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    From Tattoos to Malcolm X T-shirts, N.B.A. Hopefuls Talk Style

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    Three top draft prospects — Paolo Banchero, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams — explained their approach to fashion. “I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said.Paolo Banchero lifted the right sleeve of his black hooded sweatshirt to point out the green tattoo ink on his forearm. His long arms make up most of the 7-foot-1 wingspan that positioned him as one of the top prospects in the N.B.A. draft on Thursday, but they also tell a story.His right arm is packed with tattoos that depict crucial parts of his upbringing and make statements about his style: the Space Needle and the rest of the skyline of his hometown, Seattle, sit on his right shoulder; “19th and Spruce” is written on his inner biceps as a nod to the Boys and Girls Club where he began playing basketball; and on his inner forearm is the logo for his friend’s Seattle-based Skyblue Collective clothing brand, which he sports often and says is “a part of him.”Banchero has a tattoo on his right arm that reads “19th and Spruce,” a nod to the Boys and Girls Club in Seattle where he grew up playing basketball.Bob Donnan/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBanchero, 19, who led the Duke men’s basketball team to the Final Four this year, uses his tattoos and outfits as a form of self-expression, a subtle way of sending messages. At a pre-draft style event at a Brooklyn barbershop on Tuesday, he wore an all-black luxury designer outfit, which he said was tame compared to what he would put together on draft night.On Thursday, he wore a bright purple suit as the Orlando Magic selected him with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft.Banchero and many of the top players in the 2022 draft class already have a public persona, but it will be boosted immensely if an N.B.A. team signs them. While playing well and winning championships are paramount in how an N.B.A. player is perceived, style and image are a close second. After all, this is the league in which Los Angeles Lakers forward/center Anthony Davis made his unibrow a celebrity in its own right, even trademarking the phrase “Fear The Brow” in 2012.N.B.A. athletes have made it easy for fans to appreciate their fashion sense, turning their pregame entrances into their own version of the Met Gala. Fans on social media quickly share photos and videos from players’ 30-second walks to the locker rooms from cars or team buses at N.B.A. arenas. GQ magazine crowned Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as the N.B.A.’s most stylish player of 2022, over Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, because “the guy cares about getting dressed.”Jalen Williams, a forward from Santa Clara University and a potential first-round pick in the draft, is looking forward to the pregame catwalk. On his cellphone, he has multiple search tabs open for different clothing brands. He laughed and pointed at Jaden Hardy from the G League Ignite, another potential 2022 draft pick, when he saw that they were wearing the same black sweatpants from the brand MNML at the event on Tuesday.Williams said he tried to balance being conscious about what he wore while having fun with his style, because he knew that he would be judged by his outfits and appearance. He incorporates clothing from less popular brands into his wardrobe to encourage those who may look up to him to be “comfortable in their own skin.”Jalen Williams said fashion was important to him — even in video games.Young Kwak/Associated PressWilliams at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images“I think that’s the biggest thing that gets misunderstood in fashion,” Williams, 21, said. “You feel like you have to please whoever or look a certain way, but whatever you like is what you like.”Williams said he also tried to support small brands and promote social-justice issues through his clothing. He sported a jacket from Tattoo’d Cloth, which made custom embroidered jackets for some draft prospects, and tagged the brand in an Instagram story. On Juneteenth, he wore a shirt featuring Malcolm X, and he frequently wears different kinds of apparel supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. “I think as athletes, it’s important to inspire people and kind of spark a change and use our platform,” Williams said. “Sometimes, not even saying anything but wearing the clothes is really important.”Williams’s style goes beyond his outfits, too. As a high school sophomore, he decided to don a single braid while keeping the rest of his hair unbraided, hanging the braid at eye level. That has become a popular style in the N.B.A.“I’m not going to say I started it, but I might’ve started it,” he said jokingly.Fashion has long played a significant role in Williams’s life, back to his childhood when he began using the My Player mode in the N.B.A. 2K video game, in which users create players and can style them for hanging out in a virtual park. He is serious about the fashion choices of his My Player.“You can’t pull up to the park in brown and gray,” Williams said, mocking the generic outfit given to the created players. “No brown shirts!”The Oklahoma City Thunder selected Williams with the 12th pick in the draft on Thursday. He wore a dark pinstriped suit and large sunglasses with his famous single braid draped over them.Chet Holmgren, who is seven feet tall, said it was hard to find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame when he was younger.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersHolmgren at the N.B.A. draft on Thursday.Arturo Holmes/Getty ImagesFor the seven-foot center Chet Holmgren, who played at Gonzaga and was expected to be a top-three pick on Thursday, being fashionable was a challenge growing up. He could never find clothes that fit his long and lanky frame, and he could not afford the custom-fitted outfits he adored. He ridiculed his most impressive childhood outfit: Nike socks, basic T-shirts, basketball shorts and basketball shoes. In high school, Holmgren said, his style skyrocketed as he turned to resale websites and brands that had clothes in the large-and-tall sizing. Now, he is confident that he is the most fashionable prospect in this draft class.“In my opinion, I’m the swaggiest dude beyond just what I am wearing,” Holmgren said. He further explained that fashion was about more than just the pieces a person was wearing.“You could spend $10,000 on an outfit, but you might have a trash outfit on,” he said. “You might have the right pieces, but if you can’t put them together, the outfit’s not going to be great.”Like Williams, Holmgren is looking forward to the N.B.A.’s pregame runway, and he isn’t apprehensive about his style choices.“I feel like I don’t really miss when I put fits on,” Holmgren said. “So whatever I’m wearing, I’ll be all right.”Holmgren was drafted second overall to the Oklahoma City Thunder. His diamond chain, which featured a pair of dice, shone in Barclays Center as he walked to the stage. He chose dice for his chain, he said, because he was “big on betting on himself.” More

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      He Saw. He Believed. Now He Can Be an N.B.A. Star.

