Coaches and Managers

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Who Is Afghanistan's Soccer Team Playing For?

      by

      BELEK, Turkey — Anoush Dastgir may be the hardest-working man in soccer, but by Saturday, his job had taken a toll.Dastgir, the coach of Afghanistan’s men’s national team, was sitting in an empty restaurant at the hotel where he and his team were preparing for an exhibition match against Indonesia. It was 11 p.m., and Dastgir was battling what sounded like a heavy cold. Which wasn’t surprising, given he now had a dozen jobs to do.Coaching a national soccer team is tough enough anywhere, but coaching Afghanistan has long had unique challenges.It is one of the world’s poorest countries and a place where civil war and Taliban rule once kept the national team from playing a game for almost two decades. The country is considered so unsafe, in fact, that FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has long banned its teams from playing at home. Most of the time, that hardly mattered: Afghanistan is ranked 152nd in the world. And it has never qualified for a major tournament.Still, circumstances got even harder over the summer, when the Taliban swept back into Kabul, the Afghan government collapsed and its president, Ashraf Ghani — not to mention tens of thousands of his countrymen and women — fled the country.Afghanistan’s coach, Anoush Dastgir. He arranged his team’s friendly in Turkey on his own, and appealed to FIFA to help pay for it.Dastgir lost access to part of his team and half his staff in the chaos. Two staff members are now in refugee camps in Qatar. Two others are in Afghanistan, eager to leave. His roster is populated almost entirely by Afghan refugees, or the sons of refugees, who have found shelter in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Sweden and beyond over the years, fleeing the various conflicts that have afflicted Afghanistan since the 1980s. But a few still spend time in Afghanistan, and this year even doing that became a concern.One of Dastgir’s most important players, Noor Husin, who left for Britain when he was six, was in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in July as the Taliban approached. “I was terrified to be honest,” he said. “Because every day there was news, they’re getting closer, they’re in the outskirts of the city. And I was thinking, surely not. You just didn’t think it was going to happen.”Husin managed to get to Kabul and scramble out of the country, but he — like many of his teammates — thought the national team was finished. “Everyone thought, this is the end, the end of everything,” he said.Dastgir, though, was determined to keep it alive, to have it continue to serve, he said, as a rare symbol of unity in a country often divided along ethnic or linguistic lines. So a few weeks ago, he picked up the phone and arranged a friendly match — the first since the Taliban took over — against Indonesia. That was the easy part. He then had to find a site for the game, arrange flights and visas for players and source coronavirus tests for everyone. With the Afghan soccer federation’s bank account frozen, Dastgir successfully petitioned FIFA for help financing the trip..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}With no kit man, Dastgir also had to ship 450 pounds of training gear himself, and then persuade his brother-in-law to help him wash it. He bought soccer balls, arranged referees and — without a communications team — promoted the game on his private social media accounts. He even negotiated a broadcasting contract to make sure the maximum number of people back in Afghanistan could watch the match. And then, with all that done, he still had to find time to coach the team.But as midnight neared in the hotel restaurant on Saturday, there was still one important issue to resolve: Which flag would the team fly?A Young LeaderAt 31, Dastgir is one of the youngest coaches in world soccer. Born in Kabul, he escaped the country’s civil war with his family shortly after Soviet forces left Afghanistan in 1989. He was just a few months old, and grew up in Pakistan and then India before settling in the Netherlands.In Europe, he learned Dutch and was scouted by a leading club, NEC Nijmegen. He was eventually called up for the Afghan national team but appeared in a handful of games before a knee injury ended his playing career.Afghan players at training in Belek, Turkey, and Faysal Sheyesteh, whose many tattoos include one of a helicopter and a fighter jet raining red hearts on Kabul’s skyline.“My coaches said, ‘You have to start coaching,’ because as a player I was kind of leader of the team,” he said. His first opportunity to lead Afghanistan came in 2016, when a foreign coach didn’t turn up for a game amid a contract dispute.“The players said, ‘I think Anoush can handle it,’” Dastgir recalled. He lost that game but the team had played well. The next time the post came open, in 2018, he was given the job..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}By then, he was on the hunt for Afghan players. Many were discovered among the vast Afghan diaspora, refugees and their children spread around the world. When a match against Palestine in Kabul was arranged in 2018, the first international game to be played in Afghanistan in years, Dastgir called in many of his discoveries.“I wanted to have these players in Afghanistan to feel the country, to see the people, because most of them are born outside the country,” he said. “So if you tell them play for your country, they are like, ‘What is that?’”Even now, the team’s place as a visible multicultural institution shows up in training sessions.Instructions were shouted out in Dutch and Pashto. Encouragement was offered in German, Dari and English. Sometimes, Dastgir switched languages midsentence. “My first captain is Tajik,” he said. “My second captain is Pashtun. My third captain is Hazara.” Two of his players, the brothers Adam and David Najem, were born in New Jersey.Between bus rides, hotel down time and fans’ cheering the players’ names, the week had the feel of any international match.Still, as the match neared, the questions of the flag and the anthem remained unresolved. This was not a decision to be taken lightly. The Taliban’s white flag, with the Shahada — the Muslim declaration of faith — printed on it, has replaced the green, red and black tricolor over Afghanistan’s presidential palace. And as the Taliban have instituted a broad ban on music, the national anthem has effectively been outlawed.Dastgir knew that playing it and flying the old flag would be controversial; the country’s men’s cricket team was rebuked by a Taliban leader after doing so at the Twenty20 World Cup. He knew his choice might cost him his job or worse.“I’m not afraid of getting fired,” Dastgir said. “I’m the head coach of the national team of 37 million Afghans. I’m not the national team coach of the Taliban regime, or the regime of Ghani. We never did it for the government. We did it for the people.”Cheers Far From HomeNo one in Afghanistan’s camp was sure if any supporters would actually come to watch them play in Belek, a coastal town near Antalya.Stadium officials worried about coronavirus restrictions were assuaged when Dastgir agreed to pay for security out of his own pocket. There was also the issue of whether the Turkish police might prove to be a deterrent. At least 300,000 Afghan refugees and migrants have found shelter in Turkey in recent years, and many are undocumented. But as the daylight faded and kickoff approached, hundreds of fans lined up outside the stadium gate.Afghanistan’s game against Indonesia had been arranged on short notice. A late goal delivered a 1-0 victory, and set off celebrations behind the goal and in the stands.“I want to show I am Afghan,” said Mursal, an 18-year-old student wrapped in a large Afghan flag but wary enough to decline to give her last name. She had fled to Turkey four years ago, after her father was killed in Afghanistan, and had found few opportunities to wave the Afghan flag since she arrived. “It’s our flag. You don’t have another flag. Just this flag, and no one can change it.”Six hundred supporters — the limit agreed upon with stadium officials — soon streamed in, filling the stadium’s one long grandstand.A few minutes before kickoff, the teams lined up at midfield. In front of them, two of Afghanistan’s substitutes unfurled a large green, red and black flag, the one Dastgir had carried with him to Belek. The anthem played, a moment beamed to millions of Afghans back home. No one was there to take the traditional prematch photo: The squad’s official photographer escaped to Portugal months ago.The game was frantic, soundtracked by the constant noise of the Afghan fans. Dastgir, dressed all in black, calmly gave tactical instructions. Late in the second half, he summoned Omid Popalzay, a Dutch-raised midfielder last seen playing in Poland’s fourth tier. In the 85th minute, a few moments after entering the game as a substitute, Popalzay scored. Minutes later, the final whistle blew. Afghanistan had won, and the fans erupted with joy.One fan jumped 12 feet down onto the running track surrounding the field hoping to get a selfie, but he was intercepted by the police and frog-marched back by his neck. One player, Norlla Amiri, climbed onto the shoulders of a teammate so his infant son could be passed down to him.Norlla Amiri climbed onto a teammate’s shoulders to collect his young son during the celebrations.Other fans threw their cellphones to the players, asking for selfies. Many wanted pictures with Faysal Shayesteh, a 30-year-old midfielder who has had a globe-trotting professional career since moving to the Netherlands as a boy.Nearly all Afghan fans knew Shayesteh because of his tattoos, including the one across his chest that shows Kabul’s skyline underneath a fighter jet and an attack helicopter, each bombarding the city with red hearts. Above his left breast were two GPS coordinates: The first is for Hengelo, the city in eastern Holland where he grew up. The other is Kabul, where he was born.“If I talk about it I get emotional,” he said, holding back tears. “Because I know what the people in Afghanistan are going through. And I know this is the only thing that makes them happy, winning a game for the national team. This is the only thing they have, so I’m very happy.”Dastgir watched it all unfold from the back, filming some of it on his phone to post on his Instagram account. No one had done more to make the moment happen than him. More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in Basket

