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      Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving Talk About Nets’ Rocky Off-Season

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      Durant had asked to be traded but stayed put. Irving said he had come close to joining another team but decided that staying in Brooklyn was his best choice.Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were expected to make the Nets instant title contenders when they joined the team in 2019, bringing two of the best offensive talents in the N.B.A. to a team that had just finished sixth in the Eastern Conference.But three years later, without any championships or finals appearances with the Nets, Durant and Irving spoke Monday about a rocky off-season that at times seemed like it might end with both of them playing for other teams.In June, Durant, 33, requested a trade, which he said Monday was because of uncertainty and accountability issues in the organization.“I want to be in a place that’s stable and trying to build a championship culture,” Durant said. “So, I had some doubts about that.”Despite his trade request coming just days after Irving and the Nets couldn’t agree to a long-term extension, Durant said that wasn’t a factor.Instead, he pointed to the Nets’ 11-game losing streak while he was injured last season as a worrisome signal about the team’s direction. At the time, he didn’t want his concerns to affect the team’s play on the floor, he said, so he waited until the off-season to make his trade request.“That’s what was putting doubt in my mind, is that when adversity hit can we keep pushing through it?” Durant said. “I’ve been on championship teams. I’ve been on teams that have been right on the brink of winning a championship, and they did those things. So, I want to be a part of a group that did that.”He added: “Winning and losing — I can take all that. I’ve been in the league for a long time. So, it’s not more so about just a result. It’s like how we get to that point. And I wasn’t feeling how we was getting to that point.”In August, The Athletic reported that Durant had told the Nets to choose between keeping him or keeping General Manager Sean Marks and Coach Steve Nash. The report drew the Nets’ owner, Joe Tsai, to release a statement of confidence in the Nets’ leadership. “Our front office and coaching staff have my support,” Tsai wrote. “We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.”On Monday, Marks said, “That’s pro sports, right?” He added: “Everybody’s entitled to their opinions. And I think from us, it’s not to hold a grudge against what Kevin said, but it’s almost like: All right, that’s the way he feels. What’s going on here? Like, what do we need to change?”Nash said that he didn’t take it personally. “This is not new in the N.B.A.,” he said.“Kevin and I go way back,” said Nash, who worked with Durant in Golden State as a team consultant. “So, you know, families go through things like this.”The Nets shopped Durant to other teams, but on Aug. 23, Durant and the Nets announced that they had “agreed to move forward with our partnership.”Durant said he wasn’t disappointed or surprised to return to the Nets: “I know I’m that good that you just not going to give me away.”Before Durant’s trade saga began, there was the issue of Irving, whose contract negotiations and unwillingness to be vaccinated against the coronavirus dominated headlines for much of the past year. Irving said he felt as though the Nets had given him an “ultimatum.”“I gave up four years, 100 and something million deciding to be unvaccinated,” Irving said. “And that was the decision: It was contract, get vaccinated or be unvaccinated, and there’s a level of uncertainty of your future — whether you’re going to be in this league, whether you’re going to be on this team. So, I had to deal with that real-life circumstance of losing my job for this decision.”Irving, 30, was eligible for max contract extensions worth up to about $245 million, but he and the Nets did not reach an agreement on one. Instead, Irving opted into the final year of his contract, which will pay him $36.5 million this season. He said he had other options — but not many — and decided that staying in Brooklyn was the best choice for him. Irving played in just 29 regular-season games in 2021-22, mostly because he was ineligible to play at home because of local vaccine mandates.Marks said that not reaching a contract agreement with Irving was because of reliability, not Irving’s stance against the vaccine.“There’s no ultimatum being given here,” Marks said as Nash sat next to him and nodded his head in agreement. “It goes back to wanting people who are reliable people, who are here, accountable — all of us. Staff, players, coaches, you name it. I’m not giving somebody an ultimatum to get the vaccine. That’s a completely personal choice. And I stand by Kyrie, and if he wants, he’s made that choice. That’s his prerogative completely, and I totally understand that.”While the Nets were navigating Durant’s injury and Irving’s absences last season, they were also affected by the unclear status of guard Ben Simmons. Amid tensions in Philadelphia early last season, Simmons, 26, was traded to the Nets for James Harden in February. Simmons, who said he was dealing a lingering back injury and mental health concerns, has never played in a game for the Nets.He appeared to be close to suiting up in the first round of the playoffs, when the Nets were facing elimination against the Celtics. “That day I was was supposed to play Game 4, I woke up on the floor,” Simmons said Monday. “I couldn’t move, could barely walk.”Simmons had back surgery in May. He said he was cleared to participate in training camp, which begins Tuesday.“I’m excited to play with these guys,” said Simmons, who hasn’t played in an N.B.A. game since Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals with the Sixers. “I think it’s a good opportunity for us, and we have a lot to prove.” More

