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      Joel Embiid Says He Can ‘Do Anything’ on the Court. Let Him Show You.

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      The Philadelphia 76ers center is one of the best big men in the N.B.A., but with his dribbling skills, he may be coming for the jobs of the guards.Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers took a half-beat to assess the situation during a late-season game against the Boston Celtics. As is often the case, he sensed an advantage.Embiid, a 7-foot, 280-pound center, cradled the ball near the top of the key as he faced up against the Celtics’ Grant Williams, a 6-6 forward who crouched into a defensive stance as he waved his left hand in Embiid’s face. It might as well have been an act of surrender.Embiid had a lot of extraordinary feats during the regular season to position himself as a favorite to win his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award. In addition to leading the league in scoring for a second consecutive season, with a career-high 33.1 points per game, he averaged 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks.But there was one thing he did more often than anything else, an underrated skill for him that destabilized opposing defenses and helped lift the 76ers to the third-best record in the N.B.A.: He took 5,526 dribbles.Embiid driving against Boston’s Grant Williams in a late-season game.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDuring that possession against the Celtics, Embiid needed just two of them — a pair of hard dribbles to his right as his teammates cleared out to the 3-point line, dragging their defenders with them. Embiid pulled up in the paint, then created space against Williams with a double pivot before he sank a short fadeaway jumper over him.“How are you going to stop that?” Ian Eagle, TNT’s play-by-play voice, said during the television broadcast.The short answer for the Celtics was that they weren’t. Embiid finished with 52 points in a narrow win.Not so long ago, N.B.A. centers made their lunch-pail livings by camping out near the hoop. A between-the-legs dribble out near the 3-point line would have probably landed them on the bench.But the game has changed, of course, and the plodding big man is a relic. The modern N.B.A. is teeming with huge players who can launch 3-pointers, run sets from the high post and, in some cases, stretch defenses by dribbling like their Lilliputian teammates. More

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      in Soccer

      The Shadow of an Abuse Scandal Looms Over a World Cup Soccer Team

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      Vera Pauw was accused of body-shaming players while coaching in the National Women’s Soccer League. Sinead Farrelly helped expose abuse in that league. The two are now working together on Team Ireland.AUSTIN, Texas — As Ireland prepares for its first Women’s World Cup, its coach and a newly included midfielder find themselves on opposite sides of an abuse scandal that has roiled soccer in the United States. But their separate conflicts have fused into a tentative and pragmatic alliance.Vera Pauw, 60, Ireland’s national coach and a former coach of the Houston Dash of the National Women’s Soccer League, was accused late last year of body-shaming players and of being a “power freak” who sought to control their lives when she coached the Dash in 2018. At a news conference in Austin on Friday, Pauw labeled the accusations, contained in a blistering report organized by the league and its players’ union, “absolutely ridiculous and false.”Sinead Farrelly, 33, a native of suburban Philadelphia who has dual citizenship with Ireland, was a brave and vital whistle-blower who helped lift the league’s veil of indifference toward coaching misconduct. Farrelly and other players made accusations of sexual, verbal and emotional abuse that led to four N.W.S.L. coaches’ being barred permanently from the league early this year.Pauw was not accused of sexual impropriety, did not coach Farrelly in the league and was not among those barred for life. To return to the N.W.S.L., however, she has been told that she must accept responsibility for her actions. That restriction does not apply to international soccer.For the next few months at least, Pauw, who is Dutch, and Farrelly, who ended her seven-year absence from soccer last month in returning to the N.W.S.L. and made her debut for Ireland on Saturday, are expected to collaborate as Ireland approaches the World Cup this summer in Australia and New Zealand.The United States, a four-time world champion, and Ireland will play a second tuneup match on Tuesday in St. Louis. In a 2-0 defeat to the Americans on Saturday in Austin, Farrelly sought to bring a calming presence while starting in Ireland’s midfield after only two training sessions. Pauw said that she had spoken to Farrelly before she joined the Irish team and had tried to make her feel comfortable. They share a desire to perform on soccer’s grandest stage but also a horrible commonality. Last year, Pauw said that she had been raped by a Dutch soccer official when she was a player and that she had also been sexually assaulted by two other men.For 35 years, she kept the abuse private, Pauw said in a statement last July, allowing the memories “to control my life, to fill me with daily pain and anguish.”In a broad sense, the Pauw-Farrelly union can be viewed as a dispiriting sign of how widespread accusations of impropriety are in women’s soccer.On a personal level, Pauw is trying to restore her reputation, which she believes was unfairly tarnished. And Farrelly is attempting to restart a career, once blooming with promise but prematurely shriveled by what she has described as sexual coercion, emotional manipulation and the shattering of her self-confidence by a former coach, Paul Riley.In September 2021, Farrelly told The Athletic that Riley, one of the top coaches in women’s soccer, had coerced her into a yearslong sexual relationship and once manipulated her into kissing a teammate with the Portland Thorns in front of him in exchange for a less strenuous team practice. The teammate, Mana Shim, confirmed Farrelly’s account and made other similar allegations of misconduct against Riley. He has denied having sex with any players.The revelations pulled back the curtain on systemic abuse in women’s soccer and led to wide-ranging fallout across the N.W.S.L. An investigation headed by Sally Q. Yates, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, described Riley’s misbehavior over the years as an “open secret.”Farrelly said on Saturday that her comeback would not have been possible without the catharsis of telling her story publicly. “That healing and liberation from that had to occur before I could ever play again,” she said.She has described her return to soccer as one day at a time. Farrelly said she has been asking well-wishers, “Will you still love me if I totally mess this up?”“Because that’s my biggest fear,” she told a small group of reporters. “I don’t want to go out there and fail and make mistakes. That’s just how my brain works.”Instead, she said, she was “really trying to take people’s support and not twist it into pressure.” She wants to be grateful for the experience of attempting to make a World Cup team. “I play my best when I’m having fun. I just need to bring it back to that every time.”Farrelly playing against the United States on Saturday.Dustin Safranek/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConFarrelly announced her retirement in 2016, the result of injuries both psychic and physical, including those sustained in a 2015 car accident. But she returned to the N.W.S.L last month and signed with Gotham F.C., saying in a statement that she wanted to be a dependable player while “also having grace and compassion with myself” and hoped to “inspire others to follow their dreams, no matter how far out of reach they may seem.”Pauw’s return to the N.W.S.L. remains uncertain. Last December, in the report organized by the league and its players’ union, Pauw was accused of shaming Houston players in 2018 about their weight and attempting to “exert excessive control over their eating habits,” including discouraging the eating of fruit because of its sugar content, “with no apparent correlation to performance or health.”She was also accused of exerting control over players’ personal lives while living in the same apartment complex. The accusations included knocking on a player’s door at night and inviting herself inside; favoring some players by inviting them over for coffee and biscuits; restricting players from using the pool during the afternoon; and discouraging them from lifting weights in the belief that it would make them too “bulky.”Pauw vigorously defended herself at Friday’s news conference.“If there’s one thing that I don’t do, it is body shaming,” she said. “There is no scale in my dressing room, there’s no fat percentages taken.”“What is the standard?” Pauw said plaintively. “Can you not educate players in getting the best out of themselves with something that is technically just coaching?”No one would have complained if she were a male coach, Pauw said.“As a female coach, you’re not safe in your coaching,” she said. “You’re not safe to do your job. There’s double standards here.”The World Cup begins in three months. Farrelly and Pauw are looking ahead, seeking repair and renewal.Pauw said that Farrelly “trusts me; she trusts the truth.”Farrelly appears more wary. She said she was cautious about playing for a coach accused of abuse, even if it was not sexual wrongdoing.“I think it’s just going to be time for us to build trust and stuff like that,” Farrelly said. She took a risk, a leap of faith, she said, hoping the Irish national team would be a healthy environment for her. “It’s an ongoing thing, I think.” More

