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      Do Sports Still Need China?

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      Global outrage, broken contracts and shifting politics could change the calculus for leagues and teams that once raced to do business in China.The rewards for international sports leagues and organizations are plain: lucrative broadcast deals, bountiful sponsorship opportunities, millions of new consumers.The risks are obvious, too: the compromising of values, the public relations nightmares, the general atmosphere of opacity.For years, they have surveyed the Chinese market, measured these factors and come up with the same basic math: that the benefits of doing business there outweighed the possible downsides. The N.B.A. might blunder into a humbling political crisis based on a single tweet, and rich contracts might vanish into thin air overnight, but China, the thinking went, was a potential gold mine. And for that reason leagues, teams, governing bodies and athletes contorted themselves for any chance to tap into it.But recent events may have changed that thinking for good, and raised a new question: Is doing business in China still worth it?The sports world received a hint last week of a changing dynamic when the WTA — one of many organizations that have worked aggressively over the last decade to establish a foothold in the Chinese market — threatened to stop doing business there altogether if the government failed to confirm the safety of Peng Shuai. Peng, a top women’s tennis player once hailed by state media as “our Chinese princess,” disappeared from public life recently after accusing a prominent former government official of sexual assault.The WTA’s threat was remarkable not only for its reasoning, but for its rarity.WTA Tour officials, fellow players and human rights groups spoke up for Peng Shuai after China tried to censor her accusations of sexual abuse.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesBut as China’s president, Xi Jinping, governs through an increasingly heavy-handed personal worldview, and as China’s aggressive approach to geopolitics and its record on human rights make the country, and those who do business there, a growing target for a chorus of critics and activists, sports leagues and organizations may soon be forced to re-evaluate their longstanding assumptions.That sort of direct confrontation is already taking place elsewhere: Lawmakers in the European Union recently called for stronger ties with Taiwan, an island China claims as its territory, only months after European officials blocked a landmark commercial agreement over human rights concerns and labeled China a “totalitarian threat.”For most sports organizations, the WTA’s position remains an outlier. Sports organizations with multimillion-dollar partnerships in China — whether the N.B.A., England’s Premier League, Formula 1 auto racing or the International Olympic Committee — have mostly brushed aside concerns.Some partners have acquiesced at times to China’s various demands. A few have issued humbling apologies. The I.O.C., in perhaps the most notable example, has seemed to go out of its way to avoid angering China, even as Peng, a former Olympian, went missing.But an evolving public opinion may get harder for sports organizations to ignore. A report this year from the Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 67 percent of Americans had negative feelings toward China, up from 46 percent in 2018. Similar shifts have occurred in other Western democracies.Mark Dreyer, a sports analyst for China Sports Insider, based in Beijing, said the WTA’s standoff with China represented an escalation in the “them or us” mentality that appeared to be forming between China and its Western rivals.The threat from the WTA, then, could serve as a sign of showdowns to come, in which case, Dreyer said, China could lose out.“Frankly, China is a big market, but the rest of the world is still bigger,” he said. “And if people have to choose, they’re not going to choose China.”To some experts, then, the WTA’s extraordinary decision to confront China head-on might actually signal a turning point, rather than an aberration.“The calculation is one part political, one part moral, one part economic,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of international sports business at Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France. He said that the WTA’s dispute with China reflected the “red line” growing between the country and many of its Western counterparts, with the sides seeming more entrenched in diverging sociopolitical ideologies.Some sports organizations are deepening their ties to China. Formula 1, for example, just extended its contract for the Chinese Grand Prix, keeping the race in Shanghai through 2025.Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“I think we are rapidly heading toward the kind of terrain where organizations, businesses, and sponsors will be forced to choose one side or another,” Chadwick added.The WTA’s own about-face was stark. Only three years ago, the organization was heralding a deal that made Shenzhen, China, the new home of its tour finals for a decade starting in 2019, accepting promises of a new stadium and a whopping $14 million annual prize pool. In 2019, just before the pandemic, the WTA held nine tournaments in China.Fast forward to last week, when Steve Simon, the WTA’s chief executive, said in an interview with The New York Times that if China did not agree to an independent inquiry of Peng’s claims, that the tour would be willing to cease operations in the country.“There are too many decisions being made today that aren’t based on what is simply right and wrong,” Simon said. “And this is the right thing to do, 100 percent.”The language raised eyebrows around the sports world.“They are not the first ones to have had a run-in with China,” Zhe Ji, the director of Red Lantern, a sports marketing company that does work in China, said about the WTA. “But I haven’t seen anybody else come out with as strong a wording as that.”The run-ins have proliferated in only the last few years.The N.B.A., for instance, was seen as a pioneer when it played its first games in China in 2004, including a game featuring Yao Ming, the Chinese star for the Houston Rockets. The ensuing years brought prosperity for the league there, and relative peace. It was praised for its patient, culturally sensitive approach to building there. Then, in 2019, Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Rockets at the time, tweeted in support of pro-democracy protests taking place in Hong Kong, and in the blink of an eye a relationship that had developed over several years imploded.Merchandise for the Rockets — China’s favorite team in China’s favorite sports league — was removed from stores, and the team’s games were no longer broadcast on television. Fans took to Chinese social media to attack the league. Then, when the N.B.A. issued what was widely taken as an apology, it sparked an almost equally robust wave of criticism back home. (The N.B.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.)“The NBA should have anticipated the challenges of doing business in a country run by a repressive single party government, including by being prepared to stand in strong defense of the freedom of expression of its employees, players, and affiliates across the globe,” read a letter sent to the league by a bipartisan group of United States lawmakers.The N.B.A. saw its brand battered in China and at home after a team executive waded into Chinese politics on Twitter.Tyrone Siu/ReutersThe letter’s signees — a cross-party group that included Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a Democrat, and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican — accused the N.B.A. of compromising American values and effectively supporting Chinese propaganda.“If you’re angering both sides, it means there is no middle ground, which I think was significant,” said Dreyer, the Beijing-based sports analyst.Like other observers, Dreyer suggested the WTA’s stance was potentially game-changing. But he noted, too, that it was possibly easier for the WTA to defy China than it had been for, say, the N.B.A., for two reasons.First, because the pandemic had already forced the WTA to cancel its events in China for the near future, the tour was not necessarily forfeiting big sums of money in the immediate term. (Severing ties with China permanently would of course require the WTA Tour to replace tens of millions of dollars in revenue and prize money.) Second, because China has essentially erased any mention of Peng and the ensuing international outcry from its news and social media, the WTA’s brand may not take much of a hit there. Many in China simply do not know about Peng, or the WTA’s response.“With the N.B.A., they were burning jerseys,” Dreyer said. “You don’t have that reaction against tennis.”To be sure, big sports leagues that have deep, longstanding interests in China, barring some extreme turn of events, will not exit the market any time soon. And some organizations are still going all-in.The I.O.C., which will stage the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, has tuned out any and all calls from critics for the organization to make some statement about China’s human rights abuses, including the treatment of religious minorities in the country’s western regions.The Beijing Olympics marked the start of its 100-days-out countdown on Wednesday.Andrea Verdelli/Getty ImagesFormula 1 this month announced that it had signed a deal to continue the Chinese Grand Prix, an annual race in Shanghai, through 2025, and the Premier League appears to have patched over a crisis that began when a top player infuriated China by criticizing its human rights record.Some in the industry, though, have already noticed a change, a slight cooling, among other companies pondering business in the sports market there.“With increased political tension and the complications of doing business in China, I’ve seen more companies focus back on Europe and the U.S., where the reward may not be as large but the risk is much less,” said Lisa Delpy Neirotti, an international sports marketing consultant and director of the sports management master’s program at George Washington University.That dynamic has been vivid in European soccer, which had collectively seemed to view China as a sort of El Dorado five years ago, but now seems to be coming to terms with reality after a series of disappointments. In Italy, Inter Milan, one of that country’s most storied clubs, is in a tailspin after its Chinese owner, Suning, a consumer goods company, became engulfed in a major financial crisis. The team has been forced to sell player contracts to meet its payroll.In England, the Premier League remains in litigation with a broadcast partner that failed to pay up after signing a record-breaking television deal to broadcast games in China. A new partner is paying a fraction of the previous agreement, leaving some clubs disillusioned.Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva in Shanghai in 2019. The Premier League had to find a new television partner in China after a record-setting deal collapsed.Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Over the last five years there had been a perception in the West that China is there for the taking — there’s lots of money, economic growth is strong, a growing middle class, disposal income, and we can go feast on this,” Chadwick said. “What has happened for some sports organizations in the West is that they have not found China as lucrative as they imagined, and they have also found China incredibly difficult to do business with.”The difficulties appear to be deepening.Half a decade ago, the Chinese government, emboldened about sports after hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, announced plans to create an $800 billion domestic sports industry, the largest in the world. That captured the attention of Western sports organizations.What many organizations did not anticipate, though, were the peculiarities of the Chinese business landscape, the extent to which politics is woven through all aspects of China’s economy, and the growing spirit of nationalism under its increasingly autocratic president, Xi.“I absolutely think over the long term that major sporting events will be hesitant moving forward to schedule out in China right now,” said Thomas A. Baker III, a sports management professor at the University of Georgia who has done extensive work in China. “The China that welcomed the world in 2008 is not the same China that people are doing business with in 2021.”Tariq Panja More

