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      NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Defends 1-Year Suspension for Owner’s Misconduct

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      Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said the suspension and $10 million fine were fair, considering the “totality” of the career of Robert Sarver, who owns Phoenix’s N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. teams.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver on Wednesday defended the one-year suspension and $10 million fine assessed to Robert Sarver, the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, who was found after an independent investigation to have mistreated employees over more than a decade.Despite calls for harsher penalties, Silver said the suspension and fine were fair punishments for Sarver’s misconduct, which included using racial slurs, yelling at employees and treating female employees unfairly, according to the report. Silver said he had not talked to Sarver about his voluntarily selling his team because of his behavior, nor had the league’s board of governors discussed terminating Sarver’s ownership.“From a personal standpoint, I was in disbelief to a certain extent about what I learned that had transpired over the last 18 years in the Suns organization,” Silver said. “I was saddened by it, disheartened. I want to again apologize to the former, and in some cases current, employees of the Phoenix Suns for what they had to experience. There is absolutely no excuse for it. And we addressed it.”Sarver is also the majority owner of the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury.Silver spoke to reporters one day after the league released a 43-page report from the New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz that detailed Sarver’s repeated use of racial slurs, mistreatment of employees, bullying and unfair treatment of female employees over nearly two decades as the owner of the Suns and the Mercury. Silver said the investigative group was diverse in race and gender, but he was unsure of the demographic breakdown. The law firm reviewed thousands of pages of documents and interviewed hundreds of current and former employees.Chris Paul, the Suns’ All-Star point guard, said in a post on Twitter late Wednesday that he was “horrified and disappointed” by the actions outlined in the report.“This conduct especially towards women is unacceptable and must never be repeated,” he said. “I am of the view that the sanctions fell short in truly addressing what we can all agree was atrocious behavior. My heart goes out to all of the people that were affected.”Silver used the firm’s findings to determine what punishment Sarver deserved. He meted out the maximum fine allowable by the league’s constitution, but not the longest suspension.“I had the option to go longer,” Silver said. “I landed on one year. I will say it’s the second-longest suspension in the history of our league, just to put it in some sort of context.”Robert Sarver, center, the majority owner of the Suns and the Mercury, was found to have used racial slurs and treated women unfairly over several years.Ralph Freso/Associated PressThe harshest penalty the league has ever levied on a team owner came in 2014 when Donald Sterling, then the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, was barred for life after he made racist remarks about Black people in a private conversation and a recording of his comments was made public.At the time, Silver said the punishment was based solely on that one incident, and that he would recommend that the board of governors vote to terminate Sterling’s ownership. Ultimately, though, Rochelle Sterling sold the team, despite her husband’s efforts to prevent her from doing so.Asked why he did not go as far with Sarver, Silver called Donald Sterling’s and Sarver’s situations “dramatically different.”“What we saw in the case of Donald Sterling was blatant racist conduct directed at a select group of people,” Silver said.When it came to Sarver, Silver said, the “totality of circumstances over an 18-year period in which he’s owned these teams” didn’t warrant the same punishment.Later Wednesday, LeBron James wrote on Twitter, “I gotta be honest … Our league definitely got this wrong.”James, who stars for the Los Angeles Lakers, continued: “I love this league and I deeply respect our leadership. But this isn’t right. There is no place for misogyny, sexism, and racism in any work place. Don’t matter if you own the team or play for the team. We hold our league up as an example of our values and this aint it.”Silver said he had heard from players in the last 24 hours but would allow them to speak for themselves.“It’s beyond the pale in every possible way to use language and behave that way,” Silver said of Sarver’s behavior. But he added: “Remember, while there were these terrible things, there were also many, many people who had very positive things to say about him through this process.”Despite detailing several instances in which Sarver made women and Black people feel demeaned, the investigators said they did not find that Sarver’s actions were motivated by “racial or gender-based animus.”Silver paused when asked if he agreed with that assessment.“I accept their work,” Silver said. “To follow what we believe is appropriate process here, to bring in a law firm, to have them spend essentially nine months on this, to do the extensive kinds of interviews they can, I’m not able to put myself in their shoes. I respect the work they’ve done, we’ve done.”The public report did not explain how the investigators determined that Sarver’s actions were not motivated by racial or gender-based animus, but Silver said that the report represented only part of the findings. He said he was given more information, but to protect the privacy of those who had participated in the investigation he could not reveal more.“Let me reiterate: The conduct is indefensible,” Silver said. “But I feel we dealt with it in a fair manner, both taking into account the totality of the circumstances, not just those particular allegations but the 18 years in which Mr. Sarver has owned the Suns and the Mercury.”Silver was speaking after a meeting of the league’s board of governors in Manhattan. The board typically meets three times a year, including once before the start of the regular season. This week’s meeting lasted three days and included discussion about the investigation.When asked about the discrepancy between how Sarver is being treated, in being allowed to remain an N.B.A. owner, and how employees of most companies would be treated had they behaved similarly, Silver pointed to a different standard for team owners.“There’s no neat answer here, other than owning property, the rights that come with owning an N.B.A. team, how that’s set up within our constitution, what it would take to remove that team from his control is a very involved process, and it’s different than holding a job,” Silver said. “It just is, when you actually own a team. It’s just a very different proposition.”When asked what standards he would expect league owners to meet, Silver said each case must be considered individually.Silver made references to Sarver’s misconduct having been part of his past, and spoke of the positive changes he felt had been made in the Suns organization. But many of the incidents confirmed by investigators happened recently. For example, the report found an incident of Sarver making inappropriate sexual remarks in 2021, and one of the instances in which investigators confirmed that Sarver had used a racial slur occurred in 2016.Although the investigation has closed, Silver said this will not be the end of the league’s concern about Sarver’s actions.“In terms of future behavior, he’s on notice,” Silver said. “He knows that.” More

