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      Anthony Davis Is the Teammate LeBron James Has Been Waiting For

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarc Stein on basketballAnthony Davis Is the Teammate LeBron James Has Been Waiting ForJames, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar, has seemed happier and looser with Davis around. The duo have already won a championship together, but, somehow, seem to be getting better.Anthony Davis may be the best teammate LeBron James has ever had (no disrespect to Dwyane Wade).Credit…Matt Slocum/Associated PressFeb. 3, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETAnthony Davis started to say that he and LeBron James blend together as a basketball duo with the made-for-each-other properties of peanut butter and jelly. Then Davis caught himself.“I can’t be jelly,” Davis said.Referring to Dwyane Wade, James’s former All-Star running mate in Miami, Davis said, “D-Wade is jelly.”This was a quick but memorable chat we had at Barclays Center last season. Respectful of the bond and championships James shared with Wade on South Beach years earlier, when Wade was the one universally known as James’s most talented teammate ever, Davis searched for an adjacent metaphor that felt more appropriate.“Maybe we’re peanut butter and bananas,” Davis said, sounding unsure for one of the few times since he joined the Los Angeles Lakers.The conversation stays with me — and not only because Davis was so descriptive. I registered it as a measure of his contentment and belief, at an embryonic stage in his partnership with James, that they were already on course to become as dangerous a combo as they looked on paper.It also sticks in my head as the last time I successfully managed to break away from a pack of colleagues to secure some one-on-one time with a coveted subject, however brief, in an N.B.A. locker room after a game. Several of my fellow N.B.A. reporters and I refer to the practice as “sidling” — in tribute to a “Seinfeld” episode in which one of Elaine’s work colleagues, referred to as “a real sidler” named Lou, repeatedly managed to get close to her before she could detect him. In the current climate, such sidling is not possible because the news media’s access to locker rooms went away indefinitely last March because of the coronavirus pandemic.The usual wave of nostalgia I am prone to get swept up in duly hit me recently when I did the math and realized that one year had passed since that successful sidle in January 2020 — with no telling when the next opportunity will come. Yet there is some satisfaction knowing that my last locker-room sidle was such a good one, providing a handy window into the union that ranks as one of the few sure things in today’s N.B.A.Most teams have played at least 20 games, which is a traditional marker for front offices to assess their teams, but not this season. Not when game postponements and coronavirus-related lineup disruptions are so prevalent. Complicating evaluations further: Training camps were condensed, practice time and pregame shootarounds are scarce, and off-court bonding opportunities are drastically reduced.“I think it’s going to take a little bit longer to get a real sense, for any team in the league,” Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka said in a recent television interview with Spectrum SportsNet.What can be said, six weeks into such an uneven season, is that the Lakers remain on a tier unto themselves no matter what the standings say, thanks largely to their starry twosome of James and Davis.As good as the James-Davis pairing was in last year’s championship season, it may be even more potent this year.Credit…Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesThe Nets created the most ambitious assemblage of offensive talent in league history by trading for James Harden on Jan. 14 to play alongside Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Denver’s Nikola Jokic have made big men fashionable again by promptly establishing themselves as certifiable candidates for the Most Valuable Player Award with their performances in January. The Utah Jazz (with a recent 11-game winning streak) and the Los Angeles Clippers (with the league’s best record as of Tuesday morning at 16-5) have likewise made strong opening statements.Yet you wouldn’t put any of those teams on the Lakers’ level. You can’t. Not with the Nets looking so vulnerable defensively and depth-wise in support of their flammable trio. Not until Embiid can sustain his ridiculous near-triple-double production for a longer stretch. For Denver, Utah and the Kawhi Leonard-led Clippers in the West, a question nags at them all, even in prosperous times: What if James and Davis are getting better together?“They’re better than last year,” Sixers Coach Doc Rivers said last week, already treating the matter as decided.After leading the league in assists last season for the first time, James is trying something new: He’s on pace to shoot a career-best 40.9 percent from 3-point range and is attempting nearly seven 3s per game. James also has played each of the Lakers’ 22 games, squelching any notion that, at age 36, he would be skipping chunks of the regular season to preserve his body after the shortest off-season (72 days) in league history.The standards for Davis are so high after he won his first championship in October that his 22.3 points and 8.7 rebounds per game have actually generated criticism that he has started slowly, including from Davis himself. Maybe he won’t be the Lakers’ leading scorer ahead of James again, as he was last season, but Davis’s ability to play so many positions and cover so much of the floor remains the driving force behind the Lakers’ fearsome defense.The Lakers top the league in defensive efficiency, allowing just 104.8 points per 100 possessions, with the versatile and ultra-mobile Davis anchoring L.A.’s resistance. The myriad options he provides Lakers Coach Frank Vogel may be best illustrated by the way Davis memorably guarded Miami’s Jimmy Butler in Game 4 of the N.B.A. finals, then made a rare start at center in the clinching Game 6 victory when Vogel wanted a lineup that could play faster.With six new players on the roster, there are still issues to resolve before the playoffs. Vogel is smoothing out his rotation, and team chemistry will need more time to ferment to reach the levels of togetherness that steeled the Lakers during their stay inside the bubble at Walt Disney World last season. Montrezl Harrell and Dennis Schröder had bigger roles on their previous teams. Talen Horton-Tucker, like Alex Caruso before him, is an emerging role player. Questions abound about how Vogel can possibly find minutes for everyone.Davis was the Lakers’ leading scorer last season, helping ease the burden on James, who typically provides most of the offense on his team.Credit…Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressYet with James and Davis to lead the way, after they agreed to new mega contracts with the Lakers almost in tandem in early December, there are roughly 29 coaches who would trade problems with Vogel. The Lakers played in the Disney World bubble through Oct. 11, but hushed concerns about that very tight turnaround by winning their first 10 road games. Going 5-2 on a 15-day road trip that finally came to an end Tuesday, when the Lakers flew home from Atlanta, only figures to boost their resilience quotient.No James team will ever be devoid of drama, given the scrutiny James invites as an all-time great and how demanding he can be on teammates. Evidence is mounting, though, that James has never coexisted so comfortably with a co-star. Not even Wade.Age is presumably a factor. James is eight years older than Davis, secure in his legacy and at a point in his career when he needs more help than he would care to admit. But it also reflects supreme respect for Davis’s talents — how he is perfectly suited, as a two-way menace who looks ominously bigger than his listed height of 6-foot-10, to complement James’s all-court game.“If you saw their chemistry off the floor, it’s no wonder they’re the best duo in the N.B.A.,” Jared Dudley, the veteran Lakers forward, said of James and Davis.Davis tried to put it into words for me in Brooklyn a year ago. It’s one of the few things he hasn’t managed to pull off since forcing a trade to the Lakers.My opportunity to sidle over to his locker came while a pack of reporters had encircled James. I approached Davis, after covering him a fair bit in his New Orleans days, and told him his presence seemed to make James happier and looser.“He makes me happy,” Davis said.