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      Win Or Lose, the Knicks and Lakers Are Worth Billions

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      Sports franchise valuations are guesses, with few data points for comparison. But prestige franchises like these can defy all calculations.The Los Angeles Lakers will face the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, and from a prestige perspective, it’s the equivalent of Billy Joel and Elton John touring together.On court, it’s a different story, since both teams are having underwhelming seasons. But wins and losses are unlikely to ever significantly matter when it comes to determining the worth of each franchise. They are consistently said to be among the highest-value franchises in the N.B.A., and have been for some time, regardless of how they’ve performed on the court. The Lakers, of course, have won six championships since 2000 and have had multiple generational talents to attract fans in that span, including Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. The Knicks have had the opposite experience — rarely winning or putting star players on the court since their N.B.A. finals loss to the San Antonio Spurs in 1999.Yet, earlier this year, Sportico, a sports business publication, estimated the Knicks and Lakers to be worth more than $5 billion each, two of only three teams, along with the Golden State Warriors, to be worth that much. Last month, Forbes had a similar take, putting the Knicks at $5.8 billion and the Lakers at $5.5. billion. (In 2000, Forbes said the Knicks were the most valuable franchise in the N.B.A. at $390 million. The Lakers were the runner-up at $360 million.)Franchises have become more lucrative in recent decades as N.B.A. revenues have skyrocketed, and generally, the super rich (on paper) have become richer.“This gets into the next greatest fool theory of team ownership,” said Rick Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse University. “It suggests that there will be a next greatest fool willing to pay that amount to get that franchise. And franchise values are essentially the most important job of the league commissioner, which is to drive up the asset appreciation of the franchise holders.”Or as Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, put it in an email: “When buyers have cash and are liquid, and business for the league involved is good, prices go up and vice versa.”But what does it mean when the Knicks and Lakers are said to be worth more than $5 billion? Here’s a look behind the curtain. (Representatives for the two franchises did not respond to requests for comment.)What is a valuation, exactly?In the most basic terms: It is an estimate of how much a team would sell for if it was on the market. But it is nothing more than an educated guess.“At the end of the day, we’re estimating what a private enterprise is worth,” said Kurt Badenhausen, a sports valuations reporter at Sportico. “No different than estimating what the value of your house is worth.”LeBron James is among the big-name stars who have kept the Lakers in championship contention over the past 20 years.Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesHow are the valuations derived?Much like house valuations on online real estate sites, they are based on several factors, including location, who owns the arena the team plays in, and the team’s local television deals. James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, also owns Madison Square Garden, whereas the Lakers lease the space at Staples Center, which will become known as Crypto.com Arena on Christmas Day.“If you have two teams, let’s say one owns the building and the other leases it, what I’m valuing is the economics,” said Mike Ozanian, a managing editor at Forbes who compiles its valuations. “In other words, what are the revenues that the team generates at the building versus its expenses?”Assets related to the team don’t necessarily factor in, at least not completely. In the case of the Knicks, while Dolan owns MSG Networks, the regional cable channel that broadcasts games for the Knicks and several other New York-area sports teams, that doesn’t figure into the valuation of the team. However, the revenue generated from the network does.Valuators review public information on team finances, consult bankers involved in similar transactions, and consider previous sales and the scarcity of the product.The franchise worth changes, Cuban said, based purely on “supply and demand against cost and availability of money versus expected cash flows, if any, and expected appreciation.”What are the limitations?In 2014, Forbes valued the Los Angeles Clippers at $575 million. Later that year, Steve Ballmer purchased the team for more than $2 billion. Much like when buying a house, sometimes it’s difficult to account for just how eager a given buyer will be.“We do it with the best information we have based on a team’s finances, their arena situation and the market that they’re in,” Badenhausen said. “But sports teams don’t get bought and sold like traditional businesses, because there is there is an intangible factor in there because while there’s thousands of businesses you can buy, there’s only 30 N.B.A. teams that you can buy.”Given the rarity of team sales, there aren’t many data points for comparison.As Ozanian put it: “You could have precise information on a team and at the same time not come close to what the team sells for.”Sometimes, the accuracy of a number can be affected by how much information a team is willing to provide.“It’s possible there are times where, because one team speaks more than another, that the revenue and operating income numbers could be slightly more accurate for one than another,” Ozanian said. “But in terms of the valuations, the enterprise values, I don’t think that plays a role because the people that I speak to to get my valuations are very much in know, as to the revenues and expenses and therefore very knowledgeable on the valuation.”James L. Dolan, owns the Knicks, has said he does not plan to sell the team, even when fans have pleaded for him to do so.Mike Segar/ReutersJeanie Buss, the majority owner of the Lakers. The team has been owned by her family since 1979.Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesWhy are the Knicks and Lakers valued so highly?Both franchises generate hundreds of millions of dollars from their local television deals and arenas, which drive revenue through merchandising, sponsorships and ticket sales, though some of that is distributed to other teams through the league’s revenue sharing system. And location matters, too.In fact, it might be the most important thing.“They are also located in markets that have tremendous wealth,” Badenhausen said. “So that if they were ever to come up for sale, you would have multiple bidders at multibillion dollar valuations. And the sky is the limit in terms of what somebody would be willing to pay for both these franchises.”There’s also the intangible.“You have one shot to buy the New York Knicks,” Badenhausen said. “You have one shot to buy the Los Angeles Lakers Lakers. They just don’t come up for sale, right?”The Knicks’ renovation of Madison Square Garden a decade ago also was a big boost.“It’s one of the oldest buildings in the N.B.A.,” Badenhausen said. “But the renovation turned it into a modern-day cash register.”Why doesn’t it really matter if the Lakers and Knicks win?Badenhausen argued that even while the Knicks’ value has skyrocketed independent of their play, the years of poor performance have lowered the ceiling.“The big market teams are definitely more immune to what happens on the court than small market teams,” Badenhausen said. “But you could make a case that the Knicks would definitely be worth more if they were running out a playoff team every year that was challenging for N.B.A. titles. That 100 percent boosts teams’ finances, allows them to charge more for tickets, sponsorships and suites and all of those things. And so your revenue goes up and that helps drive valuations high.”But the team is still flush, Ozanian said, which is ultimately the biggest arbiter. Television deals are often long-term, and are locked in whether the team is good or bad. Both teams draw well in audience and sponsorships.“Potential buyers are not looking at the past,” Ozanian said. “They’re generally looking at the future, and the amount of incremental revenue that comes in from having a good team versus a not-so-good team generally isn’t that much more.” More

