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      Teenage Ballers Can Cash in Earlier Than Ever. But at What Cost?

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      Male players as young as 16 have many options to play high-level basketball before the N.B.A. without going to college — and get paid big money to do it.In February, Ramses Melendez, who goes by RJ, announced his college decision in a video posted to his social media accounts. A 4-star forward in the class of 2021, Melendez followed a typical formula for the video: a highlight reel and then a jersey reveal. He strayed from the script for a moment, though, when he acknowledged in a voice-over that “it wasn’t easy to make this decision.”A couple of months later, an unusual phone call made that decision even more difficult.On the other end of the line was Timothy Fuller, a former college basketball coach and the director of recruiting for a new league, Overtime Elite. Backed by investors ranging from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to the Nets All-Star forward Kevin Durant, Overtime Elite aims to be an alternative to college as a path to the N.B.A. for high-level high school basketball players as young as 16.Fuller had seen Melendez play, and he wanted to offer him a spot in the nascent league. Fuller told Melendez that Overtime would help him prepare for the pros. Fuller also told Melendez that, unlike college, the league could pay him.A lot.Melendez declined to reveal a dollar figure during a recent interview at Rucker Park in New York City, where he was preparing to play in the Omni Elite tournament. But he did say that it was in line with Overtime’s other announced deals.In May, Overtime signed Matt and Ryan Bewley, twin brothers in Florida who are rising high school juniors, to two-year deals reportedly worth at least $1 million apiece. The league has since signed another set of Florida basketball twins for an undisclosed sum, and its leaders have said that it will eventually acquire 30 players who are each making a minimum annual salary of $100,000.“The money was nice, but it wasn’t the most important factor in my decision,” Melendez said. “I want my next step to get me ready to play in the N.B.A. I asked myself: What’s the best way to get there?”This year’s N.B.A. draft, whose order was announced last week with Detroit landing the top pick, isn’t likely to feature any players from the newest alternative paths when it takes place on July 29. But the 2022 draft will be a different story, and players and coaches from middle school to college have taken notice — and taken action.For top-flight high school basketball players, recruiting has often been a high-wire walk without much of a safety net. These teenagers have to discern the trustworthiness of college coaches who text and call them relentlessly, promising playing time and a sure path to the pros. And they have to be wary of boosters and agents and other unscrupulous characters who often offer money and benefits that run afoul of N.C.A.A. rules and the law.Now the best men’s players also have to decide whether it’s worth it to forfeit their college eligibility by turning pro during or immediately after high school.Because of the N.B.A.’s so-called one-and-done rule, American players must be 19 years old and one year removed from their high school graduating class to be eligible to be drafted. But no rule says they must attend college during that year. These new leagues are hoping to lure top players away from the N.C.A.A. with something colleges can’t match: a salary.In addition to Overtime Elite, there is also the N.B.A.’s own elite developmental team, the G League Ignite, which pays top players far and above the salaries for the G League’s regular teams. There is the Professional Collegiate League, which is backed by former Obama administration officials and aims to place 96 players on eight teams this fall. Those players will be compensated up to $150,000 each and receive a lifetime academic scholarship.And there are also overseas professional leagues, from Australia to Europe to China, pursuing American high school stars.“Before it was just, ‘What college am I going to?’” said Samson Johnson, a center from New Jersey who has committed to play for Connecticut in 2021-22. “Now there’s a lot of leagues, and it’s hard to keep up with all this new information. How can you be sure what’s real? It’s risky.”Among top prospects, the G League Ignite team has become the most attractive alternative to college. The G League enjoys the N.B.A.’s backing, and it also has proved it can develop N.B.A. draft prospects.Last year, the Ignite team inked the 5-star guard Jalen Green to a $500,000 contract. Despite playing a shortened season because of the coronavirus pandemic, Green is still considered a top-five pick for this year’s N.B.A. draft in July.Seeing other players succeed in the G League was part of the reason Scoot Henderson decided to graduate from high school early and sign a two-year, $1 million deal with the Ignite.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Scoot Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night.”Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesHenderson had garnered interest from a professional league in China, from Overtime and from just about every college basketball powerhouse in the country.His decision came down to college or the Ignite team, which offered money, competition and the opportunity to sign endorsements. Despite some scattered progress on names, images and likeness reforms, it remains unclear whether N.C.A.A. athletes will be able to sign endorsement deals this year.“I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to own myself,” Henderson said. “With the G League, I get to play at a high level every night. I can also run camps and sign autographs and sponsor products.”Henderson had an added benefit while weighing his options. His A.A.U. coach, Parrish Johnson, is a longtime friend of Ignite Coach Brian Shaw.But not every elite high school player is so lucky. The N.C.A.A. doesn’t allow high school players to have contacts with agents, so they have to rely on the advice of coaches and family members who are not often familiar with the nuances of professional athletic contracts.Darrell Miller’s son, Brandon, is a top-15 prospect in the class of 2022. Whenever Darrell learns about a new league, he pulls out his laptop and starts Googling. Sometimes he’ll find himself with a dozen tabs open as they’re waiting at the airport for a flight to another A.A.U. tournament.“The scary part is: You just don’t know,” he said. “These are start-ups. They look really nice. They have the coaches. They have the board members. But then you get this feeling: What if? What if that check doesn’t clear? What if my son’s stock drops? If you’re a professional athlete, you’re not allowed to make the same mistakes you can as a college kid. If you choose the wrong college, you can transfer. If you choose the wrong pro league, what’s your backup plan?”Some high school and A.A.U. coaches, who are often players’ closest confidants, are also uncomfortable with their roles.“Your biggest nightmare as a coach is to push a kid in a certain direction and have it not work out,” said Vonzell Thomas, who coaches the A.A.U. team Southern Assault. “Then for the rest of that kid’s life, whenever he thinks of you, he’ll think: That’s the guy who screwed up my life. You never want your name to come up when a kid gets asked why he didn’t make it.”Melendez discussed the Overtime offer with his parents and coaches. They looked at the contract together. Ultimately, he decided to turn the league down and stick with his decision to play at Illinois. It felt, for now, like the safer decision.“I said no because I’ve heard some N.B.A. players talk about how they regret not playing in college,” he said. “I don’t want to find myself in that situation. I didn’t want to wake up next year and feel like I’d made a big mistake. These leagues may turn out to be great opportunities, but I want to be able to see some history first. I want to make sure it works. These decisions change your entire life.” More

