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      This Isn’t Who the Lakers Are Supposed to Be. Right?

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      The Lakers have long been seen as a glamour franchise of big names and big wins. LeBron James is dominating. But the wins have been much harder to come by, for a while.LOS ANGELES — LeBron James fidgeted as he answered questions after a second consecutive frustrating Lakers loss in which he thought the referees had missed a potential game-altering foul call.He was terse and dismissed a question about scoring his 38,000th career point in the N.B.A., something only he and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have done. He was asked if he thought much about what the Lakers’ many losses in recent seasons meant to the franchise.“No,” James said. Then he turned and sped out of the locker room, into a rainy Los Angeles night.The gloom outside reflected the mood in the building.For decades, the Lakers defined themselves as one of the N.B.A.’s glamour franchises — a place the biggest stars went to play, win championships and achieve basketball immortality. Making the playoffs was an expectation, not an accomplishment.Then 10 years ago, two seismic events shook the franchise. On Feb. 18, 2013, Jerry Buss, who bought and revitalized the Lakers in 1979, died at age 80, leaving the franchise to a trust controlled by his six children, some of whom would wrestle for control of the team. Less than two months later, as he tried to drag the Lakers into the playoffs, Kobe Bryant tore an Achilles’ tendon, the first in a string of injuries that would spell the end of his 20-year career.Since then, the Lakers have gone through several discordant phases, from Bryant’s return and retirement to chaos in the executive ranks to a championship in 2020 that seemed proof of purple-and-gold exceptionalism, no matter the obstacles.But new obstacles have the Lakers once again facing the question of whether the excellence they spent decades building can return. For the second year in a row, James, 38, is having to produce herculean efforts to try to pull his injury-plagued team out of the bottom of the Western Conference standings.LeBron James is averaging nearly 30 points a game at the age of 38 as he tries to power the injured and struggling Lakers to the playoffs.Jae C. Hong/Associated Press“We’re going to figure this thing out,” said Lakers Coach Darvin Ham, the team’s fifth in the past 10 years. “We’ll definitely figure this thing out.”‘Kobe realized that he could not win’If success is measured by championships, the Lakers have still been one of the top teams in the N.B.A. during the past decade. They are one of the six teams to have won championships since the 2012-13 season.Broadening the measure to playoff or regular-season success, the Lakers become less impressive. With only two playoff appearances since the 2012-13 season, the Lakers are in the bottom third of the league. Only two teams have been to the playoffs fewer times in that span — the Knicks (once) and the Sacramento Kings (none).By contrast, between 1960-61, the team’s first season in Los Angeles after moving from Minnesota, and 2012-13, the Lakers had missed the playoffs just four times.Frank Vogel coached the Lakers to their only two recent playoff appearances, guiding them to the championship in 2020 then a first-round loss in 2021. The Lakers fired him in April after they missed the playoffs.Even though injuries and roster construction played major roles in the Lakers’ struggles in the 2021-22 season, Vogel became a casualty of heightened expectations with James on board. James’s arrival as a free agent in July 2018 marked the first time since Bryant retired two years earlier that the Lakers had a transcendent star.Bryant had spent his whole career with the Lakers and won five championships. So even after his Achilles’ tendon injury, the Lakers rewarded him with a two-year contract extension worth $48.5 million, giving him the highest salary in the league at the time. They were confident that he deserved it no matter what happened next.To announce Bryant’s return from injury in late 2013, the Lakers created a video with dramatic music and an image of his jersey being battered by weather until a lightning bolt finally tore it. The video closes with the jersey having been mended by unseen means and with the words: “The Legend Continues.”Bryant returned for six games in December, then fractured his knee and missed the rest of the 2013-14 season as the Lakers won just 27 games. He missed most of the next season as the team won only 21 games.