heat’s coach, told reporters that Leonard’s words were “distasteful and hurtful.”“We know Meyers. Meyers has been a really good teammate,” Spoelstra said. “He’s a good human being. He said something that was extremely distasteful and hurtful. And we’re left with the aftermath. We don’t condone that obviously.”Udonis Haslem, who has played for the Heat for almost two decades, said of Leonard: “We can’t tolerate that here. Right is right and wrong is wrong. And since I’ve been here in this organization, to the day I leave this organization and beyond, we’re going to try to be on the right side of everything — especially issues like this.”Haslem added that he had “never heard him use any language that made me uncomfortable at all” previously.Leonard, who had played only three games this season, his ninth in the league, already was expected to miss the rest of the season because of a shoulder surgery last month. He is making about $9.4 million this year, with a team option for next season. He has come off the bench for much of his career but started the majority of the Heat’s games last year.After the clip of him saying the slur went viral, Twitch suspended his channel and several gaming companies he had been affiliated with denounced him. FaZe Clan, an e-sports team Leonard invested in two years ago, said it was cutting ties with him, although it was unclear what that meant since Leonard was an investor. Other companies, like Origin PC and Scuf Gaming, which are both owned by the hardware company Corsair, and Astro Gaming, whose gaming headsets Leonard was giving away as a promotion, also said they were ending their relationships with him.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      One Year Later, Rudy Gobert Is at Peace. And Thriving.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOne Year Later, Rudy Gobert Is at Peace. And Thriving.The Utah Jazz center’s positive test for the coronavirus began a cascading shutdown of American sports. But with a huge new contract and a dominant team, he has moved on.Rudy Gobert is averaging 14.2 points, 13.1 rebounds and a career-high 2.7 blocks a game. Credit…Kent Smith/NBAE, via Getty ImagesMarch 10, 2021Updated 9:24 p.m. ETIt was not a time in his life, understandably, that Rudy Gobert is eager to revisit. No one wants to be connected so closely to the day that the N.B.A., suddenly infiltrated by the coronavirus, suspended its season.Gobert, though, is realistic. He constantly sizes up situations in his rim-protecting role for the Utah Jazz. He understands better than most that there are some things even a supreme shot-blocker can’t swat away.So he has known for some time what was coming this month. Copious coverage of the unhappy anniversary was inevitable, ready or not, one year removed from Gobert’s positive test for the coronavirus on March 11, 2020. It was the thunderbolt that led to the postponement of Utah’s game in Oklahoma City that night and, some 90 minutes later, an abrupt announcement that the 2019-20 season was being placed on hiatus “until further notice.” The novel coronavirus had been thrust to the forefront of major team sports in North America.It was the sort of unforgettably seismic event that forced Gobert, during a virtual interview session just hours before he played in Sunday’s 70th N.B.A. All-Star Game, to field multiple questions asking him to look back.“Those few weeks, those few months, were really tough,” Gobert said softly. “I’m just blessed to be able to be here today to enjoy this All-Star Game — and to be healthy.”The focus should be back on basketball soon enough and Gobert, this March, is clearly in a good place. Despite his modest 14.2 points per game, and winding up as the last of 24 players selected when LeBron James and Kevin Durant chose the All-Star squads, Gobert can stride into Utah’s one-year-later practice session on Thursday knowing he has never been a more effective two-way player.There is a case to be made that Gobert, because of his impact at both ends, is the foremost catalyst for Utah’s league-best record (27-9) halfway through the regular season. Gobert, 28, ranks No. 239 out of nearly 500 players in usage rate; only 17.3 percent of Utah’s plays on offense involve him when he’s on the floor. But his tireless screen-setting, with the constant threat he poses to dive to the rim for dunks, opens things for Utah’s increased emphasis on the 3-point shot.The Jazz are on pace to become the first team in league history to make 17 3-pointers per game. Ryan Smith, Utah’s rookie owner and a lifelong Jazz fan, called Gobert “one of the most selfless players in the league” for the space he creates.