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      Nets Assistant Ime Udoka Nears Deal to Coach the Celtics

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      Udoka, who has been with the Nets for one season, will be hired by Brad Stevens, his predecessor. Stevens recently was promoted to president of basketball operations.Ime Udoka, who was an assistant for the Nets this season, is nearing an agreement to become the next head coach of the Boston Celtics, a person familiar with the discussions but not authorized to discuss them publicly said on Wednesday.Udoka spent seven years as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich and one season as an assistant in Philadelphia before coming to the Nets. He also played in the N.B.A. as a reserve for seven years, including spurts with the Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers and three seasons with the Spurs.The news of the impending hiring was first reported by ESPN.This will be the second high-profile move made by the new Celtics team president, Brad Stevens, who was unexpectedly thrust into the role this month. His predecessor, Danny Ainge, stepped down after the Nets knocked the Celtics out of the playoffs in the first round.Stevens had coached the team for the last eight years, but this season had been a particularly tumultuous one for the Celtics, who were besieged by injuries and an ill-fitting roster that lacked depth. Boston’s best player, the All-Star Jayson Tatum, also dealt with lingering effects from Covid-19. After making the Eastern Conference finals in 2019-20, the Celtics had to fight just to get into the playoffs and finished the season at 36-36.Udoka, 43, will inherit a team centered on two All-Star wings, Tatum and Jaylen Brown. In his first major move as team president, Stevens last week traded Kemba Walker, who was the team’s starting point guard, and Boston’s 2021 first-round pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Al Horford and Moses Brown, an up-and-coming center. The move increased the Celtics’ financial flexibility.At the news conference announcing his promotion, Stevens said of the coaching search: “I think that the good news about whoever we hire, they don’t have to fill Doc Rivers’s shoes like I did, and they don’t have to fill Danny Ainge’s shoes now like I do. The good news is they have to figure out a way to be better than the last guy.”Udoka, who is Nigerian American, will become the sixth Black coach in the history of the franchise. The others were Rivers (2004-13), M.L. Carr (1995-97), K.C. Jones (1983-88), Tom Sanders (1978) and Bill Russell (1966-69).In a league that has been criticized for predominantly hiring white coaches, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black, Udoka will be one of nine nonwhite head coaches. (This does not include Nate McMillan, who is Black and the interim head coach of the Atlanta Hawks.) Udoka will be coaching in a city that was once again in the spotlight for its treatment of Black athletes, during this year’s playoffs. Kyrie Irving, who played for the Celtics from 2017 to 2019, suggested that he had heard racist comments from fans during his time in Boston and said that he hoped he wouldn’t hear them as a member of the Nets.There are six other head coaching vacancies across the league, in Portland, Orlando, Indiana, New Orleans, Washington and Dallas. More

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      Sugar Rodgers Is Rewriting Her Life Story Through the W.N.B.A.