“At some point, I think it’s obvious to everyone that Kobe realized that he could not win,” said Gary Vitti, who was the Lakers’ head athletic trainer for decades until Bryant retired. “And once he realized he couldn’t win, then a lot of the stress and the pressure sort of came off him and he really started having fun and being a lot happier around the game and his teammates.”Kobe Bryant, who died in 2020, spent his entire 20-year career with the Lakers, though the final few seasons were rough. He scored 60 points in his final game in April 2016.Harry How/Getty ImagesOpposing fans feted him everywhere he went. They cheered the first shot he made, even if it took him a while to get there. Coach Byron Scott, a former Lakers guard, led the team during Bryant’s loss-filled farewell tour, a franchise-low 17-win season.“Losing — it’s horrible,” Vitti said. “But if you put it all in the context, if you’re Kobe, you know, basically Kobe could do whatever he wanted out there. Byron took over and kind of fell on his sword for the team. He said, let’s send Kobe out the way he wants to go.”Said Metta Sandiford-Artest, who played for the Lakers on their 2010 championship team and again from 2015-17: “At that point, you just wanted to make it comfortable for Kobe. That’s it. Nothing else really matters at that point.” He added: “He deserved it.”‘Pieces for the future’All the losing gave the Lakers enviable draft positioning.With picks earned by their records in the final few years of Bryant’s career, the Lakers drafted or acquired several promising young players, like Julius Randle, Jordan Clarkson, D’Angelo Russell, Larry Nance Jr., Brandon Ingram and Ivica Zubac.Randle, Clarkson, Russell and Nance have said they learned from Bryant’s example. But his star power was such that they had to wait until he retired in April 2016 for the franchise to focus on their development.“It felt like a career-beginning training camp because it definitely was not the pieces at the time you needed to win,” Sandiford-Artest said. “There was more, you know, pieces for the future.”Those players would not be part of their future, except as trade chips to build the championship roster.In the gap between Bryant and James, Jeanie Buss, the controlling owner, overhauled the front office and thwarted a coup attempt by her older brothers as the team’s losses — and external criticism — mounted.In the summer of 2017, the Lakers signed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who is represented by James’s agent and close friend, Rich Paul. That gave Paul an inside look at the organization a year before James became a free agent.Paul knew the situation wasn’t perfect, but few teams are. He advised James that signing with the Lakers could work, in part out of trust in Buss. James chose the Lakers and suddenly the drama of the past few seasons didn’t seem to matter.After missing the playoffs in James’s first season, when he dealt with a groin injury, the Lakers tried again. Magic Johnson, whom Buss had hired to run basketball operations and who had helped to recruit James, abruptly stepped down before the last game of the 2018-19 season. They traded several young players and draft picks to the New Orleans Pelicans for another Paul client: Anthony Davis. Rob Pelinka, the team’s vice president of basketball operations, said he consulted with James and Davis as he built the rest of the roster.The two stars were electrifying together. The rest of the team fit perfectly and charged through the coronavirus pandemic-interrupted season. When Bryant died suddenly in a helicopter crash in January 2020, James became the public face of the organization’s grief.Months later, James led the Lakers to the franchise’s 17th championship. Buss felt vindicated against those who had questioned her leadership.Jeanie Buss, the Lakers’ controlling owner, has faced criticism as the team has struggled. She oversaw the franchise’s 17th championship run, in 2020.Tracy Nguyen for The New York TimesOnstage as the team celebrated the victory, James enveloped Buss in a long embrace. He told her they had accomplished what they set out to do.“I think the hug for that long a time was to really let it soak in,” Buss told the Los Angeles Times at the time. “He’s won several championships now, and he knows that those moments are to be cherished and to be recognized.”But it was only one championship. They would soon tumble from their pedestal.‘Things are going to get right’This season is Ham’s first season with the Lakers, and it began disastrously.The team lost its first five games, and 10 of its first 12. Ham benched Russell Westbrook in October after three starts. Westbrook had struggled in his first season in Los Angeles last year.James has been a bright spot. In his 20th season, he has been playing like he is still in his 20s. He’s had trouble enjoying the chase for Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record as losses and injuries have piled up this season.Ham has remained optimistic.