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      in Soccer

      Hervé Renard Set to Coach France at Women’s World Cup

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      Renard has vast experience in Africa and led Saudi Arabia at last year’s World Cup. But he has never coached a women’s team.PARIS — Hervé Renard, a French coach with vast experience in international soccer but none leading a women’s team, was set to be hired to lead a France squad that will be among the favorites at the Women’s World Cup in July.France is expected to announce Renard’s hiring by the end of the week, just over two weeks after the country’s soccer federation fired its longtime women’s coach, Corinne Diacre, in the face of player revolt.Renard, 54, most recently coached Saudi Arabia’s men’s team but announced his departure on Tuesday, hours after the Saudi soccer federation said it had agreed to a French federation request to end his contract immediately.The French soccer federation made no announcement that it had hired Renard, but the Saudi federation’s president, Yasser Al-Misehal, essentially confirmed a deal was in the works when he told a Saudi sports channel on Tuesday night that Renard had been offered the France post and that the coach “expressed his desire to take this opportunity.”Renard’s arrival could be a welcome breath of fresh air for Les Bleues, as the French women’s team is known, but also for the embattled French federation, which will be eager for a fresh start after a leadership change as well as a series of internal conflicts that were threatening to tear apart its star-studded and trophy-chasing women’s team.Time is short: France’s players will have only a matter of months, and a handful of exhibition games, to adapt to Renard before they run out for their Women’s World Cup opener against Jamaica on July 23 in Sydney, Australia.But Renard also will have only a short window to persuade his players that he can adapt his style to them, and to the women’s game. While he has decades of coaching experience in multiple countries, he has not previously coached women at the professional or international level. At least one prominent player agent said that would not be a problem.“As someone who’s known for leading men, I’m sure he’ll have no problem leading women,” Sonia Souid, an agent who represents several players on the French women’s team, said in an interview last week. Souid suggested that Renard’s transition could be seamless as long as he can make the players believe they can succeed.“The real challenge is that Renard will be expected to have immediate results,” she said. “That’s difficult for any coach.”Renard’s most immediate task will be to heal the wounds of a “fractured” group, as the federation called its women’s team in the communiqué that announced Diacre’s departure. Fissures between Diacre and some of her best players broke for good in February, when several top players, including the team captain Wendie Renard and the Paris-St.-Germain star Marie-Antoinette Katoto, announced that they would leave the team and refuse future calls to international duty amid disagreements with the management of Diacre, which they denounced as “nowhere near top-level requirements.”Wendie Renard announced on social media that she had chosen to prioritize her “mental health” by quitting the French team. Two weeks later, Diacre was fired.Hervé Renard has a reputation as an itinerant leader who extracts results from his players and then moves on. He has never stayed more than four years on the same coaching bench in a career that has taken him to Africa, the Middle East, England’s fourth division, France’s Ligue 1 and to local teams in the Algerian and Vietnamese championships.Sharp-jawed and favoring crisp white dress shirts on the sideline, Renard attracted attention and headlines during last year’s World Cup in Qatar, where he led an unheralded Saudi Arabia team stocked with domestic-based players to a stunning group-stage victory over Argentina.A video of an impassioned speech he delivered to his players at halftime of that game racked up millions of views on social media, but also offered a glimpse into both his methods, his passion and his no-nonsense coaching style.His first look at his new team could come within days: France will gather for a training camp next week ahead of a set of friendly matches against Colombia and Canada in early April.As he prepares for the World Cup, Renard will have to work quickly to merge a new generation of talents like Katoto with an older group of players whose international careers came to an abrupt end under Diacre. That latter group includes not only Renard and goalkeeper Sarah Bouhaddi but also midfielder Amandine Henry, who remains a mainstay of the French powerhouse Olympique Lyonnais Féminin at the age of 33. Henry has not played for France in more than two years, and was left off the national team’s roster by Diacre for last summer’s European Championship in England.That tournament, like so many others, ended in disappointment and frustration for France. Despite its talent, it has never reached the final of a major championship like the World Cup or the Euros or claimed an Olympic medal in its 50 years of existence.Tariq Panja contributed reporting. More