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      Rodgers used basketball, and later her writing skills, to forge a brighter path after a painful childhood. The former All-Star is now an assistant coach for the Las Vegas Aces.For much of Sugar Rodgers’ life, her job was survival: staying alive, healthy and out of jail in her Suffolk, Va., neighborhood, where the pop of bullets nearby forced her inside and away from the basketball hoop she loved.When many eighth graders were buckling down on schoolwork and extracurricular activities, or skipping school to hang out with friends, Rodgers was truant for other reasons: to babysit her nephew while his mother was at work, or to feed and bathe her bedridden mother, who was dying of lupus.“‘What goes on in this house stays in this house,’ ” Rodgers said her mother told her. “So, I couldn’t reach out and ask people for help and do certain things because that always stemmed in the back of my mind.”Still, Rodgers said, she finished eighth grade on time by doing extra assignments, and stayed on track academically throughout high school. She was recruited to play basketball at Georgetown, and graduated as the career scoring leader. The Minnesota Lynx selected her in the second round of the 2013 W.N.B.A. draft, and she helped them win a championship that year.She played the next five seasons with the Liberty, where she became an All-Star and won the Sixth Woman of the Year Award in 2017. Now, after two seasons playing with the Las Vegas Aces, Rodgers has matriculated into the coaching ranks as an assistant for the team.Rodgers ended her time at Georgetown as the school’s career scoring leader.Jessica Hill/Associated Press“I’m just going to bring whatever it is that they need me to do,” Rodgers said. “Just like as a player — whatever they needed me to do, I did. Whatever sacrifices they needed me to make, I did those, for the betterment of the team. And I’m willing to do that as a coach as well.”A recent graduate of Georgetown’s masters’ program in sports industry management and the author of “They Better Call Me Sugar,” a young adult memoir about her childhood, Rodgers, 31, spoke to The New York Times about her childhood, the sanctity of writing and the perspective she brings to the sideline.This interview and has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.Your parents forced you to stay back in second grade. How did that impact your education journey?My mom said, like, “You’ll be fine. This is where you belong because you’re not learning at the pace that they are pushing at.”As a kid, you don’t look at it that way. You just look at it, like, “All my friends are going to be in the next grade and I’m going to get picked on because I was left behind.” And in my mind, like, it’s a reminder that I have failed, and because of that failure, I just have been, like: “I can’t fail again. I can’t fail again.”I’ve always tried to put myself in a position to be successful, so using basketball as a tool to get out of my situation, that’s what I’ve done.How did you find time while playing in the W.N.B.A. to pursue a master’s degree at Georgetown?When I wasn’t in the gym working on my game, I was at home working on my degree. It was a little bit of a struggle, especially because I started in 2019 during the playoffs. Can you imagine? I’m just starting school, and we’re in the playoffs, and just having to find that balance in between the two. I really wanted to go back to school, so I know it’s something I really wanted to accomplish and I just made time. I just made it work, whether it was some nights I stayed up a little bit later, or I got up a little bit earlier.Do you feel a shift is happening to include more women and women of color in W.N.B.A. head coaching and front office roles? And how did you know you were ready to move from center court to the sidelines?For me, I do see it changing. I do see more African American women are, you know, coming on the sidelines and taking it, especially former players. I also think for me, I just woke up and didn’t want to work out anymore. So, I just knew mentally, spiritually and physically it was time for me to look into something else.I actually kind of wanted to retire like two years ago.“It’s some things that I can say to players because I’ve actually been through it,” Rodgers said of coaching.Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesWhat made you postpone your retirement and go to Las Vegas and play for your old coach Bill Laimbeer again?Once the Liberty decided to trade me, I was like, at this point, a little exhausted with basketball and how long I had been playing. Mentally, it was having an impact on me and I wanted to just be able to take a break from basketball.Bill and them, they traded for me. So, I was like, yeah, I’ll come out. They’d be a great organization.It seems that the Liberty’s move in 2017 from Madison Square Garden to the Westchester County Center in White Plains was a low point for the franchise. Would you agree?It was just, like, ‘Oh man, oh man.’ Like, a lot of people is not going to commute that far. You know, the die-hard fans are going to come, but we had a great fan base here in the city. I think that was kind of the devastating part of it, not being able to play in front of our fans and keep them coming back to the games and excited about the seasons.Fast-forward to 2021, and the Liberty is a very different franchise, with a new owner in Joseph Tsai, a new arena in Brooklyn’s Barclays and a hot start to the season. To what do you attribute this massive turnaround?I think they have a great owner. I think it started there when they were like, OK, we’re going to go play in the Barclays, and we’re going to treat you like A-1 class athletes. And that put them in a position to be able to get players to come play in New York.Throughout “They Better Call Me Sugar,” you write about your mother wanting you to put golf first and basketball second, or not at all. As an adult looking back, do you have an understanding of why she held this view?I just know golf was her thing, and maybe because back when she played basketball, there wasn’t opportunities for women. Because my mom was a basketball player, but way back in the day, it wasn’t opportunities like how it was for men. But now, looking at it, the W.N.B.A. is 25 years old. And just to be a part of that, it shows the W.N.B.A., can grow, the salaries can get there. It just takes one step at a time.How did you begin writing about your childhood, and has writing been a source of healing for you?When I was at Georgetown, I had a coach who suggested that I go to therapy and I’m just like, I’m not going to therapy. It’s for white people. But I was just ignorant to the fact because therapy, it’s taboo in the African American community.I really didn’t like talking, and I went to therapy and I wouldn’t talk and I remember [the therapist] was like, “Well, just write it down.” And I would just write these stories and he would read them when I came in, because I didn’t like to talk. And, you know, I was like, man, these stories could become a book. It can help somebody in a situation that’s like mine or worse than mine.Writing is therapeutic for me.What do you feel like you bring that’s unique to coaching?I just bring life experience in itself. There’s some things that you can’t teach that I just bring naturally. It’s some things that I can say to players because I’ve actually been through it.You get a lot of coaches who players cannot relate to, and I think sometimes you need that balance on the coaching staff. But if you have players who cannot relate, those players don’t fit because they feel like nobody understands them. And I just feel like I bring a lot. More

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      ‘I Surely Can Stand in Front of Men and Lead Them’