      New Black N.B.A. Coaches Wonder Why It Took So Long to Get a Shot

      by

      The N.B.A.’s coaching ranks have long been dominated by white men, but a demand from Black players for more diversity may be changing things.Jamahl Mosley has traveled the world for basketball.He played for professional teams in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Finland and South Korea. He was a player development coach with the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets when Carmelo Anthony was there. He was an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the four long years after LeBron James left for Miami. Dirk Nowitzki’s final years with the Mavericks and the rise of Luka Doncic? Mosley was there, too, as an assistant in Dallas.He spent 16 seasons on N.B.A. coaching staffs, developing his skills and hoping for his big break to be a head coach. He had heeded his mother’s advice about playing college basketball for a Black coach, to learn leadership skills from someone who looked like him. The doubts about his ever getting that kind of job only surfaced in recent years when he interviewed for — and was turned down for — seven N.B.A. head coaching jobs.“Because you knew you were qualified,” Mosley said. “You knew you had interviewed well. You knew that you had the ability to do it.”The N.B.A.’s coaching and executive ranks have long been dominated by white men, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black. But this year, Mosley became part of an unusual off-season, in which seven of eight head coaching vacancies were filled by Black candidates. Five of them, including Mosley, who was hired by the Orlando Magic in July, are first-time head coaches. The others are Wes Unseld Jr. of the Washington Wizards, Willie Green of the New Orleans Pelicans, Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics and Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers. Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks and Nate McMillan of the Atlanta Hawks had been head coaches elsewhere before.“If this was 15 years ago, we probably don’t get these positions,” Green said.The uptick — 13 of the league’s 30 coaches are now Black and two others are not white — came during a broader national conversation about race and hiring practices. Black players harnessed their voices to seek change that they felt was overdue.“This is a stain on the league that no one can deny,” Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, said in an interview, “and we’ve got to continue to do better.”‘There’s a natural cultural bond’Long before he became the coach of the Celtics, Udoka was a self-described student of the game. As a teenager in Portland, Ore., he would record games that featured some of his favorite college players, standouts like Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten and Lamond Murray of the University of California, Berkeley. Then he would head to the playground to mimic their moves. (Udoka still has a stack of VHS tapes at home.)“There’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players,” Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“I wasn’t the most athletic or skilled guy,” Udoka said, “so I really had to use my brain for an advantage. I always thought through the game a certain way, and I think some coaches saw that in me, too.”Udoka grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, went to a Black high school and had Black coaches. He was not especially conscious of race, he said, since being in that environment was all he knew. But his high school coach “preached family and togetherness and a brotherhood,” Udoka said, and he carried those lessons with him.Udoka was bouncing around the N.B.A. as a defense-minded forward when he got what he described as “the coaching bug.” He helped found an Amateur Athletic Union team in Portland that included Terrence Ross and Terrence Jones, future N.B.A. players. Udoka also participated in coaching clinics hosted by the N.B.A. players’ union. After retiring, he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2012 as an assistant under Gregg Popovich.The Celtics job opened in June when the team announced that Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for eight seasons, would be its new president of basketball operations. Jaylen Brown, one of the Celtics’ young stars, said in a recent interview with The Undefeated that he had told the team to hire a Black candidate. Representation was important to him, he said.Udoka, left, talked with Marcus Smart during a preseason game this month.Winslow Townson/Associated Press“Players were asking and demanding and wanting to see more guys who looked like them,” Udoka said. He added: “In coaching, I think there’s been a shift from Xs and Os and game plans to the value that’s placed on relationships. And there’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players.”Udoka said he was not suggesting that white coaches couldn’t bond with Black players. He cited Popovich, who is white, as someone who has long stressed the importance of relationships. But for a new coach on a new team, it would be naïve to believe that race was not a factor.“Basketball is mainly minority-based,” Celtics point guard Marcus Smart said in an interview. “So having a minority as a coach, I can connect with him. I can say things to him, or he can say things to me, and we get it. Whereas it’s different when you don’t. You have to try to figure out, OK, how can I meet them halfway?”Still, a coach is a coach: Udoka suspended Smart for the team’s preseason finale for breaking an unspecified team rule.‘This decision is coming fast’About three years ago, Rick Carlisle, as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, was hearing from an increasing number of young assistants of diverse backgrounds who felt they were not getting a fair shake at head coaching jobs.The league and the coaches’ association soon began the N.B.A. Coaches Equality Initiative, a program aimed at developing young coaches and ensuring that qualified candidates are visible when jobs arise. Since 2019, there have been numerous workshops, summits, panel discussions and networking opportunities.David Vanterpool, left, was passed over for the head coaching job in Minnesota after the team fired Ryan Saunders, right.David Zalubowski/Associated PressAnd there is an app, a coaches database that was unveiled last year. It now includes profiles of about 300 coaches, whom the league’s power brokers — owners, general managers, team presidents — can access, Carlisle said. Coaches can upload their histories, their philosophies and even their interview clips. Think of it is as Bumble for the N.B.A. coaching set. But it is all part of a larger mission, said Oris Stuart, the chief people and inclusion officer for the league.“We have ongoing conversations with our teams about the importance of making sure that, as they’re making decisions, the process is inclusive,” Stuart said in an interview. “We focus on the importance of making sure that the best talent is considered, that we make a wide reach and that we go beyond the pre-established networks that people are working from.”But within the past year, the hiring processes for two white coaches — including the one that landed Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers — have been criticized for not appearing to be inclusive.The Minnesota Timberwolves fired Ryan Saunders as their coach in February and announced his replacement, Chris Finch, who is white, on the same day. The Timberwolves chose not to promote the team’s associate head coach, David Vanterpool, who is Black, which would have been typical after a midseason firing. (Vanterpool is now an assistant for the Nets.)The perception was that there was no way the Timberwolves could have seriously considered any Black candidates given their accelerated timeline, said Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union. The timing of the change, she added, “got under a lot of people’s skin.”Within days, Carlisle and David Fogel, the executive director of the coaches’ association, released a statement in which the organization expressed its “disappointment” with Minnesota’s search, saying that it is “our responsibility to point out when an organization fails to conduct a thorough and transparent search of candidates from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.”Rick Carlisle expressed some trepidation before he accepted the offer of head coach from the Indiana Pacers in June.Doug Mcschooler/Associated PressBut just a few months later, in June, Carlisle accepted the Pacers job after what appeared to be an abbreviated search. Indiana had fired Nate Bjorkgren earlier in the month after just one season, and they had interviewed only one other candidate when they offered Carlisle the job. Chad Buchanan, Indiana’s general manager, said in an interview that the team wanted an experienced coach and that Carlisle had unexpectedly become available after he resigned from the Dallas Mavericks, which he had coached for 13 seasons and led to a championship in 2011.Buchanan sought to assure Carlisle by telling him that the Pacers had interviewed 17 candidates, of whom eight were Black and one was female, before hiring Bjorkgren eight months earlier.“This was something I was concerned about,” Carlisle said, “but when they gave me that information, I was comfortable moving forward.”Washington Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. was known as the Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game.Sarah Stier/Getty Images‘It’s more of a systemic issue’As an economics major at Johns Hopkins University, Wes Unseld Jr. thought he would get into investment banking. But for two summers, before and after graduating in 1997, he interned for the Wizards. His father, also Wes, who was synonymous with the franchise from his Hall of Fame playing days, had moved into the front office as the team’s general manager after seven seasons as its head coach. The elder Unseld invited his son to learn the ropes, just in case the financial world was not for him.“If you’re going to be in this business, you’ve got to learn the business,” Wes Unseld Jr. recalled his father telling him. “So I’m thinking, OK, I’ll be around basketball. ‘No, you’re going to intern in every department.’ Community relations, public relations, marketing, sales — you name it, I did it.”Unseld, who was a very good Division III player for Johns Hopkins, soon realized that he could not leave the game behind, and he became one of the many unsung, behind-the-scenes fixtures in the N.B.A. After eight seasons as a scout for Washington, he spent the next 16 as an assistant for various teams around the league. He refined offenses. He built defenses. With the Wizards, he was known as The Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game. In Denver, he helped shape Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into stars.Yet Unseld could not land a head coaching job. He said he was never sure if his race was a factor. “When an opportunity doesn’t pan out, sometimes it’s easy to ask, ‘Was it that?’” Unseld said. “And it may have been. It’s difficult to tell.”Willie Green, the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans, spoke to reporters at a news conference last month.Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesAfter a record 14 Black coaches were manning benches for teams at the start of the 2012-13 season, those numbers dipped in subsequent years, showing how tenuous progress can be. Unseld said the N.B.A. is “a network business like any other business.”“If you’re not connected to the decision makers, it can be difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s an overt way of not interviewing or not giving people of color a chance, but maybe they just don’t have that network to pull from. It’s more of a systemic issue.”Roberts commended the coaches’ association for working to address that issue in recent seasons. But the real power, she said, has come from the players themselves.“A happy team is probably a more successful team,” she said. “And if the players think management is thumbing its nose at their articulated concerns about a coaching staff, then what’s their motivation to stay?”In New Orleans, Willie Green often thinks of his uncle, Gary Green, who coached him when he was growing up in Detroit, and who imbued him with the fundamentals. After several years as an assistant with Golden State and Phoenix, Green said he felt a heightened sense of responsibility.“We have to be caretakers of these opportunities,” he said.In Boston, Garrett Jackson, a former player on Udoka’s A.A.U. team, is now one of Udoka’s video coordinators. And Mosley got his first win for the Magic with a narrow victory against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was gifted the game ball, then got back to business.“It’s like anything,” he said. “You just put your head down and do the work.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      Outside Hotlines for Athletes Are a Sign of Strained Trust in Sports

