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      The Biggest Dance Show in Town? At a Brooklyn Nets Game

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      Since February, the Brooklynettes have performed live at Barclays Center to crowds that are smaller than usual — but huge for dance.I found an immersive performance — really, a spectacle — at a place I never would have expected it: a basketball game.Since February, the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets dance team, have been a pandemic anomaly: They have been performing live, at games, for nearly 2,000 spectators. It’s not the same as it ever was — it’s better. Barclays Center, at reduced capacity, is more intimate. The ushers treat you like you’re a guest at a dinner party. The players come into sharper focus. And the dancers, whether performing their choreographed routines or reacting to an exciting shot, are vital to the whole.It used to seem that a Brooklynettes number had three characteristics: speed, power and hair. The strokes were broad. Were the dancers skilled and meticulous? Absolutely. But at the games, their hard work was obscured by the noise and the abundance of fans. The reality was that this wasn’t so much a dance team as a group of backup dancers for a basketball team.With the arena at reduced capacity, the Brooklynettes feel more vital to the whole.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThis season though, while the Brooklynettes’ focus is still hip-hop and street jazz, the look is different, more precise. At a recent rehearsal in the arena, Asha Singh, the Brooklynettes coach and sometime choreographer, put the brakes on the dancers, to clean up a routine. “What angle of left are we going?” she asked them. “Are we going to the corner? Are we stepping side?”Why would a position held for a millisecond during a sprint of a dance matter? When these six bodies move as one, they pull you in — not just to their dancing but into the arena, where their movement creates an invisible line of energy between the players and the fans.Even when they aren’t dancing, that vitality continues as they stand, hands on hips, looking like cutouts of Wonder Woman. It sounds strange, but now for the Brooklynettes, a position held for a millisecond in a sprint of a dance does matter, because whether or not you see the effect, you feel it.The Brooklynettes — along with a galvanizing drum line and Team Hype, a male dance crew that performs on the opposite stage — are no longer a decorative afterthought. In prepandemic days, they would perform right on the court; now two stages have been built to provide the necessary social distancing from fans and players. The dancers — there are six per game now, down from 20 — are present throughout. They stand out in a way that they didn’t before, even when they were front and center performing on-court routines during home games.Asha Singh, coach of the Brooklynettes, rehearsing with the team. Back, from left, Celine, Kia and Ashley.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAnd while there is reduced capacity at Barclays Center, the numbers are still staggering for dance. How many dancers do you know who are performing indoors for so many people? (The arena has been at 10 percent capacity, about 1,700 spectators, and will go up to 30 percent on May 19.)“It’s invigorating,” said the dancer Liv David, who added that for many months during the pandemic, “I was just dancing in my little apartment trying not to kick my cats in the face and trying to make the most of it. I almost had forgotten that feeling — that adrenaline.”Live indoor dance performances have been hard to come by in New York; when they do happen, audiences are kept small. The Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum started with audiences of 50; as state mandates changed, the number was increased to 75 and now tops out at 90. At the cavernous Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, capacity for “Afterwardsness,” a coming production by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, will be 118.The drum line and dancers during a game.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesDuring the 2019-2020 N.B.A. season, when arenas were at full capacity, all 30 teams featured performances with dancing. Now, in addition to the Brooklynettes, there are 10 other dance teams performing live. (The Knicks City Dancers do not; instead, recordings of past performances are played during games.)When fans were allowed back into arenas, Criscia Long, who oversees the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets Beats Drumline and Team Hype, was charged with figuring out how to bring entertainment back.“We’re in the crowd now — we’re right next to the fans,” Long said. “You get to engage with them; you get to actually feel their energy a little bit more during performances and when the ball is in play. It’s so much more connected now than even having the whole entire crowd there.”An experienced dancer, Long was formerly a captain of the Knicks City Dancers; she also performed with Lil’ Kim, who appeared in a number with the Brooklynettes this season. “She really wanted to be a part of the show,” Long said. “She rehearsed with us, and you know how hard it is with Covid protocols, but she wanted to be in it. It felt like we were on tour with her.”The Brooklynettes backstage in April.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThat was a special occasion. Even so, Singh said that if you took away the basketball team, what the Brooklynettes present is a version of tour-style concert performances. That is even more apparent now. “Very much tour, minus the artist in front,” she said. “Imagine all that crazy dope dancing that you would see around the artist: That’s kind of the energy that we like to provide the arena.”In the past, the Brooklynettes would sometimes share the court with Team Hype for combined routines. Now, though, the two groups perform on stages at opposite sides of the arena; during the games, they play off each other while members of the drum line appear with both groups.They’re all more in the moment. At times, the dancers react to a big play: short bursts of choreography that bloom quickly and disappear. Even those dances, unannounced yet galvanizing, draw attention. As David said: “I feel eyes on us. I feel like people are appreciating what we’re doing and performing for them. And that is very rewarding.”The Wonder Woman pose.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThe drum line has returned with the dancers.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAt the start of the pandemic, Singh moved into Zoom rehearsals, like most of the dance world, and found that she needed to focus less on fixing details like exact arm placement and timing — that would be attended to once they were onstage — and more on getting the choreography in their bodies. Dancers would record themselves and send her the videos for individual notes.The emphasis of the movement has also changed. “Before, we would do a lot of big arms,” Singh said. “It was like how do I make the steps as big as possible? How do I make my body look like it’s taking up space?”While they still do that, now, she added, “It’s more about the power behind the movement and less of ‘my arm has to be way up here’ for the upper-level fans to be able to see what we’re doing.”As always, Singh wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn,” she said. “My approach to anything, all Brooklynettes is you’ve got to do it right. At least try to do it right. The last thing I want anyone to say — and especially in our industry — is, ‘Oh it’s inauthentic. They’re appropriating culture. Or they’re not really Brooklyn.’”Asha Singh, the team’s coach, wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn.”Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAs for that Wonder Woman pose? “That’s literally our signature,” Singh said, laughing. “I told the ladies the other night, ‘You have to stand like you’re still performing and stay there.’ If your arms get tired, you can relax, but then always come back so it still looks like your body is energized and you’re present. If you’re not backstage, you’re performing. That’s always been my viewpoint — on any show.”It’s another instance of the Brooklynettes doing something that they never had to do. “Now we’re learning that we have to change — we have to tweak our show, the in-between moments,” Singh said. “It’s kind of exciting though because I’m a fan of a stage. I just love lights. I love haze. I love being elevated.”As for that stage in the stands? “It just looks so much more like a show to me,” she said. “So I’m kind of loving our stage moment. We’re not sure how long it’s going to last, but it’s been really fun so far.” More

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      Champions League Final: Meeting Set on Move to London

