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      Report Details ‘Systemic’ Abuse of Players in Women’s Soccer

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      A yearlong investigation found U.S. Soccer executives, N.W.S.L. owners and coaches at all levels of American soccer had turned a blind eye toward years of reports of abuse from players.One coach called in a player to review game film and showed her pornography instead. Another was notorious at the highest levels of women’s soccer for alternately berating his players and then quizzing them about their sex lives.A third coach coerced multiple players into sexual relationships, behavior that one top team found so disturbing that it fired him. But when he was hired by a rival team only a few months later, the original club, which had documented his behavior in an internal investigation, said nothing. Instead, it publicly wished him well in his new post.Those details and others fill a highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer that found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.The report was published Monday, a year after players outraged by what they saw as a culture of abuse in their sport demanded changes by refusing to take the field. It found that leaders of the N.W.S.L. and the United States Soccer Federation — the governing body of the sport in America — as well as owners, executives and coaches at all levels failed to act on years of voluminous and persistent reports of abuse by coaches.All were more concerned about being sued by coaches or about the teetering finances of women’s professional soccer than player welfare, according to the report, creating a system in which abusive and predatory coaches were able to move freely from team to team at the top levels of women’s soccer.“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims,” Sally Q. Yates, the lead investigator, wrote in the report’s executive summary. “Abuse in the N.W.S.L. is rooted in a deeper culture in women’s soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players.”Read the Report on Abuse in Women’s SoccerAn investigative report commissioned by the United States Soccer Federation found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the National Women’s Soccer League. It also issued warning signs that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.Read Document 319 pagesLast year, U.S. Soccer commissioned Yates, a former deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to look into the sport after reports in The Athletic and The Washington Post detailed accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. After the news media reports, and after games were postponed as furious players protested publicly, league executives resigned and were fired. Within weeks, half of the 10-team league’s coaches had been linked to allegations of abuse, and some of the world’s top players had recounted their own stories of mistreatment.Cindy Parlow Cone, the U.S. Soccer president and a former member of the national team, called the findings “devastating and infuriating.” Cone said there are “systemic failures within soccer that must be corrected,” and that the federation would immediately implement a number of the report’s recommendations.A National Women’s Soccer League game between Gotham F.C. and the Washington Spirit last October.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesThe report made a lengthy list of recommendations that it said should be adopted by U.S. Soccer, and in some cases the women’s league, including making a public list of individuals suspended or barred by U.S. Soccer, meaningfully vetting coaches when licensing them, requiring investigations into accusations of abuse, making clear policies and rules around acceptable behavior and conduct, and hiring player safety officers, among other requirements.The report also raises the question of whether some team owners should be disciplined or forced to sell their teams, as it recommended the league “determine whether disciplinary action is appropriate for any of these owners or team executives.”Even with so much of the worst abuse publicly known, the Yates report is stunning in how meticulously it details how many powerful soccer officials were told about abuse and how little they did to investigate or stop it. Among those whose inaction is detailed are a former U.S. Soccer president; the organization’s former chief executive and women’s national team coach; and the leadership of the Portland Thorns, one of the league’s most popular and best-supported teams.“Teams, the league and the federation not only repeatedly failed to respond appropriately when confronted with player reports and evidence of abuse, they also failed to institute basic measures to prevent and address it,” Yates wrote. She added that “abusive coaches moved from team to team, laundered by press releases thanking them for their service,” while those with knowledge of their misconduct stayed silent.In a statement, the women’s league said in the report, and an investigation it is undertaking with the players’ union, “will be critical to informing and implementing systemic reform and ensuring that the N.W.S.L. is a league where players are supported, on and off the pitch.” The players’ union said in a statement that players who had spoken to investigators “have shown profound courage and bravery, and we stand with them.”The national team players association released a statement saying it was “dismayed” that some clubs and U.S. Soccer staff “impeded the investigation,” and urged U.S. Soccer to implement the report’s recommendations. National team players largely did not respond publicly to the report, as they were on a plane to London for a match against England as the report was released.The report said the sport does little to train athletes and coaches about harassment, retaliation and fraternization. It noted that “overwhelming” numbers of players, coaches and U.S. Soccer staff members remarked that “women players are conditioned to accept and respond to abusive coaching behaviors as youth players.”From left, Rory Dames, Christy Holly and Paul Riley.Getty ImagesWhile the report details complaints made about several coaches, it focuses its narrative on three: Paul Riley, Rory Dames and Christy Holly. The accusations against Riley, who last coached the North Carolina Courage, and Dames, who coached the Chicago Red Stars, have been well documented in news media reports. The accusations against Holly, who was abruptly dismissed as coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year with little explanation, have not been aired publicly before.Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Holly declined to comment.Holly sexually coerced a player, according to the report, by inviting her to his home for what he said was a session to watch game film. Instead, he showed the player pornography and masturbated in front of her. Another time, according to the report, after calling in the player again under the pretense of watching game film, Holly groped the player’s genitals and breasts each time the film showed she made a mistake.While coaching in the women’s league years earlier, the report also found, Holly drew complaints of verbal abuse and mistreatment and had a relationship with a player “that caused a toxic team environment.” Yet little vetting of his past occurred as he moved from job to job.The report found that Riley “leveraged his position” as a coach to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships while working previously in a different women’s soccer league, and it said that investigators received “credible reports of sexual misconduct with other players” that were not detailed in the final report.Dames, a longtime youth soccer coach, fostered a “sexualized team environment” that included speaking to youth players about their sex lives, according to the report. That environment “crossed the line to sexual relationships” in multiple cases, which the report says “may have begun after the age of consent.” Dames also screamed at and belittled players, and joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Portland Thorns fans lit a smoke bomb last November as part of a protest of the sexual misconduct scandal in the league.Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesIn the cases of all three coaches, the report found, the women’s league and U.S. Soccer officials, as well as individual team owners and executives, were repeatedly made aware of complaints of inappropriate behavior but largely did nothing to address them or prevent them from occurring elsewhere.Sexual misconduct allegations were brought against Riley each year from 2015 to 2021, for example, and an anonymous player survey in 2014 also identified Riley, then coaching the Portland Thorns, as verbally abusive and sexist. The survey results were seen by U.S. Soccer and league officials, and feedback was distributed to the Thorns owner Merritt Paulson.In 2015, after the Thorns conducted an investigation, Riley was terminated. But the team said publicly that it had chosen not to extend his contract, and Riley was not disciplined. When he was hired by another team months later, no one from the league or the federation — which at the time effectively ran and bankrolled the league — provided his new team with any of the complaints or information used to substantiate his termination by the Thorns.Players also complained about Dames for years, beginning in 2014, when they told Sunil Gulati, then the U.S. Soccer president, and Jill Ellis, then the women’s national team head coach, that Dames had created a hostile work environment with the Chicago Red Stars, according to the report. Dames was also called abusive by his players in anonymous surveys, and in 2018 he was investigated after another prominent player complained. Yet while a U.S. Soccer investigation into that case substantiated many of the complaints, the report was not distributed throughout the organization or to the league or the Red Stars, and Dames was not disciplined.Jeff Plush at a news conference in 2017.Craig Barritt/Getty Images for LifetimeIn addition to detailing the behavior of several prominent coaches and the inaction of others, the report also took note of individuals and organizations who were not forthcoming or who actively tried to stymie the investigation — even as some publicly said they were cooperating.Jeff Plush, who was the commissioner of the women’s league from 2015 and 2017 and is now the head of U.S.A. Curling, did not respond to the investigators, the report said. Dan Flynn, the retired U.S. Soccer chief executive, responded only to written questions and would not sit for an interview.The Thorns, meanwhile, “interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments” to impede the investigation, according to the report. Racing Louisville F.C. declined to provide documents about Holly’s tenure, and told investigators that current and former employees could not speak about him because of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements the team had signed with Holly when he was fired.The Chicago Red Stars also delayed production of documents for months.Rectifying the problems identified in the report will be difficult. Soccer in the United States is run by a number of organizations — federations, professional leagues, youth clubs and state soccer organizations — that have overlapping authority, a tangled web that the report suggested may have played a role in reports of abusive behavior going unheeded.And the revelations may not be over. A separate joint investigation by the women’s league and its players association has not been completed, and the report also did not investigate youth soccer, even as it made clear that the investigators believe abuse is prevalent there as well.“The roots of abuse in women’s soccer run deep and will not be eliminated through reform in the N.W.S.L. alone,” investigators wrote. More