      by

      From women’s soccer to college sports, athletes have lost faith in leagues and organizations handling abuse and other complaints.As revelation after devastating revelation emerged last month about soccer executives ignoring reports of male coaches sexually abusing or harassing female players, the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association hired an outside company to provide an anonymous online platform for athletes to report abuse and other concerns.Three days later, the N.W.S.L. rolled its own anonymous hotline, set up by a different company, to also allow anyone with knowledge of any misconduct to report issues anonymously.Then four days after that, the league’s franchise in the state of Washington, OL Reign, made its own agreement — with the same company that the league hired — to report misconduct and policy violations at the club level.While the flurry of activity stemmed from the gravest crisis to hit the top professional women’s soccer league in North America, the decisions to rely on anonymous third-party hotlines were not made in a vacuum.In the last few years, the companies that specialize in third-party hotlines have seen a surge in deals with sports organizations of many types, including the N.F.L. Players Association, P.G.A. of America, U.F.C. Gym, U.S.A. Gymnastics and a slew of university athletic programs. The latest deal, reached on Monday, was with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.The platforms, while empowering athletes, staffers or anyone connected with a sport to lodge a complaint, have also become emblematic of a deepening loss of faith in the informal and sometimes clubby methods that coaches and leagues have deployed to address allegations of misconduct.Athletes, advocates and the companies themselves caution that these efforts depend on the willingness of the sports entities to take complaints seriously. They also stress that the victim of an assault should always go first to the police and law enforcement agencies.But given the disillusionment over how institutions have ignored or covered up rampant abuse, doping and other issues, they are not surprised by the push to establish a record, especially when a complaint may not rise to the level of a crime or may need more review.“We tell people, we’re not for 911 emergencies — this is for reporting unethical and unsafe behavior, and not for reporting laws that have been broken,” said Raymond Dunkle, the president of Red Flag Reporting in Akron, Ohio, whose sports clients include baseball and basketball youth and adult leagues and, because of a more recent controversy, jiu-jitsu gyms. “The idea is to empower people to speak up, anonymously, if they see anything unsafe. You can very sincerely say my door is open but people sometimes sincerely fear management.”Fans held up signs supporting athletes at a game between the Red Bulls and Inter Miami on Oct. 9 in Harrison, N.J.Dennis Schneidler/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe trend in sports mirrors what has happened in the corporate world since the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which strengthened corporate governance and established a hotline reporting option for employees, said Thomas O’Keefe, the president and chief executive of Syntrio. O’Keefe’s company owns Lighthouse Services, a compliance training and reporting hotline company based near Philadelphia that was hired recently by the N.W.S.L. players’ union.This is how these online platforms generally work: Say an athlete has a complaint or a concern. The athlete would use a mobile device or computer to report the issue anonymously, and upload any documentation. The platform would automatically send the complaint to several people — never just one — like a human resources manager, general counsel and financial officer. The athlete, still anonymously, would be able to correspond with one of those recipients designated by the company, who could provide guidance or more information until the matter is resolved or at least recorded.“There’s a hierarchy of people in any organization that can see the report and subsequent follow-up,” O”Keefe said. “There is no way for people to change it or edit it.”For sports entities, the annual cost can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. The N.W.S.L. players’ union, for instance, is paying about $50 a month, said Meghann Burke, its executive director.Burke said the association, a new affiliate of the AFL-CIO, had initially asked the league to include an anonymous third-party hotline in its anti-harassment policy, adopted earlier this year, because of “the lack of trust the players have in the league handling these complaints.”But the league demurred, so she said she “literally started Googling anonymous hotline options” before getting assurances from associates about Lighthouse.Now, just two weeks after finalizing the deal with Lighthouse, Burke is receiving reports, and already seeing patterns.“It’s not a panacea, but it’s certainly one tool in the toolbox,” Burke said.The hotline certainly got the attention of the league’s powers. Within a week, both the N.W.S.L. and the OL Reign had announced separate deals with Real Response, a company in Charlotte.“We understand that we must undertake a significant systemic and cultural transformation to address the issues required to become the type of league that N.W.S.L. players and their fans deserve and regain the trust of both,” the league said in a news release.Even though having multiple hotlines for players may seem redundant, some issues — like financial abuses, business practices, or health concerns — may be more germane to a specific level, such as a club, according to the companies.Real Response was founded in 2015 by David Chadwick, a former college basketball player at Rice and Valparaiso. When his Rice team was reeling from allegations of racist behavior by its athletic director, he struggled to figure out who and what to believe. There was no obvious way, he said, for an athlete to immediately raise questions or get feedback from the administration on issues such as drugs, hazing, inappropriate relationships or mental health.“We can’t wait for those end-of-year surveys; we need a mechanism in real time,” he said.Real Response now works with more than 100 college athletic departments, with recent additions including Syracuse, Wichita State and Tulane. The company also has been hired by the N.F.L.P.A., U.S.A. Gymnastics and USADA.Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a lawyer and former Olympic swimming champion, cautioned that while she supported the concept, “the question is whether any third-party hotlines are given the authority to do the investigation, whether members of the sports organization are required to be cooperative, and whether their findings are to be recognized and enforced by the sport organization.”Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson, a decorated and recently retired hockey player who has frequently challenged USA Hockey, the national governing body of the sport, on gender equity issues, said if her sport’s fledgling professional leagues ever embraced these hotlines, there could be potential benefits — if done right.“It’s a right step in the right direction, but there are too many people in positions of influence and power that don’t do the right thing,” said Lamoureux-Davidson, who, with her twin and fellow three-time Olympian, Monique Lamoureux-Morando, now has a foundation to support disadvantaged children. “Each pro league, all the N.G.B.s, they all have policies and procedures, but what’s the execution? How well does it protect the athlete? Sometimes it’s not policies but the personnel.” More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in Basket