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      in Basket

      NBA ‘Bad Boy’ Wants Players to Do as He Says, Not as His Teams Did

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      Joe Dumars was on the 1980s Detroit Pistons teams known for their hard fouls. But players and coaches who step out of line today can expect fines and suspensions — from him.Joe Dumars chuckled at his desk in Midtown Manhattan as framed portraits of links to the N.B.A.’s past — Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain and Gus Williams — loomed behind him.His Detroit Pistons of the 1980s were notorious for the bruising physicality of Rick Mahorn, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman and earned their Bad Boys nickname with a knock-you-down-and-answer-questions-later bully brand of basketball.No way could Dumars pick just one particularly egregious play to characterize the teams.“I’ve had Rick and Bill say to me, ‘Next time he gets it, let him beat you.’ They would drop people,” Dumars said. “They wanted to send a message. They didn’t take a night off of being physical.”They are also like the portraits in Dumars’s office — pieces of a bygone N.B.A. era. Dumars, 59, oddly enough, is the one making sure of it. He develops new rules and imposes discipline in his first year as the N.B.A.’s executive vice president, head of basketball operations.Yes, a principal member of the Bad Boys is charged with punishing those who would dare throw elbows and punches just like his Pistons teammates did.“It’s really good to have somebody that knows what it looks like,” Dumars said. “There is no utopian view here. I know the ugly side of it. I know the physical side of it. I know the nasty side of it.”A fight between the Detroit Pistons’ Bill Laimbeer and the Chicago Bulls’ Will Perdue during the 1991 N.B.A. playoffs.Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesThis season, players and coaches have been fined or suspended for many infractions: hitting, kicking and throwing balls into the stands; grabbing one player by the neck; striking another in the groin; making obscene gestures and using inappropriate language. So many players were suspended after a melee between the Magic and the Pistons that the punishments were staggered to ensure that Orlando had enough players to continue competing.Discipline in the N.B.A. is more consuming and complex than ever, as it’s easier for wayward behavior to be captured, broadcast, debated and overblown. Players are fined for offensive social media posts, and fans can share videos and screenshots of bad interactions with players. Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant was recently suspended for eight games after livestreaming a video on Instagram while holding a gun in a nightclub. It’s not the same league Dumars played in for 14 years.“I’m not a traditionalist in the way that the game can’t ever change,” he said.‘Got away with it’In late January, a general manager sent Dumars a video of an opponent stripping the ball from one of his team’s players. The defender jumped and swung where he thought the ball would be, but he hit the player’s head instead and was called for a foul. The G.M. wanted the call to be upgraded to a flagrant foul.Dumars, who was Detroit’s president of basketball operations for 14 seasons, knows from experience that teams will try to extract an advantage by almost any means. That often includes tattling to the league.Dumars and four or five people review foul calls by cycling through clips from several angles. Monty McCutchen, a former longtime official, and Byron Spruell, the president of league operations, are usually part of the process.The former referee Monty McCutchen spoke to a referee during the 2019 summer league.David Dow/NBAE, via Getty Images“You’re trying to drive consistency, so people know that you’re fair about this,” Dumars said. “Everything that we do, there’s precedent.”The review group concluded that the head-hitting play did not meet the criteria for a flagrant foul. “He was going for the ball and he happened to catch the guy,” Dumars said.The play probably would not have received a second thought during Dumars’s N.B.A. career from 1985-99.“Outright brawls where guys are flinging punches, throwing guys over the scoring table,” Sam Smith, a longtime basketball writer, said of the league’s rivalries of the 1980s. “Fights going into the stands. Stuff that nobody in this generation has witnessed.”Smith wrote “The Jordan Rules,” the 1991 book that detailed the Bad Boys’ ruthless strategies to try to stop Michael Jordan with hard contact when he played for the rival Chicago Bulls.Although the Jordan rules are nostalgic hyperbole to an extent — “just trying to make that guy most of the time go left,” Dumars said — those Pistons teams ensured opponents’ aching bodies wouldn’t let them forget who they had played the night before.Smith said, “There hasn’t really been a rivalry since the Bulls and the Pistons, a rivalry in the sense of absolute bitterness where the teams hated each other and wanted each other not just to fail, but for careers to be over.”Michael Jordan battles for position against Joe Dumars of the Detroit Pistons circa 1990 at the Palace of Auburn Hills in suburban Detroit.Allen Einstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesDumars drew just four technical fouls over his 14 seasons. “I was out of control,” he joked. “But one of those was rescinded.”The N.B.A.’s sportsmanship award is named after him now, but he wasn’t always the court choir boy. He’d speed up to try to initiate contact when he saw a big man approach to set a screen.“The referees never looked at me in a negative way because they assumed I wasn’t trying to do that,” Dumars said. “I probably got away with it a little bit more than I should have, just on reputation.”The N.B.A. didn’t call flagrant fouls until the 1990-91 season. The year before, on-court altercations led to 67 fines (of 101 total fines) and eight suspensions. Typical seasons in the Bad Boys era had about 40 fines and a half-dozen suspensions for on-court altercations. Last season, there were 48 fines — 15 for on-court altercations — and 180 flagrant fouls. The N.B.A.’s data on individual and total flagrant fouls goes back to only the 2004-5 season, a league official said.“It’s a different game and if you tried to play the style that we played, in today’s game, you’d be in foul trouble,” Dumars said.And if you complain about it, you might get in trouble, too.‘Junking the game up’Toronto’s Fred VanVleet knew the consequences. “I’ll take a fine,” he said before profanely criticizing the referee Ben Taylor by name after a recent game against the Los Angeles Clippers. “I don’t really care.”Dumars fined him $30,000 the next day for “public criticism of the officiating.”Raptors guard Fred VanVleet, left, was fined $30,000 for criticizing officials in a news conference this month. He singled out Ben Taylor, right, who had called him for a technical foul against the Clippers.Cole Burston/Getty ImagesPlayers and coaches often complain about officiating, even if it costs them. In December, for example, Dallas Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd was ejected and fined $25,000 for confronting a referee during a game. The week before, Sacramento Kings Coach Mike Brown was ejected and fined $25,000 for “aggressively pursuing” an official during a game.Some players, like Golden State’s Draymond Green, have argued that they were unfairly called for technical fouls, or that they were punished more harshly than others for similar violations. The N.B.A. rescinded a technical foul that had been called on Green’s teammate Jordan Poole this month after he bounced the ball to a referee.The punishments and the pushback aren’t unique to basketball, and Dumars said he’s open to hearing the grievances. His phone number is plastered around league locker rooms. Players, agents and coaches sometimes call. Mostly, it’s general managers, his former peers, politicking, complaining and gossiping.One of Dumars’s former colleagues recently called him, bemoaning that his team had allowed 68 points by halftime.“You know what the shame of it was?” he told Dumars. “We were up by 5.”Many rules changes over the years have made it easier for players to score, such as one of Dumars’s initiatives for this season: stiffer penalties for defenders who commit blatant fouls to stop breakaway plays.Teams are averaging 114.5 points per game this season, the most since the 1969-70 season. Fast break points are up. A new player tops 50 points, it seems, nearly every night.“The game is so clean now, it’s just about who’s the best player,” Dumars said. “There’s nothing that’s junking the game up.”‘Protect the game’A car arrived at the N.B.A.’s Midtown headquarters in January to transport Dumars to that night’s game between the Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers.“Joe D,” a Madison Square Garden security guard said with a fist bump. “It was better in the ’80s and ’90s.”Dumars smiled, taking an elevator up to the court level. Knicks General Manager Scott Perry pulled him aside for a short conversation. A fan offered to buy him a drink. “I don’t drink,” Dumars said, “but I’m addicted to popcorn.”Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka exchanged pleasantries with Dumars on the way to his seat.“You’re just a steward of the game,” Dumars said. “You have to be there to protect the game and make sure that it’s clean.”Bedel Saget/The New York TimesDays earlier, referees had missed a clear foul by Boston’s Jayson Tatum on the Lakers’ LeBron James that would have allowed James to shoot free throws to try to win the game in regulation. Instead, Boston won in overtime. Dumars was happy that the referees immediately owned up to the blown call after the game, which rekindled a debate about how instant replay and coaches’ challenges should be used in the future.“Usually, something happens in the game that sparks a conversation, so that’s on the table now,” Dumars said.The Knicks-Lakers matchup featured few disputed plays and no technical fouls. Dumars watched, marveling at the longevity of James, who ended the night with a triple-double and would soon break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record.The Lakers beat the Knicks in overtime. Dumars walked inside the underbelly of the Garden to an elevator, then to a car to take him back to his apartment.The job doesn’t keep Dumars up at night, the way, say, trading a player once did.It does keep him busy. Over the next few days, Memphis’ Dillon Brooks hit Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell in the groin and Orlando’s Mo Bamba and Minnesota’s Austin Rivers fought. Brooks, Bamba and Rivers were all suspended. Mitchell was fined for retaliating by throwing a ball at Brooks and pushing him.“You’re just a steward of the game,” Dumars said. “You have to be there to protect the game and make sure that it’s clean. There’s always something. There will be something.” More