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      6 Takeaways From the Report on Sexual Misconduct in Women’s Soccer

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      The report focused on three coaches who have been accused of abuse and the lack of action by leaders at U.S. Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.A report published Monday detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by coaches at the highest levels of women’s soccer in the United States, and found that leaders in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on reports from players.The report was commissioned by U.S. Soccer, which asked Sally Q. Yates, a former U.S. deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to lead an investigation after news media reports documented accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against N.W.S.L. coaches.The report focuses on three coaches — Christy Holly, Paul Riley and Rory Dames — highlighting a history of sexual misconduct allegations against them and executives’ failure to investigate and act on the accusations. It also warned that girls face abuse in youth soccer.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday, and Holly declined to comment. Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Here are six takeaways from the report:Christy HollyHolly was fired as the coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year, during the team’s inaugural season, with minimal public explanation from the team. While accusations against Riley and Dames had been detailed in news media reports, the accusations against Holly were not publicly known.Christy Holly, left, was coach of Racing Louisville F.C.Getty ImagesThe report found that Holly’s misconduct while coaching Louisville included sexual contact, inappropriate text messages, abuse of power and retaliation. In one instance, Holly invited a player to his home to watch game film but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography. While watching game film with the player on a separate occasion, Holly groped the player’s breasts and genitals whenever the film showed she had made a mistake.Holly also sent the player nude pictures of himself and asked her to send sexual pictures of herself to him, according to the report. The player said that she felt “guilted” and “forced” to send photos. The player told investigators that “Holly constantly reminded her to ‘loosen up,’ telling her that having ‘fun’ with him would improve her performance on the field.”Paul RileyAnother narrative in the report centers on Paul Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage last year. The report found that Riley had “leveraged his position” to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships.“Paul Riley’s abuse was prolonged and wide-ranging,” the report said. “It spanned multiple leagues, teams and players. It included emotional misconduct, abuse of power and sexual misconduct.”Paul Riley was coach of the North Carolina Courage.Getty ImagesOne player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions. In one instance, the player said, Riley asked her to watch game film in his hotel room. When the player arrived at his room, she said, Riley answered the door wearing only underwear and told her to get on the bed. The player said she left once she realized that there was no game film on the television.“I just didn’t feel safe,” the player said. “I didn’t enjoy playing. It was a bad situation.”Rory DamesThe report also details accusations against Rory Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars last year and was also coach of the Chicago Eclipse Select youth soccer team. It found that he created a “sexualized team environment” at the youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.” It also said that he verbally abused his players and that he joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Rory Dames was coach of the Chicago Red Stars.Getty ImagesOne player who played for Dames on the Eclipse team said that on one occasion, Dames offered her a ride home from practice and asked her questions about sex. The player said that Dames “wouldn’t take me home until I answered the questions.”The report also said that it was not uncommon for Dames to spend time alone with girls from youth teams without another adult present, including in their childhood bedrooms.Lack of oversightThe report also detailed how allegations of abuse or misconduct were often not fully investigated. When they were, the accused coaches later had opportunities to coach elsewhere. The report found that several investigations across the league “failed to successfully root out misconduct.”After the 2015 N.W.S.L. season, one player reported Riley’s sexual misconduct to the Portland Thorns, where he was then coaching, and the league. The Thorns conducted an investigation that lasted one week, and Riley was promptly terminated from the team. But the Thorns did not inform their players, other teams or the public about the reason for Riley’s termination. Riley was later hired by another women’s league team.The report said that several players tried to raise concerns about Dames over the years, including in 2014, 2015 and 2018. A report by the United States Women’s National Team Players Association in 2018 prompted Lydia Wahlke, U.S. Soccer’s chief legal officer, to hire outside counsel to investigate Dames. By October 2018, the investigation had found that Dames created “a cycle of emotional abuse and manipulation” at the Chicago Red Stars. But Wahlke did not share the findings with the Red Stars or the N.W.S.L.One player said she had realized that reporting Dames’s conduct “was a lost cause.”Youth soccerThe investigation did not directly examine youth soccer in the United States, but the report found several instances of verbal and sexual abuse of players.“The culture of tolerating verbal abuse of players goes beyond the N.W.S.L.,” the report said. “Players also told us that their experiences of verbal abuse and blurred relationships with coaches in youth soccer impacted their ability to discern what was out of bounds in the N.W.S.L.”One example cited in the report details an anonymous complaint that Riley had created an “unsafe environment” in his F.C. Fury Development Academy girls’ program and that a coach in the program had “inappropriately touched a minor player.” The person making the complaint said that Riley had not reported the incident and expressed “fear of reprisal from Riley for speaking out,” adding that Riley is “known to be vindictive to anyone who crossed him.”RecommendationsAmong its recommendations, the report said that teams should be required to disclose coaches’ misconduct to their leagues to ensure that the coaches cannot move freely from one team to another, and that the N.W.S.L. should be required to meaningfully vet its coaches and investigate allegations of misconduct.The report also recommended that the N.W.S.L. conduct an annual training for players and coaches on issues of misconduct and harassment, and that teams designate an individual responsible for player safety.The report also advised U.S. Soccer to examine whether it should institute other measures in youth soccer to protect young players. More