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      With women being mentioned for open head coaching vacancies, the N.B.A. seems primed to break one glass ceiling in sports.It’s about time.The N.B.A. sits poised to be the first American men’s professional sports league to hire a woman as a head coach.The bond is there, boosted by the league’s growing group of assistants who are women and its siblinglike connection to the W.N.B.A.The N.B.A.’s players have shown a clear willingness to be led by women. Just ask Michele Roberts, the head of their powerful union.Job openings are plentiful. There are head coach postings in Orlando, Indiana, Portland and Boston.This time around, there are women among the candidates, and that’s a sea change not just for the N.B.A. but for all of sport.It’s bound to happen. If not this year, then hopefully in the next few.Will a woman running an N.B.A. team from the bench shatter the glass ceiling? Not quite. Not until women are regularly hired for such positions.More than that, true advancement will come only if trailblazing in the men’s game is just one of many opportunities for women to coach at any level — including college basketball and the W.N.B.A.Still, think of the powerful message that would be sent by that first N.B.A. hire: The leadership of a billion-dollar franchise and some of the most famous male athletes on the planet entrusted to a woman.“It would be huge,” Dawn Staley said. “We just need the right situation.”She has the bona fides to speak up.Enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame after a stellar playing career, Staley, 51, is now the head coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic team and the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team, a perennial power. She is also one of the most prominent Black women in coaching.“There are a lot of women good enough” to lead an N.B.A. team, Staley said.Kara Lawson was an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics during the 2019-20 season before departing to become head coach of the Duke women’s basketball team.Michael Dwyer/Associated PressBecky Hammon is one. She’s got insider credentials, having spent several years as Gregg Popovich’s assistant in San Antonio. In the N.B.A., that’s like being at the right hand of God.Duke’s Kara Lawson is another. She was a favorite of Brad Stevens, the former coach of the Celtics and their current president of basketball operations, during her stint as an assistant in Boston, and is reportedly on the team’s radar.What about Staley herself? A bold tactician and motivator, she is more than capable of making the leap. That’s why I sought her wisdom.When we spoke, she made it clear she wasn’t campaigning for an N.B.A. job. She treasures her team at South Carolina, which she has led to three Final Fours since 2015 and a national title in 2017.“I come with a lot of credentials,” she said. “I surely have the confidence. I surely can stand in front of men and lead them. First-team All-Stars. M.V.P.s. I’m OK with that.”More than OK, given the firm tone in her voice as she said that.What about the absence of N.B.A. experience?“I haven’t coached in the league,” Staley said, forthright. “But you know what? I’m a quick learn. I’m a quick learn.”It’s a frequent jab when talk of great female coaches helming men’s teams gets too serious — as if there haven’t been plenty of men who have led N.B.A. teams without spending time in the league. (Case in point: Stevens, who took over the Celtics after a coaching career spent entirely in college.)That common criticism prompted me to wonder what other red herrings could be thrown in the path of a female hire. What will it be like, I asked Staley, for the first woman to break through in the N.B.A.?The first woman will no doubt have plenty of supporters, she said. But there will also be knuckle-draggers who still believe that no matter what the sport, a woman cannot effectively lead male stars.“A lot of people would be out there, just waiting for you to make a mistake, waiting for you to be wrong,” she said. “There’s a whole dynamic that men, white or Black, just don’t have to think about. It’s a female thing. The expectation will be so much greater than the male coach. So much greater.”Female coaches at every level and in every sport are used to unfair scrutiny of everything from their looks to the way they speak to their strategies. The trailblazing coach will face obstacles that bring to mind those of other “firsts” who broke down barriers in sports.The city and fan base will also need to be prepared to embrace change — particularly, given the tangle of racism and sexism in America, if the coach is a Black woman.Being the first has a deep resonance that can spread far and wide, but there’s nuance to the battle for equality that women are fighting on all fronts.We can take a cue from Staley, who in our conversation noted repeatedly how happy she is at South Carolina. She sees herself in women’s college basketball for the long haul, teaching, cajoling and “getting young women ready to go to the W.N.B.A., so our W.N.B.A. can be around for another 25 years.”And a cue from the recently retired Muffet McGraw, the other Hall of Famer I spoke with last week.Muffet McGraw, center right, said women leading N.B.A. teams is “not something I even care about.” Late in her 33-year career at Notre Dame, she decided to hire only assistants who were women.Jessica Hill/Associated PressWomen leading N.B.A. teams, she said, is “not something I even care about.”“I want women coaching women,” she added. When it comes to men’s pro basketball, “I want to see those women going off to the N.B.A. and being great assistants and then coming back and taking over women’s jobs in college and the pros.”Her candor was no surprise.In her 33 years of coaching women’s basketball at Notre Dame, McGraw won a pair of national championships and turned her team into a venerable power. She also gained a reputation for speaking out about the need to have women in positions of leadership and for backing it up: As her career evolved, she decided to hire female assistants only.McGraw pointed out how much work remained to be done. In 1972, at the dawn of Title IX, the landmark law that created a pathway for gender equality on college campuses, 90 percent of the head coaches in women’s college sports were female. Then, slowly but surely, as the fame in women’s sports increased, along with the pay, men began taking over.By 2019, the numbers had dipped to around 40 percent in the highest division of college sports overall — and around 60 percent in Division I women’s basketball.It’s hardly better in the W.N.B.A. Despite its reputation as a bastion of empowerment, the 12-team league has only five female head coaches.There are too few female coaches at all levels and all sports, from elementary age through high school and beyond. “Why is it,” McGraw wondered, “that when your kid goes out to play soccer and they are age 5 and 6, it’s so rare to see someone’s mom coaching the team? And then you get older, it’s almost always a guy. So it’s no wonder that there’s a stereotype in there. You’re led to believe that when you think of a leader you think of a man.“That has to change.”Glass ceilings are everywhere for women. Shattering them in men’s professional basketball would be an important start in shattering them all. More

