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      J.R. Smith Was Lost After the NBA. Golf Became His Guide.

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      LOS ANGELES — As J.R. Smith eased his golf cart around the fifth hole at El Caballero Country Club, he relayed a story about elementary school.He thought he would grow up to be a writer. His teachers gave him notebooks and, for inspiration, picture cards — say, a boy, a mountain and a scary house — and he’d write stories for hours. He loved it, at least initially.“Then school just wasn’t my thing, and writing and dyslexia — barely could read at times,” Smith said. “It was just like, ‘Yeah, this ain’t for me.’”For a long time, it wasn’t. By his senior year at St. Benedict’s in Newark, he was a basketball star committed to play at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But about a month before the N.B.A. draft in June 2004, he decided to skip college and go straight to the pros. The New Orleans Hornets took him with the 18th overall pick. Making it to the league was a dream.“I just wish I was more mature at the time, opposed to being so young-minded,” Smith said, adding: “I was 18, but I was more — at a mature sense — I was 13.”He spent 16 N.B.A. seasons launching feathery jumpers in New Orleans, Denver, New York, Cleveland and Los Angeles. He had shirtless championship celebrations, and the Cavaliers suspended him for throwing soup at an assistant coach. He won the Sixth Man of the Year Award, and the N.B.A. fined him for “posting inappropriate pictures” on Twitter. His teammate LeBron James once looked at him in disbelief during the N.B.A. finals, and the moment became a meme. Then one day, it was all over.Smith with the Larry O’Brien Trophy after winning 2020 N.B.A. finals with the Lakers.Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIt can be disorienting for players when the N.B.A. carousel stops. Smith was bored and puzzled when no team called to sign him after he won a championship with the Lakers in 2020. He spent hours in his game room, smoking and ruminating. I’m not playing. I should be playing. I want to play.Basketball was all he’d known in his adult life. But soon he had a new thought: Maybe it was time to go back to school.“I always wanted to learn about my heritage, learn where I came from, learn more about Black people,” Smith said. “It really turned into self-love, learning more about myself. That’s really what catapulted me back into therapy, to try to understand, and try to really master myself, and master my mind.”‘Get Away From the Chaos’Smith teed off, his golf ball hissing as it cut through the air. The ball hooked left. He grimaced.“On the court, I know what to rely on,” he said quietly. “Out here, I don’t know what to rely on.”It was a cloudless, brisk day, and he was with a longtime friend, C.J. Paul, the brother of Phoenix Suns guard Chris Paul, and a few other people. Smith got into golf after Moses Malone, the Hall of Fame center, encouraged him to pick up a club at a pro-am event in Houston. On his first try, Smith drove the ball around 300 yards, but he could not do it again. The contradiction fascinated him.“It gives me something else to focus on other than my life,” Smith said. “It gives you lessons at the same time. For me, any time I get away from the chaos a little bit, that’s what it’s all about.”“Respect. That’s what I like about it the most,” Smith said of golf. “You’ve got to put the time in. You ain’t just come out here and think you’re Tiger Woods.”Michael Owens for The New York TimesDuring a round of golf a few years ago, Smith confided to C.J. Paul that he was considering attending college. Paul suggested that Smith also play golf at school. He put Smith in touch with Richard Watkins, the men’s and women’s varsity golf coach at North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university in Greensboro. At the time, Smith’s knowledge of H.B.C.U.s consisted of their famed drum lines and a vague recollection of some episodes of “A Different World,” a spinoff of “The Cosby Show” based at a fictional H.B.C.U.In the fall of 2021, at 36 years old, Smith was in North Carolina A&T’s freshman class, becoming one of several Black athletes — including Chris Paul, Deion Sanders, Eddie George and Mo Williams — who turned to H.B.C.U.s later in life for schooling or jobs.“There is something about a space in which you don’t have to grapple with race as the predominant variable of your experience,” said Derrick White, a professor of history and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. “Black colleges, even though they’re multiracial, the history and culture of those institutions provide a space for Black folk to live and learn and experience higher education without having consistent battles about whether you deserve to be here or people saying that you’re undeserving of your spot.”Smith walked onto the men’s golf team, took classes about African American history and hired a tutor, whom he credited with being patient. Beverly C. Grier, who teaches a class about race and social justice that Smith is taking, said it was “very admirable” for him to pursue a degree at his age. Students who return to learning after a hiatus are often more focused and determined, Dr. Grier said, adding that Smith had gone above and beyond on a recent assignment.Smith earned a 4.0 grade-point average and the Aggies’ Academic Athlete of the Year in his first year. He proudly shared his accomplishment on social media.Smith walked onto the golf team at N.C. A&T in 2021.Grant Halverson/Getty Images“Every day, locking in, sitting at the computer, trying to come up with a regimen of how to learn how to think,” Smith said. “Breaking down barriers of anxiety and feeling not able to do certain things, because I’ve always felt like that toward school.”He has also been going to therapy again.Smith said the N.B.A. required him to go to therapy when he played for the Knicks, but he hated it. “It felt like my story, my journey, was so much different than everybody else’s,” he said. “I didn’t feel like it would help at the time.”He said he went on and off for two years.“He was so much of a man-child coming out of high school,” said Jim Cleamons, a New Orleans assistant coach when Smith was a rookie. Cleamons added: “I’ve always thought J.R. could do what he wanted to do. He just needed to find out what he wanted to do and dedicate himself to that purpose.”The N.B.A.’s lifestyle provided a mostly inflexible calendar: shoot-arounds, practices and games packaged around flights and hotel stays. But it had holes, countless empty hours sandwiched into the middle of days and late at night.“I’ve got to continuously move around,” Smith said. “Because once I sit still, that’s when stuff starts spinning for me. I’ve got to stay busy, stay active, continuously creative, continuously doing something. It’s like that old saying, a wandering mind, an idle mind is the devil’s playground, and for me, a lot of the times where I got in my troubles, and stuff like that, it was because I was bored.”In 2009, Smith was sentenced to serve 30 days in jail after pleading guilty to reckless driving in a crash that killed his friend, Andre Bell. In court, he said it was “unbearable to deal with.” By then, he had been traded to the Denver Nuggets. He was solidifying his reputation as a scorer, though one with a curious shot selection that caused conflict with some of his coaches.Smith, shown in the 2005 dunk contest, won two N.B.A. championships and the 2012-13 Sixth Man of the Year Award.Pool photo by Mark J. Terrill“I felt like I was an artist,” Smith said. “And I was sensitive about how I worked at my game and the different shots I took because if anything, I would feel like I was getting something out of it. And if I can’t get what I want out of it, then how can I give you what you want? This is something I love.”An Uncertain FutureIn the N.B.A., Smith searched for an empty gym when he faced turmoil. There he found movement and expression. Golf, Smith discovered, enveloped him the same way.