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      Klay Thompson Finally Found Love. With His Boat.

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      Injury woes sent Thompson, the Golden State guard, looking for solace. He found it on the water. No bananas allowed.SAN FRANCISCO — Klay Thompson commutes to work in a 37-foot fishing boat.Out on the open water, he can forget about the disappointment and the frustration. He can take solace in the cool breeze. Finally nearing a return to the court for the Golden State Warriors after missing the past two seasons because of injuries, Thompson has found a new hobby that has been especially therapeutic.“You can’t have a bad day when you’re on the boat,” he said.So he fishes and explores deserted coves — and uses his Axopar 37 Cabin to avoid Bay Area traffic.“It’s been so good for my mental health,” said Thompson, the star shooting guard who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the 2019 N.B.A. finals and then tore his right Achilles’ tendon before the start of last season. “When the days would get really tough, I would take a cruise into the city or toward Oakland or just be out in nature. It always helps.”Thompson has come up with a couple of names for the boat. One is Nordic Knife. (As he recently explained to NBC Sports Bay Area, “She was made in Finland, so she’s Norwegian, I think.”) The other is Splash Express, for whenever friends are on board.“I fell in love with all the little things,” Thompson said in an interview, “whether it’s navigating, cleaning her, tidying her up — all the stuff you would never think of when driving a car.”Thompson is well aware that he often refers to his boat as if it were a living, breathing person.“I know,” he said. “That’s how much I respect her.”He has gone so far as to adhere to certain seafaring superstitions. Among them: a hard-and-fast ban on bananas, since they are believed to invite bad energy to the boat. It is a difficult one for Thompson. “Because I love bananas,” he said.Coach Steve Kerr encourages his players to have outside interests, for balance. Stephen Curry golfs. Draymond Green dabbles with broadcasting. Thompson pilots a high-end watercraft with supercharged twin engines and an enclosed cabin.“Being on the water is a safe space for him,” Curry said. “He’s outside, and he has that freedom to go wherever he wants to go out there.”Growing up in Southern California, Thompson was not the product of a “family of boaters,” he said. But he has always enjoyed the ocean. He finds the water peaceful and calming, and the goal of acquiring a boat of his own was spurred by Anthony Nuccio, his best friend since preschool. Nuccio would take Thompson fishing on his 1976 Aquasport.“He kept talking about getting one for years,” Nuccio said. “We would send pictures of boats back and forth to each other.”For a long time, Thompson made do with a dinghy, which he would board with his bulldog, Rocco. (Thompson did all the rowing.)It was not until Thompson was injured that he was motivated enough to invest in a full-fledged watercraft. A couple of months after tearing his A.C.L., Thompson was rehabbing with Rex Butler, who is a sports performance specialist and a recreational boater. When Butler learned that Thompson was looking to buy something, Butler showed him photos of an Axopar. Thompson was smitten.“I loved her lines so much,” he said.At the time, Thompson was dealing with the anguish of not being able to play basketball. The days were long, and his rehabilitation was difficult. He knew he needed something to take his mind off his troubles. He needed a boat. He conferred with Nuccio, who found a dealer in San Diego named — believe it or not — Kenyon Martin, a brand manager for Seattle Yachts who happens to have the same name as the former N.B.A. power forward.“I thought you’d be taller,” Thompson told Martin when he met him at his showroom.Thompson and Nuccio browsed the inventory and then test drove an Axopar. Retail price: north of $300,000, though it was available at a discount because it had been lightly used. Thompson signed a $190 million contract extension in 2019 but still appreciates a deal.Klay Thompson and his boat dealer, Kenyon Martin, on his test drive.Courtesy of Anthony Nuccio“Wow, this is it,” Thompson said as he took the wheel from Martin.Martin customized the boat with underwater lights and an infrared camera so that Thompson could operate it at night. Martin also connected him with a boat captain who trained him.“It’s not like a car where you just flip someone the keys and you’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re good to go,’” Martin said.Thompson said it had taken several months before he felt confident enough to man the boat by himself. In the meantime, he leaned on Nuccio for guidance. Thompson also learned to spear fish.“I love to move my body, and I was going through such a strenuous rehab,” he said. “So to be able to do a hobby that felt refreshing to me and see the world in a different way, it was a dream come true.”Thompson eventually had the boat shipped to the Bay Area, where it became apparent that he was still grasping the nuances of boat ownership. Whenever he commuted to Chase Center, the waterfront arena where Golden State practices and plays its home games, he was leaving his boat in other people’s assigned spots at a nearby boatyard. Mike Brown, Golden State’s associate head coach, overheard that Thompson was causing some hubbub.“He was just docking his boat wherever he wanted,” Brown said. “And I was like, ‘Klay, you can’t park your boat there!’”Arvind Patel, the proprietor of the boatyard, enlightened Thompson on the protocols and was so charmed by him that he invited him to dock Splash Express next to his own 60-foot sailboat.It was the start of an unlikely bromance between Thompson, a five-time All-Star, and Patel, a 70-something grandfather who runs start-ups in Silicon Valley — and does not like to disclose his exact age. (“I’m old,” he said.) Patel has taken an interest in teaching Thompson more about boating, and they recently took a day trip together in search of halibut.“We caught two nice fish and had a wonderful time,” Patel said. “It’s actually kind of a pure friendship because I’m not that into basketball. I’m into it when the local team is winning. I’m a sunny-day fan. So now, if I need tickets, I say, ‘Hey, Mr. Klay!’”Teammates have taken up Thompson on his open offer to join him on the high seas. A trip comes with the caveat that they are likely to make a cameo on Thompson’s Instagram feed.“Got rook on the boat with me,” Thompson said in a recent post, gesturing toward the second-year center James Wiseman behind him. “He don’t know a damn thing, but I’m teaching him the ropes.”Leandro Barbosa, a former teammate who joined Kerr’s staff last season, has been a regular. Barbosa and Thompson will take their mountain bikes with them and dock at one of the small islands in the bay so they can ride the trails.Brown has so far resisted Thompson’s appeals to let him take him out.“I’m not a boat guy,” Brown said. “Maybe if we were in Turks and Caicos.”Thompson, who could return to the court for Golden State by late December or early January, said he could see himself getting into sailing.“The ocean and free diving and spear fishing and boating bring me joy,” he said, “second only to winning basketball games, really.” More