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      This Is What Life After the N.B.A. Looks Like

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      Johnny Davis knew the end was near.During the summer of 1985, Davis was gearing up for his 10th N.B.A. season when he noticed something about his familiar quickness — namely, that it was missing.Davis was just 29 at the time. But the hard mileage of a productive basketball career had worn him down.“I was getting by with experience more so than I was with athletic talent,” said Davis, a versatile guard in his prime. “It was pretty obvious that I wasn’t the same player.”Davis was fortunate in the sense that he had time to prepare for retirement — “I wasn’t caught off guard at all,” he said — but he still had to confront the big question: What now?As N.B.A. teams trim their rosters before the season begins this month, a new batch of players will find themselves asking that same question. There is always an end in professional sports: Athletes become former athletes; All-Stars become “Isn’t he that guy?” And while there are perks of reaching the highest level, no one avoids the fundamental challenge of ascension: coming down.“The day you leave the N.B.A., now they tell you to start over again,” said Quentin Richardson, a guard whose 13-year playing career ended in 2013 when he was just 33.While some players have the luxury of leaving the game on their own terms, most have that decision made for them by the effects of age and injury, their careers punctuated by the wait for another contract offer that never materializes.“The sport generally leaves you,” Davis, 66, said. “And now you’re in this place where you have to move on from something that you have done your whole life. And sometimes that means you have to re-identify who you are.”Pau Gasol: ‘Now it’s someone else’s turn’Pau Gasol had many highs and lows over an 18-year N.B.A. career. But he said retiring was a “celebratory moment.”Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesPau Gasol wanted to gather his thoughts.After playing basketball for Spain at the Tokyo Olympics, he returned to his Spanish mountain cottage last August to spend time with his wife, Cat McDonnell, and their young daughter, Ellie. Gasol went for quiet walks, and as he contemplated the past — his 18 seasons in the N.B.A., his title runs alongside Kobe Bryant — he found peace.A few weeks later, Gasol announced his retirement at Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona’s famed opera house. He had just turned 41.“It was not a sad moment,” he said. “It was a celebratory moment.”Gasol had a long career, one that familiarized him with impermanence. He starred for the Memphis Grizzlies. He won two championships with the Los Angeles Lakers. He became more of a mentor with the Chicago Bulls and the San Antonio Spurs, then spent his final months in the N.B.A. laboring with a foot injury. He adapted to the evolution of his role.“I’m not saying it’s easy,” he said. “There are times when you still feel like you should start or play significant minutes. But life moves on, and now it’s someone else’s turn.”Gasol won two championships on the Los Angeles Lakers with Kobe Bryant, front, in 2009 and 2010.Kevin Kolczynski/ReutersBefore the Tokyo Olympics, he won a Spanish league championship in his final season with F.C. Barcelona, the club that had given him his professional start. “It was kind of romantic,” he said.Gasol, now 42, has since kept busy with his foundation that focuses on childhood obesity and as a member of the International Olympic Committee, a consultant for the Golden State Warriors and a W.N.B.A. investor. He also squeezes in the occasional round of golf.Of course, there are days when he misses playing basketball. So he copes by reading books about personal fulfillment and retirement, some of them geared toward people in their 60s. He also keeps in touch with Dr. William D. Parham, the director of mental health and wellness for the N.B.A. players’ union.“I’ve talked to him several times to help me weather this,” Gasol said. “You have to understand that nothing will ever really compare to the thrill of playing.”Mario West: Knowing When to Move OnMario West spent several seasons in the N.B.A. Now, he helps players cope with the worries of moving on.NBPAMario West, 38, spends most of the N.B.A. season in locker rooms making connections with players by getting personal.He might mention how in 2009 Shannon Brown, then a Lakers guard, famously pinned one of his layup attempts to the backboard. (“I’ve been a meme,” West said.) Or how he played in the Philippines and the Dominican Republic after a few seasons in the N.B.A. Or how injuries changed his plans.Now, as the director of Off the Court, an N.B.A. players’ union program, West counsels players on life after basketball. Most of them are not stars. Most worry about surviving training camp, about extending their careers. West was like that. So he gives his cellphone number to each player he meets.“If guys call me at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., I’m going to pick up,” he said.Yes, even some professional athletes go into life-crisis mode in the middle of the night, when the house quiets and the internal voices of worry and insecurity get loud. Their financial concerns may not be relatable to the average person, but late-night stomach knots are a human experience.West, left, playing in the N.B.A. playoffs for the Atlanta Hawks in 2010. He spent three seasons with the Hawks.Grant Halverson/Getty Images“I answer every phone call,” West said. “We want to be the 411 and the 911.”West often works with Deborah Murman, the director of the union’s career development program, who helps players cultivate outside interests.“I like to say that it’s much easier to walk away from something when you have something you’re walking toward,” Murman said.West’s professional career ended in 2015, when he was 31. He still plays pickup basketball in Atlanta, where he lives with his family. He has two young sons, and he wants to stay in shape for as long as possible.“I remember dunking on my dad when I was 14, and he never played me again,” West said.In his own way, West’s father knew when it was time to move on.Jamal Crawford: ‘I Had Emotional Days’Jamal Crawford won the Sixth Man of the Year Award three times over a two-decade career.Cassy Athena/Getty ImagesEven now, Jamal Crawford has trouble making sense of why his playing career ended.He thinks back to the 2017-18 season, when he came off the bench and helped the Minnesota Timberwolves reach the playoffs for the first time since 2004. Crawford’s N.B.A. peers named him the teammate of the year — then he went unsigned for months as a free agent.Sure, he had some mileage. He was 38 and coming off his 18th N.B.A. season, but he was healthy. When an offer finally did surface, it was with the Phoenix Suns the day before the 2018-19 season. He signed up for one year as a role player on one of the league’s worst and youngest teams.“You found beauty in the fact that you were helping guys learn to be professionals,” he said.Crawford thought he set himself up well for a new deal that summer by ending the season with high-scoring games. He thought wrong. The next season started without him.“I had emotional days where I’d wake up and be like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I’m not getting a call,’ ” he said.His agent was, in fact, fielding calls — several teams had reached out to gauge his interest in joining a front office or a coaching staff in 2019-20 — but Crawford still wanted to play. He was mystified: Had his late-season scoring binge worked against him? Were teams concerned that he would be unwilling to accept a limited role?Crawford scored 51 points in one of his final N.B.A. games.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressHe was still unemployed when the coronavirus pandemic forced the N.B.A. to halt play for several months in March 2020. When the season resumed that July, he joined the Nets and injured his hamstring in his first game. His season was finished. And though he didn’t know it, so was his career.Over the next two years, as he made his desire to play again known on social media and TV, he stumbled into a new vocation and passion: coaching his son J.J.’s youth basketball team in Seattle.