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    Adrian Wojnarowski Auctions Old Phones to Raise Money for St. Bonaventure

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    Adrian Wojnarowski, the former king of the N.B.A. scoop at ESPN, is auctioning off personal items to raise money for his employer, St. Bonaventure University.Sports journalists can collect a lot of detritus: old ID cards, press credentials to get into big games, phones that stop working or become obsolete. Most of it winds up in the trash, unvalued and worthless.Unless it belongs to Adrian Wojnarowski.Wojnarowski, the basketball news-breaker who recently retired from ESPN, is auctioning his castoff items to benefit the men’s basketball program at St. Bonaventure University, where he now works as the team’s general manager.Want the credential that got Woj, as he has long been known, into the 2023 N.B.A. draft? As of Tuesday morning, the bidding was at $900. His ID badge for ESPN? That’s at $2,000 (and no, you can’t use it to actually get into the network’s headquarters).But the likely stars of the auction are the smartphones that buzzed in Wojnarowski’s pockets at all hours with texts and calls from N.B.A. owners, agents, coaches or others offering coveted scoops. The iPhone that was used to break the news of the huge Paul George trade in 2019 is at $1,500, while a different phone that he used to report the 2023 N.B.A. draft lottery is at $900.Dinner with Wojnarowski and a video call from him are also available. Bidding closes next Tuesday.Wojnarowski did not immediately respond to a request for comment through the university.Wojnarowski is now the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team’s general manager.Ryan Sun/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Did Adrian Wojnarowski Take a 99% Pay Cut? To Save the Team He Loves.

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      One Wednesday last month, Adrian Wojnarowski made the three-hour drive from his home in northern New Jersey to Pennsylvania to see his St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team play at Bucknell. Wojnarowski is the St. Bonaventure general manager, but until recently he made his very public living by breaking news stories about the N.B.A. and then talking about them on ESPN. He was recognized by the first person he saw at Bucknell, a school official who pronounced himself a “big fan.” More encounters followed. At halftime, he tried to catch up with a childhood friend who was attending the game. Their conversation proceeded fitfully, interrupted by strangers introducing themselves and asking for selfies. Wojnarowski was invariably obliging. “I’ve become his photographer,” the friend told me.By then, St. Bonaventure’s Bonnies were ahead, 38-16. The rout underway was not entirely unexpected. Though Bucknell’s undergraduate enrollment of 3,900 makes it twice as large as St. Bonaventure, the Bonnies play in the Atlantic 10, a more competitive conference than Bucknell’s Patriot League, which includes similarly sized schools like Lafayette and Holy Cross. A successful Atlantic 10 team should be able to win this matchup, even in Bucknell’s home gym.And St. Bonaventure is successful, especially considering its size, which limits everything from alumni fund-raising to the amenities it can afford to provide to students. Back in 1970, it reached the N.C.A.A.’s Final Four; of the 99 schools that have achieved this feat, it is the smallest. And since 2007, when Mark Schmidt became head coach, the team has won two regular-season titles and two conference tournaments.But in 2021, the N.C.A.A. abandoned most of its restrictions against compensation for student athletes. This has transformed college recruiting largely into a matter of how much a team and its outside supporters are willing to pay. In 2022, the Bonnies reached the semifinals of the postseason National Invitation Tournament by beating Colorado, Oklahoma and Virginia. Four of their five starters announced their intention to return. Then the offers of name, image and likeness payments started pouring in. Such payments, known as N.I.L., allow college athletes to make money from product endorsements, donations from wealthy alumni, even contributions from ordinary fans. Within days, those four starters were all gone, off to larger state schools whose teams are often highly ranked. “I’ve never seen a good team with bad players,” Schmidt muses now. “And in order to get good players, you need money.” That’s where Wojnarowski comes in.At his old job, the one that paid him $7.3 million annually, his mobile phone buzzed with texts from morning until deep into night. Some of them came from N.B.A. owners. Some came from general managers, head coaches or sources in the league office. Others came from college coaches or agents. Occasionally he would hear from one of basketball’s top players — Russell Westbrook, say, or Donovan Mitchell. Some texts were