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      MIAMI — The training drill is named after LeBron James. Most people would be better off if they just let him do it.Dribble a basketball while sprinting full court. Dunk it. Rebound. No time to catch your breath. Turn around and do it again.Ten times.Is that how to spend a morning in Miami?Mark Williams walked into a gym tucked beside the bustling Interstate 95 in the Overtown neighborhood of Miami on a recent Thursday. The glowing lights of the gym were a poor substitute for the sunny skies in South Beach, where he could have been instead. But when you’re trying to make it to the N.B.A., some things have to wait.He sat on the first row of bleachers inside the gym and exchanged his slides for splashy Nikes — a little blue, a burst of purple, a lot of neon orange. He wrangled the shoelaces and made his way to a video room, slipping his 7-foot-2 frame through the doorway. Williams, 20, is tall enough to touch a basketball rim just by shifting onto his toes.He joined a handful of N.B.A. hopefuls to watch video of a pre-draft workout by the Miami Heat star Bam Adebayo from several years ago. The message? While Adebayo, now an All-Star and all-defensive team member, did not sink every one of his shots, his energy never wavered.Williams got the message.Williams is best known for his rim protection skills, but he’s been working on his shooting.Mary Beth Koeth for The New York TimesBaseline, sprint, dunk. Baseline, sprint, dunk. His black T-shirt and black shorts didn’t show it, but his face couldn’t hide the sweat. The LeBron James drill seemed to exhaust him. But Williams had enough in his tank to display some of the jaw-dropping athleticism that has him pegged as a potential first-round draft pick. Standing at the baseline, he jumped, rotated the ball under his legs and slammed it into the hoop.N.B.A. prospects a generation ago were largely on their own after either declaring for the draft or exhausting their college eligibility. Their agents scheduled workouts with teams before the draft, and the players, often by themselves, flew out for the visit. They did not think of altering their diet or agonize about how to answer questions from N.B.A. personnel. They often trained for the auditions of their life by joining whatever pickup games they could find.But the best players in Williams’s generation have little downtime while dangling on the cliff between childhood and adulthood, amateurism and the N.B.A. Their Thursdays are spent training. Their Mondays and Fridays, too, are at the gym. The hopefuls who sign with the same agent — in Williams’s case, Jeff Schwartz at Excel Sports Management — can become a team of their own. They may live with one another, attending workouts, recovery sessions and media training all aimed at preparing them for those fateful auditions and the complicated life that awaits an N.B.A. star.It can be an anxious time, a monthslong Christmas Eve.“I think it’s just the uncertainty about where I’m going to be,” Williams said. “When I get there, got to find somewhere to live. I got to find a car. I’m going to have new teammates, so just building a relationship with them, coaches. Just not knowing what’s going to happen. I feel like I embrace the uncertainty. It’s not like I’m nervous, but I’d say that’s the biggest thing.“You don’t know what’s going to happen.”Williams thought about entering the N.B.A. draft after his freshman season at Duke, but “I just wanted to go back and really prove myself.”Mary Beth Koeth for The New York Times‘Places where people can’t see’Williams grew up in Norfolk, Va., the youngest of three children. His mother, Margaret, was a nurse, and his father, Alex, is a gastroenterologist. Mark went to golf camp as a child. He played tennis for a summer. He dominated flag football for a while. No sport held his imagination like basketball did.Mark was almost 10 years old and already nearing 6 feet tall when he started shadowing his older sister Elizabeth, who at 17 was a basketball star in Virginia. She trained with Nadine Domond, a former W.N.B.A. player, who is an assistant coach for Rutgers’ women’s basketball team. Domond indulged the curious younger brother by letting him box out and practice his footwork in the post.“I’d be messing around looking, and she would teach me little tips and tricks,” Mark said.Mark started to envision his own basketball future when he attended the McDonald’s All American Game for top high school players in Chicago in 2011. Elizabeth had been chosen for the girls’ team.Mark surveyed the tall, young players on the boys’ team and asked one of them — the future eight-time N.B.A. All-Star Anthony Davis — to sign his basketball. He considered the path players such as Davis were taking toward the N.B.A. That’s what he wanted to do, too.He enjoyed watching James, who was with the Big Three in Miami, and Kevin Durant, who was beginning to harness his talents as a deadly marksman in Oklahoma City. Both were dominant, multifaceted players who seemingly did everything possible on the court. But Williams had no local N.B.A. team to follow.He could expend most of his energy being Elizabeth’s biggest fan.Mark Williams blocked the shot of a Virginia Tech player during a game in March.