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      Women’s Soccer Bans Ex-Coaches and Fines Teams After Misconduct Report

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      Findings released in December revealed a number of issues throughout the league, including several instances of sexual and emotional abuse.The National Women’s Soccer League on Monday permanently banned four former coaches, suspended other league officials, and fined several teams, following a report last month that detailed alleged abuse and misconduct across the league.Paul Riley, a former North Carolina Courage coach; Rory Dames, a former Chicago Red Stars coach; Richie Burke, a former Washington Spirit coach; and Christy Holly, a former Racing Louisville F.C. coach, were permanently banned from the league for alleged misconduct ranging from inappropriate comments to, in the case of Holly, groping a player.The Red Stars were fined $1.5 million, and Portland Thorns F.C. were fined $1 million for failure to properly act on allegations of misconduct.Craig Harrington, the former Utah Royal F.C. coach, and Alyse LaHue, the former general manager of Gotham F.C., each received two-year suspensions from the league. Harrington was found to have “made inappropriate sexual and objectifying comments,” and LaHue was found to have sent players inappropriate messages, the N.W.S.L. report said.The league said in a statement on Monday that the sweeping disciplinary actions were based on a 128-page report released in December. The report, a joint effort organized by the N.W.S.L. and its players’ union, revealed a number of disturbing problems throughout the league, including instances of sexual abuse, unwanted sexual advances, emotional abuse, racist remarks, and retaliation against players who complained about how they were treated.“Players from marginalized backgrounds, or with the least job security, were often targets of misconduct,” the report said. “At the same time, these players faced the greatest barriers to speaking out about or obtaining redress for what they experienced.”Jessica Berman, the league’s commissioner, said in a statement that the “corrective action” announced on Monday was “appropriate and necessary.”“The league will continue to prioritize implementing and enhancing the policies, programs and systems that put the health and safety of our players first,” Berman said. “These changes will require leadership, accountability, funding and a willingness to embrace this new way of conducting business.”Last month’s report is similar to another released in October, from an investigation led by Sally Q. Yates, a former deputy attorney general, that detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by women’s soccer coaches and found that officials in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on complaints from players.Holly, while coaching Louisville, groped one of his players and sent her inappropriate text messages, according to the investigations. On one occasion, Holly invited a player to his home to watch video of a game, but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography, the investigations found.The investigations also found that Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage in 2021, used his position to try to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships. One player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions, according to the reports.Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars in 2021, was accused by the women’s soccer star Christen Press of “verbal and emotional abuse,” the N.W.S.L. report said. The investigation led by Yates also found that he had created a “sexualized team environment” at a Chicago youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.”The N.W.S.L. report said that several players credibly reported that Burke “verbally and emotionally abused players,” and “used racial slurs, made racially insensitive and offensive jokes.”Riley, Dames, Burke, Holly, Harrington and the Portland Thorns did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.Kelly Hoffman, a lawyer for LaHue, said in an email on Monday night that “Ms. LaHue continues to deny the allegations made against her. Notwithstanding the issues presented in her case, she supports the N.W.S.L. in its efforts towards corrective action.”A spokesman for the Chicago Red Stars said in an email on Monday night that the team was aware of the disciplinary action and that it was “working with the league in a cooperative manner to satisfy the fine.”The investigations led by the N.W.S.L. and Yates highlighted reports in 2021 by The Athletic and The Washington Post that described accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. Those reports led to public protests by players and the resignations or firings of league executives. Weeks after the reports of alleged sexual and verbal abuse, five coaches in the league were linked to the allegations.As part of Monday’s disciplinary actions, four others teams — OL Reign, Gotham F.C., Racing Louisville F.C. and North Carolina Courage — were fined amounts ranging from $50,000 to $200,000 for failure to act on allegations of misconduct.Six other league officials were told that any future employment with the league would depend on taking part in a training, “acknowledging wrongdoing and accepting personal responsibility for inappropriate conduct” and “demonstrating a sincere commitment to correcting behavior.”Two of the six officials were Vera Pauw, a former coach of the Houston Dash, and Farid Benstiti, a former coach of the OL Reign. The N.W.S.L. report said Pauw and Benstiti, “shamed players for their weight.”In a statement after the N.W.S.L. report was released in December, Pauw said she wanted to “refute every allegation” made against her in the report. Benstiti could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday night.April Rubin More

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      Texas Longhorns Fire Basketball Coach After Domestic Assault Charge