more important than others. When Wojnarowski was expecting an especially crucial one, a confirmation of a trade or a major free-agent signing, he wouldn’t leave his house or hotel room.For more than a decade, as an ESPN reporter and podcaster (and as a columnist at Yahoo before that), he was so determined to beat every other reporter to every bit of N.B.A. news that he made it a priority to take overnight flights because news usually doesn’t happen overnight. In recent years, as the pressure for him to break stories intensified, he stopped driving anywhere more than a few minutes away and relied on a car service — he didn’t want to be on a highway and risk losing an exclusive when a source had news to break. Whenever he had a scoop, he would post it on Twitter and Instagram for his millions of followers. Wojnarowski is universally referred to as Woj, and those postings became known among even casual basketball fans as Woj Bombs. Almost immediately, they would appear across the ESPN networks, featured on the crawl at the bottom of the screen: according to Woj … Woj reports … sources told ESPN’s Woj.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The N.C.A.A. Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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      The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The NCAA Agreed to Pay Players. It Won’t Call Them Employees.

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      The argument is the organization’s attempt to maintain the last vestiges of its amateur model and to prevent college athletes from collectively bargaining.The immediate takeaway from the landmark $2.8 billion settlement that the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences accepted on Thursday was that it cut straight at the heart of the organization’s cherished model of amateurism: Schools can now pay their athletes directly.But another bedrock principle remains intact, and maintaining it is likely to be a priority for the N.C.A.A.: that players who are paid by the universities are not employed by them, and therefore do not have the right to collectively bargain.Congress must “establish that our athletes are not employees, but students seeking college degrees,” John I. Jenkins, the president of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement when the agreement was announced.It is the N.C.A.A.’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of its amateur model, which for decades barred college athletes from being paid by schools or anyone else without risking their eligibility. That stance came under greater legal and political scrutiny in recent years, leading to the settlement, which still requires approval by a judge.On its face, the argument may seem peculiar. Over the past decade, public pressure and a series of court rulings — not to mention the reality that college athletics generated billions of dollars in annual revenue and that athletes received none of it — have forced the N.C.A.A. to unravel restrictions on player compensation. A California law that made it illegal to block college athletes from name, image and licensing, or N.I.L., deals paved the way for athletes to seek compensation, some of them receiving seven figures annually.At the same time, college sports have become an increasingly national enterprise. Regional rivalries and traditions have been tossed aside as schools have switched conference allegiances in pursuit of TV money. Individual conferences can now stretch from Palo Alto, Calif., to Chestnut Hill, Mass., meaning many athletes in a variety of sports are spending more time traveling to games and less time on campus.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth Players Are Employees Who Can Unionize, U.S. Official Says

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      A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board cleared the way for the collegiate men’s basketball team to hold a vote.A federal official said Monday that members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team were university employees, clearing a path for the team to take a vote that could make it the first unionized college sports program in the country.In a statement, the National Labor Relations Board’s regional director in Boston, Laura Sacks, said that because Dartmouth had “the right to control the work” of the team and because the team did that work “in exchange for compensation” like equipment and game tickets, the players were employees under the National Labor Relations Act.A date for the election on whether to unionize has not yet been set, and the result would need to be certified by the N.L.R.B. The university and the N.C.A.A. are expected to appeal the director’s decision.In September, all 15 players on the team’s varsity roster signed and filed a petition to the labor board to unionize with the Service Employees International Union. On Oct. 5, Dartmouth’s lawyers responded by arguing that the players did not have the right to collectively bargain because, as members of the Ivy League, they received no athletic scholarships and because the program lost money each year.The N.C.A.A. and its member schools have long resisted unionization attempts by college athletes, defending the student-athlete model that has come under fire by labor activists, judges and elected officials over the years.In 2014, the Northwestern football team led the highest-profile attempt by a college program to unionize, arguing that because the players were compensated through scholarships, they had the right to bargain collectively.