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    James Harden Did Not Start the Problems for the Philadelphia 76ers

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    Discontent is not new for star players, but it has become very public for the Philadelphia 76ers at a moment when their fans are running out of patience.For Philadelphia 76ers fans, this is The Bad Place.“Disgust among Sixers fans is at one of the highest levels I have ever seen here in Philadelphia,” Joe DeCamara, a Philadelphia radio host, said in a recent interview.A confluence of misfortune and bad strategy has almost left the team where it was in the mid-2000s at the end of the Allen Iverson era: adrift with no path to contend for a championship. Whatever plans Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, had when he took over in 2020 seem to have unraveled.“We feel like people are underrating the Sixers right now,” Morey told reporters at his introductory news conference, “but we need to go out there and prove it.”What has been proved, in fact, is quite the opposite, punctuated recently when James Harden, the team’s second-best player, publicly trashed Morey as part of his quest to force a trade to another team.Discontent is not new for star players, but in the Sixers’ case it has become very public at a moment when their fans are at their wits’ end. The broader public has developed an appetite for this brand of superstar drama because it pops up every summer, but the Sixers, perhaps more than other N.B.A. teams, are poorly positioned to plea for patience because the organization has put its fans through a decade of stops and starts, including the rebuilding plan known as The Process.Harden is one of the most talented offensive players in the N.B.A., but he has come up short in the playoffs.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConHarden’s relationship with the Sixers became a Good News-Bad News situation this summer. The Good: Harden, a 33-year-old guard, opted into the last year of his contract. The Bad: It was on the condition that the Sixers trade him to the Los Angeles Clippers, according to two people familiar with the request but not authorized to discuss it publicly. To make matters worse, videos that emerged on social media this week appeared to show Harden disparaging Morey while speaking to reporters at an Adidas event in China.“Daryl Morey is a liar and I will never be a part of an organization that he’s a part of,” Harden said in the videos. Harden’s agent and Adidas did not respond to requests from The New York Times seeking to confirm the authenticity of the videos. A Sixers spokesperson declined to comment.The exact nature of Harden’s anger at Morey is unclear, but his displeasure is an extraordinary setback nonetheless. Harden is one of the greatest offensive players ever, and few defenders can guard him alone because of his combination of ball handling and size. He is one of a small number of players who can will a team to victory by themselves — when he chooses.Harden and Joel Embiid, the star center who is Philadelphia’s best player and the reigning Most Valuable Player Award winner, share some of the responsibility for the Sixers’ lack of success. They often underperform at crucial moments in the postseason, and did so again this spring, when the Sixers lost to Boston in the second round.This has brought even more pessimism to Philadelphia, where sports-related despair is as essential to the city’s identity as the hoagie.“As a fan, it’s simple: I want the team to win,” said Amos Lee, a folk singer-songwriter and avid Sixers fan. “I want them to spend all of the money and get all of the best players and put the coolest people on the team and that’s it. But I don’t know what this franchise is.”Lee added, “It has been for a long time really poorly managed.”Daryl Morey, the president of the Philadelphia 76ers. He traded with the Nets for James Harden in February 2022.Matt Slocum/Associated PressThe Sixers have not made it to the Eastern Conference finals since 2001, and Doc Rivers, who was hired as head coach a few weeks before Morey joined the team, had a history of falling short in the playoffs. Still, Morey kept him for three seasons. And after Ben Simmons, the star point guard drafted two years after Embiid, demanded a trade out of Philadelphia, Morey resisted before swinging a trade for Harden, who was trying to force his way off his second straight team. Now Philadelphia is his third.According to a person familiar with Morey’s thinking, the plan remains to bring Harden back after the Sixers ended trade negotiations with the Clippers when they could not reach what they believed would be a suitable deal.That is not a plan — that’s unjustified hope. Harden has shown that he is willing to hold out or loaf on the floor if he does not get the trade he wants. And even if Harden returns, the team did not make any real improvements this off-season and, in fact, lost several rotation players to free agency. If the 76ers could not get out of the second round last year, how will they do next season with a less-talented team and an unhappy Harden?If Harden does go, he will be the latest in a string of Sixers stars who have left the team under acrimonious circumstances, stretching back to Charles Barkley in 1992. Before Simmons and Harden, Iverson was frustrated with the franchise when he was traded in 2006, as was Andre Iguodala when he was traded in 2012.Morey has long shown little interest in fielding a struggling team. When he was an executive in Houston in 2019, he traded Chris Paul and multiple first-round picks for Russell Westbrook after the Rockets lost in the second round of the Western Conference playoffs. Before that, Morey dismantled a middling Rockets team that included a young Kyle Lowry. Those moves allowed the Rockets in 2012 to acquire the star who would push them toward true contention: Harden.If Morey decides to hit the eject button on the Embiid and Harden era in Philadelphia, after less than two full seasons, he has shown a willingness to make hard choices. But that requires patience Sixers fans do not have, and asking the team’s ownership to accept a near-term regression and financial hit while they are planning for a new arena.Joel Embiid won his first Most Valuable Player Award in the 2022-23 season.Winslow Townson/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConBut the clock is not just ticking on what to do about Harden. It is also ticking on Embiid. He said recently that he wanted to win a championship whether it was in Philadelphia “or anywhere else.” He later suggested that he was not serious, though that has not eased the anxiety of some Sixers fans.On one hand, fans could understand his restlessness. He has endured several different front office heads, a coaching carousel and unhappy stars without even a conference finals appearance to show for it. But on the other hand, those same coaches, executives and teammates have had to endure his disappointing playoff performances, too.“They have not done a great job around him,” said Spike Eskin, co-host of “The Rights To Ricky Sanchez,” a Sixers fan podcast that is unaffiliated with the team. “The organization has been a mess for the entirety of his career. But he is as much to blame for their lack of success in the playoffs as anybody is.”But for now, Morey does not have many options. That is partly on him. The best option in a sea of bad ones may be to engage in some wishful thinking: Maybe Harden shows up to camp in great shape and reconsiders his desire to leave. Maybe Embiid puts together another M.V.P.-level season and does not get hurt, as he so often has.Maybe they can even get out of the second round. More

