Los Angeles Lakers

Subterms

    Latest story

    175 Shares111 Views

    Chelsea owner Todd Boehly in talks to buy 169-year-old UK newspaper in £550m deal

    by

    TODD BOEHLY is in talks to buy The Daily Telegraph.The Chelsea co-owner, 51, could help to fund Dovid Efune’s bid to acquire the UK Newspaper.Todd Boehly is interested in acquiring the TelegraphCredit: AlamyDovid Efune has been trying to strike a deal to buy the UK newspaperCredit: GettyEfune, 39, already owns The New York Sun and is looking to add the Telegraph to his portfolio.He has been in exclusive talks for nearly two months to buy the newspaper, but this period of exclusivity is set to end in the coming days.The Telegraph’s current ownership group, headed by Jeff Zucker, is said to be coveting at least £550million ($700m).According to the Financial Times, Boehly could step in to help fund Efune’s bid.READ MORE IN FOOTBALLShould Efune drop out of the running, however, it’s said that Boehly could try to buy the Telegraph outright.The American is already a familiar name in the UK having completed a £4.25bn ($5.4bn) deal to buy Chelsea alongside Behdad Eghbali in 2022.As of the end of 2023, the Telegraph possessed more than one million subscribers.Zucker is chief executive of the RedBird IMI group, which took control of the Telegraph, as well as sister publication The Spectator, last December having paid off debts of its previous owners the Barclay family.Most read in FootballBEST FREE BET SIGN UP OFFERS FOR UK BOOKMAKERSRedBird IMI were quickly then forced to take bids for both titles by the UK government, however, due to their Abu Dhabi-backing.They have agreed a £100m ($127m) deal with British billionaire Paul Marshall to sell The Spectator.Angry Chelsea fan slams Todd Boehly’s transfer policy and claims no Blues supporters are happy with his running of the ‘unrecognisable’ clubWhile Efune and now Boehly are exploring a deal to acquire The Telegraph.Boehly has several other business interests in sport aside from Chelsea.He owns 20 per cent of MLB franchise the Los Angeles Dodgers, while he and Mark Walter acquired 27 per cent of NBA giants the Los Angeles Lakers in 2021.The businessman also possesses a stake in the Los Angeles Sparks WNBA franchise, while in June 2023 Boehly’s BlueCo bought Ligue 1 side Strasbourg for around £65m ($83m).In the summer it was reported that Boehly and Eghbali were at loggerheads and wanted to buy each other out at Chelsea.But since then it has been claimed that the rift between the two has healed somewhat.Boehly co-owns Chelsea alongside Behdad EghbaliCredit: Getty More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Basket

      Frank Selvy, 91, Dies; Scored 100 Points in a College Basketball Game

      by

      The feat, a collegiate record, came in 1954 in South Carolina. As a pro, he missed a shot that would have given the Los Angeles Lakers a championship.All eyes were on Frank Selvy when his basketball team from Furman University took on a fellow South Carolina school, Newberry College, on Feb. 13, 1954.Selvy, a 6-foot-3 guard, was the top scorer in college basketball for a second season, and his family and neighbors made the 250-mile journey from Kentucky to watch him play, joining 4,000 others in the stands in Greenville, S.C., home of Furman’s Paladins, for “Frank Selvy Night.” It would be the first college basketball game televised live in South Carolina.A mismatch loomed. Furman was a Division I team, while Newberry, a small college about 65 miles southeast of Greenville, was Division II, so Furman’s coach figured it was a perfect time to showcase Selvy’s jump shots and hooks. He instructed the team to set Selvy up for a shot whenever it had the ball.Selvy, who was nearing the end of his college career, did not disappoint. He scored a remarkable 100 points against Newberry, setting a single-game record for a Division I player.He died on Tuesday at his home in Simpsonville, S.C., in Greenville County, in the northwest part of the state, according to an announcement by Furman. He was 91.Selvy was an All-American in college and became a two-time All-Star guard in the National Basketball Association, but he was probably remembered most for that winter night in 1954. In an era before the 3-point shot, Selvy scored 41 field goals on 66 shots together with 18 free throws.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Basket