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      Lakers’ Opener Shows Its Stars Are Not Yet Aligned

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      A team that remade its roster around big names finds that getting them all on the same page is still a work in progress.LOS ANGELES — Anthony Davis still remembers the narrative that trailed him to Los Angeles: “Can he do it under the bright lights?”Davis had been a stat-stuffing star with the New Orleans Pelicans before forcing his way out, landing with the Lakers in a trade before the start of the 2019-20 season. His first game was against the Clippers, who limited him to a subpar effort in a Lakers loss. Afterward, Davis was beating himself up at his locker. LeBron James, who was sitting next to him, advised him to calm down.“You’re fine,” James told him. “This is Game 1.”And then James promptly went back to laughing at whatever he was looking at on his phone.It was an exchange that stuck with Davis, who wound up playing well enough that season to help deliver the Lakers’ first championship in 10 years. And it was one that Davis fondly remembered on Tuesday night after the Lakers’ season-opening loss to the Golden State Warriors. Something about it felt familiar to him.A new teammate, Russell Westbrook, had assembled a forgettable performance in his debut for the Lakers — 8 points in 35 frustrating minutes — that prompted James, with Davis’s help this time, to offer another post-Game 1 pep talk.“We’re with him,” Davis said of Westbrook. “It’s his job to continue to be himself, and we’re going to help him through all the little avenues and these challenges along the way.”James said he told Westbrook to go home and watch a comedy.“Do something that can put a smile on his face,” James said. “He’s so hard on himself.”The Lakers have emphasized star power over youth as they have rebuilt their roster.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressOne game does not mean a whole lot when there are 81 left to play. For the Lakers, their grand experiment — so many aging stars, only one basketball — will resume on Friday against the Phoenix Suns, who eliminated the Lakers from the playoffs last season. In the wake of that first-round exit, the Lakers used the summer to surround James and Davis with a fascinating cast of characters, including Westbrook, the winner of the 2017 Most Valuable Player Award and a triple-double factory in his heyday.Now 32, Westbrook is as polarizing as ever. Can he produce without having the ball in his hands most of the time? Can he find his jump shot? Will he help the Lakers, or ultimately hurt them?Again, the Lakers’ 121-114 loss to the Warriors was merely the first game of many. But it was a clunker for Westbrook, who finished with 8 points, five rebounds and four assists while shooting 4 of 13 from the field. In the 35 minutes he was on the court, the Lakers were outscored by 23 points. He also had four turnovers and a technical foul.His news conference was brief and fairly monosyllabic.What did it mean to him that James and Davis had given him some encouragement in the locker room? “We talked,” Westbrook said.What did he make of the ambience at Staples Center? “I would say I wasn’t paying much mind to be honest,” he said.OK, how about it being his first game for the Lakers, his hometown team? “Nothing different than a normal game day,” he said.You get the idea. The spotlight will only burn brighter from here — on the Lakers, on Westbrook, and on their decision to trade for him this summer instead of working out a deal with the Sacramento Kings for Buddy Hield, a shooting guard who would seem a better fit to play off the ball with the likes of James and Davis.“Him more than anybody, it’s going to be an adjustment period,” Coach Frank Vogel said of Westbrook. “He’s coming into our culture, our system. He’s the new guy, and he’s got to find his way.”Vogel cited the team’s patchwork preseason in explaining away some of Westbrook’s hiccups. Nobody played that many minutes together. Westbrook’s numbers in four games — 35 percent shooting, a team-high 23 turnovers — would have been more alarming if the preseason actually meant anything.For his part, James said he suspected that Westbrook had succumbed to “first-game jitters” as a player who had watched the Lakers growing up.“And now you’re putting on a Laker uniform and you’re stepping into Staples Center,” James said. “I can only imagine how many friends and family have contacted him over the last 48 hours.”The real referendum on Westbrook’s viability will play out over the coming weeks, though there are larger questions about how this Lakers team was assembled. In recent seasons, they have essentially gutted their roster of the young players they had drafted and were working to develop — everyone from Brandon Ingram to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — in favor of acquiring older, splashier players.Jordan Poole had 20 points for the Warriors.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressGolden State provided a useful counterpoint to the Lakers’ approach on Tuesday by showcasing Jordan Poole, a third-year guard who scored 16 of his 20 points in the second half and helped make up for Stephen Curry’s poor shooting night. Klay Thompson, who is expected to return to the Warriors’ lineup in a couple of months after missing the past two seasons with injuries, watched from the bench.Worth noting: All three of those players are Golden State draft picks. The Warriors continue to build from within while the Lakers go shopping every summer.It was not all bad news for the Lakers. James and Davis were as dynamic as ever, combining for 67 points. But they could have used some help.“I’ve got to figure it out,” Westbrook said. More