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      Nets Owner Backs Team Leaders Amid Durant’s Reported Ultimatum

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      “Our front office and coaching staff have my support,” Joe Tsai said on Twitter just hours after a report that Kevin Durant wants the team to choose between keeping him or the coach and G.M.Joe Tsai, the owner of the Nets, issued a statement of support for the team’s front office and coaching staff on Twitter Monday evening and added, “We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.”Our front office and coaching staff have my support. We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.— Joe Tsai (@joetsai1999) August 8, 2022
      The tweet appeared to be in response to a report from The Athletic that said the team’s star forward, Kevin Durant, was still insistent that the Nets meet a trade demand he made in June. Durant, one of the N.B.A.’s best players, met with Tsai in person over the weekend, The Athletic reported, and conditioned his staying with the team on the removal of Coach Steve Nash and General Manager Sean Marks. (Durant previously had publicly lauded Nash, who just completed his second year as the Nets’ coach, saying in the spring that the coach had handled the Nets “perfectly.”)The Nets did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for Durant’s company, Boardroom, declined to comment.Tsai’s Twitter post was an unusual escalation of a simmering feud between Durant, 33, and the Nets. Tsai has rarely weighed in on basketball matters publicly, and just one year ago Durant appeared to be happily married to the Nets, having agreed to a four-year contract extension with the team he had signed with in the summer of 2019.But much of Durant’s three seasons with the Nets haven’t gone according to plan and have been marked by tumult.Durant, while recovering from an Achilles’ tendon injury, signed with the franchise along with his friends, the star point guard Kyrie Irving and the veteran center DeAndre Jordan. During the 2020-21 season, the Nets traded many of their young players, along with several draft picks, to Houston for James Harden, seemingly assembling one of the most fearsome star groups in N.B.A. history.But injuries kept the three stars from seeing the court very often. They played only 16 games together and had a dominant record of 13-3. In the 2021 playoffs, the Nets lost in the second round to the Milwaukee Bucks, the eventual champions.Last season, the Nets were once again optimistic that they would live up to their lofty expectations. But Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 meant that he couldn’t play in home games until later in the season because of a New York City rule that was eventually lifted. A frustrated Harden asked the Nets for a trade, and the Nets sent him to the division rival Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons. And once again, Durant, as well as other players on the team, dealt with injuries, forcing Nash to push rookies into unexpected roles.Durant, left, requested a trade in June after having signed a four-year extension with the Nets in 2021.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Nets hit rock bottom in the playoffs, where they were swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics, an embarrassing outcome for a team that looked to be — on paper — one of the most talented teams of the decade.Durant’s trade request was a bombshell that shocked many league observers. For one thing, the Nets were projected to enter training camp with a formidable roster that include Simmons, a three-time All-Star, and Irving, who opted into the final year of his contract. But a player of Durant’s caliber has almost never made a trade request like this with four years left on his contract.Durant’s trade value, despite his résumé, is uncertain, in part because of how rare his request is and also because of Durant himself. In three years with the Nets, he played 90 regular season games of a possible 236 because of injuries. He will be entering his 16th season, a stage by which most players are already in steep decline. But when Durant has played, he has mostly looked like he always has: a generational talent.Durant’s talent makes him a tantalizing risk for a team looking to put itself over the top, not the least of which is that when a team trades for him, he might not want to stay. More

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      A Paean to the Gods (and Shammgods) of New York City Hoops

