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      As the N.B.A. Turns, the Phoenix Suns Keep Chugging Along

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      The uncertainty surrounding the Lakers and interpersonal dramas among the Sixers, Nets and others have obscured the Suns’ steady pursuit of the N.B.A.’s best record.Think about how the N.B.A. is consumed these days. Think about what draws buzz and eyeballs, and social media clicks.The league doubles as a soap opera and a business transaction wire. For many fans, that’s the allure: All the hype about who hates whom, what star player wants to force his way to another team, which front office executive has the boldest plan to resurrect a franchise and is willing dish to reporters — without attribution, of course.Hence this year’s fascination with James Harden’s trade demands, Joel Embiid’s beef with Ben Simmons, Zion Williamson’s injured foot and eating habits, and whether Mayor Eric Adams will allow unvaccinated Kyrie Irving to play home games in Brooklyn.Hence the speculation about every member of the Los Angeles Lakers, the parsing of each utterance by LeBron James, the job security of Coach Frank Vogel. What’s wrong with Russell Westbrook and Jeanie Buss? At this rate, it will not surprise me to see television hype merchants frothing about whether the Lakers should trade the team’s cook.In a sports ecosystem that places such a high value on sizzle, where does this leave the Phoenix Suns? The N.B.A. is currently investigating allegations of racism and misogyny against the team owner Robert Sarver, a high-stakes conflict that seems to have been lost beneath the churn of minor dramas.Amid all that, Phoenix’s fuss-free players and coaches have been impeccable. And underappreciated.The Suns have compiled the N.B.A.’s best record despite losing Chris Paul to a hand injury and playing without Devin Booker, who has been in Covid-19 protocols.Stacy Revere/Getty ImagesIt would not have seemed odd if Phoenix had struggled to shake last season’s N.B.A. finals meltdown against the Milwaukee Bucks. Coughing up a two-game lead on the sport’s biggest stage isn’t exactly easy to put in the past. But Phoenix — led by the head-down coach Monty Williams, the unrelenting will of Chris Paul and the grit and grace of his mentee, Devin Booker — has done just that.After hammering the Portland Trail Blazers by 30 points last week, the Suns became the first team in the league to reach 50 victories, which shouldn’t be a surprise since they’ve had winning streaks of 18 and 10 games this season and were undefeated in November.Their 51-13 record through Sunday is eight and a half games better than the Eastern Conference-leading Miami Heat.In the West, they stand seven and a half games better than the second-place Memphis Grizzlies.Even with Paul sidelined most likely through the end of the month with a broken thumb, even with their leading scorer, Booker, out with Covid-19 — and even after a rare, stumbling loss on Sunday when the Suns were defeated, 132-122, by the Bucks — there appears little chance Phoenix will lose its grip on the top seed and home-court advantage when the playoffs begin in April.But unless you’re a die-hard N.B.A. watcher, you probably are either unaware of how the Suns have dominated this season or you see them as a plucky team of overachievers with no way on earth to actually walk off with a championship.We’re just over a month away from the start of the N.B.A. playoffs, where we’ll find out if the Suns can puncture the public consciousness.During Tuesday’s game against the Trail Blazers in Phoenix, the Suns honored their longtime radio announcer, Al McCoy, the dean of N.B.A. broadcasters, who at 88 has been calling Suns games since 1972. Think of all the memorable Suns players whose on-court brilliance he has witnessed: Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson, Paul Westphal and Alvan Adams, Steve Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire on the “Seven Seconds or Less Suns,” who helped revolutionize the modern game.Phoenix has come startlingly close to a championship, making the N.B.A. finals three times, beginning with the “Shot Heard Round the World” series against the Boston Celtics in 1976. (If you’re too young to remember, check YouTube for a treat.)What other N.B.A. franchise boasts Phoenix’s pedigree while lacking championship hardware? They are pro basketball’s version of the N.F.L.’s Buffalo Bills and Minnesota Vikings, destined always to come oh-so-terribly close to winning it all.Coach Monty Williams’s even-keeled approach has helped the Suns bounce back from a collapse in last season’s N.B.A. finals.Morry Gash/Associated PressBut this version of the Suns can write a new chapter. This squad has a special mojo. “These guys all like one another and they just enjoy having fun playing the game together, and you just don’t see that in sports anymore,” McCoy said when we spoke last week. “A lot of teams, there’s always one or two guys that are upset about something — salary or playing time or something else. But these guys just hang together, and that’s the way they play.”It’s the sports world’s natural order: Winning can undoubtedly draw attention even in today’s hype-besotted world, but that means winning it all. That’s part of the reason we know more about the Lakers this season than the Suns: 17 championship trophies can make a franchise important to people.The same is true of Golden State, a titan of the 21st century grooved into our collective synapses on the strength of three N.B.A. titles and five straight trips to the finals. (It doesn’t hurt to have must-see stars like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson and a walking hype machine like Draymond Green, three players whose every other move and machination seem ready to go viral.)Those championship squads each had a discernible style that each member seemed to uphold. To win it all, the Suns will need to stay true to theirs: a team-first style that Williams, a former Spurs player who learned to coach under the watchful eye of Gregg Popovich, could’ve cribbed straight from San Antonio’s glory years.Like those Spurs, everyone on the Suns has a role, everyone follows the script. The ball moves and moves and moves some more. Seven Suns are averaging double digits in scoring this season. Two others are scoring 9 points per game.Those Spurs of old weren’t flashy and filled with angst, drama and uncertainty. There was no soap-opera narrative.They just got the job done. Tellingly, the Spurs’ last championship was a stunning win over the Miami Heat in 2014. It came the season after losing a heartbreaker to the Heat in the finals — courtesy of Ray Allen’s miracle step-back 3-pointer.The Suns are now trying to do something similar to those title-winning Spurs. Capturing an N.B.A. championship after suffering a searing loss is as tough a task as there is in sports.Should the Suns finally win it all, don’t expect them to receive the attention and respect they are due. More likely, a week later, fans will talk more about Zion Williamson’s weight, James Harden’s nightlife and whether LeBron James will soon be taking his talents back to Cleveland. More

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      ‘Winning Time’: When the NBA Went Pop