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      N.C.A.A. Investigates Booster Club Funding for College Sports

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      The University of Tennessee’s football program is under investigation for recruiting violations involving a donor collective, signaling an effort to rein in the role of outside money in college sports.The N.C.A.A. is investigating the University of Tennessee’s football program for recruiting violations involving a group of outside donors, signaling an escalation of efforts to rein in the growing influence of money flooding into college sports, according to documents and people familiar with the case.The investigation is focused on Tennessee’s high-profile donor collective, a group of alumni and wealthy boosters who support the team by channeling payments and other benefits to players. The inquiry is looking at, among other things, the group’s role in flying a high-profile recruit to campus on a private jet while the football team was wooing him, one person familiar with the case said.Having the booster group pay for the trip by the recruit, Nico Iamaleava, now Tennessee’s starting quarterback, would be a violation of N.C.A.A. rules. The inquiry comes after the N.C.A.A. penalized Tennessee for earlier recruiting violations and signals the organization’s growing concern about the huge sums being injected into the nominally amateur world of college sports by donor collectives.The case could have profound implications for the direction of high-profile programs across the country, especially in football, where outside money raised and disbursed to players by collectives has reshaped the economics of the game. News of the investigation into Tennessee’s athletic program was first reported by Sports Illustrated.Officials at Tennessee are concerned that the investigation could result in a devastating blow to its football program, according to a person briefed on the matter. The program is already on probation for the earlier recruiting violations, and school officials are worried about the potential for the N.C.A.A. to take drastic action, like banning the team from postseason play and disqualifying players.Facing that possibility, the school has hired several law firms and is considering a range of legal options to stave off any consequences.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Stanford Golf Star Rose Zhang Is Ready for Her Professional Debut

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      Zhang’s career is likely to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, now that college athletes are allowed to make money.Not long before Rose Zhang clutched a microphone on Tuesday, Michelle Wie West laughingly made an observation: Zhang might have logged more weeks as the world’s No. 1 amateur women’s golfer than Wie West spent as an amateur, period.It was an exaggeration — even though Wie West became a professional at 15 years old and Zhang spent more than 140 weeks in the top spot — but it also wryly underscored how Zhang’s rise in women’s golf is playing out differently from how other ascending stars built their careers.In Zhang, who will make her professional debut this week at the Americas Open in Jersey City, N.J., women’s golf is getting the rare prodigy who has played for an American college. And Zhang’s career, however long it lasts and whatever victories it yields, is essentially certain to become a case study in athletic development, long-range planning and skillful marketing, especially now that college athletes are allowed to make money in ways that were forbidden as recently as two years ago.“I believe that if you’re not able to conquer one stage, then you won’t be able to go on to the next one and say it’s time for the next step,” Zhang, 20, said on Tuesday. “So I wanted to see how I fared in college golf, and it turned out well.”To put it mildly.Zhang’s victory in April at the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, where she posted a tournament-record score one day and broke it the next, let her complete women’s amateur golf’s version of the career Grand Slam since she had already won the U.S. Women’s Amateur, the U.S. Girls’ Junior and an individual N.C.A.A. title for Stanford.Zhang after winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur tournament.