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      Why Coronavirus May Be The NBA's Toughest Playoff Matchup

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      There’s no bubble for the postseason, and players don’t have to get vaccinated. Some players have lingering effects from infections. The league acknowledged that it is “worried” others will get sick, too.The N.B.A. planned for each of its 30 teams to play 72 games across 145 days this season, its 75th. Despite a rash of postponements and injuries to big-name stars, all 1,080 games were played in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic.No one in the league office is celebrating yet.“We knew it was going to be a challenge to get through all of the games in a way that we thought kept people safe, and we’re really happy to have done that,” said David Weiss, the N.B.A.’s senior vice president of player matters. “At the same time, the virus keeps changing, so what we have to do keeps changing.”“No one knows everything about Covid,” Weiss added, “and so we’re always willing to revisit what we do.”With the playoffs beginning Saturday, here are answers to some of the questions about where things stand with the N.B.A.’s health and safety rules related to the coronavirus.Here’s what you need to know:How did the season go without a bubble?What will happen if a player tests positive for the coronavirus during the playoffs?Is the N.B.A. worried about marquee players missing playoff games because of the virus?How many players have been vaccinated?Are the protocols different for the playoffs?How are players doing after testing positive?How did the season go without a bubble?League officials have maintained all season that they did not plan to return to a restricted-access bubble environment, like the one engineered last summer at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla. Numerous players said the isolation was harmful to their mental health, and Commissioner Adam Silver said in May 2020 that playing games without fans for an entire season could lower revenue by as much as 40 percent.Without the bubble, and with limited or no fans in arenas, 31 games were postponed in December, January and February when teams could not meet the minimum requirement of eight players in uniform because of positive tests or contact tracing, as well as injuries. The league hadn’t postponed more than four games in one season over the past 20 years.After getting through March, April and May with no postponements, six of the 16 teams in the playoffs are expected to have crowds of at least 10,000 in the first round, including the Knicks (with a league-high 15,000) and the Nets.According to weekly reports from the league and the players’ union, 77 players tested positive for the coronavirus between Dec. 3, after training camps started, and Wednesday. In the first round of testing after the off-season, before training camp, 48 players tested positive.What will happen if a player tests positive for the coronavirus during the playoffs?The N.B.A. does not announce whether a player has been sidelined because of a positive test or because of exposure to someone who has tested positive. In either case, the player will be out for a number of days based on his level of exposure, often a week or more. (Unless he is vaccinated; see below.) This is the same policy from the regular season.A real-time illustration played out on Tuesday, hours before the Indiana Pacers hosted the Charlotte Hornets in the opening game of the play-in tournament. The Pacers’ Caris LeVert was ruled out for 10 to 14 days because of the N.B.A.’s health and safety protocols.Of the nearly 550 players who appeared in at least one game this season, 167 spent time in the league’s health and safety protocols, according to data maintained by Fansure.“We’re optimistic that what we’ve been doing will work, but we certainly can’t relax because it’s the playoffs,” Weiss said. “We have to emphasize that it’s important to keep following the protocols and getting vaccinated.”Is the N.B.A. worried about marquee players missing playoff games because of the virus?Yes.“That’s of course one of the things that we’re worried about, and it’s why we’ve first and foremost been pushing that everyone educate themselves on vaccination and its benefits, hoping that people decide to get vaccinated,” Weiss said.Breakthrough cases, in which a person tests positive for the virus after vaccination, are another source of anxiety. They are rare, but the Yankees recently had nine such cases, and the N.B.A. is not immune. Golden State’s Damion Lee publicly acknowledged testing positive after getting vaccinated.“Vaccines aren’t perfect, and that was expected,” Weiss said. “We’ll have to manage those cases when they come up. We also have to — like a lot of society is doing — recognize that vaccines and declining case rates are the path back to normalcy. But we can’t limit people’s entire lives. We’ve got to find a balance where we’re recognizing the stress and the mental health challenges from this season and try to get back to normal.”Further coronavirus disruptions seem inevitable over the next two months, but Silver has said for months that he would not push to make vaccinations mandatory.How many players have been vaccinated?In an April interview with Time magazine, Silver said that “more than 70 percent of our players have received at least one shot.”That figure has risen to nearly 80 percent for players and staff with full access to players, the league confirmed. The limit for team traveling parties was increased to 48 people for the playoffs, with a traveling team doctor now mandatory.Are the protocols different for the playoffs?League and union officials have discussed modifying some of the protocols after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said recently that people who are fully vaccinated — meaning two weeks removed from their second or only shot — no longer need to wear masks or distance themselves when outdoors or in most indoor settings.But the league’s rules haven’t changed much since March 17. In that round of updates, players were notified that some restrictions would be relaxed for fully vaccinated individuals and for teams with 85 percent vaccination rates among players and certain personnel.Among the rules eased two months ago:Quarantines are no longer mandatory after exposure to the coronavirus.Vaccinated players don’t have to test on off days.Outdoor dining at restaurants is OK.Friends, family and other guests can visit fully vaccinated players, at home or on the road, without registering with their teams.No masks are required at practice facilities for teams that have met the 85 percent threshold for vaccinations, with in-person team meetings and meals on team flights also restored.Fans have returned by the thousands to arenas across the league, though many still must socially distance and wear masks.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressHow are players doing after testing positive?Jayson Tatum, the Boston Celtics star, scored 50 points on Tuesday night in Boston’s victory over Washington in a play-in game, which secured a playoff berth for the Celtics and a first-round showdown with the Nets. Yet Tatum has also been open about needing to use an inhaler before games because of fatigue and breathing difficulties he has dealt with since testing positive for the coronavirus in January.Evan Fournier, Tatum’s teammate, said this month that his vision and depth perception were still diminished after he contracted the virus in April. He likened the way “bright lights were bothering my eyes” to a concussion.Portland’s Nassir Little told The Athletic in December that he lost 20 pounds and was in “miserable pain” after his bout with the virus. Milwaukee’s Jrue Holiday told The New York Times recently that he needed “three or four weeks” to restore his conditioning to its usual level after spending nearly two weeks recuperating in his basement.“The actual effects on my body were not fun,” Holiday said.Uncertainty about the effects of the coronavirus on the heart has also been a constant source of concern throughout the sports world. Every N.B.A. player who tests positive is given an extensive cardiac exam before returning to basketball activity, but the medical community’s understanding of the coronavirus and its potential long-term impact is still evolving because the virus is so new.In the Time interview, Silver said the prospect of down-the-road difficulties for players who tested positive “absolutely worries me,” but he added: “Based on the information we have today, I still believe that what we’ve done has only allowed them to live safer and healthier lives.” More