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      A new HBO drama chronicles the 1980s Lakers, whose fluid style and Hollywood flair changed the game and the culture. An N.B.A. writer takes account.When asked to describe the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, the actor DeVaughn Nixon, 38, paused for a moment. “Stylized,” he said. Then he rattled off more words: “Fast. Cool. Fun. Sexy.”That’s not how most sports franchises are typically described. But the Lakers of that era were built differently.The Showtime Lakers, as the team was known, set a new template for how professional basketball came to be viewed on and off the floor. The team crossed over into pop culture consciousness in a way no N.B.A. franchise had. It spurred discussions about the place of money, race, celebrity and sex in the game. With their brash new-money owner, Jerry Buss, the Lakers challenged what was then the status quo — which included poor attendance and ratings. They helped save the league.They also made for great TV, both in their time and as the basis for an equally flashy new HBO docudrama, “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” in which Nixon plays his own father, the point guard Norm Nixon. Episode 1 of the 10-part first season debuts Sunday.Created by Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, the series is based on the book “Showtime” by the journalist Jeff Pearlman. But the chatty, fast-paced, fourth-wall-breaking style of “Winning Time” is signature Adam McKay (“The Big Short,” “Don’t Look Up”), who executive produced and directed the pilot.“It was a story that I thought I knew the basics of,” McKay, a lifelong basketball fan who hosted a podcast last year about the N.B.A., said in an email. “I thought it was mostly about Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Dr. Buss.”“I had no idea until I read that book what a complicated, layered story it was,” he added. “It was like ‘Brothers Karamazov,’ only about basketball.”DeVaughn Nixon, left, plays his father, Norm Nixon, in the series. He said he hadn’t truly understood the impact of the Showtime Lakers until he got a bit older.Warrick Page/HBO“Winning Time” isn’t the first chronicle of the 1980s N.B.A., a seminal period for the sport and the subject of numerous books and documentaries. Based on the eight episodes provided to journalists in advance, “Winning Time” tells the story in a tone befitting those Lakers teams. Cuts are frenetic, needles drop hard, and characters frequently deliver commentary and exposition straight to the camera. Grainy film and glitchy video mix with real and faux archival footage, adding to the vintage vibes.Much like the Johnson-era Lakers, it’s an unconventional show that doesn’t pretend to be subtle.The legendThe accomplishments of the Showtime Lakers have become the stuff of lore. The Lakers won five championships from 1980 to 1988, one of the most successful runs of any franchise in N.B.A. history. Their main rivals, the Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird, won three in that same period. (This N.B.A. writer grew up a Celtics fan and was exposed to the rivalry out of the womb.) Together, those teams produced some of the greatest basketball players the world had ever seen.DeVaughn said he hadn’t understood the importance of the Showtime Lakers until he was older and on a trip to Positano, Italy, well after his father had retired.“I come back from the bathroom and Michael Jordan’s sitting down next to us, and he’s just chopping it up with my dad,” Nixon said. Jordan, he recalled, called his father a “bad boy on the court.”Solomon Hughes, right, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics was in many ways a rivalry between opposing views on what basketball should be. Warrick Page/HBO“I was like, ‘Oh, OK, all right, cool.’” Nixon added. “He was a part of something.”Jordan wasn’t alone in his admiration. Eighties basketball, particularly the Lakers, had a cultural and political poignancy that has influenced the game and the world at large ever since. One could draw a straight line, for example, from the political activism of Abdul-Jabbar, who played for the Lakers from 1975 to 1989, to that of LeBron James. (Something that hasn’t survived: Abdul-Jabbar’s deadly skyhook, which has rarely been seen in this century.)And today’s fashion parades, sexy dancers and boisterous lineup introductions — with their pyrotechnics, laser light shows and T-shirt guns — owe a lot to Buss (played in the series by John C. Reilly), the transformational owner who purchased the Lakers in 1979.Buss helped usher in an era that put celebrities courtside and expanded the fan experience. Celebrities had long been connected to Los Angeles sports teams — Doris Day and Jack Nicholson were already frequent sightings at Laker games — but Buss ratcheted up celebrity attendance, a dynamic that still exists.Solomon Hughes, who plays Abdul-Jabbar, said that “the uniqueness of that professional sports team in the backdrop of Hollywood really just changed how we how we look at sports.”The Lakers were nicknamed “Showtime” was because of a nightclub called the Horn, which Buss frequented. There, a singer would start a show by saying, “It’s showtime,” and Buss adopted the phrase to describe his approach to the Lakers. A frequent guest of the Playboy Mansion who held a Ph.D in chemistry and sported disco lapels and an impressive comb-over, he was intent on marrying Hollywood glamour with high-quality basketball — a significant break from the standard mold of how N.B.A. teams operated.The rivalryThat standard was strongly influenced by the Celtics, who dominated the N.B.A. in the two decades before Buss bought the Lakers. Red Auerbach, the former coach and general manager of the Celtics (played by Michael Chiklis), detested, for example, the idea of cheerleaders at games; Boston didn’t have them until 2006. Buss was an interloper, wreaking havoc on the sanctity of basketball.But Buss wanted more than just a glitzy experience surrounding the game. He wanted the basketball itself to be flashy. That made Johnson’s availability in the 1979 N.B.A. draft all the more serendipitous. Johnson played the game with an eye for fast-paced showmanship, frequently whipping behind-the-back, no-look bullets to teammates as if he had a third eye.“He wanted to put on a show,” Quincy Isaiah, the 26-year-old who portrays Johnson, said. “But he definitely wanted to make everybody in that arena feel good while watching, including his teammates.”Not everyone felt good, especially outside Los Angeles. Chiklis, a native of Lowell, Mass., grew up a fan of the Celtics, a franchise with a diametrically opposed view on how basketball was supposed to be.“I had just about as much hate and ire for them as I did for the Yankees,” Chiklis said, adding, “You couldn’t be in Boston at that time and not get sucked into the vortex of that rivalry.”The rivalry had a racial component, too. Bird was a transcendent player like Johnson, but some wondered whether he would have received the same attention had he been Black. Dennis Rodman, one of the game’s greatest rebounders, said in 1987 that Bird won three straight Most Valuable Player awards “because he was white,” adding, “Nobody gives Magic Johnson credit.” Isiah Thomas, Rodman’s teammate on the Detroit Pistons, agreed, adding that if Bird “was Black, he’d be just another guy,” setting off a furor.As the Lakers and Celtics rivalry evolved, interest in the league grew and more games were shown live on TV. (The rise of ESPN, which debuted in 1979, also helped.) Johnson became a household name, especially as the Lakers kept winning.John C. Reilly, left, (with Isaiah, center, and Jason Clarke, as Jerry West) plays Jerry Buss, the flashy, new-money owner who helped usher the N.B.A. into a new era. Warrick Page/HBOThe celebrityBefore the 1980s, the N.B.A. was a struggling league with low ratings, and the networks wouldn’t give it prime slots. One Finals game in 1977 tipped off at noon Pacific. Many games were aired on tape delay.The Lakers helped turn the N.B.A. from a fringe sports league into a titan, which set the stage for Jordan and, later, Kobe Bryant to help make the game a global phenomenon. As McKay put it, the Lakers “changed fashion, music, the way people behaved, the way they spoke.”“It’s an explosion that just rarely happens in any form of culture,” he continued, “let alone sports.”Along with Bird, Johnson became a star unlike any basketball player before. He and Bird appeared in TV commercials together and clocked huge endorsement deals. When Johnson — a heterosexual athlete who was averaging 12.5 assists and 19.4 points a game — announced in 1991 that he had H.I.V. and was retiring, it sent shock waves around the world. Pau Gasol, a native of Spain, said he had been so inspired by Johnson’s news conference that he vowed as a boy to find a cure for H.I.V. Instead, he became an N.B.A. All-Star, who helped lead the Lakers to multiple championships.Some of the key figures in the story have said publicly that they aren’t happy with the show, including Johnson. (Neither the central figures portrayed nor the Lakers organization were involved in the production.) In an email, a spokeswoman for Abdul-Jabbar described the series as “based on a fictional account taken from a book” written by “an outsider,” adding that Abdul-Jabbar had not seen the show and that “the story is best told by those who lived it.”Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner of the Lakers and the daughter of Jerry Buss, who died in 2013, is executive producing a documentary series about the franchise for Hulu, set to debut this year. Johnson is developing one about his own life for Apple. (Spokespeople for Johnson and the Lakers declined to comment.)“If I was Kareem to Magic or any of those guys, and I looked at it personally, like they’re telling my story, it would probably feel weird to me, too,” Rodney Barnes, an executive producer and writer of the show, said. But the creative team wanted to tell a story about everything that period encompassed, he added — about not only the Lakers but also “America as a whole.”And their story would hardly be the last take on the Showtime Lakers, Barnes acknowledged.“There’s still a lot of meat on that bone,” he said. More