“He does so much,” Smith said, “that no one sees.”It’s a scouting report no one could have filed 12 months ago, when Gobert lost any semblance of anonymity. Two days before he tested positive, Gobert made a show of touching several microphones on a press-room table. It was an ill-fated attempt to lighten the mood on the first day that reporters, limited by a new N.B.A. rule to promote social distancing, could not hold their microphones near Gobert’s face as they asked him questions. When the video was replayed, over and over, after Gobert’s positive test, his actions were widely interpreted as cavalier behavior that mocked the severity of the coronavirus.In an Instagram post, Gobert apologized for what he termed “careless” actions and said he “had no idea I was even infected.” The N.B.A. was largely praised for reacting so swiftly to Gobert’s positive test — in what many billed as the moment, along with the subsequent suspension of the season, that the coronavirus threat became real for many Americans — but the fallout made Gobert a villain on top of his status as the N.B.A.’s Patient Zero.The Jazz have the N.B.A.’s best record and Gobert’s intimidating defense and efficient offense have played a huge role in that. Credit…Steph Chambers/Getty ImagesWhat followed were those tough “weeks” and “months” that Gobert referenced before making his second consecutive All-Star appearance. Yet by year’s end, Gobert had rebounded so emphatically that he signed a five-year, $205 million contract in December, just days after Smith was approved as Utah’s new owner. It is the richest deal in league history for a center and ensured that Gobert’s 2020 produced a dizzying swirl of emotions.“It was definitely a tough year, not just for me, but for everyone,” Gobert said. “A lot of things happened. A lot of unexpected things happened. But I believe that every tough moment is a learning experience. I think the most important thing is to try to make positive out of the negative, and hopefully that’s what I’ve been able to do.”Said Smith: “It was hard for him to be the first, but if you ever dive deep into that day in Oklahoma, no one knew what to do. People were calling me when I was still a sponsor, saying: ‘How do we get the team out of here, how can we get a plane?’ The organization was literally in the most uncharted situation that we have been through.”Gobert’s lows and challenges consumed several months. His bout with the coronavirus included a temporary loss of taste and smell. The microphones episode and a positive test for Donovan Mitchell, Utah’s All-Star guard, exacerbated long-simmering tensions between the two, which lingered until the season restarted at Walt Disney World in July.Gobert, Mitchell and the franchise faced another setback when the Jazz were stunned by the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the playoffs after taking a three-games-to-one series lead. Some around the league wondered if Utah would break the duo up via trade. Yet Gobert insisted that just being in the N.B.A. bubble — and, for him, scoring the historic first basket of the restart — instilled him with “the feeling that the world was still spinning.” He and Mitchell have since rebuilt their relationship to the point it has become a running joke among Jazz players that various media reports described the union as “unsalvageable” last April.“You watch those two guys play now and that’s a long time ago, literally and figuratively,” Utah Coach Quin Snyder said of past tensions.To gain further distance from the crushing Denver series, Mitchell signed his own lucrative contract extension in November. The pair’s deals are worth a combined $400 million and Gobert, the No. 27 overall pick in 2013 who spent time in the N.B.A.’s developmental league as a rookie, has lived up to it with perhaps his best all-around play (13.1 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game).“Signing the contract doesn’t put more pressure on me,” Gobert said in a telephone interview on a recent drive home from practice. “In people’s minds, maybe it changed their perception about me, but no amount of money is going to add pressure to what I put on myself.“I’ve had a target on my back for many, many years now — for multiple reasons. When you win multiple defensive player of the years, people just try to come at you. So I’ve had that mind-set already.”Gobert, who stands 7 feet 1 inch and has a 7-foot-9 wingspan, also has a kindred spirit nearby when he needs counsel. Mark Eaton, the 7-4 center who played for the Jazz for his entire 11-season career, remains a fixture in the community and has become a sounding board for Utah’s modern-day defensive anchor.Their relationship was once described as “unsalvageable,” but Donovan Mitchell and Gobert have worked through any issues. They have committed to stay in Utah long term.Credit…Rick Bowmer/Associated PressThey bonded a few years back when Eaton introduced Gobert to a fellow Frenchman, David Folch, who designs bicycles with 36-inch wheels for tall riders. Gobert purchased his own bike and soon visited Eaton’s Park City home for a 7-footers-only ride — and, later, a visit to what Eaton called “the shrine my wife put up in our house” of mementos from his Jazz career. Gobert spotted Eaton’s two Defensive Player of the Year trophies from 1984-85 and 1988-89 and announced that he intended to continue the tradition.“Now he has two of his own,” Eaton said.Praise was slow to come during Utah’s hot start, even when the Jazz ripped off a 20-1 stretch that featured 18 double-digit victories, but Gobert has learned to live with that, too. His succinct answer for skeptics who say that the Jazz have to prove themselves in the playoffs to validate their many regular-season feats: “They’re right.”When given the chance, he also refused to fire back at the Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal, who has been repeatedly dismissive of Mitchell and Gobert on TNT — especially regarding Gobert’s contract.“I have a lot of respect for his career,” Gobert said of O’Neal. “He’s one of the guys that, growing up watching basketball, we all looked up to. But now he’s an entertainer in a way, so he’s doing things, saying things. If I start taking personal everything that’s been said about me, it’s going to be a long year.”Gobert said he would take a similar approach to cope with the likelihood that his connection to March 11 is something that he’ll always be asked about.“People only know what they’ve seen and what they’ve been told about me,” he said. “I’m not really worried about what people that don’t know me think about me.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      On the Road Again at All-Star Weekend