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      in Tennis

      Pam Shriver’s Fight to End Sex Abuse in Women’s Tennis

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      The 21-time Grand Slam doubles champion is doing four-way duty as a television commentator, a coach, an ally to sexual abuse survivors and an agitator for changing the game’s culture.INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — It was late in the afternoon of an early round at the BNP Paribas Open in the California desert, and Pam Shriver was having a day.There had been practice and strategy sessions with Donna Vekic, the talented 26-year-old Croat she has been helping coach since October. She had been going back and forth with Lindsay Brandon, the WTA Tour’s new director of safeguarding, the cause that has become Shriver’s focus over the past year.She was also spending time with a woman named Karen Denison Clark, who had reached out to Shriver in February as a fellow survivor of sexual abuse. Still ahead was a night match to call as a commentator for the Tennis Channel.This is how it is for Shriver these days. She was long known to fans as a 21-time Grand Slam doubles champion and a leading television analyst, but Shriver’s life changed last year when she spoke openly for the first time about the man who had coached her when she was a teenager. Don Candy, who died in 2020, was 50 years old and Shriver was 17 when the relationship moved beyond coaching. Shriver now understands that the relationship, which lasted five years, was sexually and emotionally abusive.Since she told her story, Shriver’s existence has become a test of juggling often conflicting missions. She is a leading face and voice for tennis. She is also the tip of the spear in the fight to expose abuse. She is one of the game’s few female coaches, as well as an ally for survivors of the kind of harassment she views as all too prevalent.“I don’t mind hurting women’s tennis if it means helping women tennis players,” Shriver, 60, said last week, sitting at a picnic table as fans streamed across the grounds of the BNP Paribas Open, the so-called fifth slam, with Clark beside her. “This is a tour that for decades and decades looked the other way.”She told her story, she said, because she wanted to change the culture of her sport, and the effects have already been significant.Shortly after Shriver went public, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, announced that the organization would conduct a wholesale review of its safeguarding policies and hire its first director of safeguarding. Brandon, a lawyer, started late last year with a mandate to make the sport safer by overseeing investigations into complaints of abuse and revamping the WTA Tour’s rules and standards.At the BNP Paribas Open, her first tournament, she met with Shriver and dozens of players, and said she had spent most of her first three months on the job looking into ongoing investigations. Her first major move has been to require anyone seeking a women’s tour credential, including players and members of their support staffs, to complete a new online safeguarding education program before the French Open.After Shriver spoke with Dave Haggerty, the president of the International Tennis Federation, the organization required a wider range of people to adhere to its guidelines and strengthened its rules on prohibited behavior.Her advocacy also led to her coaching gig with Vekic, a member of the WTA Tour’s player council, when a discussion about safeguarding during a tournament in San Diego evolved into a conversation about Vekic’s play. Within weeks, Vekic had added Shriver to her coaching staff, making her one of the rare female coaches in professional tennis.Shriver, right, and coach Don Candy arriving at the airport in Sydney ahead of the Ladies Australian Indoor Classic in 1982.Antony Matheus Linsen/Fairfax Media, via Getty ImagesHer biggest impact, though, may be in her quiet conversations with current and former players about their experiences with coaches whose behavior ranged from inappropriate to abusive to possibly unlawful, conversations like the one that began with an email from Clark on Feb. 7.Like Shriver, Clark, now 65, was a top junior player in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1960s and 1970s. Shriver remembered Clark as being older and better than she was but knew nothing about why her fledgling tennis career had fizzled largely before it began. Clark kept the reason to herself for more than 30 years before telling her husband in 2006.“I thought, ‘If I file it away, and lock the cabinet, and throw away the key, it will never bother me,’” Clark said. “But then my children got older and left home, and it just had more space.”In the summer of 1973, when she was 15, a coach with a budding reputation saw Clark play at a tennis camp and sought out her parents, offering to work with their daughter. Clark had already competed in some of the most competitive age-group tournaments. Working with an up-and-coming coach felt like an opportunity.The New York Times has not been able to speak with Clark’s former coach, despite calling his mobile phone and sending several messages to an email address, to his most recent place of employment and through social media.That fall, Clark said, the coach asked her to accompany him to an adult clinic he was holding at a resort in Charlottesville, Va., where her sister was in college. On the first night, Clark said, the coach took her to the hotel bar under the guise of meeting other participants from the clinic, but they weren’t there.Clark remembers him as giving her a glass of “something brown.” She remembers stumbling along a hallway and entering the coach’s room. The next thing she remembers is coming to on the bed. She was lying on her back with her tennis skirt around her knees, and he was wiping her stomach with tissues. The coach then drove Clark to her sister’s townhouse.“I woke up the next day thinking I can’t ever tell anyone about this,” she said.She continued training with the coach for several more months, until she could barely hold her racket without shaking and her game fell apart.Clark said that holding in for decades her story of sexual abuse “made me feel like I was going crazy.”Allison Dinner for The New York TimesLast April, when Shriver told her story on “The Tennis Podcast,” Clark was listening. In December, after successfully battling breast cancer, she began to craft an email, a draft of which stayed on her computer for two months before she sent it to Shriver, who responded 90 minutes later. They traded emails and had a video call a week later, during which Clark filled in the details. She did not file a complaint at the time and said she does not intend to now. She wanted to tell her story in hopes that it might encourage other women to tell theirs.“It made me feel like I was going crazy,” Clark said as she sat beside Shriver last week.Shriver said she had felt the same way during those five years when Candy was coaching her. Her lessons from that experience are at the heart of what she has tried to convey to people like Simon and Haggerty, offering ideas on better certifying coaches and requiring players to find another coach if they become romantically involved with a current one.She urged Haggerty to make the policing of abuse the third pillar of the federation’s independent enforcement arm, the International Tennis Integrity Association, alongside doping and corruption, including match fixing.A spokesman for the I.T.F. said Friday that the organization and its safeguarding team, which includes an investigator, was committed to working “with all survivors — including Pam — to ensure that their voices and opinions are incorporated.”Shriver was hoping the tour would move more quickly than it has been, with its current promise of having a new, clear code for behavior in 2024.“That is a whole year later than what I was told,” Shriver said, donning the agitator’s hat.A 16-year-old Shriver at the U.S. Open in New York in 1978.Dave Pickoff/Associated PressShe has, though, found her first meetings with Brandon encouraging. As Shriver sees it, tennis players have led among female athletes, having long ago gained equal pay in the biggest tournaments, as well as exposure that is far beyond what women in other sports have received.The tour’s ethical code for coaches already discourages intimate relationships between coaches and players and prohibits them for players younger than 18. Brandon wants to establish a basic code of minimum standards and rules as well as “an environment where people feel safe speaking up” and don’t need to fear retaliation.The WTA declined to say how many cases were currently on its docket.At times, Shriver’s conflicting roles can be at loggerheads. During the Australian Open, she condemned on Twitter the coach of Elena Rybakina, Stefano Vukov, for his aggressive and public criticism of Rybakina from the courtside coaching box. Her posts drew a rebuke from Rybakina, who defended Vukov. There was chatter that she violated an unwritten code — that coaches don’t publicly criticize rival coaches.Still, she said that so far the juggling act had proved worthwhile, at times for unexpected reasons.At a cafe on Friday morning, Bradley Polito, the father of a 7-year-old daughter named Madeleine who is hooked on the sport, approached to introduce himself and thanked Shriver for everything she had said.Polito explained that he had no background in sports. Shriver’s story, he said, opened his eyes and drove him to make sure his daughter had a female coach.“It’s almost like a North Star for us,” he said. More

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      Investigators Clear Former U.S. Soccer Coach in 1992 Incident