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      How Wilt Chamberlain's 100-Point Game Changed the NBA

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      OAKLAND, Calif. — On Sunday afternoon, Al Attles eased onto his living room couch next to his friend Tom Meschery, and they soon found themselves transported to March 2, 1962.They were listening to an old radio broadcast, Meschery for the first time. For a few blissful minutes, Attles’s home in Oakland was filled with the smoky baritone of Bill Campbell, who was the play-by-play voice for the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia Warriors when Attles, 85, and Meschery, 83, were teammates.“I remember thinking in the third quarter that something special was happening,” Meschery said.That something special was Wilt Chamberlain, Philadelphia’s dominant center, scoring 100 points in a 169-147 win over the Knicks in Hershey, Pa., where Attles reveled in his role of shuffling the ball to Chamberlain as often as possible and Meschery helped make history amid a haze produced by the nearby candy factories.“I can’t tell you how much the aroma of chocolate disturbed me for years,” he said.On the game’s 60th anniversary, it lives on as a part of the country’s cultural fabric — a touchstone for a transcendent athlete when the N.B.A., by design, was predominantly white. Gary M. Pomerantz, whose book, “Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era,” offers the definitive account of the game, said Chamberlain’s performance marked an important shift.“We remember Wilt’s 100-point game in part for its symbolism,” Pomerantz said in a telephone interview. “It symbolically exploded the racial quota N.B.A. owners had that limited opportunities for Black players. If this wasn’t the intended effect, it was the ultimate result: The N.B.A. would be a white man’s enclave no more.”Attles, who was one of Philadelphia’s three Black players at the time, spent his entire 11-year career with the Warriors as a player and player-coach, then stayed with the franchise as its head coach, guiding the team, which had by then moved to California, to its first championship in 1975. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.Al Attles, left, and Tom Meschery, right, were teammates during the game Wilt Chamberlin scored 100 points.Jason Henry for The New York TimesMeschery had 10 productive seasons in the N.B.A. before he embarked on a long second career as a high school English teacher. A published poet, he is the only former N.B.A. All-Star who has been inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.Yet for all their varied accomplishments, Attles and Meschery understand that their legacies are tied, in some small measure, to that night in Hershey, where Chamberlain shot 36 of 63 from the field, made 28 of 32 free throws, then caught a ride back to New York — he lived in Harlem at the time — with a couple of players from the woebegone Knicks.“He was trying to sleep in the back, and he could overhear them talking about dropping him off by the side of the highway,” Meschery said, laughing.The Great ReadMore fascinating tales you can’t help but read all the way to the end.Disney World’s new “Star Wars” hotel incorporates role playing, live interactive theater, rides and gaming. But it will cost you.A Broadway conductor caught Covid in the first wave. Two despairing years later, he is finally reclaiming his old life, breath by breath.A violent brawl that involved several biker gangs in Waco, Texas, left nine dead and led to nearly 200 arrests. Why was no one convicted?The game was, in many ways, unremarkable. It was staged at Hershey Sports Arena, an impersonal concrete shell where the Warriors played a few games each season. For their game against the Knicks, the building was only half full. The wooden court was originally designed for roller skating. The game was not televised, and only a couple of newspaper reporters made the two-hour trip from Philadelphia.Even now, the radio broadcast is not made available for public consumption without prior approval by the league. (The Warriors provided Attles and Meschery with a copy of the fourth quarter so they could listen to it.)But the game produced unexpected magic, and it has continued to be mythologized — fitting for a figure like Chamberlain, who did little to dispel the stories, real or imagined, about his life. Even to teammates, Pomerantz wrote, Chamberlain could seem detached and “beyond their reach,” though Attles was closer to him than most.“Just a terrific person once you got to know him,” Attles said.To Meschery, Chamberlain was more of a looming presence — at least at first. In 1957, as a high school senior in San Francisco, Meschery appeared on NBC’s “The Steve Allen Show,” along with the rest of the country’s high school and college all-American selections. As they gathered onstage, Meschery glanced over his shoulder.“And Wilt is standing right above me,” Meschery recalled.Chamberlain, who was dominating college defenders for Kansas, eventually left school early to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, then joined the Warriors in 1959. Attles, who thought he was bound for a teaching job at a junior high school in Newark, made the Warriors as a fifth-round pick in 1960, crafting a reputation as a defense-minded guard. (His nickname? The Destroyer.) A scrappy forward, Meschery joined the Warriors the following season.“I was in Wonderland,” he said. “I was just this kid from the West Coast, and there I was, playing with Wilt Chamberlain for God’s sake.”Meschery was prone to mixing it up with opponents. He recalled one game when Zelmo Beaty, a 6-foot-9 center for the St. Louis Hawks, lost his patience with him. They were about to brawl, Meschery said, when the 7-foot-1 Chamberlain wrapped his arms around Beaty and hauled him away as if he were a sack of potatoes.“Wilt saved my life,” Meschery said.Meschery has a memoir in the works, and he recently finished a short chapter on Chamberlain’s 100-point game. But Meschery said he had never heard the radio broadcast until Sunday, when he was transfixed by the soundtrack of a game from another era.Fans and teammates rushed the court to congratulate Chamberlain after he scored his 100th point against the Knicks.Paul Vathis/Associated PressFor Meschery and Attles, the broadcast stirred dusty memories. They remembered the way in which Dave Zinkoff, the team’s public address announcer, would enunciate Chamberlain’s nickname, the Big Dipper, in his hallmark Philadelphia drawl: “Dippah dunk!” They remembered the team’s exhaustive preseason schedule — 15 games or more in “Podunk towns,” Meschery said — as the N.B.A. sought to expand its reach. They remembered traveling by train to St. Louis from Philadelphia, long before the era of charter flights.“Wilt played cards the whole time,” Meschery said.They remembered how the team had arrived early for its game against the Knicks in Hershey, and how some of the players occupied themselves at a nearby penny arcade. Chamberlain was predictably the star attraction as he monopolized a target-shooting game.“I don’t think he missed,” Meschery said.And as they listened to Campbell’s call of the game, Meschery could even picture Frank McGuire, Philadelphia’s coach, patrolling the sideline in his crisp suit.“Frank’s out there with his cuff links, looking good,” Meschery said.McGuire had floated the idea that Chamberlain could score 100 points in a game. After all, Chamberlain had already poured in a record 78 points against the Los Angeles Lakers a few months prior, and he was averaging 50.2 points per game — while playing virtually every minute of every game.“Wilt would get ticked if he got taken out,” Meschery said.And when he was in, passing to him was usually the best option for his teammates. “If you were going to shoot, you better make it,” Attles recalled.By the early minutes of the fourth quarter for this special game, Campbell’s voice grew expectant with each possession.Chamberlain with a jumper from the circle — good!“That jumper was not really Wilt’s strength,” Meschery said. “It was sort of a miracle. But the whole game was a miracle in a way.”The kids are hollering out, “We want 100!”“If you got the ball to Wilt, you stayed in the game,” Attles said.Chamberlain in the locker room after he scored 100 points.Paul Vathis/Associated PressA game ball trophy gifted to Al Attles by Chamberlain.Jason Henry for The New York TimesHappy to be with you on this historic occasion. The big man of the Warriors, and the big man of the league, has 92 points.“Wilt loved to set up on the left block and then use that finger roll when he came across the lane,” Meschery said.And then, finally, a few minutes later: He made it! He made it! He made it!“One hundred points,” Attles said.“Astounding,” Meschery said.The Warriors relocated to San Francisco the following season. The league, of course, began to change, too. Players like Chamberlain, Attles and Meschery helped create the foundation for what the N.B.A. has become — a global enterprise and a revenue-generating colossus.Yet Chamberlain’s record remains intact, and neither Attles nor Meschery thinks anyone will break it. Kobe Bryant came the closest when he scored 81 points — with the benefit of the 3-point shot — for the Lakers in 2006.When Chamberlain died of a heart attack in 1999, he was just 63. Attles called Meschery to share the news.“I just couldn’t believe that he could die,” Meschery said. “I know that sounds very strange, but he always had that aura around him, that he was larger than life.”Now, Attles and Meschery are the only surviving members of the Warriors who played in Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Meschery, who has multiple myeloma, said he had two weeks left of treatment.“And then I’m going to live another 10 years,” he said.On Sunday, he was simply happy to be with his friend as they revisited a chapter from their past, back when anything seemed possible.“That,” Meschery said, “was an awful lot of fun.”Jason Henry for The New York Times More

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      Prospects Get a Taste of N.B.A. Life During All-Star Weekend