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      Some of the most memorable characters in New York basketball history gathered in Manhattan for a screening of the documentary film “NYC Point Gods,” a tribute to — well, to them.There is little left that defines New York City basketball, save for the Knicks’ eternal search for an impactful lead guard. It’s a search that has always been inflamed, exacerbated and magnified by the abundance of point guards bred by the city.There was the incandescent Pearl Washington, who rode a motorcycle and sometimes wore a fur to playground games, and whose tremendous dribbling for Syracuse destroyed Georgetown’s dominant full-court press in the Big East tournament.And God Shammgod, the worshiped Harlem guard who played a game within the game by offering the ball up to defenders with his right hand and then ripping it back with his left. The move, still replicated in N.B.A. games by Russell Westbrook and others, is known as the Shammgod.From them and others, New York point guards learned that moxie, flair and unimpeachable handles were just as important as the ability to initiate an offense. But the era that established the archetype of the New York point guard — pillared in the 1970s and 80s by Catholic schools that have since closed for lack of funding and playground courts that saw their rims removed during the Covid-19 pandemic — is gone.For a rare moment on Wednesday night, it was reanimated at a screening of “NYC Point Gods,” a feature-length Showtime documentary that pays homage to the guards who gave the city its rep. The film was produced by Kevin Durant and his business partner and agent, Rich Kleiman. Durant, a New York transplant, wore Dior as he doled out hugs to the documentary’s subjects. Kleiman, a native, gleamed in gold aviator glasses as he introduced the film to shouts from the audience that referred to him as Ace, as in Rothstein, the protagonist of the movie “Casino.”Durant and God Shammgod greet each other at the premiere.Theo Wargo/Getty ImagesThe venue was Manhattan West Plaza, a cathedral to the power of real estate development ordained into usefulness by a New York tradition: hoopers paying homage to hoopers.That term is an honorific that disregards professional status and statistics and can be conferred only by another hooper. It doesn’t matter if you had a 20-year N.B.A. career or if your best performances are now remembered only by basketball griots. There’s a reverence among hoopers. Did you make those who watched you play love the game as you did? Did you give the crowd an “I was there when” story?Outside the Midnight Theatre, camera flashes greeted Rafer Alston and Kenny Anderson, who walked the red carpet with his mom. Sabrina Ionescu, of the W.N.B.A.’s Liberty, sidled up for hugs with Nancy Lieberman and Niesha Butler. Jayson Tatum, of the Boston Celtics, deferentially cupped hands with Anderson as Paul Pierce spelled his name for a puzzled list-holding publicist.Once the film rolled, though, the guards’ trademark toughness washed away as they listened to each other’s stories. “It was very emotional, not just for myself, but, you know, I lived and witnessed those stories of the other guys and girls also,” said Mark Jackson, a former Knicks point guard who starred at St. John’s. Seated alongside his four children, he dabbed at his eyes as he heard Kenny Smith, a Queens-born retired N.B.A. champion, describe how Jackson’s smarts led him to a nearly 17-year pro career.Mark Jackson with his children.Amanda Westcott/ShowtimeAt its heart, “Point Gods” is the hoopers’ oral history of how the city created a lineage at the position. Shammgod developed his dribble because his gym teacher, Tiny Archibald, told him it would make him perpetually valuable to any team. Only by watching a V.H.S. mixtape compilation of point guard highlights called “Below the Rim” did he learn of Archibald’s previous work.That revelation drew a crack of laughter inside the screening, where, earlier, attendees jostled over seats and settled in with the shoulder-to-shoulder intimacy of the city’s bandbox parks. Dao-Yi Chow, a lauded fashion designer, sat near a far wall wearing Jackson’s Knicks jersey. Clark Kent, whose real name is Rodolfo Franklin and who goes by the Rucker Park-ian nickname “God’s Favorite DJ,” held down a back-row seat. Kent produced a chunk of Jay-Z’s debut “Reasonable Doubt,” which dropped in 1996, the year Jeff Van Gundy took over the Knicks.For his part, Jay-Z had welcomed Shammgod on a nearby rooftop patio before the screening. The rapper and mogul was a mainstay of Rucker Park’s Entertainer’s Basketball Classic in the early aughts, and his attempt to woo Kareem Reid from a rival’s team with a bag of cash is told by that rival, the rapper Fat Joe. The exact sum, rumored to be in the thousands, is bleeped out in the retelling as Joe recounts the Mafioso-style meeting he had with Reid to convince him not to jump ship. Reid, who had a cup of coffee with the N.B.A.’s Hornets in 2003, stayed.When the film showed LeBron James, Beyoncé and N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern (wearing Joe’s platinum and diamond chain) making summer pilgrimages to the park, a woman seated four rows from the screen yelped, “I was there,” “I was there,” “There too,” both tallying her attendance and bringing Harlem into the room.In another scene, the rapper Cam’ron — a Harlem native who played on several high school travel teams alongside some of the documentary’s subjects — explained that oohs and ahhs from the crowd were worth “five or six points” to a New York point guard.Cut to Anderson in a 1991 A.C.C. game. He’d been a high school legend at Archbishop Molloy in Queens, and New Yorkers who followed his career to Georgia Tech couldn’t wait to see him mix up Duke’s Bobby Hurley, who was notorious for his lax defense. The point guard cast hypes up what’s about to come, and Smith urges the director to pull the game footage up so he can narrate a grainy ESPN clip of the one-on-one clash.Kenny Anderson on the red carpet.Amanda Westcott/ShowtimeAnderson meets Hurley at the elbow, then takes his dribble behind his back and between his legs before gliding past a dazed Hurley for a floating layup. Unnoted was the fact that Duke won the game.Small matter. When it happened, only Dickie V’s hyperventilation on ESPN marked the moment as something special. “NYC Point Gods,” though, layered in the soundtrack of the hoopers who have told and retold the story as one of many chapters in their aggrandizing mythology.On film, though, Shammgod is awed. Stephon Marbury, who sported Anderson’s center-parted haircut in high school and followed him to Georgia Tech, leans into the retelling. The unscripted, ephemeral whoops from inside the screening, from N.B.A. stars and high school coaches and their playground peers, fell anew upon Anderson in the theater’s dark. More