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      The Phoenix Suns Are Chris Paul’s Latest Project

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      There are nights when Chris Paul will drive for a layup, toss a no-look pass to a teammate for a 3-pointer and crash to the court trying to sell an offensive foul to the officials — all before the game is minutes old. And then when the game goes to its first commercial break, he will try to sell you some home, life or auto insurance, too.Paul has been inescapable for 16 N.B.A. seasons. One of the league’s great point guards and an 11-time All-Star, he has entered the renaissance phase of his career, guiding the Phoenix Suns to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Phoenix, which is making its first playoff appearance since the 2010 season, will face the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, starting Sunday.Paul’s impact on the Suns has been profound. So much leadership, according to his teammates. So much passion. So much “tough love,” as Mikal Bridges, a Suns forward, said in an interview.Of course, there has always been so much of everything when it comes to Paul, stretching back to his two college seasons at Wake Forest, through the high peaks and low valleys of his Lob City days with the Los Angeles Clippers. Now the Suns have flourished in his painstaking, perfection-demanding wake.Paul, 36, has spent years cluttering box scores, filling television screens and polarizing opponents, fans and sometimes colleagues. Is he a winner or a whiner? Is he entertaining or irritating?Ahead of the playoffs, six people who know him from different facets of his life — from the bargaining table to the basketball court — reflected on their experiences with a star whose drive, at least, has never been questioned.The FighterDavid AlexanderFitness coachPaul’s success with the Oklahoma City Thunder was a surprise to many because of his injury history.Pool photo by Kim KlementDavid Alexander, a strength and conditioning coach based in Miami, was introduced to Paul at the 2012 London Olympics by LeBron James, who was among Alexander’s high-profile clients at the time. Alexander and Paul quickly became friends — dinners, golf — but they didn’t work together until December 2018, when Paul, who was then playing for the Houston Rockets, injured his left hamstring in a game against the Miami Heat.Paul was nearly 34 at the time. He had chronic injuries in his hands and his legs. A strained right hamstring had sidelined him for the last two games of the previous season’s Western Conference finals and may have cost the Rockets a championship. The chorus was growing louder: Paul, who could not stay on the court, was on his way out. Alexander invited him to his facility.For a week in Miami, and then for several more in Houston, Alexander and his colleagues worked with Paul, identifying and correcting imbalances in his body. Alexander was struck by his determination. Paul returned to the Rockets’ lineup by the end of January.“There are certain people who work hard because they’re actually trying to improve themselves by 1 percent every day — if not 2, 3, 4 or 5 percent,” Alexander said. “They’re really trying to improve. They’re not just going through the motions.”A few months later, after an off-season trade sent Paul to the Oklahoma City Thunder from Houston, Paul was on a football field with Alexander, running sprints in the midsummer heat and repeating a mantra of sorts: Someone’s got to pay. Someone’s got to pay.“Keep that energy all season,” Alexander recalled telling him. “This is an opportunity to show the world that Chris Paul is very far from retiring.”With the Thunder last season, Paul was injury-free and an All-Star for the first time since 2015-16, leading an unsung team to the fifth-best record in the West.Alexander has continued to work with Paul, having him do some of the “most intricate biomechanical movements.”“And if Chris isn’t able to do it perfectly on the first set, he’ll study the video to understand what he was doing wrong,” Alexander said. “It’s almost like he approaches it scientifically.”The PitchmanKevin MilesActorPaul has been acting in State Farm Insurance commercials since 2012.Wenn Rights Ltd/AlamyKevin Miles, 30, is the red-shirt-wearing actor who portrays the character Jake in State Farm Insurance commercials alongside Paul. He recalled putting in three straight 12-hour days filming a series of spots when Paul, the part-time thespian, said he was heading back to the gym for another workout. Miles started to question himself.“You’re kind of like, ‘Well, what am I going to do now?’ ” he said. “ ‘Should I go read a script? Should I write something? Should I go work out?’ There’s something about being around him that makes you want to try even harder.”Paul, who has been appearing in commercials for State Farm since 2012 (occasionally as Cliff Paul, his policy-hawking twin brother), met Miles early last year when they did their first batch of ads together. Miles kept his cool.“I didn’t want my first day with him to be like: ‘Oh, my God! CP3! Lob City!’ ” Miles said.Paul, though, seemed genuinely curious about Miles’s career path, asking him how long he had been acting (since age 9) and about his move to Los Angeles from Chicago after college.“And I’m telling him how I lived in my car for a while when I first came out here,” Miles said, “and he’s looking over to his son, saying, ‘Are you listening to this?’ I think he respects people who push through and persevere.”When they worked together again in November, Paul greeted him like they were old friends. Miles introduced him to his father, also named Kevin, whom he had brought on set. “Is this Papa Kev?” Paul asked.The process never felt rushed to Miles. After a series of rolling takes, Paul and Miles joined the director in front of a bank of monitors to review the footage.“He sees the same thing that I see from our performance,” Miles said, “and we’ll go back and change it, and it’ll look the way we want it to look. We can give each other that eye that says, ‘Yeah, that was the one,’ or, ‘No, we’re redoing that.’ ”Paul wanted to make sure they got it right, and it didn’t matter if he was running late for a flight or if he was on a conference call with Adam Silver, the N.B.A. Commissioner, which he was, more than once.“He would do the scene and then go back to his call,” Miles said. “It was kind of amazing how he was able to lock in and compartmentalize everything else that was going on in his life.”The Union GuyMichele RobertsExecutive director of the National Basketball Players AssociationMichele Roberts, center, described Paul as a “serious guy” in his role as the president of the players’ union.Joe Murphy/NBAE, via Getty ImagesIt was the coldest day of Michele Roberts’s life. A lawyer, she had been interviewing in the early weeks of 2014 with board members of the National Basketball Players Association for a position as its executive director. By the time she arrived in Chicago on a blustery morning to meet with Paul, the union’s president since 2013, her nerves were frayed.