“You’re out there literally by yourself,” he said. “Even if you’re with somebody, it’s still such an individual sport. You can really zone out and, for me anyway, find that same peace and that same energy.”Though Smith plays golf at an H.B.C.U., the sport at large is still overwhelmingly white. Smith said he is conscious of the lingering stares he receives on golf courses that seem to go beyond people recognizing him from his days in the N.B.A.“Certain people’s aura and demeanor like they don’t want you here,” Smith said. “It’s that old money that just ain’t going to change.”He wants to make golf more accessible, especially for women and minorities. “I’ve got four girls who play sports and I’m around a lot of country clubs where it’s not as welcome for women as it is for men in the game of golf,” he said.Smith is spending more time away from the campus this year, taking classes online and podcasting.Michael Owens for The New York TimesSmith played 12 rounds in four tournaments as a freshman with an average score of 85.58. Smith is not on North Carolina A&T’s campus as much this year. He had arrived in Los Angeles that week to shoot episodes with the celebrity jewelry maker Ben Baller and the fashion designer Stephen Malbon for their podcast, “Par 3,” about their love for golf. Smith takes most of his classes online and prefers training with professional golfers in Florida.Nearly 20 years ago, Smith thought his school days were over, but his path seemed to be clear. Now, his plans are open-ended after college.He wants to be involved in golf. He’s interested in becoming an athletic director at an H.B.C.U. He may even coach children, he said, “teach them the game of basketball, as opposed to running and chucking, this new-age game.”From the eighth hole at El Caballero, Smith stood in the tee box, slightly bent forward at his waist and knees. He flushed the ball solidly down the fairway.“Respect,” Smith said, returning to his cart. “That’s what I like about it the most. You’ve got to put the time in. You ain’t just come out here and think you’re Tiger Woods.”Smith said it was his first good shot of the day and returned to his golf cart, his destination uncertain beyond the next hole.Michael Owens for The New York Times

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      Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Is Greater Than Any Basketball Record

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      His N.B.A. career scoring record has been broken, but his legacy of activism and his expansion of Black athlete identity endure.Some athletes live swaddled in their greatness, and that is enough. Others not only master their sport but also expand the possibilities — in competition and away from it — for generations to come. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did just that, including for LeBron James, who has laid claim to the N.B.A. career scoring record that Abdul-Jabbar had held so tight for nearly 39 years.It is easy to forget now, in today’s digitized world where week-old events are relegated to the historical dustbin, how much of a force Abdul-Jabbar was as a player and cultural bellwether. How, as the civil rights movement heated to a boil in the 1960s and then simmered over the ensuing decade, Abdul-Jabbar, a Black man who had adopted a Muslim name, played under the hot glare of a white American public that strained to accept him or see him as relatable.It is easy to forget because he helped make it easier for others, like James, to trace his path. That is what will always keep his name among the greats of sport, no matter how many of his records fall.Guided by the footsteps of Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell, Abdul-Jabbar pushed forward, stretching the limits of Black athlete identity. He was, among other qualities, brash and bookish, confident and shy, awkward, aggressive, graceful — and sometimes an immense pain to deal with. He could come off as simultaneously square and the smoothest, coolest cat in the room.In other words, he was a complete human being, not just the go-along-to-get-along, one-dimensional Black athlete much of America would have preferred him to be.James has run with the branding concept that he is “More Than an Athlete.” Fifty-plus years ago, Abdul-Jabbar, basketball’s brightest young star, was already living that ideal.“He is more than a basketball player,” a Milwaukee newspaper columnist wrote during Abdul-Jabbar’s early years as a pro. “He is an intelligent, still maturing man, who realizes some of the individual and collective frailties of human beings, including himself.”James’s ability to make a cultural impact off the court is the fruit of the trees Abdul-Jabbar planted decades ago.Abdul-Jabbar, front right, was one of the prominent Black athletes at the Cleveland Summit in June 1967, with Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, front left; the boxer Muhammad Ali, front row, second from left; and the N.F.L. star Jim Brown, front row, second from right.Getty ImagesAs a star at the basketball powerhouse U.C.L.A. in June 1967, a 20-year-old Abdul-Jabbar was the only collegian with the football legend Jim Brown at the Cleveland Summit, a meeting of prominent Black athletes who gathered in support of Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.The next year Abdul-Jabbar shunned the Summer Olympics to protest American prejudice. “America is not my home,” he said in a televised interview. “I just live here.”In those days, Harry Edwards, now a University of California, Berkeley, sociology professor emeritus, led a new wave of Black athletes in protests against American racism. Abdul-Jabbar was a vital part of that push. He also converted to Islam to embrace his Black African heritage, and changed his name from Lew Alcindor to Kareem (generous) Abdul (servant of Allah) Jabbar (powerful).“You have to understand the context,” Edwards told me recently. “We’re still arguing over whether Black lives matter. Well, back then, Black lives absolutely did not matter. In that time, when you said ‘America,’ that was code for ‘white folks.’ So, how do those folks identify with a Black athlete who says I am a Muslim, I believe in Allah, that is what I give my allegiance to? They didn’t, and they let him know.”Edwards added: “What Kareem did was seen as a betrayal of the American ideal. He risked his life.”Black athletes still face backlash for standing up to racism, but their voices are more potent, and their sway is mightier now because of Black legends like Ali, Robinson, Russell and Abdul-Jabbar.You saw their imprint when James wore a T-shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe” for Eric Garner, or a hoodie for Trayvon Martin, or when he joined an N.B.A. work stoppage for Jacob Blake. When right-wing pundits attack James and his peers for protesting, remember that Abdul-Jabbar has been in the hot seat, too.The message here isn’t “Been there, done that, don’t need to hear it anymore.” No, that’s not it at all.What I am saying is this: No one rises alone.In this moment of basketball celebration for James, think about what he shares on the court with the 7-foot-2 center whose record he is taking: a foundation of transcendent, game-changing talent.Nowadays, a younger generation might know Abdul-Jabbar mainly as the sharp-eyed commentator and columnist on the internet — or simply as the guy whose name they had to scroll past in the record books to get to James’s. But his revolutionary prowess as a player can never be diminished.He led U.C.L.A. to three national titles in his three years of eligibility, his teams accumulating a scorched-earth record of 88-2. Along the way, the N.C.A.A. banned dunking, a move many believe was made to hinder his dominance, and U.C.L.A. came to be known as the University of California at Lew Alcindor.Abdul-Jabbar’s signature shot was the sky hook, which no one else has been able to perform quite like him.Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos, via Getty ImagesSoon, there he was, dominating the N.B.A. with his lithe quickness and a singular, iconic shot: the sky hook. Athletic beauty incarnate.The balletic rise from the glistening hardwood; the arm extended high, holding the ball well above the rim; the easy tip of the wrist, as if pouring tea into a cup, while he let the ball fly.Swish.In his second professional year, he was named the N.B.A.’s most valuable player — the first of a record six such awards.That season, he led the fledgling Milwaukee Bucks to the 1971 N.B.A. championship. It would be the first of his six titles, two more than James.The pressure he was under as a player was immense for most of his career.He said he faced death threats after boycotting the 1968 Olympics.A phalanx of that era’s reporters, almost all of them white men, failed to understand Abdul-Jabbar and took to pat, easy criticism. He did himself no favors, responding by essentially turning his back, often literally, on many of them.He also absorbed blow after blow on the court. Fights were frequent then. Sometimes it was too much, and he snapped.He contained the multitudes, all right. Aggressive frustration included.As the years passed, Abdul-Jabbar evolved. He grew happier, less strident, more content and more open. His advocacy came to focus on human rights for all who are marginalized.And ultimately, fans who once held him with disregard began to warm up.Abdul-Jabbar’s jersey was retired at a ceremony on April 24, 1993, in Milwaukee. He spent six seasons with the Bucks.John Biever/NBAE, via Getty ImagesLeBron James now holds the crown as the league’s greatest scorer with 38,390 points. Well earned. He remains something to behold at age 38. Still, his Lakers are so disjointed they would need Abdul-Jabbar in his prime to make a serious run at an N.B.A. title this year.Then again, Abdul-Jabbar at 38 would work. That Abdul-Jabbar, in the 1985 postseason, took his championship series lumps during a Game 1 loss to Boston and then came back as if launched from a Bel-Air springboard.He ripped off a string of the finest games of his career, grabbing the championship trophy and the finals M.V.P. Award.There has never been a finals series run like that from a player with as many miles on the legs.It was just another way that Abdul-Jabbar stretched the meaning of greatness in the N.B.A., leaving the next generation and James to expand it even further.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      LeBron James Keeps the World Watching

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      LeBron James sat in the visitors locker room at Madison Square Garden with ice on his 38-year-old knees and 28 more points to his name after his Los Angeles Lakers beat the Knicks in overtime. James’s teammate Anthony Davis teased him about how close he was to breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s N.B.A. career scoring record, then about 90 points away.Suddenly, James remembered something. His mother, Gloria James, was set to go on vacation soon. She might miss his record-breaking game.He called her on speakerphone, with a dozen attentive reporters close by. He asked when she was leaving, reminding her every once in a while, lest she disclose too much, that reporters could hear the conversation. Eventually, he looked around, sheepishly, and said he would call her later.“I love you,” he said. Then, just before he ended the call, he added: “I love you more.”It was typical James: He brings you along for the ride, but on his terms, revealing what he wants to reveal and no more. It is perhaps the only way someone who has been so famous for most of his life could survive the machine of modern celebrity.As he has closed in on Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 38,387 points, the very idea of what it means to be a star has shifted since James scored his first two points on Oct. 29, 2003. And James has helped define that shift. He has risen above the din of social media celebrities and 24-hour news cycles, buoyed by the basketball fans who love him or love to hate him.James, at age 38, is closing in on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s N.B.A. career scoring record while playing with the energy of a much younger version of himself.Ashley Landis/Associated PressHe has been a selfie-snapping tour guide for this journey, with a portfolio that now extends well beyond the court. He has a production company and a show on HBO. He’s acted in a few movies and received some good reviews. His foundation has helped hundreds of students in his hometown Akron, Ohio, and a public school the foundation helps run there, the I Promise School, focuses on children who struggle academically. His opinions are covered as news, given far more weight than those of almost any other athlete.“Hopefully I made an impact enough so people appreciate what I did, and still appreciate what I did off the floor as well, even when I’m done,” James said in an interview. “But I don’t live for that. I live for my family, for my friends and my community that needs that voice.”Basketball Is the ‘Main Thing’In early 2002, James was a high school junior and on the cover of Sports Illustrated. News didn’t travel as quickly as it does now. Not everyone had cellphones, and the ones they had couldn’t livestream videos of whatever anyone did. Social media meant chat rooms on AOL or Yahoo. Facebook had yet to launch, and the deluge of social networking apps was years away.“Thank God I didn’t have social media; that’s all I can say,” James said in October when asked to reflect on his entry into the league.As a teenage star, he was spared the incessant gaze of social media and the bullying and harsh criticism that most likely would have come with it.But social media, in its many changing forms, has also helped people express their personalities and share their lives with others. It lets them define themselves — something particularly useful for public figures whose stories get told one way or another.James began thinking about that early in his career.His media and production firm, now called the SpringHill Company, made a documentary about James and his high school teammates titled “More Than a Game” in 2008. It also developed “The Shop,” an HBO show James sometimes appears on with celebrity guests, including the former President Barack Obama and the rapper Travis Scott, talking like friends in a barbershop.James has built a portfolio of movies and television shows that have expanded his influence beyond basketball.Coley Brown for The New York TimesJames likes to say that he always keeps “the main thing the main thing” — meaning that no matter what else is happening in his life, he prioritizes basketball. He honors the thing that created his fame.He led his teams to the N.B.A. finals in eight consecutive years and won championships with three different franchises. He was chosen for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award four times, and he has dished the fourth-most assists in N.B.A. history.James’s talent meant it didn’t take long for him to become the face of the N.B.A. He has mostly embraced that, capitalizing on an era when sports fandom was no longer about sitting down to watch a game so much as it was about catching small bites of the most compelling moments.“People’s interest in athletes moves very quickly, especially with the N.B.A. season,” said Omar Raja, who in 2014 founded House of Highlights, an Instagram account for viral sports moments, because he wanted to share clips of the Miami Heat during James’s time playing there with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.