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      LeBron James and Stephen Curry Test Different Paths Back to N.B.A. Peak

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      James’s Los Angeles Lakers revamped their roster in a bid for another championship. For Golden State and Curry, familiar faces were just fine.LOS ANGELES — On the cusp of his 19th N.B.A. season, Carmelo Anthony belongs to a new team but harbors the same ambitions: winning his first championship. In that regard, he is not alone on the Los Angeles Lakers, a collection of veterans who will form one of the league’s most curious experiments.“We have too much experience on this team to think anything other than we’ll figure it out,” Anthony said. “But it all takes time.”After a winless preseason, the Lakers will get going in an official capacity on Tuesday night, when they play their season opener against the Golden State Warriors, a franchise that has recently gone about its business in a decidedly different way.While the Lakers have been a tear-down project — LeBron James, who signed with the team in 2018, is the longest-tenured player on the roster — Golden State has been busy remodeling while keeping intact the essential core from its not-so-distant championship era, all in the hope of staging a resurrection with the help of some new pieces.Two teams. Two approaches. And an early-season, but much-anticipated, litmus test at Staples Center on the viability of each.“I think we’ll be ready,” Anthony said. “You can feel it.”Russell Westbrook, at 32, adds a scoring punch to a team with several old-for-the-N.B.A. veterans.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressThe Warriors — remember them? — are running it back with Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and, eventually, Klay Thompson, whom the team expects to return by late December or early January after he missed the past two seasons with injuries. Thompson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the 2019 finals, then ruptured his right Achilles’ tendon last November.“It doesn’t work without Klay,” Curry said in an interview last week. “So there’s definitely anticipation. And we feel like we’ll have three seasons in one this year: this first chapter until he gets back, reintegrating him into the fold, and then the playoff chase down the stretch. So there’s a lot to look forward to.”Without Thompson — and largely without Curry, who broke his hand and missed all but five games — Golden State hibernated through the 2019-20 season, finishing with the worst record in the league. Last season, as the team continued to groom prospects like Jordan Poole, a first-round draft pick in 2019, and Juan Toscano-Anderson, who came out of the G League, the Warriors went 39-33.Now Golden State is nearly whole. And the team has welcomed the reappearance of a familiar figure: Andre Iguodala, a key cog in the team’s five straight trips to the finals, from 2015 to 2019, which produced three championships.“We built something special here,” said Iguodala, who has rejoined Golden State after spending most of the past two seasons with the Miami Heat.While Iguodala was gone, Golden State experienced its share of turbulence. But the franchise maintained a sense of stability. Curry and Green were still around. Thompson would be back at some point. And Steve Kerr, now entering his eighth season as the team’s coach, was at the helm. The pieces were there. It would just take some time for them all to coalesce again.“Our expectations are definitely higher this year than they have been the last couple of years,” said Kerr, whose team went 5-0 in the preseason. “It’s a really fun group to coach.”The Lakers will be playing under an even brighter spotlight after overhauling their roster (again) this summer. They signed Anthony, traded for Russell Westbrook and acquired veterans like Kent Bazemore, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard and Rajon Rondo while jettisoning the bulk of their personnel from last season. Gone are many of the role players from their championship run in 2020: Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.The Lakers are not big on continuity, demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice draft picks and young players for name-brand stars of a certain vintage. If there is urgency, it stems in large part from the fact that James is 36 and has struggled with injuries in recent years. No athlete can operate at the height of his powers forever, not even James. And so the Lakers have gone about mortgaging their future in pursuit of another championship now — if they can create chemistry in short order while avoiding more health problems.“I think our basketball I.Q., our talent and our skill will, for the most part, get us there,” Anthony said, “and then, the cohesiveness of being together and playing together will take us over the top. We understand where we want to be and where we’re going to be, but we’re not there yet.”Draymond Green, right, provided a critical defensive complement to the offense of Stephen Curry, left, during Golden State’s championship runs.John Hefti/Associated PressThe team has acknowledged that it will be a work in progress. As James put it before the start of training camp, “I don’t think it’s going to be like peanut butter and jelly to start the season.”Any mention of preseason basketball ought to come with the disclaimer that the games are fairly meaningless. But the Lakers did go 0-6, which was enough to raise some important questions: Is this a hodgepodge roster? Can a team this old withstand the rigors of an 82-game regular season? And, perhaps most important, can Westbrook and James, two ball-dominant players, coexist in a productive way?Frank Vogel, the team’s coach, said he had no such concerns.“There’s definitely a willingness for those guys to share and sacrifice,” he said, adding, “It’s tough to get 15-plus-year vets to be completely serious about the preseason.”For his part, James said Monday that he had fully recovered from the ankle injury that slowed him toward the end of last season — “I didn’t do much basketball for the first two months of the summer,” he said — and that he was ready for a fresh start, one that will come against an opponent that, unlike the Lakers, hopes to reach into its past. More