“It was the craziest thing,” Crawford said, “because I never knew that I would want to coach.”He shuttles his son to weekend tournaments. He diagrams plays on his iPad. He said he could see himself coaching for years to come. He announced his retirement from the N.B.A. in March but showed he still had it in an adult league in July.“Honestly, I have more fun coaching than I do playing — and I still love playing, by the way,” Crawford said. “If you’re an elite athlete and in that space for so long, you’re always going to be competitive. It doesn’t turn off. So, you need to find a way to channel it.”Cole Aldrich: Happy With Life After BasketballCole Aldrich, right, with his wife, Britt Aldrich, and their son, thought he would be away from basketball for just a year. Then the coronavirus pandemic changed his plans.Nikki JilekCole Aldrich would be the first to tell you that his circumstances are odd, that little about his life in Minnesota makes sense.He often hits the roads near his home on a fancy gravel bike. He’s “far too involved” in the construction of his new home. When he was golfing last fall, a member of his playing group asked him what he did for work. Aldrich, 33, told him he was retired.“You wouldn’t believe the looks people give you when you tell them that,” Aldrich said.In his former life, Aldrich was one of the top picks in the 2010 N.B.A. draft and spent his first two seasons with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He bounced around the league as a backup center before signing a three-year deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves with $17 million guaranteed.Aldrich spent some time as a Knicks center in 2013.Barton Silverman/The New York Times“At that point, I felt like I could take a little bit of a deep breath,” he said.He was cut before the third year of the deal, then sprained his knee while playing in China. At home in Minnesota, his wife, Britt Aldrich, was pregnant with their first child. Cole thought he would take a year off before giving hoops another shot. But after his son was born and the coronavirus pandemic rocked the world, “an easy decision for me became even easier,” he said.It is a rare luxury, “retiring” in your early 30s with millions in the bank. But can this type of life — stay-at-home dad, part-time cyclist — last forever? Aldrich predicts that he will want another job at some point.“I want to go and have a career in some capacity,” he said. “But I don’t know what that looks like.”Many people are lucky if they can afford to stop working when they’re old enough to claim Social Security payments. But in the N.B.A. world, most careers are over before the player turns 30. Aldrich was done in the N.B.A. by 29 and had earned millions. His life is indeed odd in the big picture.Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles: ‘Is It Really Over?’Quentin Richardson, left, and Darius Miles, right, made the Los Angeles Clippers cool and exciting when they joined the team as rookies in 2000.Guillermo Hernandez Martinez/The Players’ TribuneDarius Miles had just finished high school. Quentin Richardson was 20 years old. They were Los Angeles Clippers rookies in the fall of 2000.Suddenly, the woeful Clippers were cool and exciting, if not yet particularly good.“We were like a college team playing against grown men,” Miles said.The players known as Q-Rich and D-Miles were fast and fun. Fans mirrored their signature celebration by tapping their fists on their foreheads. Then, after just two seasons, the Clippers traded Miles to the Cleveland Cavaliers for a more experienced player.All these years later, Miles and Richardson wonder what would have happened had the team kept them together. Miles, 40, hopscotched around the league before he played his final game in 2009. He became depressed and withdrew into a “cave” to cope.“Just losing your career, it’s one of the mental blocks that every player has,” Miles said. “Like, is it really over?”Richardson, 42, knew he was nearing the end when the Orlando Magic cut him before the start of the 2012-13 season. He sat by the phone for months, waiting for another offer. After a brief stint with the Knicks, he spent four years in the Pistons’ front office, but he did not feel as though his opinions were valued.“It was an experience that I would not like to experience again,” he said.Richardson and Miles reconnected in 2018. With Richardson acting as his editor, Miles spent months on an essay for The Players’ Tribune titled, “What the Hell Happened to Darius Miles?”Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles were drafted together by the Clippers in 2000.Chriss Pizzello/Associated PressHe wrote about growing up around drugs and violence in East St. Louis, Ill., and about “shady business deals” leaving him bankrupt. He wrote about the knee injuries that derailed his career and about being so depressed after his mother’s death that he holed up in her house for three years. And he wrote about the invitation from Richardson to move to his neighborhood in Florida.“Q kept hitting me up,” Miles said. “I had to let the storm pass until I could see sunshine.”Their chemistry birthed the podcast “Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles,” which offers a candid look at life in pro sports via interviews with current and former athletes and coaches.“Guys do want to talk, and they prefer it in this realm where they’re sitting across from us and they know they’re in a safe space,” Richardson said. “They know we’re going to look out for each other.”He said the N.B.A. and players’ union were helpful, too, as players transitioned into retirement.“They’re trying to make it as fail proof as possible,” Richardson said. “Obviously, things can still happen.”(In October 2021, Miles was one of 18 former players charged in an insurance fraud scheme. Miles, who has pleaded not guilty, declined to comment on the case through a publicist.)With their podcast, Miles and Richardson are figuring out their new lives, without straying too far from the game. For some players, that might be the best way to move forward.Miles said the podcast had helped give him purpose. “It’s the best doctor I got,” he said.Dave Bing and Johnny Davis: Charting a Path for OthersJohnny Davis is the chairman of the National Basketball Retired Players Association, which helps former players with health care and other post-basketball resources.Jacob Biba for The New York TimesGrowing up in Detroit in the 1960s, Davis had many Pistons stars to emulate whenever he hit the playground courts with friends.“One kid would want to be Jimmy Walker, and one would want to be Dave Bing,” Davis said. “I always wanted to be Dave Bing.”Today, Davis and Bing are connected in another way: Davis is the chairman of the National Basketball Retired Players Association. Bing, 78, co-founded the group in 1992 with four other former players — Oscar Robertson, Archie Clark, Dave Cowens and Dave DeBusschere.“We were at an All-Star Game where we talked about what we needed to try to do to help these players who were up in age,” Bing said. “Their health wasn’t all that good, and nobody seemed to care about them.”Dave Bing was introduced as part of the N.B.A.’s 75th anniversary team during the 2022 All-Star Game in February.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesThe N.B.A. was not always the lucrative colossus that it is today. In Bing’s era, many players made ends meet with off-season jobs. Bing worked for a bank, first as a teller and later as a branch manager.“The guys today don’t have to work and might not have to really worry about a second career,” he said. “But in the era I played in, you didn’t have a choice. You’re done at 34, and you’ve got your whole life in front of you.”In 1980, he started Bing Steel with four employees. The company grew into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate, which he ran for 28 years before he was elected mayor of Detroit in 2009.The retired players’ association helps players with health care, education, career counseling and financial services. But Scott Rochelle, the organization’s president and chief executive, avoids using the word “retirement.”“I’ve got two or three guys who will see me and run away because they see me as the grim reaper,” Rochelle said. “We look at it as a change of direction. You don’t retire at 35. You just change your purpose and find something else that drives you from day to day.” More