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      An inquiry found no reason U.S. Soccer could not rehire Gregg Berhalter as coach of the men’s national team. But investigators criticized the parents of a player for their part in the controversy.Gregg Berhalter, the men’s national soccer team coach at last year’s World Cup, is eligible to return for the next World Cup cycle after investigators looking into his personal conduct cleared him to remain a candidate for the job, the U.S. Soccer Federation said on Monday.“There is no basis to conclude that employing Mr. Berhalter would create legal risks for an organization,” investigators said in a report made public on Monday.The federation three months ago hired investigators at the Atlanta-based law firm Alston & Bird to look into an incident involving Berhalter kicking his wife, Rosalind, in front of a bar when they were dating as students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1992. No police report was filed for that incident.The investigators said they were “impressed with Mr. Berhalter’s candor and demeanor” during the inquiry and found no discrepancies between Gregg and Rosalind Berhalter’s description of the incident, with Gregg Berhalter saying he reported it to his college coach and also sought counseling for the way he acted. The two had been drunk when they left the bar arguing, and Rosalind hit Gregg in the face. Gregg then pushed her down and kicked her twice in the upper leg, the report said.Both Berhalters, in a statement made public in January, acknowledged what happened and said they have been happily married for 25 years.The report also said, based on interviews and research, that there was no reason to believe that Berhalter — whose contract with U.S. Soccer expired at the end of 2022 — ever acted aggressively toward his wife in the past 31 years.“The investigation revealed no evidence to suggest that he had engaged in violence against another person at any time prior or thereafter,” the report said, calling the 1992 incident “an isolated event.”In a statement Monday, Gregg Berhalter said: “Rosalind and I respect the process that U.S. Soccer went through. We are grateful that it is concluded and look forward to what’s next.”The report concludes a bizarre turn of events surrounding the World Cup involving Claudio and Danielle Reyna, the parents of U.S. forward Gio Reyna. The Reynas complained to U.S. Soccer about Gio’s playing time in the tournament and suggested “they knew damaging information about Mr. Berhalter that U.S. Soccer officials did not know.”The Berhalters and Reynas had been close friends for decades, and Rosalind and Danielle had been college soccer teammates. But the Reynas became upset after hearing Berhalter’s public comments about an unnamed player at the World Cup who “was clearly not meeting expectations on and off the field” and who the staff considered sending home. The player was Gio Reyna, and the Reynas vented to U.S. Soccer about what Berhalter had said, with Danielle Reyna telling the federation about the 1992 incident.Berhalter coaching Gio Reyna during a match against the Netherlands in December.Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Reynas told U.S. Soccer about the incident, the report said, because they didn’t want the federation to renew Berhalter’s contract. “The information was disclosed at a time when it would be expected to discourage or otherwise influence the organization from offering a contract extension to Mr. Berhalter,” the report said.The report said Danielle Reyna first denied to investigators that she told the U.S. Soccer sporting director Earnie Stewart about the kicking incident, but then called back to say she indeed had. Compared to how open and willing the Berhalters had been in the inquiry, the report said, the Reynas were much less cooperative.The Reynas could not immediately be reached for comment.The investigative report details some of the Reynas’ complaints to U.S. Soccer over the years, specifically calling out Claudio Reyna’s yearslong outreach to the federation on behalf of his children, especially Gio.Claudio Reyna expressed his dissatisfaction with refereeing at the youth club level of the U.S. Soccer Development Academy, travel arrangements at the U-17 World Cup (he wanted business class) and Gio’s playing time on the national team, according to the report. One person interviewed by investigators referred to Reyna’s interactions with U.S. Soccer about his sons as “inappropriate,” “bullying” and “mean spirited.” Another, whose name was also redacted, said, “Mr. Reyna expected Gio Reyna to be treated better than other players.”The report also said that the communications between the Reynas and U.S. Soccer didn’t violate any federation laws or policy, but it did not say whether the Reynas violated FIFA’s code of ethics.In a statement, U.S. Soccer noted that the report said that there is “a need to revisit U.S. Soccer’s policies concerning appropriate parental conduct and communications with the staff at the National Team level.”The federation went on to say: “We will be updating those policies as we continue to work to ensure safe environments for all participants in our game.”Whether Berhalter will be in charge of the men’s national team when those policies are put in place is still unknown.Stewart, the sporting director, resigned in January amid the Reyna-Berhalter situation and took a job with a Dutch club team, and U.S. Soccer is looking for his replacement. The new sporting director will likely will be in charge of hiring the new men’s national team coach. More

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      The Celtics Won’t Have Inexperience to Blame if They Don’t Win This Year

