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      Dwyane Wade Talks Hall of Fame Induction and a Political Hopes

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      When the Miami Heat selected Dwyane Wade with the fifth pick of the 2003 N.B.A. draft, the league was in dire need of star players to carry it out of the Michael Jordan era.Wade’s draft class — which also featured LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Carmelo Anthony — ended up fitting the bill and then some. Wade immediately became one of the league’s most popular players, and his Miami teammate Shaquille O’Neal gave him the catchy nickname Flash. It was apt — Wade routinely attacked the rim with snazzy spin moves and finished with highlight-reel dunks and layups on his way to winning three championships.This weekend, Wade will be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, a feat that seemed inevitable as he piled up accolades over a 16-year career. He made 13 All-Star teams, led the league in scoring once and was named the most valuable player of the 2006 N.B.A. finals, which Miami won over Dallas.“To be able to be one of those select few out of an entire generation of people who have tried to play the game of basketball and to be able to walk into the Hall of Fame, it doesn’t matter if I knew 10 years ago or I just got the call yesterday — it all feels surreal,” Wade said in a recent interview.Since retiring in 2019, Wade has acquired an ownership stake in the Utah Jazz and the W.N.B.A. team in his hometown Chicago, the Sky. In the spring, Wade revealed that he had moved his family out of Florida to California because of state laws that negatively affect the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Wade’s teenage daughter, Zaya, is transgender, and Wade has been outspoken on her behalf.Wade recently spoke to The New York Times about his basketball career and potentially running for political office.This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.Dwyane Wade’s jersey is lifted into the rafters during his jersey retirement ceremony at American Airlines Arena in 2020.Michael Reaves/Getty ImagesYou grew up in the South Side of Chicago without very much. When you retired, the former President Barack Obama taped a tribute video to you. How do you reflect on that journey?My dad and I talk about it. We still can’t believe it. We still can’t believe the N.B.A. career happened and it’s gone by. I got a call from President Obama on my birthday when I turned 40, and it was like: “Hey, pick up the phone at this time. There’s going to be a call coming.” I’m like, “OK.” Once I got on, I heard, “You’re waiting for the president of the United States.” I was like: “What? This is my life, right?”Your first N.B.A. game was against Allen Iverson. You’re having a bit of a full-circle moment this weekend by having him induct you. Why did you pick him?Michael Jordan was my favorite player. But as I was growing up as a kid, as Michael Jordan decided to retire from the game, Allen Iverson became the hero of our culture. I think a lot of people know I wear No. 3, but a lot of people don’t know why I wear No. 3. And so I just wanted to take this moment as an opportunity that is supposed to be about me, and I wanted to be able to shine light and give flowers to individuals that allow me and help me get here. My family, of course. My coaches, of course. My teammates, of course.But what about those individuals that gave you the image of what it looks like and how it can be done? And Allen Iverson gave me the image of how it looks like, how it could be done coming from the broken community that I came from. So I want to give him his flowers in front of the world because he deserves it.Wade and Allen Iverson attend the Stance and Dwyane Wade’s Spade Tournament at The One Eighty in Toronto in 2016.George Pimentel/WireImage, via Getty ImagesYou’re being inducted alongside Dirk Nowitzki, with whom you had, let’s call it a tense relationship at points. What’s your relationship with him like now?I respect Dirk as one of the greatest players that ever played this game of basketball. It’s funny to have something with someone and we’ve never guarded each other. We played totally different positions, but as I’ve always said, if I’m going to have any words with anyone, I want them to come in the finals.Dirk and I have played in the finals against each other twice. His team won once. My team won one. So I call it a wash. And I’m thankful to be able to be a part of the class that I’m a part of. And Dirk to me — and there’s no shade on anybody who’s