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      NBA Vaccine Skeptics Speak Out

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      More than 90 percent of players have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but some, like Nets guard Kyrie Irving, won’t say if they have been or plan to be vaccinated.More than 90 percent of N.B.A. players have been vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the league, and all referees and key team personnel without exemptions will be, too, by the season’s start in three weeks. But a few high-profile players, including the Nets star guard Kyrie Irving, have expressed skepticism about vaccines or been evasive about their vaccination status.Because the Nets are projected to be a top championship contender, and the team is one of just three whose players must be vaccinated to play in their home arenas, Irving’s vaccination status could be as much of a factor in the N.B.A. rankings as his team’s play.“I would like to keep all that private,” Irving told reporters on Monday in response to a question about whether he expected to play home games this season. “Please just respect my privacy. All the questions leading into what’s happening, just please. Everything will be released at a due date once we get this cleared up.”While the Nets held their media day at Barclays Center on Monday, Irving answered questions from reporters by video conference instead of in person. Multiple reports said that Irving was not present because of the league’s health protocols. In Rolling Stone magazine over the weekend, Irving’s aunt Tyki Irving was quoted as saying that Irving was unvaccinated for reasons “not religious-based, it’s moral-based.” It’s not clear when the interview took place.Since Sept. 13, Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks play, have required all employees and guests ages 12 and up without a religious or medical exemption to show proof of having received at least one vaccine dose, to comply with a mandate from Mayor Bill de Blasio regarding sports arenas.A similar requirement in San Francisco applies to Chase Center, where the Golden State Warriors play. These mandates mean that the players from the Knicks, Nets and Golden State cannot play in their teams’ 41 home games without being vaccinated, which the N.B.A. and the New York arenas are defining as having received at least one dose. At Chase Center, players must be fully vaccinated. The N.B.A. has said that teams do not have to pay players for missing those games because they are not vaccinated. For Irving, who is in the third year of a four-year, $136 million contract, that could mean a substantial loss.The N.B.A. players’ union has not agreed to a vaccine mandate for its members, but the referees’ union did agree to one. All league and team personnel who come within 15 feet of players must be fully vaccinated unless they have religious or medical exemptions. In the W.N.B.A., 99 percent of players were fully vaccinated by June. The women’s league does not have a vaccination mandate.At least one N.B.A. player has tried to obtain a religious exemption to forgo the vaccine: Golden State guard Andrew Wiggins. The league said Friday that it had rejected his request. Like Irving, Wiggins would not discuss his vaccination status on Monday, during Golden State’s media day.“Who are you guys where I have to explain what I believe?” Wiggins said. “Or what’s right or what’s wrong in my mind?”In Washington at the Wizards’ media day, however, guard Bradley Beal explained why he is unvaccinated. The three-time All-Star missed the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for the coronavirus. Beal told reporters of the experience: “I didn’t get sick at all. I lost my smell, but that was it for me. Everybody is going to react differently.“Some people have bad reactions to the vaccine. Nobody likes to talk about that. What happens if one of our players gets the vaccine and can’t play after that? Or they have complications after that? Because there are cases like that.”There are no publicly known cases of professional basketball players missing time because of side effects related to the vaccine, and severe side effects are rare for anyone. However, some athletes have spoken about lingering respiratory and muscle issues after having Covid-19. The N.B.A. and the players’ union reported more than 75 positive coronavirus tests among players during the 2020-21 season, most of them before vaccines were widely available.Another vocal vaccine skeptic is the Orlando Magic’s Jonathan Isaac, a 23-year-old forward, who told Rolling Stone he was unvaccinated, and confirmed it on Monday to reporters.“At the end of the day, it’s people,” Isaac told the magazine, referring to the scientists who developed the vaccines. “And you can’t always put your trust completely in people.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}According to Rolling Stone, Isaac was “studying Black history and watching Donald Trump’s press conferences” to inform his vaccine stance. (Former President Donald J. Trump was vaccinated in January, but states that he won in the 2020 election have much lower vaccination rates than those that favored President Biden.)On Monday, Isaac disputed the magazine’s characterization of him.“I’m not anti-vax. I’m not anti-medicine. I’m not anti-science. I didn’t come to my current vaccination status by studying Black history or watching Donald Trump press conferences,” Isaac said. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for every health care worker and person in Orlando and all across the world that have worked tirelessly to keep us safe.”Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker, who helped lead his team to the finals last season, announced on a Twitch livestream over the weekend that he had Covid-19 and had lost his senses of taste and smell. He is expected to miss at least part of training camp, which begins this week, as a result.“I’m not going to tell you guys if I have the vaccine or not, but you can still get Covid with the vaccine,” Booker said on the stream, adding, “Educate yourself.”Several players have participated in campaigns encouraging people to get vaccinated, including Jrue Holiday of the Milwaukee Bucks and Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves, whose mother died of Covid-19. Commissioner Adam Silver said in the spring that he expected most players to get vaccinated.Several of Irving’s teammates said on Monday that they were not worried about his vaccination status.“That’s on Kyrie, and that’s his personal decision,” Nets forward Kevin Durant said. “What he does is not on us to speculate what may be happening, but we trust in Kyrie. I expect us to have our whole team at some point.” More