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      Boston Celtics Players ‘Shocked’ by Coach Ime Udoka’s Suspension

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      Boston’s Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown said they had not spoken to Coach Ime Udoka since the team announced his full-season suspension on Thursday.CANTON, Mass. — Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics said he was preparing for the start of training camp last week when he learned that Ime Udoka, the team’s head coach, could have been facing a lengthy suspension. But Tatum was not privy to any inside information, he said. So, how did he learn the news?“On Twitter,” he said. “Like everybody else.”Tatum was among the Celtics players who, on Monday, spoke publicly for the first time since the team announced Thursday that it had suspended Udoka for the 2022-23 N.B.A. season for unspecified “violations of team policies.” One by one, the players appeared on a dais for the team’s media day and, facing a bank of cameras and reporters, said they knew little about what had led to Udoka’s punishment.Marcus Smart: “It’s been hell for us. Just caught by surprise. No one really knows anything, so we’re just in the wind like everybody else. Last couple of days have been confusing.”Jaylen Brown: “Nobody really has any of the information.”Grant Williams: “I don’t know the facts.”For the players, Udoka’s absence — along with the secretive nature of the investigation into his misconduct — has been a troubling development as they try to reorient themselves for another crack at a championship run after losing to Golden State in the N.B.A. finals last season.One person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about it said Udoka had an inappropriate relationship with a female team employee. Another person who had been briefed said that Udoka’s violations involved one woman.Boston’s Jaylen Brown, left, is in his seventh season with the Celtics. He was the team’s second-leading scorer last season, Udoka’s first as head coach.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images“As far as initial reactions, I think we were all shocked at what was going on — a little confused,” Brown said. “But a lot of the information wasn’t being shared with us, or with members of the team, so I can’t really comment on it.”A Celtics spokesman declined to say how many violations there were.In a news conference last week, Wyc Grousbeck, the team’s majority owner, cited “privacy reasons” in declining to elaborate on the nature of Udoka’s misconduct. The Celtics’ decision to suspend Udoka came after a monthslong investigation by an independent law firm, Grousbeck said.On Monday, Tatum, Brown and Smart were among the team’s high-profile players who indicated that they did not know about the investigation while it was happening. In fact, Smart said, Udoka had recently visited him and a couple of teammates in Los Angeles. Smart was asked if anything about Udoka’s behavior struck him as unusual while he was in California.“Not to me,” he said. “I think that’s why we got so caught off guard, because it just seemed so normal.”Vague reports about Udoka’s situation emerged on social media Wednesday. At a team meeting the following day, few details were shared with players, Tatum said.“There wasn’t any more information that we found out than the things you guys heard,” Tatum said, adding: “It’s hard for me to answer if things were handled the right way or if they weren’t because, I guess for a lot of reasons, I don’t know all the details. I just don’t know.”Tatum and Brown, the team’s top two scorers last season, both said they had not spoken with Udoka since he was suspended. “It’s a lot to process,” Tatum said.Joe Mazzulla, 34, whom the Celtics hired as an assistant in 2019, will be the team’s interim head coach this season. Brad Stevens, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations and Udoka’s predecessor, said last week that Mazzulla was the best choice for the role “by a long shot.” Mazzulla, who played college basketball at West Virginia, was previously the head coach at Fairmont State, a Division II college in West Virginia.As a college player, Mazzulla twice pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct charges, according to multiple news reports at the time — first, when he was accused of scuffling with police at a Pittsburgh Pirates game, and later after he was accused of grabbing a woman at a bar.“Listen, I’ve made mistakes,” Mazzulla said Monday. “I’m not perfect. I’ve hurt people, and I’ve had to use the situations I put myself in as a younger man to learn from and become a better person. That’s what I’ve tried to focus on: How can I re-create my identity as a person? How can I rely on my faith? And how can I just have a positive impact on the people around me?”Brown, who was the subject of trade rumors in the off-season after Kevin Durant asked to be moved from the Nets, was among the players who offered Mazzulla a public vote of confidence.“I believe in Joe,” Brown said. “Joe believes in me. I’ve had conversations with him. I don’t think he sees a limit on my game. I think he’s coming in excited, so I’m optimistic.”Joe Mazzulla, who had been an assistant coach for the Celtics since 2019, will be the interim head coach during Udoka’s suspension this season.Paul Rutherford/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMalcolm Brogdon, a veteran guard who was traded to the Celtics from the Indiana Pacers in July, said he was struck by Mazzulla’s self-discipline. Over the summer, Brogdon said, Mazzulla often beat the players to the team’s training center to lift weights each morning.One day, Mazzulla noticed that Brogdon was using a balloon to do breathing exercises. Mazzulla told Brogdon that he was a fan of breathing exercises, too.“He started explaining the theories behind them and the psychology of it,” Brogdon said. “So he’s a guy that’s paying attention to everything.”Still, Mazzulla acknowledged some of the realities of the situation: that people throughout the Celtics organization need time to “feel and heal,” that he never anticipated being in this position and that he likely will need to learn on the job.The players, too, seem aware of the challenges ahead of them.“Everything that we started to build,” Smart said, “is starting over in a sense.” More