      LeBron James Faces the Basketball World He Helped to Create

      by

      James is the sport’s global ambassador, and at the Olympics, he is playing in front of — and against — people who grew up dreaming of seeing him in person.LeBron James lowered himself into a cold tub the size of a large Jacuzzi at a practice facility at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas last month.He had just finished a session with the U.S. men’s basketball team ahead of his first Olympics in 12 years. As the icy water got to work on his 39-year-old muscles, he thought about the first time he ever crossed the Atlantic Ocean.“I was, like, super intimidated and super scared to just be out of the country,” James said.He was 15 and had joined a group of basketball players from Ohio for a trip to Italy. They stayed with local families and did some sightseeing. He smiled at the memories, fuzzy as they were.He had been hesitant to go, but his high school coach, Dru Joyce II, recalled in an interview telling James he needed to “see how big the world was.”In the decades since, the world has changed, and so has James.At the Paris Games, he is playing in front of — and against — people from around the globe who grew up dreaming of one day seeing him in person. During James’s two decades in the National Basketball Association, the sport’s popularity has exploded internationally. A fascination that began with greats like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant has been supercharged during the James era. Because of advances in technology and lucrative media rights deals, teenagers in countries like the Philippines, Uganda and Brazil can easily watch his games. His was the best-selling N.B.A. jersey in the world last year.Now, far removed from the teenager who was frightened to leave the country, James is basketball’s global ambassador, his presence marketing the game better than anything else. On an Olympic roster replete with All-Stars, James is the unquestioned star as the team prepares for its quarterfinal matchup against Brazil on Tuesday. His otherworldly talent, unique personal story and career longevity have meant that fans around the world have spent 22 years voraciously consuming content about him. Some of them love the game because of him. Some don’t love the game, they just love James.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Basket

      Before LeBron and Bronny, These Fathers and Sons Made Sports History

      by

      The Los Angeles Lakers are poised to have the first father-son N.B.A. duo in league history. But other dads and sons have played pro sports together as well.When the Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James, 19, in the second round of the N.B.A. draft on Thursday night, the team set up an intriguing story line. Next season, he could play in the same lineup as his father, the 39-year-old superstar LeBron James.While there have been many great parent-child combos in sports history — Bobby and Barry Bonds in baseball; Peter and Kasper Schmeichel in soccer; Pamela, JaVale and Imani McGee in basketball — seldom do they play at the same time, much less on the same team.But at least on a few other occasions, the stars have aligned to make it possible.The Ageless Gordie Howe and SonsGordie Howe retired from hockey at age 43 after an illustrious career. But when his sons Mark and Marty joined the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association three seasons later, he could not resist.“They knew my greatest wish has always been to play pro hockey with my sons,” he said, “and when they asked me, ‘Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘Hell, yes.’”His return proved not to be a brief cameo. Astonishingly, he played with his sons for seven seasons, moving on to the New England Whalers, who joined the N.H.L. for the 1979-80 season as the Hartford Whalers. Howe Sr. was skating on major league ice at 51.He played 80 games with the Whalers in his final season, scoring 15 goals before finally hanging up his skates. “I think I have another half-year in me,” he declared at the announcement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Tennis

      GOATs Are Everywhere in Sports. So What Really Defines Greatness?