ever played — but I think Dirk will probably be looked at as the greatest international player that we’ve ever seen.You’ve talked at length about your advocacy on behalf of the transgender community, especially with your own child. What was your reaction to the Orlando Magic donating $50,000 to the super PAC affiliated with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida? (DeSantis has supported legislation such as what opponents deemed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a law signed last year that limits what instructors can teach about sexuality and gender in classrooms. The Magic’s donation was dated May 19, just days before DeSantis announced a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.)I have so many things that I’m focused on and there’s so many, so many battles to fight, in a sense. That’s one that I’m not choosing to fight, with so many other things where my voice is needed. People are going to do what people want to do. And there’s nothing that you’re going to be able to do to stop them, per se. And so I’m trying to help where the need is and where I can.There were some reports in the spring that Florida Democrats were recruiting you to run for Senate.[Laughter] I heard that.Have you ever been approached to run for office?Yes.“I’ve been able to be a star,” Wade said. “I’ve been able to be Robin.”Ike Abakah for The New York TimesSo describe to me what that approach was like.I mean, it’s just conversation. “Hey, you would be good for,” “Hey, we can see you in,” “We would love to have you in.”It’s things that I’m passionate about that I will speak out on and speak up for. And so I don’t play the politician games. I don’t know a lot about it.But I also understand that I have a role as an American citizen and as a known person to be able to highlight and speak on things that other people may not be able to because they don’t have the opportunity to do this.So you’re running.[Laughter]Let me see if I can get you to be a little spicy. I’m sure you’ve seen some of the comments Paul Pierce has made comparing the two of you. He’s said a couple of different things. But one of the things he said — I’ll read the quote — “Put Shaq on my team. Put LeBron and Bosh with me. I’m not going to win one? You don’t think me, LeBron and Bosh, we’re not going to win one? We’re not going to win a couple?”What was your reaction to seeing what Paul said about you?I’m living rent-free right now.I got so many things going on in my life. Comparing myself to someone who’s not playing or someone who is playing is definitely not on my to-do list. Listen, Paul Pierce was one of the greatest players that we’ve had in our game. And I think, you know, when you are a great player and you don’t get the attention that you feel like your game deserved, sometimes you’ve got to grab whatever attention where those straws are. And Paul believes he’s a better player than me. He should believe that. That’s why he was great. That’s not my argument, and I didn’t play the game to be better than Paul Pierce. I played the game the way I played it, and I made the sacrifices that I made. Everybody doesn’t want to sacrifice.Wade shot against Paul Pierce in 2012 in Miami.Scott Cunningham/NBAE, via Getty ImagesI’ve been able to be a star. I’ve been able to be Robin. I’ve been able to be part of the Larry, Curly and Moe, like, whatever. I’ve been able to be successful and great in all those areas.It’s easy to say what you would do if you have a certain talent on your team, but you have to play with that talent. And that’s the hardest thing to do — to play with talent in different generations and different styles, which I was able to do.What is it like to watch old highlights of yourself now that you’re 41?I just got done watching a 2005-2006 edit. I think it was 45 minutes. I watched about 15 minutes. I walked away from that edit, and I was just looking at the way I played the game and I hooped.Nowadays, we’ve got the kids. And I love what development is going on, but kids are working on their moves. I just reacted to defenders. My moves came from just reacting, and those are the moves that are being worked on and are being highlighted now. I just played the game of basketball just like I was back in Chicago playing with my uncles and my dad and my family.So I love watching old highlights of myself because, just being honest, I haven’t seen a lot of people with my game and with my style. And so it was unique. And I’m thankful to have one of those games that no one can really understand how good I really was.Ike Abakah for The New York Times More