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      Chris Beard, who was named head coach of the University of Texas men’s team in April 2021, was arrested in December and charged with a third-degree felony.Chris Beard was fired on Thursday as the head coach of the University of Texas men’s basketball team, weeks after he was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge in Austin.Chris Del Conte, the university’s vice president and athletic director, said in a statement on Thursday that the university had decided to terminate Beard’s contract effective immediately.Beard, 49, was suspended without pay on Dec. 12 after he was arrested and charged with assault on a member of a family or household by impeding breath circulation, a third-degree felony, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office. Beard posted a cash bond of $10,000 and was released from jail the day of his arrest.Rodney Terry, the team’s associate head coach, has been serving as acting head coach of the Texas Longhorns men’s basketball team since Beard was suspended. Del Conte said that Terry would finish the season as the team’s acting head coach.“This has been a difficult situation that we’ve been diligently working through,” Del Conte said.The Austin Police Department said officers responded to a call about a disturbance at a home in Austin at around 12:15 a.m. on Dec. 12. The caller told the police that the disturbance had ended and that one person at the home had left, the police said in a statement. When the police arrived at the house, a woman told them that Beard had assaulted and choked her.Perry Minton, a lawyer for Beard, said in a statement on Thursday that Beard was “crushed at the news he will not be coaching at the University of Texas.”“At the outset of Coach Beard’s suspension, the university promised they would conduct an independent investigation surrounding the allegations and make a decision regarding his employment only after they had done so,” Minton said. “They proceeded to terminate Coach Beard without asking a single question of him or his fiancée.”The university declined to comment on its investigation.A few days after Beard was arrested, Randi Trew, Beard’s fiancée, said in a statement that her lawyer shared with The Associated Press that the two had engaged in a “physical struggle” after she broke his glasses in “frustration.” Beard, she added, “did not strangle me.”“Chris has stated that he was acting in self-defense, and I do not refute that,” she said. “I do not believe Chris was trying to intentionally harm me in any way. It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted.” A university spokesman confirmed that Beard had been offered the opportunity to resign or have his contracted terminated by the university. Minton, Beard’s lawyer, told James Davis, the university’s vice president of legal affairs, in a letter on Thursday that the offer “came as a shock.”“With this, I want to be on record as emphatically stating, and herein memorializing, that Coach Beard has not done anything to violate any provision of his contract with the University of Texas,” Minton said in the letter. “He was arrested, then his fiancée retracted her previously reported statement.”The Texas Longhorns named Beard head coach in April 2021 after he spent five seasons as the head coach of the men’s basketball team at Texas Tech University, which he led to the N.C.A.A. national championship game in 2019.Before coaching the Longhorns, Beard was the head coach of the men’s basketball teams at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas; McMurry University in Abilene, Texas; Seminole State College in Seminole, Okla.; and Fort Scott Community College in Fort Scott, Kan. Beard graduated from the University of Texas in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, the study of human motion. More

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      US Soccer Investigating Gregg Berhalter After Report From Gio Reyna’s Mother

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      Gregg Berhalter, the coach, said a decades-old domestic incident had been reported to U.S. Soccer by someone looking to get him fired. It turned out to be the mother of winger Gio Reyna.Mere weeks after a World Cup performance viewed by many as a positive step forward for a promising group of players, the United States men’s soccer team has been enveloped in a soap opera story line involving its head coach, a popular former player, a current player (who happens to be the popular former player’s son) and an intricate web of friendly and familial ties.The drama — the fruit of a decades-old incident outside a college bar — has led to an investigation by the U.S. Soccer Federation, threatened the hold of the coach, Gregg Berhalter, on his post just as he is negotiating a new contract, and potentially damaged the reputation of the player, Gio Reyna, and of his parents, after his mother first reported the bar incident to Berhalter’s bosses.On Tuesday afternoon, Berhalter released a lengthy statement on Twitter, revealing that “an individual” (whom he did not name) had contacted the federation during the World Cup claiming to have information that might compel the team to terminate his employment.Berhalter came forward with the story instead, writing that he had kicked his current wife, Rosalind, in the legs during an alcohol-fueled fight in 1991, when he was 18 and the two had just begun dating as college students.“The lessons learned from that night over three decades ago became the foundation for a loving, devoted, and supportive relationship, which we honored and celebrated with our 25th wedding anniversary this past weekend,” he said in the statement.Minutes later, U.S. Soccer sent out its own, vague statement, saying that it had hired a law firm, Alston & Bird LLP, to investigate the allegations against Berhalter (which it did not specify) after learning of them on Dec. 11, a little over a week after the team was knocked out of the World Cup in Qatar.The plot only grew more bizarre on Wednesday afternoon, when the parents of Gio Reyna, a 20-year-old winger on the American team, admitted that they were the ones who had contacted the team’s sporting director, Earnie Stewart, on Dec. 11 with the information about the incident in Berhalter’s past.Reyna’s father, Claudio, is a former captain of the U.S. men’s team and widely considered one of the greatest players in its history. His mother, Danielle, played six times for the U.S. women’s national team in the early 1990s.The involvement of the Reynas, which was first reported on Wednesday by ESPN, was all the more intriguing because of the tight relationship of the families, who are known to be close friends. Berhalter and Claudio Reyna played soccer together as kids in New Jersey, playing for a club team coached by Claudio’s father and the high school team at St. Benedict’s in Newark. The two were teammates at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups, and Reyna even served as the best man at Berhalter’s wedding, according to his biography on the U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association website.Rosalind Berhalter and Danielle Reyna were roommates and soccer teammates at the University of North Carolina.In a statement on Wednesday, Danielle Reyna said she was the one who initially contacted Stewart about the bar incident, characterizing her actions as an effort to protect her son. She said she contacted Stewart on Dec. 11 out of frustration after Berhalter was quoted that day speaking at a leadership conference about a problematic player on the team who was nearly sent home during the World Cup for his poor attitude. Berhalter did not name the player, but it was widely, and correctly, assumed to be Reyna, who featured far less in the competition than expected.Reyna, one of the most promising players on the team, released a statement on Dec. 12 shortly after Berhalter’s comments were reported, admitting that he had reacted poorly to being told that he would receive limited playing time in Qatar and expressing disappointment that his coach had publicized the situation.In a statement on Wednesday, she said that Berhalter’s descriptions of the incident “significantly minimize the abuse on the night in question,” though she did not provide more detail.“Rosalind Berhalter was my roommate, teammate and best friend, and I supported her through the trauma that followed,” Danielle Reyna said in the statement. “It took a long time for me to forgive and accept Gregg afterward, but I worked hard to give him grace, and ultimately made both of them and their kids a huge part of my family’s life. I would have wanted and expected him to give the same grace to Gio. This is why the current situation is so very hurtful and hard.”Claudio Reyna, in a statement, admitted that he had separately expressed frustration during the tournament regarding his son’s playing time to Stewart and General Manager Brian McBride, whom he referred to as friends.“However, at no time did I ever threaten anyone, nor would I ever do so,” he said.The ultimate resolution of this situation has yet to be decided, but on Wednesday U.S. Soccer announced that Berhalter would not serve as head coach during the team’s annual training camp in January. Anthony Hudson would fill that role, the team said.Berhalter’s contract ended on Dec. 31. The team suggested that the awkward timing of the World Cup, coming in the fall instead of the summer, had not left the organization enough time to conduct a customary performance review following the tournament. That process is ongoing, the team said.The investigation, and the complex soap opera that emerged Wednesday, has only complicated matters. More