      by

      Athletes from Tom Brady to Serena Williams to LeBron James have all been tabbed the Greatest of All Time. Faced with the term’s pervasive use, our columnist considers how sports heroes become transcendent.If you are reading this column, I have great news: You’re the GOAT!That’s right: Among those who have happened upon this space, I deem you the Greatest Reader of All Time.Then again, if you’re LeBron James, or Serena Williams, or Nikola Jokic — with that sparkling N.B.A. championship ring — well, you already know you’re the GOAT. Everyone has been saying so.“Bahhh, bahhh, bahhh,” goes the bleating of a goat. It’s also the sound made by James’s Los Angeles Lakers teammates when he walks into the locker room. GOAT hosannas are practically the soundtrack of his life.Driven by its pervasive usage around sports, five years ago the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster entered the term GOAT in the dictionary as an acronym and a noun.LeBron James is considered by many to be the GOAT in men’s basketball.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesDefining the term as “the most accomplished or successful individual in the history of a particular sport or category of performance or activity,” a Merriam-Webster editor nodded to the pervasive use of Tom Brady’s name along with GOAT in a popular search engine as an example of why the acronym had become dictionary official.Yeah, I know — this GOAT thing, it’s a little confusing. To be the greatest implies singularity, no? But now there are GOATs everywhere we turn.Even worse than the acronym’s overuse is its doltish simplicity. There’s not enough nuance. Too much emphasis on outright winning, not enough on overcoming.What are our options here? Maybe we should ban the use of the term outright in sports, following the lead of Lake Superior State University, which cheekily ranked the hazy, lazy acronym No. 1 on its 2023 list of banished words.“The many nominators didn’t have to be physicists or grammarians to determine the literal impossibility and technical vagueness of this wannabe superlative,” read a statement from the university.Banning doesn’t quite seem like a possibility, however — not when a word has bored a hole this deep into our collective consciousness.No doubt, being a goat isn’t what it used to be. In sports, it was once a terrible insult, a term of shame hung on athletes who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Greg Norman, otherwise known as the Shark, was a goat for coughing up a six-stroke lead in the final round of the 1996 Masters, a tournament he lost by five strokes.Before Norman, there was the Boston Red Sox’ grounder-through-the legs-at-the-worst-possible-World-Series-moment goat, Bill Buckner.Need I say more?According to a Merriam-Webster editor, online searches for Tom Brady’s name and GOAT prompted the addition of the acronym to the dictionary in 2018.Elise Amendola/Associated PressMuhammad Ali is widely credited with first injecting the Greatest of All Time into the mix. When he went by Cassius Clay in the early 1960s, he recorded a comedy album anchored by the title poem, “I Am the Greatest.”After his upset win over George Foreman in 1974, he added a flourish, admonishing his doubters and critics, and reminding them of his status: “I told you I am still the greatest of all times!”But was it really Ali who came up with this particular egotistic flourish?Some say GOAT’s origins actually spring from a flamboyant, blond-tressed wrestler, George Wagner, who was known as Gorgeous George and who in the 1940s and ’50s earned lavish paydays by turning trash talk into fine art.In a precursor to W.W.E.-style braggadocio, Gorgeous George once claimed before a big fight that if he lost, he would “crawl across the ring and cut my hair off!” He added, “But that’s not going to happen, because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world.”Ali said he had learned a good chunk of his boastfulness from Gorgeous George.“A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth,” the wrestler is said to have told Ali after a chance meeting. “So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.”This week marks the moment when sport’s most legitimate GOAT talk hovers over tennis and an event its organizers not-so-humbly call the Championships.Wimbledon starts Monday. The men’s favorite, Novak Djokovic, has 23 Grand Slam tournament titles, one short of Margaret Court’s record of 24. If he wins this year, his wildly devoted fan base will confidently proclaim the Serb’s GOAT status.That will drive fans of Rafael Nadal, who is stuck at 22 major titles, to distraction. They will argue that their idol would have won 25 major titles (or more) by now, if not for injuries.Then Roger Federer devotees will wade in. He had losing records against both Nadal and Djokovic. But, by goodness, he’s Roger Federer, fine linen with a forehand with 20 Slams and a raft of epic final-round battles to his name.Not so fast, Serena Williams adherents will remind. Not only does she have 23 Grand Slam titles — including one earned while she was pregnant — Williams braved playing in a mostly white sport and bent it to her will. Besides, she’s as much a cultural icon as an athlete. Can any male player say that?Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam titles in her career, bolstering her claim to being the GOAT of tennis.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThen there are the old-school partisans of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King. Stop the unfairness, they will shout. No more comparing superlative athletes from vastly different eras.Time has changed everything in every sport — better equipment, better training methods, new rules — so how can we reliably compare? Before McEnroe lost to Borg in the 1980 Wimbledon final, neither had the benefit of sleeping, as Djokovic reportedly does, in a performance-enhancing hypobaric chamber.On and on the argument will go.That’s the craziness of it. The foolishness and the fun of it.Who’s the GOAT?Well, to be honest, I’ve got four. Willie Mays. Joe Montana. Williams. Federer.I can remember each for their sublime victories, of course. But also their stumbles. A 42-year-old Mays lost in the outfield. A fragile Montana in his twilight, playing not for San Francisco but Kansas City.I was on hand to see Williams struggle and come up short as she chased that elusive last Slam. I sat feet from Federer as he held two match points against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final of 2019. Then the Swiss crumbled in defeat.“For now it hurts, and it should — every loss hurts at Wimbledon,” Federer said at the post-match news conference. But, he added, he would persevere. “I don’t want to be depressed about actually an amazing tennis match.”No one escapes disappointment and frailty. But if we do it right, we soldier on.You know what that means? It means all of us can be GOATs!Bleat on, my friends. Bleat on! More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Basket