“I had difficulty getting a car from the airport to the hotel, and I was frozen and then his practice was late, so I had to wait for 45 minutes,” she said.They were meeting in a small hotel conference room, and as soon as Paul showed up, he opened his notebook and started peppering Roberts with questions: What experience did she have in sports and with unions and with the league’s various stakeholders? What did she know about group licensing rights and intellectual property?The interview lasted more than an hour, Roberts said. She came away impressed. “He made me want the job even more,” she said.Roberts and Paul have worked closely since, steering the players’ union through a period of growing player empowerment — and numerous challenges. Roberts recalled the emotional meeting that players and coaches had last season after the police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wis. The temperature in the room was rising, Roberts said, when Paul found a way to restore order.“I hope his children find him fun, because he’s a serious guy,” Roberts said.The AntagonistBob DelaneyRefereeBob Delaney, right, said some players like Paul use tension with referees to give them an edge during games.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressWhen Bob Delaney became an N.B.A. referee in the 1987-88 season, opposing players were rivals, he said.“You weren’t helping anybody up off the court if they weren’t wearing the same uniform as you were,” Delaney said.By the time Paul entered the league in 2005 with the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets, the dynamic among players had evolved, Delaney said. Many had been friends since high school, when they would travel in the same circles on elite summer circuits. As N.B.A. stars, they filmed commercials together, dined together and even vacationed together. (Banana boat, anyone?) The atmosphere for games tended to be less emotionally charged.“For lack of a better term, there’s a lot of love between N.B.A. players these days,” Delaney said. “So how do you get that edge for players who need that feeling? Well, it’s natural for some to find that edge through the referee.”To be clear: Paul has seldom appeared to be overly sociable with opposing players during games. (He will even spar with his own teammates.) But he seems to reserve a special brand of venom for officiating crews. He moans. He argues. He complains. He glares.“These guys are so competitive, and they see a referee’s call as getting in the way of a win,” said Delaney, who retired as a referee in 2011 and from the league office in 2017. “Their will to win is so strong. You can’t take it personally — it’s business.”Early in Paul’s career, Delaney bumped into Paul and his brother, C.J., at a summer fund-raiser for the 13th Avenue Community Center in Bradenton, Fla.“C.J. would be very vocal during games from his seat along the sideline,” Delaney said, laughing. “So, there’s this little awkwardness when you see each other in a different type of setting.”Delaney recalled having a quiet conversation with them about the community center. They steered clear of talking hoops — and that was probably by design. Delaney suspects that Paul wanted to compartmentalize that part of their relationship until the next time he needed to yell at him.“Each player,” Delaney said, “finds motivation in his own way.”The ProdigyTaron DowneyWake Forest teammatePaul spent two seasons at Wake Forest, not far from where he grew up in North Carolina.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesPaul was a junior at West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, N.C., when, in 2002, he made his official recruiting visit to Wake Forest. Taron Downey, a freshman guard, hosted him in his dorm room and showed him around, not that Paul was unfamiliar with the school, or that anyone at the school was unfamiliar with him. He was considered one of the top prospects in the country, and he had grown up about 10 miles away.“I remember there was this buzz around campus,” Downey said. “ ‘Chris Paul is coming!’ Yeah, it was a big deal.”Downey’s impression of Paul was that he loved to play basketball and talk about basketball and watch basketball and play basketball some more.“I just thought that this guy was the real deal,” Downey said, “because when you love basketball and you’re all about it, you can’t hide it.”And that translated into a hypercompetitive approach when Paul arrived as a freshman. He was demanding, with mixed responses from teammates. (Little, of course, has changed over the years.)“Sometimes you have to be a bit of a — I don’t want to say ‘jerk,’ ” Downey said. “But you’ve got to be tough on people, and that can be hard to deal with. But when you’re a winner, that’s what it takes. You have to be ready to kick some guys in the butt.”Paul spent two seasons at Wake Forest before entering the N.B.A. as the fourth pick in the 2005 draft. Downey had a long pro career that included stops in France, Cyprus, Belgium and Poland.“The thing about Chris is that he doesn’t wow you with his athleticism,” Downey said. “But he has all the small things you want from a point guard times 10: the competitive edge, the savvy to keep defenders off balance, an I.Q. that’s through the roof.”The Tough-Love MentorMikal BridgesPhoenix Suns forwardThe third-year forward Mikal Bridges said younger players listen to Paul’s lessons about basketball and competing.Rick Scuteri/Associated PressSome players make distinct impressions. Paul, for example, does not go unnoticed. Mikal Bridges can remember matching up against Paul for the first time in February 2019, when Bridges was a first-year guard for the Suns and Paul was with the Rockets.“He was talking a lot,” Bridges said. “Him being him. Hilarious.”Last season, when Paul was playing for the Thunder, Bridges was defending him when Paul pulled one of his classic offensive moves — the old swipe-through before a shot to draw contact and a foul. That time was not so hilarious. “He got me benched,” Bridges said.Now one of Paul’s teammates, Bridges has gotten an education in reading the game, attacking pick-and-roll coverages and bracing for the unrelenting nature of competition. Bridges said that the team’s younger players were listening.“There’s always back and forth because we’re trying to win and improve,” Bridges said.The Suns went 34-39 last season and missed the playoffs, despite a strong showing at the N.B.A. bubble. There is no question, Bridges said, that Paul has elevated them into contention.In late April, the Suns were coming off back-to-back losses and facing the Knicks at the end of a five-game road trip. Phoenix was weary but in need of a morale-building win. Paul delivered in the game’s late stages with a series of long jump shots, one after another. “He lives for those big moments,” Bridges said.Paul has talked openly with his Suns teammates about winning a championship, Bridges said. He has not tried to hide his ambition or his high hopes, and his approach has affected the entire franchise. Why not the Suns? Why not now?“That’s our mind-set,” Bridges said. More