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      Boston has star players, a deep bench and recent N.B.A. finals experience. What the team won’t have, if it loses in the playoffs, will be excuses.Jayson Tatum made no guarantees for the second half of the Boston Celtics’ season but of one thing he was certain. “Have we gotten better from last year?” Tatum told reporters during the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend in Salt Lake City. “Yeah, a lot better.”Tatum had every reason to be brimming with confidence. His stock has never been higher — as signified by the reveal of his own signature shoe this week. In the basketball world, this is an indication that Tatum has graduated from N.B.A. star to N.B.A. star. He would go on to win the Most Valuable Player Award in the charade known as the All-Star Game, a cherry on top of the already M.V.P.-caliber season he is having.He is also the best player on the best team in the N.B.A., with the weight of championship expectations on his shoulders and those of his fellow All-Star and teammate Jaylen Brown. This would be an enviable position for most teams. But the pressure is exponentially higher in a city home to a ravenous fan base and a franchise with long history of winning championships.When asked about the Celtics operating as an established power rather than an underdog, Tatum had already consulted the Pro Athlete Cliché Handbook.“No pressure,” Tatum said. “We feel like we’ve been, if not the best, one of the best teams all season. The goal has always been the same: win a championship. So, you know, just do the right things. Don’t skip any steps. Take it one day at a time.”For Boston’s remaining 23 regular-season games and a presumed deep playoff run, the scrutiny will be much higher than that placed on last year’s young, upstart team. The Celtics (42-17) have the burden of having lots of ways to fail and only one way to be considered a success.Joe Mazzulla became the Celtics’ permanent coach last week after having assumed the role on an interim basis.Charles Krupa/Associated Press“Our environment will change,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said in a news conference. “And so we have to make sure we don’t.”Last week, Mazzulla had the interim tag removed from his title. He had been thrust into the role right before training camp when last year’s coach, Ime Udoka, was suspended for unspecified violations of team policies. The suspension came as a shock since the Celtics were an ascendant franchise coming off a finals run in a league where continuity is at a premium. Almost as surprising was that Brad Stevens, the team’s president of basketball operations and Udoka’s predecessor, handed the keys to Mazzulla, who had been a Celtics assistant for three years but never an N.B.A. head coach.All Mazzulla had to do was lead the Celtics to a championship. No training wheels. No emotional victories. Just victories.His presence created an odd and unusual dynamic. For much of the season, Udoka was still technically slated to come back in 2023-24 regardless of how Mazzulla did. But Mazzulla got the Celtics off to a blistering 18-4 start, quieting questions about whether his lack of experience would hinder an elite team. Eventually, the Celtics rewarded Mazzulla with what might be considered gold in N.B.A. coaching: security.“The East is terrific. Obviously, the West is loaded up,” Stevens said on a conference call last week. “It’s going to be really hard to win.” He added that it would be hard to coach while “looking behind you and looking over your shoulder.”Mazzulla may not be looking over his shoulder anymore, but the Celtics should be because teams are gaining on them. Since the hot start, the team has looked merely above average at 23-13, rather than world beating. They’re now only a half-game ahead of the Milwaukee Bucks (41-17) for the N.B.A.’s best record and the East’s top seed. Mazzulla has been criticized for not calling timeouts at crucial junctures in games. Over the last 15 games, the Celtics have had a below average offense. During the 18-4 stretch to start the season, the Celtics had not just the best offense in the N.B.A., but one of the best offenses in league history. The good news for Boston is that its defense has steadily improved while its offense has declined.The Celtics should receive a boost after the All-Star break, in the great gift of health. The starting lineup that took the team deep in last year’s playoffs — Tatum, Brown, Marcus Smart, Al Horford and Robert Williams III — has played only 29 minutes together this season. That unit is expected to be at full strength for the last stretch of the season.But even with injuries, the team is deep enough to contend. Derrick White, the sixth-year guard, has been a revelation during his first full season in Boston. In eight February games stepping in for the injured Smart, White averaged 21.1 points, 5.0 rebounds and 6.8 assists per game. Malcolm Brogdon, whom the Celtics acquired in an off-season trade with Indiana, has been a reliable contributor and one of the best 3-point shooters in the league. Brogdon and White would likely be starters on most N.B.A. teams. That the Celtics expect to use them as reserves is a luxury. In one of their last games before the All-Star break, the Celtics nearly knocked off the Bucks on the road despite missing almost all of their top players.Derrick White, right, filled in for his injured teammate Marcus Smart, showing the Celtics’ depth.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe talent is there for the Celtics to win the championship. They are loaded with playmakers, elite shooting and top-notch defenders who can play multiple positions. They can counter Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo with a steady rotation of mobile forwards, including Horford. Their division-rival Nets imploded at the deadline and traded away their remaining stars, sending Kyrie Irving to Dallas and Kevin Durant to Phoenix.But lots of teams enter the playoffs with talent, as Boston did last year. Now, the Celtics, as Brown noted, should be better prepared for a grueling playoff run after last year’s finals against Golden State, when the team made sloppy, uncharacteristic mistakes and lost the series in six games.“I think this year we got a little bit more experience,” Brown told reporters. “So I think that will carry over into the finals.”Anecdotal evidence suggests continuity and experience are crucial for N.B.A. teams to win championships, and that playoff failures are necessary steppingstones to immortality. Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls suffered through the Bad Boys Pistons teams before starting their reign. Ditto the Miami Heat, who lost deep in previous playoffs before winning their championships in 2006 and 2012. It’s extremely rare for young teams to win championships, though Magic Johnson was a crucial part of the Los Angeles Lakers championship run during his rookie season in 1980 and Tim Duncan led the San Antonio Spurs to a ring in 1999 in his second.Some teams never quite get there, even with experience and talent — like LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers in the late 2000s. The jury is still out on the Phoenix Suns, who lost in the second round last year after coming within two games of winning the 2021 championship.This is the Celtics’ best chance to win a championship since 2008, their last title run. If they don’t raise the trophy this season, or at least make the finals, they won’t be able to say it’s because of a lack of talent or experience. It’ll be something intangible.Being in that place means the franchise must meet lofty ambitions. But it’s better than not having them at all. More