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      NBA Denies Andrew Wiggins a Religious Exemption From Vaccine

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      The N.B.A. has denied the request of Andrew Wiggins, a Golden State Warriors player, for a religious exemption from the coronavirus vaccine, which is required in San Francisco to attend large indoor events, including Warriors home games.The league’s decision complicates matters for the team and for Mr. Wiggins, a 26-year-old forward who was the No. 1 draft pick in 2014. He said in March that he did not plan to get the vaccine unless he was forced to.The ruling means that Mr. Wiggins will be barred from attending home games in San Francisco, where his team is based, unless he gets inoculated. The city mandated last month that people show they are vaccinated to attend large indoor events. A negative coronavirus test will not suffice.“Wiggins will not be able to play in Warriors home games until he fulfills the city’s vaccination requirements,” the N.B.A. said in a statement on Twitter on Friday.It remained unclear on Saturday on what basis Mr. Wiggins applied for a religious exemption.The N.B.A. does not currently require players to be vaccinated against Covid-19, and the players’ union has strongly opposed such a rule. Unvaccinated players will be allowed to play this season but must submit to daily testing. The league said this month that it would mandate vaccines for referees, under an agreement with the union representing them.Because of local regulations in New York and San Francisco, players for the New York Knicks, the Brooklyn Nets and the Golden State Warriors face stricter rules and must be vaccinated unless they have an exemption for medical or religious reasons.Mr. Wiggins, who is from Toronto, will likely be allowed to play most road games, but he may not be allowed to face off against the Knicks and the Nets. New York City began last month to require proof of vaccination for entry into many indoor venues, including stadiums and sports arenas.The new N.B.A. season is set to start next month, and the Warriors’ first home game, a preseason matchup, will be at the Chase Center on Oct. 6. The team is scheduled to play 44 games, including three during the preseason, between October and April.Representatives for the Warriors did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday afternoon. More

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      Andre Iguodala Plans to End His Career With Golden State

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      Iguodala said he plans to return on a one-year deal after a detour to the Miami Heat. “The opportunity to end it here was just something special,” he said.Andre Iguodala found himself in recent months in discussions with his few N.B.A. peers remaining, the ones who sculpted paralleling journeys, from being teenagers to experiencing parenthood, from playing for free in high school gyms to playing for millions in front of thousands. More

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      These N.B.A. Playoffs Burst 2020’s Bubble