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      New Black N.B.A. Coaches Wonder Why It Took So Long to Get a Shot

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      The N.B.A.’s coaching ranks have long been dominated by white men, but a demand from Black players for more diversity may be changing things.Jamahl Mosley has traveled the world for basketball.He played for professional teams in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Finland and South Korea. He was a player development coach with the N.B.A.’s Denver Nuggets when Carmelo Anthony was there. He was an assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers during the four long years after LeBron James left for Miami. Dirk Nowitzki’s final years with the Mavericks and the rise of Luka Doncic? Mosley was there, too, as an assistant in Dallas.He spent 16 seasons on N.B.A. coaching staffs, developing his skills and hoping for his big break to be a head coach. He had heeded his mother’s advice about playing college basketball for a Black coach, to learn leadership skills from someone who looked like him. The doubts about his ever getting that kind of job only surfaced in recent years when he interviewed for — and was turned down for — seven N.B.A. head coaching jobs.“Because you knew you were qualified,” Mosley said. “You knew you had interviewed well. You knew that you had the ability to do it.”The N.B.A.’s coaching and executive ranks have long been dominated by white men, even though more than 70 percent of players are Black. But this year, Mosley became part of an unusual off-season, in which seven of eight head coaching vacancies were filled by Black candidates. Five of them, including Mosley, who was hired by the Orlando Magic in July, are first-time head coaches. The others are Wes Unseld Jr. of the Washington Wizards, Willie Green of the New Orleans Pelicans, Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics and Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers. Jason Kidd of the Dallas Mavericks and Nate McMillan of the Atlanta Hawks had been head coaches elsewhere before.“If this was 15 years ago, we probably don’t get these positions,” Green said.The uptick — 13 of the league’s 30 coaches are now Black and two others are not white — came during a broader national conversation about race and hiring practices. Black players harnessed their voices to seek change that they felt was overdue.“This is a stain on the league that no one can deny,” Michele Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union, said in an interview, “and we’ve got to continue to do better.”‘There’s a natural cultural bond’Long before he became the coach of the Celtics, Udoka was a self-described student of the game. As a teenager in Portland, Ore., he would record games that featured some of his favorite college players, standouts like Syracuse’s Lawrence Moten and Lamond Murray of the University of California, Berkeley. Then he would head to the playground to mimic their moves. (Udoka still has a stack of VHS tapes at home.)“There’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players,” Boston Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“I wasn’t the most athletic or skilled guy,” Udoka said, “so I really had to use my brain for an advantage. I always thought through the game a certain way, and I think some coaches saw that in me, too.”Udoka grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, went to a Black high school and had Black coaches. He was not especially conscious of race, he said, since being in that environment was all he knew. But his high school coach “preached family and togetherness and a brotherhood,” Udoka said, and he carried those lessons with him.Udoka was bouncing around the N.B.A. as a defense-minded forward when he got what he described as “the coaching bug.” He helped found an Amateur Athletic Union team in Portland that included Terrence Ross and Terrence Jones, future N.B.A. players. Udoka also participated in coaching clinics hosted by the N.B.A. players’ union. After retiring, he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2012 as an assistant under Gregg Popovich.The Celtics job opened in June when the team announced that Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for eight seasons, would be its new president of basketball operations. Jaylen Brown, one of the Celtics’ young stars, said in a recent interview with The Undefeated that he had told the team to hire a Black candidate. Representation was important to him, he said.Udoka, left, talked with Marcus Smart during a preseason game this month.Winslow Townson/Associated Press“Players were asking and demanding and wanting to see more guys who looked like them,” Udoka said. He added: “In coaching, I think there’s been a shift from Xs and Os and game plans to the value that’s placed on relationships. And there’s a natural cultural bond that Black coaches are going to have with their players.”Udoka said he was not suggesting that white coaches couldn’t bond with Black players. He cited Popovich, who is white, as someone who has long stressed the importance of relationships. But for a new coach on a new team, it would be naïve to believe that race was not a factor.“Basketball is mainly minority-based,” Celtics point guard Marcus Smart said in an interview. “So having a minority as a coach, I can connect with him. I can say things to him, or he can say things to me, and we get it. Whereas it’s different when you don’t. You have to try to figure out, OK, how can I meet them halfway?”Still, a coach is a coach: Udoka suspended Smart for the team’s preseason finale for breaking an unspecified team rule.‘This decision is coming fast’About three years ago, Rick Carlisle, as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association, was hearing from an increasing number of young assistants of diverse backgrounds who felt they were not getting a fair shake at head coaching jobs.The league and the coaches’ association soon began the N.B.A. Coaches Equality Initiative, a program aimed at developing young coaches and ensuring that qualified candidates are visible when jobs arise. Since 2019, there have been numerous workshops, summits, panel discussions and networking opportunities.David Vanterpool, left, was passed over for the head coaching job in Minnesota after the team fired Ryan Saunders, right.David Zalubowski/Associated PressAnd there is an app, a coaches database that was unveiled last year. It now includes profiles of about 300 coaches, whom the league’s power brokers — owners, general managers, team presidents — can access, Carlisle said. Coaches can upload their histories, their philosophies and even their interview clips. Think of it is as Bumble for the N.B.A. coaching set. But it is all part of a larger mission, said Oris Stuart, the chief people and inclusion officer for the league.“We have ongoing conversations with our teams about the importance of making sure that, as they’re making decisions, the process is inclusive,” Stuart said in an interview. “We focus on the importance of making sure that the best talent is considered, that we make a wide reach and that we go beyond the pre-established networks that people are working from.”But within the past year, the hiring processes for two white coaches — including the one that landed Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers — have been criticized for not appearing to be inclusive.The Minnesota Timberwolves fired Ryan Saunders as their coach in February and announced his replacement, Chris Finch, who is white, on the same day. The Timberwolves chose not to promote the team’s associate head coach, David Vanterpool, who is Black, which would have been typical after a midseason firing. (Vanterpool is now an assistant for the Nets.)The perception was that there was no way the Timberwolves could have seriously considered any Black candidates given their accelerated timeline, said Roberts, the executive director of the players’ union. The timing of the change, she added, “got under a lot of people’s skin.”Within days, Carlisle and David Fogel, the executive director of the coaches’ association, released a statement in which the organization expressed its “disappointment” with Minnesota’s search, saying that it is “our responsibility to point out when an organization fails to conduct a thorough and transparent search of candidates from a wide range of diverse backgrounds.”Rick Carlisle expressed some trepidation before he accepted the offer of head coach from the Indiana Pacers in June.Doug Mcschooler/Associated PressBut just a few months later, in June, Carlisle accepted the Pacers job after what appeared to be an abbreviated search. Indiana had fired Nate Bjorkgren earlier in the month after just one season, and they had interviewed only one other candidate when they offered Carlisle the job. Chad Buchanan, Indiana’s general manager, said in an interview that the team wanted an experienced coach and that Carlisle had unexpectedly become available after he resigned from the Dallas Mavericks, which he had coached for 13 seasons and led to a championship in 2011.Buchanan sought to assure Carlisle by telling him that the Pacers had interviewed 17 candidates, of whom eight were Black and one was female, before hiring Bjorkgren eight months earlier.“This was something I was concerned about,” Carlisle said, “but when they gave me that information, I was comfortable moving forward.”Washington Wizards Coach Wes Unseld Jr. was known as the Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game.Sarah Stier/Getty Images‘It’s more of a systemic issue’As an economics major at Johns Hopkins University, Wes Unseld Jr. thought he would get into investment banking. But for two summers, before and after graduating in 1997, he interned for the Wizards. His father, also Wes, who was synonymous with the franchise from his Hall of Fame playing days, had moved into the front office as the team’s general manager after seven seasons as its head coach. The elder Unseld invited his son to learn the ropes, just in case the financial world was not for him.“If you’re going to be in this business, you’ve got to learn the business,” Wes Unseld Jr. recalled his father telling him. “So I’m thinking, OK, I’ll be around basketball. ‘No, you’re going to intern in every department.’ Community relations, public relations, marketing, sales — you name it, I did it.”Unseld, who was a very good Division III player for Johns Hopkins, soon realized that he could not leave the game behind, and he became one of the many unsung, behind-the-scenes fixtures in the N.B.A. After eight seasons as a scout for Washington, he spent the next 16 as an assistant for various teams around the league. He refined offenses. He built defenses. With the Wizards, he was known as The Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game. In Denver, he helped shape Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into stars.Yet Unseld could not land a head coaching job. He said he was never sure if his race was a factor. “When an opportunity doesn’t pan out, sometimes it’s easy to ask, ‘Was it that?’” Unseld said. “And it may have been. It’s difficult to tell.”Willie Green, the head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans, spoke to reporters at a news conference last month.Sean Gardner/Getty ImagesAfter a record 14 Black coaches were manning benches for teams at the start of the 2012-13 season, those numbers dipped in subsequent years, showing how tenuous progress can be. Unseld said the N.B.A. is “a network business like any other business.”“If you’re not connected to the decision makers, it can be difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s an overt way of not interviewing or not giving people of color a chance, but maybe they just don’t have that network to pull from. It’s more of a systemic issue.”Roberts commended the coaches’ association for working to address that issue in recent seasons. But the real power, she said, has come from the players themselves.“A happy team is probably a more successful team,” she said. “And if the players think management is thumbing its nose at their articulated concerns about a coaching staff, then what’s their motivation to stay?”In New Orleans, Willie Green often thinks of his uncle, Gary Green, who coached him when he was growing up in Detroit, and who imbued him with the fundamentals. After several years as an assistant with Golden State and Phoenix, Green said he felt a heightened sense of responsibility.“We have to be caretakers of these opportunities,” he said.In Boston, Garrett Jackson, a former player on Udoka’s A.A.U. team, is now one of Udoka’s video coordinators. And Mosley got his first win for the Magic with a narrow victory against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. He was gifted the game ball, then got back to business.“It’s like anything,” he said. “You just put your head down and do the work.” More

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      His N.B.A. Dream Was Right There. Then He Couldn’t Move His Legs.