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      Members of a developmental team, the N.B.A. G League Ignite, some still in their teens, participated in the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend.Amauri Hardy sat in the stands during the N.B.A.’s All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, watching his little brother, Jaden, on the court with the best young players in the league. He thought about the work Jaden had put into his game and the guts he showed in leaving home as a teenager to follow a nontraditional path into professional basketball.“I’m not sure if he actually realizes how big of a moment it is, but I did because I grew up watching this game a lot,” Amauri Hardy said, proudly. “Just to see him out there with the jersey on with our last name on it, just representing for our whole family.”He added, “He’s been making the best of these moments.”Jaden Hardy, 19, does not play in the N.B.A., though he believes he could have been drafted last year, right out of high school, if the rules had allowed it. Instead, he signed with the N.B.A. G League Ignite, a developmental team in Northern California which allows elite prospects to play professionally in the United States before they are eligible for the N.B.A. draft.This season, playing for the Ignite offered another perk. The N.B.A. included players from that experimental team in their festivities surrounding the All-Star Game. It was a chance for the league to showcase the Ignite, a project now in its second year. It also gave the players, many of them teenagers, an incomparable experience.Four players from the Ignite — Jaden Hardy, Scoot Henderson, MarJon Beauchamp and Dyson Daniels — joined 24 first- and second-year N.B.A. players, 12 from each conference. The players were split into four teams, each with six N.B.A. players and one Ignite player, for a mini-tournament on the Friday of All-Star Weekend. The Ignite players Fanbo Zeng and Mike Foster were scheduled to participate in a shooting competition during the tournament, though Zeng couldn’t participate because of an injury.“I was nervous before the game before I even got out there, but when I got out there it was kind of relieving,” Beauchamp said. He watches the All-Star events every year, he said, “so just seeing myself on the screen is pretty amazing.”While league rules prevent players from going straight from high school to the N.B.A., playing for the Ignite can be a lucrative path for prospects when compared with playing in college — Ignite players can make up to $500,000 for the season. It can be a more familiar one than playing overseas, which some have tried.Scoot Henderson, 18, passing during the Rising Stars Challenge. Because of his age, he is not eligible for the N.B.A. draft until next year.Emilee Chinn/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThey first heard that a few of them would get to participate in All-Star Weekend while at a practice in New York.“I just thanked God, honestly,” Henderson said. “I was very excited. The first thing I did was call my parents and share the moment with them. They were just saying they were proud of me and what I’ve done through my year.”The rest of their teammates attended Friday night’s events, as did family members and friends. Amauri Hardy was both a family member and a teammate — he plays on the Ignite along with his brother. Daniels’s father traveled from the family’s home in Australia and saw his son for the first time in months.This is the second season the Ignite has existed. The team was designed to play a schedule that includes games against other G League teams and international exhibitions. Last year’s team produced two top-10 draft picks — Jalen Green, by Houston, and Jonathan Kuminga, by Golden State.It is made up of prospects and veterans who serve as mentors. They practiced in Cleveland on Thursday and Saturday in preparation for a Sunday afternoon game against the Cleveland Charge, the Cavaliers’ G League affiliate.Practices include competition and camaraderie for this group. They’re all trying to become lottery picks, most of them in this year’s draft.“It’s a little tense in practice sometimes,” Foster said. “They’ve developed into brothers. We got that brotherly fight.”On Friday morning, they sat for the Rising Stars media day. That’s when Jaden Hardy started to really feel part of the weekend.“It was just fun to be able to be out there on the court with those young stars really and just being able to go out there and just laugh and compete,” he said.One of those young stars was guard Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers, a second-year N.B.A. player who met Hardy at a camp a few years ago.“I think him being around us, seeing us young guys who are thriving in the N.B.A., I think he’s getting a little bit of a taste of that,” Haliburton said. “And his future is bright, so I’m excited for him to get to the league.”Hardy’s team played against Beauchamp’s in the semifinals, and Hardy’s team won.Beauchamp caught two lobs for dunks from Cole Anthony, a second-year guard for the Orlando Magic.MarJon Beauchamp, left, and Jaden Hardy at the Rising Stars Challenge.Emilee Chinn/NBAE, via Getty Images“I’m sure it had to be a surreal experience,” Anthony said. “Not even playing in the N.B.A., being at N.B.A. All-Star, that has to be one of the dopest experiences a kid can experience. I wish I could’ve been there when I was in college just that year before going into the draft.”Among the players Henderson was most excited to play with Friday night was LaMelo Ball, the N.B.A.’s 2020-21 rookie of the year.When Henderson thought about his path to pro basketball, Ball was one of his role models. Ball left high school after his sophomore year to play professionally in Lithuania.In his rookie year, Ball was very confident, noted Henderson, who joined the Ignite after his junior year of high school.Henderson was part of Ball’s team for the Rising Stars Challenge, and thrilled for an opportunity to play with him. Conversely, Ball appreciated Henderson’s interest in his path.“My whole journey I felt like it was going to help the younger generation, which I feel like it’s doing,” Ball said. “So just having kids do what they want, I feel like it’s great.”“I was nervous before the game before I even got out there, but when I got out there it was kind of relieving,” Beauchamp said.Brian Sevald/NBAE, via Getty ImagesBut restrictions remain on players as they attempt to enter the N.B.A. Henderson, for example, will not be eligible for the draft until 2023.“If I had the opportunity and that chance, I would definitely love to play in the N.B.A. next year,” Henderson said.Henderson added that he had found the environment with the Ignite helpful given the mentorship opportunities and the chance to play against N.B.A. talent.Beauchamp was a little nervous backstage on Friday before he was introduced as a participant in the Rising Stars Challenge to a bigger audience than he had ever played for.But the butterflies dissipated by the time he arrived for introductions.His appearance was an honor normally reserved for players in their first or second N.B.A. seasons, not those, like Beauchamp, preparing for the draft. Between his accomplished teammates and the N.B.A. veterans he saw sitting courtside, he looked around and thought about what he wanted for his future.“I feel like it motivates me to want to be here,” Beauchamp said. “Again and again and again.” More

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      Pro Athletes Say They Wanted Everyday Financial Advice but Got Cheated