      NBA Quiz: Where Is the Pass Going?

      by

      Few aspects of basketball capture the joy of the game like great passes. The most exciting ones require communication, improvisation and a little luck. This year’s N.B.A. finals will feature one of the sport’s best at getting the ball to his teammates: Denver’s Nikola Jokic. Can you see the court like the pros? Try to […] More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Basket

      The Lakers Have Options to Win With LeBron James

      by

      The Lakers can get back to the N.B.A. finals, but with James’s career almost over, some of the team’s possible strategies may take too long.The day after the Los Angeles Lakers’ season ended in a sweep, General Manager Rob Pelinka told reporters that the team intended to “keep our core of young guys together.”This quote did not escape the notice of Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, whom the Lakers drafted in 2017.“Heard that before,” Kuzma wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, adding four crying emojis to the post.Kuzma spent his first N.B.A. season with the Lakers, playing alongside the lottery picks Lonzo Ball, Julius Randle and Brandon Ingram, as well as a number of other young players who went on to play important roles on other teams.All of them were shipped out or let go in service of acquiring star players who the Lakers hoped could deliver immediate championships. In July 2019, after the Lakers had missed the playoffs, Kuzma survived the Anthony Davis trade, which sent Ball, Ingram and Josh Hart to the New Orleans Pelicans for Davis. The Lakers won a championship the next season. But a year later, after losing in the first round of the playoffs, the Lakers traded Kuzma to Washington as part of a deal for Russell Westbrook, hoping he could help them win their next championship.Anthony Davis helped the Lakers win a championship during his first season in Los Angeles, but the trade to acquire him cost the team several young players.Harry How/Getty ImagesHeading into this off-season, the Lakers are confronted with the question of whether they can or should be patient. On one hand, they were just swept in the Western Conference finals by a Denver team that showed how steady building can pay off. On the other hand, the Lakers are driven by LeBron James, 38, who wants to win now.It is a tension that will tug at the Lakers as they decide what’s next.“We’re incredibly proud of this group, obviously, to get to the Western Conference finals,” Pelinka said Tuesday at a season-ending news conference where he said the team’s goal was always to work toward a championship. “After the trade deadline we had one of the top records in the league. Keeping that continuity is going to be very important. We ultimately got knocked out by a team that has great continuity.”The Lakers have had a lot of turnover in recent years, but their performance this year showed that they might have a foundation on which to build. Darvin Ham, their first-year head coach, began to find rotations that worked, which helped the Lakers go from the worst record in the N.B.A. to the conference finals.“It’s just been a hell of a year,” Ham said. He mentioned having the support of Pelinka and the Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, then added: “To go through some of those tough times early, you know, we don’t get that support, we probably don’t make it to this point.”Their roster has promise. After the trade deadline, the Lakers competed well, though they had little time to jell. Guard Austin Reaves was a great fit beside James and Davis, and Rui Hachimura, acquired via trade in January, provided needed offensive bursts. Dennis Schröder was critical defensively. Lonnie Walker, Jarred Vanderbilt and D’Angelo Russell also had moments of success in the postseason. Walker, for example, saved the Lakers with a 15-point fourth quarter against Golden State in Game 4 of the second round.Guard Austin Reaves, left, and forward Rui Hachimura, right, are two of the most promising young players on the Lakers.Harry How/Getty ImagesThe Lakers were not built around youth this season, so it takes a little guessing to figure out what Pelinka means by the team’s “young core.” But Reaves is likely a key part of that.Reaves and Hachimura are restricted free agents this year; Russell, Walker and Schröder are unrestricted free agents.