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      The N.B.A. and Its Owners Fight for Change. But Not Necessarily the Same Change.

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      The league embraces progressive causes supported by players. But some team owners pull in the opposite direction, as apparent in the Orlando Magic’s donation to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.In June 2022, on the same day the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Adam Silver, the N.B.A. commissioner, released a statement jointly with the W.N.B.A.’s commissioner, Cathy Engelbert.Silver and Engelbert said the leagues believed “that women should be able to make their own decisions concerning their health and future, and we believe that freedom should be protected.”Less than one year later, one of the N.B.A.’s teams, the Orlando Magic — as an organization — wrote a $50,000 check to Never Back Down, a super PAC promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, financial disclosures revealed this week. The Magic are owned by the DeVos family, well-known conservatives. Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of the former Magic chairman Richard DeVos, who died in 2018, was former president Donald J. Trump’s education secretary.The check was written on May 19, according to a team spokesman. That was weeks after DeSantis signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, prohibiting the termination of pregnancies after six weeks, but days before he had officially declared he would run for the Republican presidential nomination.The donation “was given as a Florida business in support of a Florida governor for the continued prosperity of Central Florida,” the team said in a statement.The Magic’s donation to DeSantis, who is in his second term as governor, was not the first time an N.B.A. team had put its name on a political donation. In the 1990s, the Phoenix Suns, then owned by Jerry Colangelo, donated tens of thousands to the Republican National Committee. But the Magic’s check appears to be the first direct donation from an N.B.A. team to a group directly allied with a presidential candidate — or one, like DeSantis, who was widely expected to run.The N.B.A., under its commissioner, Adam Silver, has supported causes supported by players.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe donation was also a reminder that for all of the N.B.A.’s professions of support for progressive causes that its players believe in, several billionaire team owners — whose interests Silver represents — have deployed their own power to fight those very causes. (The N.B.A. declined to comment.)Owners like Dan Gilbert (Cleveland Cavaliers), Tilman Fertitta (Houston Rockets) James Dolan (Knicks) and the DeVos family have donated large sums to Republican politicians who oppose abortion rights, gun control, voting rights and police reform — all issues the N.B.A. has supported, either in public statements or through its Social Justice coalition.“Any time I have noticed in my research where the N.B.A. has responded to player activism and player demands, they’ve always been forced to do so,” Theresa Runstedtler, a history professor at American University and the author of “Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the N.B.A.,” said in an interview.She continued: “It’s always been something that they’ve been pushed into by the more vocal and militant players in the league.”In the summer of 2020, several N.B.A. players protested the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by police in Minneapolis, and the Milwaukee Bucks refused to come out for a playoff game against the Orlando Magic after the shooting of another Black man, Jacob Blake, by police in Kenosha, Wis. In response, N.B.A. owners agreed to form the Social Justice Coalition, which would emphasize voting rights, police reform and criminal justice reform — all areas that disproportionately affected Black people.On paper, the N.B.A. was moving beyond traditional philanthropy. The Bucks’ walkout compelled the league to shape public policy, a goal far beyond what other professional sports leagues intended to do.“Our goal is really simple,” James Cadogan, the coalition’s executive director, said in a social media clip introducing the group. “We want to take moments of protest, moments of people power like we saw last year, and turn them into public policy. We want to change laws.”In recent years, the N.B.A. has taken up the cause of Clean Slate initiatives, an effort in states to seal some records of those who had been incarcerated. Weeks ago, DeSantis vetoed a Republican-backed bill in Florida concerning the expunging of criminal records.The Social Justice Coalition has endorsed several bills in its nascent existence, though with limited success: The EQUAL Act, a move to end sentencing disparities in cases involving the sale of crack and powder cocaine, is not yet federal law. The George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, a police reform bill that passed the House in 2021, languished in the Senate.Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors warmed up for a game in 2022. He made a video urging fans to support the Freedom to Vote Act.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter the 2020 election, Republicans made a significant push to tighten election rules at the state level, after which the Golden State star Stephen Curry made a video for the coalition imploring fans to connect with lawmakers to pass the Freedom To Vote Act. Separately, the coalition supported a voting rights bill named after the former congressman John Lewis. Both bills were blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster. The N.B.A. has not called for the filibuster to be removed.The N.B.A. is hardly to blame when a hot-button bill fails to pass a divided Congress. But it is harder for the league to effect change when some of its team owners have made it their mission to elect people who oppose that change.At the end of 2015, with Silver still relatively new to the commissioner job, the league partnered with Everytown for Gun Safety on an advertising campaign about gun safety. Stars like Curry and Carmelo Anthony spoke in personal terms about the effects of gun violence in commercials that aired during Christmas Day games, when the N.B.A. traditionally has a big national audience. The commercials didn’t call for specific legislation, but partnering with a political figure like Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who founded Everytown, was an unusual move for an American sports league.The next year, the N.B.A. moved the All-Star game from North Carolina to protest a state law that critics said targeted lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Silver’s pulling the game had consequences for the local economy and embarrassed politicians that sports leagues typically want to mollify.The Republican governor of the state, Pat McCrory, blasted the N.B.A., saying that the league, and other critics, had “misrepresented our laws and maligned the people of North Carolina simply because most people believe boys and girls should be able to use school bathrooms, locker rooms and showers without the opposite sex present.”Silver would later tell an audience that the law was “inconsistent with the core values of the league.” (A frequent donor to liberal politicians, he is open about his own political beliefs.)Now, a franchise has written a large check to DeSantis, who has signed bills that critics say target L.G.B.T.Q. communities — which would go against what Silver would call the “core values of the league.” DeSantis has also been in a feud with Disney — which the N.B.A. does business with as a broadcast partner of ESPN. Disney is a sponsor of the Magic, though Disney did not respond to a request for comment on whether that partnership would continue. And the league is choosing to stay silent for now.What the N.B.A. should and should not campaign for isn’t an easy question. But since the league loudly stood up for transgender people in one instance and abortion rights in another, its silence is noteworthy when a franchise owner, using the team name, supports a politician with opposing views.The N.B.A. is, in the end, a business whose primary goal is to make money. If it is also genuinely interested standing up for some social issues, it will need to stand up to its owners too. More

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      Inside the NBA’s Version of Comic-Con