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander Brings His Friends on Ride to NBA Stardom

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      Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard, is having a career season as one of the N.B.A.’s top scorers. He’s had a little help from his childhood friends.Mark Daigneault thought he had his first day in Hamilton, Ontario, all mapped out: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the star guard he coaches on the Oklahoma City Thunder, would make his morning rounds to shoot hoops and lift weights, and Daigneault would ride along.There was only one problem.“I don’t have room in my car,” Gilgeous-Alexander told him, “because I pick up all my friends.”Sure enough, once Daigneault hopped out of his Uber at Gilgeous-Alexander’s preferred gym in nearby Burlington, Daigneault found him working on his shooting as several young men in matching Thunder T-shirts rebounded for him.Gilgeous-Alexander soon introduced Daigneault to his “super close homies,” five childhood friends whose coordinated outfits that morning were no coincidence. They knew Daigneault was in town.“We wanted to make a good impression,” said Sunday Kong, a former high school teammate.In Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander, 24, has established himself as one of the N.B.A.’s most dynamic players. On a young team with promise, he ranks among the league leaders in scoring, averaging a career-best 31.4 points a game, while shooting 50.5 percent from the field — supercharged numbers that hint at his abilities as a 6-foot-6 guard who can absorb contact at the rim and create space on the perimeter.Gilgeous-Alexander is averaging a career-best 31.4 points per game while making about half of his shots. That puts him among the N.B.A.’s elite scorers.Garett Fisbeck/Associated PressBack home in Hamilton, a small city about 40 miles southwest of Toronto, five of Gilgeous-Alexander’s pals — a crew that also includes Mark Castillanes and Maurice Montoya, two of his best friends since elementary school, and Vincent Chu, who sat next to him in ninth-grade homeroom — practically fall off their couches whenever he crosses up a defender.“Anytime I see him do something on the court, I’m like, ‘Hey, we practiced that!’ ” said Devanté Campbell, who played youth soccer with Gilgeous-Alexander.Gilgeous-Alexander is always trying to improve, said Daigneault, now in his third season as the Thunder’s coach. That makes him an ideal fit for Oklahoma City — the same place where a young Russell Westbrook became a triple-double machine, Kevin Durant honed his perimeter game and James Harden crafted his step-back jumper. Each summer, Gilgeous-Alexander devises his own to-do list.“Shai’s got every resource available to him,” Daigneault said. “If he wanted to hire a staff and move to Hawaii in the off-season, he could do it. Instead, he parks himself in Hamilton and works with friends who have been in his life forever.”In Gilgeous-Alexander’s self-styled basketball lab, where a sneaker salesman and a restaurant manager throw defensive traps at him, and a college student and an aspiring doctor feed him passes, he prepares for his future by returning to his past.“Those guys give me a sense of home,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “They give me back a piece of myself that feels like so long ago.”‘I’ve got to get better’Before he was getting buckets at Madison Square Garden and walking the runways at fashion week in Paris, Gilgeous-Alexander was someone else: the new kid at Regina Mundi Catholic Elementary School.After moving to Hamilton from Toronto when he was 11, Gilgeous-Alexander met Montoya and Castillanes on his first day of sixth grade. Castillanes recalled showing him around.“Kind of quiet,” Castillanes said. “But once you got to know him, he became himself.”Gilgeous-Alexander impressed on the basketball court, Castillanes said, by being able to dribble and make layups with both hands. But as an undersized ninth-grader at St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School, Gilgeous-Alexander was cut from the equivalent of the junior varsity and wound up on a team of other freshmen.“I wasn’t hurt by it,” he said. “It was more a feeling of, I’m not good enough, so I’ve got to get better.”From left, Sunday Kong, Maurice Montoya, Vincent Chu and Devanté Campbell on the outdoor court at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School, Gilgeous-Alexander’s former high school in Hamilton, Ontario.Cole Burston for The New York TimesIn his spare time, Gilgeous-Alexander would hoop with Montoya and Castillanes at their Filipino basketball league — the start of a basketball odyssey. Gilgeous-Alexander spent his sophomore year at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School on Hamilton’s west side before he transferred again, this time to Hamilton Heights Christian Academy in Chattanooga, Tenn., as he sought better competition.Gilgeous-Alexander eventually landed at the University of Kentucky, where John Calipari, the team’s coach, knew he needed to be tough on him. Otherwise, Calipari was going to hear about it — from Gilgeous-Alexander’s mother, Charmaine Gilgeous, a former Olympic runner for Antigua and Barbuda.