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother Stanford golfer, Tiger Woods, achieved a similar feat in the 1990s. But this month, Zhang added a second individual championship in N.C.A.A. play.Woods competed for Stanford in a wholly different time for college sports, a time when N.C.A.A. athletes were barred from selling their autographs or cutting endorsement deals. When Woods turned pro in 1996, the sponsorships promptly rained down on him. Zhang’s timeline has moved even faster: Wednesday is the first anniversary of the announcement that Adidas had signed her.The economic possibilities in college sports have lately enticed top athletes to pursue degrees and cultivate their talents while earning money and curbing the immediate allures of turning pro. Those possibilities had less of an effect on Zhang, who is from Irvine, Calif., and who chose to attend college before a wave of state laws pressured the N.C.A.A. to loosen its rules in 2021.But they could help shape women’s golf going forward, particularly if Zhang proves that the American college game is far from an athletic dead-end and that pre-prom professionalism is not the surest path to stardom. For some time, it has often seemed that way: Of the women ranked in the top 10 on Tuesday, only one, Lilia Vu, played N.C.A.A. golf (at U.C.L.A.).Representing Stanford, Zhang walked the course at the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s golf championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., this month.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesZhang, who plans to continue her Stanford studies but will no longer be eligible to play N.C.A.A. golf, believes that her stint on campus has hardly been time wasted. She said in April that her tenure as a college athlete had been “such an important stage for me” because she craved figuring “out who I really was and my independence.”She added: “It really allowed me to get my own space and really understand what I’m about, and that allows me to improve on my golf game because I realize that a profession is a profession but yourself is also something that you need to work on.”Her professional prospects had not been far from mind, though. She recalled Tuesday that she told her Stanford coach from the beginning that she was aiming to become a professional, even if her schedule for doing so was hazy.In her first season at Stanford, she said, she did not consider professional golf at all. As her sophomore year progressed, she said, it “felt like it was time for the next stage.”“I feel like right now the mind-set is also very simple: try to adjust as much as possible to tour life and figure out what it means to be a professional, what I want to do out here,” said Zhang, already adorned with the logos of Adidas, Callaway, Delta Air Lines and East West Bank. “I feel like I have a lot of time to experiment what I want to do, so that’s kind of the mind-set that I have going throughout my career and even going forward.”Zhang hitting from the fairway during the final round of the N.C.A.A. women’s golf championships.Matt York/Associated PressZhang is entering the professional ranks while women’s golf has no shortage of elite players. Nelly Korda, the Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games, has routinely lurked around the top of leaderboards. Lydia Ko, who in 2015 became the youngest person to reach the world’s No. 1 ranking in professional golf, remains such a dependable power and brilliant player that she was the L.P.G.A.’s money leader in 2022. Minjee Lee has won a major in each of the last two years, and Jin Young Ko returned to the top of the women’s golf ranking this month when she edged Lee in a playoff at the Founders Cup.Zhang, though, may be the player facing the greatest public pressure since Wie West became a professional almost two decades ago. (Wie West will step back from competitive golf after this summer’s U.S. Women’s Open.) Zhang insisted Tuesday that she did not feel particularly vulnerable to expectations, which she tries to perceive as more of a compliment — “They think I have the ability to go out there and win every single time” — than a demand.“Growing up, my family and the people around me have given me high expectations for what I should do as a person, not just as a competitor or a golf player, so I kind of fall back toward those morals and who I am as an individual,” she said. “That allows me to go out there on the golf course and think: ‘OK, today is another round of golf. I’m going to need to do what I need to do on the golf course. If it doesn’t work out, I still have a lot of things going for me in life.’”Zhang celebrated with her Stanford teammates after winning the NCAA women’s golf championships.