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarc Stein On BasketballOn the Road Again at All-Star WeekendPlenty of stars expressed concern about playing in the All-Star Game, but it proved to be an important trip for Nikola Vucevic and for a columnist eager to resume traveling.For Nikola Vucevic of the Orlando Magic, the All-Star festivities were a chance to reconnect with a few friends. He played 19 minutes in the game and finished second in the skills competition. Credit…Dale Zanine/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMarch 10, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ETSunday’s 70th N.B.A. All-Star Game was repeatedly described as one almost all of us could have done without.The almost disclaimer got thrown in for people like Boran Rajcic, Stefan Vulevic and the Orlando Magic’s Nikola Vucevic. Like the league’s broadcast partners at Turner Sports, and the historically Black colleges and universities that gained so much from the weekend, Vucevcic and his close friends savored the experience.Vucevic and fellow All-Stars were allowed to bring up to four guests into the bubble environment that the N.B.A. conceived in Atlanta in hopes of staging Sunday’s competitions safely and hushing the naysayers who feared that the one-day format could devolve into some sort of superspreader event. After deciding with his wife, Nikoleta, that it would be wiser for her and their two young children to stay home this year, Vucevic figured he would be commemorating the second All-Star appearance of his career as a party of one.Rajcic and Vulevic wouldn’t let it happen.Rajcic drove to Georgia from California and made stops in Phoenix and Dallas along the way to register the requisite league-mandated negative tests for Covid-19 at official N.B.A. team testing facilities. Vulevic drove in six hours from Virginia to double the size of Vucevic’s fan club. So moved by those efforts, Vucevic arranged to stay over Sunday night before returning to Orlando — unlike the many All-Stars who left town immediately after the game by private jet — to maximize his time with the guys.Time together had to suffice as the primary source of entertainment, since they were posted up in a downtown hotel that, per N.B.A. rules, those cleared to enter were not allowed to leave.“I actually had a pretty nice balcony with my room,” Vucevic said. “We just hung out, played music, caught up.”Rajcic, who was the best man in Vucevic’s wedding, and Vulevic were adamant that they had to be in Atlanta, whatever it took, to make the most of what might prove to be the high point of Vucevic’s trying season. Vucevic, at 30, is producing career-best personal numbers so robust that he earned an All-Star spot despite injury-ravaged Orlando falling to 14th in the Eastern Conference at 13-23. A 6-foot-11 Montenegrin center, he is averaging 24.6 points and 11.6 rebounds while shooting 41.2 percent from 3-point range, which explains why the Boston Celtics — who openly covet a big man with shooting range — are mentioned often among the multiple playoff teams interested in acquiring Vucevic before the March 25 trade deadline.I was not aware of a room-with-balcony-option at my Atlanta hotel, but I could understand the pull Rajcic and Vulevic felt to make the trip. Before boarding a Georgia-bound flight last Friday night, I hadn’t left my Dallas base to attend an N.B.A. function of any kind since leaving the Walt Disney World bubble last September. This assignment struck me as the must-see occasion to end that drought. I was convinced of it despite the unappetizing prospect of pandemic air travel and knowing that the mere 50 members of the news media that would be credentialed at State Farm Arena, compared with the usual 1,000-plus that the league credentials, would get nowhere near the players or the floor like we ultimately did in the Disney bubble.When I strolled the streets surrounding the Atlanta Hawks’ home on Saturday afternoon, there was zero All-Star energy in the air and, unlike a typical N.B.A. production, very little signage to signal what would be happening Sunday night. Sunday’s walk to the game was even more disorienting, thanks to a police presence in the area that completely cleared out the arena’s perimeter. Maybe the N.B.A. and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor, were unable to dissuade locals and out-of-towners from congregating at unaffiliated parties thrown Friday and Saturday night as they had hoped, but by game day it was very much the closed-to-the-public, made-for-television event that the league intended.I knew going in that I would be granted access to a decent seat in a confined section of the arena behind one of the baskets and little else, but I’m glad I went. If the game was going to go ahead, after LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden and various other stars had all spoken out so forcefully against the league’s intentions to stuff three days’ worth of All-Star festivities into a one-night Turner bonanza, I felt a responsibility to get there as well and see as much as I could with my own eyes — just in case something went badly askew.Those superspreader fears were apparently averted when Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons were kept isolated from the other All-Stars after it was discovered that before leaving Philadelphia they had been exposed to a barber who had tested positive for Covid-19. The announcement that Embiid and Simmons were being pulled from Sunday’s game stoked a fresh round of apprehension and resistance among players, but my sense was that most participants came away appreciative of the experience.