      The Knicks Are Ready for a Sequel. The Good Kind.

      by

      @media (min-width: 1024px) {
      #story #fullBleedHeaderContent header > div,
      #story #fullBleedHeaderContent header figure > div {
      background-color: #1165ad;
      }
      }

      What is this feeling, so sudden and new?A surprisingly successful run last season helped the Knicks recapture the city’s imagination, much like the team had done in 1990s New York. That era of Knicks basketball is so beloved that it has spawned documentaries, books and endless nostalgia, even though it ended without a championship. The heydays of Patrick Ewing, John Starks and Latrell Sprewell re-established the team as a marquee franchise, a luster that has eroded over the last two decades of mostly despair for the tortured fan base.“After so many years of the Knickerbockers being an accident waiting to happen, you didn’t really watch them — you rubbernecked them, like you would a fender bender on the West Side Highway,” said Steve Somers, the popular radio host for WFAN. “Now, the Knickerbockers are generating some new, reborn excitement and enthusiasm.”These Knicks will attempt to build on last year’s success as they begin the season at home against the Boston Celtics on Wednesday. They’ll likely be one of two types of follow-ups: ideally, “The Godfather: Part II” — a quality sequel that builds on the original — or “The Godfather: Part III” — a rudderless ship.“It’s certainly not easy to do one year, but the second year is where that work ethic, the culture comes into place,” said Chris Dudley, who was a reserve center for the Knicks from 1997 to 2000. “Because too often you see teams have a great year and then they kind of forget a little bit how hard it was to get there and they slide back.”But if there’s one person intimately familiar with trying to sustain great play in New York, it is the man shepherding this iteration of Knicks basketball and restoring the franchise to the glory days Dudley saw up close.“There’s a strong connection from this Knicks team to when I played there in Tom Thibodeau,” Dudley said, referring to the Knicks head coach. “He fit right into that mentality of: ‘Hey, we’ve got a job to do. Let’s get it done.’ That’s the work ethic, the culture.”Thibodeau was an assistant coach for the Knicks from 1996 to 2003, meaning that as he reveled in the rise of an empire he also felt the embers when it began to crash and burn. In his first season as head coach last year, Thibodeau lifted the Knicks’ defense to fourth in the league from 23rd. The Knicks opted for a more physical style rather than finesse — a Thibodeau staple, and one Knicks fans grew to appreciate both last year and when it came from the sharp elbows of Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley in the 1990s.“Culture” for a team is, as the typically no-nonsense Thibodeau noted to reporters after a preseason practice, an ambiguous buzzword. Whatever the best word is, the Knicks have begun to shift the narrative about themselves in relatively short order after decades of futility.They have a young star in Julius Randle, a budding star in RJ Barrett, and dynamic up-and-comers in Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin. This off-season, the Knicks signed quality veterans in Kemba Walker and Evan Fournier to bolster their stable of experienced role players, like Taj Gibson and Alec Burks.Kemba Walker, left, and Evan Fournier, center, should relieve some of the offensive pressure on Julius Randle, right.Adam Hunger/Associated Press“What is culture? Culture is what you do every day,” Thibodeau said. “It’s not any one particular thing. It’s how you approach everything. Draft. Free agency. Trades. Player development. Practice. Travel. Summer program. It’s not blitzing the pick-and-roll.”Toppin is entering his second season as the rare Knick who has only known playing for a winning version of the team. “Our culture is competing every single day to help the next person,” Toppin said. “White Team is helping Blue Team. Blue Team is helping Green Team. Everybody is helping each other in practice so that, when it comes to the game, everyone is ready.”There is an organizational cohesiveness — at least outwardly — that was lacking before Thibodeau and Leon Rose, the team president since March 2020, took the lead.“It just goes to show you when you put direction in, and then you get a quality coach that stresses defense and unselfishness, those are things that help get wins,” said Rick Brunson, who appeared in 69 games for the Knicks between 1998 and 2001. “And then you put a product out there, it becomes magical.”James L. Dolan, the team’s mercurial owner with a reputation for impulsive and often detrimental meddling, has mostly stayed out of the limelight. Thibodeau said Dolan “has given us everything we’ve asked for.”Among the moves the Knicks made this summer: signing Randle to a long-term extension instead of letting a looming free agency saga play out, and inking Walker to a bargain deal after the Oklahoma City Thunder bought him out. The last time the Knicks had a young All-Star to build around in Kristaps Porzingis, they unexpectedly traded him in 2019 for a return that, even at the time, seemed paltry. None of the players the Knicks acquired in that deal are still with the team.Now the Knicks have a new challenge: to prove they’re not a fluke.“Consistency and sustaining what made you win in the first place is always a challenge,” said Stan Van Gundy, a TNT analyst who has coached four N.B.A. teams. His brother, Jeff, was the coach of the Knicks when they last made the finals, in 1999. “But I think the way it needs to be done, and certainly the way Tom will do it, is you continue to do all of those things that got you there in the first place.”There are plenty of reasons to believe the Knicks’ ceiling is even higher this season: They’ve given Randle more offensive weapons (Walker, Fournier) to take the pressure off him after the team struggled on that end last year. Mitchell Robinson, the 23-year-old center, will, if healthy, add another dimension as a shot blocking rim-runner, which the Knicks missed in the playoffs against the Atlanta Hawks. And with two other Eastern Conference contending teams in flux as a result of a possible trade (Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers) or an unvaccinated player (the Nets’ Kyrie Irving), there is a real opportunity for the Knicks to level up.Still, as Ernie Grunfeld, the architect of the Knicks throughout most of the 1990s, can attest, “You need to win.”“New York is about winning. And they’re doing that,” he added, “New York wants a team that plays hard and leaves everything out on the floor and plays together and plays basketball the right way.”That’s what his Dot Com Bubble-era Knicks teams gave the crowds at Madison Square Garden, he said.“It was electric. It was a great place to be,” Grunfeld said. “We were competitive every night. We were a team that other teams feared playing against. They were celebrities everywhere. It was a happening place in New York at the time.”As much as many N.B.A. observers pay tribute to the blue-collar persona of Thibodeau’s teams, his coaching record is more complicated. He’s had a history of quickly wearing out his welcome and not being able to build off success.Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau had success in his first season, but he quickly wore out his welcome in past coaching forays.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressThibodeau led a resurrection in 2010-11 in his first year as a head coach of the Chicago Bulls. They had the best record in the N.B.A. (62-20) but lost to the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals in five games. It ended up being the only time the team advanced past the second round in five seasons under Thibodeau. While it was the second most successful stretch in Bulls history, it was marred by injuries and Thibodeau’s clashes with the front office.Then came a roller-coaster tenure in Minnesota, during which Jimmy Butler, then the team’s best player, became alienated and demanded to be traded. Thibodeau was sent packing in the middle of his third season. A common criticism in both locations was that Thibodeau’s gruff style grated on players and management alike and that he tended to overplay his stars, leaving them tired down the stretch. Last year, Randle was No. 1 in the league in minutes played. Old habits die hard.So do old reputations.The burst of optimism surrounding this team echoes that of the 2012-13 Knicks led by Carmelo Anthony, who finished the regular season with a 54-28 record and won a playoff series. In the off-season afterward, their biggest move was trading for Andrea Bargnani, who played poorly, and the Knicks missed the playoffs. Phil Jackson took over the team the next year, ushering in a new period of inefficacy for the team.The current Knicks seem different. There is, for now, front office and roster continuity. The off-season didn’t feature any impulsive trades or long-term contracts for past-their-prime players that would limit cap flexibility. Players like Toppin are showing real development, as was indicated in the Knicks’ preseason opener when he showed off his ball handling. The Knicks should be better.But if they’re not? If last season was a flash in the pan — a Penn Station-size tease — the path forward for the Knicks becomes much murkier. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