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAfter the inaugural Americas Open, which will be contested at Liberty National Golf Club, Zhang is expected to compete in the events that make up the rest of the year’s majors circuit for women’s golf. The Women’s P.G.A. Championship will be played at Baltusrol in June, followed by the U.S. Women’s Open at Pebble Beach in July, when the Evian Championship will also be held. The Women’s British Open, scheduled for August at Walton Heath, rounds out the majors.Zhang played in three majors last year, with her best finish a tie for 28th at the Women’s British Open. (She did not enter this year’s Chevron Championship, where she tied for 11th in 2020, and instead played for, and won, the Pac-12 Conference’s individual championship.)She does not, she said, have any short-term expectations for performance. This year is about finding her way — and then letting the world watch to see if her way can work. More

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      WNBA Draft: Aliyah Boston Goes No. 1 to Indiana Fever

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      Boston, a senior forward from the University of South Carolina, was the second-ever top pick from her college.When Aliyah Boston was 12 years old, she took a 1,700-mile journey with her sister to their aunt’s home in Massachusetts from the U.S. Virgin Islands, hoping to become a good enough basketball player to go to college for free and maybe one day make it to the W.N.B.A.Boston fulfilled that dream on Monday night at Spring Studios in New York when the Indiana Fever selected her with the first pick in the W.N.B.A. draft. Boston is the University of South Carolina’s second-ever No. 1 pick in the draft; A’ja Wilson was the first, in 2018.The Minnesota Lynx selected Diamond Miller, a guard from the University of Maryland, with the No. 2 overall pick. At No. 3, the Dallas Wings chose Maddy Siegrist, a forward from Villanova University.The Wings, who also had the fifth pick, shook up the night by trading future draft selections to the Washington Mystics for the fourth pick, Iowa State center Stephanie Soares. They took Connecticut guard Lou Lopez Sénéchal with the next pick.Boston’s selection didn’t come as a surprise. She had been linked with the Fever since they landed the first pick at the draft lottery in November. Boston, a forward, will join a former South Carolina teammate, guard Destanni Henderson, in Indiana.Henderson was in the audience recording on a phone and before Boston headed into a news conference they embraced and celebrated loudly.“She was like, ‘We’re reunited and we’re teammates again,’ and I was like, ‘And it feels so good,’ you know that song?” Boston said before singing her version of the song “Reunited” by the group Peaches & Herb.South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley, center, poses with Gamecocks players who were drafted on Monday, left to right: Laeticia Amihere, Aliyah Boston, Zia Cooke and Brea Beal.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesWith Henderson in 2021-22, Boston had the best statistical season of her college career, ending it with a national championship win over Connecticut. Boston and Henderson will look to recreate that winning chemistry for the Fever, who have been something of a punching bag for the rest of the league.Indiana has not made the playoffs since 2016 and has finished with the league’s worst record in the past two seasons. Last season, the Fever finished with five wins; the second-worst team, the Los Angeles Sparks, had 13.“She’s going to have an immediate impact on this league,” Fever General Manager Lin Dunn said at a predraft news conference on Thursday. “And I’m just thankful — I think we all are — that she opted to come into the draft.”It was a South Carolina-laden first round as forward Laeticia Amihere was selected eighth by the Atlanta Dream, and guard Zia Cooke was taken 10th by the Sparks. Brea Beal, who anchored South Carolina’s perimeter defense, was selected by the Minnesota Lynx at No. 24. Alexis Morris, the star Louisiana State guard who helped the Tigers win their first championship just over a week ago, was selected by the Connecticut Sun with the 22nd pick.Boston had been a top player in college basketball since she arrived in South Carolina in 2019. She is a post-scoring, shot-blocking forward who anchored the Gamecocks as they amassed a 129-9 record over her four seasons. Boston was the consensus national player of the year in 2022 and won the Naismith Award for the defensive player of the year in each of her final two seasons.Alexis Morris, who won the N.C.A.A. championship with Louisiana State this month, was drafted by the Connecticut Sun in the second round.