“LeBron’s Instagram stories would do as well as his poster dunks, and you were like, ‘This is crazy,’” Raja said.House of Highlights reposted two videos from James’s Instagram stories in May 2019. One showed James and a former teammate dancing in a yard. Another showed James and friends, including Russell Westbrook, smoking cigars. Both videos outperformed anything that happened in the playoffs.‘I Wish I Could Do Normal Things’James has used his fame to further business opportunities and build his financial portfolio. He has used it to both shield his children and prepare them for growing up in his shadow.He has used it for social activism, most notably in speaking about Black civil rights and racism. That began in 2012, when he and his Heat teammates wore hooded sweatshirts and posted a group photo on social media after the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager who was wearing a hoodie when he was shot and killed in Florida. The Heat decided to transfer some of their spotlight to the national conversation about racism that emerged.James wearing Eric Garner’s words “I Can’t Breathe” at a pregame warm up in 2014. Garner, a Black man, died after the police in New York put him a chokehold.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesBlack N.B.A. players have a long history of speaking out or demonstrating against racism and discrimination: Abdul-Jabbar and the Boston Celtics’ Bill Russell were vocal about the racist dangers they faced in the 1960s and ’70s. But what made the actions of James and his teammates stand out was that the superstar athletes of the ’90s and early 2000s — Michael Jordan, most notably — had often shied away from overt activism.What James chooses to talk about (or not talk about) draws notice.In 2019, when a Houston Rockets executive angered the Chinese government by expressing support for Hong Kong, James was criticized for not speaking out against China’s human rights abuses. James said he did not know enough to talk about them, but some skeptics accused him of avoiding the subject to protect his financial interests in China.And in 2020, when protests swept the country after the police killed George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, both of whom were Black, the N.B.A. made social justice part of its ethos. James used many of his news conferences that season to discuss racism and police violence against Black people.The attention to James’s words separates him from others, as does the attention to his life.“I don’t want to say it ever becomes too much, but there are times when I wish I could do normal things,” James said Thursday while standing in an arena hallway in Indianapolis about an hour after the Lakers beat the Pacers there. A member of a camera crew that has been following him for the past few years filmed him as he spoke.“I wish I could just walk outside,” James said. “I wish I could just, like, walk into a movie theater and sit down and go to the concession stand and get popcorn. I wish I could just go to an amusement park just like regular people. I wish I could go to Target sometimes and walk into Starbucks and have my name on the cup just like regular people.”He added: “I’m not sitting here complaining about it, of course not. But it can be challenging at times.”James grew up without stable housing or much money, but his life now is not like most people’s because of the money he has made through basketball and business (he’s estimated to be worth more than $1 billion), and because of the extraordinary athletic feats he makes look so easy. Once in a while, as when he’s on the phone with his mother, he manages to come off like just another guy.James speaks at the opening ceremony for the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio, in 2018.Phil Long/Associated PressAnother example: In October 2018, during his first Lakers training camp, James gave up wine as part of a preseason diet regimen. He was asked if abstaining had affected his body.“Yeah, it made me want wine more,” James said, relatably. “But I feel great. I feel great. I did a two-week cleanse and gave up a lot of things for 14 days.”James had also quit gluten, dairy, artificial sugars and all alcohol for those two weeks, he said.What was left?“In life?” James said. “Air.”There to See HimThe past few seasons have been challenging for James on the court. He is playing as well as he ever has, but the Lakers have struggled since winning a championship in 2020.They missed the playoffs last season and are in 12th place in the Western Conference, though they have played better recently. James, his coaches and his teammates all insist that he spends more time thinking about how to get the Lakers into the playoffs than about breaking the scoring record.Still, Madison Square Garden, one of his favorite arenas, buzzed on Tuesday night. Because of him.Celebrities, fans and media came to watch him, just as they did when he was a constant in the N.B.A. finals.He taped a pregame interview with Michael Strahan courtside. Then he went through his pregame warm-up, shooting from different spots on the court, working against an assistant coach, who tried to defend him. He took a few seconds to dance near the 3-point line as he waited for someone to pass the ball back to him.He was in what he’s made into a comfortable place: the center of the basketball universe. More

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      A Farewell to Maya Moore, a Team Player Who Is Also One of a Kind

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      Moore, who has officially retired from the W.N.B.A., will be remembered for her brilliance on the court and her fight for justice away from it.One of my clearest memories of Maya Moore has nothing to do with basketball, and nothing to do with her fight for justice.It is a memory of watching her sing four years ago, in a choir at Passion City Church in Atlanta.I do not recall the song, but I remember the impression she gave as she and the choir belted out a spiritual. Moore is perfectly comfortable settling in and finding a rhythm with the group. And she can also stand out and make a song her own.That mix — patiently one with the team and yet powerfully individual — is a hallmark of a career that will undoubtedly end with enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.It is the quality that animated her against-the-odds quest to free Jonathan Irons, the wrongfully convicted Missouri inmate serving 50 years for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon until Moore used her star power in a successful bid to gain his release. Then she married Irons, surprising even close chroniclers such as myself.She carries those traits of communal leadership and independence into the next phase of her life. During a publicity tour for “Love and Justice: A Story of Triumph on Two Different Courts,” a book she co-wrote with Irons, Moore announced Monday that she would never play high-level basketball again. At 33, a midcareer age for most players of her caliber, she is officially retiring. Her final game was a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks in the 2018 W.N.B.A. playoffs.Jonathan Irons, right, was wrongfully convicted and was serving 50 years for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon until Moore used her star power in a successful bid to gain his freedom.Bee Trofort for The New York TimesMoore, as always, took the script and made it her own.