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      The NBA’s Investigation of Robert Sarver Reveals More Abusive Behavior in Sports

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      An investigation’s finding that Robert Sarver used racist and sexist language as owner of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury is another exhausting entry to the list of sports figures using their power abusively.I don’t want to write this column, and you don’t want to read it.Sports fans are tired of the whole subject matter: the people in sports who give the games we love a terrible name.I’m talking about the entitled bullies. The misogynists and miscreants. The racists and those who walk the line between being utterly ignorant and outright hate.I’m talking about the players and team owners who wield their power like a cudgel and act as though they can do anything they want to anyone they want.But here I am again, this time addressing Robert Sarver, the owner of the Phoenix Suns of the N.B.A. and the Phoenix Mercury of the W.N.B.A., whom the N.B.A. suspended for a year and fined $10 million after it found that he mistreated employees over his 18-year tenure. According to the N.B.A., that abuse of staff included Sarver’s repeated use of a racist slur for Black people, making sex-related comments in the workplace and inequitable treatment of women.The league’s report did not conclude “that Mr. Sarver’s workplace misconduct was motivated by racial or gender-based animus.”In a statement Tuesday, Sarver said that while he disagreed “with some of the particulars” of the N.B.A.’s report, he apologized for his words and actions.It feels like a constant drumbeat. This week, I’m writing about a guy — and yes, it’s almost always a guy — whose actions are just the latest blight on sports, one of the essential parts of our cultural life.Sarver is not well known to the run-of-the-mill fan, but the teams he owns and oversees are. The Suns and Mercury are longtime pillars in their leagues. The Suns nearly won the N.B.A. championship in the 2020-21 season and were among the league’s best last season. The Mercury have won three W.N.B.A. titles — and have drawn the world’s attention because Brittney Griner, their star center, is imprisoned in Russia and at the center of a geopolitical storm.Over the last year, Sarver and his teams have been under a microscope. While the Suns and Mercury were trying to win championships, lawyers hired by the N.B.A. began peering into the behavior of the 60-year-old owner after ESPN reported his misdeeds and the toxic work environment he spawned.The type of behavior investigators reported is so familiar, having happened in so many other instances, that it won’t take long to guess what they entailed. Misogyny? Check. Bullying and browbeating employees? Check.What to Know:Robert Sarver Misconduct CaseCard 1 of 6A suspension and a fine. More

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      NBA Fines and Suspends Phoenix Suns Owner Robert Sarver

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      An investigation found that the owner, Robert Sarver, had used racial slurs and treated female employees inequitably. The N.B.A. fined Sarver $10 million.The N.B.A. is suspending Robert Sarver, the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, for one year and fining him $10 million after an investigation determined that he had engaged in misconduct, including using racial slurs, yelling at employees and treating female employees unfairly.“The statements and conduct described in the findings of the independent investigation are troubling and disappointing,” Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, said in a statement.He added: “Regardless of position, power or intent, we all need to recognize the corrosive and hurtful impact of racially insensitive and demeaning language and behavior. On behalf of the entire N.B.A. I apologize to all of those impacted by the misconduct outlined in the investigators’ report. We must do better.”Sarver said in a statement that he accepted the consequences of the N.B.A.’s decision.“While I disagree with some of the particulars of the N.B.A.’s report, I would like to apologize for my words and actions that offended our employees,” he said. “I take full responsibility for what I have done. I am sorry for causing this pain, and these errors in judgment are not consistent with my personal philosophy or my values.”Sarver also owns the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury.N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said the findings of the investigation into Robert Sarver’s conduct were “troubling and disappointing.”Jeff Chiu/Associated PressThe N.B.A. began the investigation in response to a November 2021 article by ESPN about accusations of mistreatment against Sarver. After the article’s publication, the league retained the New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct an independent investigation.On Tuesday, the firm and the N.B.A. released a 43-page report that found that Sarver “had engaged in conduct that clearly violated common workplace standards,” which included inappropriate comments about female employees’ appearance and bullying. He also engaged in inappropriate physical conduct toward male employees on four occasions, according to the report.More than 100 individuals who were interviewed by investigators said they witnessed behavior that “violated applicable standards.” There was a general sense among employees that Sarver felt that workplace rules did not apply to him, according to the report.Sarver also made crude jokes, cursed at employees and told a pregnant employee that she “would be unable to do her job upon becoming a mother,” according to the report. Witnesses recalled Sarver saying that the employee would be busy “breastfeeding” and that a “baby needs their mom, not their father.” The employee cried in response to Sarver’s comments, according to the report. Sarver later asked why women “cry so much.”Sarver also “repeated the N-word when recounting the statements of others,” according to the report. Sarver was in the presence of players, coaches and members of the front office when he used the word during a team-building exercise during the 2012-13 season.What to Know:Robert Sarver Misconduct CaseCard 1 of 6A suspension and a fine. More