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesIn her final year, Boston led South Carolina to its first undefeated regular season in program history. Boston’s numbers were down, partly because of South Carolina’s depth and a defensive strategy used by many opponents that made it difficult for her to get loose. The Gamecocks averaged the most bench points per game in Division I in the 2022-23 season with 36.1, almost 5 points per game more than the next closest team.With Henderson gone, South Carolina never found a reliable scoring guard next to Cooke. So all season, teams sagged off the other guards, daring them to shoot and helping in the paint to deny Boston the ball.That’s a strategy teams can’t employ in the W.N.B.A., because of both the scoring ability of professional guards and the league’s defensive three-second rule, which forbids defenders from standing in the paint for longer than three seconds unless they are within an arm’s length of an offensive player they’re guarding. So Boston will likely see much more one-on-one defense and space to roam than she had over her college career.“I’m really excited for that type of spacing,” Boston said in a recent interview. “Because I think it just shows everyone how they’re able to, you know, just use their talent and go to work.”For that reason, South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley encouraged Boston to enter the draft this year, after the team lost to Iowa in the Final Four.“There are defenses that are played against her that won’t allow her to play her game. And then it’s hard to officiate that,” Staley said.Staley added: “She’s meant everything to our program. She has been the cornerstone of our program for the past four years. She elevated us. She raised the standard of how to approach basketball. She’s never had a bad day.”Boston still had a year of eligibility remaining, the extra year granted to athletes by the N.C.A.A. due to the coronavirus pandemic. She likely would have been in the conversation for player of the year again, and South Carolina would have been a favorite to win the national title with her back.But perhaps the most significant incentives to stay were the earnings she could have made in college, thanks to rules that allow athletes to make money from their name, image and likeness.Maryland’s Diamond Miller was the No. 2 draft pick, by the Minnesota Lynx.Adam Hunger/Associated PressMany women’s basketball players, like Boston, can make more money from collectives and endorsements as college athletes than they can earn from W.N.B.A. salaries alone; the base pay for rookies this season will range from $62,285 to $74,305, depending on the draft round.That earning potential likely played a role in the decisions of the stars who weren’t at the draft this year. Several eligible players who may have been first-round picks opted to return to college, such as UConn’s Paige Bueckers, Stanford’s Cameron Brink, Virginia Tech’s Elizabeth Kitley, Indiana’s Mackenzie Holmes and U.C.L.A.’s Charisma Osborne. (The W.N.B.A. requires players from the United States to turn 22 years old in the calendar year of the draft.)That makes next year’s draft all the more exciting. It could be loaded with talent: L.S.U.’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, the two stars who headlined the Division I women’s tournament with their scoring and showmanship, will be eligible. (For her part, Reese said on a podcast that she is in “no rush” to go to the W.N.B.A. because she is making more than some top players in the pro league.)Still, there are only 12 teams and 144 roster spots in the W.N.B.A. Only 36 players are picked in the draft, and only about half of those players typically make an opening day roster. And without a developmental league like the N.B.A.’s G League, some of the best basketball players end up going overseas to play professionally.“Our top players will not make a pro team,” Arizona Coach Adia Barnes said, adding: “You’re competing against, like, 30-year-old women. It’s hard. It’s competitive.”Expansion seems like it could be an easy fix to this issue, but W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has cited financial concerns for why it’s not possible right now. Engelbert said in February that the league was not in a rush to add new teams but would like to see at least two new teams added in two to four years.“I’m not going to give a timetable,” Engelbert said on Monday night, adding: “The last thing we want to do is bring new owners in that are going to fail.”One of the league’s biggest issues has been how teams travel. W.N.B.A. players fly commercial, while most major college programs fly charter. Ahead of Monday night’s draft, the league announced it would offer charter flights for all postseason games and select regular-season games where teams have back-to-back games.“We intend to do more,” Engelbert said, adding: “We do need some patience and time to build it so that we feel comfortable funding something more substantial as we get into our ensuing years.” More

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      N.B.A. Draft Preview: A Deep Field Could Yield Surprise Stars

