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    Robert Lansdorp, Prominent Coach of Tennis Champions, Dies at 85

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    His students, including Tracy Austin, Maria Sharapova, Pete Sampras and Lindsay Davenport, developed their ground strokes through his regimen of intense repetition.Robert Lansdorp, an influential tennis coach whose intense focus on developing ground strokes through ceaseless repetition helped turn four of his students — Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova — into No. 1-ranked players in the world, died on Monday in West Carson, Calif. He was 85.Stephanie Lansdorp, his daughter, said his death, in a nursing facility, was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest.Lansdorp, who was based in Southern California, worked one on one, mostly with young players — Austin started lessons with him at 7, Sampras at 10 — to build their muscle memory by relentlessly drilling them on their forehands, backhands and other strokes and on their footwork.“He wanted to do it over and over and over again, and he had methods to get there — he had a knack,” Austin said in an interview. “You knew if Robert was pushing you, it meant that he knew there was more to you. He was tough, but there was a soft side to him. He thrived on making people better.”When Austin won the women’s singles title at the U.S. Open at age 16 in 1979, she became the youngest women’s champion in tournament history and the first Grand Slam champion tutored by Lansdorp.“We made our names together,” she said.After Austin’s victory over Chris Evert, Lansdorp told reporters: “There’s room for improvement. There’s only one way to go — up.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Al Attles, a Golden State Warrior in Name and in Spirit, Dies at 87

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      He was known as the Destroyer for his gritty intensity as a player. He later coached Golden State to an N.B.A. championship and served as its general manager.Al Attles, the Basketball Hall of Fame guard who was among the most prominent figures in the history of the Golden State Warriors and their forerunner franchise in Philadelphia, died on Tuesday at his home in Oakland, Calif. He was 87.His death was announced by the Warriors, the team Attles served as a tough, defensive-minded guard, an N.B.A. championship-winning coach, a general manager and, until his death, a community relations representative. His career spanned the Warriors’ Philadelphia years and their decades in the Bay Area.When Attles was selected by the Philadelphia Warriors in the fifth round of the 1960 N.B.A. draft, he was a newly hired junior high school gym teacher in his native Newark.As a little-known player out of a historically Black college, he knew that his chances of making the Warriors’ lineup seemed slim.But he decided to give it a shot at training camp, and for six decades he remained an enduring face of the Warriors’ franchise.The Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., presented Attles with its John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and inducted him in 2019. Although he was never an All-Star in his 11 seasons in the backcourt, he was among six players whose numbers have been retired by the Warriors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Floyd Layne, 95, Basketball Player Tarnished by Gambling Scandal, Dies

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      He helped City College win two national championships in 1950 before pleading guilty in a point-shaving scheme. He later became City’s basketball coach and a mentor.Floyd Layne, who helped City College win both the N.C.A.A. and N.I.T. basketball championships in March 1950 but who shattered his career in a point-shaving scandal, died on Friday. Layne, who eventually found redemption working with young people in recreation programs and as City College’s head basketball coach, was 95.His death was confirmed by Karina Jorge, an assistant director of athletics at City College, who did not say where he died.An outstanding ballhandler and defensive player at guard, the 6-foot-3-inch Layne was among four sophomores in the starting lineup for an unheralded City team that won the National Invitation Tournament and the N.C.A.A. tournament at Madison Square Garden in championship games held 10 days apart.But late in the following season, players from powerful teams like City College, Long Island University, Bradley University and the University of Kentucky were arrested after being accused of taking bribes from professional gamblers to lose games or keep margins of victory within the point spread established to attract bettors.When three of Layne’s teammates were arrested in mid-February 1951, accused of point-shaving, students staged a campus rally to support the squad, and they carried the presumably unsullied Layne on their shoulders.But Layne was soon arrested as well. He was accused of agreeing to help keep City College from exceeding victory margins set by gamblers in their point spreads for games with Missouri, Arizona and Boston College during the 1950-51 season. Layne led detectives to the bedroom of his Bronx home, where he had hidden $2,890 — all but $110 of the bribe money — in a rolled-up handkerchief embedded in the dirt of a flower pot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Joel Embiid Believes He Could Have Been the GOAT