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      Kevin Durant Asks to Be Traded From the Nets

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      Durant has been with the Nets since 2019, but his tenure has been rocky between injuries, losses and turmoil among his teammates.The Nets’ latest foray into the world of superteams might be over.Kevin Durant, a 12-time All-Star, has asked the Nets to trade him, according to a person familiar with the request who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Rich Kleiman, Durant’s business manager, told ESPN that the Nets had given him permission to find a trade partner. Durant’s request came three days after Kyrie Irving opted into the final year of his four-year contract with the Nets.Durant and Irving signed with the Nets in 2019 on four-year deals, but last year Durant signed an extension that goes through the 2025-26 season. Irving can be traded in the final year of his contract.Durant, 33, is widely thought of as one of the best scoring forwards in N.B.A. history. He won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2014, which was one of the four seasons in which he led the N.B.A. in scoring.During this past season, Durant played in 55 games and averaged 29.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game.He and Irving came to Brooklyn hoping to win a championship together.“We want to end our careers together,” Irving told reporters at their introductory news conference in 2019. “We want to do this as a team, and what better place to do it than Brooklyn?”Durant was the second overall pick in the 2007 N.B.A. draft, selected by the Seattle SuperSonics, who then became the Oklahoma City Thunder. Durant spent nine seasons with the franchise before signing with Golden State in 2016. There, he helped Golden State win back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018, and was named the M.V.P. of both those finals. Durant tore his Achilles’ tendon during the 2019 finals, which Golden State lost to the Toronto Raptors.Irving, a seven-time All-Star, had also won a championship before joining the Nets — in 2016 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.The 2019-20 season — the first with the Nets for Durant and Irving — was interrupted by the coronavirus, but for the Nets it was a wash anyway. Durant’s recovery from his Achilles’ tendon injury lasted all year and the Nets came up short in the playoffs. In the 2020-21 season, the team added James Harden midseason after he asked to be traded from the Houston Rockets, but it lost in the second round of the playoffs.Then the Nets began last season with all three superstars presumably ready to play. But a New York City coronavirus vaccine mandate meant that Irving, who refused to be vaccinated, would not be allowed to play games in Brooklyn. The Nets decided to sit Irving until he was eligible for all games rather than allow him to be a part-time player. But they relented in December, and he began playing in road games where he was eligible to participate in January.Durant and Harden helped the Nets to the top of the Eastern Conference, but the team faltered after Durant injured his shoulder in January.Harden, who had been irritated by Irving’s absences, requested a trade and was sent to Philadelphia for Ben Simmons in February. Simmons was dealing with mental and physical ailments and has yet to play for the Nets. In March, New York City’s vaccine rules changed and Irving became eligible to play in Brooklyn.The Nets earned the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, but even though they were as complete as they had been all year, the Boston Celtics swept them in the first round.“We had high expectations,” Durant said after Game 4 of that series. “Everybody had high expectations for us, but a lot of stuff happened throughout the season that derailed us.”He added later: “No regrets.”Even when Irving had been criticized by the news media and fans, Durant had publicly supported him. As rumors swirled recently that Irving wanted out of Brooklyn, Durant said on his podcast that he wasn’t involved with Irving’s possible free agency.“Basketball is obviously the most important thing, but I try not to let that get in the way of somebody else’s personal decision,” Durant said. “Like I said, whatever happens, the friendship will still be there.”Durant’s request comes at a time when league offices are working to determine what their rosters will look like next season either through trades or free-agency signings. Teams and players were able to begin discussing free-agent deals at 6 p.m. on Thursday, and can make them official on July 6.Durant’s transcendent talent would make him appealing to many teams, despite the $193 million remaining on his contract with the Nets. Trades for players of his caliber typically include several first-round draft picks. More

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      Stephen Curry Is More Human, and Brilliant, Than Ever