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      UEFA officials and the British government will discuss shifting the Manchester City-Chelsea game from Istanbul to Wembley to sidestep coronavirus travel restrictions.European soccer’s governing body will hold talks with the British government on Monday about moving this month’s Champions League final to London because travel restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic have made it almost impossible for domestic fans of the finalists — the Premier League rivals Manchester City and Chelsea — to attend the match at its scheduled site in Istanbul.The final, which is planned for May 29 at Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, is the biggest day on the European club soccer calendar; like the Super Bowl and the Wimbledon final, Champions League final is one of the tent-pole events in global sports every year.Questions about where to hold the match have been growing since Turkey announced a lockdown late last month. They intensified on Friday, days after City and Chelsea clinched their places in the final, when the British government announced that Turkey was among the countries to which Britons should avoid all but essential travel.Officials from England’s Football Association already have opened talks with Europe’s governing body, UEFA, about moving the game, and they will be present at Monday’s meeting, when UEFA will outline its requirements for relocation. A decision most likely will be announced within 48 hours.If an agreement cannot be reached to move the final to London, a backup choice will be considered, most likely Porto, Portugal.UEFA’s demands are likely to present a dilemma for the British government, which will have to balance the popular appeal of bringing a major sporting event featuring two English teams to the country against the continuing public health need to control the spread of the virus.Among its demands, UEFA is expected to request that Britain waive quarantine requirements so its staff members, international broadcasters, sponsors, suppliers and officials can adjust their plans and attend the game.UEFA also is seeking guarantees about spectators. Fans can start attending soccer games in England later this month, but that figure is capped at 10,000 — a number that is far lower than the 25,000 fans that Istanbul has said it could accommodate. The British government relaxed that rule by saying 20,000 can attend the F.A. Cup final on May 17 at Wembley Stadium in London. UEFA will demand a similar accommodation.English officials have indicated to UEFA that the game can be played at Wembley, even though the stadium is already booked to stage promotion playoffs for the lower leagues that week. Those matches will be relocated to new venues or played on different dates. Two Premier League clubs have approached UEFA about staging the Champions League final at their stadiums, but UEFA is expected to insist that if the game is to be moved to England, it will have to be played at Wembley, a neutral venue familiar to both clubs and one that satisfies UEFA’s requirements for hosting major games.A market street in Istanbul, where a strict lockdown has closed shops in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.Emrah Gurel/Associated PressThe decision would mean pulling the game from Istanbul for the second year in a row. Last year’s decisive Champions League matches — the tournament was postponed on the eve of the quarterfinals last spring to curb the spread of the virus — were played in a so-called bubble environment in Lisbon. They were moved only after Turkish officials had agreed to surrender their coveted role as host of the final in exchange for a promise that Istanbul would host the final this year.Officials in Portugal have told UEFA that they could accommodate this year’s final on short notice, too, perhaps in Porto, after the British government on Friday included Portugal in a list of countries its citizens could travel to without having to quarantine upon their return.Turkey has recently entered a new lockdown amid a rise in virus cases, and the country has been placed on the red list, a group of countries and territories for which travel from Britain is actively discouraged. Turkey, a popular destination for British tourists, had said it would lift its lockdown on May 17 — 12 days before the Champions League final — but government officials had warned soccer fans to stay home.“First of all, it does mean with regards to the Champions League, fans should not travel to Turkey,” Grant Shapps, the British lawmaker responsible for transport, said at a news conference after announcing the new regulations for travel in and out of Britain.Making matters more complicated is a 10-day quarantine requirement for individuals who return to Britain after being cleared to travel from red list countries. That would mean more than a dozen players on both squads potentially being ruled out of preparations for the European Championship, the quadrennial Continent soccer championship, that begins on June 11.“We are very open to hosting the final, but it is ultimately a decision for UEFA,” Shapps said, adding, “Given there are two English clubs in that final, we look forward to what they have to say.”For UEFA, there is sympathy for Turkey, which may now lose the final for the second straight year. One option being considered to appease Turkish officials is an offer for the final to be played in Istanbul in 2023, to coincide with the centenary of the Turkish republic.Both Manchester City and Chelsea would have brought large traveling parties and potentially thousands of fans to Turkey for the game, in addition to the hundreds of journalists and others who normally attend the final. Their supporters from outside Britain — who might have been allowed to attend the match in Turkey — most likely will not be included in the eased travel restrictions if the game is played in England.Manchester City, on course to clinch its third Premier League title in four years this weekend, claimed its first berth in the final on Tuesday, when it eliminated Paris St.-Germain, a finalist last summer in Lisbon.Chelsea, which won the Champions League in 2012, earned its place a day later by ousting Spain’s Real Madrid.In a quirk of the Premier League schedule, City and Chelsea met in a league game on Saturday in Manchester, with Chelsea delaying City’s domestic championship celebrations by securing a 2-1 victory. More

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      The Root of the Knicks’ Success? Caring When They Didn’t Have To.

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      In a season of uncertainty, the Knicks gave fans, and opponents, one thing to count on: “They were coming to play,” one observer said.Of all the postseason-ensuring victories across the Knicks’ grand reawakening of a regular season, none rose to the level of their most compelling, collective triumph. That would be the defeat of every team’s most formidable opponent: the coronavirus pandemic.Like most teams in all sports, they have had their brushes with Covid-19. But at least until a swing out West that always loomed as a caveat to their playoff seeding, the Knicks could be counted on to “show up every night,” to quote a dearly departed season ticket holder I long knew.Some N.B.A. teams did little to improve on borderline playoff rosters or gutted them completely. Others that figured to be measurably superior to the Knicks have wobbled under the weight of too many nights when they didn’t show up — physically or spiritually.The N.B.A. this season has experienced an acute blowout problem, on pace late last month for more games after the All-Star break decided by 20 or more points since 1967-68. Let Jeff Van Gundy, the loquacious network analyst and former Knicks coach, begin to explain.“In a trying season for everybody — with testing and Covid, injuries and load management — you just haven’t known who’s going to be there, night in and night out,” he said in a telephone interview. “But with the Knicks, you have known, for the most part, they were coming to play.”This is where the hiring of Tom Thibodeau as coach was seamlessly set to pandemic conditions. Especially for what Van Gundy called “the whole crowd thing,” meaning that because there were no fans in arenas for most of the season, there has largely been no external force helping teams hold on to the rope after falling behind.Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesFrom no fans to some fans, these Knicks didn’t much need to be incentivized by a Madison Square Garden crowd. The coach’s baritone voice has been more than enough.Who among the emerging young players (RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley), veterans on expiring contracts (Reggie Bullock, Alec Burks) or reacquainted Thibodeau loyalists (Taj Gibson, Derrick Rose) was not going to be all-in with an old-school taskmaster, in his first year on the job?Van Gundy, who had Thibodeau on his Knicks staff two decades ago during the last multiseason period of Knicks relevance, mentioned an unnamed coach who told him that the higher the level of basketball you reach, winning during the regular season tends to “matter less and less to the players.” Maybe that’s an exaggeration, or simply not true. But with these Knicks, Van Gundy said, “the care factor has been exceptionally high.”Forgive the nostalgia, but their season has been reminiscent of 1982-83, when Hubie Brown rolled into town with a reputation much like Thibodeau’s, preaching defense and devotion, albeit in an exacting voice that over time grew discordant.Bernard King was the star of Hubie Brown’s 1982-83 Knicks team.Bill Kostroun/Associated PressBrown’s first Knicks team lost 26 of its first 40 games, then caught fire, won 24 of 30 and steamed into the playoffs to win a round (for the record, against the Nets).As with Julius Randle now, Bernard King was their lone star then, the one indispensable Knick, wearing the same No. 30. While other teams have required an Etch A Sketch to chart their stars’ nightly lineup availability, Randle has lost one game to injury and none to rest, leading the league in minutes played.Load management is generally for the established elite, not for a guy in the midst of a remarkable breakout season, and who began it with a partially guaranteed salary for 2021-22.Beyond Randle, Leon Rose, the team’s president, built a deep roster of interchangeable parts, ready for a condensed schedule promising to be marred by pandemic unpredictability. When the starting center Mitchell Robinson went down, the peripatetic young veteran Nerlens Noel stepped up. When Burks, a strong contributor to the team’s improved offense, was out because of virus protocols, Rose and Bullock picked up the scoring pace.“In the regular season, you can’t be top-heavy, you need depth, which Leon did a great job with,” Van Gundy said. “In the playoffs, you need greatness.”Watching the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic dismantle the Knicks in Denver last week may well have been a playoff preview. But wherever the Knicks’ season goes from here, it has been all the more astonishing when considering how little they have to show for their last five lottery picks, all top 10.Julius Randle colliding into Nuggets forward Paul Millsap in Denver on Wednesday.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBasically, it’s the ever-improving Barrett, at least until Obi Toppin gets to prove he is more than the second coming of Kenny Walker, better known as Sky. Kristaps Porzingis? Long gone. Frank Ntilikina and Kevin Knox? Might as well be.Here, again, is where the Thibodeau hiring has been a timely blessing. You may have argued last fall that this would be the perfect season to sacrifice achievement for player development, with few paying customers to please. I know I did. Why not find out once and for all about Ntilikina and Knox? Why not turn Toppin and Quickley loose from Day 1?Thibodeau was clear from the start: He wasn’t interested in coaching a team on training wheels, instead subscribing to the maxim that the best teaching environment is a winning one.Peter Roby, a childhood friend of Thibodeau’s, who in 1985 hired him for the coaching staff at Harvard, likes to playfully remind people of how Thibodeau, the acclaimed defensive guru, was known in his “knucklehead” youth for never passing up a shot. But in a recent telephone interview, he brought up Thibodeau’s age, 63, old enough to have been introduced to the pro game by the Knicks’ early 1970s championship team.Those Knicks were all about ball sharing and defense, the kind of championship DNA, Roby said, that Thibodeau associates with the franchise, even if it hasn’t won a title since the presidency of Richard M. Nixon.“Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley — those are his Knicks,” Roby said.His father’s Knicks, as well. Thibodeau wanted this generation-connective job too much to embark on a five-year plan that could easily disintegrate, given the organization’s trademark volatility under the ownership of James L. Dolan.Even with few or no fans, the Knicks have played hard.Pool photo by ElsaHe also knows how easily an N.B.A. head coach his age can overnight be downgraded from outstanding to outdated with one twist of fate — what befell Brown after King tore up a knee at the height of his scoring prowess in 1985.Chasing pickup games with Thibodeau while growing up in New Britain, Conn., a border town where sports passion is split between Boston and New York, Roby also chose the Knicks over the Celtics. As a former athletic director at Northeastern and current interim athletic director at Dartmouth, he’s long been closer to Boston but is a bigger Knicks fan than ever, thanks to his old pal.“Can you imagine what it would be like if they were playing in front of a full Garden house?” Roby said.We can, but perhaps we shouldn’t. Not yet. Because who knows what comes next, when the high-achieving role players, Derrick Rose included, will demand their free-agent rewards. When road games — such as Friday night’s in Phoenix, where the Knicks faltered late in front of 8,063 fans — may again require competing with a full-throated cacophony. When expectation will become part of the equation and, yes, when Thibodeau’s voice could begin to grate.Stirring to life a long-slumbering franchise, the story of the season has been harmony for coach and players, all while withstanding, even foiling, the daunting challenge of a pandemic. More

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      The N.B.A.’s Play-In Tournament Isn’t the Problem

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      Though stars like LeBron James and Luka Doncic have complained about the pre-playoff hurdle, the stress of the play-in matters less than injuries and the compressed season.The Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James, who lashed out about the All-Star Game staged in Atlanta in March, has a new source of league office ire. James said on Sunday that the forces behind the N.B.A.’s forthcoming playoff play-in tournament “should be fired.”Weeks before James voiced his displeasure, it was Mark Cuban, after voting for the play-in as the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, who blasted the concept as an “enormous mistake.”I say they’re both wrong, and see the race to set up the N.B.A.’s play-in round from May 18 to 21 as the most invigorating aspect of a dour, draining, pandemic-skewed season.The idea here, though, is not to dwell on James or Cuban, two of the league’s most outspoken figures. They were offering emotional reactions to their teams’ increasingly unpleasant circumstances in the standings. Both surely know how self-serving it sounded to attack the play-in format only after their teams faced an acute risk of having to participate in it.Zoom in on what’s happening among the top 11 teams in each conference, and you will see that the format change is doing its job — and promisingly so. More teams are playing more games that mean something than we’re accustomed to with just under two weeks left in the regular season. A system that gives the No. 9 or 10 seed a last-ditch pathway into the playoffs — but only if one of those teams can win two play-in games in a row — has spawned new levels of jockeying for seeding position. That’s good for the game at large, even if it has, in Year 1, complicated matters for the injury-ravaged defending champions in Los Angeles.Adam Silver, in his seven-plus years as commissioner, has emphasized finding ways to make the regular season matter more. He has also sought to discourage teams from shifting into the familiar late-season mode of resting veterans and focusing on youth development to foster losing and improve draft position, better known as tanking. The combination of the play-in and changes to the lottery odds starting in the 2018-19 season is making a difference on both fronts. Before the 2019 draft, the team with the lowest winning percentage had the highest odds to get the No. 1 pick. The three worst teams now share an equal shot at the top spot.Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks said he didn’t “see the point” of playing the whole season if a play-in tournament could keep a team out of the playoffs.Nelson Chenault/USA Today Sports, via ReutersEntering Tuesday’s play, 24 of the league’s 30 teams were still in playoff contention because of the added play-in slots, although the chances seemed unrealistic for Chicago in the East and Sacramento in the West. In both conferences, in addition to the usual grappling for the No. 1 seed, there are fevered races to secure a top-six seed and avoid the play-in round, as well as crowded races to clinch a spot in the 7-to-10 range to extend the season.The play-in scenario calls for the No. 7 seed in each conference to play one game against No. 8 at home, with No. 9 playing No. 10 at home. The winner of 7 vs. 8 claims the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game plays the winner of 9 vs. 10 at home for the No. 8 seed, with the loser of 9 vs. 10 eliminated. The seventh- and eighth-seeded teams in each conference thus have to win just once to clinch a playoff berth. No. 9 or No. 10 must win two games in a row to advance.The Mavericks’ Luka Doncic lamented last month that he didn’t “see the point” of playing an entire season if “maybe you lose two in a row and you’re out of the playoffs.” That was what prompted Cuban’s “enormous mistake” comment, but on Monday he said that he had “no problem” with the play-in and that he welcomed