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeCleveland Cavaliers guard Collin Sexton, right, scored 42 points against the starry Nets on Jan. 20. Cleveland won in double overtime.Credit…David Richard/USA Today Sports, via ReutersYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Responses may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Stein: You can’t say that all of last season’s bubble triumphs have been undone — that’s hyperbole — but I understand the reaction. I don’t like the idea of crowds, either.My position from the start of the season was that, beyond the considerable safety concerns involved, it’s not even fair. Teams that can admit reduced crowds hold a competitive advantage over the teams whose local jurisdictions mandate that buildings stay empty.Utah has increased its capacity to about 3,900 spectators from 1,500 since you voiced these concerns, but none of this is new or exclusive to the Jazz. As noted here, Atlanta and Miami last week became the eighth and ninth teams to start playing in front of reduced crowds at home. On Tuesday, Phoenix made it 10 by announcing that it, too, would begin admitting up to 1,500 fans starting on Feb. 8. The N.B.A. is allowing each of its 30 teams to make the call on letting fans in or not if local laws permit indoor gatherings.I can admit, though, that I reacted as you did when I heard last week that momentum was building toward the staging of an All-Star Game in Atlanta that would require players who were selected to be there March 6-7. Flying a bunch of the league’s best players to one location for an exhibition game in the midst of a pandemic seems especially unwise and needlessly risky — and I would imagine that there are All-Stars who will be reluctant to go.If (when?) this substitute game comes together, admirable philanthropic pursuits supporting historically Black colleges and universities and Covid-19 relief efforts will be part of it, but I would have voted for restricting N.B.A. All-Star business in 2021 to All-Star voting only. Safety first.Q: Why do headline writers use “spoil” so often? It was used on many stories after Cleveland’s Collin Sexton had his career night against the Nets on Jan. 20. Doesn’t the use of this word imply that the win rightfully belonged to the Nets, and that the Cavaliers took something that wasn’t theirs? — Andy Moore (Pittsburgh)Stein: Questions about headlines are best answered by editors rather than writers, since writers typically don’t write the headlines that land on their stories. But I had to try to respond because the copy editor energy in your question was so good.The newsiest aspect of the game in question, for a broad audience, was the debut of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving as teammates. I don’t see it as sinister to assert that the Cavaliers spoiled the Nets’ hopes for a grandiose opening act for their new star trio.Habit is surely a factor here, too. Virtually every game in every sport has a favorite and an underdog, which feeds into the “spoil” concept. Perhaps most crucially, “spoil” is also a headline-friendly word because it’s short, which will always matter to newspaper copy editors dealing with limited headline spaces. I’ve done just enough copy-desk work over the years to understand that.Q: I’m curious to know if Amar’e Stoudemire is the first N.B.A. player or coach to observe Shabbat this seriously. Also: Is he is forfeiting salary for those days? — Andrew Esensten (Palo Alto, Calif.)Stein: In my 28 seasons covering the league, speaking strictly about players and coaches, Stoudemire’s insistence that he avoid work on Shabbat is certainly the strictest observance I have seen.Ben Falk, who worked in the front office in Portland and Philadelphia before beginning his excellent Cleaning The Glass website, had the blessing from both of those teams to put religion first from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, as chronicled in this Sports Illustrated article by Chris Ballard. Tamir Goodman played Division I college basketball at Towson University without playing on Shabbat — after turning down a scholarship offer from Maryland because it was impossible to secure that time off.Those, though, are the only basketball examples I can readily cite. It’s difficult to answer more definitively than that.I don’t want to diminish the significance of the Nets’ gesture to allow Stoudemire to be away from the team from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown every week for religious reasons, because it is a wonderful gesture. Yet there’s no denying that this would be much more challenging to work through with an active player or if Stoudemire was a more prominent member of the Nets’ coaching staff.Stoudemire is a player development assistant in his first season with the club. The Nets have several player-development coaches and a big staff in general. Mike D’Antoni, Ime Udoka and Jacque Vaughn are the three assistants who sit beside Coach Steve Nash during every Nets game.Stoudemire, in other words, does not have a role with the Nets in Year 1 that compels him to be with the team every second or to join the traveling party.Numbers GameD’Angelo Russell, third from left, and Karl-Anthony Towns, right, have played in only five games together since Russell was traded to Minnesota on Feb. 6, 2020.Credit…Andy Clayton-King/Associated Press2Only two players were averaging 100 touches per game as the N.B.A. moved into February: Denver’s Nikola Jokic (102.4) and Indiana’s Domantas Sabonis (100). They are both listed at 6-foot-11.29.3In his third season, Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks started 2 for 21 on 3-pointers and is shooting 29.3 percent from long range, which ranks 168th leaguewide. Doncic’s overall statistical production remains spectacular, and he creates numerous good looks from 3 for his teammates that aren’t being cashed in, but his 3-point shooting is cause for concern. He shot 32.7 percent on 3s as a rookie and 31.6 percent last season, struggles magnified by Dallas’s dearth of outside shooters after trading Seth Curry to Philadelphia and the team’s early woes. Injuries, coronavirus-related disruptions and a road-heavy schedule are all factors, but the Mavericks’ 8-13 start is one of the league’s most alarming through the season’s first six weeks.2-8While the Lakers thrive, the Heat were only 2-8 in the 10 games that Jimmy Butler missed while awaiting clearance to rejoin the team via the league’s health and safety protocols. Coming off the shortest off-season in league history at 72 days after last season’s trip to the N.B.A. finals against the Lakers, Miami (7-13) has played several games with a depleted roster and awoke Tuesday at No. 13 in the Eastern Conference.5Saturday is the first anniversary of Minnesota’s acquisition of D’Angelo Russell in a trade with Golden State. Russell and his close friend Karl-Anthony Towns have played together in only five games in that span because of injuries and the Timberwolves’ exclusion from the N.B.A. restart last summer.13Last Sunday was the 40th anniversary of the N.B.A.’s first international broadcast — 13 days after the game was actually played. On Jan. 31, 1981, Primarete Indipendente TV in Italy aired a Boston Celtics home victory over the Los Angeles Lakers from Jan. 18, 1981. This season, when opening night rosters featured 107 international players from 41 countries, Sky Italia will broadcast at least 10 N.B.A. games per week. There were only four international players in the league during the 1980-81 season.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Grief Comes Out of the Clear Blue’: The Death of Kobe, the Father

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn Pro Basketball‘Grief Comes Out of the Clear Blue’: The Death of Kobe, the FatherDiana Munson, the widow of the Yankees’ Thurman Munson, talks about raising children after the death of their celebrity father and her advice, as a mother, to Vanessa Bryant.Kobe Bryant with his wife, Vanessa Bryant, and their three older daughters, Gianna Maria Onore Bryant, Natalia Diamante Bryant and Bianka Bella Bryant, at his jersey retirement ceremony in 2017. The youngest, Capri Kobe Bryant, was born in 2019.Credit…Allen Berezovsky/Getty ImagesJan. 26, 2021Updated 6:07 p.m. ETMarc Stein is away this week.When the news broke on that terrible Sunday afternoon, the tears came, once again, in a flood from a reservoir that never runs dry.