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      Jayson Tatum Shines as Boston Celtics Blow Out 76ers in Game 7

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      Tatum’s scoring output was an N.B.A. record for a Game 7, and it helped send the Celtics to the Eastern Conference finals, where they will face the Miami Heat.BOSTON — Jaylen Brown had used his public platform ahead of Sunday afternoon’s game to deliver a clear message to Celtics fans: Get loud. The energy at TD Garden for the team’s home games during its N.B.A. Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Philadelphia 76ers had been merely OK, he said.On Sunday, Brown got what he wanted for Game 7. It was loud early, and it was loud late. The crowd cheered every dunk and 3-pointer, every defensive stop and offensive rebound.By the time Boston’s Jayson Tatum stood near the center circle late in the fourth quarter, in the waning moments of a tour de force and the best game of his career, he beckoned the fans for even more noise. They were happy to oblige.The crowd was still cheering when the Celtics left the court with a 112-88 victory that decided the best-of-seven series and assured Boston that its championship dream would live on.Tatum, a first-team All-N.B.A. selection who had not exactly played flawless basketball during the series, was extraordinary on Sunday, scoring 51 points — an N.B.A. record for a Game 7. Brown added 25 points in the win. The Celtics led by as many as 30.“That’s when I’m at my best, when I’m having fun,” said Tatum, adding that he tried to channel his childhood love for the game. “When you go out there and relax and kind of think about those days when you were at the Y.M.C.A. or whatever, the game opens up.”Tatum was a stunning 17 of 28 from the field on Sunday, for a 60.7 field-goal percentage.Steven Senne/Associated PressA blowout loss will surely lead to an off-season of uncertainty for the third-seeded 76ers, who had title hopes of their own. But Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, who recently collected his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award, struggled in Game 7, finishing with just 15 points while shooting 5 of 18 from the field. Sixers guard James Harden scored only 9 points.“That’s the best team in the league,” Embiid said of the Celtics. “They’re so talented, and they’ve got a lot of guys who can play great basketball. Losing to them, seven games, I thought for the most part we played hard.”The Celtics, the No. 2 seed in the East, put the game out of reach with a searing run in the third quarter that included back-to-back 3-pointers by Brown and Tatum. The fourth quarter was a party that masqueraded as the closing stages of an otherwise tightly contested playoff series.“When J.T. is playing like that, we’re going to be extremely hard to beat,” Brown said of Tatum.In the process, the Celtics earned a meeting with the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals, starting on Wednesday in Boston. After surviving the play-in bracket, the Heat ousted the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, then eliminated the Knicks in six games in their conference semifinal series. Boston beat the seventh-seeded Atlanta Hawks in six games in the first round.The Heat have a star in Jimmy Butler, who, year after year, seems to elevate his level of play in the postseason — a fearsome two-way player who seldom has an off night.The Celtics, of course, have an explosive star of their own in Tatum, but he had his struggles against the 76ers. On Sunday, he was the best player in the building. He shot 17 of 28 from the field and 6 of 10 from 3-point range, and finished with 13 rebounds and five assists.“We just handled the ebbs and flows of the series,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We never got too emotionally high or too emotionally low. We were able to keep our emotional togetherness intact.”Missed opportunities will haunt the 76ers, who had a 3-2 series lead with a chance to wrap it up at home on Thursday. In that game, Tatum missed 13 of his first 14 field-goal attempts. But the Celtics were solid defensively and Tatum got hot late to extend the series with a 95-86 win.“To be honest, they had us on the ropes,” said Tatum, adding: “And I was relieved, because our season could’ve been over.”Game 7s are inherently important, but so much seemed to hinge on this one for both teams. For the Celtics, a loss would have represented a stark regression from all that they achieved last season, when they advanced to the N.B.A. finals before losing to the Golden State Warriors in six games.But progress is seldom linear, and the Celtics faced an unusually rocky path this season: an unexpected coaching change before the start of training camp, a season-ending injury to Danilo Gallinari before he even appeared in a game and a defense that lacked its familiar oomph.For the 76ers, Sunday’s game, fair or not, set up as something of a referendum on the Process, the team-building exercise that, as one of its foundational pieces, landed them Embiid in the 2014 N.B.A. draft. But now was the time for a deep playoff run.Sixers Coach Doc Rivers acknowledged the pressure before the game and anticipated the importance of his key players pushing themselves “to the max of exhaustion.”Embiid spent his final few quiet moments before the tip dribbling near the halfcourt circle. He even hoisted a couple of pretend shots before handing the ball to his teammate Tyrese Maxey.Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and James Harden combined for just 24 points in Game 7.Adam Glanzman/Getty ImagesThe rest of Embiid’s afternoon was grim. Harden’s was somehow worse. The 76ers have now made six straight playoff appearances without advancing to the conference finals.“I thought James came to play, I really did,” Rivers said, referring to Harden. “I thought he was trying to see the game, and I thought he played downhill a lot. Where he passed the ball tonight was the right decision, and we didn’t get anything out of it.”The series was full of uneven performances. Atop that list was Harden, who scored 45 points in Game 1 before he promptly disappeared, shooting a combined 5 of 28 from the field in a pair of losses. He resurfaced for Game 4, scoring 42 points, but was passive again in Games 5 and 6. So the question was: Which version of Harden would show up for Game 7?He was laboring early in the second quarter when he appeared to lose his grip on the ball going for a layup. Caught in the air, Harden swung an elbow that caught Brown in the face.“Nothing like a shot in the face to wake you right up,” Brown said.Harden was whistled for a flagrant foul. Brown made both free throws, and then Tatum threw a lob to Robert Williams for a dunk. Rivers cited the flagrant foul as a turning point.“After that, we never played right again,” Rivers said.The Celtics were continuing to mount a run when Brown, who was playing with a cotton swab stuffed up his left nostril to stanch the bleeding from his collision with Harden, tumbled in front of the opposing bench. As Brown gathered himself and turned to run upcourt, the 76ers’ Georges Niang reached out from his folding chair to grab Brown’s left leg.Brown yelled at Niang, and both players were assessed technical fouls. At the time, Boston was actually trailing. But the fans were loud, and the Celtics made sure they stayed that way. More