“There’s obviously a big balancing act, and I know Adam Silver tried to articulate that throughout this process, and obviously us as players, we have reactions to everything that happens because it’s our world and we’re living in it,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said. “I still had a great time out there.”Credit…Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images“There’s obviously a big balancing act, and I know Adam Silver tried to articulate that throughout this process, and obviously us as players, we have reactions to everything that happens because it’s our world and we’re living in it,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said. “I still had a great time out there.”Portland’s Damian Lillard added: “It had to be done, and we got it done. We showed up and did what we needed to do.”Whether All-Star 2021 really was or wasn’t a must is the point on which this whole debate hinged. Perhaps you will recall how succinctly Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers summed it up in early February.“We all know why we’re playing it,” Leonard said then. “There’s money on the line.”I, too, thought the risks taken to preserve Turner’s projected windfall of up to $30 million, on top of the untold millions that the N.B.A. and its players avoided losing through an outright cancellation, were ill-advised. Yet I must concede, with hindsight, that it’s a stretch to parrot the line that routinely dismisses the All-Star Game as “just” an exhibition. TNT treats it as the jewel of its annual N.B.A. coverage, bigger than any single playoff game on its air, while Silver said the league was expecting a global television audience of more than 100 million people, along with more than a billion social media views and engagements.No mere exhibition game generates that sort of hoopla. All-Star games don’t count — except that the N.B.A. can rightfully say they do.Like everything else in the league (and the world) these days, it’s complicated — and often inherently risky over the past year. Few understand that better than Silver, who is back in New York now for what could be another nervy week as the 400-plus players who were not in Atlanta gradually return to their teams. Coming out of a break is when the N.B.A. has typically had a surge in positive Covid-19 cases.It likewise figures to be a week filled with somber reflection given Thursday’s looming one-year anniversary of the N.B.A.’s shutdown in response to the coronavirus outbreak. I interviewed Silver recently for a one-year-later project that ran in Monday’s editions of The New York Times, which featured Silver sharing some of his thinking and takeaways from March 11, 2020.“When I made that decision that night to shut down, I thought of it more as a hiatus, because it was a realization that however long we’re shut down, we need to put in place a whole new set of protocols to deal with this emerging virus,” Silver said in last month’s interview. “It wasn’t so much that, all right, the world has stopped.“At that moment,” Silver said, “I did not have a sense that we would be having this conversation almost a year later and we still would not be back to business as usual.”The 70th All-Star Game, however you felt about it, was the latest illustration of exactly that. It became such a divisive issue because business as usual has been replaced by pandemic life for longer than most of us ever imagined.The Scoop @TheSteinLineMarch 8There is optimism within the Lakers that they will get strong consideration from Andre Drummond if Drummond ultimately leaves the Cavaliers via buyout, league sources say.Cleveland’s preference, of course, remains trading Drummond elsewhere before the March 25 trade deadline.March 6The NBA has sent out roughly 200 letters with cease-and-desist orders to various party promoters in the Atlanta area that have used the league’s All-Star logo and event name in connection with unaffiliated events scheduled this weekend, league spokesman tells ⁦‪@NYTSports⁩The most notable aspect of the letters, of course, is that they suggest there are at least 200 parties going on in the area this weekend after Atlanta Mayor @KeishaBottoms urged the local citizenry not to hold All-Star events when the NBA is not interacting with the public at allThis newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.Corner ThreeImmanuel Quickley is off to a promising start for the Knicks, but Obi Toppin is still adjusting to the speed of the pro game.Credit…Pool photo by John MinchilloYou 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.