“When I was playing, I always tried to bring energy, always tried to bring light and joy and intensity to what I was doing,” she said after her announcement. “I hope people saw me as someone who gave all she had.” She continued, noting another hope: that fans could also tell she had a healthy perspective about basketball and “where people fit into this journey of life.”What makes Moore stand out is the example she set away from basketball. By speaking up for justice before it was fashionable for athletes to do so, quitting the game to free Irons and continuing to fight for change in the judicial and prison systems, she became a beacon for others to follow.Her retirement does not shock. It’s not as if there have been social media posts in recent years showing her sweating through workouts at the gym. Notably private, when she popped up in public, she seemed perfectly content, Irons almost always at her side.Now is the perfect time to take stock of her legacy. On the court, there were few like her.She could score at will, rebound, pass, play defense and lead her team like a coach on the floor. She moved at her own pace, faster than the others or slower, depending on the moment. Either way, No. 23 seemed always to be in perfect time, and the results back that up.Two N.C.A.A. titles starring for UConn. Two Olympic golds for the U.S. National Team. Four W.N.B.A. championships leading the Minnesota Lynx. Plenty of winning in international leagues and plenty of M.V.P. awards.Moore’s Hall of Fame-caliber career includes two N.C.A.A. titles with UConn.Suzy Allman for The New York TimesOff the court, well, she was even more extraordinary. Walk away from a Hall of Fame-caliber career before turning 30 — who does that?Step out of the bright lights to take on what seemed like an impossible task — gaining liberty for an inmate held in a maximum-security prison — who does that?Maya Moore, the one and only.I followed her for weeks in 2019 as she worked to free Irons. There were interviews in restaurants and her church, in her Atlanta townhome, as we drove to visit an Atlanta shelter for struggling families and down No More Victims Road in the middle of Missouri to visit Irons in prison. What struck me most about Moore were her heart and mind.At times, I admit, I found her a little frustrating. She seemed to answer questions only after pausing, slowing down and considering how she could be perceived. It took a while to understand that Moore’s way of responding to a reporter reflected the careful way she did everything else. She mulls and ponders, mulls and ponders. Then she tells you she is mulling and pondering.She would almost always deliver, speaking earnestly of her faith, philosophizing about the price of fame, how society is changing for better or worse, and the history of injustice toward Black people in the criminal justice system and beyond.Raised by a single mother and a phalanx of extended family, she was taught since childhood to walk tall in the world while also standing apart from it. She was never going to follow the crowd. She was going to lead.There’s a tendency to think of Colin Kaepernick as the first prominent professional athlete to protest racial injustice during the fraught last decade. But before Kaepernick, Moore was helping lead her Lynx teammates in calls for change in the summer of 2016. The team wore black T-shirts over their jerseys. On the front were the phrases “Change Starts With Us. Justice and Accountability.” On the back, “Black Lives Matter,” along with the names Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two Black men shot to death by police that summer, and the Dallas police shield, honoring five officers fatally shot by a gunman who disrupted a peaceful protest of police brutality.Moore faced a backlash, but she was undeterred. “I’d found my voice,” she said.Moore taught a Black History Month workshop focused on teamwork, leadership and social justice to middle school students in 2019.Nina Robinson for The New York TimesHer willingness to be outspoken made perfect sense. It sprang from her faith. And from her connection with Irons, whom she had known since she was a teenager.In the early years of Irons’s imprisonment, Moore’s great-uncle and godparents, deeply involved in prison ministry, took him under their wings and treated him like family. Eventually, the relationship between Maya and Jonathan would morph from something they described as siblinglike to something far more profound. She kept it quiet from almost everyone in her sphere, worried the attention would distract from the quest for Irons’s freedom, but she fell in love with him while he was still incarcerated.Through him, she knew well the price of injustice.What’s next for Moore? I can’t say for sure, other than that I expect her to keep pushing for reform of the criminal justice system in her way, behind the scenes as often as in the public eye. She has most likely earned enough from playing and endorsements to be financially secure. (She hardly lives lavishly. When I checked in with her a while back, she spoke with joy of showing Irons Atlanta by driving around the city in her 2006 Honda Civic.)She and Irons now have a son, Jonathan Jr., born early last year. She has said in interviews that they hope to grow their family.“I’m stepping away to live a less famous life,” she told me once. “A life where I am less visible than in my life as an athlete. Stepping away so I can do things that hopefully can be of service to the world in ways that might not be seen until they get done.”That was four years ago. It was true then and true now. More

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      Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert Talks, Criticism, Covid and Donovan Mitchell

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      Gobert had a dominant run in Utah, but now he and the Minnesota Timberwolves are struggling to find their fit together. He hears the chatter — and ignores it.Rudy Gobert, the Minnesota Timberwolves center and French basketball star, rode the same wave of emotions as many of his French compatriots during the men’s World Cup final this month. Angst. Hope. Agony.When it ended, with France losing to Argentina in penalty kicks, he reached out to his friend, the 24-year-old French star Kylian Mbappé, who had scored three goals in the championship match.“I was really proud of him,” Gobert said. “He showed the world who he is. He’s only getting better and better. That’s what I told him.”Gobert thought Mbappé must have felt like he did after he lost to Spain in the EuroBasket final with the French national team three months ago.“Obviously, it’s not as watched as the soccer World Cup, but it’s the same feeling when you lose, when you’re so close to being on top and lose in the final,” Gobert said. “So just got to use that pain to just keep getting better.”Gobert, a three-time N.B.A. defensive player of the year, has been going through a challenging period of his own.This summer, the Utah Jazz traded him to Minnesota, which bet its future on Gobert’s ability to help the franchise win its first championship. The Timberwolves gave the Jazz four draft picks, four players and the right to swap picks in 2026.“The average fan might not understand what I bring to the table,” Gobert said, “but the G.M.s in the league do.”In Minnesota, Gobert joined his fellow big man Karl-Anthony Towns, and the team has struggled to adjust to its new makeup. The Timberwolves went on a five-game winning streak in November, but Towns has been out since he hurt his calf Nov. 28 and Gobert has missed a few games. Minnesota was 16-18 entering Wednesday’s game against New Orleans.Gobert recently sat down with The New York Times to discuss his transition to Minnesota; how he handles criticism; racism in Utah; and his relationship with his former Jazz teammate Donovan Mitchell, who was traded to Cleveland in September.