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      On June 20, 2019, Kris Wilkes awoke in an Airbnb near downtown Indianapolis. He was happy. Next to him was the woman he was falling in love with. Scattered throughout the rest of the rooms of the rented house were friends and family members who had supported him throughout his budding basketball career. It was the morning of the N.B.A. draft, and Wilkes was on the cusp of achieving a childhood dream.Just a few miles up the road at North Central High School, Wilkes had become a coveted basketball recruit. He got his first scholarship offer, from Indiana, when he was in eighth grade. He ultimately committed to U.C.L.A., where he became known for his high-flying, rim-rattling dunks. He made the Pac-12 all-freshman team, and after his sophomore season, he was projected to be selected in the N.B.A. draft, near the end of the first round.Now, more than two years later, he hasn’t made it onto an N.B.A. roster. He has never even appeared in a G League or summer league game.Moments after waking up on draft day in 2019, Wilkes discovered something startling: He couldn’t move his legs. He tore off the bed covers and stared at his lower body. He tried to fire every muscle from his hips to his toes, but nothing happened. He had no feeling below his waist.He called his father, who was at home nearby, and asked him to drive over right away.“Dad,” he said. “I’m scared.”‘I felt like I was 80.’Wilkes initially declared he would enter the draft after his freshman year at U.C.L.A., but he returned for his sophomore season to try to prove he should be a first-round pick. In March 2019, he declared for the draft again. He signed with the Wasserman management and marketing company, and his agents there arranged private workouts with teams. For players projected to be picked outside the top 14, those workouts can be the difference between starting a pro career in the N.B.A. or in the developmental G League. Wilkes wasn’t worried.“I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to be a first-round pick,” Wilkes said. “I was in the best shape of my life. Unfortunately, it was short-lived.”Kris Wilkes playing at U.C.L.A. his sophomore season.Tim Bradbury/Getty ImagesBy the time he reached his seventh workout, with the San Antonio Spurs, he felt sluggish. Near the end of the workout, Wilkes almost collapsed, and a trainer pulled him aside to take his temperature. It was 103 degrees. Team staff members walked him to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed with strep throat. Wilkes called his agent, who canceled his next workout, with the Atlanta Hawks, and he returned to his childhood home in Indianapolis to rest and recover for draft night.Within days, his fever had disappeared and his throat felt better, but he started to notice other disconcerting symptoms. His limbs would feel as if they were coated in glass. Sometimes, he wouldn’t be able to feel a hand touching his arm. Other times, he felt an almost unbearable tingle. At night, he couldn’t sleep with a blanket on his legs because it was too irritating. Then his back began to hurt. As an athlete, Wilkes was used to a certain amount of joint pain and muscle stiffness, but this was different.One night, the pain got so bad that his father, Greg Wilkes, took him to urgent care. There the doctor asked Kris if he could remember the last time he had urinated. It had been more than a day. The doctor told him to rush to an emergency room because his bladder was at risk of ripping.In the emergency room, Wilkes received morphine and a catheter, and he was released with the catheter still connected. “Here I was, days before getting drafted, and I was shuffling around my house with bad back pain and a catheter in,” he said in a series of phone calls from his home in Los Angeles last month. “It didn’t feel like I was 20. I felt like I was 80.”Two days later was the draft. Kris awoke, couldn’t move his legs and called his father. Greg Wilkes has spent the past 25 years with the Indianapolis Police Department and is trained in emergency medical response. “I wasn’t a police officer or a first responder in that moment,” he said. “I was a father, and my heart and nerves were shot. I was thinking, ‘What is going on?’ My 20-year-old son is one of the most athletic people I’ve ever met in my life, and he can’t move. How could that be possible?”Wilkes scored over 1,000 points in his two years at U.C.L.A.Alicia Afshar for The New York TimesGreg called an ambulance for Kris and followed it to St. Vincent Hospital. That night, the family crowded into Kris’s hospital room and tuned the TV to the N.B.A. draft. Word had gotten around to teams that Wilkes wasn’t well, and he watched as all 60 N.B.A. draft picks came and went, his name uncalled. For a few moments afterward, the beeps of an electrocardiogram machine were the only sounds in the room.“I was in the best shape of my life, hooping at the highest level of my life, looking good, getting ready to get drafted,” Wilkes said. “And then I was in the hospital, struggling to breathe, barely able to move my legs, and wondering if my career was over.”Then Wilkes’s agent called and told him that the Knicks wanted to sign him to a two-way contract, which would make him primarily a G League player but allow him to play in some N.B.A. games. The family erupted in celebration.But there was a problem: Kris would have to go to New York for a physical. And the doctors in Indianapolis still didn’t know what was wrong with him — or if he would ever walk again.‘It’s as rare as hen’s teeth.’When the neurologist Adam Fisch saw Wilkes’s symptoms, he ordered a series of tests — X-rays, spinal fluid sampling, magnetic resonance imaging — but was cautious with both his diagnosis and his prognosis. Fisch, whom Wilkes authorized to speak with The New York Times about his medical history, said he began to suspect that Wilkes had acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, an autoimmune disorder otherwise known as ADEM.The disorder has a small but poorly understood association with inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn’s, which Wilkes had been diagnosed with during medical testing months before the draft. ADEM often follows a viral infection, like Wilkes’s strep throat. The body confuses its own brain tissue and spinal cord with the infection and begins to attack itself. ADEM affects between 1 in 125,000 and 1 in 250,000 people around the world every year. An overwhelming majority of those cases are found in children.Making matters more difficult, Wilkes appeared to have a rare combination of ADEM and Guillain-Barré syndrome that involved the brain, spinal cord, nerves and nerve roots, Fisch said.“It’s as rare as hen’s teeth. One in a million doesn’t even do it justice. The odds are infinitesimal,” he said.New Williams, left, a former Fresno State player, training with Wilkes at Academy USA, a sports club in Southern California.Alicia Afshar for The New York TimesFisch treated Wilkes with high doses of steroids and two different blood therapies. “Some patients with ADEM will get just one of those treatments,” Fisch said. “Kris’s case was so severe that we decided it was imperative to use all three at once.”Fisch didn’t make any long-term predictions, but other hospital staff members told Wilkes to prepare for the possibility of having to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. His mother, Ahkisha Owens, rejected that right away.“I wouldn’t let myself even have a single thought that my baby wasn’t going to walk again,” she said. “I looked at him and I said, ‘God didn’t get you this far only to take your legs out from underneath you.’”After a week in the hospital, Wilkes regained feeling in his lower extremities, but he had lost more than 20 pounds and didn’t have the strength to walk. When he was discharged a week after that — the staff recommended inpatient physical therapy, but Wilkes insisted on returning home — Wilkes was expected to be in the wheelchair for at least two months.The next morning, Greg was at the stove cooking a big breakfast to welcome Kris back home — French toast, eggs, bacon and sausage — when he heard a sound like deflated tennis balls bouncing down the hallway. He turned and saw Kris out of the wheelchair, holding himself up with a walker. “Dad, what are you cooking?” he asked. “It smells good!”By August, Wilkes had progressed enough to take his first flight. He went to Palm Springs, Calif., to see Lexie Stevenson, the woman who was with him the morning of the draft. “As soon as he could walk, “he walked to me,” Stevenson said. “And we’ve been walking together ever since.”“You manifest it, you work hard, and you don’t let anyone tell you, ‘You can’t,’” Wilkes said.Alicia Afshar for The New York TimesIn September, Wilkes flew to New York to try to pass a physical for the Knicks. He had to be careful about how much water he drank because his bladder control hadn’t fully returned. Near the end of the workout, he was so dizzy from running baseline sprints that he ran into a wall. Nobody had to tell him that he had failed the physical. He knew.In October, after the Knicks signed Ivan Rabb to fill the two-way roster spot they had been saving for Wilkes, David Fizdale, the head coach at the time, said Wilkes “came down with a serious illness. I don’t know what it was, but it was pretty severe. So right now we’re not going down that road.”‘I was right there.’In the past two years, Wilkes has had health scares, such as when he got a cold and felt the glassy sensation return to his skin. And there were sleepless nights when he woke up Stevenson to talk — or to ask her to hold him while he wept.“I was able to cover the depression, but I had it,” he said. “I’d been working my whole life to get to the N.B.A. And I was right there. To go from that to paralyzed with no money and back home in Indiana, it sucked.”He resolved his money issues with a payout of “several million dollars” from a school-sponsored loss-of-value insurance policy he had signed up for at U.C.L.A. He quit his job as a Postmates delivery driver and started a company called Origyn Sport, which introduced its first product, a training basketball, in September.Wilkes used the time while he was recovering to create a company called Origyn Sport, which makes basketballs for training.Alicia Afshar for The New York TimesThough Wilkes has regained most of his muscle mass, he can sense that he is still not as explosive as he once was. He knows that making it to the N.B.A. now is a long shot. But he has faced long odds before.“Maybe most people don’t think I can get to that point, but why would I bother listening to them?” he said. “I didn’t listen to the doctors who told me I wouldn’t walk again, and I’m not going to let anyone talk me out of my goals now.” More