      U.S. Soccer's Top Women's League Faces Down Abusers, Uncertainty

      by

      The players in the National Women’s Soccer League, tired of abuse and harassment, are speaking up and seizing power. But the way forward for the troubled league isn’t clear.In the top professional soccer league for women in North America, everyone understood that the power primarily rested with men: the team owners, executives and coaches who controlled the athletes and their careers.While the National Women’s Soccer League is home to celebrities like Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan from the World Cup-winning U.S. national team, the backbone of the labor comes from unheralded players who earn meager wages and, until now, were reluctant to speak out and disrupt a league that is likely their only shot at playing professional sports in the United States.Yet a wave of allegations in recent months — that coaches sexually abused or harassed players as executives looked the other way — has highlighted a power dynamic that threatened the safety of women, allowing misconduct to go unchecked and abusers to find new jobs around the league.And while there has been a burst of outrage, and top leaders — again, mostly male — have promised reform, many players fear that the basic power imbalance will remain even as they continue to speak out in a way that evokes the #MeToo movement in Hollywood and other industries.“If this isn’t a shut-up-and-listen-to-these-players moment, I don’t really know what is,” Kaylyn Kyle, a former player for the Orlando Pride, said while providing commentary on the broadcast of a game Thursday. “Devastated, disgusted, but I’m not shocked, and that’s the problem. I mean, I played in this league where this was normalized. That’s not OK.”When several games were played on Wednesday night, players stopped their matches at the six-minute mark to stand together in silent protest. The sixth minute represented the six years it took for a coach accused of sexual harassment and sexual coercion to be ousted from the league.The fallout is widespread. At least four coaches have been fired, including one for allegedly coercing a player to have sex with him and sexually harassing other players, and another after allegations of verbal abuse, which included ridiculing players. The league’s commissioner, Lisa Baird, has resigned under pressure after the league mishandled the abuse case of a coach who left one team amid serious accusations of sexual misconduct, only to land with another team and be celebrated for leading that franchise to championships.Front office executives have been forced out. Games were postponed at the players’ insistence. At least five investigations have been promised and no one can be sure what they will reveal.“Right now, as we look across the soccer landscape, packed with painful stories of sexual abuse, emotional abuse and team mismanagement, we, along with our peers, are suffering,” players from the Washington Spirit said in a statement earlier this week. Their former coach, Richie Burke, was fired last month after players accused him of verbal harassment.A Lack of ConsensusFans at a match between the Portland Thorns and the Houston Dash in Portland on Wednesday.Soobum Im/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe path forward for the league remains muddled at best.While the N.W.S.L. will resume a full schedule this weekend, it has been nearly paralyzed by the abuse scandal, with a glaring lack of trust among the players, owners and the league, according to interviews with more than a dozen people directly involved. Everyone wants someone to blame, and there is little apparent consensus about how to fix the N.W.S.L. and its problems.“People think of athletes as superhuman beings, particularly professional athletes, when actually they are incredibly vulnerable,” said Mary V. Harvey, an Olympic gold medalist, World Cup winner and former goalkeeper on the U.S. women’s national team who is now the chief executive of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. “You don’t want to complain and be the reason the league folds. There’s a massive power imbalance, and when you have power imbalance, that’s where these human rights violations happen.”Teams and the players’ union have publicly detailed their demands. The union this week tweeted that it wanted a mandatory suspension of anyone in a position of power who was being investigated for abuse. It also asked for more transparency in the investigations and a say in who is hired as the next commissioner.It’s a moment of reckoning for a sport that bounded into America’s consciousness when Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and their teammates on the U.S. women’s national team won the 1999 World Cup in front of a Rose Bowl packed with about 90,000 fans.Val Ackerman, commissioner of the Big East Conference and the former president of the W.N.B.A., said sports organizations should pay close attention to what is unfolding in women’s soccer.She called the N.W.S.L. situation “a wake-up call for our business,” and said it should prompt every sports entity to re-evaluate its policies and infrastructure. Sports leaders need to be especially mindful of safeguarding their employees, she said, in light of the continued gender imbalance in sports, with men often coaching and running women’s teams.At the start of this season, only one of the N.W.S.L.’s 10 teams was coached by a woman, and a majority of the owners and investors were men.“What’s sobering is that we are looking at the 50th anniversary of Title IX next year and 50 years later, we are still fighting for the equitable treatment of female athletes and a safe, respectful competition environment for female athletes,” Ackerman said, referring to the federal law that mandates gender equity in federally funded educational institutions. “It makes you wonder how far we’ve really come on the basics.”The current professional league is hardly a picture of strength or equity. Few N.W.S.L. teams are profitable. The minimum player salary is about $20,000, while it is at least three times that in Major League Soccer, the men’s professional league in the United States.Investigations have been promised by U.S. Soccer, the governing body of soccer in the United States; FIFA, the global governing body of the sport; the N.W.S.L. and the players’ union.Those inquiries will seek to answer how coaches accused of abuse were hired and were allowed to remain in the league and change teams without repercussions.Nadia Nadim, an Afghan-Danish player on Racing Louisville FC, said in a tweet last month that players should be ready to spark an uprising and follow through with it to force change because the sport’s officials have failed miserably at their jobs.“This league can be great, as we have the best players in the world,” she wrote. “We just need to get the idiots out, gain power and make this league as great as it CAN be.”A ‘Very Well Respected’ CoachPaul Riley won two league championships as coach of the North Carolina Courage after he left the Portland Thorns amid allegations of misconduct.Anne M. Peterson/Associated PressPaul Riley, the coach at the center of the minute-long protests at matches this week, rose from a youth soccer coach to become one of the highest-profile coaches in the women’s game, winning two championships in the N.W.S.L., with the North Carolina Courage.In 2015, three years before winning his first championship, Riley left the Portland Thorns N.W.S.L. team. The Thorns now say he was fired for cause, though the club made no such announcement at the time. Riley showed up months later coaching another N.W.S.L. team, the Western New York Flash. When the Flash, which eventually moved to North Carolina, announced the hiring, an executive of the team praised Riley for being “very well respected around the globe.”Last week, in a report in The Athletic, two former players said Riley abused players at will and that they had reported it to team management and the league. Riley denied most of the allegations to The Athletic, and did not respond to messages seeking comment.Sinead Farrelly, who played for Riley with the Philadelphia Independence in 2011 and then again with the Portland Thorns in 2014 and 2015, said Riley used his power as her coach to coerce her to have sex with him. Meleana Shim, who also played for the Thorns, said that after a night of drinking Riley pressured her and Farrelly to kiss each other. If they did so, the team would not have to run sprints the next day. Other players have accused Riley of making inappropriate comments.In September 2015, Shim emailed the owner of the Thorns, Merritt Paulson, as well as other team executives, about the kissing incident. She also emailed Jeff Plush, then the commissioner of the N.W.S.L.The next week, the Thorns announced that Riley would not coach the team the next season, thanking him for his service and making no mention of any misbehavior. In a statement this week, Steve Malik, the owner of the Courage, wrote that upon hiring Riley, he “assured that he was in good standing.”Riley, who was fired from the Courage last week, is now under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which oversees abuse in Olympic sports.After that firing, Baird, the commissioner of the N.W.S.L. and the former chief marketing officer of the United States Olympic Committee, resigned less than two years at the post. Under her leadership, the league implemented its first anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policy. But her efforts to protect players were seen by many of them as insufficient and, at times, negligent.“The league must accept responsibility for a process that failed to protect its own players from this abuse,” Morgan said in a Twitter post.The ongoing investigations are likely to scrutinize several coaches who recently have been removed from their posts.Burke, the former Washington Spirit coach, stepped down in August for “health reasons” just before a Washington Post report detailed accusations that he verbally abused players and was racially insensitive. He remained in the team’s front office until a league inquiry prompted his firing. Burke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Two other coaches — Christy Holly of Racing Louisville FC and Craig Harrington of the Utah Royals — also were ousted from their jobs in the last year amid whispers of toxic workplace cultures. Holly was fired in August “for cause,” as his team said, but it did not provide details. Holly did not return requests for comment.Harrington, who was fired by the Royals last year after being put on leave during an unspecified investigation, was soon hired to coach women’s soccer in Mexico. Harrington did not respond to an emailed request for comment.Yael Averbuch, a former N.W.S.L. player and the current interim general manager of Gotham FC, said abuse cases in the league existed and are ongoing partly because players don’t have a safe, confidential way to report abuse or harassment. So cases go unreported, or are reported but aren’t properly handled, she said, and players are afraid to make the accusations public because they want to keep their jobs.“As a player I don’t know if I ever had an H.R. department to go to,” Averbuch said. “These are small businesses, and this league was for a while very new.”Harvey, the former national team player, said firing abusive coaches just one step toward making the league a safer place. Abuse, to her dismay, is ingrained in the culture of women’s sports — and has been for as long as she can remember. A sea change is necessary, and that might take some time.“It starts with the culture,” she said. “If you have a culture that engenders respect toward women and women athletes, then things look entirely different.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      Seimone Augustus Found Her Voice Long Before Coaching