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      Bill Russell Paved the Way for Black Coaches to Defy Doubters

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      When getting hired as a Black coach seemed “far-fetched,” as one coach said, Russell showed that it could be done — and that it could lead to championships.Bill Russell and Red Auerbach came to an agreement.Auerbach, the longtime Boston Celtics coach, had confided in Russell that he planned to retire from coaching. Russell and Auerbach had created a dynasty together, with Russell dominating at center and Auerbach cementing their championship victories with plumes of celebratory cigar smoke.They would each write down their top-five preferred coaches to succeed Auerbach and consider any name who landed on both lists.They found no matches. Auerbach had already approached Russell about taking over the job and continuing on as a player, but Russell, who had witnessed the toll coaching took on Auerbach, quickly rebuffed him.Now, after the lists crisscrossed candidates, Russell reconsidered his position and figured nobody else, beyond Auerbach, could coach Bill Russell quite like Bill Russell.“When Red and I had started to discuss my becoming coach, there were some things we didn’t have to say,” Russell wrote in his book about his friendship with Auerbach, “Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend,” in 2009. “For example, when I was finally named publicly, I didn’t know that I had just become the first African American coach in the history of major league sports.”It was 1966, and the distinction did not cross his mind until Boston news media members informed him. “When I took the job, one reporter wrote seven articles focusing on why I shouldn’t be coaching the Celtics,” Russell wrote.Russell, who died Sunday at 88, would go on to win two championships as the head coach of the Celtics, his 10th and 11th championship rings. He would also coach the Seattle SuperSonics and the Sacramento Kings and inspire a generation of Black players to try their hand at coaching, too. The skepticism that accompanied his hiring in Boston is perhaps less of an issue now, but still a factor in whether Black people are hired to coach in the N.B.A. today. Bernie Bickerstaff, who is Black, watched Russell take over as head coach of the Celtics just as he was about to enter into a life of coaching. He began as an assistant at the University of San Diego under Phil Woolpert, who had coached Russell at the University of San Francisco.Bernie Bickerstaff, who has been the head coach of five N.B.A. teams, said he was inspired by Bill Russell.Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images“At that time, you didn’t think about anything like that,” said Bickerstaff, who became the coach of the SuperSonics in 1985. “In fact, if you’re sitting back and you’re a young Black at that time, it seemed far-fetched.”Russell, the coach, mimicked Russell the player. He was a longtime civil rights activist who coached the Celtics during the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. “It rubbed a lot of Bostonians the wrong way,” Russell wrote in his 2009 book. “At the time, Boston was a totally segregated city — and I vehemently opposed segregation.”He demanded respect and competed fiercely during an era when he had no assistant coaches. He played and coached the Celtics for three seasons before closing out the N.B.A.’s most successful and long-lasting championship reign.“That speaks volumes in itself for who he was as a person and a humanitarian, if you understand the culture of this country, especially in certain places,” said Jim Cleamons, who is Black and became the coach of the Dallas Mavericks in 1996.Al Attles and Lenny Wilkens followed Russell as the next Black N.B.A. head coaches. They, like Russell, led teams to championships. It took a while for the rest of the professional sports world to catch up. Frank Robinson, Russell’s former high school basketball teammate, became Major League Baseball’s first Black manager, in Cleveland, in 1975. Art Shell became the N.F.L.’s first Black head coach in the modern era for the Oakland Raiders in 1989.“Bill Russell was an inspiration, period, with coaching,” Bickerstaff said. “But as a human being, during times when it wasn’t popular to be someone of our complexion, he stood up and he represented. He had no fear. He was genuine. He was a success. He was a leader on and off the court.”Russell became the fifth person inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach when he earned enshrinement as a coach last year.Jim Cleamons was the head coach of the Dallas Mavericks across two seasons in the 1990s. Tim Clayton for The New York TimesBy then, something that seemed far-fetched when Bickerstaff broke into coaching seemed common. Half of the N.B.A.’s 30 coaches will be Black heading into the 2022-23 season, including J.B. Bickerstaff, Bernie’s son and the coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.But as recently as 2020, only four Black coaches roamed N.B.A. sidelines. “There is a certain natural ebb and flow to the hiring and firing, frankly, of coaches, but the number is too low right now,” N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said before the 2020 finals.Other sports leagues continued to lag. Nearly two decades after Russell won his first championship as a coach, Al Campanis, a Los Angeles Dodgers executive, expressed doubt about the ability of Black people to hold managerial level positions.“I don’t believe it’s prejudice,” Campanis said in an interview on ABC’s “Nightline” in 1987. “I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.”M.L.B. recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s major league debut, yet only two of its current managers — Houston’s Dusty Baker and the Dodgers’ Dave Roberts — are Black.In the N.F.L., Brian Flores, the former coach of the Miami Dolphins, recently sued the league over discriminatory hiring practices. Flores is the son of Honduran immigrants. The N.F.L. created a diversity advisory committee and mandated that every team hire a minority offensive coach after Flores’s suit.Russell did not talk often about being the first Black coach in a major sports league. But after his hiring, he felt the stress that awaited him as the “the first Negro coach,” as he wrote in his book.The hope of his relationship with Auerbach evolving from a superficial coach-player bond into a deeper friendship comforted him.“So I started looking forward to that,” he wrote.Russell left the Celtics in 1969 but took over the SuperSonics from 1973 until 1977. He guided Seattle to the franchise’s first-ever playoffs, but the success he found in Boston eluded him.Russell coached a final season with the Sacramento Kings in 1987-88 before he was fired and moved into the front office after a 17-41 start.J.B. Bickerstaff, Bernie Bickerstaff’s son, has coached the Cleveland Cavaliers since 2020. He’s one of 15 Black coaches in the N.B.A.Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images“With a lot of truly great players, it was tough for him to understand why regular players did not have the same drive, focus and commitment to winning that he did,” Jerry Reynolds, an assistant for Russell on the Kings, said in an interview Sunday. “There’s just not very many people wired like that. That’s why they’re great. In some ways, it was hard for him to understand that. Most of the guys, they wanted to win. They didn’t have the need to win every game like him.”All along, Russell remained true to who he was while coaching.Bickerstaff recalled Russell offering a set of golf clubs to one of Woolpert’s sons instead of signing an autograph for him — an act that Russell was known to steadfastly refuse throughout his career.Cleamons said that a booster introduced his high school team to Russell shortly after it had won the Ohio state championship. Russell hardly looked up from his soup. He hated to be interrupted from a meal.Cleamons understood the mind-set after reading Russell’s autobiography.Before being thought of as a basketball player, before being looked upon as a coach, Russell wanted to be viewed as a human being.“He was a little bit like Muhammad Ali,” Reynolds said. “He was always who he was. Society and people changed. Things changed to fit more like it should have been all along.” More