the competitive boost it could lend to a standard 82-game season. Cuban’s dismay, he said both last month and Monday, is contained to this season because of the stress it heaps on already stressed teams. He contended that additional games with seeding implications compound the burden on teams chafing from cramming 72 regular-season games into five months while coping with daily coronavirus testing and extensive league health and safety demands.But the benefits, at least for fans, have been plentiful. There is a newfound incentive for teams to finish no lower than sixth, both to avoid the play-in and to gain several days of additional rest before the first round of the playoffs. The seeding scramble also features highly watchable players vying for play-in berths: Washington’s duo of Bradley Beal and Russell Westbrook, New Orleans’s Zion Williamson, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball and, most of all, Golden State’s scorching hot Stephen Curry. The prospect of stars like Curry, Portland’s Damian Lillard and maybe even Williamson headlining bonus high-stakes broadcasts presumably excites network executives as much as the possibility of an early Lakers exit scares them.In Washington’s case, Beal and Westbrook have been at the forefront of a 13-3 surge that has enabled the Wizards to overcome a 17-32 start and compete for something after a coronavirus outbreak in January essentially shut down the franchise for two weeks. As a counter to Cuban’s complaint, San Antonio’s bid to stay alive for a playoff berth despite a second-half scheduling crunch has been boosted by the play-in path. The Spurs must play 40 games in 67 days in the season’s second half, but they have clung to 10th in the West, ahead of Williamson’s Pelicans.Young players like New Orleans’s Zion Williamson, left, and Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball, right, have added intrigue to the races for lower seeds.Derick Hingle/Associated PressTanking has not been eradicated by the play-in chases, but there is certainly less of it. The numbing regular-season discourse about individual awards (and little else) has been mercifully balanced by a heightened focus on the playoff ladders and how meaningful, just to give one example, Boston’s regular-season finale against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on May 16 could be. Even fears that adding play-in berths would lead more teams to stand pat and thus chill the trade market proved mostly unfounded; deadline day on March 25 delivered a record number of trades (16).The most compelling argument against the play-in tournament is the one Cuban raised — that this wasn’t the season for such experimentation. I suppose, for some, it’s a step too far after the tight turnaround from last season, which carried into October, and all the virus-related demands that cut into players’ rest, rehabilitation and practice time.Yet the bulk of the additional stress is a byproduct of the league’s decision, in conjunction with the players’ union, to start this season on Dec. 22 and play 72 games in a compressed period. The rising concern among teams’ medical staffs about increased injury risk because of game density and scheduling logjams caused by game postponements would probably have manifested with or without the play-in wrinkle.As for suggestions that the East and West No. 7 seeds deserve more protection than the play-in system affords, based on their season-long body of work, let’s push back. The lowest seed to win a championship since the league adopted a 16-team playoff format in 1983-84 was sixth-seeded Houston in 1994-95 — when the Rockets were defending champions and traded for Clyde Drexler at midseason. The playoffs do not revolve around No. 7 seeds. If they can’t win one play-in game at home, when given two chances, how much playoff damage were they going to do, anyway?What no one envisioned was three of the four teams that reached last season’s conference finals tumbling into play-in territory, which is why the issue has caused so much angst. Miami (No. 6) and Boston (No. 7) in the East, among the teams that have been hit hardest by Covid-19 disruptions, might have to go the play-in route just to get back to the playoffs. The Lakers began the season as overwhelming championship favorites and duly started 21-6, but their subsequent struggles have played out in the most daunting way. James and Anthony Davis, as we warned, have not been able to make seamless returns from their long-term injuries.The Lakers will not look capable of a lengthy playoff run, even if they can avoid the indignity of a play-in game or two, until the health of their two stars improves. For all the attention on James’s harsh critique of the play-in games, he said something else on Sunday to suggest he had a firm grasp of the Lakers’ larger seeding plight.“If I’m not 100 percent, or close to 100 percent, it don’t matter where we land,” James said.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeA reader writes in with the hottest of hot takes: Stephen Curry isn’t that good.Mark Mulligan/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be condensed or lightly edited for clarity.)Q: To answer the question posed by last week’s newsletter, Russell Westbrook is not appreciated because he does not win. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson could have averaged 15 points, 15 rebounds and 15 assists per game every season if that was their goal. Westbrook is a pretty amazing player, and a deserved All-Star, but teams looking to win it all don’t seem to be interested in him. — Noel MacDonald (Petaluma, Calif.)Stein: This is a popular sentiment about Westbrook, and there are some minds he will probably never change until he is part of a championship team, no matter what he achieves statistically.That Westbrook has been traded twice since winning the league’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2016-17 only amplifies the argument. Yet when Westbrook has gotten triple-doubles, his teams have won handily, so I would dispute the blanket statement that Westbrook “does not win.”Westbrook has 178 career triple-doubles in the regular season and a 134-44 record in those games, good for a winning percentage of .753. That equates to a 62-20 record in a typical season.Oklahoma City, Houston and Washington, then, have clearly benefited from his triple-doubles. Detractors are bound to say Westbrook could be chasing them in every game and hurting his team when he doesn’t achieve them, but I don’t think Westbrook is motivated by triple-doubles above all else. Teammates probably wouldn’t respect him the way they do if that were happening.All of these layers, and everything we covered last week, are why I’m so curious to see the reaction when Westbrook breaks Oscar Robertson’s career record for triple-doubles (181). Maybe this will be the moment that the league at large stops to appreciate someone who plays as ridiculously hard as Westbrook does, season after season after season, even if his résumé lacks a championship. Or maybe not.Q: Stephen Curry is great, but he’s the third-best Warrior ever. He’s not better than Rick Barry, and he’s not better than Wilt Chamberlain. Unless Curry adds another dimension to his game, he will not crack the top 10 or 15 all time. — @michaelbookit from TwitterStein: This is another bold opinion (or you were just trying to get a Twitter rise out of me). Whether or not I can persuade you to reconsider your stance, I strongly disagree.Chamberlain’s greatest successes as a player were as a 76er and as a Laker. Although the statistics he posted as a Warrior remain difficult to fathom, like the 50.4 points per game he averaged as a Philadelphia Warrior in 1961-62, his time in the Bay Area lasted less than three seasons. The Warriors even missed the playoffs in Wilt’s first San Francisco season.Barry has long been one of the game’s underappreciated stars, and his all-around excellence in leading Golden State to an unforeseen championship in 1975 cemented him as one of the game’s greats, but Curry’s résumé has it all. Three championships, five consecutive trips to the N.B.A. finals, back-to-back M.V.P. awards, longevity with one franchise, massive popularity with fans and seemingly limitless shooting range that changed the game — Curry really has no peer here.Q: I have assumed that teams that qualified for the playoff play-in round but did not advance further would not be considered teams that reached the playoffs this season. Then on Friday, according to the league’s official standings, Philadelphia was shown to have clinched a playoff berth when the 76ers had 10 games left on their schedule — but only an 8½-game lead over No. 7 Miami. Didn’t that mean that the Sixers conceivably could have still slipped to seventh?