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      After 600 Days, the Raptors Finally Came Home

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      The Raptors had been separated from their home fans in Toronto since early 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

      Strict travel restrictions between the United States and Canada forced the team to play its home games and practice in Tampa, Fla., last season.

      On Wednesday night, they opened their season at home in Toronto — 600 days after their last regular-season home game. More

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      Celtics Games Are Pulled in China After Enes Kanter’s Pro-Tibet Posts

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      The Boston center called China’s leader, Xi Jinping, a “brutal dictator” on social media, igniting an online backlash in the country. The N.B.A.’s online partner stopped streaming the team’s games.Boston Celtics games were abruptly pulled from the Chinese internet on Thursday after a center on the team, Enes Kanter, said on social media that the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, was a “brutal dictator,” citing his government’s repressive policies in Tibet.The incident could spell fresh trouble for the N.B.A. in China. The league has millions of devoted fans there but has also just spent two years mending its image in the country after a Houston Rockets executive tweeted support in 2019 for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.That tweet, by Daryl Morey, who now works for the Philadelphia 76ers, was quickly deleted, though not before setting off an uproar in China. Sponsors in the country severed ties and the state-run broadcaster stopped airing games, leading to financial fallout that the league estimated cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.Geopolitical tensions and rising nationalism have made China a minefield for multinational companies, whose access to the country’s 1.4 billion consumers is often contingent on not taking the “wrong” stance on issues such as Beijing’s rule in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.Enes Kanter’s “Free Tibet” shoes.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesAn N.B.A. representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In a video that was posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on Wednesday, Kanter spoke into the camera for nearly three minutes and decried what he called a “cultural genocide” in Tibet.“I say, ‘Shame on the Chinese government,’” he said, wearing a T-shirt with the image of the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing considers a criminal separatist. “The Chinese dictatorship is erasing Tibetan identity and culture.”Another social media post by Kanter on Wednesday showed off sneakers emblazoned with Tibetan flag motifs and the words “Free Tibet.”By Thursday, recent Celtics games were marked as unavailable for replay through Tencent, the Chinese internet giant that has partnered with the N.B.A. to stream its games in the country. The website for Tencent Sports also indicated that upcoming Celtics games would not be livestreamed.Tencent Sports has not been livestreaming games involving the 76ers, either. The team hired Morey last year as president of basketball operations.A Tencent spokeswoman declined to comment.On the Chinese social platform Weibo, a Celtics fan account declared that it would immediately stop posting about the team.The account told its 615,000 Weibo followers: “Resolutely resist any behavior that damages national harmony and the dignity of the motherland!”China considers Tibet part of its historical empire, though the authorities have long confronted protests against their rule there. The Communist Party under Mr. Xi has intensified efforts to defray ethnic tensions by encouraging the region’s residents to assimilate into Chinese society and making Mandarin Chinese the dominant language in public life.Kanter, who is of Turkish heritage, has been an outspoken critic of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish prosecutors have sought Kanter’s arrest, and his Turkish passport has been revoked. He has expressed concern that Turkish agents might kill him overseas.Elsie Chen More

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      N.B.A. Eastern Conference Preview: The Bucks Aren't Finished Yet

