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      Bronny James Commits to U.S.C. as Father Dreams of N.B.A. Meet-Up

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      The Lakers star LeBron James, 38, has made it clear that he intends to team up with his son in the N.B.A. someday.LeBron James’s immediate goal is to win another N.B.A. championship with the Los Angeles Lakers. But longer term, he wants to play in the league with his older son, LeBron Jr., who goes by Bronny, beginning in 2024.“I need to be on the floor with my boy,” James told ESPN in January, recalling a situation from his childhood in which Ken Griffey and his son, Ken Griffey Jr., played for the Seattle Mariners. “I got to be on the floor with Bronny.”Bronny James, a 6-foot-3 guard, kept that goal on track Saturday by verbally committing to playing college basketball next season at the University of Southern California. He was seated at courtside Saturday night as the Lakers took a 2-1 lead in their Western Conference semifinal series with the Golden State Warriors.“First of all, congratulations to my son on his next journey and picking a great university in U.S.C.,” LeBron James said after posting 21 points, 8 rebounds and 8 assists as the Lakers won Game 3, 127-97, in Los Angeles. “I’m proud of him. This is an incredible thing.”LeBron James added that he believed Bronny would be the first member of his family, the “first one out of the James gang,” to attend college.Bronny James made his announcement on Instagram, where he has more than seven million followers. His account had a picture of him standing in the Southern California locker room along with the caption “Fight On #committed.” U.S.C. is sponsored by Nike, which has invested heavily in his father since he entered the N.B.A. as a generational phenom in 2003.At U.S.C., Bronny James plans to join a Sierra Canyon classmate, Juju Watkins, the top-rated girls’ prospect in the senior class. Both players have endorsement deals with Nike, and Bronny James also has one with Beats by Dre.Memphis and Ohio State, the school LeBron has said he would have attended had he gone to college instead of going straight to the N.B.A. from high school as the No. 1 overall pick, were among the other universities linked to Bronny James. He visited Ohio State with his father in September, and fans at the football game that weekend chanted, “We want Bronny.”Bronny James had less fanfare as a prospect than his father did (of course, few high school players get the treatment LeBron James had). He is ranked as a four-star prospect by the recruiting site 247Sports, which rates him as the No. 26 prospect in the senior class.He won’t be the highest-ranked recruit for U.S.C. That honor belongs to Isaiah Collier, a five-star prospect from Marietta, Ga., who is rated as the No. 1 point guard in the class.Still, Collier was busy recruiting Bronny James during the recent showcase circuit.“‘Stay home,’ that’s my pitch,” Collier told reporters at the Nike Hoop Summit last month in Portland, Ore., where both players competed. “Why leave L.A.?”The book so far on Bronny James is that he has a keen basketball I.Q. and an improved jump shot, but that he lacks elite athleticism. He averaged 14 points, 5.5 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.8 steals per game last season at Sierra Canyon, but was a second-team all-league selection.“He’s solid,” said Thaddeus Young, who finished his 16th N.B.A. season and sponsored a grass-roots team that competed against James at last summer’s Nike Peach Jam. His assessment was largely echoed by college coaches and N.B.A. scouts. “Obviously, probably not the elite of the elite. But he’s athletic, he’s strong, he plays defense, he can shoot the ball well, he can run the point guard position, he can play off ball,” he said.LeBron James’s older son, Bronny, right, averaged 14 points, 5.5 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.8 steals per game last season at Sierra Canyon in Los Angeles.Gregory Payan/Associated PressStill, some colleges were wary of recruiting Bronny James. There were multiple factors in play for any coach that considered taking him. What happens if he doesn’t play well enough to merit significant playing time? What if the team does well but he struggles? What if the team doesn’t do well at all? How will security and locker room access be handled when LeBron James and his wife, Savannah, attend games? Considering Bronny has significant potential for individual endorsement deals, will there be added pressure to play him?Bronny James, who turns 19 in October, is widely expected to spend one season in college before entering the N.B.A. draft in 2024, when his father will turn 40. Under the league’s current rules, players cannot enter the draft until they are 19 and one year removed from their high school graduation class. That rule was renewed in a recent collective bargaining agreement between the N.B.A. players’ union and team owners, despite some campaigning in college sports for athletes to be able to turn pro right out of high school.LeBron James was asked on Saturday if it remained his goal to play alongside his son.“We’re going to support him whatever he decides to do,” he said. “Because that’s my aspiration and my goal doesn’t mean it’s his. And I’m absolutely OK with that. My job is to support my son, whatever he wants to do.”Bronny James is projected as an N.B.A. lottery pick by some draft experts. The Lakers, however, do not have a first-round pick in 2024, and LeBron has a player option for the 2024-25 season.That all makes it unclear how Bronny James can end up on the same team as his famous father.Sopan Deb More

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      Stephen Curry and LeBron James Meet in the Playoffs, Maybe for the Last Time