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Gobert’s scoring is down this season, to 13.9 points per game from 15.6 per game last season in Utah.Chris Szagola/Associated PressWhat has it been like adjusting to playing with another center like Karl-Anthony Towns?I don’t really like to call him a center because I don’t think he’s a center. I think it’s more of a wing in a center’s body. But yeah, it’s been a fun process so far. Obviously, we knew there was going to be some ups and downs, and there is some ups and downs. But KAT has been a great teammate. He’s been a great human.People like to focus on the fact that it’s two big men that play together, but there is always a process of adjustment when a player like me joins another team. Building chemistry takes time.Is it hard when you’re going through that process and there are so many eyes on how it’s going?It’s not hard for me. I want to win, I’m a competitor, so it’s hard to lose. But at the same time, I’m able to understand the bigger picture and to understand that you got to go through pain to grow. I’ve said every time people ask me, it’s going to be some adversity. And when adversity hits, obviously everybody will have something to say. People are always going to have opinions.A lot of people celebrate my failures. It’s kind of like a mark of respect for me just to have people that just wait until I do something wrong or until my teams start losing. Then they become really, really loud. And when my teams do well it’s quiet again. You know, I kind of embrace that it’s part of the external noise that comes with all the success that we’ve had in Utah and over the last few years in my career.When did you first feel that people were celebrating your failures?Once I started to have success, when I started winning defensive player of the year, All-N.B.A., being an All-Star. When my team, when we started winning like 50 games and stuff. The people on social media are always the loudest. When I go outside, it’s usually all the interactions are positive.Social media is a different place, and the people that have a lot of frustration can put it out there. The fans are going to have opinions. I’m more talking about the media.A lot of people talk about Utah as being a difficult place for Black players, for Black people in general. Did you ever have experiences like that as a Black player when you were there?My family and I never had any bad experiences. I’ve always had a lot of love over there. But I can understand, for me being an N.B.A. player and for a young Black man that’s maybe the only Black guy in his school, treatment can be different. People talk about Utah, but it’s similar everywhere when there’s not a lot of diversity. It’s part of every society in the world that people that can be marginalized for being different color of skin, different religion. There’s always going to be kids at school that’s going to bully people for being different.Gobert has won three Defensive Player of the Year Awards.Alika Jenner/Getty ImagesYou went through a very strange experience a couple of years ago in Utah as the first N.B.A. player known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. You were blamed for spreading it within the league, even though no one really knew how it happened. How did that experience affect you?It was a really tough experience for me, dealing with all that, obviously, Covid, but also everything that came with it. Thanks to — yeah, it was a tough experience, but I think it made me grow.Did you say ‘thanks to media’?No, I stopped saying what I was going to say. But I remember a lot of things that happened. I won’t forget, you know. There was a lot of fear. There was a lot of narratives out there. I was a victim of that. But at the same time, a lot of people were going through some really tough moments. I had to get away from what people are saying about me. It was people that don’t even know me. And I know that when you have something like that that’s happening, people are really stressed out and it was tough for everyone.There was a lot of conversation about your relationship with Donovan Mitchell, at that time and afterward. How do you view how that relationship was?I think it was a tough situation for me, just like it was a tough situation for him. After that, we came back to have a lot of success as a team. As of today, Donovan is someone that I want to see him happy. I want to see him succeed. I want him and his family to be great. Things happen, and sometimes people can do things to you that can hurt you. A lot of times it’s out of fear, you know. So you just have to grow through that and see past that.You mentioned people will do things that hurt you. Do you mean Mitchell?I mean generally. That’s life. More

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      With End of Griner’s Detention, a New Wave of WNBA Activism Begins

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      With their campaign to free Brittney Griner from prison in Russia over, W.N.B.A. players say they will help free others and focus on women’s health and pay equity.The W.N.B.A. is a trendsetter, a league of mostly Black women who have taken up major progressive causes: voting rights, stricter gun laws, equality for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But this year’s push to free Brittney Griner, one of their own, from a geopolitical standoff in Russia — that was their toughest test yet.“This is what Black women do,” Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics said. “We carry the weight in our family, this country, and we always have, whether we get the acknowledgment or not from it.”Griner was released from a Russian penal colony on Thursday in a prisoner exchange after, the U.S. State Department said, she had been “wrongfully detained” on drug charges for nearly 10 months. Griner is home. Other imprisoned Americans who also may be in danger are not. The W.N.B.A.’s mission continues.“We also want those other prisoners over there to come home as well,” Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said. “We don’t want them to just be like, ‘Oh, we just got B.G. home, and we’re done.’ No, that’s not what the W does.”In recent years, W.N.B.A. members helped flip a Senate seat in Georgia by supporting the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, when Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who owned the Atlanta Dream, spoke against the Black Lives Matter movement. They walked out of games to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin, and dedicated a season to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by Kentucky police. Their latest collective bargaining agreement set new benchmarks in pay and benefits for women in sports.Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics, center, marched to the M.L.K. Memorial in Washington to support the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020.Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images“But, at the same time, they are mere mortals,” said Terri Jackson, the executive director of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “Emotionally, this does take a toll. All of their advocacy and their work in the communities around so many issues — pick an issue, reproductive rights, voting rights, gun control — it wears on them.”More on Women and Girls in Sports‘We Have Fun All the Time’: Women’s college running programs can be rife with toxicity. At North Carolina State, Coach Laurie Henes is winning with a different approach.Pressure to Cut Body Fat: Collegiate athletic departments across the country require student-athletes to measure their body composition. Many female athletes have found the tests to be invasive and triggering for those who had eating disorders or were predisposed to them.New Endorsements Bring Up Old Debate: Female college athletes are making millions thanks to their large social media followings. But some who have fought for equity worry that their brand building is regressive.Pretty in Any Color: Women’s basketball players are styling themselves how they want, because they can. Their choices also can be lucrative.The plane returning Griner from Russia had not even touched down in the United States before Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, pledged that the campaign to free Griner would transition into securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans around the world. W.N.B.A. players have been at the heart of that campaign and many others.