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      Pretty in Any Color: Women in Basketball Make the Style Rules

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      Angel Reese considers herself “a pink kind of girl.”Pink nails, pink hair tie, pink shoes, sometimes even “a little bit of pink in my lashes,” Reese said of the eyelash extensions she applies before basketball games. “Everything’s pink.”It’s all part of the pregame routine for Reese, who in May transferred to Louisiana State after a breakout season on Maryland’s women’s basketball team. Before Reese hits the court, she swipes on lip gloss and gels down her edges — her hairline — to prevent flyaways.“Grandma would always emphasize, ‘Don’t let anybody make your makeup sweat,’” Reese said.Reese’s devotion to her appearance for games expresses who she is as much as her playing style. Players in women’s basketball freely mix a traditionally feminine beauty standard with finishing touches that are popular in Black and Latina culture, like gelled edges. It’s a freedom that some say is an advancement in a sport whose athletes have historically been pressured to fit a mass-market ideal that has long benefited straight, white women. Reese is Black.But the introduction of name, image and likeness deals in college sports and an influx of marketing money in professional women’s basketball have added dollars-and-cents stakes to female players’ decisions to glam up. In interviews with a dozen college and professional players, women talked about how the decision on how to express themselves through their appearance has been changing.“I’ve never really felt the pressure until the N.I.L. thing started,” said Reese, whose endorsement deals include Xfinity, Amazon, Wingstop and a Washington, D.C.-area supermarket chain.Camille Lenain for The New York Times‘There is a pressure for me to look a certain way.’Stanford forward Cameron Brink usually applies concealer, eyebrow gel, mascara and maybe a little blush before she heads out for a game, but she scoffed at the idea of in-game touch-ups. “I look like this when I was playing, I’m going to live with it,” she said.Her shot-blocking was a key piece of Stanford’s run to the 2022 Final Four, where the team lost to Connecticut in front of 3.23 million TV viewers, a 19 percent increase over the previous season and a 49 percent bump from 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s also a swelling fan base that follows Brink on social media. She posts makeup tutorials, which she loves because she views makeup as art. “It’s really relaxing to me,” she said. Brink has had deals with ThirdLove, Visible Mobile, the energy drink Celsius and Portland Gear.She acknowledged that her following — 203,000 on Instagram and 62,800 on TikTok — had built up at least in part “because I do play into that role of being feminine and dressing femininely.”“There is a pressure for me to look a certain way,” said Brink, who is white. “Sometimes it’s refreshing to go out and play sports and not worry about it.”Stanford’s Cameron Brink said that she felt some pressure to conform to traditionally feminine beauty standards but that her beauty routine was also something she enjoyed.Rikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesRikkí D. Wright for The New York TimesLast year, the N.C.A.A. changed its rules to allow college athletes to profit from their names, images and likenesses in marketing deals. Women’s college basketball players quickly began out-earning athletes in every other sport besides football, according to the marketing company Opendorse. Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, who is white, signed with Gatorade for an estimated $1 million.Blake Lawrence, a co-founder of Opendorse, said female college basketball players had outshined their male counterparts in the N.I.L. marketplace in part because of how they distinguish themselves through their appearance.“They’re willing to create content; they’re willing to create a character that you want to follow and cheer for while on the court, while on the track, while on the grass,” Lawrence said. “That may be through hairstyle changes; that may be through makeup changes; that may be through the accessories that you bring to the field.”But with that can come tremendous pressure to fit traditional notions of attractiveness, adding another layer of competition to college basketball.“Comparing yourself to other people — oh, this girl is really pretty; oh, she looks really pretty — it’s hard,” Oklahoma guard Kelbie Washington said.Washington enjoys spraying on perfume as part of her pregame routine (Jimmy Choo is her favorite), and she pays for eyelash extensions, which can cost more than $130 a set.“Everyone is human,” she said of the urge to compare herself with others. “Everyone has those emotions, whether they say it out loud or not.”‘Women have to be so much more marketable than men.’TV ratings for college and W.N.B.A. games are rising, and the profiles of the players — among the most vocal and visible social justice activists in sports — are exploding.Within that explosion, Victoria Jackson, a sports historian at Arizona State, sees the players driving a generational shift, a reframing of norms. “Athletes themselves are pushing back against historical ideas of what it means to be a female athlete and what’s acceptable to be performed as a female athlete,” Jackson said, adding that the W.N.B.A. is “a good example” of that.Nefertiti A. Walker, an associate professor in sports management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a former college basketball player, said players didn’t necessarily feel as if they had to fit the usual standards.