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      The confined, roiled 2020 N.B.A. playoffs reflected their times. So, too, do this year’s celebratory games.Last August, as the N.B.A. began its 2020 postseason in the confined bubble of Walt Disney World in Florida, the coronavirus pandemic raged, a vaccine was nothing but a dream and the battle for racial justice stood firmly at the forefront of every game.That was then, and this is now: The playoffs are back, but this time set against a much different backdrop. Vaccines have softened the pandemic’s blow, allowing America to reopen and N.B.A. fans to attend games in numbers that, while still limited, would have shocked last summer.Black Lives Matter slogans are not painted on the courts or stitched on jerseys. Players no longer lock arms and kneel during the playing of the national anthem.Last year’s N.B.A. postseason reflected the tension, tenor and tone of society. The league’s players, 75 percent of whom are Black, sparked a movement that spread to other sports when they boycotted games to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis. These days, as the 2021 playoffs get off the ground, shootings continue without such stoppages.The tinderbox days of the bubble seem like forever ago.This postseason is more about moving forward and sloughing off, however tentatively, the raw pain of the last year. It’s about welcoming new possibilities. It’s about basketball, the pure sport and entertainment of it.And so far, after the first few days of action, it can’t get much better.It began with the so-called play-in tournament, an innovation first tried in the Florida bubble, which gives the league’s middle-of-the-pack teams a shot at making the playoffs.The tournament, held last week, gave us Jayson Tatum leading his Boston Celtics over the Washington Wizards, sinking every shot imaginable as he went for a cool 50 points.It gave us another unforgettable duel between the two players and two teams that have defined basketball in the 21st century. That the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers and the Golden State Warriors struggled through injury-filled seasons hardly mattered. Wednesday’s matchup was LeBron James against Steph Curry in a game with real meaning — even if it wasn’t the N.B.A. finals, where they met four times before.It ended like poetry, with James squaring his shoulders, setting his feet and nailing a 34-foot jumper with seconds on the shot clock and less than a minute left in the game. That he did so over the outstretched arms of Curry, his longtime nemesis, added to the moment’s indelible heft.Friday night, reeling from the heartbreak loss to the Lakers, there was Curry again, only this time his Warriors were playing on their home court, in their still new arena in downtown San Francisco. Roughly 7,500 fans were on hand, the largest, most boisterous crowd at Chase Center this season.Many lament that Steph Curry, left, will not be a part of a playoff run but what would the N.B.A. be without the emergence of fresh talent like Ja Morant, right?Jed Jacobsohn/Associated PressAnd this time, they played against the league’s youngest team, the Memphis Grizzlies, with everything on the line. The winner would advance to the playoffs. The loser, to vacation.Curry claims to be 33. Maybe he’s fooling us. Coming off an M.V.P.-caliber regular season in which he led a hobbled, patchwork team to the league’s most improved record, he barely took a breather. True, there were signs of fatigue. His slow walk during breaks in action. The occasional slump of his shoulders. The slight hint of bewilderment in his face as he endured another night of battering from swarming defenders.And yet he scored 39 points and willed his team from a 17-point deficit to force an overtime.The narrative, so said almost every pundit, would belong to Curry and the Warriors in the end. Ja Morant had other ideas. Memphis’s 21-year-old, catlike point guard outdueled Curry. Normally underwhelming from long range, Morant made five of his 10 3-point attempts. And when it counted most, in the last two minutes of overtime, he showed why he is one of the brightest young stars in the league, ready to emerge from the shadow of Zion Williamson, who was taken one spot ahead of Morant in the 2019 N.B.A. draft. Morant finessed his way past the Warriors’ defense in the last gasps of overtime and sank a pair of deft push shots to seal a Memphis win, 117-112.Many lament that Curry, global icon, will not be a part of a playoff run. Many still grouse about the play-in tournament, claiming it is unfair or that it cheapens the regular season. Remember when James said, seemingly only partly in jest, that the N.B.A. official who drew up the tournament should be fired? Considering the feast the games provided as an appetizer to the main course — and, of course, the high television ratings — the criticism seems silly now.Sure, we don’t have Curry and the Warriors in the playoffs, but what fun is sport without surprises and novelty? What would the N.B.A. be without the steady emergence of fresh talent like Morant and his cast of young Grizzlies teammates, who now must prove themselves anew in their first-round playoff series against the Utah Jazz, holders of the league’s best record, which began Sunday night?Last year, the N.B.A. reflected the mood of our society. Angered, standing up in the face of worry and fear.But if our sports are to be a mirror, they must also mirror our hope and joy and celebrate new genius.That’s what we’re seeing now: an N.B.A. still wary about the troubles of the past year but ready to do what it does best. Ready, as the playoffs of 2021 get underway, to put on a show. More

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      In the NBA Playoffs, The Scariest Teams Are Lower Seeds