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersElizabeth Williams blocked the shot of a Stony Brook player during a game in 2014.Andy Mead/YCJ/Icon Sportswire/Corbis via Getty ImagesElizabeth finished high school in Virginia and began her 2011-12 freshman season at Duke, where she became the program’s first four-time all-American. Mark was a vocal fixture at her games. “He was super loud,” Elizabeth said. “It didn’t bother me. I loved it.”Elizabeth had figured her brother would be tall. She is 6 feet 3 inches tall, and they have a couple of uncles who are around 6-foot-9. But Mark did not simply have a growth spurt — it really never stopped. “I like being tall,” Mark said. “It’s nice. You get to see over everything, places where people can’t see.”A rising basketball star needs that kind of vision, both physically and metaphorically. Williams became a McDonald’s all-American like his sister — although the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of the game — and he chose to play basketball at Duke, too. Elizabeth’s No. 1 jersey was retired at Cameron Indoor Stadium after the Connecticut Sun took her with the fourth overall pick in the 2015 W.N.B.A. draft. She’s in her eighth W.N.B.A. season, her first with the Washington Mystics. Mark has his sights set on that kind of professional path as well. But others don’t always see what we see.Williams debated declaring for the N.B.A. draft after his freshman season, but returned when he was pegged as a borderline first-round selection.“I just wanted to go back and really prove myself and make it not up for debate anymore,” Wiliams said.Williams is learning how to navigate the increased recognition that comes with playing high-stakes basketball.Al Drago for The New York TimesHe flashed dominance as a rim protector and rebounder as a sophomore and grew more confident with each game. By the time North Carolina outlasted Duke in a memorable Final Four appearance in early April, he had known for a while that he would be off to the N.B.A. “Throughout the year, I really felt like I could be a pro,” Williams said.‘Setting a tone’The voices of Kanye West, Drake and DJ Khaled blared through the speakers of Core Fitness Miami, but Williams was tuned in to Andy Luaces.Luaces owns the gym on Northeast 25th Street in the Edgewater neighborhood of Miami. It’s near a juice bar and is lined with framed jerseys of some of the professional athletes Luaces has trained, including Terry Rozier and John Wall. The space has fake grass, rows of weights and no room for messing around.“If I let people start to get away with half-ass reps, then you’re setting a tone for your gym that quality here doesn’t matter,” Luaces said.Williams watches film with other N.B.A. hopefuls. One video showed a yearsold predraft workout of the Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo.Mary Beth Koeth for The New York TimesFueled by a bagel sandwich and a smoothie, Williams was there with four other N.B.A. prospects for an afternoon workout after the morning drills at the Overtown gym several miles south.Williams tossed a football back and forth with Ousmane Dieng, a French prospect who last played for the New Zealand Breakers, a professional men’s team based in Auckland. Luaces gathered Williams, Dieng and three others for what he called a feel-good workout. For the next hour, the group cycled through exercises that targeted their hamstrings and glutes.They started working out with Luaces at his gym a couple of months earlier. At the time, most still had lingering aches and pains from their seasons in college or overseas. Luaces had hoped to help them become healthy, stronger and faster to make their bid for the N.B.A.Now, with team tryouts on the horizon, he steered the workouts toward preserving their progress.Luaces watched closely as Williams collapsed before finishing the final repetition on a Nordic hamstring exercise. He told Williams to do it again. Williams grimaced and complied, letting out a long exhale upon finishing.Getting ready for the N.B.A. involves plenty of weight lifting and basketball, but there is more. It’s about learning to find time for balance — Williams and the hopefuls took a trip to the beach — and deciding how to craft an image. Williams picked his draft-night suit earlier that week, debating how flashy he wanted to be and what accessories he wanted to wear. He went to an Eastern Conference finals game between the Boston Celtics and the Heat in downtown Miami the day before.“I saw A-Rod at the game last night,” Williams told Luaces, referring to the former Yankees star Alex Rodriguez.Some fans asked Williams for selfies at the game. His height has always made him noticeable, but he also has a quick smile. Now he stands out by name, especially after the Final Four run. Williams hopes he can stir some of the same inspiration in children that his 2011 run-in with Davis spurred in him.The best big men in the N.B.A. are able to dunk and shoot from outside.Mary Beth Koeth for The New York TimesHis oldest sister Victoria Oloyede has a 2-year-old son named Tristan. “He’s a lot of fun,” Williams said. “Being an uncle is fun.”Just before leaving the gym to spend an hour in physical therapy next door, Williams asked Luaces if he had a tape measure.Luaces found one in a drawer. Williams held out one long arm and asked Luaces to measure his wrist. He planned to buy a new bracelet soon.“I would go 8 ½ or 8 ¾,” Luaces said. “Are you a bracelet guy?”“He’s about to be,” Dieng chimed in.