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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

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      How LeBron James Scored a Record-Breaking 38,390 Points

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      No one thought LeBron James would overtake Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the N.B.A.’s career scoring leader when he came to the league as an 18-year-old. It didn’t seem like anyone could. The top 250 scorers in N.B.A. history Line chart showing career points for the top 250 scorers in N.B.A. history. The line for LeBron […] More

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      Lakers Agree to Trade Russell Westbrook in a Three-Team Deal

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      Westbrook, a nine-time All-Star, would head to Utah after not fitting smoothly with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. Minnesota’s D’Angelo Russell will return to the Lakers, who drafted him in 2015.The Los Angeles Lakers have agreed to trade guard Russell Westbrook to the Utah Jazz as part of a three-team deal, according to three people familiar with the trade who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.As part of the exchange, the Lakers will receive Minnesota Timberwolves guard D’Angelo Russell, whom they drafted No. 2 overall in 2015 then traded away after just two seasons.The agreement was first reported by ESPN.The deal will end Westbrook’s tumultuous, and brief, tenure with the Lakers. The Washington Wizards traded Westbrook to the Lakers before the 2021-22 season, giving the Lakers high hopes that he would be part of a so-called superteam with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. To acquire Westbrook, the Lakers traded multiple players who were crucial to their championship run in 2020. It didn’t pan out.Westbrook, a nine-time All-Star and the 2017 most valuable player, is versatile and athletic at his best, easily able to fill up box scores. But in Los Angeles, Westbrook struggled to adjust to coming off the bench and not being the primary ballhandler. That, along with his below-average perimeter shooting, sunk the chances of him fitting with James and Davis.The Lakers (25-30) are out of the playoff picture in the Western Conference, despite their championship aspirations. Westbrook averaged 16.2 points, 6.1 rebounds and 7.7 assists per game off the bench for the Lakers this season.The Westbrook trade will also send to the Jazz forward Juan Toscano-Anderson, center Damian Jones and a first-round pick in the 2027 draft. The Jazz will mark Westbrook’s fifth team in five years, an unusual level of movement for a former M.V.P. still relatively close to his prime.The Jazz will send Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt to the Lakers, and they will trade Mike Conley and Nickeil Alexander-Walker to Minnesota.Russell, 26, who had been with Minnesota since the 2019-20 season, has had an up-and-down career. The Lakers traded him to the Nets in 2017, before his third season. He earned an All-Star selection with the Nets in 2019 but was sent to Golden State that summer as part of a sign-and-trade deal for Kevin Durant. Only months into the 2019-20 season, Golden State traded him to the Timberwolves, where he played alongside his close friend Karl-Anthony Towns. The potential was high for yet another dynamic star pairing in the N.B.A.But Minnesota, like the Lakers, has languished in the standings — battling for a playoff spot when the expectations were to be near the top of the West, especially after acquiring center Rudy Gobert, one of the best defensive players in the league, in a summer trade with Utah.Even so, Russell averaged 17.9 points and 6.2 assists per game for Minnesota this season, one of the best of his career. Crucially for the Lakers, he will provide another shooter as they attempt to salvage their season: He is shooting 39.1 percent from deep this season. For his career, he’s at 36 percent from 3-point range.The Lakers will add multiple role players as well. Beasley averaged 13.4 points per game for the Jazz this year and shot 35.9 percent from beyond the 3-point arc. Vanderbilt averaged 8.3 points and 7.9 rebounds per game on 55.6 percent shooting from the field, mostly off the bench.Russell’s replacement in Minnesota would be Conley, who started 42 games at point guard for the surprisingly resilient Jazz this season. Conley, a 2021 All-Star, averaged a career-high 7.7 assists for the Jazz, but his scoring numbers have dipped to 10.7 points per game, his lowest output since his second season in the league. He is a more traditional point guard than Russell and may fit better next to Anthony Edwards, the third-year guard who has emerged as a franchise player for the Timberwolves. More

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      The Story of LeBron James’s 38,390 Points