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      Marv Albert, Hall of Fame N.B.A. Sportscaster, Is Retiring

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      Albert, who turns 80 in June, will call his last game in the Eastern Conference finals.Marv Albert, whose rapid-fire coverage became an N.B.A. soundtrack for almost 60 years, will retire from sportscasting after the 2021 postseason, his employer, Turner Sports, announced on Monday.Albert, who will turn 80 in June, called 25 N.B.A. All-Star Games, 13 N.B.A. finals, the 1992 gold medal men’s basketball victory for the United States and dozens of other major sporting events for several networks in a long career that earned him recognition in several halls of fame.Though Albert called games in a variety of sports, including professional football, hockey and baseball, he is most recognized for his work in basketball. He was the Knicks’ lead play-by-play voice for much of four decades starting in 1967, and became the primary N.B.A. voice for NBC Sports in 1990, where he worked from 1977 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2002. He has worked for Turner Sports for 22 years, 19 of them as an N.B.A. play-by-play announcer.“There is no voice more closely associated with N.B.A. basketball than Marv Albert’s,” Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, said in the announcement. “Marv has been the soundtrack for basketball fans for nearly 60 years,” he added.Albert registered his first signature “Yes!” call in 1968, when Knicks guard Dick Barnett hit a jump shot during the playoffs.On-air, he was “as warm as they come,” David Halberstam, a former play-by-play announcer for the Miami Heat who publishes the Sports Broadcast Journal, said in a phone interview. But off-air, Albert was on the quiet side. Born and raised in Brooklyn, his obsession with basketball started early. He worked as a ball boy for the Knicks as a teenager and then returned as a college senior and developed a close relationship with Marty Glickman, the famed broadcaster who called the team’s games for WCBS radio at the time. Sometimes, Glickman would hand Albert the microphone to announce statistics.Albert called his first game on Jan. 27, 1963, filling in for Glickman as the Boston Celtics beat the Knicks. He was 21.“He called the game with such a great flair and such great descriptiveness that he had learned from Glickman, and it was riveting and gripping,” Halberstam said of Albert’s early years. “You’d never want to turn that radio off.”Albert’s coverage of the first five of Michael Jordan’s six N.B.A. championship titles solidified his household name. But his career was interrupted by a highly publicized trial in 1997 that exposed a series of lurid sexual encounters. Two women testified that Albert had attacked them, and Albert pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor account of assault and battery.After pleading guilty, he resigned from the MSG Network, which broadcast the Knicks and the Rangers of the N.H.L., and was fired by NBC. He did not serve jail time but attended court-mandated therapy.Less than a year later, though, he returned to broadcasting by covering Knicks games on the radio and as host of the nightly “MSG Sportsdesk.” In 1999, he rejoined NBC. Albert left NBC in 2002, after the network lost its N.B.A. coverage, and he was let go as the voice of the Knicks in 2004 after criticizing the team’s play on air.“He made you love basketball more because of his style and because of his voice, his tone and his rhythm and his pace,” Mike Breen, who took over doing television play-by-play for the Knicks from Albert, said in a phone interview. “It was perfection.”Albert was named to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2015, and was recognized by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997.His final series will be the Eastern Conference finals; Philadelphia is the top seed in the East, and the Nets are No. 2. The No. 4-seeded Knicks will make their first postseason since 2013.Albert said in a statement that his 55 years in broadcasting had “flown by.”“Now, I’ll have the opportunity to hone my gardening skills and work on my ballroom dancing,” he said.Richard Sandomir contributed reporting. More

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      For Jrue Holiday, It’s a Good Game When His Wife Says So