“I’m an Italian girl who gets emotional, maybe more than I should,” said the former Diana Dominick, who in marriage became Diana Munson.The moment when she heard Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash was destined to embed itself deep in the heart of Thurman Munson’s widow. Another tragedy from the air. Another famous sports star — along with eight others, including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna — instantly lost in the flames.Most of all, more young ones deprived of their father. And this time — even worse than it had been for her own children — Bryant’s children lost a sister, as well.Though it now feels so very long ago, it has been one year since the plume of smoke rose over Calabasas, Calif., about 30 miles west of Los Angeles. When the tragedy was still being absorbed, Diana Munson predicted she would always be able to pinpoint the time and place: at home with the television on. Just as so many other people — particularly Yankees fans of a certain age — could tell you, and as some have told her, exactly where they were on Aug. 2, 1979.That was the day her Thurman died at 32 while landing his small plane at the Akron-Canton Airport in his native Ohio. She never took offense when people brought her back to that moment. “They just really wanted to talk about the impact he’d had on their life,” she said.For a young sports journalist at the New York Post, Munson’s death meant back-page pandemonium, a departmentwide call to action. For the Yankees fan I had been growing up, it was the painful loss of the indispensable catcher and captain of two beloved World Series champions. Within the American sports culture of the late 1970s, Munson of the New York Yankees was every bit the name — if not the brand — that Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers was.More than 40 years later, the Bryant shocker was delivered to me as it was for so many millions — from a smartphone, while I was in line at a Macy’s checkout counter after a carefree roaming of the department store aisles. Remember those? That, too, seems like part of another life, considering all the Covid-19 casualties still being counted into the new year.Several days later, I met up with Diana Munson in a Manhattan hotel lounge before the 40th annual Thurman Munson Awards Dinner, an event that has raised more than $17 million for the benefit of people with disabilities. (The 41st dinner is scheduled, virtually, for Feb. 2 and will honor, among others Gio Urshela and Luke Voit of the Yankees.)I have come to know her as someone able to articulate complicated emotions. While I was visiting her home for a story on the 10th anniversary of Thurman’s death, Diana led me into his office, its contents untouched from the day he died, right down to the miniature model of a Cessna Citation on his desk. That was the plane that two men — a friend and a flight instructor — had escaped after being unable to free a paralyzed Munson from a smoking cockpit.So while Diana made sure to say that one “should never compare tragedies,” and that she couldn’t imagine the pain that Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s widow, was having to endure in losing a child, she couldn’t help but dwell on an obvious parallel. “Thurman learned to fly because he wanted to spend more time with his family during the season,” she said. “I read where Kobe used helicopters to get home so he could do things like pick up his kids from school.”A plaque dedicated to the memory of Yankees catcher Thurman Munson was viewed by his widow, Diana, and outfielder Bobby Murcer, during a ceremony at Yankee Stadium in 1980.Credit…Associated PressSo if she could offer any advice to Vanessa Bryant, it would have to be as a mother, one who knows that children cannot be shielded from the world, no matter how hard one tries.Tracy was 9, Kelly 7 and Michael 4 when their father died. Other children would, presumably without intent, “say hurtful things, upsetting things,” Diana said. She recalled the day one of her children came home in tears after being told that another child’s father had found a small piece of wreckage from Thurman’s plane in the woods around the airport and saved it as a souvenir.“My kids would be devastated by things like that, but they didn’t want to show emotion so they internalized it,” she said. “They had a time growing up where they had to figure it out for themselves.”She believed it was all made easier by being in Canton where Thurman had moved the family in 1978 from the New York suburbs, and where he was more townie than icon. In Los Angeles, Bryant will always be cast as an all-conquering superhero for his five N.B.A. titles, his explosive scoring and his 60-point finale in 2016, albeit on the often-overlooked sum of 50 shots.Abetted by the news media, the public invariably mythologizes its sports heroes, but in doing what we do, we typically overdo. In death, Bryant was hailed as an emergent champion of women’s basketball, as if there weren’t elements of self-interest — Gianna’s apparent love of the game and especially Bryant’s post-playing-career brand rehabilitation from a 2003 sexual assault allegation in Colorado — probably driving his passion. (His besieged accuser became unwilling to testify, and the charges were dropped.)What Diana Munson realized early on was that her children needed to know their father the way she did: as a complex man who survived his abusive father, and who was self-protectively gruff to the world at large but tender at home to the point of being the preferred parent to brush his daughters’ hair.She could predict that Bryant’s three surviving children, especially the two who were younger than 5 when he died, would have questions as they grew up and would deserve and demand more than a highlight reel. The young Michael Munson, having repeatedly studied video of Thurman’s mammoth home run that won Game 3 of the 1978 American League Championship Series against Kansas City, was moved to ask: “If my daddy was so strong, how come the other two men got out of the plane and he didn’t?”“Grief comes out of the clear blue,” is what Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, graciously advised Diana in a phone call decades ago. She was reminded of that days before my 1989 visit. She and Michael, then 14, went to see “Field of Dreams,” knowing only that it was a baseball flick, not a father-son story that would leave them sobbing in each other’s arms when the father’s ghost — in full catcher’s gear — materialized at the end to toss a few balls with his son.She knew then that they couldn’t live in the past if they expected to have a future. Vanessa Bryant touched on the same theme — generously for the hundreds of thousands in mourning over the past months — when she posted on Instagram recently: “One day you’re in the moment laughing and the next day you don’t feel like being alive. I want to say this for people struggling with grief and heartbreaking loss. Find your reason to live.”Diana Munson never remarried but her family grew, adding seven grandchildren. Tracy and Michael remain near her in the Canton area, while Kelly relocated, coincidently to Tampa, Fla., the Yankees’ winter home, which Diana visited shortly before the 2020 dinner. Out with the family one night in a restaurant, she ran into Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ owner. There were introductions all around and suddenly, thankfully, there was another moment to remember. But surely not to mourn.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThough Marc is away this week, you can still send in your questions via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.)Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      He Bonded With Kobe as a Competitor, Then as Another #GirlDad

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.Will the Harden Trade Work Out?The N.B.A. Wanted HerZach and Mackenly Randolph in the backyard of their home nearly a year after Kobe and Gigi Bryant have passed away.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexHe Bonded With Kobe as a Competitor, Then as Another #GirlDadA year after Kobe Bryant’s fatal crash, the former N.B.A. All-Star Zach Randolph and his daughter MacKenly, who played for Bryant’s girls’ basketball team, are still learning how to grieve.Zach and Mackenly Randolph in the backyard of their home nearly a year after Kobe and Gigi Bryant have passed away.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 24, 2021, 8:00 a.m. ETZach Randolph and Kobe Bryant were contemporaries in the N.B.A.’s Western Conference for more than a decade. They were teammates in two All-Star Games. They even shared a workplace during Randolph’s brief stint with the Los Angeles Clippers, who played in the considerable Staples Center shadow of Bryant’s Los Angeles Lakers.They crossed paths often enough to develop what Randolph described as “a mutual respect.” Yet there were no hints back then that the relationship was destined to take on a coach-parent dynamic — that Randolph, in his first year of retirement, would ask Bryant to make room for his eldest daughter, MacKenly, on Bryant’s Team Mamba.“Who could imagine it?” Randolph said.Until the summer of 2019, when Randolph relocated from Memphis to Southern California, all his go-to Kobe stories centered upon Bryant’s maniacally competitive nature and what it was like to experience it firsthand. Those showdowns go back to the start of Randolph’s career in the early 2000s during his turbulent start with the Portland Trail Blazers, long before his run as one of the most successful and popular players in Memphis Grizzlies history.The recollections that flow now from Randolph tend to focus heavily on Bryant’s coaching ways as opposed to their N.B.A. encounters, memories cherished from the few months MacKenly was able to work with Bryant before tragedy intervened. On his way to a Team Mamba game on Jan. 26, 2020, Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, Calif.The crash, nearly one year ago on a foggy Sunday morning, killed all nine people aboard — including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, her Team Mamba teammates Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester and the assistant coach Christina Mauser. The catastrophe has left Randolph fixated on the image of Bryant as the girls’ ultra-organized, practice-obsessed and, in stark contrast to his playing persona, reserved-during-games coach.