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      Promoted as a celebration of the league’s cultural relevance, the convention also highlighted the N.B.A.’s business ambitions.Somewhere under the lights of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center over the weekend, the Jabbawockeez danced during a television special that could have been an email as part of the “most culturally relevant basketball experience on the planet.”That’s what the signs called it, anyway. It was the first-ever N.B.A. Con, the league’s riff on Comic-Con. The basketball-themed Lollapalooza was a three-day smorgasbord of fashion, music and basketball.But seen through another lens, the convention was an intriguing window into how the league sees itself as a business.The first-ever N.B.A. Con drew more than 25,000 attendees.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesThe event was a three-day festival of fashion, music and basketball. There were also arcade games.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesFor the N.B.A., stars are bigger than the games — cultural presences far beyond the floor. The N.B.A. took advantage of that by holding the convention during its summer league in Las Vegas, when scores of stakeholders from the union, retired players, owners, general managers, players, sponsors and fans descend on Nevada.“When you ask people about the N.B.A., for them, it’s not a company,” said Mark Tatum, the league’s deputy commissioner. “It’s life. It’s their culture. The N.B.A. is this culture of music and fashion and entertainment and style.”More than 25,000 fans attended, mostly paying $30 to $250 to get in. But really, cultural relevance is priceless, especially when sponsored by Michelob Ultra. (They were there too.)The convention floor was set up to evoke the spirit of New York City, with park benches, Jenga, cornhole and pickleball courts. There were neighborhoods titled the Drip, the Collection, the Network, the Park and the Convos.The Drip, where sponsors set up shop, was the real core of the convention.Sure, a convention does help the league reach fans in a way it otherwise wouldn’t at a time when LeBron James isn’t playing every night. On Saturday, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver detailed a new in-season tournament during a bloated television special. But throwing an N.B.A. Con meant the league also created an opportunity for new intellectual property. It sold N.B.A. Con merchandise and created a new Twitter account, though the account had fewer than 2,000 followers on Monday compared with nearly 44 million on the league account.There was an AT&T booth, where a sign read, “Step into the spotlight and show off your fire fit.” Fans lined up and shot slow-motion videos of their outfits under a fancy spotlight.Attendees swarmed the former Knicks star Carmelo Anthony for photos and autographs.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesAnother booth, run by a memorabilia company, MeiGray, sold game-worn jerseys. Its main podium showed a mannequin wearing a jersey that Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic wore in Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals last month. It sold for $150,000. Next to that was a smaller podium with a jersey that Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler wore during Game 3 of that series. It sold for $17,500. To the victors — the Nuggets — go the bigger boxes and higher prices.Tucked in a back corner of the convention space was an exhibit called “Rings Culture,” from the jewelry store Jason of Beverly Hills. It displayed several replicas of championship rings. It might’ve been the perfect place for a heist in a movie like “Ocean’s Eleven.”The night before the convention, the N.B.A. held a walk-through for journalists. Tristan Jass, a YouTuber known for trick basketball shots, displayed some of his skills on a temporary court. But before doing so, he described his ascension to fame.“When you ask people about the N.B.A., for them, it’s not a company,” said the league’s deputy commissioner. “It’s life. It’s their culture.”Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesFans measured their vertical leaps near the Drip, an area of the convention where sponsors sold merchandise.Bridget Bennett for The New York Times“We just left a trail of inspiration around the world,” Jass told the crowd.His first shot was a heave from a spot adjacent to the court behind a chain-link fence. He missed the first two attempts, but hit the third. It was impressive. His second shot was a full-court launch from the opposite corner. This one didn’t go as well. After at least 20 misses, some observers — the uninspired ones, clearly — moved on to the rest of the tour. When a shot rimmed out, Jass muttered, “Those ones hurt.”The biggest draw for the weekend was a panel discussion with Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar moderated by Isiah Thomas, the former Detroit Pistons star. There were a couple hundred seats, but a long overflow line for viewers trying to catch a glimpse of a basketball torch being passed. Wembanyama was the much-heralded No. 1 pick in the N.B.A. draft last month.There was a larger backdrop too: Abdul-Jabbar’s conversation with Wembanyama in that 30-minute panel was more time than he had spent chatting with James in the last two decades combined. Last month, Abdul-Jabbar told reporters in Los Angeles that he had “never had a chance really to talk to LeBron, other than two or three minutes.”At N.B.A. Con, Abdul-Jabbar said he was struck by how much the game had changed.“The different duties and what is expected of various players in various positions,” he said. “It’s really been through a tremendous change, and for more than a few minutes, I just sat there and wondered, ‘Would I be able to compete?’”Abdul-Jabbar spent 20 seasons in the N.B.A. and retired in 1989 as the career scoring leader. James surpassed his record in February.“Sure would have been nice, though, to be able to fly from city to city in a charter jet like these guys do,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “I didn’t get to do that. I could have played longer.”To that end, the convention served not just as a branding exercise for the N.B.A., but also the players themselves. Scoot Henderson, the 19-year-old who was drafted third by the Portland Trail Blazers last month, is part of a new generation of stars with a marketing reach that players from Abdul-Jabbar’s era would find unrecognizable. Most players are active on social media, which has given them expanded ways to build an audience. Henderson was interviewed in a panel by the former Knicks star Carmelo Anthony — delivering a signal that the league viewed Henderson as next in the star lineage.“I’ve been thinking about myself as a business for a minute,” Henderson said afterward. “The name. A corporation — that’s who I am.”Most fans paid $30 to $250 to get into N.B.A. Con.Bridget Bennett for The New York Times More

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      Victor Wembanyama Gets Introduction to N.B.A. Fame and Game in Las Vegas