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      Tim Hardaway knows stars when he sees them. Hardaway, a Hall of Fame point guard, battled against his share of them, including Michael Jordan, during a 14-year N.B.A. career.So when he sees Stephen Curry and LeBron James encountering each other yet again in the N.B.A. playoffs, only one comparison comes to mind.“Michael Jackson and Prince,” Hardaway said. “You must see that. That’s how big of a star they are. They command the crowd.”James, with the Los Angeles Lakers, and Curry, with the Golden State Warriors, have the attention of the basketball world in the Western Conference semifinals. It’s not the biggest stage, like when they faced off in four straight N.B.A. finals from 2015 to 2018, as James played for Cleveland. But in the N.B.A., any stage they are on is the biggest one. Together and apart, they have for a generation defined a league whose individual stars can determine a team’s fate and shift the broader culture more than stars in other team sports can.The Cleveland Cavaliers drafted James No. 1 overall in 2003. He’s been a headline star ever since, winning championships in Cleveland, Miami and Los Angeles. Clara Mokri for The New York TimesA playoff series headlined by Curry and James is the basketball equivalent of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles touring together. Or Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, except with a touch more gray and way more mutual respect. Or, in basketball terms, this is Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird in the 1980s.But this year’s matchup is especially significant. James, at 38, and Curry, at 35, are nearing the end of careers that have revolutionized basketball, with no clear heirs to continue the progression. Curry’s mastery of the 3-pointer ushered in a new era of long-distance shooting as a primary offensive attack, at all basketball levels. James, a powerful 6-foot-9 and 250 pounds, has been nearly impossible to duplicate physically, but he changed the way basketball stars viewed their own ability to bend teams to their will and create political and social capital for themselves off the floor.Their playoff matchup this year may be the last time fans see two basketball players of this level of influence competing against each other in the postseason, which may be why ticket prices are breaking records for a non-championship series.“What is it going to be like when those two guys — obviously two of the biggest names in the league, if not the biggest — are gone?” said Dell Curry, Stephen Curry’s father and a former N.B.A. player. “I think the league is very healthy as far as star power, but who takes the lead in that role?”Clara Mokri for The New York TimesFor much of the past two decades, James and Curry have been the N.B.A.’s largest draws, generating revenue through television ratings, sponsorships, and jersey and ticket sales. In 2009, when Golden State drafted Curry, Forbes estimated that the team was worth $315 million — the 18th most valuable N.B.A. franchise. Last year, after Curry led the team to its fourth championship in eight years, Golden State was ranked No. 1 with an eye-popping $7 billion valuation.Tamika Tremaglio, the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union, said in an email that Curry and James “have fueled economic prosperity in the cities they play in.”“From an equity standpoint, our players are powerful, and Steph Curry and LeBron James are living proof of that truth,” Tremaglio said.New Orleans Pelicans guard CJ McCollum, the president of the players’ union, said, “What they’ve done is astronomical to our game in terms of viewership, in terms of globalizing the game.” He added, “Our league is in a better place because of it.”Curry and James faced off in the N.B.A. finals for four straight years, from 2015 to 2018. Curry’s Golden State teams won three times.Photo by Bob Donnan/Pool/Getty ImagesJames’s presence has been a boon at each stop in his career, from the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Miami Heat and now to Los Angeles. He has become a symbol of modern fandom, in which many fans follow players and not teams. And Curry, whose pregame shooting routines draw even opposing teams’ fans, has shown how transcendent talent can test even the staunchest loyalties.“The basketball impact is like every kid especially that is coming into the league now, those are the two guys you want to be like,” said guard Isaiah Thomas, who has played with James and had to defend Curry. “I’ve seen younger guys come in the league and be in awe of these guys and they’re competing against them.”Jamal Crawford, who recently retired after two decades in the N.B.A., said Curry’s physique — 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds — made him seem like he was like “the boy next door” compared to bigger athletes.“He’s the guy — the kid — that every kid can look up to and say: ‘You know what? If I work hard on my game, if I work on my skills, if I believe in myself, I can accomplish unbelievable things,’” said Crawford, now a TNT analyst. “If you look at LeBron, you say, ‘Wow, he is a force of nature, something we’ve never seen before.’”Curry broke Ray Allen’s career 3-pointers record last season. He is widely considered the greatest shooter ever.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesSince they last met in the N.B.A. finals in 2018, Curry and James have expanded their influence on the culture. Curry spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, and James endorsed Joe Biden for president that year and launched a voting rights group. They have been outspoken against gun violence, and Curry has helped with public health outreach during the coronavirus pandemic. James is the first active N.B.A. player to become a billionaire. And through production companies — James’s SpringHill Company and Curry’s Unanimous Media — both players have found opportunities to bolster their legacies, perhaps veering into hagiography.The documentary “Stephen Curry: Underrated,” directed by Peter Nicks and co-produced by Unanimous Media, debuted at the San Francisco International Film Festival last month and will stream on Apple TV in July. Curry, a top-10 draft pick out of Davidson, has won two Most Valuable Player Awards — one by unanimous vote, for the only time in N.BA. history. To get there he struggled through ankle injuries early in his career, but he is now widely considered the best shooter ever.In June, SpringHill, James’s company, is releasing the feature film “Shooting Stars” on Peacock, based on his high school team, St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. It is an adaptation of a 2009 book by James and Buzz Bissinger.James has played for the Lakers since the 2018-19 season. He led the Lakers to the franchise’s 17th championship in 2020.Clara Mokri for The New York TimesThe projects underscore the two players’ vastly different paths to stardom. James was already a sought-after star as a teenager. Sonny Vaccaro, the former shoe-marketing executive, once flew James out to a Lakers playoff game in a private plane from Adidas while he was in high school. James was enthralled, recounted Jeff Benedict, who recently released an independent biography of James titled “LeBron.” He said James had long understood that “basketball isn’t just a sport.”“It’s like show business,” Benedict said. “It’s a very high form of public entertainment in the United States.”The cultural impact of Curry and James has also rippled out to the theater in independent plays unaffiliated with the stars. This summer, Inua Ellams, a playwright based in Britain, will debut a play called “The Half-God of Rainfall” at the New York Theater Workshop. The plot combines mythology and basketball: A half-god comes to Earth and becomes the biggest star in the N.B.A. Ellams, a longtime N.B.A. fan, said the character is loosely based on Curry and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.In another play, Rajiv Joseph’s “King James,” which makes its Off Broadway premiere this month at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York, James looms but doesn’t appear, an indication of his influence. The piece chronicles the friendship of two Cleveland-based men who idolize James.Joseph, a Cleveland native and lifelong sports fan, said the idea for the play came to him after James won a championship with the Cavaliers in 2016.James and Curry last met in the playoffs in 2018, in the N.B.A. finals.Gregory Shamus/Getty Images“It always felt to me, as I came to think about it, is he was almost like this deity who, when he smiled upon our fair little land in Cleveland, crops thrived and rivers ran clear,” Joseph said. “And then when he left, everything kind of dried up. Now, that is an exaggeration, but from a sports perspective, it certainly felt that way.”Ellams said the N.B.A. will feel a “cavernous” loss when Curry and James are gone. In February, James broke the league’s career scoring record, which had been held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar since 1984. Last season, Curry broke Ray Allen’s career 3-pointer record in 511 fewer games.“It’s going to be half a century before anyone comes close to what they have done — what they are actively doing,” Ellams said. “This isn’t history in the making. This is punching holes out of mountains.”James is in his 20th season, far past the time when most players’ careers are over. He and Curry, in his 14th season, have staved off the need for the N.B.A. to fully transition into a new era of stardom. But those in and around the league are bullish about its future.Led by Curry and his teammates Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, Golden State won four championships in eight years. The last was in 2022, against the Boston Celtics.Clara Mokri for The New York Times“There’s always a next, even though we can’t see it,” said Candace Parker, one of the most accomplished players in W.N.B.A. history.She added: “That’s what we asked ourselves after Michael Jordan retired. After Magic and Bird retired. It just seems like there’s always that next coming.”Parker, who plays for the Las Vegas Aces and is an N.B.A. analyst on TNT, cited players like Antetokounmpo, Dallas’s Luka Doncic, Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Victor Wembanyama, the French prodigy expected to go first in this year’s N.B.A. draft, as possible torch carriers.Oscar Robertson, one of the best guards ever to play in the N.B.A., said part of the reason Curry and James were able to maintain their influence was because of how well they were still playing at their ages.“Some players when they are 29, they’re even too old. Some players when they are 34, they’re too old,” Robertson, 84, said. He added: “Guys try to rise to the occasion to play against these two athletes. And I’m so glad that these two athletes are meeting that challenge every time they go on the court.”But so far, no other current player in the N.B.A. — or likely anyone else in American team sports — is in the same orbit of stardom and influence as James and Curry.“We just have to enjoy these guys in the present because who knows how much longer they’ll play?” Crawford said. “But what we do know is we won’t see two like this ever again. So we should savor every moment.”Clara Mokri for The New York Times More