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      in Basket

      Ime Udoka, Boston Celtics Coach, Suspended for 2022-23 Season

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      The team said Udoka violated unspecified team policies. He led Boston to the N.B.A. finals last season, his first as a head coach.The Boston Celtics on Thursday suspended Coach Ime Udoka for the 2022-23 season for unspecified “violations of team policies,” just months after he led the team to the N.B.A. finals in his first year in the role.A person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly about it said Udoka had an inappropriate relationship with a female team employee that was considered a violation of the team’s organizational guidelines.The Celtics have not said who would fill Udoka’s post during his suspension. In a statement announcing the punishment, the team said that a decision about Udoka’s future in Boston would be “made at a later date.” Wyc Grousbeck, the Celtics’ majority owner, declined to comment. A Celtics spokesperson also declined to comment.Udoka spent nine seasons as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Nets before the Celtics hired him to his first head coaching role in June 2021. The Celtics lost to Golden State in the N.B.A. finals this June.News of a possible suspension for Udoka was first reported late Wednesday. The reports touched off a firestorm, with many people on social media posting the names and pictures of women who work for the Celtics and speculating whether they were involved in the situation.In a statement to ESPN, Udoka said he accepted the team’s decision. “I want to apologize to our players, fans, the Celtics organization and my family for letting them down. I am sorry for putting the team in this difficult situation.”He said he would have no further comment.Udoka’s suspension comes during a challenging month for the N.B.A.On Tuesday, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards was fined $40,000 for making homophobic remarks in a post on Instagram, where he has more than 1 million followers.Last week, the N.B.A. said an investigation had unearthed a yearslong pattern of inappropriate behavior by Robert Sarver, the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns and the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury. The investigation’s report said Sarver had used racial slurs and treated female employees unfairly, among other findings, over more than a decade. N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver fined Sarver $10 million — the maximum permitted — and suspended him for a year. But amid backlash about the perceived leniency of the punishment, Sarver announced Wednesday that he planned to sell both teams.The Suns and the Celtics are scheduled to host media days for the 2022-23 season Monday.Udoka, who is from Portland, Ore., had a peripatetic career as a basketball player, bouncing around overseas before he latched on with the Portland Trail Blazers for the 2006-7 season as their starting small forward. Over the next four seasons he played with San Antonio and the Sacramento Kings.Last summer, he was part of a wave of Black coaches hired to head coaching roles, including several who, like him, had been assistants for many years. The N.B.A. has long been criticized for having mostly white head coaches in a league with mostly Black players.In mid-January, Boston had a 21-22 record and was seemingly bound for an underwhelming season. But the Celtics won 28 of their final 35 games to close out the regular season and earn the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They swept the Nets in the first round of the playoffs, then eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks, who were the defending champions. In the Eastern Conference finals, Boston beat the Miami Heat.The trip to the N.B.A. finals was Boston’s first appearance since 2010. Udoka came in fourth in voting for the Coach of the Year Award. Will Hardy, who was Udoka’s top assistant last season, was recently hired as the Utah Jazz’s new coach.Tania Ganguli More

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      in Soccer

      The Problem With Chelsea (Hint: It May Not Be the Manager)