“What you’re seeing is certainly athletes now who, because of the changes we’ve seen in college sport — they all have pride nights, there’s gay marriage now — all these changes that have happened in their lifetime that signal it might be OK to perform their gender in a different way,” she said.That may be true on the court, but a recent swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated suggested a narrower view of sex appeal, which can be an important factor in marketing. The magazine included five W.N.B.A. players in bikinis and one-piece swimsuits with cutouts.Courtney Williams, an All-Star guard on the Connecticut Sun, said on Twitter that the shoot would have been better if it had included a player in a sports bra and baggy shorts. “There’s more than one way to look sexy, and I hope in the future we can tap into that,” she said.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesCamille Lenain for The New York TimesRikkí D Wright for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesJonquel Jones was the W.N.B.A.’s most valuable player in 2021. “If u don’t fit into the normal stereotype of what feminine is or what it ‘should be’ you lose opportunities,” Jones said in an August 2020 Twitter post. “Women have to be so much more marketable than men.”W.N.B.A. players, with a maximum base salary of about $230,000, earn far less than their millionaire counterparts in the N.B.A., making marketing dollars even more important. The W.N.B.A. has a pool of $1 million that it must spend on marketing deals for players, and each team has to spend between $50,000 and $100,000 per year on player marketing deals. Any unspent amount carries over to the next season on top of the minimum.The league said it selects players to participate in marketing efforts based on a variety of factors: on-court performance, an established personal brand with an active fan base, and the willingness to travel and participate in league events.“Ideas about bodies play out most explicitly on the bodies of athletes — harmful ideas and also positive ideas,” Jackson said. “That’s another way in which this can be a space of conflict and a space of harm, too, depending on the way those ideas are packaged and sold.”‘They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete.’Tiffany Mitchell likes to feel the swing of her ponytail as she runs the court.Mitchell, who is Black, has often worn her hair in long, braided styles past her waist since she starred at South Carolina from 2012 to 2016. This kind of protective hairstyling allows her to go longer between restyling and can prevent breakage during the grind of the season with the W.N.B.A.’s Indiana Fever.Those swinging braids became an issue during the W.N.B.A. off-season in December, when she was competing with the Melbourne Boomers, a professional women’s team in Australia. Basketball Australia, the sport’s governing body, said the league’s players had to tie their hair back or up, mistakenly attributing the policy to a FIBA rule that was no longer in effect. Mitchell, one of just three Black players on the Boomers’ roster, felt targeted, since she had never had to change her hair for other international competitions. Basketball Australia later apologized and rescinded what it called a “discriminatory” policy.“They have no idea about what a Black woman goes through, let alone an athlete,” Mitchell said. “So I think that me bringing it to their attention called out the ignorance because there have been players in this league that have had braids before me, and it was never an issue.”Tiffany Mitchell loves playing basketball while wearing long braids. But that became an issue when she was competing in Australia.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times‘When I look good, I feel good, I play good.’As early as fifth grade, Deja Kelly’s mother encouraged her to create a signature hairstyle.“She would call it a ‘D-I do’: If you want to go D-I, you have to look like you play D-I,” Kelly said.She adopted a slicked-back ponytail or a bun as her preferred hairstyles. Her glam routine now — eyelash extensions, a tight bun and detailed edges — “has never affected my performance” as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s leading scorer last season. Kelly has had endorsement deals with Dunkin’, Beats by Dre, Forever 21 and the sports drink Barcode, among others.“For me, when I look good, I feel good, I play good,” Kelly said. “That’s something I always prided myself in.”Walker, the sports management professor, said her studies on women’s sports pointed to a trend: Women in basketball are showcasing greater agency and self-determination by glamming.Video by Gabriella Angotti-JonesDiJonai Carrington of the W.N.B.A.’s Connecticut Sun said she felt that she played better after she had gone through her glam routine.Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesGabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times“A lot of women’s basketball players feel free to express themselves, to perform in a way aesthetically that accomplishes whatever they want to accomplish,” Walker said. “Sometimes we underestimate how business savvy they are, particularly in this day and age.”Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington has had an endorsement deal with Savage X Fenty, Rihanna’s lingerie brand. She makes sure she has on her 20-millimeter mink eyelash extensions before every game. Her nails, typically coated with some sort of bright polish, are usually done with acrylic extensions. She’s grown so accustomed to applying gel to her hairline that it takes her only about 30 seconds.“I feel like I play better. I don’t know if I do or I don’t, but I just feel like I do,” Carrington said. “And I never have wanted to compromise one thing or another, whether that’s being a hooper and being a dog on the court and still being able to look a certain way.” More

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      Once an ‘Easy Way Out’ for Equality, Women’s Soccer Is Now a U.S. Force