“We don’t know what team we have next year,” Davis said. “But whatever it is, whoever we have coming to training camp with the mind-set of building that chemistry, building that foundation, me and LeBron setting the tone, trying to get back here and further.”Because of the little time they have spent together, it’s hard to say how much further they could get.When James joined the Lakers as a free agent in 2018, some of his teammates were closer to his oldest son’s age than his. He said he knew being part of that team would require patience, and he said he was prepared to wait. But it quickly became clear he didn’t enjoy the interim.The Lakers missed the playoffs that 2018-19 season, in part because of serious injuries to James and Ball. Midway through the season, James began hinting that he wanted the Lakers to get Davis from the Pelicans. That summer, the Lakers completed the trade.“Yeah,” James told The Los Angeles Times when asked if he was glad he wouldn’t have to be patient anymore. “Because I was patient last year, and you see where it got me.”He showed a bit of that same impatience on Monday after the Nuggets clinched their series, saying he doesn’t “play for anything besides winning championships at this point in my career.”James hinted at retirement after 20 seasons.James outscored everyone in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, even though he was the oldest player in the game. He had 40 points.Ashley Landis/Associated Press“We’ll see what happens going forward,” James said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to think about, to be honest. I’ve got a lot to think about, to be honest. Just for me personally, going forward with the game of basketball, I’ve got a lot to think about.”Later, he explicitly told ESPN and Bleacher Report that he was considering retiring.“LeBron has given as much to the game of basketball as anyone that’s ever played,” Pelinka said. “When you do that you earn a right to decide whether you’re going to give more.”Some saw James’s remarks as a sign that he was worn out from the past four months, when he gave a herculean effort to play through a torn tendon in his foot, or that perhaps his friend Carmelo Anthony announcing his retirement this week made him wonder if he should, too.It was also possible he was trying to pressure the Lakers to get him a roster that could win a championship next year — perhaps by finding a way to acquire his former teammate Kyrie Irving, a controversy-plagued point guard who attended Game 4 of the Western Conference finals, despite restrictive new salary cap rules. Irving is phenomenally talented, but he has struggled to make a difference on teams since he helped James win a championship in Cleveland in 2016.The Lakers aren’t as used to delayed gratification as most other teams. The wait between acquiring a major star to win and winning has not taken long when it has worked.The Lakers drafted Magic Johnson with the No. 1 overall pick in 1979 and won a championship his rookie season, then four more over the next decade.It took a few years longer for the payoff from their key signings in the summer of 1996 — Shaquille O’Neal (free agent) and Kobe Bryant (post-draft deal) — but they never missed the playoffs before winning three championships in a row.The Lakers owner Jeanie Buss stands next to a row of the team’s championship trophies. The Lakers have won 17 titles.Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesThey added Pau Gasol to Bryant’s team in February 2008, lost in the N.B.A. finals four months later, then won back-to-back championships.And Davis, like Johnson, helped the Lakers win a championship right away. It was only James’s second year in Los Angeles.Conversely, the Nuggets have spent years constructing this team.They waited while their point guard Jamal Murray tackled the long recovery that comes with an anterior cruciate ligament tear. Murray’s injury came in April 2021, after the Nuggets had built a roster that seemed capable of winning a championship. His recovery has delayed that timeline.They could afford to wait since their top star, Nikola Jokic, is still in his 20s.The reward for their patience is a team that has looked serene in challenging moments, whose players mesh with each other completely. This season’s newcomers understood the culture right away.But James is 10 years older than Jokic, and that provides a unique challenge. No star has ever played as well as he has at his age. He may not be at his own peak, but he is still one of the best players in the game. The night Denver ended his season, he had 40 points — more than anyone on either team.James doesn’t want to wait, but quick fixes don’t always work; see the trade for Westbrook that sent Kuzma to Washington. The Lakers missed the playoffs in Westbrook’s first season, then traded him away this season for young players who helped but couldn’t win it all.Based on what the Lakers established this year, they would not be starting from scratch if they chose to stay on their current path. But it could take more time than James has left. More