(Responses may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: You recently wrote an article about the surprising New York Knicks. Knicks fans are excited about Immanuel Quickley, but this Knicks fan is puzzled about the play of Obi Toppin. What is your sense of the hype he got when drafted and the reality of his play to date? — Rich Helfont (Port Washington, N.Y.)Stein: The hype hasn’t helped Toppin’s cause, but the Knicks’ circumstances have changed since draft night in November, too. No one expected Julius Randle to play at an All-Star level. Toppin was drafted as a potential Randle replacement by a front office that suddenly finds itself trying to determine whether Randle’s glorious half-season makes him a cornerstone player they have to keep.I thought there was a decent chance that the Knicks would take Tyrese Haliburton at No. 8 rather than Toppin, but they felt a greater need in the frontcourt, with RJ Barrett projected to be a more significant contributor to the Knicks’ future than Randle.The most troubling aspect of Toppin’s slow start is that, at age 23, he was thought to be more N.B.A.-ready than most rookies. Even Derrick Rose, whose recent return to the Knicks has clearly helped Toppin when they play together, mentioned recently that Toppin is still adjusting to the speed of the N.B.A. game. The ultratight turnaround from draft night to the start of Toppin’s first N.B.A. training camp, with no summer league, appeared to snuff out the supposed experience edge.Q: Is there any concern about dilution of the N.B.A.’s brand due to the oversaturation of the alternate jerseys teams wear every year? The recent orange-versus-red clash between the Hawks and Thunder seemed like a humorous, and unfortunate, result of league guidelines that allow teams to wear clashing colors instead of the traditional light-versus dark contrast. Is anyone at league headquarters worried that the Lakers wearing blue on another team’s blue court, or Miami dressing like the Pittsburgh Steelers or cotton candy on any given night, or Milwaukee wearing two shades of blue that have never been part of the Bucks’ aesthetic cheapens the history of these teams and the league? — Michael McAfee (Austin, Texas)Stein: As a fellow traditionalist, I decided to let your whole rant run, even though I suspect you knew the answer before you sent in the question. The league and its teams clearly hold no such concerns about printing an array of new jerseys every season. It must be profitable or they wouldn’t do it.If it were up to sappy me, of course, teams would all be wearing what they wore in the 1970s and 1980s (when applicable) and Mitchell & Ness would remake and market everything the Buffalo Braves wore from 1973-74 through 1977-78. But I, like you, clearly am not the target audience for today’s jersey manufacturers.I will say, though, that I really do like the San Antonio Spurs’ new Fiesta scheme. That’s pretty much the lone modern design I am drawn to.Q: If a replacement All-Star gets replaced, does it go in the record books that they made the All-Star team? — @RivelBrian from TwitterStein: Excellent question about precisely the sort of record-book minutiae that this newsletter cherishes.I checked with the league office and, yes, Phoenix’s Devin Booker will be recorded as an All-Star for the second successive season, even though he was chosen as a replacement for the injured Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers and then had to be replaced by Utah’s Mike Conley because of a sprained left knee.Conley thus exits the Best Player To Never Earn All-Star Status debate, leaving behind the likes of 1980s (and 1990s) stalwarts Derek Harper, Ron Harper, Rod Strickland, Byron Scott and Cedric Maxwell, along with Jason Terry and Lamar Odom from the more recent past, and Portland’s CJ McCollum as the most deserving current veteran player.Booker will surely carry a chip into next season even with the league now recognizing him as a two-time All-Star, because he was an injury-replacement selection both times after being snubbed by Western Conference coaches two seasons in a row. McCollum, in his eighth season, was also playing at an All-Star level when he sustained a fractured left foot on Jan. 16.Numbers GameWith Deandre Ayton anchoring the team’s defense and Devin Booker and Chris Paul thriving on offense, the Phoenix Suns are one of just two teams ranked in the N.B.A.’s top-ten in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Credit…Ronald Martinez/Getty Images2As the second half of the season begins with two games on Wednesday, only two teams rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency: Utah and Phoenix. The Jazz, at No. 4 in both categories, are the only team in the league that ranks in the top five in both. The Suns are No. 8 in offensive efficiency and No. 3 in defensive efficiency.99.4After two consecutive seasons in which pace leaguewide crept past 100 possessions per 48 minutes for the first time since 1988-89, that figure is down ever so slightly. Entering Wednesday’s play, teams are averaging 99.4 possessions per 48 minutes, according to Stathead.3The Lakers, Clippers and Nets are the only teams in the 30-team N.B.A. that have not had a game postponed this season according to the league’s health and safety protocols. The league had to postpone 31 games during the season’s first half because at least one team could not field the requisite eight players in uniform as a result