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      How a Nonprofit Soccer Leader Spends His Sundays

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      When Ray Selvadurai, the director of coaching for the Manhattan Soccer Club, is not on the pitch, he’s with his daughter in the Bronx.Manhattan Soccer Club is one of the largest youth soccer organizations in New York. Its home base for play is Randalls Island in Manhattan, where around 1,500 members between 5 and 23 train and compete on its 31 soccer fields. Ray Selvadurai, who has been with the club for 23 years, is its director of coaching.Play was suspended last year, from March through August, because of the virus, which took one of the club’s beloved coaches. “Freddy Fuentes was only 49; he worked here for 15 years,” Mr. Selvadurai said. “We still haven’t recovered from that, and probably never will.”But with players and parents back at Randalls Island, things, on the field at least, are returning to normal. “We’ve realized how much we missed all of this,” Mr. Selvadurai said. “I’ll never take it for granted again.”Mr. Selvadurai, 48, lives in Spuyten Duyvil, in the Bronx. His daughter, Ella, 10, lives with him on the weekends.LIGHT AND SWEET My biological alarm clock goes off at 7:30 a.m. I have two cups of coffee with milk and two Equals each — I like it sweet. I make it using coffee from Tierney Fine Foods, this old-world deli that is five minutes away from my home. My daughter appears in the kitchen and asks for “Dad’s eggs Benedicts.” We talk about our day and the upcoming week. She tells me about her school friends and her new sister who is only a few months old. This is our special time to sit together and learn about her life.Mr. Selvadurai at home with his daughter, Ella.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesSTANDING ‘DADDY’ ORDER If we have home games, I drop her off at her mother’s in Pelham. We do a deli run at Tierney first. Ella walks in and just says, ‘Daddy.’ They know it’s for me and hand her my coffee and a turkey and Cheddar sandwich.A sandwich run at Tierney Fine Foods in the Bronx.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesPARK AND PACK The drive to Randalls Island is maybe 20 minutes. I’m there by 10:30. I park in a lot under the Triborough Bridge. I get out my folding chair, which I bought at REI, my favorite store for outdoor camping, which is just big enough for me to sit on and be comfortable, my Yeti filled with water and a notebook, and put everything into my knapsack. For the next six hours I watch the games and training sessions.THE ROUNDS I oversee the entire club, so I’m in charge of developing the curriculum for the players and working with the coaching staff. We are a national level program, so we’ve had some great success professionally. As a director, people need to see you and know who you are. Sundays are when the families come, that’s the real dynamic of this city sport. There’s a tremendous joy to see everyone. It all feels so normal. To watch soccer games live outside is a special thing. When it’s taken from you, you realize how much you miss it.“As a director, people need to see you and know who you are.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesPLAY For the first two hours I watch our local teams, who are ages 12 to 19. At 12:30 I watch the premier teams, also 12 to 19. These kids are at a completely different playing level. At 2:30 I visit the players ages 8 to 11. This is the sponge age; they pick up everything. To see them grow up is a real joy. They love wearing the uniform and being part of a team. This is the future of our club. I’ve been drinking water all day, but around now I’ll have a PowerBar or sandwich.Mr. Selvadurai oversees the coaching for about 1,500 soccer players between the ages of 5 and 23.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesBREAKDOWN At 4:30 whoever has the last game helps break down the field. It’s a sea of parents and coaches bringing over soccer equipment — flags, nets and benches — which is nice because everyone collaborates. Everything gets put into a large, red storage locker. There’s a box in the corner full of lost and found items that’s always overflowing: shin guards, cleats, soccer balls, sweatshirts. When you have 1,500 kids, you name it, it’s left here. I trek back to my car. The bridge is right above me. You can see and hear the cars as it connects our community with the other boroughs.SUSHI WITH ELLA I head back to Pelham and pick up my daughter around 5:30 and drive back to my house, which is only 6.7 miles away. She might do her homework or play Roblox on her iPad. It’s a game where you build little towns and economies. She’s a big sushi fan so we order in from Sushi Palace — miso soup, spicy tuna and crab rolls, salmon pieces — and talk about our day.Coffee in the morning with Ella, and sushi with her at night.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesBRIDGE FILMS I’ve been trying to get Ella to embrace movies I saw as a kid. We’ve seen all three of the “Karate Kid” movies. Watching them with her makes me feel nostalgic and connects the generations. Sometimes we laugh at the same thing. She’s the female version of me in a lot of ways. By 9:30 she’s showered and in bed.WORK, THEN DISCONNECT I go over notes from the training sessions and games and prepare for the week at the dining room table. I’ll send emails and communicate with coaches. I think about the players. During the week I’m out there with all of them. I’m pretty close to knowing everyone’s name. My players will call and talk. It’s an earned trust between families and players. It’s a lot of responsibility to be this other voice in their lives. At midnight I stop. I have a rule: I keep my phone, on silent, on the coffee table outside of the bedroom. My sleep has to be great and uninterrupted.Sunday Routine readers can follow Ray Selvadurai on Twitter @SelvaduraiRay. More

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      in Football

      Jim Fassel Bridged Giants Eras With a Smile. And, Once, a Rant.