‘Something I never experienced’Williams returned to the Overtown gym for another hour of shooting to close the day’s sessions. The final workout was shorter and looser, designed to develop a shooting rhythm and confidence by seeing the ball repeatedly splash home.Andrew Moran, a skills coach who works with Williams, sees him as more than a dunker and rim protector and said that N.B.A. teams would be surprised by the fluidity and accuracy of his outside shot.Ten years ago, a 7-foot-2 center wouldn’t need to spend months working on 3-pointers. But the demands are different now. The best big men are shooters — Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns — so prospects want that edge.And in this enlightened era of load management, they also want to rest sometimes.Williams has been projected to be drafted in the middle-to-late first round. The N.B.A. invited him to attend the draft in person.Mary Beth Koeth for The New York TimesAfter dunking and sprinting and activating his glutes, Williams planned to spend the rest of the day recuperating, possibly starting on a new show. He recently finished “Ozark” on Netflix.“It was crazy,” he said of the show’s final season.He thinks about how he would fit on various N.B.A. teams, the combinations cycling through his mind. He is projected to be drafted in the mid-to-late first round. Williams said he didn’t care where he went.Elizabeth will be at Barclays Center for the draft on Thursday after getting permission from the Mystics to miss a game to attend with her parents and sister.Mark is ready. He can already see it. “I’m looking good in my suit, and then when Adam Silver calls my name, it’ll just be surreal,” Williams said, referring to the N.B.A. commissioner. “It’ll be, I don’t know. I can’t even put into words that feeling. It’ll just be something I never experienced. A life-changing moment.”On most evenings, Williams asks himself if he had a good day before drifting to sleep. Soon, he will be living the dream. More

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      The Pelicans Are Finding Their Way Without Zion Williamson

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      New Orleans’s success without Williamson, who has been injured, has raised the ceiling on the team’s potential when he returns.Last month, Zion Williamson threw the ball off the backboard, caught it in the air, crossed it between his legs and threw down a dunk before descending back to earth. This month, he drove to the paint, leaped up from the restricted circle and launched into a 360-degree slam. These were the Cirque du Soleil-style highlights that Pelicans fans had hoped to see Williamson perform nightly after New Orleans drafted him with the No. 1 pick in the 2019 N.B.A. draft.The only problem? Neither of those highlight-reel plays took place during a game. The first was posted to Williamson’s Instagram story from an empty gym, and the second came during pregame warm-ups before the Pelicans defeated the Los Angeles Clippers in the play-in tournament.It has been almost a year since Williamson last played in a live game, the result of foot surgery that has been painfully slow to heal. Without him, the Pelicans have made a surprising playoff run and are giving the top-seeded Phoenix Suns all they can handle in their first-round series. The Pelicans’ performance has left basketball fans everywhere — and especially in New Orleans — wondering how good this young team could be if Williamson were there.The Pelicans tied the series, 2-2, with an energetic 118-103 victory at home over Phoenix on Sunday. The Suns were up by 2 at halftime, but New Orleans outscored them by 12 in the third quarter and led by as many as 18 en route to the win. The home crowd was rocking — the kind of atmosphere that could become routine as the team continues to find itself, with and without Williamson.The last game Williamson appeared in was on May 4, 2021, against Golden State. He had 23 points, 12 assists and 7 rebounds in the win.Gerald Herbert/Associated PressAs a high schooler, Williamson was hyped like no player since LeBron James. His high-flying dunks made him a social media celebrity and a sought-after recruit, but some scouts wondered whether a 6-foot-6, 280-pound forward could thrive in college basketball or the N.B.A. In his single season at Duke, Williamson left no doubts about his abilities. In his collegiate debut against Kentucky, he scored 28 points in 23 minutes on 11-for-13 shooting and produced the first of many mind-boggling highlights when he blocked a 7-footer’s shot with both hands before leading a fast break and finding RJ Barrett for a bucket in transition.During that Duke season, Williamson’s dunks continued to peel the paint off rims and to air on repeat on “SportsCenter.” But he proved to be more than a human highlight reel. He showed an uncanny knack for seeing passing lanes before they appeared on offense — and for cutting them off on defense, where he averaged 2.1 steals per game. Despite his size, the Blue Devils often played Williamson at the 5, and he defended the rim admirably, averaging 1.8 blocks per game.