    • 113 Shares159 Views

      in Basket

      Denver Nuggets Sweep Lakers to Head to NBA Finals

      by

      Denver dominated in the regular season but still had not been favored to make it to the championship round.LOS ANGELES — As the Denver Nuggets’ historic celebration began, LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers’ star forward, walked off his home court, his face expressionless.On Monday night, the Nuggets stamped out the final gasps from the Lakers, who had kept their season alive for weeks after it was presumed finished. Even after the final buzzer, some of Denver’s players looked as if they couldn’t believe the series was over and that they had actually done it.The Nuggets are going to the N.B.A. finals for the first time in franchise history after completing a four-game sweep of the Lakers in the Western Conference finals with a 113-111 win on Monday.Denver will face the winner of the Eastern Conference finals, in which the Miami Heat have a 3-0 series lead over the Boston Celtics. Game 4 in the East is Tuesday in Miami.Nuggets center Nikola Jokic was named the most valuable player of the Western Conference finals. He smiled warmly as he held his trophy and his teammates surrounded him on the court and patted his head. He had 30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists on Monday.“Even when you guard him for one of the best possessions that you think you can guard him, he puts the ball behind his head Larry Bird style and shoots it 50 feet in the air and it goes in,” James said, then he smiled wryly. “Like he did four or five times this series.” He added, as he took off his hat and tipped it: “So you do like this to him.”Jokic, left, was averaging a triple-double in the postseason and had another one in Game 4, with 30 points, 14 rebounds and 13 assists.Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConDenver had not been to the N.B.A. finals in its 47 seasons in the league. Now the longest drought belongs to the Sacramento Kings, who have not been since 1951, when they were known as the Rochester Royals. The Pelicans, Timberwolves, Clippers, Grizzlies and Hornets have never been.“I’m really happy for the guys and for the organization and just how we fight through,” Jokic said. “I remember the days when nobody was in our — you could hear the ball bounce on the floor and there was no fans.”For the Nuggets, the win on Monday culminated a yearslong process in which their core players grew together, weathered challenging injuries and faced questions about their ability to even compete in the West. Jokic won the league’s M.V.P. Award twice, but could get to the conference finals only once.Denver lost the star guard Jamal Murray in April 2021, when he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. Nuggets Coach Michael Malone said the day after the injury Murray tearfully asked if the Nuggets would trade him, calling himself “damaged goods.”“I hugged him,” Malone said. “I said: ‘Hell no, you’re ours. We love you. We’re going to help you get back, and you’re going to be a better player for it.’”Murray missed the rest of that season and all of 2021-22. In this year’s playoffs, Denver’s patience paid off.Jamal Murray averaged 35 points in the first three games on hallowed shooting splits, exceeding 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free-throw line.Allen Berezovsky/Getty ImagesMurray tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in April 2021 but returned to form this season, especially in the playoffs. He had 25 points and 5 assists Monday.Gary A. Vasquez/Usa Today Sports, via Reuters ConMurray began looking like the player he was before the injury and Jokic continued playing at an elite level, perfectly complemented by Denver’s cast of talented role players.The Nuggets rose to first in the West in December and never fell out of the top spot. In the playoffs, they beat the Timberwolves, 4-1, in the first round and the Phoenix Suns, 4-2 in the second round. Despite Denver’s dominance all season, oddsmakers did not favor them to win the championship. The Nuggets embraced that.