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      Wembanyama had the anticipation of fans and a turn in the tabloids, yet a more modest showing as he learns his new team.The walls around Victor Wembanyama, as he sat for a news conference Friday night at the Thomas and Mack Center, were plastered with images of past winners of the Las Vegas Summer League tournament. There were N.B.A. stars who played there in the early days of their careers and a photo of LeBron James from 2018, when he showed up wearing gold shorts that said “Lakers” on the front in his first public appearance after signing with the team.The summer league debuted the year after James’s rookie season, so its first marquee rookie was Dwight Howard, the top pick in 2004. As Wembanyama spoke with reporters, a picture of a smiling Howard could be seen on a wall to his right.“The Beatles?” one team executive had joked earlier that night when asked what he would compare to the hysteria around Wembanyama, whom the San Antonio Spurs selected first overall last month. The closest real comparison is to James’s entry into the league in 2003.Wembanyama had just finished his debut performance in a Spurs jersey, when he scored nine points with eight rebounds, three assists and five blocks. He made 2 of 13 shots and sometimes looked tired.None of this will matter for his long-term future, nor does it predict what his career will be. But Wembanyama’s first few days in Las Vegas didn’t just introduce him to N.B.A. play, they also introduced him to the absurdity of fame’s glare. He came out of that experience a bit subdued, but still smiling and poised as his journey continued.Wembanyama only finished his French season three weeks ago, the week before the N.B.A. draft. That he would be selected first overall was a foregone conclusion, but it still brought him to tears when it happened.The Spurs immediately began molding him. He went to dinner the next day with some of the organization’s legends — Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Sean Elliott and Manu Ginobili — to start learning from them.They knew his body needed a break, so they had him skip their games in Sacramento last week to save his debut for Las Vegas. He will also skip the World Cup this year, where he would have bolstered the French national team.And when Wembanyama began playing and practicing with the Spurs’ summer league team, together they focused on learning again.“There is an eagerness that’s very clear as a coach,” said Matt Nielsen, who is coaching the Spurs’ summer league team. “He’s wanting to do the right thing.”Friday night’s game featured Wembanyama and the Spurs against the Charlotte Hornets and Brandon Miller, the second overall pick in June’s draft.The Thomas and Mack Center is a worn-down arena on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas that once a year dresses itself up as the center of the N.B.A. world.All 30 N.B.A. teams show up a couple of weeks after the N.B.A. draft for the summer league with rosters that include their most recent draft picks, whom they pray won’t get injured during the exhibition games. Scouts, team owners and executives dot the lower bowls and every so often the league’s biggest stars take a break from casinos, clubs and sponsorship appearances to stop by and sit courtside for a game.A typical summer league crowd might fill half the lower bowl, and a good crowd packs it and maybe spills into the upper decks. On Friday night, the entire arena was filled to the top with nearly 18,000 spectators hoping to see something spectacular.Wembanyama had some bright moments, but did not produce the kinds of moments the crowd had waited breathlessly for. He missed a layup and a dunk, in all 11 of the shots he took. He was not the focal point of the Spurs offense for most of the game. Defensively, his natural size and 8-foot wingspan meant he could block jump-shots even when he was late getting to the shot.At least once, his victim was Miller, who scored 16 points on 5-of-15 shooting with 11 rebounds.After the game Wembanyama talked about wanting to improve his conditioning, and said he was “exhausted” every time he came out of the game. He needed to better understand the plays called by the point guard, and the team’s defensive system, he said.“I didn’t really know what I was doing on the court tonight, but I’m trying to learn for the next games,” Wembanyama said. “The important thing is to be ready for the season.”It was a levelheaded response from Wembanyama, who seemed less effervescent but still poised.That didn’t stop observers from drawing conclusions about his future or fans of the pop star Britney Spears from mocking his performance.Yes, Britney Spears.She had tried to approach Wembanyama from behind on Wednesday night and was stopped by a Spurs security guard who swung his left arm in her direction. Las Vegas police said the security guard’s actions caused Spears to hit herself in the face, but Spears said the response was overboard and asked for an apology.Wembanyama said he never saw her face during the encounter, but her fans, nonetheless, remained irritated. The police said no charges would be filed.That minor controversy had marked the start of Wembanyama’s time in Las Vegas, and highlighted the absurdity that can come with fame. It passed, though, just as the memory of a mundane start can, too, as Wembanyama’s career progresses. More

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      Miles Bridges Will Rejoin Hornets After Felony Domestic Violence Plea Deal