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      Pat Riley, Once Front and Center, Reigns in the Background

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      Riley’s decades in the N.B.A. have given him plenty of stories to tell. But the formerly flashy coach of the Knicks, Heat and Lakers is keeping a low profile — “the boss he thinks you should be.”The network camera was drawn to Pat Riley after Jimmy Butler’s 22-foot jumper landed like a kick to the collective groin of the Milwaukee Bucks late in Game 4 of Miami’s first-round playoff series upset. While Butler, soon to complete a 56-point masterpiece, pranced in full-throated fashion, there sat Riley, a gray-haired Buddha, arms folded across his suit jacket and tie, smiling without celebrating, blinking but not moving.No surprise, really. By this point in a long basketball life, what has Riley not already seen that would make him compromise on his veneer of calculated, unflappable control?Circulating online, the clip was another striking visual to add to the Riley collection. From the 1966 national championship game in which a Texas Western squad dominated by Black players defeated his all-white Kentucky team to his tenured role as the Heat’s president, Riley has been tethered to basketball history of tectonic magnitude.True, the 1970s version of Riley is most memorably recalled as a role player practically riding piggyback on the great Jerry West while leaving the court upon the Los Angeles Lakers’ clinching of the only title West ever won as a player. From the 1980s on, Riley moved front and center, stylishly coifed.Riley coached the Heat to a championship in the 2005-6 season, with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal leading the team on the court. Miami beat the Dallas Mavericks in six games.Rhona Wise/European Pressphoto AgencyHe has played, coached or been chief executive for a team in a championship game or series for an extraordinary seven consecutive decades — the most recent being the Heat’s 2020 N.B.A. finals loss to the Lakers. Had there been an award for most venerable personality, the man who inspired Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko look for the 1987 film “Wall Street” would have to be its inaugural designee.Riley’s run as a coach and executive is arguably the most remarkable of all, given the generational shifts he has withstood. West is a front-office Lakers legend but was a reluctant three-season coach. Phil Jackson has more than double the head coaching titles (11-5), but he took on only star-laden rosters and was a bust as Knicks president. Red Auerbach deserves credit for coaching or assembling 16 of the Celtics’ 17 title teams, but most were achieved in a nascent league in which players had no freedom of movement.Riley coached the Lakers from 1981 to 1990, winning four championships with the future Hall of Famers Magic Johnson, right, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, left.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesRiley didn’t win a championship during his four seasons with the Knicks in the early 1990s, but they made it to the N.B.A. finals in 1994, when they lost to Houston in seven games.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesRiley did inherit a championship cast in Los Angeles, but he steered it to dynastic prominence and four titles. He made the Knicks matter again in the 1990s, however tortured — his word — he remains from not getting them across the finish line in the 1994 finals. He turned Miami’s nowhere expansion franchise into a contender and three-time champion.But we likely won’t hear much, if anything at all, from Riley on himself, the injury-plagued Heat or the Knicks during their Eastern Conference semifinal series. It’s not breaking news that he has ceded the organizational microphone to Erik Spoelstra, the coach he handpicked to succeed him in 2008 and who has remained in place well beyond the four-year Miami residency of LeBron James and the franchise’s last title in 2013.As far back as 2012, I sampled the Heat locker room for a column on how Riley had stepped away from the spotlight that once couldn’t resist him. Dwyane Wade, who joined the Heat in 2003, said, “For the most part, he stays back, stays out of the way when it comes to the players, and he’s been doing that for a couple of years.”Riley rarely speaks publicly anymore, but he has come out to support Wade, right, who spent more than a decade with the Heat.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesRiley declined a request to talk about why his once-commanding voice is now seldom heard with rare exceptions — typically to acknowledge revered service, as in the recent cases of Wade’s election to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Heat veteran Udonis Haslem’s upcoming retirement. Feelers to others affiliated with the Heat were met with a familiar refrain: Riley does not want anyone but Spoelstra and his players speaking publicly during the playoffs.Better then to consult someone whose employment doesn’t depend on him. Jeff Van Gundy, a Riley protégé who became his coaching antagonist after Riley’s stormy departure from New York in 1995, said: “He morphed into the boss that he always wanted, the boss he thinks you should be. Stay behind the scenes. Do your job.”Dave Checketts, who in 1991 hired Riley to coach the Knicks, recalled a phone conversation in which West, with whom Riley occasionally clashed during the Lakers’ Showtime era, warned him, “You’re going to have to figure out how to handle the press because Pat will lose his mind when someone says something he doesn’t want out there.”Said Checketts: “And Pat did say when he came, during hours and hours of conversation, that we needed to speak in one voice. That’s why I give him tremendous credit for what he’s done in Miami — he’s lived by what he’s espoused. And Spoelstra has been a great spokesman, too.”Six years ago, during my last extended conversation with Riley, he did veer off the agreed-upon interview topic — Magic Johnson’s brief ascension to the Lakers’ presidency. When I complimented him for refusing to tank, for remaining competitive despite losing James to Cleveland and Chris Bosh to a medical issue, Riley said:LeBron James, Wade and Chris Bosh spent four seasons together on the Heat, winning two championships. Riley was team president, after handing the coaching reins to Erik Spoelstra in 2008.Hans Deryk/Reuters“Players come and go, great players. When LeBron left, that was the most shocking thing to me — not to say he was right or wrong — and the most shocking thing to the franchise. But our culture is the same. You have your up years and your down years, but what can’t change is the way you do things.”That wasn’t necessarily the whole truth. After the Heat lost to San Antonio in the 2014 N.B.A. finals, Riley, undoubtedly referring to James’s looming free agency, told reporters: “You’ve got to stay together if you’ve got the guts. And you don’t find the first door to run out of.”James still exited, stage left. An old Riley tactic — challenging players’ manhood — fell on deaf, new-age ears. Most spiels grow old. And Riley, 69 at the time, is now a more muted 78, a stealth operator, Godfather Riley more than Gordon Gekko Riley. Yet he remains indisputably relevant, still resplendent, while watching and waiting for the auspicious occasion that will merit his last hurrah. More