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      Injuries and illness dragged down the records of several teams, including the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. That could mean early postseason exits for the season’s best.The N.B.A.’s play-in tournament nearly fell flat with a series of blowout games until LeBron James and Stephen Curry rescued the postseason appetizer experiment with a dynamic one-off between the Los Angeles Lakers and Curry’s Golden State.Now, the real games are here, with the Knicks and the Nets both earning a seat at the table.The championship is up for grabs after a truncated off-season and a somewhat sluggish and injury-filled regular season.In the Western Conference, neither of the two top seeds — the Utah Jazz or the Phoenix Suns — is favored to escape the conference with the defending-champion Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers lurking.In the Eastern Conference, the Nets are finally at full strength at the right time, Milwaukee and Philadelphia are revamped, looking to advance beyond past stumbles, and Jimmy Butler and his Heat — last season’s Eastern Conference champions — will try to prove that success last year was no fluke.Here’s a look at the matchups.Eastern ConferenceNo. 1 Philadelphia 76ersvs. No. 8 Washington WizardsPhiladelphia’s Joel Embiid is one of three finalists for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award.Matt Slocum/Associated PressThe Wizards have emerged as an Eastern Conference feel-good story to rival the Knicks. To seize the East’s final playoff berth, they rallied from a 17-32 start and a coronavirus outbreak that shut down the team for nearly two weeks.The problem: Washington’s reward is a first-round matchup with the best Philadelphia team since Allen Iverson led the 76ers to the N.B.A. finals in 2001. Joel Embiid is one of three finalists for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award, Ben Simmons ranks as one of the league’s most feared defenders and Coach Doc Rivers, in his first season with the Sixers, has this group primed to capitalize on an enticing playoff draw.The three teams best equipped to keep the Sixers out of the N.B.A. finals — Milwaukee, Miami and the Nets — are all on the other side of the bracket, meaning Philadelphia can face only one of them and not before the conference finals.The potency of Bradley Beal and the triple-double king Russell Westbrook in the Wizards’ backcourt might enable them to steal a game, but this is a series in which the Wizards could use Thomas Bryant, their rugged big man who sustained a season-ending knee injury in January. As good as Daniel Gafford has been since Washington acquired him from Chicago on trade deadline day in March, Gafford and a resurgent Robin Lopez will need help to cope with Embiid.No. 2 Brooklyn Netsvs. No. 7 Boston CelticsBoston’s challenge in facing the Nets is daunting, but Jayson Tatum gives the Celtics (some) hope.Bob Dechiara/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Nets’ starters have not played together enough to be deemed invincible, but it will take a team at full strength to pose any serious challenge. The Celtics are not that team.Boston limped through the regular season with injuries to Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart and Evan Fournier, whom the Celtics traded for in March. Most significantly, Jaylen Brown and his 24.7 points and 6 rebounds per game are out for the season following his wrist surgery.Walker and the offensive virtuoso Jayson Tatum will have to play magnificently and carry the burden just to steal a game or two against a Nets defense that can be porous. The Nets finished with one of the most efficient offenses in N.B.A. history, scoring 117.3 points per 100 offensive possessions, and vied for the Eastern Conference’s top seed, despite piecing together rotations throughout the season.The most realistic result of this series is that the Nets will use the games as an opportunity to jell following a regular season in which Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving rarely all shared the court. Their real test won’t come until they meet healthier opponents down the playoff line.No. 3 Milwaukee Bucksvs. No. 6 Miami HeatJimmy Butler and the Miami Heat have a chance to show that their success last season was not a fluke.Bob Dechiara/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLast season, the Heat thumped the Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, needing just five games to eliminate Giannis Antetokounmpo & Co. It was another disappointingly brief postseason appearance for Milwaukee, which has reoriented itself behind Antetokounmpo for another crack at its first trip to the N.B.A. finals since 1974 — and its first championship since 1971. Few contenders, if any, have gone about their business more quietly. Antetokounmpo went a long way toward ensuring a drama-free existence for the franchise by signing a huge contract extension before the start of the season, and the addition of Jrue Holiday has given the team some defensive-minded toughness.A season removed from an Eastern Conference championship (and a demolition of the Bucks in the process), the Heat have had their ups and downs. Jimmy Butler appeared in just 52 games because of injuries and illness, but he is a fearsome competitor — especially in the postseason. Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro are constant perimeter threats, and the power forward Bam Adebayo is coming off the most productive regular season of his career. Slowing Antetokounmpo — who was limited by an ankle injury last season — will be the challenge.No. 4 New York Knicksvs. No. 5 Atlanta HawksTrae Young was Atlanta’s leading scorer this season, averaging 25.3 points per game.Brett Davis/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Knicks and Hawks might be the most evenly matched teams in the first round. Each team has a marquee player who carried it to the postseason: Julius Randle for the Knicks, and Trae Young for the Hawks. Both teams played their best basketball in the second half of the season after an inconsistent first half. Both were among the slowest in terms of pace.All of that to say: This is a tossup. The Hawks do have a wild card in their favor: health. They’re getting some key players back, including Kris Dunn and De’Andre Hunter, who were out with injuries for most of the season. That could cause some headaches for the Knicks, who have mostly avoided the injury bug.The Knicks were elite defensively and have the weapons to contain Young. But offensively, the Knicks have had trouble finding consistent help for Randle. That being said, Randle played the best basketball of his season against the Atlanta. The Knicks won all three of their matchups.Western ConferenceNo. 