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      Golden State was good. Then too good. Then very, very bad. The worst. Back among the N.B.A. elite, Curry’s team has been humbled by the journey.BOSTON — Stephen Curry was demoralizing the Celtics when he decided to improvise. After he dribbled to spin past Marcus Smart, who happens to be one of the N.B.A.’s most ferocious defenders, Curry found himself sizing up Robert Williams, a 6-foot-9 center whose sneakers might as well have been filled with concrete.Curry took a hard dribble, leaving Williams in his wake, before he rose from the court to sink a running 12-foot floater that extended Golden State’s lead in Game 4 of the N.B.A. finals Friday night.It was a scene that felt familiar but new, the same but somehow different. Curry has spent his career filling games with parabolic 3-pointers and dazzling drives to the hoop. But now, at age 34, having spent the past couple of seasons wandering through the basketball wilderness with his teammates, he has been busy staging a renaissance.And it was his performance — 43 points and 10 rebounds on a sore left foot — that had basketball fans buzzing ahead of Game 5 on Monday night in San Francisco. The series is tied, 2-2.“He wasn’t going to let us lose,” his teammate Draymond Green said.Aside from Curry’s relatively slight stature — at 6-foot-2, he is a shrub in the N.B.A.’s forest of redwoods — it might be difficult for ordinary humans to relate to him. He is a highly trained athlete and the greatest shooter who has ever lived. He has won two N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Awards. The architect of an expanding entertainment empire, he golfs with former President Barack Obama in his spare time.And for five seasons, from 2014to 2019, Curry sat atop the basketball world.Few people ever become the best at anything, and wins can feel elusive. You get stuck in the slowest checkout line. You deserved that job promotion. You want to be able to buy a house in that neighborhood, too. But Curry helped the ordinary masses feel like winners alongside him, even if they rooted for his team to lose.Curry draws crowds, no matter which city he is in.Noah Graham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesAs Curry led Golden State to five straight N.B.A. finals appearances, winning three championships, opposing fans would turn out early for games just so they could watch him warm up. At Madison Square Garden, where the lights are low and the court is a stage, the M.V.P. chants were for him. In Los Angeles, in Houston, in Philadelphia and in Miami, cities with All-Stars of their own, the roars and the crowds, the oohs and the aahs — they trumpeted his arrival.Along the way, he pushed his teammates to turn basketball into high art. They shot with precision. They moved with the grace of ballet dancers. And in a sport saturated by supersize egos and enormous paychecks, they relished passing to the open man.And then came Kevin Durant, all arms and legs and 25-foot jumpers. After losing to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 N.B.A. finals, Golden State had successfully recruited Durant to sign on as a free agent. Was it a cry for help, an acknowledgment that the team had room for improvement? Or were the rich just getting richer?“We were the evil empire for a while,” Rick Welts, the team’s former president, said in a recent interview.Durant, of course, was fearsome before he joined Golden State. After being named the league’s M.V.P. in 2014, he described his mother, Wanda, as the “real M.V.P.” in an emotional speech. The callousness of the current era eventually turned that expression of humility into a meme, one that would soon be turned against him: Between Durant and Curry in Golden State, who was the real M.V.P.?That question — from social media trolls, television personalities and needling sports fans — was a dig at Durant, but its sharp edge wounded Curry, too. Golden State had become too good.Draymond Green, left, and Klay Thompson, right, formed the core of Golden State’s five straight finals appearances and three championships alongside Curry.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSure enough, Durant was a force in back-to-back championships, the latter a four-game sweep of the Cavaliers. There was a sense of joyless inevitability about Golden State: Anything short of a championship was a failure.And then the dynasty crumbled. In the 2019 finals, Klay Thompson and Durant sustained serious injuries as the Toronto Raptors staged an upset to win their first title. Thompson sat out the next season after knee surgery. Durant left for the Nets in free agency. And Curry broke his left hand, missing all but five games as Golden State finished with the worst record in the N.B.A.In a matter of months, the league’s most dominant team had morphed into a renovation project. Making matters worse, Thompson ruptured his Achilles’ tendon in a workout before the start of last season, and Golden State fell short of making the playoffs again.This season, nothing was guaranteed. Golden State had gone from indomitable to vulnerable, a battered version of its younger self. But the team was not totally broken. Thompson’s return in January after a 941-day absence was celebrated as a triumph and no small medical marvel. He soared for a dunk in his first game.The finals have been a microcosm of Golden State’s long road back — a beautiful struggle. After splitting the first two games of the series in San Francisco, Golden State lost Game 3 in Boston, and Curry injured his left foot in the final minutes when the Celtics’ Al Horford landed on him in a scramble for a loose ball.Afterward, it was left to Thompson to offer some hope, saying he was “getting big 2015 vibes,” a reference to the 2015 finals, back when Golden State trailed the Cavaliers, 2-1, before engineering a comeback to win it all, the team’s first of the Curry era.Bruce Fraser, an assistant coach, estimated he tosses 200,000 passes a season to Curry during practices and workouts. “I get nervous when I’m passing because I don’t want to throw him off,” Fraser said.John Hefti/Associated PressMore broadly, Thompson cited Golden State’s postseason experience as a positive. When he was younger, he said, there were trapdoors everywhere. Prone to feeling anxious when trailing in a series, he was likely to be overconfident with a lead. Now, he was older but wiser.“You can’t really relax until the final buzzer of the closeout game,” he said. “That’s the hardest part about the playoffs — you have to deal with being uncomfortable until the mission is complete.”Curry slept well after Game 3, he said, and kept his left foot in a bucket of ice whenever possible. The emphasis was on recovery and mending his achy body. (Steph Curry: Just like us.) He knew only one thing for certain: He was going to play in Game 4.Precisely 75 minutes before Friday’s opening tip, Curry appeared for his pregame warm-up routine. Clad in black, with the notable exception of lavender-colored sneakers, he started off by making five layups. He then moved to the left elbow, where he hoisted a series of shots with his left hand, which is his off hand, and missed nine in a row to the delight of hundreds of early-arriving Celtics fans.But over the next 20 minutes, something strange but not entirely unexpected happened: The crowd began to murmur in admiration and appreciation as Curry sank 136 of 190 shots, including 46 of 72 3-pointers, a few of them from just inside halfcourt. Fans broke out their cellphones to record the moment for posterity. Children yelled for autographs.“People think his shot is like Ken Griffey Jr.’s swing — it’s so pretty that you think he never has to work on it,” Bob Myers, the team’s general manager, said in an interview during the regular season. “But that is anything but true. When you peek behind the curtain, you see the work.”Thompson said Curry had never played a better finals game than Game 4 on Friday.Winslow Townson/Getty ImagesOnce upon a time, Curry’s feats seemed magical — and they still are. But in recent seasons, as Golden State wandered through a wasteland of injury and uncertainty, Curry and his teammates revealed that success does not happen by accident, that it takes great effort and determination. Sure, they are still basketball savants, but they are savants who have shown the world their homework.“Win, lose, whatever it is, however you play, you have to keep coming back to the well to keep sharpening the tool kit and finding ways to evolve your game,” Curry said. “That is the hardest part of what we do.”After helping force the Celtics into a late turnover that essentially sealed Friday’s win, Curry and Thompson celebrated by swinging their arms in unison. Thompson, who knows Curry better than most, said his teammate had never played a finer game in the finals. Curry was asked whether he agreed with Thompson’s assessment.“I don’t rank my performances, though,” he said. “Just win the game.”At this stage, he knows what matters. More