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      James Harden Finds His Old Groove and Gets the Sixers Back on Track

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      Harden, the Sixers guard, summoned the scoring machine he had been for previous teams but had not been in Games 2 and 3, and Philadelphia tied its second-round series with Boston, 2-2.PHILADELPHIA — James Harden of the 76ers was on his way to Wells Fargo Center on Sunday morning when he received a text message from his coach, Doc Rivers, that included a link to a gospel song, “You Know My Name” by Tasha Cobbs Leonard. It was the first time Rivers had sent Harden a song. His curiosity was piqued.“I tell my homies, ‘Let’s play the song,’” Harden recalled, adding, “I let the whole song play, and I’m like, ‘All right, it’s got to be some kind of good juju in this song.’”It was not some random text, of course. The basketball-watching universe had spent about 36 hours dissecting Harden’s poor play in the past two games of the 76ers’ Eastern Conference semifinal series with the Boston Celtics. The point of sending the song, Rivers said, was to remind Harden of his identity.“James had to get himself back,” Rivers said.Sure enough, with 19 seconds left in overtime Sunday afternoon, Harden sank a baseline 3-pointer that lifted the 76ers to a 116-115 victory and evened the best-of-seven series at 2-2. Harden was brilliant in Game 4, finishing with 42 points, 9 assists, 8 rebounds and 4 steals.“Quite frankly,” Harden said, “today was do or die.”The 76ers have been a staple of the N.B.A. playoffs over the past six seasons, making five appearances in the conference semifinals. But those second-round series are where the road has tended to end for them. The last time they made the conference finals was in 2001, when Allen Iverson led them past the Milwaukee Bucks and into the N.B.A. finals. (The 76ers wound up losing in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers.)The collective patience of Philadelphians seems to be wearing thin. Before Game 3, when N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver presented 76ers center Joel Embiid with his first Most Valuable Player Award, it was the fulfillment — on at least one level — of the franchise’s dust-covered, team-building blueprint known as the Process. Without getting into too many of the messy specifics, it involved the team playing abysmal basketball for several seasons while collecting a slew of top draft picks, one of which they used to select Embiid from the University of Kansas.The challenge for the 76ers, of course, is that the Process was never about winning individual honors, though those are nice. The mandate now, on players like Embiid and Harden, but also on Rivers and Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, is to vie for a championship. Embiid is 29. The 76ers traded for Harden last season. Before Game 4, Rivers was asked about his team’s level of urgency.“Do I really need to answer that question?” he said, laughing. “You worked on that question for 48 hours, and that’s what you came up with? Whatever high is, I’m going to assume it’s high.”Harden delivered. Early in the first quarter, he made a beeline to the basket and scored on a runner, playfully bopping the ball off his head after it fell through the hoop. It was a sign of more pyrotechnics to come.None of it was easy. The 76ers gave up a 16-point third-quarter lead. Embiid finished with 34 points and 13 rebounds, but struggled from the field, shooting 11 of 26. And Jayson Tatum scored 22 of his 24 points after halftime, nearly leading the Celtics to a crushing comeback victory. Instead, Harden shouldered the load for the 76ers.“I’m always a competitor,” he said. “I always want to win.”During the regular season, Harden operated as a facilitator, averaging a league-best 10.7 assists per game. He was neither the scoring nor the 3-point-shooting machine that he was in a former basketball life with the Houston Rockets. Instead, he formed a potent partnership with Embiid, the team’s centripetal force. Everything and everyone revolved around Embiid, for good reason, including Harden.Game 1 of the 76ers’ series with the Celtics upset that balance in an odd and unexpected way. Embiid had sprained his right knee late in the first round and was sidelined, which meant that Harden apparently felt obliged to board his personal time machine and travel back to his gluttonous, ball-dominant days with the Rockets. He torched the Celtics, scoring 45 points while shooting 7 of 14 from 3-point range to lead the 76ers to a narrow win.Embiid was back in the lineup for Games 2 and 3, and suddenly Harden seemed almost too conscious of his teammate’s presence, too passive and deferential. It hardly helped that Jaylen Brown affixed himself to Harden for long stretches. In those two losses, Harden shot a combined 5 of 28 from the field and 2 of 13 from 3-point range. Game 3 on Friday was particularly gruesome. Harden routinely passed up open shots. When he did launch a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, he barely grazed the front of the rim. More than a few fans expressed their displeasure.“I think with anyone, if you’re not making shots, you hesitate at times,” Rivers said.For his part, Harden defended his shot selection, telling reporters: “I’m pretty good on basketball instincts. I know when to score. I know when to pass, so I’m pretty sure a lot of it was the right play.”Center Joel Embiid, left, going up for a shot against Al Horford of the Celtics, scored 34 points on Sunday.Matt Slocum/Associated PressOn Saturday, the 76ers had a lengthy film session at their practice facility. Rivers identified clips from Game 3 where he felt the 76ers needed to play with more pace, where the Celtics outhustled them for rebounds and loose balls, and where his players exhibited poor body language. The Celtics, who advanced to the N.B.A. finals last season and have renewed title aspirations of their own, carried themselves differently.“I think the film yesterday said what we had to be,” Rivers said, “that they’re going to make a run, that we’re going to make a mistake. Things are not going to go well, and just keep playing.”On Sunday, the 76ers made plenty of mistakes. Their offense stalled in the fourth quarter. They stopped moving and settled for tough shots. Harden, though, has playoff experience, and he said he was also inspired by the presence of John Hao, a student who survived the deadly shooting at Michigan State University in February. Harden and Hao connected over FaceTime.Late in regulation, Harden’s runner over the Celtics’ Al Horford tied the game, 107-107. And in overtime, Harden came up with a key steal while defending Marcus Smart. He appeared to have a calming influence on his teammates.He also found himself with the ball in his hands when it mattered most. He knew who he was. More

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      James Harden Scores 45 to Beat the Celtics