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      The pressure is on as the Bucks head to the N.B.A. playoffs, but Holiday has somebody at home who understands competition: his wife, Lauren, who faced high expectations on the U.S. national soccer team.It was not until May, which the Bucks began with back-to-back victories over the Nets, that Milwaukee loudly announced it was still an N.B.A. championship contender. Jrue Holiday scored 14 points in the first quarter of the second win, and in a contented home locker room, one of the league’s foremost defensive players let his guard down.As he made his usual postgame scan of his phone for messages, he was greeted by a text from his wife, Lauren. It included the words that will get any spouse’s attention: “We need to talk.”“You could have done more,” Lauren Holiday wrote.After his productive first quarter, Jrue Holiday scored only 1 point in nearly six minutes in the second quarter. Lauren Holiday, who won two Olympic gold medals and the 2015 World Cup as a bustling midfielder with the United States women’s national soccer team, did not regard the sweep of the Nets or her husband’s play as a significant statement. She said she “felt like he took the quarter off.”“It’s not that I think he did poorly,” Lauren Holiday said. “I just wanted to know what his thinking was — just help me understand. At first he said, ‘I took what the defense dictated,’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t agree.’ Those are the conversations he has to have just because I’m also a competitor.”The Holidays have been a tandem since they were athletes at U.C.L.A., and only grew closer after doctors found she had a brain tumor in June 2016, six months into her pregnancy with their daughter, Jrue Tyler. They have two children now, and maintain deep rooting interests in each other’s sports. They also oversee a seven-figure social fund that supports Black-led nonprofit organizations and Black-owned businesses, after deciding last year that they could be doing more as a couple, too.They relocated to Milwaukee from New Orleans in November. The Bucks viewed Jrue Holiday as the sort of marquee addition whose arrival would persuade Giannis Antetokounmpo to make a long-term commitment to the small-market franchise, so the Bucks surrendered the veteran guards George Hill and Eric Bledsoe, three future first-round draft picks and the rights to swap two more first-round picks to get him as part of a four-team trade.After a nervy wait for Bucks fans, Antetokounmpo signed a five-year, $228 million contract extension, the so-called supermax, 21 days after the trade, only for Holiday to quickly discover that business matters were merely a part of the burden.The Bucks have not won a championship since the 1970-71 season. Antetokounmpo shoulders the weight of expectations more than anyone in town, after winning back-to-back Most Valuable Player Awards and last season’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, but Holiday is next in line. He was billed as the Bucks’ missing piece who, despite just one All-Star appearance and 31 playoff games on his 11-year résumé entering this season, would lift them to a new level. And that talk began months before he signed a four-year contract extension in April worth at least $134 million.“It is something that you don’t get used to but you have to accept if you want to be in this line of work,” Holiday said.Lauren Holiday celebrated with teammates after defeating Japan in the final of the 2015 Women’s World Cup.Michael Chow/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLauren Holiday agreed. She played in four major competitions in her eight-year career with the national team, helping the United States win three of them. Although the 2011 World Cup final slipped away on penalty kicks against Japan, she said she only ever imagined going four for four.“The N.B.A. is like a different world,” she said. “They try to manage their bodies. That part of basketball, how they rest, that’s all foreign to me. I’m 110 percent all the time. That’s all I know. That was instilled in us on the national team: ‘You are winners. We win. We don’t lose.’”Lauren Holiday’s expertise in coping with lofty expectations makes her a helpful sounding board for her husband as he heads into a postseason in which the Bucks will be immediately confronted by some demons, thanks to a first-round matchup against the Miami Heat. Milwaukee was dominated by Miami in five games last summer in a second-round series in the N.B.A. bubble at Walt Disney World, crashing out early after posting the league’s best regular-season record for the second consecutive year.She was also the primary source of counsel when Jrue, still with New Orleans, gave strong consideration to skipping the N.B.A. restart. Their JLH Fund was inspired by her suggestion that he finish out the Pelicans’ season and donate the remainder of his 2019-20 salary ($5.3 million) to help Black communities ravaged by the pandemic and a summer of social turmoil after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.The initial focus of the grants were the cities closest to the Holidays: New Orleans, Indianapolis (her hometown) and Los Angeles (his hometown). On Monday, they will donate an additional $1 million to the fund to begin a second round of grants and add Milwaukee to the list of featured cities.“I’m not going to lie: I didn’t really want to go to the bubble,” Jrue Holiday said. “It didn’t feel like it was the time for basketball. My wife was pregnant. I just felt like me leaving my family wasn’t the best for my family. I also wanted to go out and protest, but I couldn’t do that because I had to protect my family from Covid. I felt like I needed something to motivate me to go.”The new season, in a new city, predictably brought fresh challenges. Hendrix, the Holidays’ son, was 5 weeks old when the trade to Milwaukee went through. They chose a house, Lauren Holiday said, largely by scrolling through “pictures on Zillow.” It was the first house Jrue has lived in with a basement — which proved a vital utility when he had Covid-19 in February and missed 10 games.He said he moved into the basement for nearly two weeks of “isolation in my house.” Contact with the children peaked with FaceTime calls and pictures that 4-year-old J.T., as her parents call her, drew for her father and left at the top of the basement stairs.“I got to at least hear my kids,” Jrue Holiday said.He said he had “all the symptoms — chills, fever, headache, body aches, and I lost my taste and smell.” Yet Jrue, who will turn 31 next month, has recovered to assemble the best season of his career. He was shooting a career-high 50.3 percent from the field and 39.2 percent from the 3-point line entering Sunday’s season finale against Chicago, while only adding to his reputation as one of the game’s top two-way players. Respected veterans like Portland’s Damian Lillard and Miami’s Andre Iguodala have anointed him as the N.B.A.’s best individual defender. His strength, anticipation and aggression enable him to guard four positions on the floor, despite standing at just 6-foot-3.Jrue Holiday, guarded by Kevin Durant, during one of Milwaukee’s matchups against the Nets this season.Stacy Revere/Getty Images“He’s special on that side of the ball,” the Nets’ Kevin Durant said.Lauren Holiday said: “He’s playing with such freedom. And I feel like that was what he needed. I think change can be good sometimes, and this change has been just tremendous for him.”External judgment will naturally depend on how much Holiday can help the Bucks in the playoffs. After dominating the past two regular seasons and then having humbling playoff eliminations inflicted by Toronto in 2019 and Miami last year, Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer heeded calls to experiment offensively (more screening) and defensively (more switching). The target was increased versatility, in support of a more top-heavy roster after relying for years on depth around Antetokounmpo, but the experimentation came with a cost.Sinking to No. 3 in the Eastern Conference means the Bucks’ path, just to earn a berth in the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1974, could require them to eliminate Miami, the Nets and top-seeded Philadelphia in succession. Holiday’s presence theoretically eases pressure on Antetokounmpo and the sharpshooting Khris Middleton, but the trade assets and contract he commanded require Holiday to deliver All-Star production — whether or not he ever formally regains the All-Star status he achieved in 2012-13 with Philadelphia.An undaunted Holiday insisted that he was “ready to go,” and that he wished the playoffs “were here already.” Welcoming more pointed postgame critiques from Lauren, he added, is wrapped up in that readiness.“She’s literally the athlete and the winner in our family,” Jrue Holiday said. “Getting that from her means a lot to me. It’s real, and she backs it up.” More

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      Alex Rodriguez and Partner Reach Deal on Timberwolves and Lynx

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      The agreement, which is pending league approval, lets Glen Taylor run the teams for two more years. Taylor believes the teams will stay in Minnesota.The baseball star Alex Rodriguez and his business partner Marc Lore have reached terms on a deal to purchase the N.B.A.’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the W.N.B.A.’s Minnesota Lynx for $1.5 billion.Glen Taylor, the lifelong Minnesotan who moved from a career in politics to become the owner of both franchises, announced on Friday that the sides have agreed to terms just a few days beyond the 30-day exclusive negotiating window they entered on April 10. The sale requires approval from the N.B.A.’s Board of Governors to formally begin “the transition of ownership and a new chapter,” Taylor said in a statement.As part of what has been billed as a 50/50 partnership with Lore, Rodriguez will bring a newfound level of star power to the Timberwolves, something they’ve lacked in any measure since trading Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics in July 2007. The team badly needs leadership that can make a true impact on the court with its stewardship, spending and commitment; Minnesota is 22-48 this season and has reached the playoffs only once in Taylor’s last 17 years of ownership.The Minnesota Timberwolves have performed poorly this season but the team has several talented players. Harrison Barden/Getty ImagesTaylor, who turned 80 last month, has engaged in negotiations to sell the team numerous times in recent years, only to repeatedly balk. He openly advertised a desire to sell in July 2020 and, in Rodriguez and Lore, Taylor appears to have found buyers who were not only willing to meet his purchase price but also grant his well-known wish for a slow exit from his post. The untraditional deal terms call for Taylor to serve as controlling owner for two more seasons, with Rodriguez and Lore assuming operational control entering the 2023-24 season.Rodriguez, the former Yankee and three-time winner of the American League Most Valuable Player Award, and Lore, an e-commerce mogul who left his full-time position with Walmart in January, headed a group that made a serious run at purchasing the Mets and also featured Rodriguez’s former fiancée, Jennifer Lopez. They withdrew from that process in August 2020 as the Mets closed in on selling the franchise to the billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen for $2.4 billion.If the sale is approved at league level, as expected, Minnesota would become the second N.B.A. team to be sold this season. Gail Miller, whose family owned the Utah Jazz for 35 years, sold a majority stake in the team to the tech entrepreneur Ryan Smith in October for nearly $1.7 billion, with league approval following in December.Neither Rodriguez nor Lore has yet to speak in depth about their plans for the teams, but speculation about a move to Seattle is certain to swirl given that Rodriguez began his Major League Baseball career there — and since Seattle has been actively seeking a new N.B.A. team to fill a void created by the SuperSonics’ move to Oklahoma City in 2008.Taylor, who served as a Republican senator in Minnesota from 1981 through 1990, purchased the Timberwolves in 1994, ensuring that the franchise stayed in Minneapolis amid a serious threat of relocation to New Orleans. He said in an interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune last month that Rodriguez and Lore have pledged to keep the Wolves and Lynx in Minnesota.Marc Lore built his fortune with websites like Diapers.com and Jet.com. He recently left a post a Walmart.Cole Wilson for The New York TimesMinnesota has declined sharply since a trip to the playoffs in 2017-18, with the star guard Jimmy Butler (now in Miami) traded to Philadelphia soon after that breakthrough and Coach Tom Thibodeau (now coaching the Knicks) subsequently fired. But Rodriguez and Lore will not inherit a barren roster.The Timberwolves have two No. 1 overall draft picks in Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards, as well as a former No. 2 overall draft pick in D’Angelo Russell. Their immediate challenge is securing a favorable outcome in the next N.B.A. draft lottery, as Minnesota, which entered Friday’s play in a tie with Cleveland for the league’s fifth-worst record, loses its top pick in the July 29 draft to Golden State unless it lands in the top three as part of its trade with the Warriors for Russell in February 2020.Rodriguez, 45, is a prominent baseball analyst for ESPN in addition to his various business pursuits. He hit 696 home runs in a 22-season career with the Seattle Mariners, the Texas Rangers and the Yankees — winning a World Series ring with the Yankees in 2009 — but also faced heavy criticism and served a yearlong suspension in 2014 for his admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs. Lore, 49, served as the chief executive of U.S. e-commerce for Walmart after founding major e-commerce firms such as Diapers.com and Jet.com. More