1 Utah Jazzvs. No. 8 Memphis GrizzliesUtah’s Jordan Clarkson is one of three finalists for the league’s Sixth Man of the Year Award. He averaged a career-high 18.4 points per game.Neville E. Guard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersWhat to make of the Utah Jazz? They were the best team in the N.B.A. and did not have a single top candidate for the Most Valuable Player Award. Donovan Mitchell, their young star in the midst of a career year, missed the final 16 games of the season because of an ankle injury. The Jazz went 10-6 in those games. Utah led the league in point differential, meaning the average margin of victory for their games. The team was dominant, in large part because of Rudy Gobert’s anchoring of the defense, and because of players like Joe Ingles and Jordan Clarkson picking up the slack with Mitchell absent.It’s unclear whether Mitchell will be able to return for the first round. But the biggest issue is that we’ve seen great regular seasons from the Jazz in the past two years, only for them to get bounced in the first round. But this is the best regular-season Jazz team since 1998-99.They’ll face Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies, who overpowered Golden State in a play-in game on Friday night for the eighth seed. Morant, who won the Rookie of the Year Award last season, was relentless on Friday with 35 points. The Grizzlies are young and inexperienced, but they’re also fearless. That mind-set will give them their best chance against the Jazz.No. 2 Phoenix Sunsvs. No. 7 Los Angeles LakersLeBron James’s game-winning 3-pointer against Golden State in the play-in game, which gave the Lakers the seventh seed, signaled that he’s ready for the playoffs.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressThe Suns assembled their best regular season since 2006-7, motoring through a competitive conference to win their division. Just two seasons ago, they went 19-63 and were a laughingstock. But their talented young core, led by Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton, has begun to fulfill its potential, and the addition of Chris Paul in the off-season infused the team with leadership, desire and direction.The Suns’ reward for all their hard work? A first-round meeting with the defending champions. It doesn’t exactly seem fair that Phoenix has to christen its first trip to the postseason since 2010 by figuring out how to contend with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. (Welcome back to the playoffs!)The Lakers are an oddity as a No. 7 seed: Injuries to their stars hindered their season, and the roster was seldom whole. James, for example, appeared in just 45 games because of an ankle sprain. But if his game-sealing 3-pointer against Golden State in the play-in round is any indication, he could be rounding back into form — and the Suns could be in for a tough series.No. 3 Denver Nuggetsvs. No. 6 Portland Trail BlazersThe Trail Blazers are healthier than they were this time last season, but they will still need to rely on their All-Star guard Damian Lillard.Steve Dykes/Associated PressThe last time these teams met in the playoffs, the result was an epic seven-game clash that included a quadruple-overtime game before Portland exhaustingly outlasted Denver in the 2019 Western Conference semifinals.Both teams have sensational M.V.P. candidates — Denver’s Nikola Jokic and Portland’s Damian Lillard, stars looking to journey past the conference finals for the first time.Both also wavered through uneven stretches during the regular season. Denver was below .500 after the first 13 games of the season, and Portland often struggled while cycling through a series of injuries to key rotation players.But Portland will have the services of CJ McCollum and the former Nugget Jusuf Nurkic after each missed chunks of the regular season. The Nuggets will be without Jamal Murray, one of the breakout stars of last season’s playoffs, after he sustained a knee injury in April. Denver’s Monte Morris and Will Barton are also nursing recent injuries.Jokic should be able to find holes in Portland’s 29th-ranked defense. The Nuggets will look for Aaron Gordon, acquired in a March trade with Orlando, and Michael Porter Jr. to replace some of Murray’s scoring punch, and will need to pay attention to Lillard and McCollum on screens.No. 4 Los Angeles Clippersvs. No. 5 Dallas MavericksThe Clippers fell apart in last season’s playoffs, but they stand a good chance against the Dallas Mavericks this year.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesWhen the Clippers lost their final two regular-season games to Houston and Oklahoma City, two of the league’s worst teams, it signaled to the rest of the N.B.A. that the Clippers wanted to get out of the Lakers’ side of the Western playoff bracket and delay a possible matchup until the conference finals. With the Clippers needing only a win over the Thunder to clinch the No. 3 seed, rest assured that they were equally motivated by the prospect of dropping to No. 4 and locking in a first-round series with Dallas.The state of the Clippers’ psyche remains a major curiosity after their second-round collapse against Denver last season, but no one questions their confidence in being able to beat the Mavericks for the second straight postseason. It’s a matchup they clearly relish; health is the greater uncertainty after they coped with myriad injuries this season.For all of the danger Dallas’ Luka Doncic poses, Clippers Coach Tyronn Lue has a variety of defensive options (Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Marcus Morris for starters) to send at Doncic and make him work for his numbers. To have a chance, the Mavericks will need consistent production from Tim Hardaway Jr. and Jalen Brunson, and even more so from their big men who can stretch the floor with shooting — Maxi Kleber and Kristaps Porzingis. More