— Jeff Pucillo (Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.)Stein: You are correct that teams that get to the play-in round will not be considered playoff teams unless they win the last playoff spot in each conference.The standings, though, did not convey the full picture of Philadelphia’s situation. The Sixers clinched a playoff berth as of Friday because No. 6 Boston and No. 7 Miami still had two games against each other — and the results of those forthcoming games, no matter what they are, will ensure that either the Celtics or the Heat can’t catch the Sixers.Numbers GameThe Sixers are 32-6 when Ben Simmons, center, and Joel Embiid play together.Darren Abate/Associated Press57It’s not your imagination: Major blowouts have been increasingly common this season. A record six games in April were decided by margins of at least 40 points, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, and Indiana promptly drubbed Oklahoma City by 57 points, 152-95, on Saturday, the first day of May.50When Utah scored 154 points in a 49-point rout of Sacramento last week, it was the eighth time over the past two seasons that an N.B.A. team had scored as many as 150 points in a non-overtime game. Over the prior 20 seasons, from 1999-2000 to 2018-19, it happened only four times, according to Elias.32-6Philadelphia is 32-6 this season when Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons are both in uniform. The 76ers’ .842 winning percentage in those games shows the team’s tremendous potential when the two stars are healthy, but their 38 games together mean Embiid and Simmons have been available as a duo for only 58 percent of Philadelphia’s schedule.8Of Utah’s 18 losses this season, eight were inflicted by three teams: Phoenix, Washington and lowly Minnesota. The Suns and Timberwolves went 3-0 against the Jazz, who also absorbed a 2-0 season sweep from the Wizards. In another quirk, Sacramento is 10-1 against Denver (3-0), Dallas (3-0), Boston (2-0) and the Los Angeles Lakers (2-1). The Kings are 17-36 against the rest of the league and will most likely soon miss the playoffs for the 15th consecutive season.96Golden State’s Stephen Curry sank 96 3-pointers in April to establish a league record for a single month. It was not until the ninth season of existence for the 3-point line in the N.B.A. that a player reached that total over 82 regular-season games; Boston’s Danny Ainge (148), Denver’s Michael Adams (139), Seattle’s Dale Ellis (107) and Ainge’s Celtics teammate Larry Bird (98) were the first to get there, in 1987-88.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      After Opting Out, Micah Parsons Prepares for the 2021 NFL Draft

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      Players and scouts adjusted their methods to account for the absence of a traditional combine in Indianapolis.Micah Parsons relaxed his 246-pound body as he decelerated from running the 40-yard dash in front of N.F.L. scouts at a predraft showcase hosted by his college, Penn State, in late March.When Parsons, a linebacker projected to be one of the first defensive players selected in the 2021 N.F.L. draft, learned he clocked in at 4.39 seconds — a time comparable to receivers and running backs — he pounded his chest and pointed upward.“It’s like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” he said afterward. “Now I can finally relax.”Parsons, 21, is one of over 100 Division I players who opted out of the 2020 college football season because of coronavirus concerns, leaving N.F.L. talent evaluators precious little current information to go on in a year further hindered by the absence of a traditional scouting combine. Parsons knew that his data offered his strongest argument for why a franchise should still draft him a year after his last in-game action.Prospects and N.F.L. teams are adapting to having to rely on university-hosted workouts, teleconference interviews and video analysis, data that isn’t standardized and, in most cases, wasn’t collected in person, to make their draft cases.College-hosted workouts, or pro days, took on added importance after the N.F.L. canceled the in-person workout portion of its draft scouting combine, typically hosted in Indianapolis every spring. That decision meant players would conduct their 40-yard dashes, bench presses and vertical jumps — among other physical tests that can sway draft slotting drastically — at their college facilities, rather than at a neutral site with standardized measures.Many players who had opted out spent the college football season and beyond prepping specifically for that testing, as many draft eligible players do each spring. Without a college season, they had longer than usual to train. Parsons signed with an agency, Athletes First, and moved to Santa Ana, Calif., in September to train full time and focus on how he would perform in front of scouts in March.Along with some other star players who opted out, such as Louisiana State receiver Ja’Marr Chase and Oregon offensive lineman Penei Sewell, Parsons is among the potential first-round picks who are trying to remind N.F.L. teams of the promise and acumen they haven’t been able to display publicly in over a year.L.S.U. receiver Ja’Marr Chase spent the 2020 season training for the draft. He ran the 40-yard dash in 4.38 seconds at the school’s pro day workout in March.Matthew Hinton/FR 170690AP, via Associated PressChase, who in 2019 set Southeastern Conference records with 1,780 receiving yards and 20 touchdowns on the way to a national championship and undefeated season, enrolled with Exos, a company that trains professional athletes, in October and temporarily relocated to Texas. There, his packed days mimicked his collegiate peers’. Starting at 8 a.m., he rotated through positional workouts, speed drills, weight training and physical therapy until around 3:30 p.m., six days a week.“We wanted him to be in a predictable situation,” said Brent Callaway, the company’s director of sport performance. “We wanted to put him in the best situation possible to be able to maximize his strength and change direction with speed whenever the stopwatches came out.”Still, being at his best for L.S.U.’s pro day on March 31 meant timing his gains to the testing. Chase entered Exos at 207 pounds and swelled to 213 pounds, so Callaway pulled him off upper-body lifts ahead of the pro day. Chase weighed 201 pounds by his workout, where he ran a 4.38-second 40-yard dash, faster, by nearly three-tenths of a second, than when he first got to Exos in October. Chase’s 41-inch vertical jump was an increase of seven inches.“I would say I kind of surprised myself,” Chase told reporters.As important as pro days have been to this year’s scouting process, those involved acknowledged that the circumstances were less than ideal. Prospects at one school may work out or test on grass while others run on FieldTurf or another surface, creating an unequal comparison.“I think also we’re trying to compensate for what we see on tape and matching what we see in the player,” said Howie Roseman, the Philadelphia Eagles’ general manager.With pro days scattered across the country and Covid-19 protocols still in effect for team staffs, scouting departments had to choose which workouts, if any, to attend in person. The Los Angeles Rams, who hold six total picks in this year’s draft, none in the first round, sent scouts to about a dozen pro day workouts, J.W. Jordan, the team’s director of draft management, said. Because of coronavirus concerns, the team instructed scouts to travel only by car and prohibited overnight stays, which limited them to regional workouts.“From a scouting perspective, it’s getting less and less necessary for you to go in person,” Jordan said. “Everything you’re trying to accomplish they already give it to you.”Rams staff relied mostly on videos and data of pro days provided to them by the league. To verify prospects’ times that seemed a tad fast, Jordan said their scouts would watch the drill onscreen and clock it themselves.This year’s limits on draft evaluations have also meant changes to the more subjective parts of the scouting process. Players recovering from injuries, like Syracuse’s Andre Cisco, whose knee injury early last season prompted him to opt out, got a chance to reassure N.F.L. teams of their health with in-person examinations in Indianapolis conducted by team doctors in April. While the top 100 athletes, plus 44 others who had an eligible medical history, received an additional physical checkup in Indianapolis, all of the draft prospects were given checkups by their local doctors, either virtually or in over-the-phone visits, which were then shared with teams that couldn’t evaluate those players in person.For players who opted out of playing the 2020 college season, prepping for video interviews with potential employers has been as important as training for drills.Parsons had 109 tackles and was an all-American as a sophomore in 2019, so he trusted that film of his game performance would show him as an elite competitor. But he said he faced questions about why he opted out last August as well as lingering character concerns stemming from a 2018 hazing accusation against him and other Penn State players made by a former teammate. Parsons’s accuser filed a lawsuit against Coach James Franklin and the university, claiming the coach ignored the claims. The university investigated the claims and took them to the Centre County, Pa., district attorney, who declined to bring charges. Penn State has filed for the suit to be dismissed.In his video interviews with teams, Parsons sometimes talked with just one person and at other times with a team’s entire defensive unit. He told evaluators that the health of his 2-year-old son, Malcolm, was his biggest concern in opting out, a response he said some teams easily accepted, while others pushed harder.Parsons said he had been more adamant, though, in addressing concerns over his character, emphasizing that once a team drafts him and interacts with him in person daily those concerns will be resolved.“It made me want to show how much of a hard worker I am and how good of a father I am,” said Parsons, who will attend the draft in Cleveland on April 29 with Malcolm in tow. “I’m going to make sure I never put myself in a situation that is going to dictate my future or put the team in jeopardy.” More