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      Brace Yourselves: The Knicks Are Going to the Playoffs

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      New York’s seven-year postseason drought ended when the Celtics lost on Wednesday.Let’s keep this simple: The Knicks — the Knicks! — are going back to the playoffs.When the Boston Celtics lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night, the Knicks clinched a top-six seed in the Eastern Conference.That means the Knicks will avoid the N.B.A.’s play-in round. And while their final playoff seed is still to be determined, they know they will make their first playoff appearance in eight years.WE HERE.The New York Knicks are headed to the Playoffs. #NewYorkForever pic.twitter.com/kpp3Pu3RJr— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) May 13, 2021
      “Check it off the list. We not close to done #NYWEHERE,” Julius Randle, the Knicks star, said on Twitter on Wednesday.Immanuel Quickley, the team’s rookie guard, expressed his emotions in a single word: “CLINCHED!”This will be the Knicks’ first postseason trip since the 2012-13 season, when Mike Woodson was coaching the team and Carmelo Anthony was its franchise player. That was an outlier burst of competitiveness in which the team made the playoffs in three consecutive seasons. For most of the 21st century, the Knicks have been defined by the carousel of coaches, public drama, underachieving players and late-spring vacations. Since the 2000-1 season, the Knicks have made the playoffs only five times, including this season, and won just one series so far, after a decade of deep playoff runs led by Patrick Ewing.Returning to the playoffs is another step in a remarkable turnaround for the Knicks. Last season, they were one of the worst teams in the league and fired their coach, David Fizdale, after a 4-18 start, the worst one in team history. Once again, the Knicks were a punchline.But two months after Fizdale’s firing, the Knicks named Leon Rose as their team president. One of Rose’s first moves in the summer was to hire Tom Thibodeau as coach, and Thibodeau has established a competitive team culture in which effort on the floor is paramount.This year, the drama-free Knicks have a chance to host a playoff series in the first round, thanks in part to the growth of players like Randle and the second-year guard RJ Barrett. Rose has made several other savvy additions, including trading for guard Derrick Rose, who has offered a scoring boost, and acquiring Quickley in a draft-day trade.The Knicks’ playoff seed will be determined over the final three games of the regular season. At 38-31 entering Thursday’s games, they are battling with the Atlanta Hawks (39-31) and the Miami Heat (38-31) for the fourth, fifth and sixth seeds. Getting the fourth seed would mean the Knicks would not only have home-court advantage in the first round, but they would also avoid the Nets, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers — currently the conference’s top three seeds — in an opening-round matchup.But if the Knicks do meet Brooklyn, it will be the first playoff meeting between the teams since 2004, when the Nets, based in New Jersey at the time, swept the Knicks in the first round.The Knicks have been one of the hottest teams in the league over the last month of the season, going 13-4 in their last 17 games. More

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      How Kevin Garnett Made His Case for the Hall of Fame