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      Asked to shoulder the load, Harden scored 45 points in a playoff game for the first time in eight years.The last time James Harden scored 45 points in a playoff game, it was 2015. His Houston Rockets, down three games to none in the Western Conference finals, were winning a home game for pride against the soon to be champion Golden State Warriors.On Monday night, Harden matched that career playoff high in a much more significant game.With the Philadelphia 76ers’ star and N.B.A. scoring champion, Joel Embiid, out with a knee sprain, Harden scored 45 again, and gave the Sixers an unexpected one-game-to-none lead over the top-seeded Celtics, 119-115, at TD Garden in Boston.Points 43, 44 and 45 were the biggest, coming on a bloodless 3-pointer while closely guarded by Al Horford to give the 76ers a 117-115 lead with just over eight seconds left. On the next play, Marcus Smart of the Celtics threw the ball away in traffic under the basket, and two free throws wrapped it up for Philadelphia.“I was wondering if they were going to put two on the ball,” Harden said of the possibility of a double-team on the go-ahead shot. “It was a one on one. So then I’m looking up, I’m just, all right, this is what I work on every day. Get the best available shot no matter what it is. Raise up and shoot it.”Harden made 17 baskets on 30 shots, both season highs. He made seven 3-pointers on 14 shots, also both season highs. He also had a team-high six assists.From the first possession, Harden, 33, took it upon himself to get Philadelphia points, hitting a 10-foot jumper.“Whatever they gave me, I rose up and took a shot,” Harden said after the game. “Whether it’s a 3, whether it’s a floater, whether it’s a midrange jumper.”Asked why there was no double-team on the last shot, Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said: “That was one of our best defenders. He made a big shot.”Paul Reed had 13 rebounds filling in at center for Embiid. He had a career-high 15 in Game 4 of the Sixers’ first-round sweep of the Nets, a game that Embiid also missed.Going into Monday night’s game, the Celtics were favored not just in the series but to win the N.B.A. title. They were 9.5-point favorites to win Game 1 at home in the absence of Embiid.Disquietingly for the rest of the series, the Celtics actually played quite well on Monday, hitting 58.7 percent of their shots and outrebounding the 76ers by 10. But they never seemed to be able to stop Harden.“We have opportunities to bounce back,” a terse Mazzulla said.After three scoring titles and a Most Valuable Player Award with the Houston Rockets, Harden had built an impressive legacy. But it was tarnished somewhat with an abortive and injury-plagued two seasons with the Nets. When he was traded to the 76ers in early 2022, most of the focus was on the Sixers finally getting rid of Ben Simmons rather on their acquisition of Harden.Harden has fit in well as Embiid’s lieutenant in Philadelphia. He led the league in assists per game this season with 10.7 and averaged 21 points.Embiid shot around, but did not run on Monday at practice. Coach Doc Rivers said he didn’t know if Embiid would play in Game 2 on Wednesday.For one game at least, thanks mostly to Harden, the Sixers didn’t need him. More

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      Their Reputations Precede Them. And That’s the Problem.