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      Brooke Volza and the other girls who play in the top division of high school soccer in Albuquerque know all about the Metro Curse: The team that wins the city’s metro tournament at the start of the season is doomed to end the year without a state championship.So when Cibola High School defied that fate with Volza scoring the only goal in the team’s 1-0 victory against Carlsbad High School before a cheering stadium crowd at the University of New Mexico last year, it was pandemonium. “I started crying. I started hugging everyone,” Volza, 17, said, describing the experience as “times 10 amazing.”Now the ball she used to score that goal sits on a shelf in her bedroom, covered with her teammates’ autographs and jersey numbers. Across it in large capital letters are the words, “2021 STATE CHAMPIONS.”Fifty years ago, Volza’s experience of sprawling and robust competitive high school soccer was effectively unheard-of in the United States. Yet thanks to Title IX, which became law in 1972 and banned sex discrimination in education, generations of girls have had the promise of access to sports and other educational programs.Brooke Volza at Cibola High School in Albuquerque.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesAsia Lawyer, a rising senior at Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAnd girls’ soccer, perhaps more than any other women’s sport, has grown tremendously in the 50 years since. School administrators quickly saw adding soccer as a cost-effective way to comply with the law, and the rising interest helped youth leagues swell. Talented players from around the globe came to the United States. And as millions of American women and girls benefited, the best of them gave rise to a U.S. women’s national program that has dominated the world stage.“Once Title IX broke down those barriers, and let women and girls play sports, and said they have to be provided with equal opportunities, the girls came rushing through,” said Neena Chaudhry, the general counsel and senior adviser for education at the National Women’s Law Center. “They came through in droves.”A 50-Year Rise Out of NowhereWomen’s participation in high school and college athletics surged after the passage of Title IX in 1972, and no sport has added more players than soccer.

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      Girls’ Participation in High School Sports
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1978-79 academic year.Source: National Federation of State High School AssociationsBy The New York Times

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      Women’s Participation in N.C.A.A. Divisions I, II and III
      Notes: Top 15 sports shown. Data is not available for all sports in all years, and comparable data is not available prior to the 1981-82 academic year. Some schools were added to the data in 1995-96.Source: N.C.A.A.By The New York TimesBefore Title IX passed, an N.C.A.A. count found only 13 women’s collegiate soccer teams in the 1971-72 season, with 313 players. In 1974, the first year in which a survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations tracked girls’ participation across the United States, it counted 6,446 girls playing soccer in 321 schools in just seven states, mostly in New York. That number climbed to about 394,100 girls playing soccer in high schools across the country during the 2018-19 school year, with schools often carrying multiple teams and states sponsoring as many as five divisions.Mountain View Los Altos stretching during the tournament in Redmond, the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn 2018-19, the most recent season counted because of the coronavirus pandemic, there were 3.4 million girls overall participating in high school sports, compared with 4.5 million boys.Many of those athletes have overcome fears to try out for a team. Some have practiced late into the night, running sprints after goofing off with teammates. Some have found archrivals through competition, and plenty have grappled with the sting of defeat. Numerous girls and women on the soccer pitch have felt the thrill of a goal, and the pride of being part of something bigger than themselves.“We are the heart and soul of soccer at Cibola,” Volza said.Title IX is a broad law, and was not originally intended to encompass sports. Its origins lie in fighting discrimination against women and girls in federally funded academic institutions. But as the regulations were hashed out, they eventually encompassed athletics, and it helped bridge disparities beyond the classroom. Today, Title IX is perhaps best known for its legacy within women’s interscholastic athletics.Despite initial and heavy opposition to the law because of a perceived threat to men’s athletic programs, the N.C.A.A. eventually sponsored women’s sports, including soccer in 1982. Before that, only a handful of teams played one another around the country.The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a dynasty that has won 21 N.C.A.A. championships and produced inimitable players including Mia Hamm, began its run playing against high schoolers.“We didn’t really have anyone to play,” said Anson Dorrance, the head coach of the women’s team since its inception in 1979. He described how he cobbled together a schedule that first season. One travel soccer club, the McLean Grasshoppers, “came down to U.N.C. and beat us like a drum,” he said.Florida Gators Coach Samantha Bohon, left, talking with an assistant coach, Jocie Rix, as they scout players during the Elite Clubs National League playoffs.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThe playoffs are a big showcase for high school players to be seen by top college coaches.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesAfter the N.C.A.A. brought women’s soccer into the fold, participation rates went from 1,855 players on 80 teams across all three divisions in 1982 to nearly 28,000 players across 1,026 teams in 2020-21.Now, the N.C.A.A. claims soccer as the most expanded women’s sports program among universities in the last three decades.Current and former athletic directors, sports administrators and coaches attribute the rise of soccer to several factors. Initially, complying with the law was a game of numbers and dollars: Soccer is a relatively large sport, where average roster sizes typically float between 20 and 26 players. The generous roster sizes helped schools meet the requirements of the law to offer similar numbers of opportunities to male and female students.For administrators, soccer was also economical: It needed only a field, a ball and two goals. It was also a relatively easy sport to learn.“At the time schools were interested in, ‘How can I add sports for women that wouldn’t cost me very much?’” said Donna Lopiano, founder and president of Sports Management Resources and a former chief executive of the Women’s Sports Foundation. She added: “Schools were looking for the easy way out.”The shifts did not begin until the late 1980s and early 1990s. College programs increasingly gained varsity status — often pressured by litigation — which created scholarship opportunities and made soccer a pathway to higher education. The game boomed at the high school level, where it became one of the most popular sports, fourth in terms of participation rates for girls for 2018-19, according to the high school federation (the top three girls’ sports were track and field, volleyball and basketball).An under-14 match in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesA cottage industry of club teams also sprang up around the country, as athletes jockeyed for attention from college coaches. The youth game grew, and university teams became a farm system for the elite world stage, as women struggled to play the sport in many countries outside the United States.The U.S. women’s national team went largely unnoticed when it played its first international match in 1985. It also got little attention in 1991 when it won the first Women’s World Cup, held in Guangdong, China.Then the United States began to feel the power of Title IX. In 1996, women’s soccer debuted at the Olympics in Atlanta, and the United States won gold. During the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, against China, the Americans secured a victory during penalty kicks before a capacity crowd of more than 90,000 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.Michelle Akers, the pillar of the U.S.W.N.T. in the ’80s and ’90s who is now an assistant coach for the Orlando Pride women’s professional team, said Title IX was “game-changing.” “I can’t even understand the amount of time and energy and heartache that took to get that pushed through, and not just pushing it through but enforcing it — making it real for people, and making it real for me,” she said.The national team’s success continued, with a record four World Cup titles and four Olympic golds. And this year, after a six-year legal battle, a multimillion-dollar settlement and eventual labor agreement established equal pay for players representing the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams when competing internationally.“It was a historic moment, not just for soccer, but for sport,” Cindy Parlow Cone, U.S. Soccer’s president, said.The U.S. women’s national team celebrating its World Cup win in 2019 after a parade in Manhattan.Calla Kessler/The New York TimesSydney Sharts, left, and her sister Hannah, right, are college players. Their mother, Michelle, was on a club team in the ’90s.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesIn 1993, Michele Sharts was part of a club team at U.C.L.A. that threatened to sue the school under Title IX for not sponsoring women’s soccer.Sharts, who was cut from the inaugural varsity squad, now has two daughters playing at large university programs. Hannah, 22, started at U.C.L.A. before transferring to Colorado, where she is a graduate student. Sydney, 20, began at Oklahoma before transferring to Kansas State for the coming season.Hannah Sharts has played in front of as many as 5,000 fans. “Being able to gradually see more and more fans fill up the stands throughout my college experience has been very promising,” Hannah Sharts said. Both Hannah and Sydney have dreams to play professionally.Like the Sharts sisters, Volza, the rising senior in New Mexico, plans to play in college. She is looking at Division II and III schools with strong engineering programs.But first, she has her final year of high school ahead. Volza said she wanted to be a leader for the younger players.“I want to motivate them and teach them what it’s like to play varsity soccer for a state-winning championship team,” Volza said.And Volza wants to make history again in her own corner of America, by leading her team to win the Metro tournament and state championship in back-to-back years.Members of the De Anza Force celebrating a win over World Class F.C. in Redmond.Lindsey Wasson for The New York Times More