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      Six days after spending more in a single transfer window than any club in history, Chelsea’s new owners fired the team’s coach, Thomas Tuchel. Now what?The caveat, right from the start, was experience. The consortium, fronted by Todd Boehly and bankrolled by the private equity firm Clearlake, had the money. That much was plain. They had, after all, paid $2.8 billion to buy Chelsea in a frantic, opaque auction, making it the most expensive acquisition in the history of sports.They had expertise in the business, too, or some form of it: Neither Boehly nor Mark Walter, a comparatively late addition to the ownership group, was a sporting neophyte. Both own a slice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and that investment, in recent years, has proved a relatively adroit one.No, the only thing that could be held against the new owners, the only thing that gave Chelsea’s fans pause for thought as they considered what a post-Roman Abramovich future might bring, was that none of them — Boehly, Clearlake, Walter or Hansjorg Wyss, the octogenarian Swiss billionaire who had brought the group together — knew the first thing about English soccer.Three months in, those doubts have been overcome. Scarcely 100 days have elapsed since the group took official control of Chelsea. In that time, it lavished more than $300 million on new signings — more than any club had ever spent in a single transfer window — and then, with the ink still drying on the last couple of contracts, decided to fire its manager only a half-dozen games into the season.If they carry on like this, Chelsea’s new owners will fit into the Premier League’s hyperbolic soap opera just fine.Todd Boehly and his partners have been remaking Chelsea all summer. Change has not been cheap.David Cliff/Associated PressFrom the outside, Chelsea’s decision to part company with Thomas Tuchel in the early hours of Wednesday felt distinctly, comfortingly familiar. The team had lost the previous evening in its opening Champions League engagement against Dinamo Zagreb. That defeat came on the back of a stuttering start to the Premier League campaign that has left Chelsea in sixth, just 5 points behind first-place Arsenal but already smarting from losses to Leeds United and Southampton.This was, then, the new Chelsea behaving precisely as the old Chelsea always had, with a short-termism so ruthless it almost qualified as proud. Spending an unimaginable sum of money to furnish a manager with the team he desired only to dismiss the manager at the first hint of trouble? Roman would be proud.Internally, the picture was a little more nuanced. Tuchel’s brief reign — he was in place for only 19 months — had hit its peak early, in the uncanny valley of lockdown soccer, when he took a team that had been struggling to qualify for the Champions League under his predecessor, Frank Lampard, and turned it into the champion of Europe in four months. Rarely, if ever, has a coach had such an immediate, spectacular effect.The 49-year-old Tuchel, though, failed to build on that starburst. He was presented, a year ago, with the $111 million signing of Romelu Lukaku, theoretically the player who could catapult Chelsea to a first Premier League title since 2017. It did not quite work out like that. Lukaku was allowed to leave the club this summer on loan.Though Tuchel steered the team to two domestic cup finals in his first full campaign — losing both on penalties against Liverpool — and handled with poise and dignity the geopolitical storm that engulfed the club in the wake of the British government’s decision to sanction Abramovich, Chelsea’s season petered out, with the German’s side eventually finishing 19 points behind Manchester City.Tuchel in better days. Last year.Susana Vera/Pool Via ReutersThat malaise had not gone unnoticed by the club’s newly installed hierarchy. Nor had Tuchel’s demeanor over the summer, which grew more detached, more disaffected with every passing week.In July, he bemoaned that his players’ “level of commitment, physically and mentally,” was insufficient. By August, he described them as “not tough enough.” On Tuesday, after losing in Zagreb, that had metastasized into admitting that “everything was missing” from his team’s performance.Those public complaints betrayed a growing unease in private. Tuchel had come to be known at Chelsea as a gregarious, warm, affable sort — at a club with plenty of managers to compare him to, he fared well — but a number of players felt he had become more truculent, more distant in recent months, particularly with those he did not consider his most reliable lieutenants.Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, the co-founder of Clearlake, noticed the same thing. As they attempted to retool the squad this summer, they had sought Tuchel’s counsel frequently, asking the manager — in the absence of a technical director — to direct them to his preferred targets.That was not a role that Tuchel relished particularly; he was far happier to be left alone to coach. As the transfer window gathered pace, Boehly and Eghbali found that Tuchel had a tendency to prove difficult to contact at critical junctures. Whatever relationship they had been able to establish in their few weeks working together began to fracture and fray.Kalidou Koulibaly and the rest of Chelsea’s players, new and old, opened the Champions League with a loss on Tuesday.Antonio Bronic/ReutersAs the relatively curt statement released by the club to announce his departure suggested, Boehly and Eghbali did not feel they had acted rashly. They had, instead, reached the decision to part company with Tuchel even before defeat in Zagreb. The travails of the early part of the season were supporting evidence for their conclusion, rather than the thrust of their case.For all the mitigating circumstances, though — and while the owners have been swift to identify Graham Potter, the intelligent, affable and talented Brighton manager, as Tuchel’s likely replacement — it does feel as if his dismissal fits a pattern.Boehly has taken on the role of interim sporting director with vigor and determination. Those at the club have been stunned by his work ethic, and he has made an effort to establish a rapport with many of the game’s most influential agents, inviting some of them to watch games from his box at the club’s stadium.In some cases, that has borne fruit. Chelsea spent a lot of money this summer, but it spent much of it well. Wesley Fofana may have been expensive, but he is also one of the most promising defenders in world soccer. Raheem Sterling has for years been one of the Premier League’s most devastating attacking players.The deals that did not come off tell a story too, though. There was the offer for Romeo Lavia, a player who had made just a handful of appearances for Southampton since moving from Manchester City in July; Chelsea offered to pay at least double what he had cost in August.Then there was an attempt to sign Edson Álvarez, a Mexican midfielder at the Dutch club Ajax, which bubbled to the surface as the transfer window was closing. The approach came so late, in fact, that Ajax was able to use it as proof that Chelsea was not spending to any plan, but rather for the sake of it — an argument that worked sufficiently well for Álvarez to decide to remain in Amsterdam.As they reached the (entirely artificial) watershed of their 100th day in charge of the club, Boehly and Eghbali reportedly spent considerable time contemplating the sort of culture they wanted to establish at Chelsea.They wanted to shift away from the urgency and the uncertainty of the Abramovich years and build something more sustainable, they decided, and they felt that Tuchel was not the right sort of figure to oversee that change. He was better suited, they determined, to the old ways, when nothing lasted forever, and Chelsea’s manager lived each day as if it could be the last.And yet here we are: Six games into the season, six days after the end of the transfer window, Chelsea has fired its manager on the back of a few poor performances and because of rumblings of discontent among the playing squad. Perhaps this will be the last hurrah of the old Chelsea, the final break with the past. Or perhaps a culture, once embedded, is not an easy thing to change, no matter how much money and ambition you have. More