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      When an athlete breaks the rules of the game, he or she may be judged on much more than that single act. Call it the Draymond Green Effect.Most times in basketball, a foul is just a foul. But sometimes, it can feel like so much more: a Rorschach test unearthing a person’s biases about the game, a window into a player’s thinking, a referendum on his entire career.Was that a malicious kick or an involuntary swing? When does an outstretched arm morph into a punch? Can an on-court act be judged on its own or must the actor be considered, too?A sequence of hard fouls across three different first-round N.B.A. playoff series — and the subsequent responses to them — has reinforced the extent to which the reputations of players, and the swirling narratives associated with them, seem to color the way the athletes, referees, league officials and fans process the action unfolding on the court.After each instance, the players’ reputations were called into action in some way — as corroborating evidence, as a shield, as a liability.It started on Monday of last week, when Draymond Green of the Golden State Warriors stomped his size 15 sneaker into the sternum of the Sacramento Kings big man Domantas Sabonis after Sabonis had grabbed Green while lying on the court. Afterward, the league suspended Green for one game, invoking not only the on-court incident but his entire body of work.“The suspension was based in part on Green’s history of unsportsmanlike acts,” the N.B.A.’s statement read, evoking the veritable highlight reel of pugnacious gamesmanship in his career, but not referencing any specific previous infraction.After he was called for fouling Royce O’Neale of the Nets in a first-round playoff game, James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers gave the universal signal for “Who, me?”Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressA few nights later, James Harden of the Philadelphia 76ers was ejected for hitting Nets forward Royce O’Neale below the waist on a drive to the basket. In the locker room after the game, Harden pointed toward his own reputation as part of his defense, mentioning that he had never before been thrown out of a game.“I’m not labeled as a dirty player,” Harden said, alluding to the public’s perception of him. He should not be judged harshly, he implied, because he is, so to speak, not that guy. (Harden, of course, has often been labeled by critics as something else: a player willing to flop to draw a whistle and earn free throws.)Then, two nights after that, Dillon Brooks of the Memphis Grizzlies was ejected for hitting LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers around the groin area while trying to defend him. The next day, Brooks, too, nodded toward his reputation, speculating that it must have preceded him on the play and informed the referees’ quick-fire decision to toss him.“The media making me a villain, the fans making me a villain and then that just creates a whole different persona on me,” Brooks said. “So now you think I intended to hit LeBron James in the nuts.”In sports, reputations are quickly formed and particularly hard to shed. Athletes conduct their professional lives in high definition. Their every move is broken down ad nauseam, scrutinized in slow motion, refracted through the eyes of analysts and commentators.Heightening this dynamic is the fact that history looms large in the sports world, seeming to always be front of mind. Record books and bygone statistics are invoked every day. Fans keep big wins and heartbreaking losses etched onto their hearts.“The past,” William Faulkner wrote, “is never dead. It’s not even past.”On top of everything else, the impulse to create two-dimensional characterizations about a person’s behavior, to reduce their action to moral terms, is widespread in the sports world, where fans and news media members often apply a storybook framework to the action, experts say.“We create these schema, these cognitive shortcuts, to read the world, and we’re quick to label individuals as friend or foe,” said Arthur Raney, a professor of communication at Florida State who has researched how emotions shape the sports viewing experience. “We do that with folks on the street, and we do that with entertainment and sports and politics and everything else.”Raney added, “And once those frames, those schema, are set, they then serve as a lens for our expectations of the future.”There will always be tension, then, around questions of whether an athlete’s reputation is fully justified.Ndamukong Suh, a defensive tackle in the N.F.L. with a long history of major penalties, cautioned people not to pass judgment too quickly. Here, he attended the league’s boot camp for aspiring broadcasters.Kyusung Gong/Associated PressNdamukong Suh, a longtime defensive tackle in the N.F.L., developed a reputation as a dirty player after a seemingly countless log of bad hits, fines and suspensions. Suh has pushed back against this characterization at various points in his career — though it is questionable whether anyone might be convinced otherwise.“Before you pass judgment on somebody, always take the time to get to know them, meet them, have coffee with them, whatever it may be and then be able to go from there,” Suh said in 2019.Many might similarly scoff at the claims of innocence of Brooks, who led the N.B.A. with 18 technical fouls in the regular season and made headlines earlier in the playoffs for taunting James (“I don’t care. He’s old.”) — essentially casting himself as a villain without anyone’s help.Still, when humans are involved in adjudicating behavior in sports, there will always be unanswerable questions about how those decisions are made. Did a player’s bad reputation lead officials to call more penalties or fouls on borderline plays? How many more fines and suspensions does a player earn after developing a reputation as someone who deserves them?“Generally, officials at the highest level do not hold grudges, but in a preconscious, mythic way are influenced by narratives,” said Stephen Mosher, a retired professor of sports management at Ithaca College.Reputations can be suffocating. Dennis Rodman’s reputation as an erratic and unsportsmanlike competitor — developed with the Detroit Pistons and honed with the San Antonio Spurs and Chicago Bulls — overshadows his status as one of the greatest defensive players in N.B.A. history. Metta Sandiford-Artest, years after his involvement in the fan-player brawl known as the Malice at the Palace in 2004, when he was still known as Ron Artest, developed a reputation as a mellow veteran, but only after changing his name and publicly reckoning with his mental health.And reputations can feel problematic when they seem in any part derived from race. Raney said the potential for this was higher in sports that were “racialized” — that is, closely associated with one race. He mentioned the tennis star Serena Williams, who is Black, as an example of an athlete who may have developed an undue reputation at times because of the color of her skin in the context of her sport. A recent study in European soccer revealed the dramatic differences in the way television commentators spoke about white players (praising their smarts and work ethic) versus nonwhite players (highlighting physical traits like strength and speed) and how far-reaching the impact of these perceptions could be.“I’d look directly at the story tellers, announcers, color people, for why these perceptions carry such weight,” Mosher said.Sports leagues invite speculation about the role reputations play in competition because of the apparently subjective nature of officiating.Joel Embiid of the 76ers was neither ejected nor suspended for this very personal foul against the Nets’ Nic Claxton.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConEarlier in the game from which Harden was ejected, 76ers center Joel Embiid blatantly tried to kick the Nets’ Nic Claxton between the legs. Embiid, who has largely maintained a reputation as a clean player, was not ejected or suspended. Harden and Brooks were not suspended after their ejections, either. (The N.B.A., like other sports leagues, takes into account a player’s disciplinary history when doling out punishments.)In explaining the disparity of outcomes between Embiid and Harden, the N.B.A. has asserted that the motive mattered far less than the outcome, and that each incident, even if it felt similar to another, needed to be evaluated on its own terms. No two shots to the groin are alike, essentially.“You have to be responsible for your actions outside the realm of intent,” Monty McCutchen, the N.B.A.’s head of referee development, said in an interview on ESPN.But many people’s minds went to a similar place. What would have happened if someone else — say, Draymond Green? — had kicked out the same way Embiid had. More

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      Joel Embiid Says He Can ‘Do Anything’ on the Court. Let Him Show You.

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      The Philadelphia 76ers center is one of the best big men in the N.B.A., but with his dribbling skills, he may be coming for the jobs of the guards.Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers took a half-beat to assess the situation during a late-season game against the Boston Celtics. As is often the case, he sensed an advantage.Embiid, a 7-foot, 280-pound center, cradled the ball near the top of the key as he faced up against the Celtics’ Grant Williams, a 6-6 forward who crouched into a defensive stance as he waved his left hand in Embiid’s face. It might as well have been an act of surrender.Embiid had a lot of extraordinary feats during the regular season to position himself as a favorite to win his first N.B.A. Most Valuable Player Award. In addition to leading the league in scoring for a second consecutive season, with a career-high 33.1 points per game, he averaged 10.2 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 blocks.But there was one thing he did more often than anything else, an underrated skill for him that destabilized opposing defenses and helped lift the 76ers to the third-best record in the N.B.A.: He took 5,526 dribbles.Embiid driving against Boston’s Grant Williams in a late-season game.Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDuring that possession against the Celtics, Embiid needed just two of them — a pair of hard dribbles to his right as his teammates cleared out to the 3-point line, dragging their defenders with them. Embiid pulled up in the paint, then created space against Williams with a double pivot before he sank a short fadeaway jumper over him.“How are you going to stop that?” Ian Eagle, TNT’s play-by-play voice, said during the television broadcast.The short answer for the Celtics was that they weren’t. Embiid finished with 52 points in a narrow win.Not so long ago, N.B.A. centers made their lunch-pail livings by camping out near the hoop. A between-the-legs dribble out near the 3-point line would have probably landed them on the bench.But the game has changed, of course, and the plodding big man is a relic. The modern N.B.A. is teeming with huge players who can launch 3-pointers, run sets from the high post and, in some cases, stretch defenses by dribbling like their Lilliputian teammates. More

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      How the Nets Fell Apart From the Top