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      Months Before Season, N.F.L. and Players Clash Over Pandemic Workouts

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      Players on 14 teams announced they would not attend off-season programming because of concerns about the coronavirus. Some may give up financial benefits in the process.Five months before the regular season starts, the N.F.L. and its players are facing their first clash over playing in the pandemic, with players for nearly half of the teams vowing to skip voluntary off-season workouts.Players on 14 of the league’s 32 teams, including the Giants, the Jets and the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said in statements released by the N.F.L. Players Association that they would not participate in the workouts scheduled to begin Monday because of concerns it would be unsafe to gather.Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady was among players who spoke out to the news media and on social media.“We feel very strongly about the game, the short- and long-term health of the players, and there is no game without strong, healthy players,” Brady said in a conference call with The New York Times and the union’s leadership. “People within the league may think, ‘Oh, let’s just get back to business, let’s go back to what we’ve usually done.’ But I think it’s really smart for people and players to think, ‘Is this the best possible way to do things?’ Not, ‘Is this tolerable, but is it the best way to deal with the situation?’”The N.F.L. declined to comment.The union has called for a virtual off-season — essentially players working out on their own away from team complexes — similar to what took place in 2020. Although a nationwide vaccine campaign is underway, the union argues that the danger is still high.Last season, the N.F.L. shifted its off-season program to a virtual format, with the only in-person work happening at training camps in August. This spring, the union asked the league to use a similar format, while allowing for a mandatory minicamp in June. The league declined, citing protocols that it said would allow the workouts to occur safely.That prompted the players to mobilize. J.C. Tretter, a center for the Cleveland Browns and the president of the union, wrote an open letter to members with DeMaurice Smith, the union executive director, encouraging players not to attend.The league and the union signed a new collective bargaining agreement in 2020, stipulating that off-season workouts were optional, which Smith and Tretter’s letter emphasized. Players then organized calls and team meetings to discuss their stances, some choosing to collectively release statements.The nine-week off-season regimen, which the league published on Wednesday, consists of three phases that gradually increase the level of physical interaction. The first phase will be virtual, with chances for players to work out in the team weight rooms. The next phase allows for on-field work at a gradual pace before traditional full-speed, organized team activities and the minicamp conclude the program.Last season, despite virus outbreaks at team facilities and a flurry of schedule changes, the N.F.L. played all 256 regular-season games and a full playoff slate, culminating with the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla.The N.F.L., which had put in place protocols such as regular testing, mask wearing and social distancing at team facilities, reported that 262 players and 463 team personnel tested positive for the coronavirus, yielding a 0.08 percent positive rate. Similar protocols would be in place this off-season.But Smith said those procedures did not apply to the current situation. More players will be in team buildings as they vie for a spot on the active roster, increasing the possibility for transmission. Others may not live in the city where the team is based during the spring and summer — Tretter said he was one of about six players who had entered the Browns’ facility this off-season — and travel will create chances for exposure.Players should not need to jeopardize their health for optional workouts, unlike during the regular season when they would need to be present daily, Smith said.“It’s balancing necessary versus unnecessary risks,” Smith said. “Our guys have to be there from week to week to compete at the level that our fans want them to compete on Sunday. Off-season workouts are something we know that is not needed for a successful season.”Data compiled by the players association show 172 concussions were reported in 2020, a 30 percent drop from the average of 247 concussions reported per year over the last five seasons. Missed-time injuries, defined as injuries sustained that affect a player’s availability during the season, dropped to 2,716, a 23 percent decrease from the five-season average of 3,524.Tretter argued that those statistics show it is in the N.F.L.’s best interest to continue last season’s template, something Brady agreed with.“If we want to make the game better, we have to continue to make better year-round choices as individuals, as teams, as a league.” Brady said.Tretter said that the workouts had “completely lost the definition of voluntary” and that some players might feel forced to go. “There’s an expectation that you’re just supposed to show up and put up with whatever the N.F.L. asks of you,” Tretter said. “Guys are remembering now that they have a choice to attend.”Still, some view the off-season programs as beneficial. More than 200 players could receive financial bonuses for attending off-season workouts, according to OvertheCap.com, a perk included in their contracts. Teams have discretion to qualify what counts as a workout, including whether they want a player to attend physically or virtually.The face-to-face interaction can build camaraderie between new players, and offers those on the fringe of the roster a chance to impress coaches early.Leigh Steinberg, a longtime agent who represents Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, said he sided with the union, but would advise any client to make the best individual decision.“When they call for advice, it’s a personal choice,” Steinberg said. “It’s predicated on their position with the team, how secure they feel in their position and how much work they really need.” More

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      The Gambling Company That Had the Best Pandemic Ever

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      LONDON — At no point during the soccer game between Stoke City and visiting Watford did anyone say, “Tonight’s match is brought to you by bet365,” one of the world’s largest online gambling companies. No one needed to. It was pretty obvious.The game took place at bet365 Stadium, where “bet365” was stenciled across a huge swath of red seats, which were empty because of the pandemic. LED banner ads with the green-and-yellow bet365 logo blinked and rolled around the perimeter of the field throughout play. And every Stoke player had bet365’s insignia emblazoned on the front of his shirt. The company doesn’t just sponsor the team. The company owns it.