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      Garnett was widely doubted before he was drafted, but over more than 20 years in the league he reset the limits for N.B.A. big men and made a case for the Hall of Fame.“Does the N.B.A. have no shame?” a Dallas Morning News columnist wrote in 1995 about the prospect of Kevin Garnett going right into the league from high school.Soon after, a Washington Post columnist chimed in, “If Kevin Garnett winds up leaving childhood for the N.B.A. without first going to college, then a whole lot of adults who claim to have his best interests at heart will have failed him.” That same columnist added, “The kid isn’t physically ready to play under the basket in the Big Ten, much less against Hakeem Olajuwon and David Robinson.”“It’s preposterous,” Marty Blake, a veteran N.B.A. scout, told The New York Daily News.It’s hard to envision now, but before Garnett was chosen by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth pick of the 1995 N.B.A. draft, he was viewed by many — including The New York Times — with a great deal of skepticism. The conventional belief was that a teenager could not adapt to the rigors of professional basketball. A columnist for the Detroit News even scoffed at rumors that Garnett was interested in playing for the University of Michigan, saying: “Michigan doesn’t need the huge headache Garnett would bring. Sorry. This is an easy call.”We all know what happened next. Garnett starred in the N.B.A. for more than two decades and retired in 2016 as one of the greatest players to ever take the court. He made 15 All-Star Games, his first coming during his sophomore campaign. He won the Most Valuable Player Award in 2004 and the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2008. And last year, Garnett was selected for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame, alongside the journalist Michael Wilbon, who is now with ESPN but was at The Washington Post in 1995, when he wrote that Garnett was not ready for the N.B.A.In an interview, Wilbon said that Garnett was “one of the great players of the last 25 years,” but that he also wished Garnett had gone to college. Wilbon said that he still felt there were too many people who said “education was an impediment to success.”“That’s not on Kevin or Kobe,” he said. “That’s on the system.”Wilbon added later: “I look at what these things have done to Black Americans and all the kids who think that they’re going to play pro basketball at 18 or 19, and they’re not.”In 1995 Kevin Garnett went directly from Farragut High School in Chicago to the N.B.A Todd Rosenberg/ALLSPORT via Getty ImagesOver his career, Garnett disproved the predraft doubts and disrupted the conventional wisdom about how someone who is nearly 7 feet tall should play.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, an early critic who once told The Hartford Courant that Garnett was “in for a rude awakening,” now describes Garnett as “a consistent offensive threat and a great rebounder and defender.”“He was able to play and lead at both ends of the court,” Abdul-Jabbar said in a statement emailed by his manager. “It was like that from Day 1 until he retired, and that’s why I consider Kevin a Hall of Famer.”Garnett’s impact on the league went far beyond his on-court accomplishments. He showed that a 19-year-old could thrive in the N.B.A., and he influenced the thinking of scouts and executives, most likely easing the transition for others who were drafted immediately after high school, such as Kobe Bryant (1996) and LeBron James (2003).“He’s paved the way for a lot of players,” said Thon Maker, a fifth-year center who played for the Cleveland Cavaliers this season and has worked out with Garnett. “A lot of young bigs in the league like myself, the first thing I learned from him is to drown out the noise and let your basketball do the speaking.”Garnett became one of the country’s top high school prospects after playing for three years at Mauldin High School in South Carolina and his senior year at Chicago’s Farragut High School. He was compared to players ranging from Shaquille O’Neal and Abdul-Jabbar to Bill Walton and Shawn Bradley. His 220-pound frame made him difficult to assess, as did the paucity of prior high school draftees.One of them was Moses Malone, who was drafted in 1974 out of Petersburg High School in Virginia by the N.B.A.’s competition, the A.B.A. Malone would, like Garnett, have a Hall of Fame career, and in some ways, Garnett’s debut represented a passing of the torch. Malone’s last season was the year before Garnett’s first.“Garnett has more skills than Moses, but he doesn’t always come to play every night,” Tom Konchalski, an N.B.A. scout who died this year, told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1995. “He takes nights off. Emotionally, he isn’t ready to handle the N.B.A. lifestyle. He still is a kid. Moses was a man.”Kevin Garnett was chosen by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the fifth pick of the 1995 N.B.A. draft.Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE, via Getty ImagesThere was also Bill Willoughby, who spent eight seasons as a role player for six teams from 1975 to 1984. He struggled in his transition and lost much of his money. (He called Garnett to offer advice as Garnett prepared to make his decision to enter the league.) Darryl Dawkins had a productive career from 1975 to 1989 after being drafted fifth over all. Both Dawkins and Willoughby entered the N.B.A. through a hardship waiver.Shawn Kemp enrolled at the University of Kentucky but left without playing and briefly went to a junior college instead. He did not play there either before becoming the 17th overall pick of the 1989 draft and joining the Seattle SuperSonics.There was a downside to Garnett’s brilliance: His immediate triumphs in the N.B.A. set a lofty bar that few players coming out of high school could meet. In his rookie year, he averaged a productive 10.4 points and 6.3 rebounds, while starting roughly half of Minnesota’s games.“His legacy is as one of the greatest players, one of the greatest two-way players,” said Danny Ainge, the president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics. Ainge traded for Garnett in 2007, revitalizing the franchise and helping it win its first championship in more than 20 years.Garnett was, Ainge said, “a guy that was all about winning and gave great energy night in and night out. The ultimate teammate.”Before entering the N.B.A., Leon Powe, part of Boston’s 2007-8 championship team, was on an A.A.U. team called the Oakland Soldiers along with a future Celtics teammate, Kendrick Perkins, and LeBron James.“LeBron, me and Kendrick, everybody, we all wanted to go out of high school,” Powe said, referring to the N.B.A. “Especially because we knew what happened with Kobe, K.G., everybody that came before us. That just inspired us.”Like James, Perkins made the leap in 2003, becoming a late first-round pick who would have a 14-year career in the N.B.A. If not for an injury, Powe might have jumped too, he said. Instead, he attended the University of California, Berkeley.There were more high school players who did not meet expectations in the N.B.A. — such as Kwame Brown and Sebastian Telfair — than those who did. The result was a rule in the mid-2000s that said a player had to be a full year removed from high school before he could be eligible for the N.B.A. The last high school player to be drafted into the N.B.A. was Amir Johnson in 2005.But the clamor to reverse the rule has grown larger with every passing season. In 2019, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver said that it would probably be eliminated within a few years, and in March he told reporters that it would be discussed as part of the next collective bargaining agreement. So soon enough, the craving will start anew for another Garnett: a worldbeating talent whose prime might last 15 years. That’s still a lofty bar to clear, but he was the one who, as he might say, made it so that “anything is possible.” More

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      Why Yuta Watanabe's Viral Moment Brought Cheers From Japan