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      The Giants coach called Gentleman Jim was best known for smoothly transitioning the team out of the Bill Parcells era, but one uncharacteristic tirade stood out.It was the day before Thanksgiving in 2000, and Giants Coach Jim Fassel, who looked like a librarian and generally behaved like the winsome air-conditioning salesman he once was, had a wild, restless look in his eye.His Giants, two weeks earlier a shoo-in for the N.F.L. playoffs, had been booed off the field after two consecutive ugly home losses. Their postseason prospects were now dim, a mutiny was brewing in the locker room and management was agitated.Fassel, who died of a heart attack on Monday at age 71, stepped to the rostrum for what was normally a pro forma news conference, and in a fiery tone barked: “I’m raising the stakes right now. This is a poker game, and I’m shoving my chips to the middle of the table. I’m raising the ante, and anybody who wants in, get in. Anybody who wants out can get out.”Fassel then guaranteed the Giants were going to the playoffs.“No worries,” he said. “I’ve got no fear. None. Zero.”Or, as I wrote that day: Jim Fassel, the Mister Rogers of football coaches, tore off his cardigan today, tied it around his head and joined the Hell’s Angels.Two days later, standing with Fassel in the bowels of the old Giants Stadium, I wondered what had gotten into the guy nicknamed Gentleman Jim.“If this doesn’t work out, you’re going to get fired,” I said.“I was going to get fired before I did this,” he answered. “Now we’ll see what happens.”The Giants won their next seven games, including a 41-0 rout of the Minnesota Vikings in the N.F.C. championship game — a contest that almost no one thought the Giants could win.They did lose big to the Baltimore Ravens in the ensuing Super Bowl when they couldn’t handle Ray Lewis, which was hardly uncommon back then.Most remembrances of Fassel are short on details after the Super Bowl defeat, and it’s easy to underrate Fassel’s role in bridging the gap from the Giants’ successes between 1986 and 1990 to the Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning championships roughly 20 years later. But Fassel should not be overlooked for leading a pivotal franchise renaissance out of the Giants’ dark period. In the two seasons before he arrived as head coach in 1997, the team was 11-21 and the heyday of Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor seemed as distant as the days of Frank Gifford and Y.A. Tittle.The year Fassel took over the Giants, the Jets hired Bill Parcells. A national magazine put pictures of both coaches on the cover of its preseason issue, except Parcells took up 90 percent of the page with Fassel appearing in a one-inch head shot positioned over Parcells’s shoulder. He was labeled, “the other guy.”Fassel, pictured at his Nevada home in 2011, is remembered for his active, energetic appearances at ground zero in Lower Manhattan a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks.Isaac Brekken for The New York TimesThe other guy took the Giants to the playoffs and won the 1997 Associated Press Coach of the Year Award. He instilled some accountability, screaming at his team after their first preseason defeat that year.“Nobody could have missed that message,” cornerback Jason Sehorn said. “One preseason loss and he was ballistic.”Fassel’s tactics, however, were usually strategic and thoughtful. Although he was an offensive guru, he let defensive leaders like Jessie Armstead and Michael Strahan take the helm of the team on the sideline because they were outspoken and commanded more respect from their teammates than a coach ever could.At the same time, while Fassel was raised in Southern California and had a laid-back vibe, he understood the territory and landscape of his workplace. Especially in his first few years with the Giants, he grasped that the team was at its best when it reflected the gritty, blue collar ethos promoted by Parcells, the northern New Jersey native. As an assistant for two years to the erudite but miscast Ray Handley, who replaced Parcells as Giants coach in 1991, Fassel had witnessed a failure of style in the Meadowlands.So Fassel went the other way in 1997.“The man has a mean streak,” Armstead, who was no softy, said of Fassel in 1997. “You really don’t want to mess with him. He goes after people. You should see him.”Fassel will also be remembered for his active, energetic appearances at ground zero in Lower Manhattan a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks.“I just walked around talking and shaking hands with the people working down there,” he said at the time. “They looked like they hadn’t slept in days, they were dirty and drained. I stayed as long as I could just saying, ‘Thanks for what you’re doing here.’”In Fassel’s tenure, a wealth of top Giants talent was developed: Amani Toomer, the franchise leader in receptions; Tiki Barber, the team’s career rushing leader; and Kerry Collins, the only quarterback in 96 years of Giants history to throw five touchdowns in a postseason game.An argument could be made that the high-powered 2002 Giants offense that vaulted to a 38-14 third-quarter lead in a wild-card playoff game in San Francisco might have been Fassel’s best team. When they blew the lead and lost by a point, it was as if those Giants, and Fassel, never recovered. The next year’s team won only four games.He resigned with a 58-53-1 record and days later was on the verge of being named the head coach at Washington when Joe Gibbs, who won three Super Bowls there, stunned the team owner Dan Snyder by expressing his desire to come out of retirement at 63.There was never another N.F.L. head coaching job offered to Fassel.He was not cut from classic football coach cloth. He smiled too easily, told corny stories, tried to get away from football when he could and wanted people to like him. But he won a lot of games, made an important contribution to a storied N.F.L. franchise, earned the devotion of scores of players and, in fact, succeeded in winning over most everyone who met him.About 10 years ago, I had breakfast with Fassel and asked him if he saved his notes from his now-famous Thanksgiving eve speech from 2000. You know, the stuff about the poker chips, raising the stakes and having no fear.“I never wrote anything down,” he said, laughing. “I just knew I had to put myself in the cross hairs — and nobody else. I had to kind of cause a distraction. So I just winged it.” More