      by

      The first time Seimone Augustus realized what she was capable of wasn’t when, as a 14-year-old, she landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women next to the question, “Is She the Next Michael Jordan?”When Augustus, a W.N.B.A. legend who retired this year after 15 seasons, reflects on the moments that made her understand her potential, she thinks of the stands at Capitol High School in Baton Rouge, La. She led the team to back-to-back state titles, scoring 3,600 points and losing just seven games in four years.The school is at the center of the predominantly Black neighborhood where she grew up, a neighborhood she described as close-knit and full of “a bunch of people that you would never know who helped make my game the way it is.” With each win, though, the crowds that gathered to see Augustus play at the Capitol gymnasium started to look different.“The same white folks who, had we seen them driving down the street a year ago, would have been hitting the locks with their elbows and zooming through were suddenly embracing coming to the gym, wanting to experience whatever it is that they experienced while watching me play,” Augustus said.Only then did Augustus start to realize the kind of change her preternatural abilities on the court might enable her to push for off it. “I think it hit me then,” she said. “It was just a melting pot of people, the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in my life.”Augustus ran practice drills with Sparks forward Nneka Ogwumike in July.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesAugustus’s legacy as a player — a women’s basketball pioneer, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and the cornerstone of the four-time champion Minnesota Lynx, one of basketball’s great dynasties — isn’t in question. But she is also one of sports’ most forward-thinking and undersung activists. Now, as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Sparks, Augustus is working to help her players find the same solace and freedom that she did on the court and find ways to use their influence to advocate for themselves and their communities outside basketball.“How can I make this a safe space for you to just feel free and express yourself through basketball?” she asks them.Basketball has long served as that kind of refuge for Augustus.“Just being me was hard, to be honest,” she said, explaining that she was bullied in high school. “Every day walking down the hallway it was like: ‘She’s gay. She’s gay.’”Augustus’s parents and family supported her, but others were hostile. “You had parents coming up to my parents and saying, ‘Because your daughter is gay, she’s got my daughter feeling like she’s gay,’” Augustus said. “People I’ve never met in my life are blaming me for something that their child is now choosing to express.”At the same time, Augustus was racking up almost every accolade a high school basketball player could hope for — and trying to consider how the racist legacy of the Deep South community she grew up in would shape where she chose to play in college. Louisiana State University, her hometown school, did not employ a Black professor, Julian T. White, until 1971. “The whole recruiting process, I had so many people that were like, ‘Do not go there,’” she said.Ultimately, she decided to attend L.S.U. anyway: She wanted the chance both to stay close to home and to build a winning program instead of joining an established powerhouse like Tennessee or Connecticut. “I had a lot of elderly Black people that said, ‘Just to step on this campus was a lot for me, and I did that for you,’” Augustus said. “I think it helped give them a release. Like, at least we’re at peace enough to be able to enjoy this moment.”Those experiences laid the groundwork for Augustus’s transition to public-facing activism, which demanded self-assurance and sensitivity. Her first foray into advocacy was fittingly personal: She came out publicly in the L.G.B.T.Q. magazine The Advocate in May 2012, detailing her relationship with, and plans to marry, LaTaya Varner, who is now her wife.Augustus’s profile had never been higher, given that she had just led the Lynx to their first title, in 2011, and had been named the most valuable player of that year’s finals. But the decision was still risky. It would be years before the W.N.B.A. started a leaguewide L.G.B.T.Q. pride program, in 2014, and the timing was crucial since Minnesotans would vote on a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that November.“That was like the first time I actually stepped out and used my voice,” Augustus said. “I felt like I was at a place in my life where I was ready to be open with people. I don’t think it was a big surprise, but for the people that needed it, it really helped them. I had so many people that came over, like, ‘I was able to tell my mom after 40 years.’”She continued to speak to the news media about the issue, telling her own story as a rebuke to the proposed Minnesota amendment. It was defeated, and same-sex marriage became legal in all 50 states soon after Augustus and Varner were married in 2015.“When she came out in 2012 and then started doing so much intentional work in Minnesota around marriage equality, we saw Seimone and then other players within the W.N.B.A. kick off conversations that became really reminiscent of the athlete activism of the ’60s,” said Anne Lieberman, director of policy and programs at Athlete Ally.Those conversations were never more influential than in 2016, when the stars of the Lynx — including Augustus — began to publicly support the Black Lives Matter movement. They spoke out against police brutality and wore shirts during warm-ups that bore the movement’s slogan in the wake of the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling before Colin Kaepernick, for the same cause, made waves by taking a knee during the national anthem at N.F.L. games.For Augustus, both killings resonated deeply. She had spoken out about racial profiling by the police in suburban Minneapolis in 2012, where Castile was killed four years later; the corner store where Sterling was killed was the same one where she used to buy snacks when she was growing up in Baton Rouge.“Obviously, we’ve all been stopped by the police before,” Augustus said. “My dad has been in town in Minneapolis and gotten stopped by the police. That could have very well been my father or cousin or uncle or anybody.”The W.N.B.A. fined players for wearing the shirts, before rescinding the fines after player and public outcry. Four Lynx security guards, all off-duty police officers, walked out during a game in response to the players’ actions.“​​We had cops walk out on us and leave the Target Center wide open for people to just — if they wanted to come in and do something to us, we didn’t have anyone there to protect us,” Augustus said. “Because we wore T-shirts. Because people don’t want to be held accountable for their actions.”In the wake of George Floyd’s murder last year, the W.N.B.A. more proactively encouraged player activism as a part of its identity — four years after the Lynx first took a stand. “Now it’s like, ‘We’re celebrating you!’ And we’re like, ‘Uh huh, you’re celebrating now, but in years prior, it was kind of hard to get you to embrace it,’” Augustus said.Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said Augustus “played the game with a flair and a confidence.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesShe still remembers meetings where the league, she said, tried to goad players into wearing more makeup and skimpier uniforms, and how in her first years of playing it was the players with husbands and children who seemed to get all the publicity. “They would say, ‘We don’t have a cool factor,’ and I’m like, ‘We cool, what are you talking about?’” Augustus said. “It’s insane the conversations we had to have.”In an emailed statement in response to Augustus’s comments, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert cited the emphasis on L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights by the league’s Social Justice Council, which was established last season.“The W.N.B.A. has long been one of the most inclusive and welcoming sports leagues in terms of its commitment to players and fans,” she said, adding, “Today, that commitment continues to grow with countless demonstrations of inclusivity and with an understanding that there will always be more work to do.”Augustus has always prioritized the game itself, and that’s no different now that she’s a coach. But the seemingly effortless way in which she has integrated fighting for herself and her community into her basketball career seems likely to rub off on her protégés.“She played the game with a flair and a confidence that would tell you that she wants to be the loudest person in the room, but she really doesn’t,” Sparks Coach Derek Fisher said. “She just wants to help people get better and serve others.” More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in Football