“He’s one of the best to ever do it,” Randolph said, referring to Bryant’s coaching rather than to his standing as the fourth-leading scorer in N.B.A. history.Randolph marveled at the N.B.A.-inspired lengths to which Bryant, alongside Mauser, went to train and teach his team of seventh- and eighth-graders. Bryant scheduled his players for yoga sessions, beach workouts, sprints and laps at the track, and frequent film study to supplement specialized on-court work to master footwork concepts and defensive principles. Conditioning and strength training were prioritized. Practice and travel schedules were comprehensive. Bryant also made a point of asking his players to name the colleges they dreamed of attending and playing for to establish that as a formal goal.“He put his all into it,” Randolph said. “He ran it like a real organization.”MacKenly Randolph had become aware of Team Mamba and the basketball-crazed Gianna Bryant through Instagram. At MacKenly’s urging, Kobe Bryant was one of Zach’s first calls after the family left Memphis and took residence in Encino, Calif. Zach asked Kobe if he was open to coaching MacKenly.“We’ll see,” Bryant told Randolph. “Let’s get her here and see how she mixes with the other girls.”Zach Randolph said he’s still learning how to help his daughter MacKenly deal with grief from the deaths of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, and other friends and family in recent years.Credit…Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMacKenly might have been the 6-foot-tall daughter of a former 6-foot-9 N.B.A. star, but Bryant promised nothing. She was not granted a starting spot right away — not even with Team Mamba in need of a center. Practices were often held Monday through Friday in Orange County, where most of the team’s players lived, meaning that MacKenly was expected to make the long commute from the San Fernando Valley. After practices, she had to run extra to “catch up to the other girls,” as Zach recalled Bryant saying.None of that, though, stopped Randolph from calling it “a perfect fit.”“Like a puzzle, man,” Randolph said. “My daughter was just so ecstatic. It’s all she talked about.”He said MacKenly was “mesmerized”; MacKenly said he was exaggerating. Though she said she was “super nervous” at first about being coached by Bryant, “After like a week it was, ‘Oh, he’s just a regular person.’ ” While some of the girls on the team called him “Coach Bryant,” MacKenly said she “really just called him Kobe.”Where father and daughter readily concur: Bryant helped MacKenly improve immediately.“I work with her a lot, but you could tell the difference with Kobe,” Zach said. “When Kobe was speaking, he didn’t have to say, ‘Pay attention.’ ”“He basically taught me how to play defense and how to rotate,” MacKenly said.Asked to describe Bryant’s coaching demeanor, MacKenly added: “You would know when he’s mad, or he’s not playing around, but he would never, like, yell at you.”The pandemic has delayed the start of MacKenly’s freshman season at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, Calif., but her game continues to develop. Even though MacKenly shoots right-handed and Zach is a lefty, comparisons to her father’s combination of strength, guile and a deft scoring touch inside are frequent. Such is MacKenly’s potential that she has received verbal scholarship offers from Louisville and Arizona before playing a single high school game.“She’s extremely talented,” said Alicia Komaki, Sierra Canyon’s coach. “She’s very mobile and agile and she’s really worked on developing her guard skills, because I think she’s been locked into the post as a youth and she really wants to expand on that part of her game.”MacKenly has been helped along by games of one-on-one against her father in which Zach permits her only three dribbles before shooting. She also trains occasionally with the former N.B.A. All-Star Gilbert Arenas, whose daughter Izela is another highly rated freshman at Sierra Canyon. (The school’s boys’ team received national acclaim last season with a roster that included LeBron James Jr., who is known as Bronny and is the eldest son of the Lakers star LeBron James. He’s now a sophomore.)Although strict Covid-19 regulations in California have restricted Sierra Canyon to just a handful of practices and individual workouts in recent months, Komaki already sees improvement in MacKenly’s 3-point shooting and ball handling.“You can tell she’s been working on those skills,” Komaki said.Less clear, Zach Randolph said, is how to coach MacKenly through the many layers of grief that have been mounting for the Randolphs in recent years. Mae Randolph, Zach’s mother, died in November 2016. Roger Randolph, Zach’s younger brother, was shot and killed in June 2018. Then, less than two years later, the helicopter crash.A week before the crash, MacKenly made the same helicopter trip with the Bryants from Orange County to Ventura County after spending the night at their house. She and Gianna had bonded quickly as teammates, MacKenly said, because Gianna, sensing the newcomer’s unease about joining an established team, went out of her way to help MacKenly fit in.Kobe Bryant, right, his daughter Gianna, left, and MacKenly Randolph, center, at the Mamba Academy as Bryant coached Team Mamba in tournament play on Jan. 25, 2020.Credit…Chris Costello, via MoPho/SplashNews.com“She was super nice,” MacKenly said.Team Mamba played two games on Jan. 25, 2020, on the opening day of the first Mamba Cup, which Kobe Bryant had organized to attract top teams from California and other states. MacKenly Randolph said she thinks often about how “three of my best friends were here one day and then the next day, they were gone.”“It was tough for my baby — still is — but I’m proud of her,” Zach Randolph said. “She’s 15, but she’s strong, man.”As the one-year anniversary of the crash approached, Randolph said he was still processing his own emotions. It has stuck with him that Kobe Bryant, anticipating years of working with MacKenly, said on more than one occasion: “Z-Bo, just wait until I get done with her.”On the morning of the crash, Zach Randolph was driving north on U.S. Highway 101 to get to Bryant’s academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., to watch MacKenly. She was already there with several teammates awaiting a noon tipoff against a team from Texas coached by Jason Terry, another former N.B.A. player.“When I got the news, I had tears in my eyes,” Zach Randolph said. “I looked around and everybody on the highway in their car was crying, too. It was like everybody got the news at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”A hint of comfort, Randolph said, came from having the chance to connect MacKenly with Bryant on Team Mamba like she wanted. He has been open about being raised without a father in Marion, Ind., how that might have contributed to some of the troubles and controversies he faced in his teens and his 20s, and “coming up in poverty.”Another bit of solace: Randolph said he did get to tell his old rival how grateful he was for all Bryant had taught MacKenly.“He loved them girls,” Zach Randolph said. “He loved my baby. He told me, ‘I love her, man.’ When he told me that, I told him, ‘We’re brothers for life.’ ”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Becky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. Game