“We’ve been stuttering a bit,” Peter Coates, who is chairman of both bet365 and Stoke City, said in a phone interview a few hours before the January game. “We need a win tonight.”He didn’t get one. Watford prevailed, 2-1, after more than 90 minutes of sporadically exciting play.Bet365 undoubtedly had a much better night.Bet365, in Stoke-on-Trent, England, thrives in a nation that loosely regulates online gambling.Nathan Stirk/Getty ImagesThe company is private and doesn’t report quarterly earnings. But publicly traded rivals have announced results, and they strongly suggest that gambling operators are one of the big winners in the pandemic economy. The gaming giant Flutter Entertainment announced in November that sports betting revenue rose more than 30 percent last summer from the previous summer. The average daily number of gamblers at all of the company’s chains rose 40 percent.In soccer-crazed England, gambling is one of the few legally available thrills for a nation that is bored, isolated and stuck at home. It’s the British answer to day trading in the U.S. stock market, which has boomed throughout the pandemic and is expected to rise again as a new round of stimulus checks arrives. With an efficiency that seems both grim and arbitrary, Covid-19 has struck down millions but left others unscathed and, in some cases, richer than ever.The latter group includes executives at a select group of companies in a variety of fields including e-commerce, like Amazon, and entertainment, like Netflix. Gambling has a singular distinction in this rarefied class. Much of its gains come directly from people in financial duress — and much of that duress has been caused by gambling.The Gordon Moody Association, a British charity offering residential treatment for gambling addicts, said over the summer that the number of calls from gamblers who said they felt suicidal had recently quadrupled. A House of Lords report found last year that 60 percent of the industry’s profits came from 5 percent of its customers — namely problem gamblers, or gamblers at risk of developing a problem.People like Lewis, a 25-year-old from Hampshire who requested anonymity because few people know about a compulsion he is still struggling to control. He won about $77,000 at age 16 with an online betting account and chased the high of that original hit for years. Since 2016, he said, he has toggled between total abstinence and flat-out mania.To him, bet365 is the most insidious of the many online gambling sites, because it outpaces the rest at catering to the always-on impulse of people who want to wager, day and night, on games happening anywhere in the world.“A gambler is desperate to distract himself, and during lockdown there was nothing to distract me,” he said. “Can’t meet your mates at a pub, can’t go out for a meal. You’re at home every waking second. You end up in a vicious cycle.”A character out of John le CarréDenise Coates, who runs bet365, earned more than $420 million in 2019, the company reported.Felix Clay/EyevineThe online gambling industry has long operated under exceptionally lenient rules in Britain, many of them codified in 2005, with a set of regulations that was largely designed for retail betting shops. It has been described as an analog law for a digital age, and it’s overseen by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, also known as “the Ministry of Fun.”By all accounts, no company has profited more under this light-handed regime than bet365. Which is why it is spectacularly profitable.In 2019, the company stated in an annual filing that Mr. Coates’s daughter, Denise Coates, the co-chief executive, had earned more than $420 million, making her the highest-paid executive in the country and the “highest-paid woman in the world,” according to The Guardian. That was many times more than the chief executives of publicly traded competitors and more than 12,000 times the average salary in Stoke-on-Trent, the struggling city, 140 miles north of London, where bet365 is based.The company floundered last year during the months when soccer games were suspended in Britain, Mr. Coates said. Bet365 leaned on its casino offerings and found some soccer games in Belarus and Australia. Revenue snapped back quickly when play resumed.Ms. Coates, 53, rarely gives interviews and did not respond to messages for this article. She has been described as intensely private, and even to some longtime rivals — the sort of people she might run into at conventions or associations — she remains elusive.“She’s like a character out of a John le Carré novel, a person you know exists but whom you never meet,” said Ralph Topping, a former chief executive of William Hill, one of the country’s largest betting companies. “When I was at William Hill, we would have liked to have had her input on matters important to the industry. I’ve never had a conversation with her.”Ms. Coates’s journey to the pinnacle of online gambling started after she graduated with an honors degree in econometrics from the University of Sheffield and joined her father’s catering business as an accountant. Mr. Coates then owned a few dozen retail gambling shops, essentially a side business at the time.“She said, ‘Dad, that’s the most boring thing I’ve ever done,’” Mr. Coates recalled. “She said, ‘I want to run those shops for you,’ and she was brilliant at it.”She spruced up the stores and added 15 more. In 2000, she bought the domain name bet365 from eBay.“She’s very driven, always likes to be better than anyone else,” Mr. Coates said. “Very organized, good with people. She turned out to be a bit of a star.”Offering wagers all game longA Stoke City match against Leicester at bet365 Stadium. “In-play betting” lets bettors place wagers throughout a game.Getty ImagesThe world that her father credits Ms. Coates with creating is reflected in a television ad for bet365 that ran before the Stoke-Watford game. It featured the actor turned pitchman Ray Winstone, who sat in the back of a luxury sedan, dressed in a dark suit, idling in traffic and exuding ease and control.“At bet365 we’re always innovating and creating,” he said in a Cockney accent, staring at the camera. Cellphone in hand, apparently ready to place some wagers, he ticked through a list of those innovations, including something called “in-play betting.”In-play betting allows customers to wager throughout a sporting event, on minutiae that has little bearing on the outcome. How many corner kicks will there be in the first half of a soccer game? How many players will be ejected? What will happen first during a 10-minute increment — a throw-in, a free kick, a goal kick, something else? When those minutes expire, the site takes wagers on the next 10.“It’s very much like being in a casino,” said Jake Thomas, a former gambling industry executive who chaperoned a reporter, over the phone, through the website during the Stoke-Watford game. “Why wait 90 minutes to find out if your team is going to win? Why not get a little buzz betting on the next corner kick?”As Mr. Thomas spoke, and the minutes ticked by, the odds of dozens of wagers were constantly repriced. A bet that Stoke would score in the first 30 minutes paid 9 to 1 at just over 25 minutes into the game. A moment later, as that outcome appeared fractionally less likely, the same bet paid 19 to 2.The company has said it takes action on 100,000 events throughout the year, on sports and races around the world — greyhounds in New Zealand, women’s table tennis in Ukraine, golf in Dubai. There’s even a section on politics. (George Clooney is currently 100 to 1 to win the American presidency in 2024.)If no live events appeal, virtual events beckon. These are video-generated simulations of tennis matches; games of football, soccer, basketball and cricket; and on and on. One afternoon, bicycle races in a virtual velodrome were running every three minutes, each lasting about a minute.James Grimes, the founder of an antigambling group, and an ad for the gambling app Paddy Power in Manchester.Andy Haslam for The New York TimesOther gambling operators now offer just about everything found on bet365’s site. But rivals say Ms. Coates and her team led the way.“We were always looking at them to see what they were doing and how they were doing it,” said Peter Nolan, a former group director at William Hill. “And to the extent we could, we competed with them.”Because of that competition, fans 40 and younger grew up inundated with gambling ads. The subtext, and sometimes the text, was that soccer and betting don’t merely go together — they enhance each other.“I trusted the messages that football sent me,” said James Grimes, who lost $140,000, two jobs and all of his friends before he quit gambling and founded the Big Step, an antigambling group. “A slogan that I heard a lot as a kid” — from Sky Bet, an online gambling company — “was ‘It matters more when there’s money on it.’ And I believed that.”A tight-lipped companyPeter Coates, left, the chairman of bet365, at a soccer match in Stoke-on-Trent, where the company is the largest single employer.Nick Potts/PA Images, via Getty ImagesStoke-on-Trent is well known for ceramics — it’s where the reality fare “The Great Pottery Showdown” is filmed — but today, with a payroll of more than 4,000, it’s bet365 and not Wedgewood that is the city’s largest single employer. Few employees, even those who have been around for years, have met Ms. Coates. Her reticence is embodied in the company’s approach to the news media. It doesn’t have a press office, and no one responded to messages left with customer service representatives, even to say, “No comment.”Instead, after giving an impromptu phone interview, Peter Coates called to say he would forward any questions to relevant people at bet365. He added, good-naturedly, that speaking to this reporter had landed him in “some trouble.”The origins of bet365 start with Mr. Coates, a Stoke-on-Trent native and son of a coal miner. With money he had earned through a business selling food at stadiums across the country, he bought three local betting shops, essentially as a favor to the brother of an employee. The chain would eventually expand to 35 shops, stretching from the West Midlands to Liverpool.Two decades ago, after getting online at Ms. Coates’s urging, the company operated out of a portable cabin near one of the betting shops. It was a more complicated and expensive proposition than the family had initially realized.