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      Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant have become the faces of their superteam’s failure, but the Nets leadership could have averted disaster several times, and didn’t.Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant didn’t trade themselves from the Nets.They didn’t hire Steve Nash to coach the team, even though he had no experience.They didn’t trade for — and then trade away — James Harden.They didn’t sign off on Irving playing only part-time because he would not get the coronavirus vaccine.As players, they couldn’t have done any of those things. But the team owner Joe Tsai and General Manager Sean Marks could. And they did.Over the past three and a half years, the Nets’ ambitious plans to form a championship-winning superteam have fallen apart in fits and starts, finally imploding over the past week with the trades of Irving and Durant. Those two superstars have become the faces of the collapse, but the rubble of the franchise may reveal that the problem extends to the foundation — to the people who had the power to avert disaster many times and never did.During a news conference on Thursday, Marks was asked whether he deemed the Durant and Irving era in Brooklyn a failure.“I think it would be easy to look in from the outside,” Marks said. “And, you know, honestly, I look at it internally and say, ‘Wow, it didn’t work.’ Like, let’s be honest there. We did not reach the full potential of where we thought we could get to.”‘We do have the pieces’In the summer of 2019, Durant and Irving spurned the Knicks and joined the Nets in free agency. Tsai, a billionaire co-founder of the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, assumed full control of the Nets and Barclays Center at a record-setting $2.35 billion team valuation. The Nets were primed to be not just the dominant basketball power in New York, but also in the N.B.A.“I think the fans expect that we win a championship,” Tsai said in a YES Network interview months later. “And the good thing is, I believe that we do have the pieces in place.”Few teams ever do, and the Nets, it’s now clear, didn’t either. But it wasn’t for one of the most common reasons — a cheap owner — since Tsai has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in luxury tax penalties for his starry teams over the past three seasons.But he waffled on key decisions, signed aging veterans who were little help and tolerated behavior that eroded the team’s culture. He was more visible than most team owners, often sitting courtside at games and posting on Twitter in response to rumors about team drama. The N.B.A. has fined him for criticizing officiating on Twitter.Tsai also has been willing to use his financial muscle to help his players, even if it invited public criticism. He arranged for all of the Nets to be tested for the coronavirus early in the pandemic when tests were scarce for the general public, earning a rebuke from then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. Tsai also owns the W.N.B.A.’s Liberty, and in 2021 the women’s league fined the team $500,000 for secretly chartering flights to games for the players. Tsai has been critical of the W.N.B.A. requirement that players fly on commercial airlines.But catering to players can backfire, as Tsai found out.Steve Nash won two Most Valuable Player Awards as an N.B.A. player, but he had no coaching experience when he was hired to coach the Nets in September 2020.Vincent Carchietta/USA Today Sports, via ReutersA coach with no experienceCoaching is typically considered a crucial piece for superstar-laden teams. Coaches must manage egos, maximize talent and manage workloads, all while winning basketball games. Only Golden State’s Steve Kerr has won a championship as a rookie head coach without having been an assistant coach first.But for the Nets superteam, Tsai and Marks decided their head coach would be Nash, who won two Most Valuable Player Awards as an N.B.A. player but had no coaching experience. They drew criticism for overlooking Jacque Vaughn, an experienced Black assistant coach, for Nash, who is white. The hiring, in September 2020, came at a time when only seven of the N.B.A.’s 30 team head coaches weren’t white. Most N.B.A. players are Black.But Nash and Marks were teammates on the Phoenix Suns, and Nash knew Durant because he consulted for Golden State when Durant played there.Irving almost immediately undermined Nash during an appearance on Durant’s podcast, saying: “I don’t really see us having a head coach. You know what I mean? K.D. could be a head coach. I could be a head coach.”While both expressed their respect for Nash, Irving’s comments indicated that the Nets would need structure and accountability, since Durant and Irving were already resisting the traditional hierarchy. For his part, Durant responded to Irving and called the partnership with Nash “a collaborative effort.” It was a glaring instance in which leadership experience might have made a difference. After Durant requested a trade over the summer, he described a culture on the Nets that seemed adrift.“I went to them and was like: ‘Yo, I don’t like how we are preparing. I don’t like shootarounds. I like practices. I need more,’” Durant told Bleacher Report in November.He added, “Hold me accountable.”The Nets fired Nash in November and hired Vaughn.Irving vs. TsaiNowhere were the cautionary signs for the Nets more clear than in the rift between Tsai and Irving. Irving declined to take the coronavirus vaccine as the 2021-22 season got underway, but Tsai was a vocal proponent of vaccines, telling ESPN that it wasn’t “a matter of belief” but rather a scientific “matter of fact.”Irving became a liability. He was not allowed to play in home games because of a local vaccine mandate, and he showed no signs of changing his mind. Tsai and Marks allowed him to become a distraction. First, they said he would not be allowed to play in road games either, citing the harm to the organizational culture of having him play only part-time. But just two months later, they changed their minds, even though Irving hadn’t changed his and the team was in first place in the Eastern Conference.It sent the message that Irving could play by his own rules.About a year earlier, the Nets acquired Harden from Houston by trading away promising young players. But soon after Irving was allowed to return, Harden stunned the Nets by asking for a trade. Harden later told reporters that Irving’s decision to not get vaccinated had a “very minimal” effect on his trade request, but he acknowledged that “it definitely did impact the team.”The Nets quickly acquiesced to Harden in February 2022 by trading him to the Philadelphia 76ers, the competitor of his choice, instead of riding out the season, since they were playing well, or giving themselves time to explore all of their options to be sure they were getting the best deal.In December, Harden told Fox Sports why he wanted out of Brooklyn.“It was just, there was no structure and even superstars, they need structure,” Harden said. “That’s what allows us to be the best players and leaders.”Four days after the Nets sent Harden to Philadelphia, one of the popular players they had traded away to get him from Houston — center Jarrett Allen — was named an All-Star with his new team in Cleveland.Days after trading Kyrie Irving, the Nets reached a deal to send Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLast chanceEven after the Boston Celtics embarrassed the Nets last year by sweeping them in the first round of the playoffs, the Nets still had a shot to fulfill the promise of Durant and Irving this season. The Nets leadership attempted a culture reset — a public display that they would not be pushed around by stars anymore. When asked about Irving receiving a long-term extension, Marks demurred.“I think we know what we’re looking for,” Marks told reporters in May. “We’re looking for guys that want to come in here and be part of something bigger than themselves.”After Durant requested a trade in the off-season, Tsai tweeted support for the front office and coaching staff. A few weeks later in August, Durant backed off his request and Marks said the sides had “agreed to move forward with our partnership.”Then in October, when Irving refused to disavow antisemitism or apologize after posting a link to an antisemitic film on Twitter, Tsai publicly rebuked him and suspended him.Irving missed eight games. But when he returned, the Nets showed their tantalizing potential once again, going 18-2 in one stretch, only to unravel again as Durant got injured and Irving’s contract-extension talks fell apart and he asked to be traded.“I want to be in a place where I’m celebrated and not just tolerated or just kind of dealt with in a way that doesn’t make me feel respected,” Irving said Tuesday, a day after the Nets traded him to the Dallas Mavericks.Two days later, the Nets traded Durant, too, to Phoenix. “We believe making this trade now positions the franchise for long-term success,” Marks said Thursday in a statement.Marks, at a news conference Thursday, was asked what his message would be to Nets fans who expected to see a championship contender this year.“That’s honestly tough,” Marks said. “But my goal here and our goal is, from ownership all the way down, is to put something out on the floor that everybody can be proud of.” More