“While I was fighting for B.G. this year, I was still fighting for sensible gun laws,” Cloud said. “While we were still fighting for B.G., we were still fighting for a woman’s right to her body and to the choice to her body and the choice to her life. We were still fighting and trying to get people out to vote, understanding how important these elections were in the trajectory of where our country was headed.”W.N.B.A. players went about their season while knowing their teammate and friend was imprisoned in Russia. “Honestly, I don’t think the W.N.B.A. ever takes a break from advocacy,” Harrison said. “I think we’re always at a point where we’re fighting and trying to get some type of justice, all whilst trying to build up our league and play basketball.”On Aug. 4, the day a Russian court sentenced Griner to nine years in a penal colony, her Phoenix Mercury teammates played a game.“Nobody even wanted to play today,” Mercury guard Skylar Diggins-Smith said afterward. “How are we even supposed to approach the game and approach the court with a clear mind when the whole group is crying before the game?”Napheesa Collier, of the Minnesota Lynx, said she didn’t go more than a day or two without talking about Griner, and her group chats with other W.N.B.A. players constantly included discussions of the situation in Russia.“They’ve advocated every single day, keeping her in the media, keep talking about her, making sure that no one’s forgetting, making sure that we’re doing everything that we can to bring her home,” Collier said.Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said Griner had been fun to play with and kind to her when she was a rookie.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressW.N.B.A. players often proudly refer to themselves as “The 144,” referring to the total number of players in the league. Some, like the Seattle Storm’s Breanna Stewart, a former most valuable player, sent social media messages daily in support of Griner.“I was using my platform in all ways possible and really making sure that throughout this time, everybody was still keeping B.G. in their thoughts during her wrongful detention,” Stewart said. “To finally be at a moment where I don’t have to send that tweet is amazing.”She added: “Ever since I came into the W.N.B.A., we’ve always been at the forefront in speaking out against social injustices, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. As a league full of women and majority Black women, there’s a lot that needs to be fought for, and we’re used to it and we’re used to speaking up on our own account and now for others.”Many players wore Griner-themed clothing designed by Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old known as Jiggy Izzy, who is popular on social media for her basketball skills. The front of the design, seen on hoodies and T-shirts, features a smiling Griner in her Mercury jersey with a basketball that reads “WEAREBG” — the phrase that became the rallying cry for her release.Griner’s jersey number, 42, is wrapped around the left side, and on the back, her first and last name are printed in capital letters. With the help of her brothers, Escribano worked with Griner’s agent and the W.N.B.A. players’ union to get the clothing to players across the W.N.B.A. and the N.B.A. Escribano said it was “very empowering and rewarding” to see Griner freed.“Because just, like, for all we’ve done, and for her to be home now, it was for a purpose,” Escribano said, adding: “I hope one day I can meet her and tell her how I felt and how I wanted to help her in any situation possible.”Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old hooper known as Jiggy Izzy, designed T-shirts and hoodies that helped raise awareness of Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesAmira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Penn State University specializing in race, sports and gender, said that the W.N.B.A. had proved itself as a force for social justice, though she “would love for them to have the opportunity to develop advocacy on their terms.”“They meet the challenge every time, but wouldn’t it be great to not have to?” she said.Jackson, the union’s executive director, said Griner’s ordeal shoved to the forefront important issues like pay equity and W.N.B.A. investment. Griner had been in Russia during the W.N.B.A. off-season to play for a professional team there that reportedly paid her at least $1 million, more than four times what she made in the United States. Dozens of W.N.B.A. players compete internationally in the off-season to boost their incomes. But Griner’s detention led many players, fans and opinion columnists to wonder aloud whether more should be done to raise pay here so players do not feel the need to go abroad.“We are not honoring the players, we are not honoring B.G., if we don’t have those conversations,” Jackson said.This weekend, the W.N.B.A. players’ union plans to certify a new executive committee, whose members will set the agenda for the next wave of activism. Jackson and others expect the players to focus on women’s health and continue pushing for the freedom of those like the American Paul Whelan, who is also detained in Russia. Many people were disappointed that Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, had not been included in the prisoner exchange that freed Griner.“Instead of people hating and complaining for one American coming home who has won and has represented her country in the most respectful ways, we should harness that into fighting for Paul,” Cloud said.The league, for years now, has shown that it knows no other path. One issue is solved. Others remain.“They really understand the power of the collective voice, and so they can lean on each other — literally, sometimes — to continue to draw that strength and propel them forward,” Jackson said.Shauntel Lowe More

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      An Open Letter to Welcome Home Brittney Griner

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      When Griner was imprisoned in Russia, letters were her main form of communication with home. Our columnist offers one last letter to mark her return to the United States.Welcome home, Brittney. At long last, welcome home.Like so many others, I wondered if this day would ever come.Now you are home and safe after nearly 10 months of brutal uncertainty and fear.Home and safe after isolating imprisonment in a Russia that has cast aside international norms.Home and safe after getting trapped in a web of geopolitics that grew thicker each day as the war in Ukraine dragged on. What you endured over the last 10 months is nearly unfathomable. As a Black, openly gay woman, you were in particular danger as a prisoner in a country with dangerous, retrograde views on race and sexuality.Home — and safe. What a turn of events.And yet, less than a day after your plane touched down at a Texas military base, controversy and conversation swirl.Some voices say the Biden administration should never have swapped a W.N.B.A. star in a one-for-one trade for Viktor Bout, a former Soviet Army lieutenant colonel described by the Justice Department as one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.Others feel that you deserved no help, that you alone should have answered to Russian authorities for the mistake of having vape cartridges containing a trace of cannabis oil in your luggage, even though you’ve said you use the substance for pain management.The Release of Brittney GrinerThe American basketball star had been detained in Russia since February on charges of smuggling hashish oil into the country.Anxiety Turns to Relief: Brittney Griner’s supporters watched with dismay as her situation appeared to worsen over the summer. Now they are celebrating her release.The Russian Playbook: By detaining Ms. Griner, the Kremlin weaponized pain to get the United States to turn over a convicted arms dealer. Can the same tactic work in the war in Ukraine?A Test for Women’s Sports: The release was a victory for W.N.B.A. players and fans, who pushed furiously for it. But the athlete’s plight also highlighted gender inequities in sports.Then there are those hailing the White House for committing an act of mercy in pressing for your return.I’ll leave the political discussion to someone else. I want to focus on another part of the conversation. Already people are asking: What’s next?When will you return to the W.N.B.A., your Phoenix Mercury teammates, and the U.S. national team you helped lead to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics?Roughly a decade ago, you became one of the first Black and openly lesbian headliners in women’s basketball. In your trademark soft-spoken manner, you pushed for racial and social change in America. So will you use this moment to become an even more powerful advocate?Will you do more, Brittney?