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      Anthony Davis Leads Lakers Past Golden State

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      Only Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal previously had 30 points and 20 rebounds in a Lakers playoff game.SAN FRANCISCO — Anthony Davis sat next to LeBron James, watching as James heaped praise upon him.“The Lakers franchise over the years, over the course of their existence, has always had dominant big men, dominant guys that have been a force at the rim,” James said, after a dominant performance by Davis in the Lakers’ Game 1 win on Tuesday night in their Western Conference semifinal series against the Golden State Warriors. “That’s why their jerseys are in the rafters. A.D. will be up there when he’s done playing.”James went on for another minute in the same vein. Once he finished, Davis patted him on the back.“I’ll take my watch next week,” James said, smiling at his joke about a quid pro quo. “Or a car.”This series is one that has stirred nostalgia for the years when James and Warriors guard Stephen Curry used to face off every June for the N.B.A. championship. But it could hinge on Davis, who has the potential to be the best player in the series. On Tuesday night, Davis showed just what his dominance can mean to the Lakers, as he pushed them to a 117-112 win on the road over the defending champion Warriors, wresting away home-court advantage.Curry finished with 27 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists while two other Golden State guards, Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole, also eclipsed 20 points.Davis finished the game with 30 points, 23 rebounds and 4 blocks. With at least 30 points and 20 rebounds, Davis joined elite company in Lakers playoff history: Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Shaquille O’Neal. The most drastic statistical difference between the teams was a direct result of Davis’s play: The Lakers outscored the Warriors inside the paint by 54-28.“He’s everything for us,” Lakers guard Dennis Schroder said. “Defensively, offensively, big part for this organization. I mean, wasn’t an All-Star, wasn’t the defensive player of the year. He’s taking it serious, doing everything for us, and he’s the anchor.”That James and Curry were the narrative center of this series made sense. They are two of the best to have ever played in the N.B.A., and each has won four championships. They played against each other in the finals every year from 2015 to 2018, and each has won a championship since then as well — James in 2020 and Curry last season.This is the first time since 2018 that the two have faced each other in the playoffs, and there were plenty of moments Tuesday night when they commanded the stage.Before the game, the two shared a laugh at the scorer’s table. Midway through the second quarter, while Davis was shooting free throws, James wandered down the sideline with Curry, who was heading to the Golden State bench. James stayed by Curry’s side until he sat down, and even then continued talking to him.“He was just joking around about having to guard me all the way till I got to the bench,” Curry said.But at halftime, James was with Davis. The two of them walked off the court together, shoulder to shoulder, stride for stride.The scene was reminiscent of their first season together, the 2019-20 championship season, when Davis and James hardly went anywhere without each other and waited for each other to finish their on-court interviews after every game.The Lakers gave up a lot to acquire Davis the summer before that season, including players who would become critical pieces for other franchises, and Davis seemed to reward them right away. He was named first-team All-N.B.A. that year, as well as the All-Defensive first team. He was a candidate for defensive player of the year. He fit perfectly on James’s team.Part of what made that partnership work so seamlessly was the way their personalities meshed. Davis never needed to be the center of attention. James didn’t mind it, even thrived in it.“We’re not jealous of each other,” James said during the 2020 N.B.A. finals.That dynamic came into play on Tuesday night when James and Curry were the center of attention.Davis might not seek attention, but on the court he requires it, especially when he plays the way he did in Game 1.“We know that’s what he’s capable of,” Lakers Coach Darvin Ham said. “It’s great. We needed every bit of all those points and rebounds and blocked shots, assists as well.”Despite 27 points from Stephen Curry, Golden State is down, one game to none.Cary Edmondson/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConThough Davis excelled at defending inside the paint, he made his presence felt all over the court. Late in the game, he thwarted the Warriors shortly after Curry tied the game with a heart-stopping 3-pointer with 1 minute 38 seconds remaining that capped a 14-0 run.Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell scored, getting the lead back for the Lakers. Moments later, Curry tried again, this time driving toward the basket, only to have his shot blocked by Davis. With 39.3 seconds left and the Lakers up by 3, Davis grabbed a rebound off a miss by Poole.Davis was aggressive offensively as well and seemed tireless despite playing 43 minutes 50 seconds, more than any other player. He played the entire second half.Ham credited the load management in which the Lakers had engaged earlier in the year for being able to play Davis big minutes in the playoffs.Davis’s critics have questioned his durability and his consistency, and not without reason. He has missed games because of injury in every year of his career and played in only 56 games this season.“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “I don’t care what no one thinks. Only the guys in the locker room, coaching staff, only opinions that I care about. Other than that, I just go out and play basketball, do what I can do to help the team win.”Davis and James were two of the last remaining players on the court Tuesday night, Davis doing a postgame interview with TNT and James speaking with the Lakers’ regional broadcast channel. Davis briefly interrupted James’s interview to do a personalized handshake before leaving the court.“It’s going to be a different game,” Davis said, when asked about Game 2 on Thursday. “They’re going to make adjustments; we’re going to make adjustments.” He added: “I’m going to continue to be aggressive.” More