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      Nets Face Uncertainty Again After Agreeing to Trade Kyrie Irving

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      Adding Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant hasn’t led to a conference finals berth, much less a championship. After meeting Irving’s trade request, the Nets are once again in a state of uncertainty.Having superstar talent is the only surefire way to win a championship in the N.B.A. It has been nearly 20 years since a team won a championship without at least one superstar player, and usually it takes two.So when Kyrie Irving, a virtuoso at point guard, and Kevin Durant, one of the smoothest scorers in the game, chose the Nets in free agency during the summer of 2019, they seemed to be sprinkling onto the Nets the sort of pixie dust necessary to turn a team into a real title contender. And so, for the past three and a half years, the Nets firmly set their sights on a championship that, they believed, the arrivals of Irving and Durant had put within reach.But instead of taking incremental steps toward that goal, the Nets found that their path featured endless detours. They spent this era dealing with one distraction after another. They tried desperately to make the most of having two players as gifted as Durant and Irving, giving up draft picks and promising young players to acquire a third superstar and create one of the greatest collections of talent ever seen in the league. They changed coaches and even disciplinary philosophies in an attempt to make this work.For the past few months, the Nets seemed to have found some semblance of stability. They were winning games, Irving seemed to be in a good place, and even Durant’s knee injury, while detrimental, wasn’t catastrophic.But then their fragile peace fell apart again.Irving requested a trade last week, and on Sunday the Nets agreed to a deal that will send him to the Dallas Mavericks. Through the deal, announced Monday night, the Nets will receive two players, a distant first-round draft pick and multiple second-round picks. They never really got to enjoy the fruits of such a big free-agency score, and now their future is uncertain. In many ways, though, the team lived a murky in-between life, even with the two superstars who came to them four years ago.Only three weeks ago, Irving was lauding the Nets’ cohesion. Reporters had asked him what would keep the Nets from struggling after Durant’s injury the way they did last year when Durant was out.“I’m consistently in the lineup, that helps,” Irving said. He said the team didn’t have anyone who was “halfway in” and added: “And there’s just a primary focus on the big picture here.”Irving seemed to be taking a shot at James Harden, who spent about a year with the Nets before asking for a trade.The Nets acquired Harden from Houston through a four-team trade in January 2021 as part of their efforts to make the Durant and Irving experiment work. They gave up a king’s ransom to do it: The package included three first-round picks, four pick swaps and Jarrett Allen, a talented young center who has found success, including an All-Star selection, in Cleveland.James Harden arrived in a four-team trade in 2021, but he ended up playing only 80 regular-season games with the Nets.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAt first, the trade seemed like a no-brainer. They were all perennial All-Stars. Durant and Harden had won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. Durant and Irving had won championships. Who could beat this team? At least one article declared that they might be the greatest basketball team ever assembled.They took the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks to seven games in the conference semifinals in 2021 and seemed poised for domination in the 2021-22 season.But Irving barely played in the 2021-22 season because of his decision not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Harden seemed irritated with Irving’s inconsistent availability, and once joked that he would inoculate Irving himself.But in an interview with FoxSports.com in December, Harden mentioned two other reasons that made his time in Brooklyn difficult: He was never fully healthy, and he struggled with the organization.“It was just, there was no structure,” Harden said. “And even superstars, they need structure. That’s what allows us to be the best players and leaders for our respective organizations.”The Nets traded Harden in February 2022, and got back Ben Simmons, who, in his 37 games for the Nets, has struggled to contribute.The Harden experiment had failed, and Irving was available only some of the time for most of the season. New York City’s private-sector vaccine mandate made him ineligible for home games until it was lifted, and the Nets did not let Irving play part time until they relented at midseason. The Boston Celtics swept the Nets out of the first round of the 2022 playoffs.There was some irony to the Nets’ being eliminated by the Celtics. In 2013, the Nets gave up five players, three first-round picks and the option to swap another first-round pick for four players, including Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. Their Nets teams didn’t make it past the conference semifinals, either.The Nets had made a big bet on stars soon after moving to Brooklyn, making a trade with Boston for Kevin Garnett, right, and Paul Pierce. Those teams didn’t make it past the second round, either.Jason Szenes/European Pressphoto AgencyAfter losing to the Celtics in 2022, Irving overestimated his power within the organization.“When I say I’m here with Kev, I think that really entails us managing this franchise together alongside Joe and Sean,” Irving said, referring to the team owner Joe Tsai and General Manager Sean Marks.Marks was asked later if the Nets were committed to Irving.“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,” Marks said. “That goes not only for Kyrie but for everybody here.”The chaos was all too much for Durant, who asked for a trade in June and was given permission to seek one, but couldn’t find one to which the Nets would agree. He returned to the Nets, ready to move on.Where Durant stands now is uncertain. He expected to be competing for championships. It’s possible that once he’s healthy he will lead the Nets to a strong finish this season. But it’s also fair to wonder, as teams around the league surely are, if Durant will try again to be traded.If the Nets let it happen this time, it will fully end another star-laden era that never really got off the ground. More