“When he played well, she would call me and say, ‘Don’t you let up on him,’” Calipari said.Gilgeous-Alexander had arrived at Kentucky with a hitch in his jump shot — Calipari compared it to Charles Barkley’s herky-jerky golf swing — and spent the early weeks of the season mostly coming off the bench. By the middle of January, he was blossoming as a starter. By June, he was the 11th overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, headed to the Los Angeles Clippers.Gilgeous-Alexander played so well as a rookie that the Thunder put him on their wish list. That summer, when the All-Star Paul George wanted to be traded to the Clippers from Oklahoma City, the Thunder insisted that Gilgeous-Alexander be included in the deal.Now in his fourth season with the Thunder, Gilgeous-Alexander is the face of a franchise that should come equipped with training wheels. Although Chet Holmgren, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2022 draft, is out for the season with a foot injury, the Thunder have a core that includes Josh Giddey, 20, and Luguentz Dort, 23. Even amid his emergence, Gilgeous-Alexander has never sought to separate himself from his teammates.“I might have sworn at Lu before,” Gilgeous-Alexander said, “but me and Lu lived together, and we’re like brothers so it doesn’t count.”Luguentz Dort, left, and Gilgeous-Alexander bonded as teammates and roommates in Oklahoma City.Alonzo Adams/USA Today Sports, via ReutersGilgeous-Alexander and Dort, who are also teammates on the Canadian men’s national basketball team, are candid about their bromance. When Gilgeous-Alexander was vaccinated against the coronavirus, Dort held his hand. (Gilgeous-Alexander is afraid of needles.) When they were roommates, Dort accepted the perils of sharing space with someone who was recently voted GQ magazine’s Most Stylish Man of the Year.“I don’t want to say his clothes are everywhere,” Dort said. “But he has a lot of clothes — clothes that have a lot of volume to them.”But while life in the N.B.A. is rewarding — Gilgeous-Alexander is in the first year of a five-year contract extension worth about $180 million — it can also be disorienting. So he dodges complacency as if it were a traffic cone, supplementing his time with the team by working with Olin Simplis, a high-profile skills coach.And, of course, he heads to Hamilton at the start of each off-season to work out with friends who neither expect nor ask for anything in return.‘Just something that friends do’After his first season in Oklahoma City, Gilgeous-Alexander wanted to make his summers more structured. So he hit up his buddies: Would they help him out five mornings a week?“It wasn’t even something that needed to be said,” said Campbell, who works full-time at a Kids Foot Locker and assists with a girls’ basketball league. “It was just something that friends do: If we want to see this guy grow and succeed, we need to be there for him no matter what.”Last summer, Gilgeous-Alexander would text his friends a few minutes before 7 a.m. to let them know that he was leaving his house — his hoops-centric version of flashing the Bat-Signal.“You get that text, and you know you have about 15 minutes to get ready,” said Chu, a student at Toronto Metropolitan University.Gilgeous-Alexander’s friends help him with shooting and passing drills during the summer in Ontario.Cole Burston for The New York TimesGilgeous-Alexander would retrieve his friends, one by one, in his pale brown Mercedes-Benz G-Class. Castillanes was typically the first stop.“He always got the front seat,” Chu said.Once assembled, they often had enough time during the ride to Burlington to cram in a homespun version of “Carpool Karaoke.” In June, Jack Harlow’s album “Come Home the Kids Miss You” was on repeat. By July, they were tearing through Burna Boy’s latest tracks.“It’s a refreshing start to the day to see all your friends,” Chu said, “even when you’re mad tired.”At the gym, they would warm up and stretch, then Gilgeous-Alexander would polish his shooting for about an hour as his friends rebounded for him. He usually filled the second hour with drills — footwork, defense, passing — before transitioning into half-court games of 3-on-3 with a lopsided feel.“Shai takes all the shots,” Campbell said.His court work complete, Gilgeous-Alexander would drop his friends off so he could lift weights — in another buddy’s two-car garage. Nem Ilic, 27, who describes his work as “athlete development,” spent last summer building Gilgeous-Alexander’s lower body: lunges in the garage, weighted sled pushes in the cul-de-sac out front. (The neighbors always knew when Gilgeous-Alexander was around.)“Guys in my position, you usually have to work your way up from high school to college to the pros,” Ilic said. “And I have a unique timeline. It went straight to Shai.”In their own way, the friends are a part of it all.A poster of Gilgeous-Alexander is seen on the doors of Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School.Cole Burston for The New York Times“I think the N.B.A. is so crazy that he wants to come here and feel grounded,” Chu said, “and we’re all so grounded up here that we want to hear about N.B.A. life.”They can see Gilgeous-Alexander’s progress — and feel it, too, whenever they try to defend him on those early summer mornings.“I want to say it’s never really that much of a fun time,” Campbell said.They have busy lives of their own. Montoya, for example, manages a Hamilton-area restaurant. Castillanes recently relocated to Oklahoma City after Gilgeous-Alexander asked him if he would help manage his day-to-day life. And Kong works in public health while he prepares for medical school.“You know how they say commitment will pay off if you improve by 1 percent every day? It’s something you see in real time with Shai,” Kong said. “And it’s something I can apply to my own life.” More

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      Nets Cut the Drama and Rekindle Championship Hopes