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      LeBron James Has First 20-20 Game in Lakers’ Game 4 Win Over Grizzlies

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      A 22-point, 20-rebound game by James led the Lakers in Game 4 against the Grizzlies, a win that put Ja Morant and Memphis on the brink of elimination.LOS ANGELES — There are still milestones left for LeBron James to reach, as improbable as that seems.In a 20-year career in which James has powered three franchises to championships and become the league’s all-time scoring leader, James had never grabbed 20 rebounds in a game. Not in the regular season. Not in the postseason.Not until Monday. Until his Los Angeles Lakers needed his muscle, his experience and his intuition. Until it needed James to push a brash young opponent, the Memphis Grizzlies, to the brink of a first-round playoff elimination.“These are the moments that I love,” James said. “I love the postseason.”The 117-111 overtime victory James helped deliver on Monday night led the Lakers, a team that started the season 2-10 and seemed lost heading into the trade deadline, to a 3-1 lead over the Grizzlies, who spent all season as one of the best teams in the Western Conference.The Lakers are in this commanding position because James found a way to push through his exhaustion in the final minutes of Game 4 and add to his lore. He grabbed rebounds, he took charges, he made a driving layup through contact with 29.1 seconds left in overtime and screamed into the crowd as he pounded on his chest.“He understands the timing, the timing of everything,” Lakers Coach Darvin Ham said. “The known of what happened yesterday and the unknown of tomorrow, it makes him even more entrenched in today, into the moment.“All of his travels. All of the phenomenal things he’s accomplished — he still has that passion, that grit to want to be on top and to want to put his team in position, the right way, to be successful. That’s what you saw.”With 22 points and 20 rebounds, James became the first Laker to reach 20 points and 20 rebounds in a playoff game since Shaquille O’Neal in 2004. At 38, he became the oldest player in N.B.A. history to have 20 points and 20 rebounds in a game, beating a playoff mark set by Wilt Chamberlain in 1973.James’s presence is part of the reason it has been clear from the start of the series that the Lakers are no ordinary seventh seed. Their record didn’t reflect who they were once Anthony Davis and James were available, if not fully healthy. They also improved significantly after remaking their roster at the trade deadline.Conversely, the Grizzlies came into the postseason hobbled. Their starting center, Steven Adams, has been out with a knee injury, and Brandon Clarke, another player who lent size to their lineup, also has been injured.Memphis lost Game 1 at home. But, famous for their bluster, that early defeat did not humble them. One Grizzlies player, Dillon Brooks, went directly at James on the court and off it.During Game 2, Brooks said James called him “dumb” for acquiring his fourth foul.“I don’t care — he’s old, you know what I mean?” Brooks responded.“I was waiting for that. I was expecting him to do that Game 4, Game 5. He wanted to say something when I got my fourth foul. He should have been saying that earlier on. But I poke bears. I don’t respect no one until they come and give me 40.”Creating a rivalry with James can be an easy way for another player to siphon some of his spotlight. James knew that and wanted no part of it.After a practice last week, James was asked several questions about Brooks’s comments and sidestepped each one. He then ended his news conference early, before he was tempted to say anything that might escalate the feud. He said he preferred to speak through his play.In the minutes before Game 3, though, James approached Brooks. There was no audio, but cameras caught the interaction and the video circulated on social media.“There was nothing private about it,” James said after the game, giving away that he wasn’t actually ignoring all that Brooks had said. “It was very, very public. I like it that way.”The Lakers led by 35-9 after the first quarter of that game, driving their fans into a delirious frenzy and making Memphis’s bravado seem foolish. The Grizzlies never recovered from their poor start even though Ja Morant scored 45 points. Brooks was ejected in the third quarter for a flagrant foul assessed when he struck James in the groin, putting an early end to whatever battle might have been brewing between the two of them.Ja Morant, who scored 45 points in a loss in Game 3, was held to 19 on Monday.Gary A. Vasquez/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConStill, not everything came easily for the Lakers on Monday.They had a 15-point lead in the second quarter, but Memphis closed the first half with a 14-1 run and the Lakers led by just 2 at halftime. To end the third quarter, Morant wove through the paint to dunk the ball as time expired and gave Memphis a 2-point lead.Late in the game, however, the Lakers got important contributions from several players. Davis, after a quiet game through three quarters, made important defensive plays late. D’Angelo Russell made three 3-pointers within a one-minute span during the fourth quarter to pull the Lakers out of a 7-point deficit.But James’s contributions, as he fought through fatigue in the closing minutes, meant the most.“You just dig deep and understand that you’ll be able to sleep at some point, just not right now,” James said, looking drained after the game. “This is not the time to rest or forget about an assignment. You’ll have plenty of time after a game and the next day to kind of rest and decompress as much as possible.”Rest is hard to come by in the playoffs. Though the Lakers and the Grizzlies had a kinder schedule than some teams got, with two days off between each of the first three games, they are now playing every other day with increasingly high stakes. The Lakers’ first chance to finish off the series will come in Game 5 on Wednesday in Memphis.“The closeout game is always the hardest game of the series,” James said. “It’s the most tiring one.” More