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonA Year of Kobe and LeBronThe Warriors Are StrugglingMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBecky Hammon Becomes First Woman to Serve as Head Coach in N.B.A. GameShe took over coaching the San Antonio Spurs after Gregg Popovich was ejected from a game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday night.Becky Hammon took over as head coach of the Spurs.Credit…Eric Gay/Associated PressDec. 31, 2020Updated 9:53 a.m. ETThough 2020 is nearly over, it keeps turning out sports milestones. On Wednesday night, for the first time, a woman served as head coach in an N.B.A. game.When Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich was ejected after arguing with a referee in the second quarter of a game with the Los Angeles Lakers in San Antonio, he turned to his assistant, Becky Hammon, and indicated that she should take over the team.“He officially pointed at me,” Hammon said. “That was it. Said, ‘You’ve got them.’ Obviously, it’s a big deal. It’s a substantial moment.”“It was business as usual,’’ she added. “They’re used to hearing my voice in practice. In practice, Pop will put us in two teams and we’ll each have a team. So they’re kind of used to hearing me out there, seeing me draw a play on the board or whatnot.”Although not much was made of the milestone during the game, which the Lakers won, 121-107, reaction poured out afterward and on social media.“It’s a beautiful thing just to hear her barking out calls, barking out sets,” said LeBron James of the Lakers. “She’s very passionate about the game. So congrats to her, congrats to our league.”Hammon, 43, played for 16 years in the W.N.B.A., where she was a six-time All Star. After being passed over for the U.S. Olympic team, she represented Russia, where she had also played professionally, in the 2008 and 2012 Games.In 2014, she becoming the first full-time female assistant coach in the league. At the time, she said of Popovich: “Honestly, I don’t think he gives two cents that I’m a woman. And I don’t want to be hired because I’m a woman.” She was head coach of the Spurs’ Las Vegas Summer League team three time, winning the title in 2015.Hammon’s trailblazing in the league has prompted speculation that she will one day be a head coach, and she has been reported to be a candidate for several top jobs in the past, most recently the Indiana Pacers.“The future is bright for her,” said Dejounte Murray of the Spurs after the game. “I hope she just sticks to it and doesn’t give up. One day it may happen, it may not happen, who knows, but she’s definitely on the right road.”Hammon sought to keep the focus on her duties.“I’m just in the moment with the guys,’’ she said. “Trying to figure out what’s the best way to help them.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      From Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonThe Warriors Are StrugglingVirus Upends Houston RocketsMarc Stein’s Fearless PredictionsThe Reloaded LakersAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storymarc stein on basketballFrom Kobe to LeBron: Tragedy and Triumph in the N.B.A.A year that began with the deaths of two N.B.A. icons could not end soon enough, marked by heartache along the way but also small moments worth celebrating now.Kobe Bryant and LeBron James dominated a year of tragedy and triumph in the basketball world.Credit…John McCoy/Getty ImagesDec. 30, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETThe longest and possibly saddest year in pro basketball history is almost over. From this world that plays out on hardwood, as with so many other wings of society, there will be few fond farewells to 2020.The basketball public has been losing and grieving since the first day of January, when David Stern, the N.B.A.’s former longtime commissioner, died at age 77. Soon after, a helicopter headed for a weekend youth tournament with nine aboard, among them Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, Calif. There were no survivors.Mere weeks later, the country was gripped by the coronavirus. Inside and outside of the sport’s sphere, life did not get easier and, as 2021 dawns, it still hasn’t.Yet there was some undeniable good along the way, most of all the N.B.A.’s leadership in coping with the coronavirus, and how its players, in tandem with their longtime activist peers from the W.N.B.A., lent many loud and influential voices to a year of profound social reckoning. The N.B.A. was the first major professional sports league to shut down in response to the pandemic, completed its 2019-20 season by engineering an ambitious protective bubble, and amplified the fight for racial justice and equality.Those were real-world triumphs that will be long-lasting.So let’s celebrate them. In the final edition of Year 3 for this newsletter, I have singled out a few of the far smaller victories, too, as opposed to rehashing a frequently dispiriting 12 months in detail. For all the natural Year In Review instincts that kick in for all of us every December, I’d rather reach back for some smiles, thin as they might be, than recount all the tumult and tragedy.Allow me to rewind to All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February, when the much-maligned dunk contest, and a competitive All-Star Game crunchtime enhanced by the use of the Elam scoring system, generated a level of tension and watchability that many skeptics no longer thought possible.Derrick Jones Jr. won the dunk contest during a revitalized All-Star Weekend in Chicago in February.Credit…Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere were five uplifting Sundays in a row during the mostly lonely (and scary) days of April and May when a basketball documentary about Michael Jordan, “The Last Dance,” delivered the sort of shared experience and sense of community — through sports — that was otherwise unavailable.Michael Jordan captivated millions each week this spring with his recollections of his Chicago Bulls glory days.Credit…Jon RocheThe recent sports trading card renaissance extended to basketball, and led to rookie cards from LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo fetching $1.8 million — each — at auction.The creative forces behind the acclaimed animated series “Game of Zones” served up one final season that, to my great shock and pride, managed to work in a few lucky sports scribes.The seventh season of the animated show “Game of Zones” by Bleacher Report includes characters inspired by Marc Stein, right, and the former N.B.A. star Dwyane Wade, left.Credit…Bleacher ReportAnd when it comes to something that really matters: Delonte West, the former N.B.A. guard, was back in Maryland to spend Christmas with his family after years of struggling with bipolar disorder and drug use. A video surfaced in late September that appeared to show West, a former Dallas Maverick, homeless in Dallas. That led Mark Cuban, the owner of the Mavericks, to track him down and help West enter a drug rehabilitation facility in Florida.The dunks and trading cards and M.J. memes, to be clear, were mere footnotes at a time even sports struggled to provide its usual escape, but one suspects we will keep coming back to the bigger headlines from basketball’s intersection with a global health crisis.“This will go down as the most remembered year in N.B.A. history,” said Jared Dudley, the veteran forward and frequent unofficial team spokesman for the Los Angeles Lakers. “They will be making movies about 2020 for years to come.”He’s probably right. Tales from the bubble are bound to hold considerable long-term interest, particularly after Dudley’s Lakers emerged from the grand experiment as champions.Hollywood’s team is back on top for the first time since 2009-10, and the ending did include a surprise element: James and Co. have not been subjected to as much asterisk talk as the curmudgeons among us (like me in April) envisaged.My original view stemmed to some degree from fears that the N.B.A. postseason would be truncated from its usual four rounds of best-of-seven series, and thus not constitute a representative championship run. Critics could have also seized on the absence of travel, arenas without fans, and how much living and playing at the same address might have benefited the Lakers, so I still wanted to give it some time to see how their 17th championship would be received.LeBron James said he has won “the two hardest championships” in N.B.A. history, including the 2019-20 title.Credit…Harry How/Getty ImagesThe response has been encouraging. Occasional jabs about James and his supposed “Mickey Mouse” ring haven’t really stuck.Perhaps James went too far the other way with his recent assertion on the “Road Trippin’” podcast that he had won “the two hardest championships” in league history: Cleveland’s comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the 2015-16 N.B.A. finals against the 73-win Golden State Warriors, and the Lakers’ bubble crown. Historians haven’t exactly rushed to endorse those claims, but there is an no shortage of appreciation for what the Lakers did overcome during their 95-day bubble stay, cut off from the outside world.There was a mental toll from essentially living at work. There was isolation. There was an internal conflict to manage, as James and many of his peers would explain, for athletes playing a game and feeding the entertainment industry at a time of so much social unrest in their home communities.The truth, of course, is that you could slap an asterisk on just about anything that happened in 2020, sports or not, since we strayed so far from normalcy in too many precincts to count. Or did so much change get foisted upon all of us that nothing in 2020 should be sullied by the asterisk treatment?Maybe we’ll have that figured out by next year’s final newsletter.The Scoop @TheSteinLineCorner ThreeThe league’s free agency investigation of the Bucks ruined Milwaukee’s chances of signing Bogdan Bogdanovic, who landed with the Atlanta Hawks.Credit…Brett Davis/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: It is vital that it be explained why this was the “line in the sand” for the N.B.A. There have clearly been other examples of tampering. Why