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      U.S. Soccer and Players Guarantee Equal Pay in New Contracts

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      Landmark labor agreements with members of the men’s and women’s national teams will include higher paychecks and shared World Cup prize money.As the women’s soccer stars stared at their laptop screens Monday night and the new labor deal was explained to them, the numbers just kept climbing. A few thousand dollars here. Tens of thousands of dollars there. Pretty soon, the figures had crossed into the millions.What they added up to, the players all knew, was something many of them had chased for most of their careers: equal pay.That reality arrived Wednesday in landmark contracts with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will guarantee, for the first time, that soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions.In addition to equal rates of pay for individual matches, the deals include a provision, believed to be the first of its kind, through which the teams will pool the unequal prize money payments U.S. Soccer receives from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, for their participation in the quadrennial World Cup. Starting with the 2022 men’s tournament and the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that money will be shared equally among the members of both teams.“No other country has ever done this,” U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Cone, said of the deal to equalize World Cup payments. “I think everyone should be really proud of what we’ve accomplished here. It really, truly, is historic.”U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, a former national team player who helped guide the national teams to a deal, with President Biden at an Equal Pay Day event in March.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe agreements were reached just over six years after a group of stars from the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national team began a campaign to overcome what they said was years of wage discrimination by U.S. Soccer against its female players. The players argued that they had been paid less than their male counterparts for decades even as they won world championships and Olympic gold medals.The fight over per diems and paychecks eventually morphed into a federal lawsuit in which the women accused U.S. Soccer of “institutionalized gender discrimination.” While the women lost in federal court in 2020, when a judge ruled against their core claims, they eventually won their equal pay victory at the negotiating table, with a final assist from the men’s team.It was the men’s team’s players, in fact, who opened a pathway to a deal late last year when they privately agreed to share some of the millions of dollars in World Cup bonus money that they have traditionally received by pooling it with the smaller payments the women receive from their own championship.That split could see the two teams pool, and share, $20 million or more as soon as next year. That will be in addition to match payments that are expected to average $450,000 a year — and double that, or more, in years when World Cup bonus money is added.For the women’s team’s players, Wednesday’s agreements were as much a relief as a triumph. Becky Sauerbrunn, one of the five players who signed the original complaint in 2016, admitted, “It’s hard to get so, so excited about something we should have had all along.”Through the years, as the sides battled in courtrooms and negotiating sessions, the dispute produced sometimes caustic — and personal — disagreements about personal privacy, workplace equality and basic fairness, and drew support (and second-guessing) from a disparate chorus of presidential candidates, star athletes and Hollywood celebrities — not all of them supportive of the women’s campaign for pay equity.The difference in compensation for men and women has been one of the most contentious issues in soccer in recent years, particularly after the American women won consecutive World Cup championships, in 2015 and 2019, and the men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Over the years, the women’s team, which includes some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, had escalated and amplified its fight in court filings, news media interviews and on the sport’s grandest stages.The dispute had always been a complex issue, with differing contracts, unequal prize money and other financial quirks muddying the distinctions in pay between the men’s and women’s teams and complicating the ability of national governing bodies like U.S. Soccer to resolve the differences.Yet the federation ultimately committed to a fairer system. To achieve it, U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements. These agreements will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year from sponsors, broadcasters and other partners.The U.S. women’s soccer team amplified its equal pay message on the way to winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesLabor peace will be expensive: U.S. Soccer has committed to single-game payments for most matches of $18,000 per player for games won, and as much as $24,000 per game for wins at certain major tournaments — cementing the status of the U.S. men and women as two of the highest-paid national teams in the world. And the federation will surrender to the men and women on those teams 90 percent of the money it receives from FIFA for sending teams to the next two World Cups.The split of prize money, then, is a notable concession by the American men, who have previously been awarded the bulk of those multimillion-dollar payments by U.S. Soccer, and a potential seven-figure windfall for the women. The 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, for example, competed for a prize pool of $30 million; the 32 men’s teams that will compete in Qatar in November will split $450 million.Timeline: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Fight for Equal PayCard 1 of 11A six-year legal battle. More