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      Coach K’s Retirement From Duke and the End of the College ‘Supercoach’

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      Mike Krzyzewski of Duke announced his retirement shortly after his Tobacco Road nemesis, Roy Williams, announced his, as the N.C.A.A prepares to grant athletes greater agency.Is the supercoach soon to be extinct?Jim Boeheim, how much longer will you hold on at Syracuse?John Calipari, what about your long ride at Kentucky?Tom Izzo at Michigan State, and even Nick Saban, the czar of college football at Alabama, have you been double-checking your retirement plans?Together, you represent the last of a dying breed.The herd of such coaches — transcendent, paternalistic, charismatic, leading the most vaunted men’s programs in the most popular sports — thinned significantly last week when Mike Krzyzewski, a coaching legend, announced his plans to decamp from Duke. At the end of next season, with 42 years and at least five national titles in the bag, Krzyzewski will pull the curtains on a remarkable career.The transition isn’t just a monumental moment in the history of Duke basketball, royalty in college sports. It also signals broad, fundamental change. As amateur and professional players disrupt the status quo, they are sparking a revolution that is giving athletes increased power while diminishing the prevalence of coaches’ unquestioned authority.Nowhere is that more apparent than in college, particularly in football and men’s basketball, where supercoaches are now an endangered species.It was not long ago when they strode unquestioned across the college sports firmament. More famous than all but a few of their players, they weren’t just coaches, they were archetypes, part of a mythology in American sports that connects to the days of Knute Rockne at Notre Dame.The annual games pitting Duke against North Carolina were billed as a test of deities — first Krzyzewski against Dean Smith, then Coach K against Roy Williams.But Williams retired two months ago, after 48 years, suddenly and surprisingly. An avowed traditionalist, it was clear that he had seen enough of the changes shaping the future of college sports.“I’m old school,” Roy Williams has said of the new N.C.A.A. transfer rules. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end.”Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesUpstart disrupter leagues such as Overtime Elite and the Professional Collegiate League are set to take on the establishment, even as the G League flourishes as a minor league alternative to the N.B.A. They are offering lucrative contracts to the best high school players — Overtime Elite offers $100,000 annually — legitimizing payments to players who have long operated under the table in the college game.Krzyzewski earns in the neighborhood of $10 million a year, a mogul who operates atop an economic caste system that has kept the athletes unpaid at the bottom of the barrel.Players have fought for the ability to be paid, too, and soon they will finally be able to earn significant sums by trading on their marketability as the N.C.A.A. prepares to respond to legislation sweeping the country that will allow student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. Eventually they may end up getting salaries from their universities for their work on the field and court. A push continues to allow them to unionize.Coaches have always had the freedom to walk away from their contracts for better deals at other colleges.Players fought for similar mobility.Now they can transfer to another school and play immediately, instead of being penalized with sitting out for a year. Baylor just won the men’s national title in basketball on the strength of players who started their careers at other universities.What’s the supercoach take on that kind of player freedom?“I’m old school,” said Roy Williams, considering the matter before he retired. “I believe if you have a little adversity, you ought to fight through it, and it makes you stronger at the end. I believe when you make a commitment, that commitment should be solid.”The irony is thick. In 2003, Williams bolted to North Carolina from Kansas. He left the Kansas players he had recruited, no doubt with promises that he was going to stay put, in the rearview mirror.Gone are the days of reeling in top players like Duke’s Grant Hill and Christian Laettner, watching them mature for four years and riding their talents to multiple national titles.Gone, too, are the days when athletes didn’t have options. They kept complaints quiet or risked being banished to the bench, maybe for good. Today’s college athletes can take their concerns to far-flung audiences on social media or easily move to another university.All of this makes players less likely to follow every last dictate without question. It lays siege to the kind of authority that has powered the best-known men’s coaches in the biggest college sports for over a hundred years.In the news conference announcing his departure, Krzyzewski said his retirement had nothing to do with the swiftly evolving landscape.“I’ve been in it for 46 years,” he said. “Do you think the game has never changed? We’ve always had to adapt to the changes in culture, the changes in rules, the changes in the world. We’re going through one right now.”That’s a dodge.Equating today’s tectonic shifts to the relatively minor changes of yesteryear — the introductions of the 3-point line or the shot clock, for instance — misses the mark.The world of old seems quaint now. Think of the 1980s, after Krzyzewski went to Durham after coaching at West Point.Along with Coach K at Duke and Smith at North Carolina, Jim Valvano strode the sideline at North Carolina State. Not far away, in the mighty Big East Conference, stood Lou Carnesecca (and his famed sweater) at St. John’s. Rollie Massimino was at Villanova. John Thompson at Georgetown. And a much younger version of Boeheim, now 74, at Syracuse.Apologies to the younger generation, to the likes of Baylor’s 50-year-old men’s basketball coach, Scott Drew, but it will never be that way again. Not with the players getting in on the action, getting a share of the pie, demanding their rights.The time is right for change. Ten years down the line, what will the landscape look like?Nobody can say for sure, which is both exciting and daunting. But this much seems inevitable: The supercoach, secure in power, dictating the terms, firm in archetypal fame, is unlikely to still be around. More