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      Luka Doncic Makes Basketball Look Easy. It’s Not.

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      SALT LAKE CITY — Luka Doncic couldn’t sleep after playing the game of his life. None of the N.B.A.’s one-name greats — Wilt, Kobe, Jordan, LeBron — had ever managed a night quite like his. He was exhausted, but tossed and turned in his bed for hours, then got up to channel his energy into playing the video game Overwatch until the sun rose.Everything had gone right that December night: 60 points, 21 rebounds, 10 assists, an overtime win for his Dallas Mavericks against the Knicks at home. He wows crowds without appearing to break a sweat.“It’s hard every game,” Doncic said recently in an interview at his hotel on the road. “People say that it looks easy, but it’s not easy, trust me.”He smiled. “Maybe it looks easy because I’m slow,” he said.Doncic, who is from Slovenia, came to the N.B.A. five years ago as both a known commodity and a mysterious figure, already a superstar in the EuroLeague but still a media-shy teenager trying to find his way.At 23 years old — “I’m 22, no, 23, about to be 24,” Doncic said — he embodies the N.B.A.’s decades-long effort to have global reach.“Luka plays at the highest level with joy, passion and creativity,” N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said. “He’s an exemplar of this new wave of international stars who are influencing the game in their own unique way.”Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd said Doncic, above, has a “cheat code” for the game with his court vision.Tim Heitman/Getty ImagesDoncic received more than 5.5 million fan votes for the All-Star Game on Sunday night in Salt Lake City and will make his fourth consecutive appearance. His jersey ranks among the league’s top sellers. College teams and even some N.B.A. players play in his signature sneaker from Nike’s Jordan Brand line. And now, after Dallas traded with the Nets for Kyrie Irving this month, he may have the dynamic partner he has been missing as he has tried to lift the Mavericks to their first championship since 2011. He’s slowly stepping into the spotlight, opening up about how he got to this point — and where he wants to go.“I’d rather have the championship than M.V.P.,” he said, “but if you win an M.V.P., it’s amazing, too.”‘He didn’t have any fear’Doncic said he was nearly trembling when he became the youngest professional player to debut for Real Madrid in the Spanish basketball league at 16.He shot a 3-pointer in the closing moments of a game against Unicaja in 2015. “I don’t know how it went in,” Doncic said. “It was the 30th of April, my girlfriend’s birthday. So that’s a good day.”Doncic is now known for wanting the ball with the game on the line.“Some people are just put on the planet and they’re doing exactly what they’re supposed to do,” said Bill Duffy, Doncic’s agent, who has known him since he was 14.Those who recall Doncic’s early days in Slovenia describe his play as the merging of genetic gifts and tunnel-vision devotion. His father, Sasa Doncic, played professionally for years. He had “the greatest court vision,” said Damir Radenovic, who practiced with Sasa Doncic and is the marketing director for the Basketball Federation of Slovenia.Luka Doncic could always be found in his father’s shadow, begging to take shots during downtime or talking in the locker room. “He learned, maybe unconsciously, some of those veteran things,” said Marko Milic, a Mavericks assistant coach who was the first Slovene player drafted into the N.B.A., in 1997.Playing against children his own age was too easy for Doncic. Grega Brezovec coached an 8-year-old Doncic for about 13 minutes. “OK, Luka, this is not for you,” he recalled telling him before moving him up to a group of 12- to 14-year-olds.Doncic wanted to play so often that Jernej Smolnikar, another of his youth coaches, worried about how his prepubescent body would absorb some of the drills. He occasionally tried sending Doncic home, only for Doncic to plead with his parents to call Smolnikar to let him back on the court.At 13, Doncic left Slovenia, signing a five-year contract with Real Madrid.Doncic was a star for Real Madrid as a teenager. He was named the most valuable player of the Adidas Next Generation Tournament in 2015.Luca Sgamellotti/Euroleague Basketball, via Getty ImagesAlberto Angulo, a former Real Madrid player and director of the Real Madrid Academy, said in an interview in Spanish that Sasa Doncic saw it as a good development opportunity. Mirjam Poterbin, Luka’s mother, was more reluctant, he said.Doncic was wary of leaving the familiarity of his home and mulled the decision for months. “Then the last week came, I made a decision,” he said. “I just decided to.”Real Madrid had rules designed to build character in its young players — no hats in the dining room, finish your dinner, be on time. Doncic once overslept for a morning meeting. Coaches sat him the next game.“To punish a player, you take away what they love the most,” Angulo said.Doncic never overslept again. He wanted the chance to sharpen his game, Angulo said.