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      Angel City F.C. and the N.W.S.L.’s Ongoing Search for Itself

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      LOS ANGELES — Angel City F.C., one of two new franchises in the National Women’s Soccer League, arrived for its first season equipped with dozens of celebrity investors, sleek branding, copious media coverage and a well-choreographed social media campaign.What it did not have, at least consistently, was a place to play soccer.Early this year, just as Angel City’s players began arriving in Los Angeles for the team’s inaugural season, an agreement the team had made to use the Los Angeles Rams’ practice fields at California Lutheran University was put on hold. The issue? The N.F.L. team was on a Super Bowl run and still using them.Adjusting on the fly, Angel City arranged to spend the first few weeks of its preseason at Pepperdine University. But just as the players were to return to Cal Lutheran, team officials decided the school’s turf football field they had been given wasn’t adequate. They canceled training, and the players were offered a spa day instead.“Every start-up has to adjust and pivot: I’m comfortable with those last-minute changes. Having said that, we have 24 players and a coaching staff of 20, and it’s not as easy for them,” said Julie Uhrman, Angel City’s president and one of its founders, adding, “Sometimes we fall short of delivering for the players, and it’s devastating.”Missteps for a new team aren’t surprising. But to veterans of the N.W.S.L., Angel City’s early problems — not only its field issues, but also the idea that professional athletes would prefer a spa day to a rigorous practice only weeks before their first game — were concerning signs of how far even the league’s best-funded teams still need to go.Katie Johnson of the San Diego Wave, left, and Jasmyne Spencer of Angel City F.C. Both teams are new to the N.W.S.L. this season.Meg Oliphant/Getty Images“That’s exactly what I mean when I talk about operational rigor,” Jessica Berman, the new N.W.S.L. commissioner, said when asked about her immediate priorities. “It is the sort of stuff behind the curtain — how the sausage gets made — that really paves the way for the league’s growth. The commercialization and the revenue will flow from creating an infrastructure within the league that is consistent, professionalized, credible, reliable.”Yet as the league opens its 10th regular season this weekend, Angel City’s stumbles on the basics, after a year in which the N.W.S.L. was rocked by claims of player mistreatment, have many around the league once again asking:What is the N.W.S.L.? And what does it want to be?A player-led push for change“Enough is enough,” one veteran player said of the mind-set that saw N.W.S.L. pros take a more active role in the direction of their league.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe arrival of Angel City, along with a second new franchise in San Diego, was expected to offer a fresh start for the N.W.S.L. after a very public reckoning last year. In a matter of months, five of the league’s 10 head coaches were fired or resigned for off-field conduct, including one who was accused of coercing a player to have sex with him. (Yet another coach, James Clarkson of the Houston Dash, was suspended on Tuesday over unspecified findings in a continuing review of “current and historic complaints of discrimination, harassment and abuse.”)The scandals were an existential moment for the league. Its commissioner, criticized for mishandling reports of coaches abusing and bullying players, resigned. Team owners faced hard questions about their own failings. Even some of the league’s most devoted fans turned on their teams, demanding answers and accountability.The players took it a step further: For one remarkable week, they refused to play at all.Veteran players said the show of player power was not new. Things had been changing, they said, since the league’s early years, when sponsors came in the form of family-run meatpacking businesses, broadcast deals were next to nonexistent and players were reluctant to ask for more.“Keeping everything quiet, dealing with it, sucking it up because we just need to make progress and we don’t want to do anything that could hurt the league,” Yael Averbuch West, the general manager of Gotham F.C. and a former player, said of the mind-set in the early years of the league. More