“We’re the underdogs,” guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope said. “We don’t get enough credit for what we do.” He continued: “Not being talked about a lot, we take that personal. We just use that energy, continue to prove everybody wrong.”Even after the first two rounds, some thought the Lakers were dangerous enough to be the team that finally upended the Nuggets.That confidence in the Lakers had developed only during the playoffs.For a while, the Lakers seemed doomed because of roster issues and injuries to their stars, James and Anthony Davis. They began the season with a 2-10 record. In December, when the Nuggets were solidifying their spot atop the West, the Lakers were in 13th.Guard Russell Westbrook, who struggled with the Lakers last season, still wasn’t fitting in and was pulled from the starting lineup after three games. Davis injured his foot on Dec. 16 against the Nuggets and missed 20 games while he recovered. Not long after Davis returned, James missed several games with a foot injury that some doctors he consulted said would require surgery.But changes at the trading deadline in February helped. The Lakers shipped out Westbrook and brought in role players — Jarred Vanderbilt, D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley. They had also traded for Rui Hachimura in January.They rose to seventh in the West by the end of the regular season, and beat Minnesota in overtime in the play-in tournament to secure the seventh seed for the playoffs. In the first round, they quieted a boisterous Memphis team, which had spent most of the season in the top three in the West, beating them, 4-2. Then they upset the defending champion Golden State Warriors, 4-2, dominating them in the clinching game of the second round.The Lakers’ LeBron James and Denver’s Aaron Gordon were called for technical fouls in the first half of Game 4 after they got tangled up. James had 31 first-half points.Ashley Landis/Associated PressAll the while, Darvin Ham, their first-year head coach, reminded them how few people expected them to even make the playoffs.But the Nuggets turned out to be a different type of opponent. They were more cohesive, less dramatic and stronger at center than Memphis and Golden State.“We competed every night,” Ham said. “We competed every game in this series. I just told the guys to take stock of what this meant, what this feeling feels like right now, what we went through in an entire season and what we had to do to get to this point.”In the Lakers’ first two series, their opponents sniped at them verbally, whether it was Grizzlies guard Dillon Brooks calling James, 38, old, or the Warriors accusing them of flopping for favorable calls. The Nuggets took a different approach, showing deference off the court until the very end.“I’m not going to say that I’m scared, but I’m worried,” Jokic said after Denver’s Game 3 win. “Because they have LeBron on the other side, and he is capable of doing everything.”James had looked more fallible in this series than he had in the past. He went 0 for 10 from 3-point range in the first two games, made costly mistakes late in Game 1 and drew ridicule for missing a dunk in Game 2. He had dragged the team through Davis’s postseason inconsistency so far, but the Nuggets wouldn’t let him do it again.Even when the Lakers’ Anthony Davis played well, he wasn’t the best big man on the court because of Jokic.Ashley Landis/Associated PressA few hours before Monday’s game, James was going through his pregame warm-up when a group of broadcast workers staged a rehearsal for the Western Conference championship trophy presentation on the court a few yards away. James said he used that as motivation.He scored 31 points in the first half, making all four of his first-quarter 3-point attempts.“It was scary,” Caldwell-Pope said. “We know who LeBron is.”James finished with 40 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists. On the game’s final play, James drove to the basket and tried to shoot a game-tying shot through a swarm of Nuggets. Murray was there, and as James gathered to shoot, Murray put both hands on the ball and didn’t let go.“I knew I had to be there,” Murray said.The clock expired and the Nuggets bench emptied in celebration.“It’s almost like shock a little bit,” Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon said. “You’re just, like, unsure, like, are you sure we don’t have more time on the clock? Are you sure we don’t have another quarter to play or another game to play? It’s just another chance at them winning? Then it’s like: ‘Oh. No. We won.’” More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in Basket