“This kid is — he’s just one of a kind,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski told reporters in March 2019. “He’s certainly a special basketball player, but as a youngster, he has a maturity. It’s uncommon. It really is uncommon. How humble he is. How fresh, exciting. He’s exquisite. He’s just the best.”In one of the most memorable moments of Williamson’s college career, on the road against No. 3 Virginia, he pulled off a seemingly impossible block against a future top-five pick, De’Andre Hunter. After initially defending guard Kyle Guy outside the 3-point line, Williamson chased a pass to a wide-open Hunter in the opposite corner. Covering 25 feet in two seconds, Williamson launched as if from Cape Canaveral and swatted Hunter’s shot into the fourth row of the stands.Brandon Ingram has powered the Pelicans without Williamson, averaging 29.7 points over the first three games of the series against the Suns. He had 37 points in New Orleans’s Game 2 win.Matt York/Associated PressAfter tearing his meniscus in the 2019 N.B.A. preseason, Williamson appeared in only 24 games during his first season in New Orleans. Nonetheless, he was named to the N.B.A. All-Rookie first team. The next season, he averaged 27 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game on the way to his first All-Star selection. He proved to be one of the most efficient scorers in the N.B.A., at one point shooting better than 50 percent from the floor in 25 consecutive games. His average of 20.3 points in the paint per game was more than any player since Shaquille O’Neal. It’s Williamson’s ability to score easily in halfcourt sets that New Orleans has missed the most this year.With Williamson sidelined again this season, the Pelicans looked listless to start the year. They won just one game in their first 13 and spent most of the first three months in the Western Conference cellar. But Willie Green, their first-year head coach, managed not to let the team linger on questions of when Williamson would return. Instead, he focused on developing other young stars: Trey Murphy, a first-round pick; Herbert Jones, a second-round pick; and the undrafted point guard Jose Alvarado have emerged as surprisingly mature and effective rookies. As the trade deadline approached, the Pelicans had become a pesky and physical defensive team and had climbed to 10th place in the West.Trading with the Portland Trail Blazers for guard CJ McCollum took some of the offensive pressure off their leading scorer, Brandon Ingram, and gave the Pelicans a much-needed veteran leader in the locker room. Ingram and McCollum developed a quick chemistry despite playing in just 15 games together during the regular season. When McCollum and Ingram shared the floor with center Jonas Valanciunas, the Pelicans posted an astounding 119.2 points per 100 possessions. The strengths that the team has developed — from rebounding to transition offense to points in the paint — perfectly suit Williamson’s skills. And when New Orleans’s offense stagnates in the halfcourt, it’s hard not to imagine how much more pressure it could put on defenses with a 60 percent shooter in its arsenal.CJ McCollum has averaged more points, rebounds and assists since he was traded to New Orleans from Portland in February.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesIn prior matchups against a healthy Williamson, the Suns often assigned the 6-foot-11 center Deandre Ayton to guard him. When Williamson pulled Ayton out to the perimeter, driving lanes that had once resembled the freeway on a Friday afternoon suddenly opened. There’s no doubt that a healthy Williamson would have an impact on this series. With the Suns’ starting shooting guard, Devin Booker, sidelined because of a hamstring injury, the return of Williamson could transform the series. And even if he was not able to put New Orleans over the top of the reigning N.B.A. Western Conference champions, his presence would be an opportunity for the Pelicans’ core players to get experience playing together in high-stakes situations.According to ESPN, Williamson and the franchise have a “difference of opinion” about whether he’s healthy enough to play. But the team has not officially ruled him out. Whatever tension exists between Williamson and the Pelicans is likely to spill over into the off-season, with Williamson eligible for a rookie max extension after having played just 85 games in three seasons.“Some things need to stay private, but I will say this: What Z is going through is extremely difficult,” Green told reporters in February. “As a player and person, I’ve went through injuries. No excuses made on my part, but it’s difficult. You’re weighing a lot at those moments. You’re weighing when you’re going to continue to play. A lot goes through your head. For us here, for me, it’s having compassion and having an understanding of what he has to go through to get healthy.”Until Williamson’s return, all that’s left for his fans to do is rewatch old highlights, overanalyze new ones and wonder what could be. More

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      Why College Basketball Teams Are Turning to Alumni to Find Coaches