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      NBA Christmas Day Games 2022: What to Know

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      The N.B.A. brings out its stars on Christmas. This year, there will be some new rivalries, too.The N.B.A. showcases its stars on Christmas Day, and this year there will be some big names to watch, like LeBron James, Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid.There will also be a new face in the mix (Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant is playing on the holiday for the first time) and a familiar one missing (Golden State’s Stephen Curry is out injured).In each of the five games, there is something to look forward to, from young players trying to make their mark to older foes avenging playoff losses.Here’s what you need to know.All times are Eastern, and all games will air on ABC and ESPN. The statistics were current entering Friday night’s games.Philadelphia 76ers at Knicks, noonJames Harden missed several games for the Sixers with an injury, but he’s back and helping them stack up wins.Matt Slocum/Associated PressAfter rocky starts, these teams are finally clicking. The Knicks surged up the Eastern Conference standings on the strength of a recent winning streak, while Philadelphia was compiling a streak of its own.They met on Nov. 4, with the Knicks winning, but Philadelphia didn’t have its two best players: center Joel Embiid and guard James Harden. That makes Sunday’s game the teams’ first true matchup. The Knicks have played on Christmas more often than any other team, but this is the first time they will have Jalen Brunson, their big free-agent signing of the off-season.Brunson, a guard who spent his first four seasons in Dallas, leads the Knicks in assists and is the team’s second-best scorer, behind forward Julius Randle. For the first quarter of the season, the Knicks struggled to string together wins. But then December hit, and they found their stride.That’s when fortunes improved for the Sixers, too. Harden had missed more than a dozen games with a foot injury but returned this month to produce several impressive games with double-digit assist totals. The Knicks will, of course, have to watch out for Embiid as well. Last month, in a game against the Utah Jazz, he had this wild stat line: 59 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists and 7 blocks.Los Angeles Lakers at Dallas Mavericks, 2:30 p.m.Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Doncic is in his fifth N.B.A. season but has already been named to the All-Star team three times.Emil Lippe/Associated PressFans can seemingly always count on seeing the Lakers on Christmas — this is the 24th year in a row — but nothing else about the team has been that consistent.Even as LeBron James, who will turn 38 on Friday, continues to defy reason with his youthful play, minor injuries keep tugging him to the bench. Then there’s the major injury to center Anthony Davis, who is out indefinitely with a sore right foot. Other ailments have rippled through the roster, and the Lakers’ sub-.500 record reflects that. But it also reflects an aging team that got off to a terrible start (0-5) and hasn’t settled into a high-performing rhythm since then.All of that is to say: The Lakers have been a little bit all over the place.Dallas has been, too. Luka Doncic is playing and scoring more than last season, but the Mavericks are losing to bad teams right after beating good ones. The Lakers could fall into either category on Sunday. At the very least, it should be a fun game, with Doncic and James battling to see who can put on the best show. They are both capable of making even the earliest risers hold off on a midday nap.Milwaukee Bucks at Boston Celtics, 5 p.m.Jayson Tatum led the Celtics to the N.B.A. finals last season and has followed that up with high-scoring play this season.David Butler II/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBoston’s Jayson Tatum has responded to his disappointing appearance in the N.B.A. finals last season in the best way: by playing better than ever before. He’s leading the league in minutes per game (37.2), and he’s putting them to good use, averaging a career-best 30.6 points per game by making about half of his shots.The Celtics will face a Bucks team with a not-so-shabby star of its own in Giannis Antetokounmpo. Last season ended in playoff disappointment for him, too, with Milwaukee falling to Boston in seven games in the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Sunday will be his first chance for a little revenge.The Bucks and the Celtics are jockeying for first place in the East, though they are fighting with different strengths. Boston has the league’s second-best offense, while Milwaukee has the third-best defense. The postseason is still a ways off, but it would be a surprise not to see one of these teams in the N.B.A. finals. Their Christmas matchup should help each team see what it needs to work on to make sure it’s the one playing for a title.Memphis Grizzlies at Golden State, 8 p.m.Ja Morant has made the Grizzlies one of the most exciting teams to watch in recent years. Brandon Dill/Associated PressNo one can argue that the Grizzlies haven’t earned this, their Christmas debut.Point guard Ja Morant is the speedy, soaring, confident heart of the team, but Memphis is more than its brightest star — and Morant would be the first to say so. He’s averaging a career-best 7.8 assists per game as he and his teammates keep the Grizzlies near the top of a tightly contested Western Conference.They finished last season as the No. 2 seed in the West and could have made a run to the conference finals if Golden State (and injuries) hadn’t gotten in their way in the second round. Sunday will be the teams’ first meeting since then.Both teams have dealt with their share of injuries this season, but Golden State has an especially big one: Stephen Curry has been out since he hurt his shoulder against Indiana on Dec. 14, and it’s not clear when he will return.Golden State is currently ranked in the bottom half of the West, but the intensity of last season’s playoff series with Memphis should carry over and make Sunday’s game a good contest nonetheless.Phoenix Suns at Denver Nuggets, 10:30 p.m.Denver’s Nikola Jokic won the Most Valuable Player Award the past two seasons.Kevin C. Cox/Getty ImagesThe last game on a long day of basketball is easy to overlook. But Denver’s Nikola Jokic is sure to make at least one pass that will make staying up late worth it. That’s kind of his thing: One minute he has the ball, and then the next his teammate on the other side of the court does, and no one is quite sure how it happened. The Suns are a top-10 defensive team, but some things just can’t be stopped.Phoenix is also the league’s best on offense, which could be a challenge for the Nuggets, who are among the N.B.A.’s worst on defense. Suns guard Chris Paul is one of the best ever at getting the ball to his teammates. Paul led the league in assists last season, his fifth time doing so, and is averaging about nine per game this season.If this game’s late start isn’t a deal-breaker, it should be a nice chance to see some excellent passing and skilled shooters making good on the assist. More