were no draft picks rescinded in those cases? — @Wanediggity from TwitterStein: I know Bucks fans are upset, but I don’t think the league’s decision to strip their team of a second-round pick in 2022 in the wake of Milwaukee’s failed attempt to court Bogdan Bogdanovic is such a mystery. For all the league’s shortcomings in policing and curbing tampering, it has been consistent in dishing out penalties when violations were blatant. The violations, in this case, were pretty blatant.These were not mere rumblings or assumptions about the sort of free-agent conversations that many of us suspect are happening leaguewide before they are supposed to. The league opened an investigation in response to a detailed news report about a five-player deal involving the Bucks and Sacramento Kings that had Bogdanovic, a restricted free agent, landing in Milwaukee — nearly four days before free agency was scheduled to start.The league took action again on Monday when it fined Daryl Morey, Philadelphia’s new president of basketball operations, $50,000 for a seemingly harmless tweet congratulating James Harden on a statistical milestone he hit when Morey was still his general manager in Houston. It doesn’t matter if the social media post was automated or accidental, as ESPN reported Morey told the league office. The mere fact that Morey publicly “discussed” another team’s player put him in line for a fine.Bucks fans have asked me: What about all the teams that have tried to recruit Giannis Antetokounmpo behind the scenes? My retort: Do we have proof? If there was a detailed news report in circulation about a specific team doing so — or if text messages Antetokounmpo has reportedly received from players on other teams were turned in to the league — I’m quite sure penalties would be imposed on the offending clubs. But no such evidence has surfaced in the public domain. It’s not that the Bucks are the only ones breaking the rules. Other teams have just been better at hiding it.Whether or not Milwaukee or Sacramento wanted this stuff to be out there, it got out. Both were operating as if they had a deal even though Bogdanovic insisted he never agreed to anything. The league wasn’t going to let that go.Even though the league announced in September 2019 that it would institute a new set of anti-tampering regulations to crack down on the practice, there is clearly still much to fix, given how many deals we still saw coalesce in the early hours of free agency on Nov. 20. But the league’s stance on this one, in the words of its general counsel Rick Buchanan, is that Milwaukee had to be sanctioned for “gun-jumping” the start of free agency.There is plenty of skepticism regarding Commissioner Adam Silver’s claim that the punishment “will act as a clear deterrent” to other teams, since the whole episode technically only cost Milwaukee a future second-round pick. Yet it’s also true that the league’s decision to investigate essentially snuffed out any chance the Bucks had of resurrecting a deal for Bogdanovic — someone, by all accounts, Antetokounmpo badly wanted to play with.So losing the ability to pursue Bogdanovic was Milwaukee’s real penalty here, while Sacramento wound up losing Bogdanovic without compensation after electing not to match Atlanta’s four-year, $72 million offer sheet. The Kings did not receive any formal penalty from the league office, but they would have acquired a player they coveted from the Bucks (Donte DiVincenzo) had the original sign-and-trade plan been resuscitated.Q: Any word on the status of Jeremy Lin getting his FIBA Letter of Clearance yet? Many fans want to know! — Tom GardnerStein: To catch up those who weren’t following this saga as it played out on Dec. 19, Golden State needed a clearance letter from the Beijing Ducks, Lin’s last team in China, to sign and then immediately release him before 11 p.m. Eastern time that day. That would have allowed the Santa Cruz Warriors to secure Lin’s G League rights.In part because FIBA’s office is closed on weekends, Golden State couldn’t obtain the letter in time. The rush to get the clearance letter pretty much ended then, because it initially appeared that subsequently obtaining Lin’s G League rights would require some complicated (and more costly) roster gymnastics for the Warriors.It has since emerged that the Warriors will have a new pathway to steering Lin to their G League affiliate that wasn’t apparent then — provided that the G League goes ahead with a 2020-21 season that will be at least partly played in a bubble environment. The N.B.A. is instituting a rule that will enable N.B.A. parent clubs to recruit players to fill one G League roster spot with an N.B.A. veteran who has at least five years of service time. The Warriors will thus have a mechanism to guarantee that Lin can play with Santa Cruz, their G League affiliate, should he decide to sign with the league.Neither the Golden State Warriors nor the Santa Cruz Warriors would sign Lin. He would have to sign with the G League first and then be allocated to Santa Cruz via the new rule, which some G League observers are even calling “the Jeremy Lin rule.” Yet there is no frantic need for the clearance letter now with the G League still trying to resolve some outstanding issues and commit to a season.If Lin decides he wants to go the G League route in hopes that it can boost his chances of an N.B.A. comeback at age 32, and if Santa Cruz is where he wants to play, it will happen.Q: Knowing James Dolan, do you think that the Knicks want to trade for James Harden? I’m sure Dolan is already tired of the Knicks playing second fiddle to the Nets. — Frank AlecciStein: After skipping the opening week of training camp and forcing the league to hit him with an additional four-day quarantine last week, while repeatedly violating the league’s health and safety guidelines in both instances, Harden made his season debut Saturday and promptly uncorked 44 points and 17 assists in Houston’s overtime loss to Portland.As my Houston Chronicle colleague Jonathan Feigen put it, Harden quickly reminded us that, yes, he is worth the trouble on a lot of levels.This would be especially true for a Knicks team that doesn’t have anything close to a certifiable franchise player at the moment. I imagine that Harden would hold appeal throughout the organization — not just with Dolan — despite being under contract only for the rest of this season and next season before he has the right to become a free agent in July 2022.The harsh reality of the Knicks’ current roster, though, is also a problem when it comes to getting into the Harden sweepstakes, since Houston has made it clear that it wants a player like Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons to headline the package it receives for Harden. If there is a combination of Knicks players and draft picks that would entice the Rockets, I don’t see it.Numbers GameKevin Durant (7) and Kyrie Irving (11)Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty Images7-11In one of the better quotes from the season’s opening week, Kyrie Irving said he and his Nets teammate Kevin Durant had “introduced the world to 7-11” with their scoring outbursts in the Nets’ first two games. Irving, of course, was referring to their jersey numbers, not the famed convenience store chain.23.2The average margin of victory from the league’s five Christmas Day games was a whopping 23.2 points. Only the first game (Miami over New Orleans by 13) and the last one (Clippers over Denver by 13) could be classified as competitive. Not what the N.B.A. was hoping for when it pushed up the start of the season at the behest of the league’s television partners, who badly wanted a Christmas week launch.107There were 107 international players from 41 countries on opening-night rosters, including a record 17 players from Canada and a record-tying 14 African players. It’s the seventh consecutive season that opening-night rosters included at least 100 international players; 113 at the start of the 2016-17 season is the record. France (nine), Australia (eight) and Serbia and Germany (six each) are the countries with the most players after Canada.5K.C. Jones earned enshrinement to the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1989, but his coaching résumé is perhaps even more H.O.F.-worthy. Jones coached three teams in the N.B.A. across 10 seasons (Washington, Boston and Seattle) and made five trips to the N.B.A. finals in that short span, winning championships with the Celtics in 1983-84 and 1985-86. Jones died on Christmas at the age of 88.4,500There is a strong argument to be made, as a matter of fairness, that fans should not be in N.B.A. buildings until all 30 teams were allowed by local health regulations to do so, because it is a competitive advantage to have a crowd of any size. Yet it’s worth noting just how varied the maximum crowd sizes are for the six teams currently admitting fans. At the low end: Cleveland (300 fans maximum), New Orleans (750) and Utah (1,500). At the high end: Toronto (3,800 fans maximum in Tampa, Fla.), Orlando (4,000) and Houston (4,500).Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Nets and Clippers Open N.B.A. Season With Big Wins