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      Kyrie Irving Wants the Nets, but Do the Nets Want Him?

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      Brooklyn needs its star guard to be more than a part-time player next season, General Manager Sean Marks said, without clearly stating the team wants Irving back.As the Nets’ disappointing season reached its end after they were swept by the Boston Celtics in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, Kyrie Irving made clear that he was committed to the Nets for the long term.But after a season in which Irving played only 29 of the 82 regular season games because of his refusal to comply with a local vaccine ordinance, do the Nets want him back?That question loomed over the team’s season-ending news conference on Wednesday held by General Manager Sean Marks and Coach Steve Nash. While Marks was reluctant to give a clear answer, that he didn’t immediately say “yes” spoke nearly as clearly as anything he could have said. The Nets haven’t decided yet if Irving can and should be part of their future. “I think we know what we’re looking for,” Marks said. “We’re looking for guys that want to come in here and be part of something bigger than themselves, play selfless, play team basketball, and be available. That goes not only for Kyrie but for everybody here.”That theme of availability persisted throughout Marks’ remarks, and has been challenging for the Nets’ star players. Irving and Kevin Durant signed with Brooklyn to great fanfare in 2019, but the Nets have yet to reap the benefits of adding two multiple-time All-Stars who had each won championships by themselves. Durant missed all of the 2019-20 season while recovering from an Achilles’ tendon injury he sustained in the 2019 finals with Golden State.Last season, they added James Harden through a trade with Houston, creating what was supposed to be a formidable lineup. They lost to Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference semifinals last season despite 48 points in Game 7 from Durant, who hit a buzzer-beating 2-pointer to tie the game in regulation. His toe was on the 3-point arc — the shot was mere millimeters from being a game-winner.Rather than building on that near miss, the Nets went backward this season.Irving declined to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, which meant he would not be able to play in games in Brooklyn or at Madison Square Garden for most of the season. The Nets initially decided they didn’t want a part-time player, and said Irving would not play until he was eligible for all of their games. They abruptly changed course in January and Irving began exclusively playing in road games outside New York and Toronto.On Wednesday afternoon, Marks declined to reconsider that decision, while again stressing the importance of a player’s availability.“When you have a player of Kyrie’s caliber, you try and figure out: How do we get him in the mix and how long can we get him in the mix for?” Marks said. “Because the team was built around saying, ‘Well, Kyrie and Kevin are going to be available.’”Irving’s absences made the Nets’ margins that much slimmer. Any time Durant or Harden were injured, that meant the team was down two starters instead of just one. As they dealt with coronavirus-related absences, like many teams did, they had fewer players on whom to rely. Irving, right, with Kevin Durant in a playoff game in April.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“There were a variety of teams out there and the teams that are still playing to this day, they may not have had quite the extent of the excuses that we can come up with, but they had to navigate Covid as well, they had to navigate injuries,” Marks said. “And if I’m going to be brutally honest, they navigated it better than we did.”Harden tired of Irving’s absences and the challenges they posed. He was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, who play in Game 6 of their second-round series against the Miami Heat on Thursday night.In the trade, the Nets acquired Ben Simmons, who didn’t play a game for them. Simmons had back surgery on May 5 after magnetic resonance imaging showed a “herniation had expanded,” Marks said.In talking about the team’s big stars, Marks mostly spoke of Durant alone. He said Durant was a draw for other players around the league — that people wanted to play for him. He said Durant is the team’s best player development coach. He talked of wanting to involve Durant in personnel decisions, without asking him to actually make those decisions.“People think player empowerment means you just let them do whatever they want to do,” Marks said. “That wasn’t the case when Steve was a player. That wasn’t the case when I was a player on any of the teams we’ve been on. That’s not the case here. I think involving players on key decisions at particular points in the season is the right way to do it. There’s nothing worse than having players surprised by something.”Whether Irving returns to the team is not just in the Nets’ hands. He has a player option for next season worth $36.5 million and is also eligible for an extension worth $200 million over five years. Should he decline his player option, he would become an unrestricted free agent.He showed his dynamism on the court in several games this season, scoring 50 points against the Charlotte Hornets in March and then 60 a week later against the Orlando Magic.But what use is that explosiveness if he isn’t playing?“I think there’s been far too much debate, discussion, scuttlebutt — whatever you want to call it — about distractions, and about things that really are outside of basketball,” Marks said. “Whereas we’d like to focus on doing some of the things that got us here in the first place.”Marks made that comment in his opening remarks during Wednesday’s news conference, before anyone had asked him about Irving. It fit, though, with the message he seemed to be sending throughout his news conference. It was a message to Irving about committing in a real way, not just contractually, to a team that could have used more of him this season. More