of positive tests for Covid-19 or, more frequently, because of issues with contact tracing.6Only five of the six actually played in the All-Star Game after Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons was sidelined by the N.B.A.’s contact tracing rules, but this season’s six All-Stars listed as left-handers tied a league record: James Harden (Nets), Julius Randle (Knicks), Domantas Sabonis (Indiana), Simmons (Philadelphia), Zion Williamson (New Orleans) and the late addition Mike Conley (Utah).14Leave it to my trusty friends at Stathead to be able to dial up the history that shows there were also six lefties in the 1973 All-Star Game in Chicago: Tiny Archibald (Kansas City-Omaha), Dave Cowens (Boston), Gail Goodrich (Los Angeles Lakers), Bob Lanier (Detroit), Jack Marin (Houston) and Lenny Wilkens (Cleveland). Yet it must be noted that All-Star rosters swelled from 12 to 14 from 1970-71 through 1972-73, when the N.B.A. briefly stipulated that each team in the 17-team league had to be represented in the All-Star Game. The 1973 game in Chicago was the league’s last of three in a row with 28 All-Stars rather than 24. Fan voting for the five starters began in 1974-75.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Meyers Leonard Will Be Away From Heat ‘Indefinitely’ After Use of Anti-Semitic Slur

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMeyers Leonard Will Be Away From Heat ‘Indefinitely’ After Use of Anti-Semitic SlurLeonard, a reserve center for the Miami Heat, lost gaming sponsorships after a video emerged of him using the slur while playing a video game on the livestreaming site Twitch.Meyers Leonard, right, during the 2020 N.B.A. finals. This season, he had played only three games and was expected to miss the rest of the campaign after having shoulder surgery.Credit…Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSopan Deb and Published More

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      Blake Griffin Agrees to Sign With the Nets

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBlake Griffin Agrees to Sign With the NetsA six-time All-Star, Griffin will be another big name on a Nets team stacked with them, but he has appeared in only 38 games since the 2018-19 season.Blake Griffin, right, has struggled since the 2018-19 season, when he made All-N.B.A. third team.Credit…Michael Dwyer/Associated PressMarch 8, 2021, 9:55 a.m. ETBlake Griffin, a six-time N.B.A. All-Star, is expected to sign a contract with the Nets on Monday, a person familiar with his plans said.The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the deal publicly. Griffin became a free agent on Sunday after clearing waivers.The terms of the contract were not disclosed.The deal adds another big name to a stacked Nets team, but it also carries some risk. Griffin, 31, had one of the best years of his career in 2018-19, when he made the all-N.B.A. third team, but his production has significantly slipped since then as a result of injuries. This season, Griffin struggled in 20 games for the Detroit Pistons, averaging 12.3 points on 36.5 percent shooting and 5.2 rebounds.There’s also a question of fit: Griffin’s best attributes have been his scoring and passing abilities. He has never been known as a defender. The Nets are already the best offensive team in the league with three players who dominate the ball: James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant.Even so, Griffin, if he can recapture any of his play from his All-Star years, will make the Nets even more formidable. The Nets are 24-13 and second in the Eastern Conference behind the Philadelphia 76ers. They have won 10 of their last 11 games.Griffin was drafted first over all by the Los Angeles Clippers in 2009 but he missed the 2009-10 season because of a knee injury. He then became a sensation known for his high-flying dunks and charismatic personality. He made the All-Star team in his first season and helped revitalize the Clippers. In 2018, after more than seven seasons with the team, the Clippers traded him to the Pistons. This season was Griffin’s fourth in Detroit. The Pistons are rebuilding while Griffin is in the twilight of his career, so the two sides went their opposite ways.Griffin and his new Nets teammate James Harden have combined for 15 All-Star selections.Credit…Carlos Osorio/Associated PressLast season, Griffin played only 18 games because of knee soreness, and his production (15.5 points, 35.2 percent shooting) was well below his career averages (21.4 points, 49.5 percent). This year, though, Griffin has at least appeared healthy but it has not translated to on-court production.One of the most notable moments of Griffin’s career was a dunk over a car at the 2011 dunk contest. While now a part of N.B.A. lore, it also underscores a truth about Griffin’s career. He dominated in highlight reels especially during the regular season, but hasn’t had much playoff success. He has never been on a team that made the conference finals. Joining the Nets gives him the best opportunity in his career to do so.“The individual awards and these things are fine, and I’m appreciative of them, but I just want to win,” Griffin said in January. “Not making it to a conference final, yeah, it does gnaw at me. Not to the point where I’m losing sleep over it. But that’s the main goal — I want to win.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More