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonNets and Clippers Win BigMVP: LeBron or Luka?The Reloaded LakersWill the Nets Reign?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNets and Clippers Open N.B.A. Season With Big WinsThe Nets dominated the Warriors, and the Clippers staved off a comeback attempt by the Lakers. Kevin Durant and Paul George were the night’s stars.Paul George had a strong performance for the Clippers on Tuesday, with 33 points on 13-of-18 shooting.Credit…Harry How/Getty ImagesScott Cacciola and Published More

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      Lakers vs Clippers: Live NBA Season Opener Updates

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonWarriors vs. NetsMVP: LeBron or Luka?The Reloaded LakersWill the Nets Reign?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLIVE UPDATESN.B.A. Live Updates: Lakers vs. ClippersIt’s opening night, which means the official debut of the Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving pairing, and a ring ceremony for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.Scott Cacciola and Right NowFrontline workers are presenting the Lakers with their championship rings.The N.B.A. is back (so soon!) with a doubleheader on opening night, featuring several of the league’s biggest names: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry and Kawhi Leonard.For Durant, it’s a much-anticipated regular-season debut with the Nets, alongside Kyrie Irving. And for James, it’s a short turnaround for his Los Angeles Lakers after winning the championship just over 10 weeks ago.Follow along with us live.What: Warriors @ Nets, 7 p.m. Eastern time; Clippers @ Lakers, 10 p.m.How to watch: TNTExtras: Western Conference preview | Eastern Conference preview | Times staff predictionsHere’s what you need to know:The Lakers get their championship rings.LeBron says he’s ready, even with little rest this off-season.The Nets beat the Warriors big, 125-99.4th Quarter: Up and down debut for the Warriors rookie James Wiseman.End 3rd Quarter: It might be a wrap.3rd Quarter: 3-pointers are only falling for the Nets.3rd Quarter: Yikes.Kevin Durant got off to a hot start in his regular-season debut with the Nets.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressClick here to refresh for live updates.The Lakers get their championship rings.Before the Lakers took the court for their spectator-free championship ring ceremony, Coach Frank Vogel reflected on just how “surreal” the team’s title run still felt to him.“I don’t really know if it ever really hits you,” he told reporters before the game. “It’s what you dream about. It’s what you work for your whole career. I’m just happy for my family, who made so many sacrifices to allow me to have these opportunities. Grateful to the league for letting us finish the season and creating the bubble environment.”Because of the coronavirus pandemic and the massive shutdowns it caused, Vogel said he had only sporadically been able to get a sense of what the championship meant to fans in Southern California. But whenever he goes grocery shopping or stops by Target, someone will thank him for what the team was able to do, he said.The ring ceremony itself, even without fans in the arena, was surprisingly emotional. In recorded video presentations, the players’ families congratulated them, one by one, before they went to collect their rings. There was even a cameo from the Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose younger brother, Kostas, spent last season on a two-way contract with the Lakers.And in a nice touch, frontline medical workers presented the rings to the team’s assistant coaches. LeBron says he’s ready, even with little rest this off-season.The Lakers added a bunch of new pieces over the off-season, but LeBron James, who will turn 36 on Dec. 30, is back for more. Neither he nor his returning teammates got much of a break following last season’s championship run, which concluded in October, and James’s minutes will be something to monitor early this season. It might behoove the Lakers to rest him more than he usually does, and they appear to have the depth to be able to do that.Before the game, Lakers Coach Frank Vogel said he planned to play — and rest — James in bursts. He does not want James playing extended minutes, or sitting for long stretches and getting cold.“If he’s on the bench for too long of a stretch and has to come back in cold, that’s where you’re in a riskier situation,” Vogel said.In a video call with reporters last week, James was asked whether he expected to be the team’s primary ballhandler, much like he was last season. He said it was too early to tell, though it seems likely that Dennis Schröder will step in to handle more of those duties. James also mentioned how Marc Gasol can operate as a playmaker from the high post.But, as always, James said he was ready to carry an outsize load.“Whatever it takes for our ball club to win, I’m going to bring my game,” James said, “and you know what my game brings for this ball club.”The Nets beat the Warriors big, 125-99.Steve Nash got his first win as an N.B.A. head coach in dominating fashion, as the Nets blew out the Golden State Warriors at home, 125-99. The Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant partnership got off to a fast start: Irving had 26 points and Durant added 22, both in 25 minutes. Neither played in the fourth quarter. But for all 48 minutes, the Nets looked like the championship contenders they were billed to be. The Nets were particularly proficient from the perimeter, shooting 15-35 from deep (43 percent). Caris LeVert, who came off the bench, scored 20 points and grabbed 9 rebounds.Golden State, missing Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, struggled mightily on both ends of the floor. Offensively, the Warriors looked as if they would miss even if they threw a basketball into space from the International Space Station. They shot 10-33 from three (30 percent). Stephen Curry, who missed most of last season, looked overmatched, scoring 20 points on 21 shots. He did, however, have 10 assists. Curry did not get much help from his teammates. Andrew Wiggins, whom the Warriors acquired last season, shot 4-16 from the field for 13 points. James Wiseman, the heralded rookie, scored 19 points and grabbed 6 rebounds, a solid debut, but much of his production came in the fourth quarter when the outcome of the game was not in doubt.4th Quarter: Up and down debut for the Warriors rookie James Wiseman.James Wiseman, the highly touted prospect whom the Warriors drafted second overall in November, has had a mixed N.B.A. debut after Coach Steve Kerr put him in the starting lineup. So far, through 17 minutes, Wiseman has 10 points and 6 rebounds on 3-of-8 shooting. The 19-year-old looked nimble handling the ball but sometimes struggled finishing under the basket and on the defensive end.End 3rd Quarter: It might be a wrap.The game became a blowout early on … is still a blowout entering the final quarter, as the Nets outscored the Warriors by 10 in the third, to lead 99-71. We are all about bright spots here, so we found one for Golden State: Stephen Curry has 10 assists. So there’s that. Aside from that? The Warriors are shooting 24 percent from 3 and only have two players in double figures. Andrew Wiggins is shooting an awful 4-14 from the field for 13 points. For the Nets, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving have combined for 48 points and may not have to play anymore tonight. Caris LeVert has 16 points, Joe Harris has 10, and DeAndre Jordan has 10 rebounds.3rd Quarter: 3-pointers are only falling for the Nets.It got ugly here in Brooklyn (depending on your vantage point). The Nets pushed the lead to 31 in the third quarter. The Warriors are only shooting 5 of 21 from deep, compared to 10 of 22 for the Nets. That has essentially been the ball game. Durant now has 16 points; Irving has 26.3rd Quarter: Yikes.So, this is Kevin Durant:And this is how the Warriors are doing:Halftime: Kyrie Irving leads with 24 points.The onslaught continued for the Nets, as they ended the first half up 63-45. Kyrie Irving continued to put on a show, pouring in 24 points on 13 shots and hitting several momentum-stopping jump shots to keep the Warriors from sustaining any sort of run. Kevin Durant had 12 points on 11 shots. Caris LeVert ended the half with 12 points. For Golden State, every point seemed to be a labor. Stephen Curry led with 16 points, but it took 15 shots. He also had 5 assists. Andrew Wiggins shot 2-10 for 8 points. The Nets have looked faster and more aggressive, keeping the game mostly uncompetitive. Their defense also was effective in stopping the Warriors from getting uncontested shots. One potential red flag for the Nets: They only had 10 assists to 13 turnovers. They’re winning based on a lot of isolation basketball. But who can complain when it works?Silver: Others need the vaccine ‘much more desperately’ than N.B.A. players.Commissioner Adam Silver, in a pregame interview on TNT, reiterated that he did not think that N.B.A. players should receive the vaccine right now, saying that he did not want players prioritized over more vulnerable populations.