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      Bucks’ Physical Play Makes Celtics Suddenly Look Average

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      Giannis Antetokounmpo overcame early struggles to post a triple double against Boston, which had looked impressive in its sweep of the Nets.The task of stopping a player like Giannis Antetokounmpo — has there ever been a player like Giannis Antetokounmpo? — represents something of a collaborative quagmire.You need a player at once big and strong and nimble enough to stay in front of him. You need others, preferably long-armed men, pestering him with their hands from the periphery. Then you need someone to stand tall and protect the rim from the inevitable onslaught.The Boston Celtics have all of those things. They showed as much last week, in spectacular fashion, when Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Nets were swallowed up in their quicksand defense. And, still, it may not be enough.On Sunday, Antetokounmpo led the Milwaukee Bucks to a comprehensive, 101-89 win at Boston in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference semifinals matchup, quieting, for a night, the hype bubbling around the Celtics after their impressive four-game sweep of the Nets.In the process, in making one of the N.B.A.’s hottest teams look normal for a night, the Bucks were also making a point: The national basketball conversation — that nebulous thing that floats across television and social media and newspaper columns — may inexplicably overlook them at times, but they are the defending champions, and they employ one of the world’s most spectacular athletes.The league’s Most Valuable Player Award this year may be seen as a two-man contest between Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets and Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers. And soap operas and train wrecks may draw the focus of fans to other big-market teams. But all the while, Antetokounmpo and the Bucks are going about their business as one of the most formidable clubs in the league.For Antetokounmpo, then, this series represents an opportunity: How better to burnish your towering reputation than against the league’s most feared defense?“He keeps reading the game,” Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer said of Antetokounmpo, who overcame some early struggles to register a triple double: 24 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists. “Sometimes it’s scoring it. Sometimes it’s sharing it. He knows he’s got to do both.”The Celtics made a loud entrance onto the playoff stage last month with a flock of long-limbed, athletic defenders working together in the switching, scrambling, disorientingly aggressive defensive system of their first-year coach, Ime Udoka.Durant seemed perplexed by it all. After the series, he willingly sang Boston’s praises.Durant and Antetokounmpo enjoy similar statures in the N.B.A. They are both virtuoso artists. But they work in different mediums. If Durant is a painter with a palette of fine watercolors, Antetokounmpo is a sculptor wielding a mallet and a chisel.If Sunday was any indication, the physicality of Antetokounmpo and the rest of the Bucks’ roster could represent a key difference between the first and second rounds for the Celtics.When the Celtics tried to funnel Antetokounmpo this way or that, he simply skipped around them, a sports car swerving through traffic. If Boston’s defenders — large men, all of them — tried more physical methods to throttle him, they bounced feebly off his body.Midway through the fourth quarter, the Celtics appeared, for once, to corral Antetokounmpo into a dead end. Looking around and realizing he was trapped — “I’m going to get stuck,” he said he told himself — he flipped the ball off the backboard and snatched it out of the air again for a two-handed dunk over Jayson Tatum’s head.“That’s pure talent, pure instinct,” Budenholzer said. “He’s a great player. He does things that are unique and special and timely. That’s one of those plays where you’re just happy he’s on our side.”More important than one superstar’s solo work, though — and another potentially crucial difference between the circumstances of Durant and Antetokounmpo — were the contributions of Milwaukee’s supporting cast.Antetokounmpo, driving for a basket, posted 24 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in Boston.David Butler Ii/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe spotlight on Antetokounmpo has sizzled brighter in the absence of Khris Middleton, the team’s second-best player, whose participation in this series remains in doubt after he injured his left knee in Game 2 of the first round last month. A three-time All-Star who averaged 20.1 points and 5.4 assists per game in the regular season, Middleton commands plenty of attention with his ability to create his own shot and score in isolation.With him watching the game from the bench in a navy blue jacket, so much more of the Celtics’ focus could flow toward Antetokounmpo, with the ball spending so much more time in his hands.But those bemoaning Middleton’s absence may be overlooking the Bucks’ remaining cast of trustworthy satellite contributors, players capable of sinking a shot after a defense has collapsed on Antetokounmpo.Jrue Holiday, celebrated often for his defense but a formidable scorer when called upon, chipped in 25 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists. Grayson Allen led the Bucks’ reserves with 11 points, making three of six 3-point attempts.“I try to be as simple as possible,” Antetokounmpo said. “My teammates were there, they were open and they were knocking down shots.”Still, all of these players, the entirety of the Bucks’ universe — their offense, their defense, their collective mood and personality — revolves around Antetokounmpo.How much fuel does he have to burn? He played all but a few seconds in the first quarter, took a short break at the start of the second and got some reluctant rest in the third after an ill-advised fourth foul. Otherwise, he huffed through 38 punishing minutes, earning respite at the end only because the game was clearly decided.Afterward, he let out a long groan as he folded himself into a chair to talk to reporters.“Maybe I’m weird,” Antetokounmpo said when asked whether he felt roughed up. “I thrive through physicality. I love feeling beat up after games. I don’t know why. My family thinks I’m a weirdo.”For a Celtics defense still smarting from a steamrollering, these may be ominous words. More