      What We Learned From Week 2 of the N.F.L. Season

      by

      Bill Belichick sees a path toward making the Patriots a dynastic contender again, the Cowboys’ talent got a chance to shine, and Sam Darnold looks … happy.There were no shirtless pictures of Bill Belichick from Barbados gracing your screens this off-season.Belichick, the New England Patriots’ head coach, was far too busy to kick back last spring.As a drunken Tom Brady chucked the Vince Lombardi Trophy boat to boat, and as we all declared the quarterback the true driving force in New England all those years, Belichick, the N.F.L.’s Voldemort, plotted his vengeful return. Ego understandably ended this generation’s greatest dynasty. Honestly, it’s a miracle Brady and Belichick coexisted for two decades. Now, ego just may be transforming the Patriots into contenders again.After the Patriots’ first losing season since 2000, Belichick declared himself the fixer this off-season with a $232 million spending spree on his roster. The message was clear in his 47th year as an N.F.L. coach: Give me the horses, and I’ll win with a quarterback on the cheap.And while nobody should ever schedule a Super Bowl parade after a win over the calamity that is the Jets, Sunday served as a quiet warning to the rest of the N.F.L. that Belichick’s Patriots aren’t dead yet.New England’s defense suffocated Zach Wilson throughout a 25-6 win. Once again, Belichick turned a rookie quarterback into a pumpkin. At one point, Wilson had four interceptions and four completions, and you half-hoped Jets Coach Robert Saleh would put the poor player out of his misery by handing him a clipboard.Add it all up, and what we learned most in Week 2 is that there is absolutely a path for the Patriots to be the Patriots once again.Clearly, the Jets are zero threat to win any time soon.The Miami Dolphins (1-1) looked abysmal in a 35-0 home loss to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. With or without quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, this isn’t an offense that’ll scare anyone any time soon. Here’s thinking their Week 1 upset in Foxborough, Mass., was a gift-wrapped fluke.And, yes, the Bills are the defending A.F.C. East champs. Yes, they blasted Miami and, yes, the defense looks phenomenal. The fact is, their franchise quarterback — the very rich Josh Allen — has not looked sharp. He completed only 51 percent of his passes.So what if the Mac Jones Experience in New England is as exciting as a trip to the dentist? We see now why this team was OK washing its hands of Cam Newton. Jones is not overwhelmed by the speed of the N.F.L., Dad bod or not, and that’s all Belichick asks with the roster he has assembled around the position. After paying up for edge rusher Matt Judon, tight ends Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith, wide receivers Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne, corner Jalen Mills, defensive tackle Davon Godchaux and end Henry Anderson — Get all that? — Belichick knew he didn’t need a Superman at quarterback. He needed a distributor who wouldn’t turn the ball over.If that sounds very 1994, he frankly does not care.He let the Jets swing for the fences on a potential Mahomes Lite at No. 2 overall, perfectly content standing pat at No. 15 for a quarterback who completed 77.4 percent of his passes at Alabama. And unlike every other team that drafted a quarterback in April, the Jets did not sign anything resembling a threat or a veteran to challenge or support their rookie. This was Wilson’s gig from Day 1 and, on Sunday, you couldn’t help but wonder if the Jets should’ve found themselves a McCown of some sort.Wilson, the Brigham Young gunslinger, saw more ghosts than Sam Darnold ever dreamed of.After Interception No. 3 — a bizarre floater right to cornerback J.C. Jackson — Jones called an audible at the line and threw a beautiful rainbow to the Patriots’ Jakobi Meyers, in stride, for 24 yards.Such was the theme. This game served as a magnifying glass over two polar-opposite rookies. Wilson wants to play off-script like the three-time M.V.P. he idolized: Aaron Rodgers. His improvisation should at least make another losing season fun for the Jets. When a 315-pounder, Lawrence Guy, barreled in for a sack, Wilson hardly blinked. He juked. He escaped. He kept his eyes downfield before throwing incomplete.This style of play could prove to be special.This style could also get chewed up and spat out by the rest of the N.F.L.Interception No. 4 was even uglier, almost as if New England’s Devin McCourty was Wilson’s intended target.Meanwhile, Jones chugged along. He threw no touchdowns and no picks in completing 22 of 30 passes for 186 yards for the Patriots.Interesting, isn’t it? Through this off-season of quarterback madness, teams bent over backward for the chance at something special. San Francisco unloaded three first-rounders for someone from North Dakota State who played one football game in 2020 (Trey Lance); Green Bay was perfectly fine being publicly embarrassed by its disgruntled M.V.P. for six months (Rodgers); Indianapolis was willing to take on Carson Wentz’s massive contract; the L.A. Rams unloaded two firsts, a third and Jared Goff for a 33-year-old who has gone 74-90-1 in his career with zero playoff wins.The Bills handed Allen a six-year, $258 million contract.The Bears took a swing at every veteran possible before trading up for Justin Fields.And here’s Belichick again zagging as the rest of the league zigs. His defense is highly compensated and loaded. Judon will be worth every penny of his four-year, $56 million deal. Good luck finding a weakness anywhere. And this offense will only get better. Damien Harris atoned for his Week 1 fumble with arguably the best run of the season on Sunday.Harris broke seven tackles on the way to the end zone for a 26-yard touchdown.Beast Mode himself would be proud.OK, Brady’s title for Tampa Bay justifiably has us all questioning who meant more to those six N.F.L. titles in New England. Let’s not write those obituaries on the Patriots quite yet. If this equation leads to a winner, be it 2021 or 2022, nobody will question Belichick again. That’s surely on Belichick’s mind, too.For now, let’s just get the popcorn ready for Patriots-Bucs on Oct. 3.Defensive back Nasir Adderley of the Los Angeles Chargers broke up a pass intended for tight end Blake Jarwin of the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesCowboys’ talent overcomes Chargers’ errors.The Dallas Cowboys and the Los Angeles Chargers of this generation are bound to throw wins away as the seconds wane. Both teams have assembled contenders but something, always something, is bound to go wrong.Sunday’s game, a 20-17 Dallas win, sure seemed to be heading in that direction for both teams.On two consecutive drives, the Chargers had touchdowns wiped out by penalties.First, a holding penalty nullified a Donald Parham Jr. score. (An interception soon followed.) Then, an illegal shift nullified a Jared Cook touchdown when Los Angeles had first-and-goal from the 2-yard line. (The Chargers settled for a field goal.) The Chargers (1-1) finished with 12 penalties for 99 yards.Then, it appeared to be the Cowboys’ turn. With 3 minutes 45 seconds left and the score tied, quarterback Dak Prescott drove Dallas into Los Angeles territory, and the Cowboys (1-1) grew lax. Coach Mike McCarthy, who has had clock management issues throughout his career, inexplicably let precious time bleed off the clock with the ball on the Chargers’ 38-yard line.Nonetheless, with four seconds left, Greg Zuerlein banged in a 56-yard field goal to give Dallas its first win of the season.This will need to be the theme for the Cowboys, a team that has suffered the same problems for 25 years now. In 2021, that talent may be enough to validate the machinations of the ownership, the coaching changes and the constant attention. This was a solid win. We know Prescott is one of the greats, but on Sunday, the Cowboys proved they could win with the run, too. Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard combined for 180 rushing yards.Defensively, this isn’t going to be the historically awful unit we saw in 2020. The team’s new defensive coordinator, Dan Quinn, has brought a scheme that is much better than the one Mike Nolan installed via Zoom a year ago, and Micah Parsons gives the Cowboys a playmaking pass rusher that opposing coordinators must now account for every week. A rookie out of Penn State, he was a presence all game with four quarterback hits and one sack.Next time, the Cowboys just may want to gain another 8 yards to be safe.Through his first two games with the Carolina Panthers, quarterback Sam Darnold has looked accurate, decisive and in rhythm. In other words, not like a Jets quarterback.Jacob Kupferman/Associated PressHey, Darnold.There is good news, Jets fans! Your new quarterback isn’t taking any advice from Adam Gase.The Carolina Panthers’ Sam Darnold — newly Gase-less — was the best quarterback on Sunday in lighting up the same New Orleans Saints defense that throttled Aaron Rodgers a week ago. He shredded the Saints for 305 yards on 26-of-38 passing with two touchdowns in a breezy 26-7 win. Thus far, the Panthers have gotten the most bang for their buck through that quarterback carousel. The marriage between Darnold and the offensive coordinator, Joe Brady, has been perfect two games in.Darnold isn’t going to wow anyone with his athleticism or his arm strength, but the reason a team drafted him over Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson is finally on display. He’s decisive. He’s accurate. He gets into a rhythm. Brady’s offense isn’t wordy or complicated like Gase’s. It simply has an answer for every type of coverage you can throw at Carolina — and Darnold delivers. After failing to register 200 yards and two scores in any game last season, the former Jet accomplished exactly that in one half against New Orleans.Now, with the right coach and the right weapons, he has a realistic shot to be everything we expected in 2018. And then some.Sunday’s GamesRaiders 26, Steelers 17: Derek Carr has secretively been a top 10 quarterback for a while now and he made one of the best defenses in the NFL look silly. If this is the real Henry Ruggs III, the Raiders’ offense may be here to stay, too. He’s not dinking and dunking all game as you might’ve thought — Carr has developed incredible touch on his deep ball.Henry Ruggs III caught a 61-yard touchdown pass from Derek Carr in the fourth quarter of the Raiders’ 26-17 win over the Steelers.Philip G. Pavely/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBears 20, Bengals 17: Nine quarterback hits, four sacks, three interceptions, one pick-6. Let’s pray the Bengals aren’t ruining Joe Burrow off that torn ACL.49ers 17, Eagles 11: Jalen Reagor juuust stepped out of bounds running his route before hauling in a deep touchdown that would’ve completely changed the complexion of this game. Instead, San Francisco recovered to grind out the win.Browns 31, Texas 21: Baker Mayfield shouldn’t try to lay anybody out after his next interception. After giving locals a scare with a shoulder injury — a familiar feeling in Cleveland — the quarterback bounced back to finish 19 of 21 for 213 yards with one rushing score and one passing score.Rams 27, Colts 24: It wasn’t pretty but this is also why Sean McVay traded for Matthew Stafford. The longtime Lions starter is used to rallying his offense in the fourth quarter, and he needed to on Sunday.Broncos 23, Jaguars 13: No Jerry Jeudy, no problem. This Denver offense hummed right along with Courtland Sutton (nine receptions for 159 yards) stepping up as Teddy Bridgewater’s go-to guy. Like Darnold in Carolina, Teddy B in Denver is looking like a steal.Buccaneers 48, Falcons 25: A year ago, this offense was in disarray. Tom Brady wanted one offense. Bruce Arians wanted another. Now? Tampa Bay is already scoring at will and that’s a scary thought. Ten different players accounted for 24 completions as Brady threw five touchdowns in all. Until further notice, the Bucs are the team to beat.Cardinals 34, Vikings 33: When the Vikings decided to re-up Kirk Cousins one year ago, it meant embracing a total rebuild on defense. Mike Zimmer’s entire unit underwent a youth movement for the team to simply get under the cap. And while the Covid-19 pandemic provided an understandable excuse for last year’s issues — and there were plenty — there’s no excuse for how bad Minnesota’s defense has looked through two games. Zimmer has work to do.Titans 33, Seahawks 30 (Overtime): Weird things happen in Seattle. Always. None of us should be surprised that the Titans erased a 24-9 lead in a hostile environment to win. As ugly as the first six quarters to their season were, this remains an offense overflowing with weapons and Derrick Henry isn’t showing the slightest signs of wear and tear. The workhorse back bashed Seattle for 182 yards on 35 carries with three touchdowns. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Football