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      A Morgan Stanley broker entrusted to make basic long-term investments was barred from the securities industry after his dealings with Jrue and Lauren Holiday, Chandler Parsons and others.Around the time that Lauren Holiday helped the United States soccer team win the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she and her husband, Jrue Holiday, the N.B.A. player, visited the Southern California office of a securities broker who had come highly recommended for making prudent long-term investments.Experienced? The broker had two decades with blue-chip firms like Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch. Connected? He said he specialized in assisting athletes in all sports, with a client list of 70 current and former pros.But instead of pursuing a “conservative to moderate investment strategy,” the Holidays now allege, the broker, Darryl M. Cohen, steered $2.3 million of their money to “dubious individuals and entities” — and now most of the money is gone.Other athletes said they had a similar experience. Chandler Parsons and Courtney Lee, who also played in the N.B.A., said that Cohen and Morgan Stanley improperly diverted $5 million and $2 million of their investments and that most of that money has similarly disappeared. So Parsons, Lee and the Holidays have filed claims against Morgan Stanley with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a self-regulatory organization known as FINRA which oversees brokerage firms.“I feel violated and taken advantage of,” Parsons said in a statement provided to The New York Times via Phil Aidikoff, a longtime securities lawyer in Beverly Hills, Calif., who represents the athletes as well as another claimant, in separate cases filed last year.Jrue Holiday with his daughter, Jrue Tyler, and wife, Lauren, in 2018.Max Becherer/The Advocate, via Associated PressThe athletes’ cases are still months away from being resolved through a settlement or an arbitration hearing. Yet FINRA, the industry regulators, in a separate but dramatic step last week, barred Cohen from the securities industry. By refusing to cooperate with FINRA’s own inquiry into the “improper use of customer funds,” FINRA said, Cohen had “stymied an investigation into very serious potential misconduct.”Officials at Morgan Stanley declined to comment. But in a regulatory filing, the firm said it had terminated Cohen in March 2021 because of allegations involving “transactions not disclosed to or approved by Morgan Stanley.”When reached on his cellphone, Cohen said, “I’ll get back with you.” He did not respond to a follow-up message, and his lawyer, Brandon S. Reif, said, “No comment.”FINRA cases are typically confidential, and documents are not publicly available. Aidikoff, citing pending litigation, declined to make his clients available for interviews to elaborate on their cases. Still, the fact that the athletes wanted to go public underscores their determination to “ensure it doesn’t happen to someone else,” Parsons said, and to encourage other possible victims to come forward.Lee said in a statement that he believed Morgan Stanley would put his interests first because it had been around for many years. “I was wrong,” he said.The Holidays, who have been active philanthropists, said: “We are all susceptible to being exploited by people like Darryl Cohen. We are disappointed that a company as well known as Morgan Stanley would enable someone like Mr. Cohen to be in a position that allowed him to move money out of our accounts the way that he did.”There is no shortage of stories about prominent athletes being duped or getting entangled in risky financial schemes. An Ernst & Young report last year found that professional athletes reported almost $600 million in fraud-related losses from 2004 to 2019. The “incidence of fraud in sports is trending in the wrong direction,” the report said.But Parsons, Lee and the Holidays are different, Aidikoff said, because they simply did what many ordinary investors often do: They relied on a big-name brokerage to make low-risk, long-term decisions.Jrue Holiday, 31, won an N.B.A. title with the Milwaukee Bucks and an Olympic gold medal with the U.S. basketball team in Tokyo last year. He signed a four-year extension in April 2021 for $134 million. He met his wife, then Lauren Cheney, while they were at U.C.L.A., and her soccer career led to endorsement deals with Under Armour and Chobani.Parsons, 33, a sharpshooter whose best seasons came with the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks, retired in January, two years after he was seriously injured in a car accident caused by a drunken driver. His last contract, signed in 2016, was a four-year deal worth $94 million, and he has been active in Los Angeles real estate.Lee, 36, last played for the Mavericks, his eighth team, in 2020, after signing a four-year, $48 million contract in 2016 with the Knicks. He had a serious calf injury in 2020, but played golf last summer in Thousand Oaks, Calif., with Parsons, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and others.Courtney Lee last played in 2020, for the Dallas Mavericks.Ron Jenkins/Associated PressThe athletes apparently heard about Cohen through basketball circles, including a former N.B.A. player who had also been an assistant coach, Aidikoff said.Cohen worked alongside his father, Marc Cohen, in the same Morgan Stanley branch in Westlake Village, Calif. His father has not been accused of wrongdoing, and remains with the firm, records show.The Holidays first met the younger Cohen in mid-2015. For Parsons, it was late 2015, and for Lee, it was sometime in 2017, according to their statements to FINRA.In mid-2020, a business adviser to Parsons noticed oddities about the Morgan Stanley investments. After Parsons contacted Aidikoff’s firm, lawyers discovered that Cohen and Morgan Stanley had apparently sent checks and wire transfers from Parsons’s accounts to questionable entities, including a purported charity which built a basketball court in Cohen’s backyard.All the athletes invested in life insurance policies based on deceptive information provided by Cohen, and used an accountant recommended by Cohen. But the accountant was actually an insurance salesman. And the person who signed the athletes’ tax documents — the insurance salesman’s father — was a lawyer who had never met or spoken with the athletes, Aidikoff said.Nyjer Morgan, center, settled a claim against Cohen in 2020.Mike McGinnis/Getty ImagesCohen has been the subject of a handful of other complaints, according to regulatory records. In March 2021, Nyjer Morgan, an outfielder who played for four Major League Baseball teams, settled a claim for $125,000 over the improper use of a “liquidity access line to loan funds to outside business entities.” One former client of Cohen’s, a retired professional athlete, told The Times that Cohen had won him over through word of mouth and then by a sales pitch over dinner that included laminated reports. But a year later, when the client noticed financial transactions that looked unfamiliar — and lost tens of thousands of dollars in the process — he was alarmed, and told his agent to immediately find another broker.“It’s painful and it doesn’t leave you,” said the athlete, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid reliving a difficult private experience in the public eye.Susan C. Beachy More

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      Lakers Pass N.B.A. Trade Deadline Unchanged and Uncertain