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      Fans may have heard of Chet Holmgren and Shaedon Sharpe, but others are ready for their shot: “I knew if I got good enough, the N.B.A. would find me,” one said.When the Orlando Magic hand their draft card to N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver, on Thursday night at Barclays Center, they’ll settle a debate that has raged in draft circles for the better part of a year: Who should be the No. 1 pick?The front-runner is Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren, a rail-thin but nail-tough seven-footer who can shoot, dribble, pass and defend with aplomb. But there are equally strong cases to be made for the Auburn big man Jabari Smith, who spent this past season sinking seemingly impossible shots, and for Duke’s Paolo Banchero, a creative shotmaker who is as polished in the paint as he is on the perimeter.“All three guys are incredibly talented,” said Jonathan Givony, founder of the scouting service DraftExpress an N.B.A. draft analyst at ESPN. “This draft has really great players at the top and really good depth, too.”Here are five more prospects to know.Nikola Jovic doesn’t mind being compared to Nikola Jokic. After all, Jokic is a two-time most valuable player, he said.Darko Vojinovic/Associated PressNikola Jovic6-foot-11, 223 pounds, forward, Mega Mozzart (Serbia)People ask Nikola Jovic about Nikola Jokic all the time. And it makes sense. Jovic and the Denver Nuggets star have quite a bit in common: They’re both Serbian big men who played for the same club, Mega Mozzart, and only a single letter separates their last names. But the comparison doesn’t bother Jovic, who is expected to be the first international player taken on Thursday.“People bring that up all the time,” he said. “I’m really cool with that. I think it’s pretty funny also because the chances of something like that happening are really low. At the same time, I feel good because people are comparing me to a two-time league M.V.P.”As a boy, Jovic wanted to be a professional water polo player. He spent his summers with his mother in Montenegro and loved swimming in the Adriatic Sea. When he was 13, his father introduced him to basketball. What started as a backyard hobby soon became an obsession and a profession. “I was getting bigger and bigger,” Jovic said, “and it was pretty easy to see that basketball would be a better choice than water polo.”Although many N.B.A. teams track European stars from their early teenage years, Jovic didn’t become a big name on draft boards until he broke out at the Adidas Next Generation Tournament in Belgrade in March 2021. Offensively, he could develop into a floor-spacing 4 who can shoot 3s, lead fast breaks and make smart passes. He said he is willing to remain in Europe after being drafted, but he hopes to land with a team that wants him to play right away.“Even if I need to play in the G League, that’s cool,” he said, referring to the N.B.A.’s developmental league. “But right now, I think the perfect fit for me is the N.B.A.”Dominick Barlow has gone from overlooked three-star prospect to a potential first-round pick.Kyle Hess/Overtime Elite, via Associated PressDominick Barlow6-foot-9, 221 pounds, forward, Overtime EliteWhen N.B.A. evaluators visited Overtime Elite this year, it was with an eye toward the future. The start-up league has potential top-10 players in the 2023 and 2024 drafts. But one player from the 2022 draft class took advantage of all that extra scouting attention and has worked his way from being an unheralded 3-star high school prospect to a potential first-round draft pick: Dominick Barlow.“The fact that this was OTE’s first year intrigued scouts,” Barlow, 19, said. “And once the scouts were in the building, they were able to see what I could do.”Barlow played for Dumont High School, a small public high school in Dumont, N.J. He didn’t land with a powerhouse Amateur Athletic Union program until the summer before his senior year, when a coach for the New York Renaissance spotted him playing at a public park. He surprised most basketball insiders in September when he left a prep program and declined several high-major offers to sign with Overtime Elite. It offers a six-figure salary to boys’ and men’s basketball players who are at least in their junior year of high school.Barlow hopes his story inspires other overlooked players to keep working. “I came in as a 3-star kid, and I’m leaving as an N.B.A. draft pick. Some 5-star kids struggle with getting to the N.B.A. one year after high school,” he said.Keegan Murray, who played for Iowa, was described as the “most productive player in college basketball this year.”Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressKeegan Murray6-foot-8, 225 pounds, forward, IowaWhen Keegan and Kris Murray were going through the recruiting process for college basketball, the twin brothers told every coach that they weren’t a package deal. Their father, Kenyon, had played college basketball at Iowa in the early 1990s, and he encouraged them to each find their own path.Their father’s faith and knowledge helped the brothers remain buoyant even when they ended their high school careers with just one scholarship offer, to Western Illinois, a Summit League school that has never been to the Division I N.C.A.A. tournament.