      Considering Itself Outside the Title Picture, U.S.C. Fires Clay Helton

      by

      After the Trojans lost to Stanford as 17-point favorites, they moved on from Helton, who had two years left on his contract.With the University of Southern California’s defense being gashed, its offense stagnant and its discipline lacking — the kicker was ejected on the opening kickoff — fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum showered the team with boos during a 42-28 thumping at the hands of Stanford, which entered Saturday’s game as a 17-point underdog.Afterward, Clay Helton, the seventh-year coach, pleaded for calm.“At the end of the season, see where we’re at,” he told reporters.Wherever the Trojans are at the end of the season, Helton won’t be around to see it. He was fired Monday amid increasing fury from the school’s alumni and former players for whom Saturday wasn’t just a bad game, but another confirmation that the football program would never become a contender for a national title under Helton.In fact, Athletic Director Mike Bohn, in announcing a national search for a new coach, said in a statement that the Trojans would be better off for the remainder of the season with Donte Williams, a 39-year-old cornerbacks coach who has never even served as a coordinator, as the interim head coach.Bohn, who replaced Lynn Swann as the athletic director two years ago, said that despite adding resources for the football program since he arrived, it was clear even after two games — a win over San Jose State and the loss to Stanford — that U.S.C. was nowhere near becoming a national championship contender. “It is already evident that, despite the enhancements, those expectations would not be met without a change in leadership,” he said.If Helton’s firing was a shock this early in the season, it is de rigueur for the Trojans, who have quite the history of bloodletting with football coaches.Lane Kiffin was fired at the airport after being summoned from the team bus upon returning to Los Angeles following a defeat at Arizona State. Steve Sarkisian checked into rehab after getting fired in the middle of the season after repeatedly showing up drunk. And years ago, John Robinson returned home from Christmas shopping to find a message on his answering machine that he had been axed.Stanford running back Nathaniel Peat, right, had more than 100 yards rushing on only six carries in the Cardinal’s 42-28 win.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressThis decision, though, might have been made far earlier but for the whopping six-year contract extension Helton was awarded by Swann before the 2018 season — one that is expected to have paid him close to $5 million this season and runs for two more years.The Trojans, who were carried to the Rose Bowl and the Cotton Bowl by quarterback Sam Darnold in Helton’s first two full seasons, have gone 19-14 since Helton signed the new contract. In last year’s pandemic-shortened season, the Trojans won their five conference games, but their hopes of sneaking into the College Football Playoff vanished when they were upset on their home field by Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game.Helton never gained a foothold with U.S.C. fans, who were befuddled that the former athletic director Pat Haden — who like his successor Swann had been a star football player at the school — promoted Helton to interim coach after firing Sarkisian, and then gave him the permanent job. Haden had previously passed on another interim coach, choosing to not retain Ed Orgeron, who two years ago coached Louisiana State to a national championship.Helton’s coaching staff was a revolving door, and each August he seemed to promise a more disciplined team. But even a rousing comeback victory over the conference rival U.C.L.A. last year was marred by Trojans taunting their rivals when the game ended — Helton falling to the turf trying to pull his players away.The scene was a picture of a coach who did not have control of his team.The cost of firing Helton will be considerable, presumably in the neighborhood of $15 million (the terms of his contract are not public because U.S.C. is a private school). But with a $315 million renovation of the Coliseum to be paid for in part through ticket sales, a considerable financial hit from the pandemic and declining attendance, there was also a cost to doing nothing.On Monday, U.S.C. decided it was too much to bear. More