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      One Final Look at a Nets Season That Fell Short

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      Exhaustion had replaced exhilaration by the time the Nets took the court for Monday’s fait accompli playoff game against the surging Boston Celtics.The early-season excitement surrounding the Nets and their glittering roster faded through a season’s worth of head-butting against the Murphy’s law adage that anything that can go wrong usually will.Gone, too, were the packed rows of New York celebrity onlookers, like Mary J. Blige, Spike Lee and Aaron Judge, who attended Game 3 at Barclays Center, perhaps trusting — despite the preponderance of evidence of the contrary — that a quick win on Monday would propel the Nets back into the series.Even Ben Simmons, who had stood out from the sideline earlier in the series because of his kaleidoscope outfits, was not there.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesMichelle Farsi for The New York TimesThe Nets fans who attended Monday’s game seemed subdued, perhaps drained from one season that felt like many more because of the array of off-court distractions. Celtics fans, who witnessed their team undergo the midseason revitalization that Brooklynites expected of the Nets, arrived ready to pour salt into festering wounds.Boston — too cohesive, too lengthy, too tenacious — simply slammed the door on a Nets season derailed from the start.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesKyrie Irving missed most of the season because he refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Kevin Durant, bothered by a knee injury, missed more than a month.The Nets plummeted with an 11-game losing streak. James Harden forced a trade to Philadelphia that returned, among others, Simmons — the centerpiece of the deal who never took the court.Often alone shouldering the load throughout the season was Durant. During the playoffs, he crafted his best performance of the series on Monday with 39 points.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesMichelle Farsi for The New York TimesMichelle Farsi for The New York TimesBut Jayson Tatum’s two-way performance throughout the series neutralized Durant. Boston fans serenaded Tatum with chants of “M-V-P” in Brooklyn before he fouled out on Monday with 2 minutes 48 seconds remaining and the Celtics leading by 6 points. Their final lead was just 4 points — just enough for victory. And too much for the Nets.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIrving is now in line for a contract extension. Most of the Nets’ veteran rotation players are scheduled for free agency. No one knows when the injured Simmons will play. But the story of this season may not so much be how it ended, but whether the Nets’ stars have been left with enough to find a way to start again.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times More