“Having a D-I player be your coach and teach you everything and guide you through the recruiting process is really helpful,” Keegan, 21, said of his father, who was an assistant on his high school team in Iowa. “He told us we were going to be pros, and we believed him.”After declining the Western Illinois offer and decamping to Florida for a year at a prep school, Keegan and Kris signed with their father’s alma mater, Iowa. Keegan showed remarkable efficiency as a freshman and started garnering N.B.A. draft buzz, but he wasn’t considered a top-flight talent until this past season. As a sophomore, Murray was the top scorer among Power 5 conference players, he had the second most rebounds in the Big Ten, and he shot 55.4 percent from the field and a solid 39.8 percent from 3.“He was the most productive player in college basketball this year,” Givony said, adding that he was good in transition and on defense. “Everybody’s looking for a player like him.”Keegan is projected to be a top-five pick, while Kris has decided to return to Iowa for another season. “Thinking about where I was three years ago and where I am today is surreal,” Keegan said. “I didn’t always know where or when all this hard work would pay off, but I knew it would pay off eventually.”Ryan Rollins, in blue, who played for the University of Toledo, is looking to follow the path of other mid-major players, like Ja Morant, to the N.B.A.Al Goldis/Associated PressRyan Rollins6-foot-3, 179 pounds, guard, ToledoRyan Rollins has heard people say that he should have returned to the University of Toledo for his junior season. With another year of experience, he would project as a likely first-round pick in 2023. But Rollins rejects that idea. He doesn’t see any reason to wait.“I feel like I’m one of the better players in the draft,” Rollins said. “If I don’t get picked first round, that’s fine. In the long run, I’m going to be very good for a very long time in this league. Whenever and wherever I end up going, I’ll be proud to be there.”A Detroit native, Rollins played for a prominent A.A.U. program, the Family. But the stacked roster, combined with some nagging injuries and his decision to commit to college early, kept him under the recruiting radar. “I always had the mind-set that I was where I was for a reason,” he said. “I kept working, kept trying to perfect my craft. I didn’t worry about the politics of basketball. I knew if I got good enough, the N.B.A. would find me.”Over two seasons at Toledo, he emerged as a mid-major showstopper, with a smooth handle, fluid footwork and a deadly midrange game. Now he’s likely to be a second-round pick with the potential to sneak into the first round. But he’s more worried about what he does when he arrives in the N.B.A. He hopes he can be the next mid-major player to become a superstar.He’s inspired by former mid-major players who are in the N.B.A., such as Ja Morant (Murray State), Damian Lillard (Weber State) and CJ McCollum (Lehigh University).“They went to small schools but have been able to make names for themselves,” Rollins said. “I feel like I’m next.”Shaedon Sharpe is expected to be a top-10 pick, even though he hasn’t played competitively in almost a year.Todd Kirkland/Getty ImagesShaedon Sharpe6-foot-5, 198 pounds, guard, KentuckyThere is no player more mysterious in the 2022 draft than Shaedon Sharpe. Although he’s listed as a Kentucky prospect, Sharpe never suited up for the Wildcats. In fact, he hasn’t played in a competitive basketball game in almost a year.The Ontario, Canada, native moved to Kansas to play for Sunrise Christian Academy in his sophomore year of high school, then transferred to Arizona’s Dream City Christian in 2020 for his junior season, when he was unranked in the class of 2022. Then a dominant performance with the UPlay Canada team in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League last summer made everyone take notice. The tournament is often a proving ground for future N.B.A. stars, and Sharpe averaged 22.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists in 28.3 minutes per game over 12 games.Sharpe graduated from high school a year early and enrolled at Kentucky this spring. Although there were rumors that he would join the team on the court, or return for the 2022-23 season, he has instead entered the N.B.A. draft. And there’s good reason: He will almost certainly be taken in the top 10.“In terms of physical ability and sheer talent, it’s all there,” Givony said. “He’s a dynamic shot maker, an aggressive defender, a smart passer.”N.B.A. teams haven’t been able to see much from him, but his 6-foot-11 wingspan, explosive athleticism and polished shooting stroke could have most N.B.A. teams outside of the top five ready to take the risk. More