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      Stephen Curry’s favorite memory of playing against LeBron James isn’t from any of the three championships he won with the Golden State Warriors against James’s teams. It was from his 2009-10 rookie season, when James was in his seventh year with the Cleveland Cavaliers.They first met when James attended one of Curry’s college games for Davidson. The night before their first N.B.A. clash, in Cleveland, James hosted Curry at his home.“For me, as a rookie, it was a whirlwind of excitement,” Curry said. He added: “The fact that he’s as big as he is, as strong as he is, as skilled as he is, there’s never a time he can’t get a shot off.”James scored 31 points, most coming from near the rim or at the free-throw line. He hit just one 3-pointer.More than a decade later, James’s game looks different, though he can still dunk as if the rim insulted his honor. The N.B.A. has evolved rapidly since James entered the league in 2003, and his ability to change with it helped him break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s seemingly unbreakable career scoring record of 38,387 points on Tuesday. James has 38,390 points now.“Nobody could imagine somebody doing it,” said Drew Gooden, who played hundreds of games alongside James in Cleveland. He added: “If you would have said or told somebody in 2003 when LeBron James got drafted when he was 18 years old that he was going to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record, they would have looked at you like you were crazy.”Drew Gooden (90) played with LeBron James in Cleveland from 2004 to 2008. He cited James’s strict diet as one of his secrets to staying in the game for 20 seasons.Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE, via Getty ImagesN.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver, in an email, called the record “one of the most hallowed” in all sports. Of James, he said, “His extraordinary athleticism, power and speed leave you in awe.”Over the past 20 years, James’s ascent to the top of the scoring list has impressed Hall of Fame players as he made a definitive case to join their ranks and perhaps be considered the best among them. His shots have felled the toughest competitors, yet made them fans as he blocked them from fulfilling their sports dreams. His teammates have amassed stories of the joys of playing with him — and the pain of being on the other side.At 38, James is one of the N.B.A.’s oldest players. He’s also still one of its best.“It’s not like he’s holding on for dear life just to get the award,” Curry said. “He’s still playing at a high level. So it’s pretty damn impressive.”‘Scored baskets in every way possible’Abdul-Jabbar, 75, played in the N.B.A. from 1969 to 1989 after starring for three seasons at U.C.L.A. When he broke Wilt Chamberlain’s career scoring record in April 1984, he did so with his patented, and nearly unstoppable, shot: the sky hook.James hasn’t cultivated that kind of signature.“Now, is there a shot that you know that he got that would make you say LeBron James? No,” said George Gervin, 70, a Hall of Fame player who won four scoring titles and is known for his finger roll.Instead, Gervin said, James’s “greatest attribute will be his ability to be consistent.”James, shown here in the 2007 Eastern Conference semifinals, has developed his 3-point shooting over time. Early in his career, he focused on dunks and short-range shots.Suzy Allman for The New York TimesJames has methodically developed his game all over the floor, borrowing from the greats. During any given game, he might shoot the fadeaway from the post perfected by Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, go for a logo 3-pointer like Curry or do the “Dream Shake” he was taught by its namesake, Hakeem Olajuwon.“LeBron has scored baskets in every way possible,” Philadelphia 76ers Coach Doc Rivers said.Rivers, who has also coached the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers, said he recently ran into James in Los Angeles and joked, “I think you scored at least 10,000 of those points against one of my teams.”He said James responded, “‘Those Celtics points were the hardest damn points that I’ve ever had to score.’”Defenders became “more fearful” as James expanded his game, Rivers said.“When LeBron first started, you wanted to take away his right hand. His drive. His attacks to the basket,” Rivers said. “You actually would sag off and give him shots. Then he started going both ways with the ball, which made it more difficult to guard. Then he got the in-between game.”The Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo, one of the league’s best defenders, said James was “like a computer.”“He’s calculating everything that is going on at a rapid speed,” Adebayo said. “So it would be like you typing normally and you got somebody on, like, Excel saying it to the computer and the computer is just reading what they’re saying and just typing it.”Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat, right, described James as a “computer” because of how quickly he can outsmart opponents on the court.Kim Klement/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJames is known for his savvy, but also for his strength.“His area of attack is at the top of the floor,” said Mike Brown, who coached James for five seasons in Cleveland. “Everybody knows it, but nobody can stop it.”Diana Taurasi, who holds the W.N.B.A.’s career scoring record, said James was “probably still the most dangerous man in transition.”Gooden said he “took it for granted” that he had played with James. That is, until 2008, when Cleveland traded Gooden to Chicago and he tried to make the Cavaliers regret it the first time he faced off with James.“I jumped right in LeBron’s way, and it was like a freight train hit me,” Gooden said. “He came across with two elbows. All his elbows went across my face. Basically, he got an and-one. And I came out of the smoke with a bloody, busted lip. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s what everybody’s been having to deal with.’”More passer than scorer?James’s points are often an afterthought to his skill as a passer.“He never set out to be a scoring leader,” Golden State forward Draymond Green said. “He’s never been viewed as a scorer. I think that’s more impressive than anything.”James passed Magic Johnson for sixth on the career assists list in December and passed Mark Jackson and Steve Nash to become fourth in January.Jeff Green, who was James’s Cavaliers teammate in 2017-18, said James’s passing “allowed me to get a lot of buckets.”James has led the league in assists only once, in the 2019-20 season. But Erik Spoelstra, who coached James to two championships with the Heat, said he believed that James could have done it any time he wanted to.James has said he thinks of himself as a passer more than a scorer. He rose to No. 4 on the career assists list in January.Barton Silverman/The New York Times“The skill that I thought was most fascinating with him, with his size and skill and his vision, is his passing,” Spoelstra said.Some think the most momentous play of James’s career wasn’t even on offense.Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said: “In terms of memorable, it’s not points he has scored. It’s his chase-down block of Andre in the finals.”Late in Game 7 of the 2016 N.B.A. finals against Golden State, James, then with Cleveland, flashed the length of the court to block a crucial shot by Andre Iguodala, helping the Cavaliers complete an improbable championship run.“I never got mad about that,” Iguodala said. “Like, people think it hurts me when they say, ‘You got blocked by LeBron.’ That was an amazing play. Even in real time, I was like, ‘Geez, bro, that was incredible.’ ”‘A grown man playing among kids’During James’s rookie year, he averaged fewer than three 3-point attempts a game. Last season, he averaged eight a game — a reflection of the N.B.A.’s shift to emphasize 3-point shooting and his willingness to go with the tide. It’s also a reflection of graceful aging to preserve his legs.Abdul-Jabbar rarely missed games because of injury and James largely had not either, until recent seasons with the Lakers. James is known for a diligent diet and exercise regimen that has allowed him to stretch his career and remain dominant past the typical N.B.A. retirement age.“The reward for doing that is he’s a grown man playing among kids now,” Gooden said.As James’s game has drifted toward the perimeter, his drives to the basket — and the foul shots they often draw — have become less common. Instead, he’s become a better shooter, with more of his points coming from 3-point range.Still, Silver said he had always been struck by “the sheer force of his dunks.”In 2012, when James was with the Heat, he jumped over the 5-foot-11 John Lucas III for a dunk against Chicago.“It happened so fast that I didn’t know he actually jumped over me until it was on the Jumbotron and we called the timeout and the crowd was going crazy,” said Lucas, who was an assistant coach on James’s Lakers team last season. “My phone was blowing up at halftime.”James dunked over the head of Chicago Bulls guard John Lucas III in 2012.Wilfredo Lee/Associated PressLucas even has a picture of himself getting dunked on hanging in his house.“That picture is going to be in the Hall of Fame,” Lucas said. “I have a great sense of humor.”Malik Monk, who played with James on the Lakers last season, said he often teased Lucas about the dunk. “He said he wanted to punch him,” Monk said.James has spent a career making once-in-a-lifetime athleticism look casual, which is why his career-best 61-point performance against the Charlotte Hornets in 2014 seemingly blends in with last season’s 56-point explosion against Curry and Golden State, not to mention his scoring at least 40 points against every N.B.A. team.But James’s greatness is far from casual. He has been a symbol of consistent dominance for decades — just as Abdul-Jabbar was. When James entered the league straight from high school, he did so with unprecedented hype. He had already been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. His high school games were on national television.As Rivers put it: “LeBron is one of the few people in the history of sports to overachieve from a position that was impossible to overachieve.”Decades later, perhaps the most remarkable fact about James’s career is that his scoring at age 38 is at least as good as it’s ever been — meaning the story of his offensive prowess has not been fully written. More