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      The Lakers, Clippers and Kings, and an L.A. Court in Constant Motion

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      LOS ANGELES — Jorge Mendez waited impatiently as the Los Angeles Kings’ fate hung in the balance late Friday night.Their N.H.L. first-round playoff game against the Edmonton Oilers had already gone into overtime, robbing Mendez’s crew of several precious minutes they would need to get Crypto.com Arena ready for the Clippers’ N.B.A. playoff game on Saturday afternoon. And now there was another delay. Officials were trying to determine whether a would-be game-winning goal by Kings forward Trevor Moore should count.Mendez, the venue’s assistant conversion manager, had a crew of about 20 people waiting to transform the chilly arena. They would be working all night and had to finish by 7 a.m. Saturday. They had never missed a deadline, and weren’t about to start now.“With the referees we don’t know,” Mendez said. “They could say they deny that one and it goes longer. And the more longer they go, they’re going to take more time from me.”The Kings had a playoff game Friday night, and the Clippers and Lakers hosted postseason games Saturday, creating an eventful weekend for arena workers.The goal stood and the Kings won. Fans celebrated and left the building, then Mendez’s crew got to work: The nets and glass surrounding the ice rink came down; the penalty boxes and benches were disassembled and moved; the ice was cleaned and covered by insulation so it wouldn’t melt during the next day’s basketball games; and the modules containing seats were shifted into new configurations.They finished well before 7 a.m. and Mendez drove home at 6:30 a.m. At that time of day there is little traffic, so it took him just 10 minutes. When he works overnight, he sleeps during the day, and his wife tries to stop his 9-year-old daughter from bursting into his room to ask if he wants to bike with her. But Mendez’s weekend was long from over.Like dozens of others, Mendez worked tirelessly to make sure the arena could handle its frenetic week. The busiest time came in the 36 hours after the Kings game Friday, when the building turned over from the Kings to the Clippers to the Lakers and back to the Kings. All three teams have called the arena home since 1999, when it opened as Staples Center.“My favorite part of this is when they’re done,” said Lee Zeidman, the president of Crypto.com Arena; the nearby Microsoft Theater; and the surrounding entertainment district, L.A. Live. “It’s like a puzzle. These men and women they’re the best in the business.”Mendez was back at 1 p.m., ready to flip the arena from the Clippers’ array of red, blue, black and silver to the Lakers’ purple and gold.Joe Keeler usually drives the Zamboni that maintains the ice during Kings games, but he sometimes helps transition the arena to basketball.The ice gets cleaned and covered with insulation so it does not melt during basketball games. Then the court and basketball hoops get changed in accordance with which team is playing.‘Organized chaos’Between Thursday and Monday night, Crypto.com Arena will have hosted four basketball playoff games and two hockey playoff games.“It’s chaos,” said Darryl Jackson, an event operations assistant manager for the arena. “But it’s organized. Organized chaos.” He began his career working on conversions, but now helps to make sure the baskets during basketball games and the glass during hockey games stay in good condition.Minutes after Game 4 of the first-round series between the Clippers and the Phoenix Suns finished Saturday, Loreto Verdugo backed a forklift down an aisle between the court and the first row of grandstand seats. He had just a couple of inches of space on either side of him. After years of doing this task, he wasn’t nearly as nervous as he was the first time he did it.“You don’t want to hit the floor because the floor’s the most important thing out there,” Verdugo said. “But you don’t want to hit anybody else either.”He had quietly left his home in North Hollywood at 4 a.m. (“I’m like a mouse,” he said) to be at the arena in time to begin supervising maintenance work.As soon as the Clippers’ game ended, just before 3 p.m., and all of the people had been cleared from the court, a bustle of expertly choreographed activity began. By the time the Clippers’ players began their postgame interviews, workers had bagged fans’ trash, and the player and logo banners the Clippers hang in the rafters had been rolled up to reveal the gold-colored championship banners for the Lakers and the W.N.B.A.’s Los Angeles Sparks, who have also shared the arena for much of the past two decades.The Kings won in overtime Friday against the Edmonton Oilers before the Clippers lost to the Phoenix Suns and the Lakers beat the Memphis Grizzlies.The Clippers’ court was already being uprooted from the floor, piece by interlocking piece, and loaded onto pallets that Verdugo and two other forklift drivers would pick up and deposit in a storage area that doubles as a news conference room.It was the 251st midday conversion in the history of Crypto.com Arena.About an hour after the Clippers’ game ended, their court had been replaced by the Lakers’ floor.Joe Keeler, who normally drives the Zamboni that cleans and builds the ice during hockey games, joined a group of people folding the baskets with white stanchions that the Clippers use and rolling them out to the storage area. They replaced them with the yellow-stanchioned baskets the Lakers use.“Everybody helps where they can,” said Keeler, who also helped pick up the Clippers’ floor and lay down the Lakers’.Red Clippers drapery was replaced by purple, and a purple carpet had been rolled out in the tunnel the Lakers use to go onto the court.It is a little easier when the conversion is from one basketball court to another. Doubleheaders involving the Kings are more challenging. When the building first opened, Zeidman gathered the vendors for the basketball courts, the seats and the plexiglass for hockey games and asked them how long they thought it would take to convert the hockey arena into a basketball arena. They told him at least four hours.“Unacceptable,” Zeidman said.Robbin Dedeaux, a seasoned usher, worked his section during the Clippers’ game before the changeover. The court and banners, like the Lakers and Sparks’ championship banners, are adjusted accordingly.‘How can I work here?’The first conversion for a doubleheader was an event in itself. Fans were allowed to watch from a designated area. Arena workers watched from a break room upstairs.“It was amazing,” said Juanita Williams, 57, an usher who has worked right behind the home benches during basketball games since the building opened. “To see it for the first time, we were like there’s no way they’re going to change this over in two and a half hours. It happened.”Williams started as an usher 25 years ago at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., where the Lakers and the Kings played from 1967 to 1999. She called to find out how much Lakers season tickets cost.“I said: ‘OK, I cannot afford those tickets. So how can I work here then?’” she said.In the daytime she works from home as a buyer for a washer and dryer company that she has been with for 34 years. Her daughter briefly took a job as an usher, too, while going to cosmetology school.By Monday night, Williams will have worked in all six playoff games since Thursday.The merchandise available on arena concourses must be refreshed, too.Robbin Dedeaux, 65, will have too. He works at the top of the lower bowl in aisle 14, checking tickets and greeting customers. He is stationed right next to where the Lakers’ radio broadcasters sit.Dedeaux also started this work as a second job to get out of the list of chores his wife, Ricca Dedeaux, was always asking him to do. He started with ticket-taking in 1999 and then became an usher. He has been asked if he’d like to work down on the floor, but he thinks he might get sleepy if he got to sit down.“The fans are the best part of the job,” Dedeaux said. “You get to see them from all over the world. They come in from Italy, they come in from France, they come in from Germany. You have fun with them.”He added: “When the fans that come here from different arenas, I have fun with them. I tell them to get out.”He laughed.Dedeaux and his wife have been married for 40 years. He said she misses him during basketball and hockey season when he is working so many hours.“That’s just marriage,” Dedeaux said. “She knows I love her, she knows I love what I do. She tolerates it.”He added, “Then I make up for it.”After the Lakers game, Darryl Jackson and his crew convert the arena back into an NHL venue.‘It has to be done’Ignacio Guerra’s first job in the events world came in the early 1990s. He was a high school chemistry and biology teacher and coach, and he would park cars at the Hollywood Bowl in the summers. When Staples Center opened, Guerra worked for the contractor parking cars there, before finding a job working for the arena. Saturday was his 21st anniversary with the arena.In 2019, he took over as the head of the arena’s operations department. He is now the senior vice president of operations and engineering. He has worked hundreds of events and has two large frames in his office displaying credentials for everything from Taylor Swift concerts to N.B.A. All-Star Games.He shepherded the building through coronavirus shutdowns and the return of fans. During the shutdown, many of his workers took other jobs and didn’t come back, which meant starting over with new people at some positions.Kings and Lakers fans celebrated victories while the Clippers fell further behind in their playoff series.At least a handful of the remaining people have worked at the arena since the beginning, including the man who builds the penalty boxes for hockey games. Guerra often stands in the middle of the floor supervising all of the activity.“They’re the heart and soul of this,” Guerra said of the operations staff.He said the crew has never missed a conversion.“You can’t wait up at 7 in the morning and say, ‘Hey, sorry we couldn’t get the Laker floor down.’” Guerra said. “It has to be down, and there’s a no-fail mentality.”The Lakers played at 7 p.m. Saturday. By 10 p.m. another conversion had begun. More