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      The Bucks might be better, while the Sixers and Nets are playing wait-and-see with key stars. The Eastern Conference could play out in several ways.Here lie the N.B.A.’s most compelling story lines.Potential contenders in the Eastern Conference scrambled during the off-season to assemble teams fit to knock off Giannis Antetokounmpo — now with a new, improved jump shot? — and the reigning N.B.A. champion Milwaukee Bucks. Even the conference’s perennial bottom feeders built rosters that will demand attention from basketball devotees. Some teams are just hoping that distractions don’t derail their seasons before they start.Many wonder how the Ben Simmons situation in Philadelphia will end. The 76ers seemed locked in a stalemate with Simmons, a three-time All-Star, who has wanted to be traded for months. Simmons ended his holdout midway through the preseason and reported to the team but has not played. The 76ers have said they want him on their roster, but if they persuade him to stay, can they really go forward with business as usual?Meanwhile, the Nets have a bona fide championship roster. They know this, and even with the distraction of Kyrie Irving’s murky status because he’s not vaccinated, they expect to hoist the Larry O’Brien championship trophy at season’s end.Could the N.B.A.’s balance of power, which has long rested in the West, be shifting to the East? Here’s a look at how the Eastern Conference shapes up this season.Miami HeatIn some ways, it seems so long ago. But little more than a year has passed since the Heat plowed their way to the 2020 finals before losing to the Los Angeles Lakers. Was it a fluke, aided by playing under the unusual conditions of a bubble environment, with no fans? The Heat were up and down last season before the Milwaukee Bucks ejected them from the 2021 playoffs in a lopsided first-round series.Jimmy Butler needs to be efficient. Duncan Robinson needs to be consistent. Tyler Herro needs to recapture his assertiveness. And Bam Adebayo needs to keep making the sort of strides that have pushed him toward becoming a perennial All-Star.The team should benefit from two additions: Kyle Lowry, who at 35 left the Raptors after nine seasons, and P.J. Tucker, who helped the Bucks win the championship last season.Philadelphia 76ersThe Sixers don’t need Ben Simmons to be competitive (they do have Joel Embiid, pictured), but they are better with him.Matt Slocum/Associated PressBen Simmons is, for now, back in the City of Brotherly Love.Simmons, who reportedly demanded a trade in late August and missed training camp, reported to the 76ers ahead of their third preseason game but did not play. Simmons’s future in Philadelphia remains unclear, though. He still has four years left on his maximum contract.With or without him, Philadelphia is antsy to win now. Joel Embiid is coming off the best season of his career, when he finished second in the voting for the Most Valuable Player Award. The 76ers were the No. 1 seed in last season’s Eastern Conference playoffs but collapsed in the semifinals, continuing their inability to turn regular-season wins into deep postseason success.Philadelphia is a better team with Simmons, 25, despite his offensive shortcomings. But even if he doesn’t play anytime soon, Embiid, Seth Curry, Danny Green and Tobias Harris should be experienced enough to keep the Sixers in contention.New York KnicksThe Knicks doubled down on last season’s roster, which unexpectedly made the playoffs then flamed out — albeit after a brilliant flare — in the first round. The veterans Derrick Rose and Taj Gibson are back, but Elfrid Payton, who triggered an influx of gray hairs for fans, is not. The additions of Evan Fournier and Kemba Walker are significant, and should help take the offensive load off RJ Barrett and Julius Randle, who signed a four-year contract extension in the off-season.This feels like a make-or-break year for the 23-year-old Mitchell Robinson, the center who is up for an extension and can jump through the roof. At his best, he protects the rim and is an excellent roll man. But he has had difficulty staying healthy. Look for bigger roles for Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin, who each showed promise off the bench as rookies last season.The Knicks should easily make the playoffs, but their bench depth is a question mark.Milwaukee BucksThe Bucks kept the band together. Same coach. Same star. Same core — mostly. And why not? Fresh off their first championship since 1971, the Bucks seem poised for a title defense.The challenge could be fatigue. Because of the pandemic, their postseason run stretched into July, and two starters — Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday — helped the U.S. Olympic team win gold in August. The Bucks also lost P.J. Tucker, invaluable in the late stages of last season, to the Heat in free agency.But Giannis Antetokounmpo, the two-time M.V.P., is still the face of the franchise and the proud owner of a newly minted championship ring. And he may be better than ever, showing off an improved jump shot in the preseason. With a contract that runs through the 2025-26 season, he is not going anywhere anytime soon.Atlanta HawksAtlanta guard Trae Young led the Hawks on a surprising run through the first two rounds of the playoffs last season.Brett Davis/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAfter a surprising run to the Eastern Conference finals last year, the Hawks enter the season with the burden of expectations and the benefit of continuity. This team is deep and should compete to be one of the best in the East.Most of the key players are back. The Hawks locked in their two best players, Trae Young and John Collins, with long-term extensions. Coach Nate McMillan will be running the team from opening night, as opposed to being thrust into the job midseason as he was during the last campaign after Lloyd Pierce was fired.Atlanta almost pulled off a miracle run to the N.B.A. finals last season, after taking down the Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers, but were bedeviled by injuries against the eventual champions, the Milwaukee Bucks. Players who were unavailable or not 100 percent, like De’Andre Hunter, Cam Reddish and Bogdan Bogdanovic, are expected to start the season with clean bills of health. The Hawks also added some quality veteran bench pieces in Gorgui Dieng and Delon Wright, and an intriguing rookie they drafted late in this year’s first round, Jalen Johnson.Charlotte HornetsLaMelo Ball, last season’s rookie of the year, highlights Charlotte’s promising young core. He’ll likely be the Hornets’ primary facilitator and already has great court vision and playmaking ability, and he is continuing to improve his jump shot.Ball and forward Miles Bridges in the pick-and-roll were elite last season, with Bridges’s power at the basket and Ball’s precise lob placement on display. That pairing should only be better this season.The Hornets already had solid veterans in Terry Rozier and Gordon Hayward, and they added Kelly Oubre Jr. and Mason Plumlee. Oubre is an inconsistent shooter, but could be impactful in transition. Plumlee is a versatile big man.This group won’t be knocking at the door of the N.B.A. finals this season, but the Hornets will be a fun team to watch, and have a real chance at a playoff berth.Brooklyn NetsWith the addition of Patty Mills and Paul Millsap, as well as the return of Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge, the Nets, on paper, are one of the best teams in N.B.A. history. In normal circumstances, they would be title favorites, given their Big Three of Kyrie Irving, James