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      Kevin Durant’s trade request, a coaching change and Kyrie Irving’s suspension made the Nets look destined for another season of disappointment. Now, they’re the hottest team in the Eastern Conference.The Nets were a complicated franchise when Jacque Vaughn met with his players at a morning shootaround in Washington on Nov. 4.Before their game against the Wizards that night, the Nets had filled the early weeks of their season with substandard basketball. But it was their off-court issues that were worthy of a telenovela. The Nets had indefinitely suspended Kyrie Irving for refusing to disavow antisemitism. They had fired Steve Nash as their coach. And Ben Simmons was scuffling through his delayed debut with the Nets.Vaughn, a longtime assistant, was in a tenuous spot as the team’s interim coach at a particularly fraught moment for an organization that had already experienced its share of fraught moments in recent seasons. But Vaughn was hoping to act as an agent of change.“Our shootaround was the precipice of that,” he recalled, “me getting up in front of the group and being as vulnerable as I can be in explaining the situation and telling them that ‘I’m going to be as consistent as I can be with you every day, and as honest as I can be — and I’m always going to do what’s best for the group.’”As a self-described “simple person,” Vaughn wanted his team to rid itself of unnecessary clutter. So he stripped down the playbook. He began to stress just three defensive concepts — “I won’t say what those are,” he said — so that his players could focus on them rather than make huge adjustments from game to game. And he emphasized the purity of their pursuit: Why make life in the N.B.A. more difficult than it needed to be?“We kind of pledged to each other that it was going to be about basketball,” Vaughn said, “and hopefully not let any outside noise interfere with that. And our guys have done an unbelievable job protecting each other.”Nets guard Kyrie Irving was suspended for eight games in November after he would not disavow antisemitism. He apologized and has averaged 25.6 points per game since he returned.Kirk Irwin/Getty ImagesThe Nets won that game against the Wizards, which was the start of a trend — a trend that has them climbing the Eastern Conference standings and back in the conversation as, yes, a championship contender.The Nets, who extended their winning streak to nine games on Monday night with a 125-117 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, have won 20 of their last 26 games under Vaughn, who was named the head coach on Nov. 9. The Nets’ resurgence has been notably drama-free, no small feat given their early challenges.Kevin Durant is assembling one of his finest seasons, averaging 30 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.3 assists a game while shooting a career-best 56.3 percent from the field. Simmons, after missing all of last season, has rebooted and found his footing as a pass-first facilitator and disruptive defender. And Irving, whose suspension lasted eight games, had 32 points and 5 assists in the Nets’ win over the Cavaliers.“I think we’re finding our identity off the court in terms of how we treat each other, and that’s looking good on the floor,” Irving said after the game. “It’s looking great on the floor, honestly. We just want to keep it up.”There is no denying the Nets’ talent, but everyone has already heard this story. They were talented last season, too, until their grand experiment blew up in spectacular fashion. Remember last season? Irving refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. James Harden asked to be traded. And the Nets crashed out of the playoffs when the Boston Celtics swept them in the first round. During the off-season, Durant asked to be traded, and Irving seemed to be on his way out, too.Both stars stuck around, but the Nets seemed bound for more dysfunction anyway in the wake of the early coaching change and Irving’s high-profile suspension. For his part, Durant blamed the news media, rather than Irving’s behavior, for creating a lot of the “outside noise” that had the team flailing. But Vaughn has operated as a calming influence.“Coach shored up our roles, pretty much letting us know each day what he needs from us,” Durant said. “I think that’s been our focus. It’s not like, ‘Man, finally we got the noise out of our locker room, and now we can play.’ I think we always been locked in on basketball to try to get this thing back on track.”The question now, of course, is whether the Nets can sustain their strong play. The answer will hinge in large part on Irving, a gifted player who is not known for being the most reliable teammate.“Any external negativity or praise, I really don’t care about it,” Irving said. “I think I’m just focused on being the best version of me and letting the results play out based on how well we trust one another as a group.”After Monday’s win, Irving reflected on the six seasons he spent with the Cavaliers at the start of his career. He recalled the pressure he put on himself when they made him the No. 1 overall pick of the 2011 draft and how he felt like a “lone superhero” for several lean seasons before LeBron James returned to the Cavaliers after four seasons away in Miami. Together, they delivered an N.B.A. championship to Cleveland in 2016.“I think the greatest lesson I learned throughout that process is that it’s not a lonely road that you’re supposed to take on your own,” Irving said. “It takes a lot of help.”In Brooklyn, Irving has help. He has help from Durant, who has outsize goals of his own. He has help from teammates like Simmons and Nic Claxton, a promising young center. And he has help from a coach who has urged the Nets to get back to basics.“And we’re not going to change that anytime soon,” Vaughn said. More

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      Paul Silas, NBA Defensive Star and Head Coach, Dies at 79