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      Vanessa Bryant Settles Helicopter Crash Photos Lawsuit for $28.85 Million

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      Bryant, the widow of the basketball star Kobe Bryant, sued Los Angeles County after some of its employees shared graphic photos of the crash that killed her husband and one of their daughters.Los Angeles County agreed to pay Vanessa Bryant and three of her daughters nearly $30 million to settle a lawsuit and potential claims over the sharing of graphic photos of the January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Bryant’s husband, the basketball star Kobe Bryant, and one of their daughters, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The settlement includes $15 million a jury awarded Vanessa Bryant in August, with additional funds to settle potential claims from her daughters.“Today marks the successful culmination of Mrs. Bryant’s courageous battle to hold accountable those who engaged in this grotesque conduct,” Luis Li, Bryant’s lawyer, said in a statement. “She fought for her husband, her daughter, and all those in the community whose deceased family were treated with similar disrespect. We hope her victory at trial and this settlement will put an end to this practice.”On Jan. 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant, 41, and his daughter Gianna Bryant, 13, were in a helicopter with seven other people when it crashed in foggy conditions outside Los Angeles, killing all on board. Soon after, Vanessa Bryant learned that some employees of the county’s fire and sheriff’s departments had shared graphic photos of human remains from the crash. She sued for negligence and invasion of privacy in September 2020 and won at trial in August, providing a rare and expensive public admonition of some of Los Angeles’ most powerful institutions.The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay Bryant’s family $28.85 million to settle Bryant’s lawsuit and potential future claims by Bryant and her daughters: Natalia, 20, Bianka, 6, and Capri, 3. The jury in August awarded Bryant $16 million, which was later reduced by $1 million because of a clerical error.In a statement, Mira Hashmall, the lead trial counsel for Los Angeles County in Bryant’s case, called the settlement “fair and reasonable” and said all county-related litigation from the crash had been resolved.“We hope Ms. Bryant and her children continue to heal from their loss,” Hashmall said.Kobe Bryant, who starred for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 years before retiring in 2016, was on his way to coach Gianna’s basketball team at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif., when they boarded the helicopter on the day of the crash. The pilot, Ara Zobayan, became disoriented in the clouds and crashed into a hill near Calabasas, Calif., killing all nine people on board.In a deposition for her lawsuit, Vanessa Bryant said Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ general manager and Kobe Bryant’s former agent, drove her later that morning to a sheriff’s station in Malibu, near the crash scene.Alex Villanueva, who was the Los Angeles County sheriff at the time, confirmed the deaths and asked Bryant if he could do anything for her, she said.“And I said: ‘If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure that no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area,’” Bryant said during the deposition. “And he said: ‘I will.’ And I said: ‘No, I need you to get on the phone right now and I need you to make sure you secure the area.’”Bryant testified at trial that she learned from a Los Angeles Times report that a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy had showed photos of the crash at a bar. The existence of the photos, Bryant said, compounded the tragedy.“I live in fear of my daughters being on social media and these popping up,” Bryant testified.The pictures were primarily shared between employees of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s and fire departments.Lawyers for the county acknowledged that the photos were taken and shared, but argued that an immediate order to delete them kept them from being publicly disseminated.At the trial, the jury also awarded $15 million to Chris Chester, who joined the suit because his wife Sarah, 45, and daughter, Payton, 13, were killed in the crash. Los Angeles County agreed to pay the Chester family an additional $4.95 million to resolve any future claims.Two other families separately settled with the county over the photos for $1.25 million each in October 2021.Li previously said that Bryant would donate the proceeds from the lawsuit to her Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, which honors Kobe and Gianna Bryant. More