      Nikola Jokic Has Mastered the Art of Slowness

      by

      Providing unhurried but timely play, Jokic, the two-time most valuable player, has the Denver Nuggets on the cusp of the N.B.A. finals.LOS ANGELES — After watching Nikola Jokic repeatedly lumber down the court, hold a basketball above the defense like a freshly picked grapefruit, wheel, pause, and sling a tightrope pass that led a teammate to an open shot, a question came to mind.What is the best one-word descriptor for this guy, a player steadily distinguishing himself as unlike any in N.B.A. history, now on the verge of taking the Denver Nuggets to the finals?Is Jokic …Fundamental? Yeah, that partly hits the mark.Is Jokic …Efficient? Hmm, there’s more than a kernel of truth in that.Is he …Intelligent? That’s true, though it’s an assessment that comes with baggage. Jokic is white, and, yeah, he’s a physicist on the court, but so are LeBron James and a host of Black players who do not get nearly enough credit for their smarts.What about …Slow? Well, now we are on to something. Here we find his special sauce.It is the speed with which he plays, or, rather, the lack of it, that sets him apart in the fast-twitch N.B.A. Jokic, the two-time league most valuable player, could write an instructional book about the game he has come to master: Basketball and the Fine Art of Slowness.This particular faculty is not entirely about sprinting pace. Jokic can move fairly quickly in spurts. It is just as much qualitative. When he is on the court, no matter the circumstance, he seems to control time. He moves where he wants, when he wants, while every other player is slicing around the court in a frenzy.On Saturday night, as the Nuggets and Lakers starters gathered on the court at Crypto.com Arena before tipoff in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals, it seemed like every other player was jumping up and down or fiddling nervously with their uniform or hunting for someone to high-five.Jokic just stood at center court, focused, waiting. It brought to mind something Jeff Van Gundy, the former N.B.A. head coach who is now a television analyst for ESPN, told me before the game, describing the towering Serb. “He looks completely unruffled. Jokic is the epitome of the John Wooden quote, ‘Be quick, don’t hurry.’”“He’s an absolute marvel,” Van Gundy added.Wait, this guy, a marvel? Jokic is muscular but hardly ripped. He stands nearly 7 feet, weighs almost as much as a subzero refrigerator, and has arms that might as well be pterodactyl wings. He is 28, still in the middle of the prime years for physical prowess, but he might trip while trying to jump over the Sunday paper.And yet he dominates the N.B.A.He has been a presiding force in this season’s playoffs, his consistently high level of play matched only by Miami Heat guard Jimmy Butler. Seven triple-doubles in 14 games. Six games with more than 30 points. A 53-point masterpiece against Phoenix in the conference semifinals. Then he practically won Game 1 against the Lakers by himself.But as Game 3 of that series began on Saturday, Jokic struggled to find a rhythm. Uncharacteristically, he scuffled for a while, and was saddled by foul trouble. Then, with the Lakers briefly taking an 85-84 lead early in the fourth quarter and James beginning to recall his younger self, a switch went on inside Jokic.Suddenly, there it was, the whole arsenal. Deflections, rebounds and orbital jump shots. Scooping, angling passes. Jokic dribbled up the court, a commanding, surveying point guard. He methodically backed down a Lakers defender. Time seemed to grind to something near a standstill. Then Jokic spun, twirled, and sped briefly to the basket to knock in a soft layup as if it were a one-inch putt.This was Zen: Wait patiently, clear the mind, calm the body, see the opening, strike. That’s Jokic.When Jokic is on the court, no matter the circumstance, he seems to control time. Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via Reuters ConDenver pulled away, Jokic (and his sidekick Jamal Murray) in full flight. When Jokic catapulted in a 25-foot 3-pointer with about three minutes left, the Nuggets surged ahead by 10 points. Eventually they won, 119-108.How did he become such a master?Jokic turned pro 11 years ago in his native Serbia when he was a rawboned 17-year-old. His coach, Dejan Milojevic, now an assistant with the Golden State Warriors, recalls Jokic operating in those days with the same uncanny understanding. He moved without haste, at what Milojevic prefers to call “the speed optimum for Nikola.”What Jokic needed, at least at the start of his professional career, was the strength or stamina to prosper. His old coach claims that Jokic had to undergo a crash conditioning course because he couldn’t complete even two push-ups. Once he got in shape, the blossoming began.But getting in shape and being well coached can’t be the whole story. If so, there would be 1,000 players like Jokic.Is there something about how he is wired?“The way he tracks information around him, knowing where everybody is on the court, making perfectly timed passes all the time to open teammates, takes a special mental ability,” said Greg Appelbaum, director of the Human Performance Optimization Lab at U.C. San Diego, where scientists study athletes’ cognition.“Prospective inference” Appelbaum called Jokic’s capacity to stay one, two, and sometimes three steps ahead of the action on a 94-by-50-foot hardwood swath.Prospective what?An analogy can be found in a cheetah’s amplified ability to scan terrain and extrapolate the possible escape routes of prey. In sports, it’s the skill to predict the future movements of opponents and teammates, said Appelbaum, shortly after watching Denver’s Game 3 win. “It sure looked like Jokic did that tonight.”It did, indeed.Of course, no matter the cause of his mastery, none of it happens if Jokic takes himself off balance by rushing. That’s the foundation.Speed defines our society. Faster, faster, faster is the mantra — sometimes for the better and, as it is becoming increasingly clear, often for the worse. But watching Nikola Jokic provides an antidote: the enduring power of taking one’s time. More