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      Bridges will rejoin the team on a one-year contract after completing a suspension that will sideline him for the first 10 games of the season.Miles Bridges will return to the Charlotte Hornets on a one-year contract next season after he finishes a suspension for pleading no contest to felony domestic violence.Bridges, 25, had been a restricted free agent for the Hornets since June 2022, when he had been expected to negotiate for a $173 million maximum deal over five years. But on June 29, 2022, he was arrested in Los Angeles, accused of beating the mother of his two children in front of the children. In November, he pleaded no contest to one count of felony domestic violence as part of a plea deal that included three years of probation but no jail time.“I sincerely apologize for the pain, embarrassment and disappointment that last year’s incident caused so many people,” Bridges said in a statement through the team on Friday, adding that he was “grateful” to have a second chance to play. He had been with the Hornets since they acquired him in a draft-day deal in 2018. His new one-year contract is for $7.9 million, according to ESPN.Bridges will have to sit out for the first 10 games next season. The N.B.A. suspended him for 30 games in April, but gave him credit for 20 because he did not play last season. N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver later told a group of sports editors that Bridges and the league had a “mutual agreement” that he would not play during the 2022-23 season, though he said the agreement did not constitute a suspension. However, in February Bridges had told The Associated Press that he might return in March.As part of his plea deal, Bridges was required to undergo a year of domestic violence counseling, complete 100 hours of community service and go to parenting classes. The victim was also granted a 10-year restraining order. Bridges initially faced several felony charges of domestic violence and child abuse.In the team’s statement on Friday, Hornets General Manager Mitch Kupchak said Bridges’s “commitment to counseling and community service” had factored into Charlotte’s decision to bring him back.“Throughout this process, we have taken a measured and serious approach,” Kupchak said. He added of Bridges, “He has shown remorse, indicated that he has learned from this situation and expressed that it will not happen again.”Bridges said that he had been in therapy and that he understood why people had questioned whether he deserved a second chance. He vowed to earn back everyone’s trust and confidence.Without Bridges last season, the Hornets were the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference. Charlotte’s best player, guard LaMelo Ball, also missed most of the season with injuries. The poor showing positioned the Hornets for a high draft pick, which they used on Alabama’s Brandon Miller at No. 2 overall.Michael Jordan, the former Chicago Bulls great who had owned the Hornets since 2010, announced last month that he would sell his majority stake in the team but stay on as a minority investor. More

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      Britney Spears Seeks Apology After Encounter With Victor Wembanyama’s Security

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      Spears said on Twitter that a member of an athlete’s detail had hit her outside a Las Vegas restaurant Wednesday night.The singer Britney Spears asked for an apology on Thursday after accusing a member of a star N.B.A. player’s security detail of striking her in the face outside a Las Vegas restaurant when she tried to greet the player, Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs.In a tweet about the encounter, Spears did not name Wembanyama, but in discussing the unnamed player she referred to public comments he had made to reporters hours before. Spears, 41, said that she had seen “an athlete” at two different hotels Wednesday night and “decided to approach him and congratulate him on his success” at the second one, outside a restaurant. Spears said after she tapped him on the shoulder, a member of his security team “back handed me in the face,” knocking her glasses off and causing her to nearly fall down.Spears said that she was still waiting for an apology from the player, his security and his team. Wembanyama, 19, was the No. 1 pick in the N.B.A. draft last month. He is expected to play in the N.B.A.’s summer league starting Friday in Las Vegas.The Spurs did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Thursday. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department did not respond to an email request for comment. A person who answered the phone at the department’s public records office said they could not comment on a specific case and that it could take three to five days to respond to a records request.In statements to multiple news outlets, including Variety and People, the Las Vegas police said that around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, “officers responded to a property in the 3700 block of Las Vegas Boulevard regarding a battery investigation,” but that no arrests or citations had been made. The incident was first reported by TMZ on Thursday morning. Spears’s lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, said the Las Vegas police were investigating and declined to make further comment beyond Spears’s statement.Earlier on Thursday, before Spears’s tweet, Wembanyama offered a different version of events while meeting with reporters in Las Vegas. He said that “there was one person calling me,” but Spurs security had told him not to stop for anyone, since doing so could have invited a crowd. He then said that a person had “grabbed me from behind, not on my shoulder.”“I don’t know with how much force, but security pushed her away,” Wembanyama said, adding that he did not know that the woman was Spears until hours later. “I didn’t stop to look, so I kept walking and enjoyed a nice dinner.”Spears she was “not prepared for what happened” and that it was “super embarrassing” to discuss publicly.“However, I think it’s important to share this story and to urge people in the public eye to set an example and treat all people with respect,” she said.Wembanyama, at over 7 feet tall, is one of the most heralded N.B.A. prospects in recent decades. He averaged more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game last season with Metropolitans 92, a French professional team.Claire Fahy More

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      in Tennis

      GOATs Are Everywhere in Sports. So What Really Defines Greatness?