“What’s next” is an understandable query, but I hope folks pump the brakes.Brittney, you shouldn’t feel you owe anything more than the gratitude you’ve already expressed to those who stood by your side and worked for your release.You have done more than enough. Don’t feel you have to do anything but heal.During this ordeal, we all saw the anguish and tears of your wife, Cherelle Griner. She, no surprise, has said the two of you will speak up for Americans the State Department has said were wrongly detained in other countries, including Paul Whelan, who has been imprisoned in Russia since 2018.Before all this happened, you might not have been well-known outside of sports circles. Now, more and more people have heard about how you were part of a wave of W.N.B.A. players who spoke up for racial injustice. More know that you have fought to help L.G.B.T.Q. people and those without homes in Phoenix.So it’s exciting to think about your next move and how you can use your platform for good.When I spoke to Victor Kozar, the Mercury’s president, this week, he mentioned the letters you exchanged over the last several months. “At all times, she was asking about other people,” said Kozar, your boss and friend. “Her concern was about other people. First and foremost, she asked how her teammates were doing, asking us to ensure we were taking care of her wife.”“That’s B.G.,” he added. “Even under this kind of duress, it was not about her. It was about others.”Sports stars offer us inspiration in many ways. Most commonly, it’s on fields and courts, through performances that allow us to see how we can be stretched to the limit.Brittney, you’ve inspired us in ways that matter more than slam dunks, blocked shots or championships.When you were freed, I thought about the timing. This week, Congress voted to cement federal recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. (It’s a huge deal for me, too, since I have a nonbinary family member and my Black father and white mother married in 1954, when such unions were finally becoming legal in a smattering of states.)It’s sad that it took until 2022 to ensure such rights, but think about how far we’ve come. Ten or twenty years ago, if you’d been imprisoned in Russia, we probably would not have discussed race, sexual orientation and how those facts of your life put you in danger, this openly and often.“Brittney’s situation is a sign of progress, a sign that our nation has moved tremendously.” That’s how Victoria Kirby York, the National Black Justice Coalition public policy director, put it when she and I chatted Thursday. She noted the serious work that remains to be done, but added: “We have seen Americans move toward racial justice, and we are only going to see more of that happen, and a big part of it is people like Brittney Griner inviting us to see who they really are.”Rest with that, Brittney. May it be part of the support that helps you heal.My guess is that you’ll head back to basketball in due time — particularly when I think about how you grew up, with the game providing solace and healing for a young, Black, gay woman edging toward 7 feet tall in the American South of the 1990s and early 2000s.If history is any guide, you are likely to continue with advocacy and speaking out.Now your name and your story have a resonance few in the sports world can top. Who can better speak to our American shortcomings than someone scorned by many at home but also saved and spared by the intense efforts of the U.S. government?Then again, maybe you don’t do any of this. Brittney, don’t look back or feel bad if you want to ride into the sunset now, healing away from the public eye and maybe staying away for good.If that’s the decision, wonderful. Either way, we’ve got your back. More

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      Black and Spanish: A National Team Starts to Reflect All of Its Nation

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      An increasingly diverse Spain squad is drawing in fans who had once seen it as a symbol of their country, but not necessarily of them.DOHA, Qatar — Lucía Mbomío was never a particularly devoted soccer fan. When she was a child, the sport intruded on her consciousness only rarely, whenever a World Cup or a European Championship rolled into view. As she watched, though, she found herself cheering not only for her native Spain, but also for France, the Netherlands and even England.Those other teams appealed to her not because they played with any particular beauty or because they could be relied on to deliver glory, and it was not because they had an individual player she idolized. Instead, she said, it was something more visceral that drew her in. When she saw those teams, she realized, she saw herself reflected back.“I felt close to them,” said Mbomío, a 41-year-old journalist and author. “I was happy when they won because they had Black players. These were countries with white majorities, but in their teams they had people like me. They were recognizing those people. It was a message. It said to me, ‘I exist.’”For a long time, Spain could not make her feel the same way. In the 1990s and 2000s, Spain’s national team had a smattering of Black players, but often — as in the cases of the midfielders Donato and Marcos Senna and the striker Catanha — they were Brazilians who had been given citizenship after moving to Spain to play professionally.“There was always a suspicion that they had been naturalized purely for sporting reasons,” said Moha Gerehou, a Spanish writer who focuses on racism and immigration. “They didn’t represent the normalization of Spain’s diverse communities.” That, perhaps, explains why Mbomío found herself particularly drawn to the exception, Vicente Engonga, who was born in Spain to Guinean parents. “He was like me,” she said.A generation later, Mbomío can look at Spain’s national team and, for the first time, start to see in it a reflection both of herself and her community. There are four Black or mixed heritage players on Luis Enrique’s World Cup squad this year: the reserve goalkeeper Robert Sánchez, the defender Alejandro Baldé and the forwards Ansu Fati and Nico Williams.Nico Williams, left, and Alejandro Baldé started for Spain in its final group game. Julio Cortez/Associated PressTheir roots are different — they can variously trace their families’ origins to Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Dominica and Ghana — but their backgrounds are the same. Fati has lived in Spain since he was 5. The other three were all born in the country. These are not players who have, in effect, been recruited to bolster the team’s hopes. “They are Black and Spanish,” Mbomío said.They have appeared only occasionally during the tournament so far — a couple of substitute appearances and one start each for Baldé and Williams, a bit of time off the bench for Fati — but their presence alone is significant, said Rúben Bermúdez, a Spanish director and photographer. “Representation may not be the most important thing in the fight against racism, but it is something that matters,” Bermúdez said. “Seeing these players in the national team of the country where they were born or grew up is very important.”A Brief Guide to the 2022 World CupCard 1 of 9What is the World Cup? More