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      Coaches of several N.C.A.A. tournament teams either attended their universities, like North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, or started their careers there, like Kansas’ Bill Self.NEW ORLEANS — Just before his senior season at Oklahoma State, Bill Self injured a knee while working as a basketball camp counselor at the University of Kansas. Each time he saw Larry Brown, who was then the Jayhawks’ coach, the limp got worse.Brown felt so badly for Self that when the camp ended he told Self that if there was ever anything he needed, he had only to ask. So Self did.“I said ‘I want to be your graduate assistant next year,’” Self said. “And he said, ‘You’re hired.’”It was not much of a job. Self read USA Today and passed along any articles he thought might interest his boss. He made sure a lane was reserved at a local bowling alley on game days, in case Brown wanted to blow off steam. And, mostly, he stayed out of the way.But during that year, Self built relationships — with an assistant athletic director, with a publicist, with the basketball secretary — and maintained them well enough that when Kansas’ head coaching job opened 17 years later, he had a small army of fans within the athletic department.“That probably played a role in me being able to come back here,” Self said.Taking advantage of those early connections hardly makes Self an outlier in college basketball, where it is increasingly common for former students, team managers, players and low-level assistants to have triumphant homecomings as head basketball coaches.Just look at the Final Four, where Self is joined by Villanova Coach Jay Wright, who caught the eye of Rollie Massimino when he worked his camps and returned to the Wildcats after building Hofstra into a N.C.A.A. tournament team. There’s also North Carolina’s Hubert Davis, who starred for the Tar Heels from 1988-92, then returned to Chapel Hill as an assistant after a lengthy N.B.A. career and dabbling in broadcasting. The other team here, Duke, will be coached next season by Jon Scheyer, a former captain of a national championship team and a current assistant who will succeed the retiring Mike Krzyzewski.Jon Scheyer, right, a captain on a Duke national championship team, will lead the Blue Devils after Mike Krzyzewski retires.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesSimilar stories have dotted the entire bracket.Texas Tech’s Mark Adams, a 65-year-old basketball lifer, and Michigan’s Juwan Howard, a member of the fabled Fab Five who went on to have a decorated N.B.A. career, took their teams into the second weekend of the tournament with one thing in common: They were doing it at their alma maters.In all, 14 of the tournament’s 68 coaches were working at schools they either attended or began their coaching careers at. And the trend shows no sign of abating: Shaheen Holloway, the architect of St. Peter’s miraculous run to the East regional final this year, was hired on Wednesday by Seton Hall, the university where he starred as a slick point guard and later spent eight years as an assistant coach.Louisville, which has not won an N.C.A.A. tournament game since 2017, turned to Kenny Payne — a Knicks assistant and a reserve on Louisville’s 1986 title-winning team — to reverse the Cardinals’ fortunes. And at least six other people are taking over as head coaches at schools where they either played or served as an assistant.“I find myself watching the coaching carousel in all the sports, asking, ‘What’s their tie to the institution? Have they gone there before?’” said Nina King, the athletic director at Duke. “I think it’s something that we look at.”King said that while coaches who had no connection to Duke were discussed as Krzyzewski’s replacement, it was important to turn to someone from “the brotherhood,” where there was no shortage of possibilities, including the college coaches Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Tommy Amaker (Harvard), Johnny Dawkins (Central Florida), Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh), Chris Collins (Northwestern), Kenny Blakeney (Howard) and Steve Wojciechowski (formerly of Marquette), or Quin Snyder of the Utah Jazz.Ultimately, Krzyzewski put his considerable thumb on the scale for Scheyer, who has continued to gain commitments from top recruits.“To be able to sit in a kid’s living room recruiting him and say ‘I’ve lived this — come throw in with me because I’ve lived Duke for X number of years,’ I think it’s important,” King said.Kenny Payne won a national title with Louisville as a player and left his job with the Knicks to try to revitalize the program.Timothy D. Easley/Associated PressAn increasing number of coaches can pitch more than a familial tie: They can cite N.B.A. experience. Often, though, that pro experience has not translated to the college game, where having connections to youth basketball power brokers are essential to recruiting elite talent. The job also requires glad-handing boosters and, more recently, navigating the transfer portal, duties that aren’t part of the N.B.A. ecosystem.It’s why former N.B.A. players like Clyde Drexler (Houston), Chris Mullin (St. John’s), Eddie Jordan (Rutgers) and Kevin Ollie (Connecticut) did not have enduring success at their alma maters, though Ollie did win a national championship before fizzling. And it is why Patrick Ewing has struggled at Georgetown, where his team lost its final 21 games this season.“Most of the guys that have been in the N.B.A., they’ve made so much money, they didn’t really care that much about coaching,” said Roy Williams, who retired last year as North Carolina’s coach after winning three national titles and cheered on Davis in Philadelphia last weekend.The Final Four in the Men’s and Women’s TournamentsCard 1 of 5The national semifinals. More

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      N.C.A.A. Tournament Peek: Gonzaga Remains the Favorite, but the Blue Bloods Are Back