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      Athletes from Tom Brady to Serena Williams to LeBron James have all been tabbed the Greatest of All Time. Faced with the term’s pervasive use, our columnist considers how sports heroes become transcendent.If you are reading this column, I have great news: You’re the GOAT!That’s right: Among those who have happened upon this space, I deem you the Greatest Reader of All Time.Then again, if you’re LeBron James, or Serena Williams, or Nikola Jokic — with that sparkling N.B.A. championship ring — well, you already know you’re the GOAT. Everyone has been saying so.“Bahhh, bahhh, bahhh,” goes the bleating of a goat. It’s also the sound made by James’s Los Angeles Lakers teammates when he walks into the locker room. GOAT hosannas are practically the soundtrack of his life.Driven by its pervasive usage around sports, five years ago the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster entered the term GOAT in the dictionary as an acronym and a noun.LeBron James is considered by many to be the GOAT in men’s basketball.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesDefining the term as “the most accomplished or successful individual in the history of a particular sport or category of performance or activity,” a Merriam-Webster editor nodded to the pervasive use of Tom Brady’s name along with GOAT in a popular search engine as an example of why the acronym had become dictionary official.Yeah, I know — this GOAT thing, it’s a little confusing. To be the greatest implies singularity, no? But now there are GOATs everywhere we turn.Even worse than the acronym’s overuse is its doltish simplicity. There’s not enough nuance. Too much emphasis on outright winning, not enough on overcoming.What are our options here? Maybe we should ban the use of the term outright in sports, following the lead of Lake Superior State University, which cheekily ranked the hazy, lazy acronym No. 1 on its 2023 list of banished words.“The many nominators didn’t have to be physicists or grammarians to determine the literal impossibility and technical vagueness of this wannabe superlative,” read a statement from the university.Banning doesn’t quite seem like a possibility, however — not when a word has bored a hole this deep into our collective consciousness.No doubt, being a goat isn’t what it used to be. In sports, it was once a terrible insult, a term of shame hung on athletes who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Greg Norman, otherwise known as the Shark, was a goat for coughing up a six-stroke lead in the final round of the 1996 Masters, a tournament he lost by five strokes.Before Norman, there was the Boston Red Sox’ grounder-through-the legs-at-the-worst-possible-World-Series-moment goat, Bill Buckner.Need I say more?According to a Merriam-Webster editor, online searches for Tom Brady’s name and GOAT prompted the addition of the acronym to the dictionary in 2018.Elise Amendola/Associated PressMuhammad Ali is widely credited with first injecting the Greatest of All Time into the mix. When he went by Cassius Clay in the early 1960s, he recorded a comedy album anchored by the title poem, “I Am the Greatest.”After his upset win over George Foreman in 1974, he added a flourish, admonishing his doubters and critics, and reminding them of his status: “I told you I am still the greatest of all times!”But was it really Ali who came up with this particular egotistic flourish?Some say GOAT’s origins actually spring from a flamboyant, blond-tressed wrestler, George Wagner, who was known as Gorgeous George and who in the 1940s and ’50s earned lavish paydays by turning trash talk into fine art.In a precursor to W.W.E.-style braggadocio, Gorgeous George once claimed before a big fight that if he lost, he would “crawl across the ring and cut my hair off!” He added, “But that’s not going to happen, because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world.”Ali said he had learned a good chunk of his boastfulness from Gorgeous George.“A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth,” the wrestler is said to have told Ali after a chance meeting. “So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.”This week marks the moment when sport’s most legitimate GOAT talk hovers over tennis and an event its organizers not-so-humbly call the Championships.Wimbledon starts Monday. The men’s favorite, Novak Djokovic, has 23 Grand Slam tournament titles, one short of Margaret Court’s record of 24. If he wins this year, his wildly devoted fan base will confidently proclaim the Serb’s GOAT status.That will drive fans of Rafael Nadal, who is stuck at 22 major titles, to distraction. They will argue that their idol would have won 25 major titles (or more) by now, if not for injuries.Then Roger Federer devotees will wade in. He had losing records against both Nadal and Djokovic. But, by goodness, he’s Roger Federer, fine linen with a forehand with 20 Slams and a raft of epic final-round battles to his name.Not so fast, Serena Williams adherents will remind. Not only does she have 23 Grand Slam titles — including one earned while she was pregnant — Williams braved playing in a mostly white sport and bent it to her will. Besides, she’s as much a cultural icon as an athlete. Can any male player say that?Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam titles in her career, bolstering her claim to being the GOAT of tennis.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThen there are the old-school partisans of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King. Stop the unfairness, they will shout. No more comparing superlative athletes from vastly different eras.Time has changed everything in every sport — better equipment, better training methods, new rules — so how can we reliably compare? Before McEnroe lost to Borg in the 1980 Wimbledon final, neither had the benefit of sleeping, as Djokovic reportedly does, in a performance-enhancing hypobaric chamber.On and on the argument will go.That’s the craziness of it. The foolishness and the fun of it.Who’s the GOAT?Well, to be honest, I’ve got four. Willie Mays. Joe Montana. Williams. Federer.I can remember each for their sublime victories, of course. But also their stumbles. A 42-year-old Mays lost in the outfield. A fragile Montana in his twilight, playing not for San Francisco but Kansas City.I was on hand to see Williams struggle and come up short as she chased that elusive last Slam. I sat feet from Federer as he held two match points against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final of 2019. Then the Swiss crumbled in defeat.“For now it hurts, and it should — every loss hurts at Wimbledon,” Federer said at the post-match news conference. But, he added, he would persevere. “I don’t want to be depressed about actually an amazing tennis match.”No one escapes disappointment and frailty. But if we do it right, we soldier on.You know what that means? It means all of us can be GOATs!Bleat on, my friends. Bleat on! More