Harden and Kevin Durant. But that was the case last year too, and the Nets bowed out in the second round of the playoffs.Health will be the principle factor for determining how far the Nets go. All of the Nets’ top players have significant miles on their legs and have missed substantial time in recent years.If there is a potentially weak point for other teams to exploit, it is defensively, where the Nets struggled last season, and their off-season additions didn’t seriously address that. This could come back to bite them in the postseason, particularly in the frontcourt against players like Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored at will during last year’s playoffs, or Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid.But the offensive firepower is top notch. It’s hard to see the Nets being beaten in a seven-game series if they’re healthy.Chicago BullsDeMar DeRozan gives the new-look Chicago Bulls a threat from the mid-range.Kamil Krzaczynski/USA Today Sports, via ReutersChicago could be a sneaky-good team this season.Arturas Karnisovas, the Bulls’ executive vice president of basketball operations, voiced displeasure with the team’s 31-41 record shortly after last season. Since then, he’s added DeMar DeRozan, Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso and Tony Bradley to a roster with Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic, whom Chicago acquired from Orlando at the March trade deadline.DeRozan is lethal in the midrange, but some have questioned how he’ll fit with LaVine, as both players are most effective with the ball in their hands. Chicago will have an upgrade at point guard with Ball, who is a deft passer. And Caruso will add a rugged spark off the bench. Coach Billy Donovan will have to figure out how they all fit on the court.In any event, Michael Jordan said that with the changes the Bulls made, they could compete in the East. How long has it been since those words were last spoken?Toronto RaptorsIt’s a new era in Toronto basketball. Kyle Lowry, perhaps the most lauded Raptor in franchise history, has gone to Miami. Without him, the Raptors are likely stuck between being too talented to get a top draft pick and not being so good that they’ll contend for a top seed in the conference.But there may be an opening for Toronto in the turbulent East: Scottie Barnes, whom the team surprisingly drafted at No. 4 this year, showed potential in the preseason. And the Raptors’ frontcourt, helmed by Chris Boucher and the newly acquired Precious Achiuwa, will be a force.There are lots of questions for the Raptors entering the season: Is Pascal Siakam, who is expected to miss the start of the season as he recovers from shoulder surgery, a true franchise cornerstone? Will Lowry’s replacement at guard, the 35-year-old Goran Dragic, last the season in Toronto? Or will Masai Ujiri, the Raptors head of basketball operations, flip Dragic’s expiring contract?Detroit PistonsYou’d be hard pressed to find any Pistons fans who haven’t already crowned the rookie guard Cade Cunningham as their Magic Johnson. Johnson, of course, won an N.B.A. title as a rookie after the Lakers drafted him No. 1 overall in 1979.Detroit drafted Cunningham, a savvy scorer and shot creator, No. 1 overall earlier this year to hopefully lift itself out of years of irrelevancy. An ankle injury sidelined him in the preseason, and the team is being cautious.Detroit’s young group showed promise last season, despite finishing with the worst record in the East, but the Pistons are another team in rebuilding mode. Coach Dwane Casey has said that this season’s goal is to earn a spot in the postseason play-in tournament.Cleveland CavaliersOnly someone like LeBron James could render an entire franchise into an afterthought. But that was what he effectively did when he departed the Cavaliers for the glamour of Hollywood in 2018, leaving them to rummage through the wilderness without him. The Cavaliers instantly went from title contender to lightweight, though the team has some up-and-comers — highlighted by Collin Sexton and Darius Garland in the backcourt — who are cause for cautious optimism.None of this is to suggest that the Cavaliers will come anywhere close to sniffing the playoffs. But a slow, steady rebuild — augmented by smart draft picks — is the way back to respectability. And there is more good news: Kevin Love (remember him?) has just two seasons remaining on his gargantuan deal, which could make him a more appealing target on the trade market.Boston CelticsJayson Tatum has shown promise with Boston, but postseason success has so far eluded him.Jasen Vinlove/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFrom the start of training camp, Ime Udoka, the Celtics’ first-year coach, has had a particular emphasis: ball movement. He does not want the ball to stick. He wants his players to work together to generate the best shots.This must have been welcome news to fans who got tired of watching the Celtics’ offense devolve into isolation sets last season. Jayson Tatum, 23, and Jaylen Brown, who will turn 25 this month, form one of the most talented young tandems in the league, but fulfilling their promise in the postseason has so far eluded them.Perhaps Udoka can help them deliver. He replaced Brad Stevens, who moved to the front office after a posting .500 record and losing in the first round of the playoffs in his eighth season as the team’s coach.Washington WizardsWes Unseld Jr., Washington’s new head coach, has a tall task ahead of him.The Wizards are not a championship-caliber team, even after adding solid veterans like Spencer Dinwiddie, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kyle Kuzma and Montrezl Harrell. So this season will be mostly about persuading Bradley Beal, who can become a free agent next summer, to make a long-term commitment to the franchise.It’s hard to win without multiple elite playmakers, and the Wizards have just one in Beal after trading Russell Westbrook to the Los Angeles Lakers. But even in a yet another bridge year, the Wizards should, at the very least, have a playoff team. They’ll have the promising center Thomas Bryant back from injury, and the team can hope for some growth from its last two lottery picks, Deni Avdija (2020) and Rui Hachimura (2019).Orlando MagicThe Magic have a young team with a first-year head coach in Jamahl Mosley. They’ve made just two playoff appearances in the past nine seasons, and traded away their best players, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic, in the middle of last season. Then they landed Gonzaga’s Jalen Suggs at No. 5 in this year’s draft.Suggs joined a roster that is crowded at guard, with Markelle Fultz, who will return from a knee injury, RJ Hampton, Terrence Ross, Cole Anthony and Gary Harris. Suggs probably has the highest ceiling of those players, though, and he was solid in the summer league before injuring his thumb.The Magic will not be legitimate contenders for a while, so they have plenty of time to sort out their roster.Indiana PacersRick Carlisle, back for his second stint with the Pacers, is the team’s third coach in three seasons. Indiana could use some stability to help develop a young core that includes Malcolm Brogdon, Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis, already a two-time All-Star at 25.But the Pacers, who have not advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2014, are coming off a 34-38 season, and Caris LeVert is out indefinitely with a stress fracture in his back.Carlisle coached the Pacers for four seasons, from 2003 to 2007, while guiding them to three postseason appearances. It will take some hard work to get them there again. More