“We had to find about 20 million pounds,” Mr. Coates said. “In the early days, we lost a lot of money. They were worrying times, but I felt we were accumulating a customer base, and we eventually passed the critical mass you need.”The last time the company filed a financial report, in December 2019, it stated that operating profit had jumped 15 percent from the previous year, to roughly $1 billion. This capped an immensely lucrative period for Ms. Coates. Forbes recently estimated her net worth at $6.4 billion. For the second year in a row, the Coates family is the United Kingdom’s biggest taxpayer, according to the annual Sunday Times Tax List, published in late January. The family paid the equivalent of $785 million into state coffers last year. Ms. Coates has also set up the Denise Coates Foundation, which focuses on health care and research and charity and in its most recent filing reported $14 million in giving.More quietly, she has been buying hundreds of acres in nearby Cheshire and building what The Daily Mail called a $125 million “glass palace,” along with stables, a tennis court and a 75,000-square-foot artificial lake.In Stoke, Ms. Coates is both acclaimed and largely invisible. She can be counted on to chip in money for civic projects, as she did when the town needed additional funds to erect a statue for Arnold Bennett, a local author who died 90 years ago. Just don’t expect her to show up at the unveiling.“A lot of people who have made money in Stoke leave,” said Fred Hughes, 80, a retired police officer who attended the Bennett statue ceremony. “This is quite an impoverished area, and it’s always looking for outside investment. The Coates family is the exception.”Winners not always welcomeMark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead, has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe success of bet365 stems in large part from the way it pampers bettors. It offers, for instance, refunds to anyone who bets on a soccer team to win in a game that ends without any goals. (Nil-nil ties enrage bettors.) And in certain circumstances, the company will pay out winners before a game is over.This is not exactly altruism.“The logic from their point of view is that if you’ve got your winnings before the game is over, you can use that money to bet again,” said Warwick Bartlett of Global Betting & Gaming Consultants.The company is far less hospitable to another type of customer: consistent winners. Brian Chappell said he had a falling out with bet365 a few years ago after earning about $4,800 over a summer of gambling on horses. A retired health care researcher, Mr. Chappell said he simply studied the sport and understood the complexities of hedging well enough to come out ahead on weekly races.“Then one Saturday I went to place a bet and the most I could wager was £1.60,” or about $2.20, he said. “They don’t tell you it’s going to happen — there’s no interaction at all. Just one day, your bet is restricted.”After learning that others had encountered similar obstacles, at bet365 and other operators, Mr. Chappell founded Justice for Punters — “punter” is slang for bettor — to fight back.“I call it the ‘ban or bankrupt’ strategy,” he said, describing what he calls an “amazing” business model: “If you’re any good, you get banned. If you’re useless, you get a V.I.P. manager who will keep you gambling.”Antigambling activists contend that such stratagems are just part of the problem, especially during the pandemic.“The lockdowns have accelerated the growth of online gambling and increased the use of more addictive gambling products,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, who runs Clean Up Gambling, a nonprofit. “This means an entire generation is now far more vulnerable to gambling addiction.”Without new regulations, separating soccer and gambling will never happen, Mr. Zarb-Cousin and others say, because the two are now essentially fused. About 70 percent of teams in the top two English leagues earn millions by wearing betting company logos on their uniforms. Even the few soccer team owners who refuse gambling money, on principle, end up taking it just by competing.Mark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game. He was appalled two seasons ago when bet365 wound up with broadcasting rights to some games. The Football Association, which markets those rights, shares revenue with teams in the league.“And bet365 decided that if you wanted to watch games you needed to go to the company’s website and sign up for an account,” Mr. Palios said. “The company was nakedly leveraging its market power to compel people to gamble. I thought that was obscene.” More

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      Tony Murray, Moral Support for a Gay N.B.A. Player, Dies at 60

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      Mr. Murray, along with his husband, helped their nephew Jason Collins become the first player in the league to come out publicly. He died of Covid-19.This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.When Jason Collins stepped onto the court on Feb. 23, 2014, as a member of the Brooklyn Nets, it was a historic event: He was the first openly gay player in the National Basketball Association, and this was his first time in uniform since he had come out.Among the thousands cheering him on in Los Angeles, in a game against the Lakers, were his uncle, Mark Collins, and Mark’s husband, Tony Murray. “Congratulations,” they said to Mr. Collins over drinks after the game. “We love you.”They were more than just supportive family members. Mr. Collins and Mr. Murray married in 2013, the same year Jason Collins came out in a cover story in Sports Illustrated. In that article, and in many other places, he talked about how important his uncles were to him as examples of gay men — and, as he began to tell people about his sexuality, how valuable they were as guides and advisers.“For a confused young boy,” Mr. Collins wrote, “I can think of no better role model of love and compassion.”They also paved the way for Jason to come out to his family by showing them that gay men were nothing to be afraid of. Some relatives had difficulty accepting that Mark Collins was gay — until they met Tony.“I think once we saw how Mark and Tony were, the love they had for each other, we knew Mark was going to be fine,” Mr. Collins, who played for six teams in a 13-year N.B.A. career, said in a phone interview.Mr. Murray died on March 16 at a hospital in Valley Stream, N.Y. He was 60. The cause was Covid-19, Mark Collins said.Antoine Murray was born on Nov. 16, 1960, in Philadelphia. His father, William Murray, was unemployed; his mother, Phyllis (Turner) Murray, worked as an office clerk at a supermarket.Along with his husband and nephew, he is survived by his sisters Cynthia and Darlene and his brothers William and Brian.Mr. Murray graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in communications and received a master’s in education from West Chester University in Pennsylvania.While in college he interned at WCAU, a TV station in Philadelphia, and was later hired there as a mail clerk. He rose steadily, becoming its manager of community relations.It was that job, which involved a heavy dose of educational outreach, that took him to an educators’ conference in Philadelphia in 1995. Also in attendance was Mr. Collins, who is a social worker for the Hempstead, N.Y., public schools.The two began a long-distance relationship, visiting each other and taking trips to explore their respective home states. They both loved casinos, and traveled to Atlantic City and Las Vegas.They loved food, too. Along with vacations to foodie-friendly cities like New Orleans, Mr. Murray cooked for them at home, lavishly and often. His tastes were eclectic, but he had a spot for making huge spreads of soul food.“When he cooked, he always cooked for 30 people,” Mark Collins said. “He didn’t know how to cook in small portions.”After Mr. Murray moved to New York in the mid-2000s to work in administration for the YMCA, the couple settled in the Far Rockaway section of Queens. There they would host neighborhood barbecues on their front lawn, with Mr. Murray essentially catering the whole spread. He became one of the most popular people in the neighborhood, Mark Collins said.Jason Collins played center for the Brooklyn Nets in a game against the Toronto Raptors in 2014. “Tony was so proud of Jason,” Mark Collins said of his husband. Kathy Kmonicek/Associated PressBoth Jason and Mark Collins described Mr. Murray as an old soul, relaxed and somewhat reserved, committed to his Baptist faith but adamant in defense of gay rights.Mr. Murray and Mr. Collins marched every year in the New York City Pride parade, and in 2013 they traveled to Boston to join Jason Collins in his first Pride march. The basketball player was there at the invitation of Rep. Joe Kennedy III, his former college roommate, who was leading a contingent in the parade.His uncles smiled as the crowd cheered for Jason.“It was a beautiful day,” Mark Collins remembered. “Tony was so proud of Jason. He was just humbled by the whole experience.” More