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

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

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      Rucker Park, a Basketball Mecca, Gets New Life

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      As a child, Michele Roberts occasionally found herself at Holcombe Rucker Park when her older brothers, who were supposed to be babysitting her at home in the South Bronx, would take her to Harlem instead.Roberts could not see over the heads of those who stacked the park’s sidelines shoulder-to-shoulder. But she soaked in the excitement and energy from the crowd, the laughter from the bellies, the yelling from the lungs, in what amounted to one large block party at West 155th Street and what was then known just as Eighth Avenue, with basketball as the eternal soundtrack.“If you grew up in New York probably ever, but certainly in the ’60s and ’70s when I grew up, you could not help but understand what the Rucker meant to New York basketball,” said Roberts, 63, now the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union.Over generations, the asphalt court honed its reputation as a siren calling and name-making mecca for soon-to-be N.B.A. legends like Wilt Chamberlain, Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Julius Erving, who went by the nickname the Claw at the park long before he was known as Dr. J. They mixed with playground legends whose colorful nicknames matched their outsize games: Earl “the Goat” Manigault, Herman “the Helicopter” Knowings, “Jumpin’” Jackie Jackson and Pee Wee Kirkland.“If you’re a hooper, your dream was to play at that park,” said Corey Williams, who goes by the nickname Homicide and turned impressive performances at the Rucker and other playgrounds into a lengthy international professional career. “Everybody wanted it.”Roberts visited Rucker Park after moving back to New York when she became the executive director of the players’ union in 2014.She wondered if her memories had deceived her into a sunny nostalgia. Rucker Park, in her estimation, looked decrepit, with the blacktop cracked and uneven and the bleachers in disarray.Teams play at Rucker Park during the summer before renovations.“The notion that the park would be in any state of disrepair is a heartbreaker to me,” she said.When Roberts asked members of the players’ union’s executive committee if they had interest in renovating the Greg Marius Court at Rucker Park, the players asked how soon they could begin.In August, the players’ union announced it had joined with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, among others, to give the court a substantial face-lift that would cost $520,000 and to create a recreation position for Rucker Park and the nearby Jackie Robinson Recreation Center.Crews worked on the court starting in August, leveling the asphalt and installing black bleachers, a state-of-the-art scoreboard and N.B.A. custom baskets donated by Spalding. The new black-and-gold court features a mural designed by ASAP Ferg, an artist and Harlem native, and produced by Set Free Richardson, an artist and filmmaker.The court formally reopened on Saturday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, youth basketball clinics and games. Williams, now a commentator for the Australian National Basketball League, served as the M.C. for the reopening, which was attended by Erving, Kirkland, Nate Archibald and a number of others who had forged their reputations on the court.“It’s something that needs to be preserved,” Williams said. “You treat Rucker Park like you treat Central Park, the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty. The red tour buses come to Harlem and go to that park. It’s iconic. It’s a landmark in New York City. It’s a staple. That is the Madison Square Garden of street basketball courts in the world.”The goal of the players’ union is to restore the park as a community asset and attract N.B.A. players.Not long ago, players like Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson and Vince Carter made the pilgrimage to West 155th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard to a court that is tiny in area, but large in cultural and historical significance.“It’s paved the way for so many people,” Williams said. “It’s gotten people out of trouble. Crime stopped for four hours, four days a week in that area. It’s no secret it’s across the street from one of the most dangerous housing projects in New York City, the Polo Grounds. But when those games were on, everybody stopped.”Roberts said that the renovation would also extend the legacies of those who brought fame to the park and court.“The basketball players, the kids that are aspiring to be in the N.B.A. or just love the game who may live in the vicinity of the park and may not fully appreciate its history, and if that’s the case, then we hope that this project will revive the history,” she said. “We’ll be telling the history.”Holcombe Rucker, a playground director, established a youth basketball league and summer tournament nearly 70 years ago to keep children away from temptation even as others warned him to disregard a sport designed for the winter.Crews spent about two months renovating. Michele Roberts, below, the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union, checked in on the progress.Rucker mentored children, building a program from scratch, always keeping his busy schedule in his pocket. As his tournament gained in popularity and the Rucker League transformed into a summer pro-am, Rucker managed his connections to secure hundreds of college scholarships for the teenagers he viewed