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      Transfers and first-year coaches will play a key role in who cuts down the nets in New Orleans in April.The N.F.L. and college football have crowned their champions, with the Los Angeles Rams and the University of Georgia winning titles. The Winter Olympics are in the rearview mirror. And the start of the Major League Baseball season is in flux because of a lockout.But the men’s college basketball season is just heating up, with the N.C.A.A. tournament set to begin March 15 before concluding with the Final Four in New Orleans in early April.Here’s a look at the major themes of the college season so far.Gonzaga is once again the team to beat.Gonzaga forward Drew Timme has averaged 18 points per game.James Snook/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBecause Gonzaga is in the West Coast Conference — meaning most of its games air late at night on the East Coast — a lot of people don’t get to see the Bulldogs much before March.But one year after suffering their only loss of the season in the N.C.A.A. championship game against Baylor, the Bulldogs are once again the favorites to win their first title. They are ranked No. 1 in The Associated Press poll and in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, and when the N.C.A.A. Division I Men’s Basketball Committee announced its projected Top 16 seeds on Sunday, Gonzaga was at No. 1 overall.Unlike last season, the Bulldogs (23-2, 12-0 W.C.C.) won’t enter the national tournament undefeated because they lost to Duke and Alabama, but they have won 16 straight games and already wrapped up their 10th straight W.C.C. regular-season title.With the conference possibly sending four teams to the N.C.A.A. tournament this year, Gonzaga Coach Mark Few said that “to be undefeated is quite an accomplishment.”Entering Tuesday, the Bulldogs led Division I in scoring at 89.5 points per game — and, once again, a team will likely have to put up at least 85 or 90 points to have a chance at upsetting them in March. Five Gonzaga players boast scoring averages in double figures, led by the skilled forward Drew Timme (18.0 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game) and the 7-foot freshman sensation Chet Holmgren, who is averaging 14.4 points, 9.6 rebounds and 3.4 blocks per game and is projected to be a top-three pick in this summer’s N.B.A. draft. In a year without many elite point guards at the top of college basketball, the Gonzaga senior Andrew Nembhard, who averages 10.9 points and 5.7 assists, might be the most savvy floor general.The blue bloods Duke, Kansas and Kentucky are all contenders.Kansas guard Ochai Agjabi is a contender for the National Player of the Year Award.Ben Queen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLast year, Duke and Kentucky missed the N.C.A.A. tournament in the same year for the first time since 1976. Another powerhouse, Kansas, made the tournament as a No. 3 seed but was destroyed, 85-51, by Southern California, a No. 11 seed, in the second round.This season, the three blue bloods have come roaring back, and all have a legitimate shot to reach the Final Four and contend for a title.Kansas, 23-4 and 12-2 in its conference after beating Kansas State by 19 points on Tuesday, sits atop the powerhouse Big 12. Powered by the national player of the year candidate Ochai Agbaji, who is averaging 20.2 points and 5.2 rebounds, Kansas has been projected as a No. 1 seed — along with Gonzaga, Auburn and Arizona — by the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, whose members include athletic directors and conference commissioners.Duke and Kentucky, which both feature a nice blend of one-and-done freshmen alongside experienced older players, were projected as No. 2 seeds.Mike Krzyzewski, 75, is coaching his final season at Duke (23-4, 13-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) and appears to have all the weapons he needs to contend for the program’s sixth championship.The Blue Devils feature five players who could be selected in the first round of the N.B.A. draft, led by the 6-foot-10 freshman Paolo Banchero, a projected top-three pick averaging 16.9 points and 8.4 rebounds per game; the junior wing Wendell Moore Jr. (13.9 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.6 assists); and the freshman guard Trevor Keels (12.0 points and 4.0 rebounds).Duke’s team boasts five potential first-round N.B.A. draft picks, including Paolo Banchero.Gerry Broome/Associated PressKeels recently said that this year’s team had “better talent” and “better depth” than the 2014-15 Duke squad that won the N.C.A.A. championship — and that it can “definitely” cut down the nets.Kentucky, which lost by 8 points to Duke in November at Madison Square Garden and blew out Kansas on the road by 18 points in January, has a shot at the title because it blends elite freshmen like point guard TyTy Washington, averaging 12.4 points and 4.1 assists per game, with skilled older players and transfers.Oscar Tshiebwe, a 6-foot-9, 255-pound junior transfer from West Virginia who was called “a mountain masquerading as a man” by the dogged talent scout Tom Konchalski, is averaging 16.4 points per game and a Division I-best 15.2 rebounds. He is a leading contender for the John R. Wooden and Naismith Awards, given to the top college basketball players.Kentucky (22-5, 11-3 Southeastern Conference) also has a variety of other weapons: Kellan Grady, a graduate transfer from Davidson, is averaging 12.3 points per game while shooting 45.1 percent from 3-point range, and Sahvir Wheeler, a junior transfer from Georgia, is a speedster averaging 9.6 points and 7.1 assists.Several first-year coaches have their teams in contention.Arizona Coach Tommy