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      For a team still searching for cohesion around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, the buyout market may not be enough to vault into title contention.The Los Angeles Lakers were not in a great place ahead of the N.B.A. trade deadline on Thursday. They had disgruntled stars, a losing record and a general air of dysfunction a couple of months before the playoffs were scheduled to start.The bad news? Nothing changed once the trade deadline passed. Same disgruntled stars. Same losing record. Same general air of dysfunction.As some stiff winds of change swept through the N.B.A. on Thursday, the Lakers continued hobbling forward as constructed, which does not bode well for their future. It is an indictment of a franchise that still employs LeBron James and Anthony Davis, two stars who are part of a hodgepodge cast of aging and ill-fitting pieces.Exhibit A: Russell Westbrook, whose inconsistent play at age 33 has landed him on the bench in crunchtime situations. If the Lakers were looking to trade him this week, there was an obvious problem: Who would take him and his contract? He is making $44 million this season, with a player option worth $47 million next season.In a post-deadline conference call with the team’s beat writers, Lakers General Manager Rob Pelinka did not offer specific details but said he was “aggressive in a lot of conversations trying to improve this team.” Nothing panned out.As for Westbrook’s future?“Russ is a big-hearted individual. He wants to win,” Pelinka said. “And he knows that with players as impactful and influential as Anthony and LeBron are, it’s going to require sacrifices in his game and how he plays.”On Wednesday night, Westbrook sat out the Lakers’ loss to the Portland Trail Blazers with what the team described as a stiff back. Afterward, Lakers Coach Frank Vogel said Westbrook had been engaged with his teammates on the bench. That might have been the only bright spot for the Lakers, who are 26-30 ahead of their game against Golden State on Saturday.“I do know this has been an extremely difficult and challenging season for all of us,” Vogel said, “so there is a toll.”Those words preceded a dizzying trade deadline for a whole bunch of teams not named the Lakers. At the top of that list: The Nets agreed to send James Harden to the 76ers as part of a deal for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry and Andre Drummond. Other big names were on the move, including Kristaps Porzingis, whom the Dallas Mavericks traded to the Washington Wizards for Spencer Dinwiddie. The Boston Celtics beefed up their backcourt by trading for Derrick White. The Charlotte Hornets acquired Montrezl Harrell from Washington for a late-season push.While the Lakers could still be active in the buyout market, it seems impossible to envision a way in which they could reinvent themselves as a realistic championship contender. They were limited at the trade deadline after having already sacrificed so many assets, including future draft picks, in their deals for Davis and Westbrook.On Wednesday night, the eve of the trade deadline, James said he was tired.“I just want to get some wine and get up tomorrow,” said James, who helped deliver a championship to the Lakers just two seasons ago. “I feel good about what tomorrow has in store, and we’ll see what happens.”He added: “But other than that, I’m kind of just focused on what we can do to be better.”It is a long list. Entering Thursday, the Lakers ranked 17th in defensive rating, 22nd in offensive rating and 26th in turnovers. Westbrook has committed 224 turnovers this season, more than any other player in the league.Russell Westbrook leads the N.B.A. in turnovers.Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIt was only August when the Lakers acquired him from the Wizards in exchange for Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Harrell and draft picks. While James seemed to acknowledge his role in recruiting Westbrook to the Lakers — “It was exciting helping put this team together this summer,” James said before the start of the season — Westbrook seemed thrilled about returning to Los Angeles, where he grew up and played in college at U.C.L.A. He went so far as to call it a “blessing.”It was not difficult, though, to anticipate problems before the experiment began. The Lakers, with the oldest roster in the league, were built to compete for championships — eight years ago. In fairness, James said it would be a process to form chemistry. (It would not, he famously said, be “peanut butter and jelly” right away.) But a process usually leads to some form of improvement, and the Lakers, if anything, have regressed recently, having lost six of their last eight games.James and Davis have been limited because of knee injuries — Davis missed a huge chunk of the season, and there are broader concerns about the state of James’s 37-year-old body — but Westbrook is a shadow of the player who won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Award with the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2017.In 55 games with the Lakers, Westbrook is averaging 18.3 points per game — the fewest he has averaged since his second season in the league in 2009-10 — while shooting 43.5 percent from the field and just 29.8 percent from 3-point range.At the same time, he has started to gripe about his diminished role.“You never know when you’re coming in, you never know when you’re coming out,” he said this week.On Wednesday, James compared the trade deadline to being in a fog.“We’re all trying to see what’s on the other side of it,” he said.On Thursday, the fog dissipated. The view was unpleasant. More

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      N.B.A.’s Warriors Disavow Part-Owner’s Uyghur Comments