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      Known for his rebounding, he spent 16 seasons as a player, most notably with the Celtics. He was also LeBron James’s first coach as a pro.Paul Silas, a rebounding and defensive pillar on three N.B.A. championship teams, who went on to a coaching career that included presiding over LeBron James’s professional debut with the Cleveland Cavaliers, died on Saturday at his home in Denver, N.C., outside Charlotte. He was 79.The cause was cardiac arrest, his daughter Paula Silas-Guy said.Silas was known for his tactical approach to rebounding, especially on offense. A robust 6-foot-7-inch forward, he studied the arc and spin of his teammates’ shots to compensate for his lack of vertical skills.“I used to tell him that you couldn’t slip a sheet of paper under his feet but he was still an incredible rebounder,” Lenny Wilkens, a teammate with the St. Louis Hawks when Silas entered the N.B.A. in 1964, said in an interview for this obituary earlier this year. “Once he was in position, you just couldn’t move him.”Silas played for five N.B.A. franchises, the last of which was the Seattle SuperSonics, where he was reunited with Wilkens, who coached the team, and became a valuable role player during a 1978-79 championship season.Silas shoots against the Houston Rockets in 1975. He enjoyed his most prominent role playing for the Celtics, where he formed a rugged frontcourt tandem with Dave Cowens.Dick Raphael/NBAE, via Getty ImagesBut it was with the Boston Celtics, after five years with the Hawks and three in Phoenix, that Silas enjoyed the most prominent of his 16 playing seasons. Acquired in 1972 from the Suns by the Celtics’ patriarch Red Auerbach in a trade for the negotiating rights to Charlie Scott, Silas formed a rugged frontcourt tandem with Dave Cowens, a 6-foot-9 center.Auerbach pursued Silas after he had his best overall statistical season, averaging 17.5 points and 11.9 rebounds. “The main reason that Red wanted Silas was to deal with Dave DeBusschere, who had been wearing them out,” said Bob Ryan, who covered the Celtics for The Boston Globe, referring to the rival Knicks’ star forward.Cowens and Silas quickly cultivated an on-court chemistry, with Cowens’s ability to shoot from the perimeter leaving the interior open for Silas to outmuscle opponents around the basket, where he also had a deft tiptoe push shot.“Me and Dave began to just wear teams out,” Silas told the sports digital publication Grantland in 2014. “I mean wear them out.”Coached by Tom Heinsohn, the Celtics occasionally deployed Silas as a starter and in the role made famous by his teammate John Havlicek, as the first sub off the bench, or sixth man.In the 1974 playoffs, they avenged a 1973 defeat to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals, then outlasted the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-led Milwaukee Bucks in the league finals, winning the last game on the road.With a core of Cowens, Havlicek, Jo Jo White, Silas and Scott, whose rights were reacquired by Auerbach in 1975, the Celtics also won the 1976 title, defeating Phoenix in six games.Auerbach then made what The Globe’s Ryan called “his greatest blunder,” trading Silas to the Denver Nuggets after a salary dispute. Aligned with Larry Fleisher, the sport’s most powerful agent and executive director of the N.B.A. Players’ Association, Silas insisted on being paid like the Celtics’ stars — especially the team’s white stars.With Fleisher’s help and some locker room sleuthing, Silas found N.B.A. team salary lists and discovered that Black players tended to be paid less than white players of similar, and sometimes inferior, ability.In negotiations, Auerbach would tell players, “I’m giving you this, don’t you tell anyone else,” according to Don Chaney, another Black Celtic who left the team in 1975 for more money in the rival American Basketball Association.“No one ever talked until Silas arrived,” Chaney said in 1991. “He started going around asking guys, ‘What are you making?’”Silas’s departure triggered a late 1970s Celtics decline and upset Cowens enough to prompt him to take a two-month sabbatical at the start of the 1976-77 season.“We’d just won a championship in ’76, so it’s like, why screw around with a good thing?” Cowens said in the 2014 Grantland article. “I was a little bit upset at everybody. I was upset at Paul, and I was upset at the Celtics for allowing that to happen.”Silas in 1977 playing with the Denver Nuggets.Focus on Sport/Getty ImagesSilas admitted to some regret about leaving the Celtics when his playing time in Denver diminished. He welcomed the reunion with Wilkens, the star guard who in St. Louis had encouraged the young Silas to shed 30 pounds, to an eventual playing weight of 220.“I would make him play me one-on-one,” Wilkens said. “Paul liked to eat, and I’d tell him, ‘You’ll never be able to guard me unless you get on that diet,’ which he did.”Paul Theron Silas was born on July 12, 1943, in Prescott, Ark., and at age 8 moved to Oakland, Calif., with his parents, Leon and Clara, and two brothers. His father worked as a railroad porter. In Oakland, the family initially shared a home with Silas’s cousins, three of whom grew up to form the rhythm & blues group the Pointer Sisters.Silas sang with his cousins in the school choir but spent most of his free time at West Oakland’s DeFremery Park, watching and idolizing Bill Russell, the future Celtics great, dominate the competition. At McClymonds High School, where Russell had played nearly a decade earlier, Silas led the varsity to a 68-0 record over three seasons, earning a scholarship to Creighton University. His brother, William, accompanied him to Omaha, Neb., but died of cardiac arrest while Silas was in school.As a junior, Silas led the nation in rebounding, averaging 20.6 per game. He was the 12th pick, or third of the second round, by St. Louis in the 1964 N.B.A. draft.After Silas’s N.B.A. playing career — during which he averaged 9.4 points and 9.9 rebounds a game, played in two All-Star games and was twice voted first-team All-Defense — he had a long run as an assistant and head coach.Having come of age during the N.B.A.’s rough-and-tumble foundational era made him a logical choice in 2003 to mentor the 19-year-old LeBron James in Cleveland as James, from nearby Akron, Ohio, made the leap from high school prodigy to the pros.In the carnival atmosphere that greeted James, Silas became a tough-love enforcer, barring James’s vast entourage from practices and notifying official sellers of Cavs merchandise that people other than the rookie phenom played for the team.“Once LeBron sets foot out here, he’s got to come with it like everybody else,” Silas told The New York Times in 2003.In 2005, when the Cavaliers lost nine of 12 games, Silas was fired, even though he and James had seemed to form a strong bond, The Times reported.“I loved Paul Silas a lot — he gave me a chance to showcase my talent early,” James told The Times. “Coach was always upbeat, even after a loss.”Silas in 1999 while coaching the Charlotte Hornets to a 49-33 record.Sporting News, via Getty ImagesThe best of Silas’s 12 head-coaching seasons was in 1999-2000 in Charlotte, where Silas directed the Hornets to a 49-33 record. The season was marred by the death of Bobby Phills, one of the team’s best players, in a car crash that involved a teammate, David Wesley. Both were reportedly speeding in their Porsches near the team’s arena.“The guys look at me as a father figure,” Silas, then 56, said as the Hornets mourned Phills while moving forward with their season, which ended with a first-round playoff defeat.Silas, who in interviews expressed regret over not having a close relationship with his father, helped launch his son Stephen’s coaching career, adding him to his Charlotte staff in 2000. Stephen Silas became head coach of the Houston Rockets in 2020.In addition to Stephen and Paula, Silas is survived by his wife, Carolyn (Kemp) Silas, whom he married in 1966; a stepdaughter, Donna Turner, from Ms. Silas’s first marriage;three grandchildren; and two stepgrandchildren.Silas embraced the reputation that had earned him his job mentoring James: that he was a resilient, cool-tempered paternalistic figure.“You can’t play this game mad — your own game just falls apart,” Silas told The Globe’s sports columnist Leigh Montville in 1972. “I play fierce but I never play mad. There’s a difference.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      in Tennis