“He didn’t have any fear — in fact the opposite — of bringing in a player that could be better than him or take minutes away from him,” Angulo said. “He thought, ‘No, no no, if he’s good, he’ll make me better.’”Doncic was named the most valuable player of the under-16 Spain championship. But Doncic said he missed his friends and being home.“So that’s one part I’m never going to get back, but I think it’s worked,” he said.He added: “If I had it to do again, I would do it.”‘That’s the cheat code’In every N.B.A. generation, a player or two can see the future. In the 1980s, it was Magic Johnson. In the 1990s, there were Jason Kidd and Steve Nash. Then LeBron James and Chris Paul came along. Now it’s Doncic who can see a play or two ahead.“It’s not all about speeding,” Doncic said. “Obviously, speeding would be even better. But it’s just the angles, the timings.”He isn’t fast like other top guards, but he said his legs give him an edge for getting into advantageous positions. “I was just born like this,” he said. “My father is like this. His legs are really strong. The trainers call them tree-trunk legs.”Dorian Finney-Smith, who signed with the Mavericks two years before Doncic was drafted, laughed as he recalled the origins of Doncic’s now trademark step-back shot. Doncic tried one in a game. Rick Carlisle, then Dallas’s coach, said it a was bad shot and told Doncic to put it where the sun doesn’t shine, Finney-Smith said.“Against the Sixers, he came out, made three in a row,” Finney-Smith said. “Nobody else said nothing else about that step-back.”Kidd, who took over as Mavericks coach last season, said he could tell Doncic viewed the game the way he did from their first game together.Doncic has one of the top-selling jerseys in the N.B.A.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesDoncic leads the N.B.A. in scoring, with 33.3 points per game.Jake Dockins for The New York TimesA defender had ducked under a screen. Kidd called a timeout, but before he spoke, Doncic told him that he had seen it and would take advantage of it.“That’s the cheat code, and some are born with it, some are not and some can take it to a different level,” Kidd said.Doncic plays dominoes with Kidd on team plane rides, and he loves chess. He plays on his phone so often that Chess.com recently partnered with him. “I always say basketball, you try to play like chess,” Doncic said. “We’re trying to anticipate opponents’ moves and read the game.”Kidd likes to push Doncic. He has jokingly asked him if he can pull a Klay Thompson and score 60 points on just 11 dribbles.“When you have a Picasso-like player, you got to challenge him in other ways to be successful because there could be boredom,” Kidd said. “Because he’s seen everything.”‘He markets himself’The Phoenix Suns trailed badly in Game 7 of the 2022 Western Conference semifinals. By halftime, Doncic had as many points as all of the Suns. As he leaned over in one moment, he looked up at Suns guard Devin Booker and grinned, creating a cutting and defining meme for the Dallas victory. He has racked up dozens of technical fouls in his career, but not this time. “I was like just: ‘Don’t blow this, please. Let’s not do this,’” Doncic said.Dallas lost to the Golden State Warriors, the eventual champions, in the conference finals.“It was really hard to win against them,” Doncic said. “We won only one game. But you can learn from them. You can learn from losses.”He also had a brief chance to learn from a Dallas legend: Dirk Nowitzki, 44, who retired from the Mavericks after Doncic’s rookie season. Nowitzki, who is from Germany, said he initially wondered if he belonged in the N.B.A. But he was a trendsetter for international players thriving in the league.“If you look at some of the M.V.P. candidates now with Jokic, Giannis and Luka in the mix now every year, that already tells you where European basketball is at the moment,” Nowitzki said, referring to Nikola Jokic of Serbia and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece. He added of Doncic: “He’s tons of fun to be around. He’s cheeky, he’s funny and he’s got a good heart.”Dirk Nowitzki, right, played for Dallas for 21 seasons. He set the stage for international players like Doncic, left, to thrive in the N.B.A.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesDoncic is steering the N.B.A.’s future.“His play supersedes everything,” Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, wrote in an email. “We don’t really have to market him. He markets himself.”The rapper Bad Bunny frequently mentions Doncic in his music. “When you hear your name in a song from Bad Bunny, it’s amazing,” Doncic said.Doncic recently went viral after he came to a game in a doomsday-looking Apocalypse HellFire truck. He’d been wanting a six-wheeler like it for a long time. He used to stand in the street, marveling at the cars here; they’re much nicer than in Slovenia, he said.But he said his life is low-key.Doncic and his girlfriend, Anamaria Goltes, have known each other since they were children. They share three dogs, Hugo, Gia and Viki, who help Doncic escape from the game he has chased all his life.“They don’t know if you had good or bad game,” Doncic said. “They’re just happy to see you. So they bring a real joy to my life.”He already has his retirement planned out.Doncic wants to farm.“It’s slow,” he said.James Wagner More