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      If all goes according to plan, the star-laden American men’s basketball team will romp to a gold medal at the Paris Olympic Games next month. Which means that for one of the team’s linchpins, the Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, the most complicated challenge may have been choosing to play for the United States in the first place.Embiid, who is 30, is a native of Cameroon who also holds French and American citizenship. France aggressively courted Embiid, and his decision to instead join the U.S. team led to withering criticism from the French basketball community. (Cameroon’s team did not qualify for this year’s Games.)Listen to the Conversation With Joel EmbiidThe N.B.A. star talks Philly cheesesteaks, Twitter trolling and playing for Team U.S.A. over France in the Olympics.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppBut things never go easily for Embiid. He is one of the sport’s best players but also something of a Sisyphean figure. For all his success — including an M.V.P. award in 2023 and multiple scoring titles — he has never achieved the N.B.A.’s biggest prize: a championship. The Sixers have repeatedly fallen short in the playoffs, at times in heartbreaking fashion. Then there’s the churn: During his tenure, the team has seen coaches, star players and general managers come and go. And Embiid himself can’t seem to avoid injury. (Shortly after Embiid and I spoke, the 76ers did sign another star player, Paul George. So there’s reason to hope, Philly fans!)That combination of iffy management and just plain bad luck have cast the shadow of unfulfilled potential over Embiid’s decade-long career. So in some ways, the Games are a chance for a little redemption. Although based on his past experience, Embiid told me he is expecting adversity instead.Can you talk about what it means for you to be playing for the United States? It means a lot. I’ve spent half of my life here. I’ve got a great family, great wife, my son, so it just made a lot of sense. I’ve been given the opportunity to be here and accomplish a lot. More

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      Julian Nagelsmann Is the Most Important Man in Germany This Month

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      Julian Nagelsmann was hired to win a European Championship on home soil. Can he restore a divided nation’s self-esteem at the same time?A little more than a week before the start of this summer’s European soccer championship, one of Germany’s national broadcasters aired a documentary examining the national team’s history through its multiculturalism. Or, rather, the lack of it.While the thrust of the film, “Unity and Justice and Diversity,” focused on the progress that Germany had made, it has reverberated inside the country, and beyond, for a very different reason.In it, the film’s director, Philipp Awounou, included the results of a survey commissioned by the broadcaster, ARD, that asked more than 1,300 people if they agreed with the statement: “I would prefer it if more white players played in the German national team again.” About 21 percent of respondents said that they did.The backlash was immediate. Joshua Kimmich, a senior member of Germany’s national team, described the survey as racist. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, declared, “We will not allow ourselves to be divided.” They, and many others, focused not on the findings but on the decision to ask the question in the first place.The job of changing the subject over the next few weeks, though, will fall to a figure who, in his own way, represents how the country wishes to see itself. Julian Nagelsmann, the coach of the national team, is passionate, uncompromising and ambitious. He is also 36, by some distance the youngest man to occupy the post. The task on his shoulders is both lofty and unenviable. He has to lead Germany to glory, in one form or another. And he has to try to restore the country’s sense of self at the same time.Man of the MomentAlexander Rosen cannot quite recall which newspaper ran the headline, but eight years later, the phrasing still sticks in his mind. He had just appointed a new coach for the team he runs, TSG Hoffenheim, a small but striving club in Germany’s top division.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Premier League’s Asterisk Season

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      As it concludes an epic title race, soccer’s richest competition is a picture of health on the field. Away from it, the league faces lawsuits, infighting and the threat of government regulation.With five minutes left in his team’s penultimate game of the Premier League season, Manchester City Manager Pep Guardiola found the tension just a little too much. As a rival striker bore down on his team’s goal, Guardiola — crouching on his haunches on the sideline — lost his balance and toppled over onto his back.Lying on the grass and expecting the worst, he missed what may yet prove to be the pivotal moment in the Premier League’s most enthralling title race in a decade.But the striker did not score. His effort was parried by goalkeeper Stefan Ortega, sending Manchester City above its title rival Arsenal in the standings and positioning it, if it can win again on Sunday, to become the first English team to win four consecutive championships.“Ortega saved us,” Guardiola said afterward. “Otherwise, Arsenal is champion.”That the destiny of the championship should have been determined only so late in the season seems fitting for what has, on the surface, been a vintage Premier League campaign.All of that drama, though, comes with a figurative asterisk. This season’s Premier League has been defined as much by turbulence off the field — points deductions, internecine bickering, legal disputes, fraud accusations and the looming threat of government intervention — as it has been by City’s (eventual) smooth sailing through it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      LSU’s Kim Mulkey Courts Controversy in Style