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      in Tennis

      At the U.S. Open, Data Analysts Are Just as Busy as the Players

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      A new era of data analysis has given players deeper insights into their opponents’ games and a strategic advantage.For the data analysts working with the top tier of American tennis players, the busiest time of year begins with United States Open qualifying. They will spend 15-hour days creating and curating a trove of quantitative data and video clips.They will churn out match statistics and about 200 scouting reports for nearly 70 players over the three-week competition. The ultimate goal: provide players and coaches with more granular insights into each point and, in the process, give them a strategic advantage.“Players will always get their match tagged, broken up into how a point starts and how a point ends, and back to them within 24 hours,” said Geoffrey Russell, who works for the United States Tennis Association as senior manager for Team U.S.A.’s professional players. “We’ll also do bespoke projects for coaches who ask us to break down certain things even further.”During this year’s Open, Russell will collaborate with a team of eight data analysts. Their efforts speak to growing interest and investment in tennis analytics, and represent one of many ways the sport is employing the in-depth data analysis long used by professional teams in baseball and basketball.In tennis, it’s been more a data evolution than revolution, a gradual search for new, objective performance measures. That’s largely resulted in a combination of statistics and video highlights that build a more sophisticated picture of how individual players compete and, as a result, guide some match strategy and development.Tennis lags behind other sports in analytics, but it has gained significant momentum over the last several years. Better technology means more opportunities to capture and analyze more data points efficiently.National governing bodies like the United States Tennis Association collect shot-level data. New metrics in the tennis lexicon include steals (when players fall behind in a point yet manage to win it) and balance of power (how much time players spend on attack versus how much time opponents spend there). And there’s more attention paid to how points develop.The strategy coach Craig O’Shannessy said that from 1991 to 2012 tennis analytics “was very primitive.” Then, in 2015, rally length appeared in tournament data. Analysis of that data revealed much shorter rally lengths than expected, driving curiosity and greater respect for analytics.Andy Murray and his coach, Ivan Lendl, during a practice in June. Toby Melville/Reuters“There has been a gradual acceptance of new data points in our sport that matter most to winning and losing matches,” he said. “So, we’re definitely going down a road where we’re improving.”Still, even with new metrics and keen interest in analytics from top players like Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, tennis has not fully embraced analytics, especially since the data requires time-consuming analysis and sometimes calls into question conventional thinking about how to compete and train.“The challenge at the moment is that coaches are looking at the numbers, but not always looking at them in the right way,” said Warren Pretorius, founder of Tennis Analytics, which provides players and coaches with match analytics. “They’re taking bits and pieces of match stats to support their theories.”So which new data points provide the most meaningful insights? It depends on the player. That speaks to another big tennis analytics challenge: What translates to more wins varies widely based on a player’s strengths, weaknesses and tendencies under pressure.“What we try to do is help athletes gain clarity about what their identity is,” said David Ramos, the U.S.T.A.’s director of coaching education and performance analytics. “How do they want to be playing in the most important points? How do they define a good performance if they don’t win a match? It’s definitely about the game style and personalizing the K.P.I. [key performance indicators] for a particular player.”To provide new insights and help process all the information, there are data-oriented companies eager to service players, coaches, broadcasters and fans. The U.S.T.A. works with companies like TennisViz, SwingVision, Hawk-Eye, Dartfish, Kinexon and IBM to generate meaningful data.The player Mackenzie McDonald of the United States calls himself a “big numbers guy” and finds the scouting reports provided by the U.S.T.A. helpful. At a recent U.S. Open tuneup tournament, he used data about his opponent’s preferred placement for first and second serves to his advantage. He also looks at the hot and cold plays metric (patterns that increase or decrease players’ chances of winning points).“You have to build a story for your opponent,” said McDonald, 27, who is ranked No. 77 in the world and will be playing in the Open. “It’s not x’s and o’s. It’s more like this is what can happen. This is what this guy likes. And these are the tools you can use.”Some top players add strategy coaches to their team for data analysis. O’Shannessy worked with Djokovic’s team from 2017-19, helping the former No. 1 player in the world understand his game better through analytics.O’Shannessy said that sometimes Djokovic asked simple questions, like whether he should hit a backhand or move around for a forehand when the ball landed in a specific spot. O’Shannessy then presented data for winners and forcing errors that came from the right side of the court versus the left side.“He was so good at absorbing all of this information and not rejecting it,” said O’Shannessy, who is also director of Brain Game Tennis, a strategy and analytics website. “His openness and willingness to just ask questions, anything to find an advantage, was key. His talking about it in the tennis world gave it a lot of legitimacy.”When the U.S. Open starts, McDonald will review the scouting reports provided by the U.S.T.A.“I think you’ve got to keep things as simple as possible,” he said. “You’ve got to keep some human element and instinct. Bottom line for me is I only look at a couple different areas.”Mat Cloer, who coached McDonald and is associate head coach for the University of Florida men’s tennis team, added: “It comes back to understanding the player you’re working with and how they absorb information. What information do you need to provide? That’s where the art of coaching comes into play.“If used properly, analytics can be game changing and eye opening.” More

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      in Basket

      Liberty Reflect on a Season of Changes

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      Under a first-year coach, the young team dealt with injuries and inconsistency before losing in the first round of the W.N.B.A. playoffs to the reigning champion Chicago Sky.Two words echoed among the Liberty’s players in the days before the start of the W.N.B.A. season: “defense” and “identity.”They said they needed to get better on defense. (And they did do that.)They said they wanted to be known as a tough and winning team. (They won, but not as much as they had hoped.)Then two new words forced their way into the Liberty vocabulary during a season of injuries, comebacks and losses: “adversity” and “resilience.”“Being along for the ride through a lot of the adversity that we faced this season is something that I’ll definitely learn from,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu said.She continued: “It’s just helped me understand what it takes to win, and sometimes those wins weren’t pretty, but we found a way.”The Liberty’s season ended Tuesday with a first-round playoff loss to the Chicago Sky, the No. 2 seed and the league’s defending champions. The best-of-three series, like the Liberty’s season, showed the team’s promise, and its pitfalls. On Thursday, as several players and Coach Sandy Brondello reflected on the year, they praised one another for persevering but wished that they hadn’t needed to be so resilient.“We saw glimpses of just how great we can be regardless of what was going on, regardless of injury, regardless of record, regardless of just really any kind of obstacle that we were dealing with,” said Betnijah Laney, who missed most of the season because of a knee injury.She added: “And still being able to make that playoff push was really good for us. And just imagine if we had all of that the entire season where we would’ve ended up: We’d probably still be playing right now.”The Liberty opened the season with a tight win at home over the Connecticut Sun, then plunged into a seven-game losing streak. They lost both Laney and Jocelyn Willoughby to injuries during the streak, a blow for a team hoping to make its name on defense and toughness. Brondello said Laney, a 2021 All-Star, was the team’s toughest player and Willoughby was one of its best defenders. Other players were in and out of the lineup all season with a variety of maladies, including a concussion, a hamstring injury and a chin laceration.It was difficult to build chemistry, which is important for every team but especially a young one with a new head coach. Brondello was in her first season with the Liberty after eight seasons with the Phoenix Mercury, a veteran team that won a championship in her first season there in 2014. She said coaching the Liberty had required more teaching and patience, but she did not have to deal with anything that she had not seen before.Before the season, Brondello said she hoped to build a tough, defensive team with an “aggressive mentality.” The Liberty were that kind of team at times — when they went on a 13-0 run to seal a Game 1 playoff victory against the Sky in Chicago — but their inconsistency cost them. A 16-0 Sky run in the fourth quarter of the decisive Game 3 in Brooklyn pushed a victory out of reach.“They need to feel pressure,” Brondello said of her team’s young players, adding that she would look to add more experienced players during the off-season.“We’re just a few pieces off,” she said.Ionescu, 24, who was named to her first All-Star team this year, was the team’s top scorer with 17.4 points per game and led the Liberty with 6.3 assists per game. Forward Natasha Howard, a past defensive player of the year, led the Liberty in rebounds (7.3) and steals (1.3) per game. Ionescu, who had two triple-doubles this season, was just behind Howard with 7.1 rebounds per game. More