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      The Golden State Warriors distanced themselves from a minority stakeholder, Chamath Palihapitiya, who said “nobody cares” about the Uyghurs, the ethnic group that has faced a deadly crackdown in China.The N.B.A.’s Golden State Warriors on Monday distanced themselves from a partial stakeholder in the team after he said “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs,” the predominantly Muslim minority that has faced widespread repression in China’s western Xinjiang region.Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire venture capitalist who owns a small stake in the Warriors, made the comments on an episode of his podcast “All-In” that was released on Saturday. During the podcast, Mr. Palihapitiya’s co-host Jason Calacanis, a tech entrepreneur, praised President Biden’s China policies, including his administration’s support of the Uyghurs, but noted that the policies hadn’t helped him in the polls.Mr. Palihapitiya replied: “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, OK. You bring it up because you really care, and I think it’s nice that you care — the rest of us don’t care.”Later in the podcast, Mr. Palihapitiya, the founder and chief executive of the venture capital firm Social Capital and a former executive at AOL and Facebook, called concern about human rights abuses in other countries “a luxury belief.” He also said that Americans shouldn’t express opinions about the violations “until we actually clean up our own house.”On Monday, the Warriors minimized Mr. Palihapitiya’s involvement with the team.“As a limited investor who has no day-to-day operating functions with the Warriors, Mr. Palihapitiya does not speak on behalf of our franchise, and his views certainly don’t reflect those of our organization,” the team said in a statement.In recent years, China has corralled as many as a million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities into internment camps and prisons, part of what Chinese authorities say is an effort to tamp down on extremism. The sweeping crackdown has faced a growing chorus of international criticism; last year the State Department declared that the Chinese government was committing genocide and crimes against humanity through its use of the camps and forced sterilization.Mr. Palihapitiya’s comments could be the latest chapter in what has become a fraught relationship between the N.B.A. and China, where the league hopes to preserve its access to a lucrative basketball audience. In 2019, a team executive’s support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong prompted a backlash from China in which Chinese sponsors cut ties with the league and games were no longer televised on state media channels. The league later estimated that it lost hundreds of millions of dollars.On Monday, Mr. Palihapitiya, 45, who was born in Sri Lanka, moved to Canada when he was a child and now lives in California, said in a statement posted to Twitter that after re-listening to the podcast, “I recognize that I come across as lacking empathy.”“As a refugee, my family fled a country with its own set of human rights issues so this is something that is very much a part of my lived experience,” he said. “To be clear, my belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, the United States or elsewhere. Full stop.”Nevertheless, his original comments were condemned by several public figures who have spoken out against China’s human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region.Enes Kanter Freedom, a Boston Celtics player whose pro-Tibet posts caused the team’s games to be pulled from China in October, said on Twitter that “when genocides happen, it is people like this that let it happen.”“When @NBA says we stand for justice, don’t forget there are those who sell their soul for money & business,” he said.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican who has often criticized the N.B.A. for its approach to China, tied the league to Mr. Palihapitiya’s comments.“ALL that matters to them is more $$ from CCP so NBA millionaires & billionaires can get even richer,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.The discussion of human rights took up the largest portion of the 85-minute podcast episode. After Mr. Palihapitiya said that he did not care about the Uyghurs, David Sacks, a co-host, suggested that people cared about the Uyghurs when they heard about what was happening in Xinjiang, but that the issue was not top of mind for them.Mr. Palihapitiya then dug in.“I care about the fact that our economy could turn on a dime if China invades Taiwan; I care about that,” he said. “I care about climate change. I care about America’s crippling, decrepit health care infrastructure. But if you’re asking me, do I care about a segment of a class of people in another country? Not until we can take care of ourselves will I prioritize them over us.”He continued: “And I think a lot of people believe that. And I’m sorry if that’s a hard truth to hear, but every time I say that I care about the Uyghurs I’m really just lying if I don’t really care. And so I’d rather not lie to you and tell you the truth — it’s not a priority for me.”Mr. Calacanis said it was “a sad state of affairs when human rights as a concept globally falls beneath tactical and strategic issues that we have to have.” Mr. Palihapitiya countered that it was a “luxury belief.”“The reason I think it’s a luxury belief is we don’t do enough domestically to actually express that view in real, tangible ways,” he said. “So until we actually clean up our own house, the idea that we step outside of our borders with us sort of morally virtue signaling about somebody else’s human rights track record is deplorable.”The N.B.A. is heavily invested in not attracting the kind of messy blowback it received in 2019, when Daryl Morey, then the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted in support of Hong Kong protesters. China removed N.B.A. games from state media channels, with games returning to air a year later.LeBron James, perhaps the league’s biggest star, faced widespread backlash when he appeared to side with China, saying Mr. Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation at hand” in Hong Kong. More