Lloyd has led his team to the top of the Pac-12 standings in his first year.Rick Scuteri/Associated PressWhen the list of the 15 coaches in contention for the Naismith Coach of the Year Award was released last week, it featured some household names who have run their programs for years: Gonzaga’s Few, Baylor’s Scott Drew, Kentucky’s John Calipari and Auburn’s Bruce Pearl. Few, Drew and Pearl’s teams have all been ranked No. 1 in The Associated Press poll this season.But two first-year coaches are also in the mix for the award, and for deep runs in March: Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd and Texas Tech’s Mark Adams.Lloyd, 47, came to Arizona from Gonzaga, where he was the chief recruiter under Few, to replace Sean Miller, who failed to reach a Final Four during his 12 years with the program and whose team was the subject of F.B.I. and N.C.A.A. investigations.All Lloyd has done in his first season as a head coach is to lead the Wildcats (24-2, 14-1 Pac-12 Conference) to the top of the league standings with significant contributions from the projected N.B.A. lottery pick Bennedict Mathurin, a 6-foot-6 native of Montreal averaging 17.4 points and 5.8 rebounds.Adams, 65, was elevated to the head coaching position at Texas Tech in April after Chris Beard left for Texas. Despite losing several players to transfers, Adams rebuilt the roster, and the ninth-ranked Red Raiders (21-6, 10-4 Big 12) now have two wins over both Texas and Baylor, the defending national champion.“He always wants to get the best out of us, and he’s doing a good job right now,” said the junior guard Terrence Shannon Jr.Some big-name coaches and programs are making headlines — and not in a good way.Michigan Coach Juwan Howard, suspended for five games, will be eligible to return for the Big Ten Conference tournament.Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal, via Associated PressJuwan Howard, Penny Hardaway and Patrick Ewing have several things in common: they all starred in the N.B.A. and they all now coach at their alma maters.They’re also all struggling in various ways at the college level.Howard, the Michigan coach, was suspended for five games and fined $40,000 on Monday after he slapped a Wisconsin assistant coach in the head in the handshake line after a blowout loss to the Badgers on Sunday. Howard, who apologized and will be eligible to return for the Big Ten Conference tournament, said he was upset with a late timeout called by Wisconsin Coach Greg Gard while the Badgers had a double-digit lead.The veteran coach Phil Martelli will lead Michigan (14-11, 8-7 Big Ten), which is on the bubble for the N.C.A.A. tournament after being ranked as high as No. 4, for the rest of the regular season.At Memphis, Hardaway has talked openly about aspirations of winning national championships, and the Tigers were among the preseason favorites after Hardaway persuaded the superstar recruits Emoni Bates and Jalen Duren to reclassify and enroll this season as freshmen. But Bates, who was once compared to a young Kevin Durant, struggled early and hasn’t played since late January because of a back injury. Without Bates, the Tigers (15-9, 9-5 American Athletic Conference) won six straight games before losing to Southern Methodist on Sunday. They own impressive wins over Alabama and Houston but remain on the N.C.A.A. tournament bubble.At Georgetown, Ewing and the Hoyas are making history — and not in a good way. They’ve lost 16 straight games and stand at 6-20 overall and 0-15 in the Big East Conference. One year after winning the conference tournament, Georgetown is trying to avoid becoming the first Big East team to finish 0-19 in league play.Key transfers are again playing an important role.Kentucky’s Oscar Tshiebwe, who transferred from West Virginia, leads Division I with 15.2 rebounds per game.Jordan Prather/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWhen Baylor won the N.C.A.A. title last spring, the team started two transfers (Davion Mitchell and MaCio Teague) and brought two more off the bench (Adam Flagler and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua). Gonzaga started another transfer, Nembhard, at point guard in its run to the title game.Given that more than 1,700 players entered the N.C.A.A. transfer portal after last season, don’t be surprised to see them play a role on teams that advance deep into March. Gonzaga, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky and Texas Tech all have key transfers on their rosters. After losing three players to the pros, Baylor brought in the former Arizona and Georgetown guard James Akinjo, who is averaging 13.2 points and 5.8 assists for the 10th-ranked Bears.At Auburn (24-3, 12-2 SEC), Pearl may have hit the jackpot with the additions of Walker Kessler (North Carolina), K.D. Johnson (Georgia), Wendell Green Jr. (Eastern Kentucky) and Zep Jasper (College of Charleston).The 7-foot-1 Kessler has teamed up with Jabari Smith, the potential No. 1 pick in this year’s N.B.A. draft, to give the Tigers a fearsome front line that is the envy of some N.B.A. teams. After averaging 4.4 points, 3.2 rebounds and 0.9 blocks as a freshman with the Tar Heels, Kessler is averaging 12.0 points, 8.2 rebounds and a Division-I best 4.6 blocks. In a recent win over Texas A&M, Kessler had a triple-double with 12 points, 12 blocks and 11 rebounds. More

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

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