“While there is no doubt a role our that our players can play at the appropriate time, and whether it’s in the African-American community in certain cases, whether it’s demonstrating to young people that it’s safe to get the vaccine should our players feel that way, I just think right now, given that there’s limited doses and given that there’s another cohort of people out there who need it much more desperately than young, healthy people, my sense is we should wait,” Silver said.“But ultimately we’ll follow what the public health officials tell us to do. I know we’ve already had some conversations with public health officials who suggested that there is a role that our players can play in demonstrating to the broader public that it is safe to go ahead and get vaccinated.”2nd Quarter: Caris LeVert is key off the Nets’ bench.It’s just one game. But Andrew Wiggins, who will now have to fill some of the gap left by Klay Thompson’s absence, has had a rough start to the game. He started 1-8 and has missed multiple wide-open jumpers.On the other end, Caris LeVert is thriving early on in his role as sixth man for the Nets. He has 12 points on 7 shots along with 3 rebounds and an assist, providing a spark off the bench while Durant and Irving sit for a spell. LeVert’s ability to keep the offense afloat while the Nets’ star duo rests will be crucial as the season progresses.Side note: TNT’s audio appears to be out of sync with the video. I just heard the clank of a missed jumper seconds after the ball hit the rim on the screen. Look, it’s not just the players who are getting themselves into shape. End of 1st Quarter: The Warriors are struggling.The Nets jumped out to a 40-19 lead in the first quarter, while the Warriors looked out of sorts on offense, before the Nets ended the opening frame leading 40-25. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were dominant, scoring 27 points on 10-of-15 shooting combined. Joe Harris also scored 6 points, hitting a pair of triples. Kelly Oubre, a new Warriors addition, had a rim-rattling dunk and Stephen Curry had 9 points on 3-of-7 shooting to keep the Warriors afloat, but Golden State had trouble generating quality offensive possessions as a whole.Kevin Durant is hot to start.It’s a beautiful sight to see. Kevin Durant has hit 4 of his first 5 shots. What’s impressive is that all four of his makes have been different. One was a runner, another a 3-pointer, a pull-up jumper which also sent him to the line, and, finally, a baseline dunk. He scored 8 points in the first three minutes of the game. An impressive start so far, pushing the Nets to an early double-digit lead, 18-8. Kyrie Irving has hit 2 of 3 so far for 5 points.Klay Thompson says there’s a ‘huge hole in my soul.’Klay Thompson, the Golden State Warriors guard who will miss this entire season, said on Instagram shortly before Tuesday night’s game that “It pains me every day knowing I won’t be able to chase a chip.”Thompson, a five-time All Star, missed all of last year’s campaign after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the 2019 finals. In November, as he was gearing up to return for this season, Thompson tore his right Achilles’ tendon, one of the most devastating injuries for a basketball player. He had surgery and was ruled out for his second straight season.“I do not want to be writing this,” Thompson wrote on Tuesday. “My soul is in Brooklyn taking a pregame nap. Unfortunately, reality looks a bit different.”He added: “There’s a huge hole in my soul when I can’t do what I love and compete against the best players in the world. But I plan on playing for a long time and will continue to work every day to get back on the court and help my team bring more championships to the Bay.”It’s a reunion for Durant and Curry.Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesOpening night won’t just be a long-awaited return to the court for Kevin Durant. His teammate, Stephen Curry, with whom Durant won two championships, also will play. Curry, a two-time Most Valuable Player Award winner, missed 60 games last season because of a broken left hand. Curry and Durant will face each other as opponents for the first time since 2016. After that season, Durant shocked the basketball world by joining Curry in Golden State, forming one of the most talented partnerships in the history of the league. “You always kind of find yourself in awe of stuff he can do on the floor,” Curry told reporters this week, adding, “That was a big part of our success: kind of feeding off of each other, that energy and that pursuit of greatness every day. Seeing it up close and personal, you had no choice but to meet it every day.”Durant, for his part, is not outwardly putting extra stock in Tuesday night’s game, even though it is against his former team. “Playing against old teammates never really ratcheted me up,” Durant told reporters this week. “I always felt like I was on that level no matter who is on the floor. I feel like each game is important to me.”‘Nerves and anxiety’ for Steve Nash in his coaching debut.Before his first regular-season game as an N.B.A. head coach, Steve Nash told reporters that Kevin Durant “does look exactly like he did before the injury, but he also needs a little bit of breathing room to get himself acclimated to competitive basketball.” “The only thing I say about it is that he’s done everything and he’s in absolutely the ultimate position to come back from this injury,” Nash said of Durant, who tore his right Achilles’ tendon during the 2019 N.B.A. finals, which sidelined him for all of last season.Nash continued: “But I think we also have to give Kevin time to play N.B.A. games and not get carried away.” As far as his coaching debut — Nash’s first direct involvement in a N.B.A. game since he retired as a player in 2015 — Nash said that this gameday had a “different rhythm but similar nerves and anxiety” as when he was a player. “I always felt a little nerves until I actually got out there in pregame warm-ups. So I feel that a little bit tonight and that’s probably a good thing,” Nash said.Here’s hoping the Warriors can be great again.I’m not ready to say goodbye to the Golden State Warriors.I find myself pining for the splendor of Steph Curry, the snarl of Draymond Green, the beautiful basketball, the sheer dominance. I fear we may never see it again — at least, not at the level we once did.Klay Thompson’s shredded Achilles’ tendon probably means a second straight lost season, and possibly a fatal blow to the Warriors’ hopes for a revival. And that’s where I truly become wistful.I don’t miss the Warriors as a fan would (my San Jose roots notwithstanding). It’s not just that I’ll miss writing about their roundball artistry (though that’s certainly true, too). It’s more personal than that.To their fans, the Warriors provided endless basketball bliss — a montage of deep 3s and shimmies and raucous parades. To others, they provided a standard of selfless play and joyful domination. They defined an era, and redefined the formula for building a superteam.But they gave me something far more precious: a final few hours with my father. I just didn’t know it at the time.Continue reading by clicking here.Drama for the Clippers. New deals for the Lakers.In some ways, it feels like Kawhi Leonard joined the Clippers a million years ago. In fact, it was only during the summer of 2019 when the Clippers signed Leonard and traded for Paul George, a momentous one-two punch that reshaped the franchise.But some of the behind-the-scenes intrigue of that momentous summer recently resurfaced when Johnny Wilkes, a man who claims to be a Leonard family confidante, accused Jerry West, one of the team’s executives, of reneging on a pledge to pay him for helping deliver Leonard to the Clippers.After Wilkes, who played high school basketball with Leonard’s uncle Dennis Robertson filed a lawsuit, the N.B.A. opened an investigation. The Clippers have denied any wrongdoing, calling Wilkes’s allegations “baseless,” and Leonard told reporters that Wilkes had nothing to do with his decision to sign with the Clippers.Leonard has never been considered among the N.B.A.’s most charismatic stars, but his short tenure with the Clippers has produced no shortage of drama. Also percolating in the background: his contract situation. Leonard suggested this week that he would decline his player option for next season, meaning he would become a free agent.Meanwhile, all is copacetic in Laker-land: LeBron James and Anthony Davis both agreed to new long-term deals over the off-season.More about the Lakers and Clippers:AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More