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      Pelicans Choose to Remain Upbeat, Not Beaten Down

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      New Orleans guard Josh Hart is assembling his most complete pro season under a new coach who is relentlessly positive, and for a team that is still missing Zion Williamson.BOSTON — Josh Hart has experienced quite a bit. He won a national championship at Villanova. He played alongside LeBron James with the Los Angeles Lakers. He reached great heights and scrambled for minutes. But Hart got a dose of something new at the start of this N.B.A. season with the New Orleans Pelicans: relentless positivity.It hardly mattered that the Pelicans had lost 12 of their first 13 games, or that they were scuffling through a series of blowouts, or that the team’s fans seemed preoccupied with the one player — Zion Williamson — who was absent from the lineup. No matter the circumstances, Willie Green, the team’s first-year coach, was going to remain upbeat.“I think he was almost overly positive,” Hart, a fifth-year guard, said in an interview. “But this is a new group with a lot of young players, and we knew it was going to take time.”That process, as evidenced by the Pelicans’ 104-92 loss to the Celtics on Monday in Boston, is continuing. But there has been progress. Since their brutal start, the Pelicans have gone 15-16 behind the efforts of unsung players like Hart, who, at 6 feet 5 inches, defends and rebounds, and has joined his teammates in focusing on what they can control.“Obviously, we want Z to get back as quickly as he can and get 100 percent,” Hart said of Williamson. “But we can’t sit here and be like, ‘We’ve got to keep the ship afloat in hopes of a Zion grand return.’ That’s just not the mentality to have. The mentality is: We’re not going to have him for the season. That’s how we’re looking at it, and we’ve all got to step up and hoop and take advantage of our opportunities. And if he comes back? Perfect, we’ll be even stronger.”Williamson, a first-time All-Star last season and one of the N.B.A.’s most explosive players (when in uniform, which is increasingly rare), has had a series of setbacks since he had off-season surgery to repair a fracture in his right foot. A planned return to practice in December was abandoned when he reported soreness. Medical imaging revealed what the team assessed as a “regression” in the healing process, and he has since been rehabilitating in Portland, Ore. He has yet to play in a game this season, and there is no timetable for his return.“He’s still recovering, still trying to get healthy,” Green said on Monday.It is a credit to Green and his players that the Williamson story line has not ballooned into something bigger. Winning a few games has helped. But so, too, has Green’s approach.“I go back and forth sometimes myself on how much positivity I should show,” Green said. “But there have been studies. If you show people positive ways in which to do things versus the negative, their growth is tremendous. And it just happens to be a part of who I am. It’s not like I’m not holding them accountable. But I would prefer to be positive.”After a brutal start to the season, Coach Willie Green’s Pelicans have gone 15-16 behind the efforts of unsung players like Hart.Mary Schwalm/Associated PressHart said he did not feel especially valued last season under Stan Van Gundy, who was then the team’s coach. At times, Hart said, it felt like his only job was to stand in the corner and shoot the occasional 3-pointer. As the losses piled up, so did the bad vibes, Hart said. (He recalled a teammate being yelled at for calling a timeout after he dived for a loose ball.)Van Gundy was fired after the Pelicans went 31-41 in his lone season as the team’s head coach. Hart, meanwhile, waded into restricted free agency after having missed the team’s final 25 games with a hand injury. Still, he was hopeful that he would receive interest from teams around the league. Those lucrative offers never materialized. He wound up signing a three-year extension with New Orleans. The deal could be worth as much as $38 million, but it comes with a big caveat: Only the first year is guaranteed.“I know it’s very easily tradable,” Hart said, “so that’s always in the back of your mind.”Hart had been hoping for more security, and, for the first time in his adult life, he took a break from basketball over the summer. He got married. He spent some time away from the game, banking on the belief that distance would give him fresh perspective. He also began preparing to play for yet another head coach — his fourth in five seasons. Hart acknowledged that cycling through so many philosophies and management styles can take a toll on a young player, especially one trying to find his niche.“Some coaches are positive, and some are negative,” he said. “Some keep it real with you, and some kind of don’t.”Hart said he was still feeling “skeptical” about his place in the organization when he met Green for the first time over dinner before the start of training camp. Green, a former assistant with the Warriors and the Suns, said he approached the meeting with an agenda. First, he wanted to listen: What had happened with Hart over the summer? What were his frustrations? How could he help? Second, he wanted to convey that he loved Hart’s competitive nature — “He has made every team he’s played for better,” Green said — and viewed him as a leader.“I walked away feeling encouraged that he wasn’t going to limit me or put me in a box, that he was going to let me play the game the way I love to play it,” Hart said. “For a basketball player, that’s what you want to hear — that you have the confidence of your coach.”Hart is assembling his most complete season as a pro, averaging 13.1 points, 7.5 rebounds and 4.3 assists while shooting a career-best 51.5 percent from the field.“I believe in them,” Green said of his players. “Even when it doesn’t look great, I know we’ll get there.” More