as students before athletes.He died of cancer in 1965 before he turned 40. The park was renamed after him as the Holcombe Rucker Playground in 1974. It’s commonly referred to as Rucker Park or just the Rucker.Chris Rucker, Holcombe Rucker’s grandson, said that “the park is a symbol and reference point to what my grandfather did and what he accomplished over the years, so without a basketball court in good working order, the legacy wouldn’t be complete.”He added, “Rucker Park is as much a part of the Harlem community as the Apollo Theater.”By the 1980s, N.B.A. players had mostly stopped playing at Rucker Park out of fear of risking their increasingly lucrative contracts.Greg Marius, a former hip-hop artist, revitalized the atmosphere by starting the Entertainers Basketball Classic in 1982. Soon, he invited pros back, enlivening the experience with the addition of bombastic play-by-play callers, booming hip-hop soundtracks and corporate sponsors.Marius died at 59 in 2017. That June, Mayor Bill de Blasio named Rucker Park’s basketball court the Greg Marius Court.Stacey Marius, Greg’s sister, said that her brother “had this vision of bringing his love for hip-hop and basketball and getting them together and having tournaments, but in a place where it was a high-profile tournament that everybody could enjoy.”Some believed that part of the purity Rucker had striven for suffered when the park was commercialized. But the stars returned, and not just on the court. Former President Bill Clinton once stopped by to watch the action. Hip-hop luminaries like Fat Joe and Diddy backed teams.“You come in that park, and while the tournament is on, you might be able to see any star,” said Gus Wells, the chief executive of Entertainers 155, which operates the street ball tournament. “You’ll see N.B.A. players playing out there. You will see a celebrity sitting in the audience out there. And the biggest thing is it’s for free. You can’t get that for free basically nowhere else like that.”N.B.A. players learned through the decades that they could not just own the court by reputation alone. Bryant, the former Los Angeles Lakers superstar who died last year, earned both cheers and jeers from a lively crowd during his 2002 appearance.Tim Gittens, a Harlem native, earned his nickname — Headache — at the park and is now an assistant coach for the W.N.B.A.’s Dallas Wings.“All these guys came down there because it was basically mano a mano,” he said, “with you against somebody, not being told how to run a set, but your best skill against my best skill, and your knowledge against my knowledge, on this even playing field where the crowd can become an opponent too.”Julius Erving and the rappers Fat Joe and ASAP Ferg spoke at the park’s reopening after renovations.He added, “You was pushed into a different level of playing because you didn’t want to fail in front of all of these people, and you want them to see you perform, because it gave you so much more energy and more life, and then your legend grew.”Wells recalled the time Carter, who recently retired after a 22-year N.B.A. career, matched against Adrian Walton, better known as Whole Lotta Game. “He was shocked that a little 18-year-old kid was giving it to him like that,” Wells said. “He had to tie his sneakers a little tighter.”The former N.B.A. All-Star Baron Davis made sure to get some shots up on the court the evening before he played at Rucker Park, Gittens said.Wells recalled that in 2011, Kevin Durant made an appearance at Rucker Park during the N.B.A.’s lockout and amassed 66 points in a memorable performance.“You would think this was video for a movie, because every time he came down, they made sure he got the ball, and he was just firing it from way beyond the 3-point line,” Wells said. “It wasn’t like he was off. It was automatic.”Jamar Jones, whose nickname is Papa, was anticipating playing on the renovated court after its reopening Saturday. He has witnessed players like Bryant, Durant and Klay Thompson performing there.For Jones, a 16-year-old resident of Harlem, it’s still just his home park, the one he has played at ever since he can remember. The renovation has meaning for him beyond just the return of celebrities and N.B.A. players.He is looking forward to sharpening his game on a functional court.“It was kind of tough, because one side of the court was uneven, so if you would run downhill, one side would be deeper than the other,” Jones said. “It would be hard to shoot if you would go to the corner.”He added, “So I’m excited.”Wells is hopeful that the renewed interest in Rucker Park will restore the court’s allure.In recent years, Wells said, some summer tournaments that used to come to the Harlem court have started to go elsewhere.“It’s not just the renovation,” Wells said. “It’s all the relationships that will hopefully come back and support the brands that’s out there and the tournament’s that’s out there, and that will help bring back the mystique of what it was and what it is. It needs the relationships and the connections with other brands and the support. It needs to have the support that we used to have.”That mystique may be gone. But Rucker Park has always been home to true ballers who forge their identities, as Williams said.“We don’t care who you are,” he said. “We don’t care what you do. We don’t care where you from. We don’t care about your accolades and credibility in the N.B.A. It’s just us today in the park. That’s why that park is special. We don’t come there giving you roses. You got to earn it. Many players came to that park and got booed. Trust me. Many of them.” 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