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      NBA Trade Deadline 2023: Suns Get Durant as Power Shifts to the West

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      No move was bigger than Phoenix Suns’ agreement to trade for Kevin Durant. But the Lakers and Mavericks look stronger after deals of their own.It was supposed to be a quiet dinner with friends and family, who were there to celebrate Mat Ishbia’s big win — officially taking over as the controlling owner of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury.But Ishbia had his sights set on another win.An energetic 43-year-old billionaire in the mortgage industry, Ishbia kept ducking out of the room to take phone calls Wednesday evening as he and James Jones, the Suns’ president of basketball operations and general manager, worked together to make a deal for one of the greatest scorers in N.B.A. history: Kevin Durant.On his first full day on the job, Ishbia agreed to trade with the Nets for Durant, adding him to a competitive Suns lineup that already has the star guards Devin Booker and Chris Paul.In doing so, he had delivered the biggest splash in a season full of them, and he’d done so during a critical moment: the frenzied days before the N.B.A.’s trading deadline, which may have shifted the power in the league to the Western Conference.The Lakers got rid of their ill-fitting and expensive guard, Russell Westbrook. The Dallas Mavericks acquired the disgruntled but dynamic Kyrie Irving from the Nets to pair him with Luka Doncic, the star 23-year-old guard. Around the league, smaller deals tinkered with rosters and reset timelines, but no team changed as much as the Suns. Now, they are a championship contender and a potent threat to everyone else, including elite teams like the Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets.It had been difficult to know what to make of the West for much of this season. While the East has two teams at the top that have proved that they can win in the playoffs — Boston and Milwaukee — the West has been a jumble of aging stars and unproven youth.Heading into Thursday, only three games separated fourth-place Dallas from 11th-place Utah. No team is dominating, not even the Nuggets, who have led the conference since Dec. 20 but have developed a reputation for stumbling in the playoffs.The Grizzlies have been firmly in second place since Jan. 1, but they are also an unproven team in the postseason. They earned the No. 2 seed in the West last year, but were challenged by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round before losing to the Golden State Warriors, the eventual champion, in the second round.A few days before Christmas, the Grizzlies’ star guard Ja Morant was interviewed by ESPN’s Malika Andrews. She asked him what teams he would have to go through to win a championship.“Celtics,” Morant said, without hesitation.“No one in the West?” Andrews said.“Nah,” Morant said, shaking his head and smiling mischievously. “I’m fine in the West.”On Christmas, the Grizzlies faced Golden State, then struggling in 11th place. Golden State didn’t have its best player, Stephen Curry, but taunted the young and braggadocious Grizzlies team on the way to a 123-109 victory.The Warriors have had a confusing season as well. Their stars — Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — are older. The team has had injury issues, most notably to Curry and the starting forward Andrew Wiggins. But every once in a while Golden State notches a signature win, like its Christmas game, that reminds everyone why this team has won four championships in the past 10 years.And now Morant’s team has more competition to worry about.After news of the Durant trade broke Thursday, New Orleans Pelicans shooting guard CJ McCollum recalled Morant’s oft-memed words.“This all because @JaMorant said he was good in the West,” McCollum posted on Twitter, adding at the end three emojis of laughter with tears.The Los Angeles Lakers traded Russell Westbrook to the Utah Jazz as part of a three-team deal on Thursday.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressHours before the Durant trade surfaced, the Lakers agreed to trade Westbrook to the Jazz in a three-team trade that included a package of draft picks and players headlined by Minnesota’s D’Angelo Russell. The Lakers are in 13th place in the West but just four games away from a secure spot in the playoffs above the play-in tournament positions.With LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the Lakers’ roster, it stood to reason that a few tweaks could dramatically change their fortunes. Russell, whom the Lakers drafted No. 2 overall in 2015 but traded two seasons later, is a much better 3-point shooter than Westbrook and should help on offense. Two other players the Lakers received in the Westbrook trade — Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt — should help the team, too.The addition of Durant, one of the best to ever to play the game, could make the West a lot less open.On Wednesday, Ishbia woke up at 5 a.m. in his Detroit-area home and flew to Phoenix with his wife, three children, parents and some close friends.After meeting with some team employees, he walked onto a stage at the Suns’ arena, the Footprint Center, for his introductory news conference. He eschewed the lectern, using it only to hold a bottle of water he sipped from during questions. He paced the stage with the energy of a start-up founder giving a keynote address, using his hands to emphasize his rapidly delivered words.“I’m not going to be sitting here counting the dollars,” Ishbia said when asked if he would be willing to pay the league’s luxury tax penalties to exceed the salary cap, adding, “Money follows success, not the other way around.”He spent the afternoon at the team’s practice facility strategizing with Jones. Later, after the dinner with his family and friends, Ishbia stayed up all night working on the details of the Durant deal.Durant, 34, improves the team immediately, and dramatically. He has been out with a knee injury since Jan. 12, but his health is the only thing that has slowed him lately.He comes to a Phoenix team searching for a steady postseason identity.The past two seasons have ended with different kinds of heartbreak for the Suns. They lost to the Bucks in the finals two years ago, with Paul working through injuries. Then last year, despite setting a franchise regular-season wins record, they ended their season with an embarrassing blowout loss to the Mavericks in Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals.If all goes as planned, the West will now go through Phoenix. More