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      Going viral because you got dunked on? Yikes — unless you’re Yuta Watanabe, whose effort has endeared him to a growing wave of basketball fans in his home country, Japan.Toronto Raptors forward Yuta Watanabe ended up on the wrong end of a viral moment when Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards dunked on him during a game in February.Photos and videos of Watanabe hopelessly coming up short in his attempt to stop the dunk made their way across social media, including the Instagram feed of the actor and basketball fan Kevin Hart, who shared a photo of the dunk with his 100-million-plus followers, saying: “This defender has to be thrown out of the league immediately….there’s no coming back from this.”But Watanabe is still here, and in his third N.B.A. season he has captured the imagination of basketball fans in Japan, his home country, while earning a rotation spot with the Raptors.Takeshi Shibata is the manager of basketball business for Nippon Bunka Publishing and has been a writer and editor with the company in Tokyo since 2010. A Tokyo native, he grew up watching the Showtime Lakers on satellite television in the 1980s, learning English by listening to the famed play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn.This season, he is one of the dozens of Japanese reporters covering Watanabe, whom he has followed since Watanabe was in high school playing for Jinsei Gakuen in the Kagawa Prefecture in Japan.“What I saw was an unbelievably athletic player,” Shibata said. “He was a man of energy, a man of effort.”Watanabe, then with the Memphis Grizzlies, exchanged jerseys with Washington Wizards forward Rui Hachimura, left, in 2019.Brandon Dill/Associated PressWatanabe has the best-selling N.B.A. jersey in Japan this season, ahead of Golden State’s Stephen Curry, the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James and Rui Hachimura, the Washington Wizards forward who in 2019 became the first Japanese player ever drafted in the first round.Hachimura has more name recognition and better odds of becoming a star in the league, but Watanabe’s story — going undrafted in 2018 after four seasons at George Washington University, then signing a two-way contract with the Memphis Grizzlies — has appealed to a large audience in Japan.“He took more of a humble path,” said Ed Odeven, who grew up in the Bronx and has covered basketball in Japan since moving there in 2006. “The Japanese culture places a value on sticking with it and working hard to reach your goals. They see that in Yuta, and it resonates with them.”The pandemic curtailed Shibata’s plans to travel to Toronto — where he honeymooned with his wife, Ayako, in 1994 — to cover Watanabe in person this season. Instead, he wakes up at 5 a.m. and covers the Raptors from his home in Chiba, Japan, publishing up to four basketball stories daily on the company’s website. (The Raptors aren’t in Toronto, either; because of Canada’s health restrictions, they have spent the season in Tampa, Fla.)Shibata appreciates the flexibility of working from home, and has developed a rapport with Toronto Coach Nick Nurse, who has answered questions from Japanese reporters at the end of his virtual news conferences.“I enjoy talking to him and getting responses from him,” Shibata said. “He knows my English is shaky, and I’m trying my best to communicate with him. He’s been really inclusive to someone like me.”Through Toronto’s first 66 games, Watanabe has appeared in 47 and is averaging 4.2 points in 14.2 minutes.“I’m pretty sure I could come up with a good story even if Yuta played five seconds on the court,” he said. “Because every second means a lot to the basketball fans in Japan.”Shibata was hired by Nippon Bunka Publishing in 1992 as an advertising associate at what he believed was the start of a golden era of basketball in Japan.He joined the company shortly after watching Michael Jordan and the Dream Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which ignited interest in the game globally. That coincided with the publication of a popular Japanese basketball manga written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue and named “Slam Dunk.” It ran from 1990 to 1996, sold over 120 million copies in Japan and helped inspire millions of children — including Hachimura and Watanabe — to play the game.Two local leagues eventually emerged. The Basketball Japan League began in 2005, and the Japan Basketball League, which became the National Basketball League, followed in 2007. Having two domestic leagues running concurrently violated FIBA’s general statutes, and the Japan Basketball Association, which oversaw both, was suspended from international competition in 2014.The N.B.A. held a pregame between the Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors at Saitama Super Arena near Tokyo before the 2019-20 season.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press“There’s been so many roadblocks along the way,” Shibata said.Things have started to change in the past several years. The FIBA ban was lifted in 2015. The B. League — a new local pro league featuring 47 teams across three divisions — launched in 2016 and has been a success through the first five years, attracting local fans and major sponsors.Hachimura and Watanabe have inspired a new generation not only to watch the game, but also to see themselves playing at the highest level. (Yuta Tabuse became the first Japanese-born player to play in the N.B.A. in 2004, but lasted only four games with the Phoenix Suns.)In Japan, basketball is watched much less than baseball, soccer, tennis and sumo wrestling. Local newspapers will publish the occasional basketball story, such as the news last month that the Raptors had converted Watanabe to a standard N.B.A. contract. But N.B.A. games are available only online, through a streaming partnership between the league and Rakuten.To find basketball coverage in Japan, you must actively seek it out.For the longest time, the news media reported only traditional game stories, which was an adjustment for the former Lakers center Robert Sacre, who played professionally in Japan for three seasons.“They’re way more respectful,” he said. “They just want to know what happened during the game. It was never about trying to find a story. They want to know why you guys won or why you guys lost. It was unique in that sense.”There’s now a growing number of social media accounts, YouTube channels and podcasts, and they’re helping to provide the kind of off-the-court, personality-driven stories that reflect how basketball is covered in North America.“It’s become different in the last decade,” said Detroit Pistons Coach Dwane Casey, who coached in Japan from 1989 to 1994 and visits regularly. “You can see the younger generation getting more excited about basketball, and they’re covering it now. They’re into all the same things that get the younger generation’s attention in North America.”N.B.A. teams are recognizing this new appetite for digital content. The Raptors featured Watanabe in an episode of “Open Gym,” their behind-the-scenes video series, in February. It is the season’s most-viewed episode. And in 2019, the Wizards hired Zac Ikuma, a bilingual sports reporter in Japan, as a digital correspondent. The team has a dedicated Japanese Twitter account, and Ikuma hosts a Japanese-language podcast for fans overseas.Shibata has also ventured into telling different kinds of stories online. One of his most popular features was about a group of female Raptors fans in Toronto who nicknamed themselves “the Watana-baes.” The story, an explainer on the term “bae,” was picked up by a Japanese television network.Photos and videos of this dunk, by Timberwolves forward Anthony Edwards over Watanabe in February, made their way across social media.David Berding/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe digital activities of younger basketball fans are also helping give the North American audience a better idea of how the game is perceived in Japan.A few weeks after video of the Edwards dunk against Watanabe went viral, a Japanese reporter asked Watanabe about the play. The interview was translated into English by the Twitter fan account @RaptorsInfoJPN.“In a situation like that, most people avoid it these days for fear of it going viral on the internet,” Watanabe said. “I think, if I do so, I shouldn’t be here anymore and I shouldn’t get any playing time.”For Shibata, the play exemplified Watanabe’s work ethic, which has opened the door for a new generation of basketball players in Japan to dream of one day following the same path to the N.B.A.“It was only two points,” Shibata said. “We were proud of him for sacrificing his body to try to stop the dunk. To be an N.B.A. player, you have to stop these guys in the air. To do that, you can’t hide.” More