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      Danny Ainge Retires as Celtics President

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      Ainge, who played for the Celtics in the 1980s, had been in the role since 2003. He will be replaced by Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for the past eight seasons.Danny Ainge retired as the president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics on Wednesday and was replaced by the team’s coach, Brad Stevens, whom Ainge hired in 2013 out of the college ranks. It was a stunning change at the top of the franchise that Ainge ran for nearly two decades. Stevens has no front office experience, though as the head coach he gave input on roster moves.The announcement came a day after the Nets beat the Celtics in Game 5 of their first-round series to eliminate them from the playoffs, capping a disappointing season. Ainge, flanked at a news conference by two Celtics owners and Stevens, said that the decision to step down was entirely his and that he began thinking about doing so two years ago, when he had a heart attack during the 2019 playoffs.“I trust my instincts,” Ainge said. “My instincts told me a couple months ago that it was time for me to move on. That’s what is best for us. That’s what’s best for the Celtics.”Wyc Grousbeck, the majority owner of the Celtics, said: “For the record, Danny came and said it’s his time. It’s completely his decision with no support whatsoever from ownership in making that decision. No support was offered except for wishing him the best once it became clear that was his decision.”Ainge, 62, and Stevens, 44, said they had casually discussed the possibility of Stevens inheriting Ainge’s job in the past. Grousbeck called elevating Stevens to the front office a “natural promotion from within.”“He was at the table here with Danny in the war room and all of our roster decisions along the way for the eight years, which has had a number of notable successes,” Grousbeck said.Ainge’s hiring was one of the first moves Grousbeck and Stephen Pagliuca made after purchasing the Celtics in 2003. The Celtics had made the 2002 Eastern Conference finals, led by Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce, but had not won a championship since 1986, when Ainge played in Boston’s backcourt. Rather than building on that success, Ainge blew up the team, including a trade of Walker.In 2007, he pulled off two trades that revitalized the franchise, for Ray Allen and for Kevin Garnett. The moves were considered risky, but almost overnight, Boston became a championship contender. The Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2008 N.B.A. finals for the franchise’s first championship in 22 years.Since then, Ainge has kept the team competitive, in part through shrewd moves like trading Pierce and Garnett to the Nets for the draft picks that became Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But some of his moves backfired. In 2017, he traded one of those Nets picks and guard Isaiah Thomas for Kyrie Irving, then a disgruntled star with the Cleveland Cavaliers. After the 2018-19 season, Irving spurned the Celtics and signed with the Nets in free agency.Brad Stevens made three appearances in the conference finals over eight seasons as head coach.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesEven before Ainge was hired by the Celtics, he was revered by fans for his play on two Boston championship teams. He is the only figure in Celtics history to win rings both as a player and an executive.On Wednesday, Ainge did not rule out working in basketball again. He said his immediate goal was to assist Stevens with the transition. “I’ll think about the future somewhere in the future,” Ainge said.Among the first decisions Stevens has to make is who will succeed him as coach. He was an unexpected hire when he replaced Doc Rivers in 2013. Stevens had spent six years as the men’s basketball coach at Butler, where he orchestrated several cinderella runs in the N.C.A.A. tournament. As an N.B.A. coach, Stevens went 354-282 over eight seasons and made the playoffs in seven times, including three trips to the Eastern Conference finals.“I’m looking forward to really diving into this process,” Stevens said. “I think that the good news about whoever we hire, they don’t have to fill Doc Rivers’s shoes like I did and they don’t have to fill Danny Ainge’s shoes now like I do. The good news is they have to figure out a way to be better than the last guy.”Much of the Wednesday afternoon news conference served as a tribute to Ainge, who had been criticized over the past week for saying in a radio interview that he had not heard about racism toward players at the Celtics’ arena in his 26 years with the team. His comment was in response to a remark from Irving, who had asked Boston fans not to be belligerent or racist when the Nets came there for Games 3 and 4 of their first-round series. A fan was arrested at Game 4 in Boston after throwing a bottle that nearly hit Irving in the head, and many athletes over the years have spoken out about racism they experienced in Boston.“I’ve been in professional sports for 44 straight years,” Ainge said on Wednesday. “And I’ve had a lot of ups and downs and fun and sad losses. Today is not a great day. I wish we would’ve finished the year on a much better note but I feel like there’s so much hope in the Celtics going forward.” More