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      Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Is Greater Than Any Basketball Record

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      His N.B.A. career scoring record has been broken, but his legacy of activism and his expansion of Black athlete identity endure.Some athletes live swaddled in their greatness, and that is enough. Others not only master their sport but also expand the possibilities — in competition and away from it — for generations to come. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did just that, including for LeBron James, who has laid claim to the N.B.A. career scoring record that Abdul-Jabbar had held so tight for nearly 39 years.It is easy to forget now, in today’s digitized world where week-old events are relegated to the historical dustbin, how much of a force Abdul-Jabbar was as a player and cultural bellwether. How, as the civil rights movement heated to a boil in the 1960s and then simmered over the ensuing decade, Abdul-Jabbar, a Black man who had adopted a Muslim name, played under the hot glare of a white American public that strained to accept him or see him as relatable.It is easy to forget because he helped make it easier for others, like James, to trace his path. That is what will always keep his name among the greats of sport, no matter how many of his records fall.Guided by the footsteps of Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell, Abdul-Jabbar pushed forward, stretching the limits of Black athlete identity. He was, among other qualities, brash and bookish, confident and shy, awkward, aggressive, graceful — and sometimes an immense pain to deal with. He could come off as simultaneously square and the smoothest, coolest cat in the room.In other words, he was a complete human being, not just the go-along-to-get-along, one-dimensional Black athlete much of America would have preferred him to be.James has run with the branding concept that he is “More Than an Athlete.” Fifty-plus years ago, Abdul-Jabbar, basketball’s brightest young star, was already living that ideal.“He is more than a basketball player,” a Milwaukee newspaper columnist wrote during Abdul-Jabbar’s early years as a pro. “He is an intelligent, still maturing man, who realizes some of the individual and collective frailties of human beings, including himself.”James’s ability to make a cultural impact off the court is the fruit of the trees Abdul-Jabbar planted decades ago.Abdul-Jabbar, front right, was one of the prominent Black athletes at the Cleveland Summit in June 1967, with Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, front left; the boxer Muhammad Ali, front row, second from left; and the N.F.L. star Jim Brown, front row, second from right.Getty ImagesAs a star at the basketball powerhouse U.C.L.A. in June 1967, a 20-year-old Abdul-Jabbar was the only collegian with the football legend Jim Brown at the Cleveland Summit, a meeting of prominent Black athletes who gathered in support of Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam War.The next year Abdul-Jabbar shunned the Summer Olympics to protest American prejudice. “America is not my home,” he said in a televised interview. “I just live here.”In those days, Harry Edwards, now a University of California, Berkeley, sociology professor emeritus, led a new wave of Black athletes in protests against American racism. Abdul-Jabbar was a vital part of that push. He also converted to Islam to embrace his Black African heritage, and changed his name from Lew Alcindor to Kareem (generous) Abdul (servant of Allah) Jabbar (powerful).“You have to understand the context,” Edwards told me recently. “We’re still arguing over whether Black lives matter. Well, back then, Black lives absolutely did not matter. In that time, when you said ‘America,’ that was code for ‘white folks.’ So, how do those folks identify with a Black athlete who says I am a Muslim, I believe in Allah, that is what I give my allegiance to? They didn’t, and they let him know.”Edwards added: “What Kareem did was seen as a betrayal of the American ideal. He risked his life.”Black athletes still face backlash for standing up to racism, but their voices are more potent, and their sway is mightier now because of Black legends like Ali, Robinson, Russell and Abdul-Jabbar.You saw their imprint when James wore a T-shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe” for Eric Garner, or a hoodie for Trayvon Martin, or when he joined an N.B.A. work stoppage for Jacob Blake. When right-wing pundits attack James and his peers for protesting, remember that Abdul-Jabbar has been in the hot seat, too.The message here isn’t “Been there, done that, don’t need to hear it anymore.” No, that’s not it at all.What I am saying is this: No one rises alone.In this moment of basketball celebration for James, think about what he shares on the court with the 7-foot-2 center whose record he is taking: a foundation of transcendent, game-changing talent.Nowadays, a younger generation might know Abdul-Jabbar mainly as the sharp-eyed commentator and columnist on the internet — or simply as the guy whose name they had to scroll past in the record books to get to James’s. But his revolutionary prowess as a player can never be diminished.He led U.C.L.A. to three national titles in his three years of eligibility, his teams accumulating a scorched-earth record of 88-2. Along the way, the N.C.A.A. banned dunking, a move many believe was made to hinder his dominance, and U.C.L.A. came to be known as the University of California at Lew Alcindor.Abdul-Jabbar’s signature shot was the sky hook, which no one else has been able to perform quite like him.Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos, via Getty ImagesSoon, there he was, dominating the N.B.A. with his lithe quickness and a singular, iconic shot: the sky hook. Athletic beauty incarnate.The balletic rise from the glistening hardwood; the arm extended high, holding the ball well above the rim; the easy tip of the wrist, as if pouring tea into a cup, while he let the ball fly.Swish.In his second professional year, he was named the N.B.A.’s most valuable player — the first of a record six such awards.That season, he led the fledgling Milwaukee Bucks to the 1971 N.B.A. championship. It would be the first of his six titles, two more than James.The pressure he was under as a player was immense for most of his career.He said he faced death threats after boycotting the 1968 Olympics.A phalanx of that era’s reporters, almost all of them white men, failed to understand Abdul-Jabbar and took to pat, easy criticism. He did himself no favors, responding by essentially turning his back, often literally, on many of them.He also absorbed blow after blow on the court. Fights were frequent then. Sometimes it was too much, and he snapped.He contained the multitudes, all right. Aggressive frustration included.As the years passed, Abdul-Jabbar evolved. He grew happier, less strident, more content and more open. His advocacy came to focus on human rights for all who are marginalized.And ultimately, fans who once held him with disregard began to warm up.Abdul-Jabbar’s jersey was retired at a ceremony on April 24, 1993, in Milwaukee. He spent six seasons with the Bucks.John Biever/NBAE, via Getty ImagesLeBron James now holds the crown as the league’s greatest scorer with 38,390 points. Well earned. He remains something to behold at age 38. Still, his Lakers are so disjointed they would need Abdul-Jabbar in his prime to make a serious run at an N.B.A. title this year.Then again, Abdul-Jabbar at 38 would work. That Abdul-Jabbar, in the 1985 postseason, took his championship series lumps during a Game 1 loss to Boston and then came back as if launched from a Bel-Air springboard.He ripped off a string of the finest games of his career, grabbing the championship trophy and the finals M.V.P. Award.There has never been a finals series run like that from a player with as many miles on the legs.It was just another way that Abdul-Jabbar stretched the meaning of greatness in the N.B.A., leaving the next generation and James to expand it even further.Sheelagh McNeill More

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      Like a Record, LeBron James’s Age Is Just a High Number

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      Still among the best players in the N.B.A. at 38, James is now 36 points away from the league’s career scoring record. He could break it at home on Tuesday.NEW ORLEANS — LeBron James headed into Saturday night’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans needing 63 points to break the N.B.A. career scoring record. It was a large number for anyone to reach in a single game, especially a 38-year-old in his 20th N.B.A. season.And yet spectators wearing purple-and-gold jerseys and T-shirts displaying James’s No. 6 flooded Canal and Bourbon Streets ahead of Saturday’s game, and then they piled into the Smoothie King Center, most of them hoping to witness N.B.A. history.Larry Unrein, a New York native who traveled to three of the Lakers’ last four games, came to New Orleans a day after his 40th birthday, hoping for a belated gift.