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      Inside the coach’s winning fashion playbook.The smog of a Washington Post exposé may have been hanging over Kim Mulkey’s head during the L.S.U. game on Saturday afternoon, but the highest paid coach in women’s collegiate basketball wasn’t going to hide. How could you tell?Well, in part because at the start of the N.C.A.A. tournament, she had given a news conference threatening a lawsuit about the article, thus calling to attention to it. In part because there she was, running up and down the sidelines and screaming her head off. And it part because … goodness, what was she wearing?A gleaming pantsuit covered in a jumble of Op Art sequined squiggles, as if Big Bird had met Liberace and they’d teamed up for “Project Runway.”Kim Mulkey, resplendent in sequins at the L.S.U. Sweet Sixteen game on March 30.Gregory Fisher/USA Today, via ReutersEven in the context of basketball, a sport in which players and coaches understood the power of personal branding through clothes long before almost any other athletes, Ms. Mulkey stands out. More than perhaps anyone else in the league — possibly in all of women’s basketball — she has made her image a talking point, a reflection of her own larger-than-life personality and a tool to draw attention to her sport. She is basketball’s avatar of the Trumpian era, offering a new version of The Mulkey Show at every game and costuming herself for the moment. As her team meets the University of Iowa again in the Elite Eight, brand Mulkey will most likely be raising the stakes once more.It would be wrong to call her clothes “fashion.” They have little to do with trends or silhouette. But love what she wears or hate it, love how she behaves or hate it, her sometimes ridiculous, always eye-catching outfits are, like her winning record, abrasive personality, problematic comments about Covid-19 and reported homophobia, impossible to ignore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dawn Staley Is More Than a Basketball Coach for Her Players

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      For the veteran women’s coach at the college and Olympic levels, honesty and discipline are central to leadership.This article is part of our Women and Leadership special report that coincides with global events in March celebrating the accomplishments of women. This conversation has been edited and condensed.As coach of the University of South Carolina women’s top-ranked basketball team, Dawn Staley is a dynamic leader at a time of surging global popularity in women’s sports. At 53, she is a Hall of Fame point guard who guided the United States to three Olympic gold medals as a player and one as a coach. And in her 16th year at South Carolina, Coach Staley just led the team to its second straight undefeated regular season. Now she seeks her third national collegiate title. A proud Philadelphia native, Coach Staley is an outspoken advocate for gender and racial equity in sports and beyond.Her secret to guiding young people today? Honesty and discipline, lessons she learned from her mother.You make statements with your coaching wardrobe, and a hoodie you recently wore declared, “Everyone watches women’s sports.” What’s different now?I just feel like there’s more access to our game. There’s more demand. I think it’s OK to tell the stories of our game and people in our game. I hope it’s not a fad. I don’t think it is. Because the fabric of our game is strong. It’s bursting at the seams right now on all levels, not just collegiately, but the W.N.B.A., even high school. Younger girls have grown up on the W.N.B.A., and during my time in college, we didn’t have that. We’ll get a big bump when the Olympics roll around.For the first time, there’s going to be the same number of female athletes as male athletes at the Olympics. Are you amazed it took that long?No. I’m not. I think we have been held back, intentionally, and the numbers and the demand today prove that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lefty Driesell, Basketball Coach Who Put Maryland on the Map, Dies at 92

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      He built Maryland into a national powerhouse and became the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs.Lefty Driesell, the Hall of Fame coach who built nationally prominent basketball teams at the University of Maryland in the 1970s, and who at his retirement in 2003 was the nation’s fourth-winningest N.C.A.A. Division I men’s coach, died on Saturday at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 92.His death was announced by the university.Driesell (pronounced drih-ZELL) was the first coach to win more than 100 games at each of four major college programs. Over five decades, his teams won a total of 786 games.He coached at Maryland from 1969 until October 1986, posting a 348-159 overall record in College Park. His Terps reached eight N.C.A.A. postseason tournaments, won the 1972 National Invitation Tournament championship and captured an Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship in 1984. They finished high in The Associated Press’s national college basketball rankings of the early 1970s.He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018.Driesell was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2018.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesAcross Davidson, Maryland, James Madison and Georgia State, Driesell had an overall record of 786-394. He coached James Madison to four consecutive appearances in the N.I.T. and led the team to the N.C.A.A. national tournament in 1994.He closed out his coaching career at Georgia State, where he was head coach from 1997 to 2003. He led the team to a huge upset of Wisconsin in the opening round of the 2001 N.C.A.A. tournament.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More