      Nick Bollettieri, Nurturer of Tennis Champions, Dies at 91

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      At his training camps, he employed a tough style in developing 10 players who reached the No. 1 world ranking. “He yells at kids, insults them. And they work harder.”Nick Bollettieri, who never competed in elite tennis but was once the world’s most famous tennis coach, developing 10 players who reached the No. 1 international ranking in singles, died on Sunday at his home in Bradenton, Fla. He was 91. David R. Legge, a journalist who is writing an authorized biography about Bollettieri, confirmed his death. Legge said Bollettieri began having renal problems several months ago and that his health had deteriorated since then.Bollettieri was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., in 2014 as a “contributor” to the game. He joined only three others honored solely for their coaching, the longtime Australian Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman and two other Americans, Vic Braden and Dr. Robert Johnson, an advocate for African American junior tennis who mentored Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe.Bollettieri co-founded the Port Washington Tennis Academy on Long Island in 1966, its star pupils including John McEnroe and Vitas Gerulaitis.In the early 1980s, he opened the Bollettieri Academy in Bradenton, Fla., on what were then tomato fields, pioneering the concept of live-in facilities for promising junior tennis players. He sold it in 1987 to the sports agency IMG. Now known as the IMG Academy, it tutors young athletes in many sports and has dozens of tennis courts for the Bollettieri Tennis Program. Bollettieri, who founded that program, became its president.Serena and Venus Williams, Monica Seles, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Marcelo Rios and Boris Becker are among the players who trained or boarded at the academy.Nick Bollettieri spoke to young players at what had been his tennis academy in 2013; he had sold it to the IMG sports agency in 1987, but remained president of the Bollettieri Tennis Program. Edward Linsmier for The New York TimesBollettieri was known for a hard-driving style. As Sports Illustrated put it in 1980: “He yells at kids, insults them. And they work harder. He grabs players and orders them off the court. And they work harder. At junior tournaments, when the Bollettieri contingent arrives, the other kids look at them as if the Marines had just landed. They are the products of a tougher sort of training.”Nicholas James Bollettieri was born on July 31, 1931, in Pelham, N.Y., in Westchester County. His father, James, was a pharmacist, and his mother, Mary Rita (DeFillipo) Bollettieri, was a homemaker.He graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala., in 1953, and then saw military service in an airborne division. After his discharge in 1957, he attended law school at the University of Miami. To earn money toward his tuition, he taught tennis at area courts, charging $1.50 for a half-hour lesson, though his experience was limited to some play as a teenager. His first students included Brian Gottfried, who went on to an outstanding tennis career.Bollettieri built his Bradenton, Fla. academy on what were tomato fields. He pioneered the concept of live-in tennis camps. Lutz Bongarts/Bongarts, via Getty ImagesBollettieri quit law school after one year and worked during summers at the John D. Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills, a hamlet in the Westchester town of Mount Pleasant, and winters at the Rockefeller-owned Doral Beach hotel in Puerto Rico, becoming its tennis director. He returned to Florida in 1978 and became an instructor at what was then the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort in Longboat Key before opening his academy in Bradenton.The ABC News program “20/20” profiled the academy in its early years, bringing it national attention.In 2014, Bollettieri was giving private lessons at $900 an hour.“Nick is one of the youngest, most passionate guys on the planet,” Jim Courier, who had won four major singles titles, told The New York Times at the time. “No baloney. He’s not doing it for the money. He loves making a difference and getting meaning from it. As corny as that sounds, it’s true. He has family and more wives than anyone should ever have, but Nick is someone who wakes up in the morning and craves going to the office. It’s what keeps him going.”When Bollettieri was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2014 as a “contributor” to the game, he joined only three others honored solely for their coaching. Carsten Rehder/picture alliance, via Getty ImagesBollettieri’s survivors include his eighth wife, Cindi Eaton; his children from various previous marriages, including his daughters, Danielle Bollettieri, Angelique Bollettieri, Nicole Bollettieri Kroenig and Alexandra Bollettieri; his sons, James, Giovanni and Giacomo; and four grandchildren.Bollettieri was the instruction editor of Tennis Magazine and published the memoirs “My Aces, My Faults” (1996, with Dick Schaap) and “Bollettieri: Changing the Game” (2014). He was the author of the instructional book “Nick Bollettieri’s Tennis Handbook” (2001).In his later years, Bollettieri cut down on his schedule and did his coaching on indoor courts.“Today the whole world is playing tennis, and many years ago there were about six countries,” Bollettieri told The Times in 2014. “Now we are competing against the world, so it’s much more difficult for me when somebody comes up and says, ‘Nick, tell us about another champion.’ I’m very reluctant.”Alex Traub More