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      in Basket

      After Midnight at the NBA Draft, Dreams Still Come True

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      Mark Tatum, the deputy commissioner of the N.B.A., had an important job — though not a glamorous one — on Thursday night.He had the late shift.Shortly after 11 p.m., Tatum clocked in to begin announcing the names of the players who had been selected in the second round of the N.B.A. draft at Barclays Center. By then, the crowd had thinned, leaving just dozens of scattered fans — and sharply dressed but tired family members — as his audience. There might have been tumbleweeds somewhere.Commissioner Adam Silver had received prime billing at 8 p.m., calling the names and shaking the hands of the most-hyped prospects in the first round, such as Victor Wembanyama, Brandon Miller and Scoot Henderson — the top three picks.But Tatum was there for the confident players who were starting to feel snubbed, and for the long shots still hoping to be given a chance. Some of the players Tatum called — like Amari Bailey of U.C.L.A. — were with their family and friends up in the stands, not high-profile enough to be one of the 24 players invited to sit at the long tables draped with black tablecloths and gold basketballs on the floor of the arena. It looked like the most upscale cafeteria known to man.Mark Tatum on stage during the second round of the draft.The first pick Tatum announced, for the Charlotte Hornets at No. 31 overall, was James Nnaji, a center from Nigeria who came up and shook his hand. Art Nevins, a 34-year-old from Brooklyn, was still around to see it.A New Orleans Pelicans fan, Nevins had come with his friend John Traub, 33. Sitting in the stands, Nevins said he was sticking around for the second round to see if the Pelicans might be able to trade for Henderson, whom the Portland Trail Blazers had selected with the No. 3 pick.“I’m wide-awake,” Nevins said. “I’m ready.”It helped that because he had purchased his tickets with a particular credit card, he had received a voucher for two free drinks.Bailey, a point guard who spent one season at U.C.L.A., was selected 41st overall by Charlotte. He descended from the stands in a stylish white suit that appeared to be lined with pearls.Tatum, through a spokesman, said that he looked forward to announcing the second-round picks every year.“The second round is when the hard-core basketball fans at Barclays Center make the most noise,” he said.And they did: Even a single person’s cheers could be heard from the opposite side of the emptying arena.A few rows behind Nevins sat Christian Cabrera, a 22-year-old San Antonio Spurs fan who had made the trek from Atlantic City, N.J., to see Wembanyama be selected with the first pick. He wasn’t ready to leave.“You can’t be tired on a night like this,” Cabrera said. He added: “I’m a real fan, you know? I’m getting my money’s worth for the trip out here. I got to see Wemby up close and personal. I got to be on ESPN, so it was cool.”Amari Bailey, a point guard from U.C.L.A., was selected 41st overall by the Charlotte Hornets. He came down from the stands to meet Tatum on the stage.There’s always a chance of seeing history by hanging in there.In 2014, Nikola Jokic was sleeping in Serbia when the Denver Nuggets drafted him in the second round, and a Taco Bell commercial had been airing when Tatum announced his name. It seemed that only the people in the building had heard the call — the start of the N.B.A. career of a future champion and two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award.Depelsha McGruder, who attended the draft with her 11-year-old son, Grant, said she went to Harvard Business School with Tatum. She said his affection for the night shift was genuine.“It’s still the N.B.A. draft,” said McGruder, an executive at the Ford Foundation. “It doesn’t matter. I mean, there’s still people here. This is one of the biggest nights in basketball. Hoop dreams are coming true.”One player sobbed in Tatum’s arms after his name was called.Rayan Rupert, a 19-year-old guard from France, was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the 43rd pick.Tatum had another triumphant made-for-television moment, for those who were still awake and watching.Rayan Rupert, a 19-year-old guard from France, was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers with the 43rd pick. Rupert was the last of the 24 invited players still remaining at the tables on the main floor. When Tatum announced his name, Rupert received a roaring standing ovation from the remaining crowd as he hugged his family and friends, with tears in his eyes.Most second-round picks will not have All-Star careers, though players like Jokic, Draymond Green, Dennis Rodman and Manu Ginobili have been exceptions. But judging by all of the hugs, cheers and tears deep into Thursday night, getting drafted, no matter how late, still matters.The 58th and last pick of the draft went to the Milwaukee Bucks, sometime after midnight.They chose Chris Livingston, a forward from the University of Kentucky. He was in the stands and made his way down to the stage.Tatum ended the night with a handshake.One pick acknowledged some of the few remaining fans while heading into the tunnel at Barclays Center. More