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      Kyrie Irving Defends Decision on Vaccine After Being Benched

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      Kyrie Irving, the N.B.A. star who has been indefinitely barred from practicing or playing with the Brooklyn Nets because of his refusal to get the Covid-19 vaccine, spoke out publicly on Wednesday night for the first time since the team decided to keep him off the court, saying his refusal was a matter of personal freedom.“You think I really want to lose money?” Irving, who is set to earn about $40 million in salary this season, said on his Instagram feed in a meandering monologue that included incorrect medical information. More than 90 percent of players in the league are vaccinated, a proportion much higher than in the general population of the United States.“You think I really want to give up on my dream to go after a championship?” Irving, 29, said. “You think I really just want to give up my job? You think I really want to sit at home?”On Tuesday, the Nets said they had barred Irving from playing until he becomes “eligible to be a full participant.” New York City requires most teenagers and adults to have at least one vaccination shot to enter facilities such as sports arenas, and Irving has not practiced with the Nets in Brooklyn. Irving joined the Nets in 2019 as they built a team of superstars that includes Kevin Durant and James Harden.Irving asked that his decision to remain unvaccinated be respected and said that he has no plans to retire. He couched his refusal to get vaccinated in his opposition to mandates, saying nobody should be “forced” to do it.Irving falsely claimed his decision to remain unvaccinated does not harm other people. The highly contagious Delta variant has quickly spread in areas with low vaccination rates. And hospitals in those areas have been overrun with unvaccinated patients, leaving few beds and staff members to treat other patients. More