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      in Basket

      The Celtics Have Found a New Way to Be Better Than Everyone Else

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      Boston was the best defensive team last season en route to the N.B.A. finals. Not so much this year. A scorching offense has helped them to the best record this year.BOSTON — The Celtics have been many things this season.Explosive from the 3-point line. Unguardable in transition. A nightmare for defenders, who have witnessed another leap in the twin-pronged development of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, two young players who, around this time last year, were coping with criticism about whether they could coexist. Now, they have the Celtics positioned as a presumptive favorite to return to the N.B.A. finals — and perhaps win it all.Yet for all their pyrotechnics on offense, the Celtics have had their issues on defense. Through the early weeks of the season, Boston has been more pasta strainer than steel curtain when it comes to thwarting open looks. Considering everything else that the team can do — namely, score oodles of points — the Celtics have offered up some decidedly mediocre defense.But that may be changing, which is awful news for the rest of the league.Facing the Celtics last week, the Dallas Mavericks were trying to sustain a late-game surge when their All-Star guard, Luka Doncic, found a seam to the basket — only to have his finger roll rejected at the rim by Tatum. The Celtics came away with the ball and pushed it ahead to Brown, who sank a 3-pointer to seal the Boston win.As that sequence was playing out, Tatum and Doncic were left in quiet conversation at the other end.“I told him that I didn’t want him to dunk on me,” Tatum said later. “He looked at me and was like, ‘You thought I was going to dunk it?’ I was like: ‘You never know.’”The Celtics, who have won 13 of their last 14 games to improve their record to a league-best 17-4, still have a middle-of-the-pack, bend-but-don’t-break defense under Joe Mazzulla, their interim coach. Their defensive rating, which is a measure of points allowed per possession, ranked 14th in the league entering Tuesday. But over their past eight games, the Celtics have produced a top-10 defense — a sign of growth as they lean into Mazzulla’s up-tempo style while compensating for the injury absence of Robert Williams III, their starting center.Celtics guard Marcus Smart, right, who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award last season, is defending centers more often this year with center Robert Williams III out injured.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press“Our offense is so good that it hides some of our defensive flaws,” Marcus Smart, the team’s starting point guard, said in an interview. “But we’re continuously out here working, and it’s only going to get better with time.”And it will presumably improve even more later this season. After Williams underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in late September, the team said he would resume “basketball activities” in eight to 12 weeks. There are no certainties about his health, of course, but even if Williams were to return at less than full strength, his mere presence around the rim would help. Last season, he was named to the N.B.A.’s all-defensive second team.In his absence, Smart, who is 6 foot 3, has spent more time guarding opposing centers than he would prefer. After he averaged 1.7 steals a game last season, when he won the N.B.A.’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, Smart is averaging just 1.1 steals this season, a dip that can be attributed to his playing out of position.“Because I’m guarding the post so much, you don’t want to gamble too much,” Smart said. “It’ll be different when Rob is out there and I can gamble. But without him, I have to be solid for my team and control that back line.”The Celtics were all about grinding opponents to smithereens last season, when they led the league in defensive rating. Ime Udoka, who was in his first season as the team’s coach, made defense his priority, and it was a winning strategy. In the playoffs, Boston advanced to the N.B.A. finals before falling to Golden State in six games.Mazzulla, though, was made interim coach on the eve of training camp after the Celtics suspended Udoka for the season for unspecified “violations of team policies.” (According to two people with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to discuss it, Udoka had a relationship with a female subordinate.)But while Mazzulla was an assistant under Udoka last season, he has not tried to replicate Udoka’s approach. Instead, Mazzulla has done things his own way — by recognizing the team’s unique offensive abilities. Entering Tuesday, the Celtics were leading the league in scoring, 3-pointers, 3-point percentage and offensive rating.It is also worth noting that, as a part of Boston’s off-season trade for Malcolm Brogdon, the Celtics gave up Daniel Theis, a defense-minded center. The trade, of course, was worth it: Brogdon, a point guard, has been terrific coming off the bench, and Theis has yet to play for the Indiana Pacers this season because of an injured knee.In any case, the Celtics have essentially been daring opponents to keep up with them. Sometimes, Smart said, that may mean that the Celtics give up an extra offensive rebound or two as they look to break out and run.“When you’re not really boxing out as much and having as many guys stay back, your defense is going to take a hit,” Smart said. “But we’re going to get it together.”For his part, Tatum has clearly taken another step as a defender by averaging a career-best 1.2 blocks a game. He recently described himself and Brown as “two of the best two-way players in the league.”Tatum left his imprint on the Mavericks last week. Late in the second quarter, Tatum raced in as a weakside defender to swat a layup by the Mavericks’ Dorian Finney-Smith. Tatum corralled the rebound, brought the ball upcourt himself and got fouled attempting a 3-pointer. He made all three free throws.“That’s what’s going to make him an even greater player — being able to do it on both ends,” Smart said. “We know what he can do on the offensive end. Everybody knows. But it’s even more detrimental to a team when you’re locking them up.”There are times, though, when it may not even matter.On Monday, the Celtics hosted the Charlotte Hornets, an injury-marred team that has taken up residence in the Eastern Conference basement. With Brown and Al Horford sitting out the second game of a back-to-back, Mazzulla went with a deeper rotation. Blake Griffin, who had been collecting dust bunnies on the bench for nearly two weeks, made his third start of the season and scored on the team’s opening possession. The Celtics sank 10 3-pointers in the first quarter and led by as many as 30 points before halftime.They were well on their way to another rout in a season full of them. More