“He could break it, dude,” Unrein said before the game. “He’s 38, and he’s playing like he’s 24. I turned 40 yesterday and aspire to take care of my body, drink tons of water and stretch.” Unrein, who skateboards in his free time, said James was inspiring him to skate into old age.An employee at the arena named Anita, who would not give her last name but said she had been working there for 10 years, was nervous that the record might be broken on the Pelicans’ home floor. “We can’t let him do it here,” she said. “It ain’t about the King tonight.”No one, really, should have thought that James, at this point in his career, would score 63 points on Saturday. (His career high is 61 points, in a game against Charlotte in 2014.) But James has provided many miracles in his career. That he is competing at such a high level at 38 seems to be just one more — a feat that is altering perceptions of athletic limits and athletic primes.James fell short of the scoring record on Saturday, finishing with 27 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists, and the Lakers (25-29) lost to the Pelicans (27-27), 131-126. James is now 36 points away from passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who scored 38,387 points from 1969 to 1989, and tickets for the Lakers’ home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday night have soared in anticipation that James will break the record then.On Saturday, James made plays that explained why many supporters will always believe that another miracle is on its way. He played 40 minutes, more than any of his teammates. It was the third time in his last four games that he played at least 40 minutes, a figure, he said, that was “catching up to him.”“I’m tired as hell,” he said after the game. “But I’ll be ready to go on Tuesday.”“I think it’s historic on a lot of different levels,” Lakers Coach Darvin Ham said earlier this season. “For him to be at this point of his career and still able to produce at the level in which he’s producing, I just think all of us, just really being able to witness it, be a part of it — it shows his competitive spirit, his no-quit mentality.”A moment of “How is LeBron doing this at this age?” came in the third quarter, with the Lakers leading by 7 and forward Herbert Jones barreling toward the rim. James took a charge, flying onto his back from the impact of Jones’s crashing into him. Many N.B.A. players, especially stars and older players, are reluctant to take a charge, given the risk of injury or, more simply, the wear and tear on the body over a long season. Even Kobe Bryant, who was known for his toughness and mentality when he played for the Lakers, was publicly against taking charges.Bryant’s reasoning was that great players such as Scottie Pippen and Larry Bird were injured after taking many charges throughout their careers, while others, including Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, didn’t take charges and avoided significant long-term injuries.But there was James, nearly 40, taking a charge on a player listed at 6 feet 7 inches and 206 pounds.James plunged into the crowd after diving for a loose ball.Emily Kask for The New York TimesWith just under three minutes remaining in Saturday’s game and the Lakers losing by 4, James dived for a ball heading out of bounds, launching himself above courtside fans. It was the second time he had done so in recent weeks. He did not save the ball, but players of his age and status would be excused for not even making the effort. James would not excuse himself: There he was, his blue-and-pink shoes among the fans’ faces in the crowd.“I think it inspires them out there to do their jobs,” Ham said this season about the impact of James’s play on his teammates.James aggressively attacked the basket throughout the night, bumping and fighting through fouls to make layups and sprinting past players for scores. On multiple occasions, younger teammates passed up layup opportunities to give the ball to their much older, but somehow much more explosive, teammate, who threw down dunks that ignited fans, many who wore his jersey and some who wore New Orleans colors.James was not perfect. He often settled for 3-point shots, including an off-balance one late in the game, which he missed and seemed foolish to take. He finished 1 for 7 from long range. Defensively, he, like his teammates, did little to stop the Pelicans’ 42-point barrage in the third quarter, which sparked their win.As James went to the free-throw line with 18 seconds left and the Lakers losing by 6, he missed his first attempt. If the game wasn’t over already, it was effectively over after that.But Anita, the stadium worker, wasn’t buying it. She thought James was too good to miss a free throw. This had to be part of a script: “He’s just doing that,” she said, “so he could get that record in L.A.” More