“I get disappointed, but I don’t get discouraged or down on myself or the team,” he said in an interview. “Yeah, there’s moments in games we should have won, or different moments we should have played better, but at the end of the day working in the N.B.A. for one of the most, if not the most storied franchise, having a lot of great people I get to work with, great people I’m working for. It’s been fun.”The Lakers lack depth, but there is evidence lately that, with the right additions, they can contend for a championship if they have Davis, who had been playing like a candidate for the league’s Most Valuable Player Award before his foot injury in mid-December. The Lakers went on a five-game winning streak starting Dec. 30 and recently they nearly beat two contenders — the Mavericks and the 76ers.Lakers guard Russell Westbrook, left, has had a rocky tenure in Los Angeles, but has found success coming off the bench this year. Coach Darvin Ham, right, pulled Westbrook from the starting lineup after three games.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressThe trading deadline is Feb. 9, giving the Lakers until then to make a major move to get back on the championship track. But all of the trades of the last few years, particularly those for Davis and Westbrook, have left them with little flexibility and salary-cap space. They can’t trade any of their first-round picks until the 2027 selection, and have been reluctant to lose more draft assets.Ham said he has felt support from Pelinka and Buss, who signed Pelinka to a multiyear extension last year despite the team’s struggles. After a five-game road trip from Christmas to Jan. 2, Ham and Pelinka went to Buss’s office.“She gave me a big hug and told me: ‘Hang in there, you’re doing a phenomenal job and things are going to get right. We’re going to start winning consistently, but Darvin, we’re totally happy with what you’re doing and you and your staff are doing an excellent job,’” Ham said. “It was cool. It was really thoughtful.”Ham said the mood when he sees both Buss and Pelinka is light and full of smiles.“It’s not like a lack of an awareness, but just a gratefulness, a thankfulness to be in this together,” Ham said.He is being afforded patience, at least for now. More

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      Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert Talks, Criticism, Covid and Donovan Mitchell

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      Gobert had a dominant run in Utah, but now he and the Minnesota Timberwolves are struggling to find their fit together. He hears the chatter — and ignores it.Rudy Gobert, the Minnesota Timberwolves center and French basketball star, rode the same wave of emotions as many of his French compatriots during the men’s World Cup final this month. Angst. Hope. Agony.When it ended, with France losing to Argentina in penalty kicks, he reached out to his friend, the 24-year-old French star Kylian Mbappé, who had scored three goals in the championship match.“I was really proud of him,” Gobert said. “He showed the world who he is. He’s only getting better and better. That’s what I told him.”Gobert thought Mbappé must have felt like he did after he lost to Spain in the EuroBasket final with the French national team three months ago.“Obviously, it’s not as watched as the soccer World Cup, but it’s the same feeling when you lose, when you’re so close to being on top and lose in the final,” Gobert said. “So just got to use that pain to just keep getting better.”Gobert, a three-time N.B.A. defensive player of the year, has been going through a challenging period of his own.This summer, the Utah Jazz traded him to Minnesota, which bet its future on Gobert’s ability to help the franchise win its first championship. The Timberwolves gave the Jazz four draft picks, four players and the right to swap picks in 2026.“The average fan might not understand what I bring to the table,” Gobert said, “but the G.M.s in the league do.”In Minnesota, Gobert joined his fellow big man Karl-Anthony Towns, and the team has struggled to adjust to its new makeup. The Timberwolves went on a five-game winning streak in November, but Towns has been out since he hurt his calf Nov. 28 and Gobert has missed a few games. Minnesota was 16-18 entering Wednesday’s game against New Orleans.Gobert recently sat down with The New York Times to discuss his transition to Minnesota; how he handles criticism; racism in Utah; and his relationship with his former Jazz teammate Donovan Mitchell, who was traded to Cleveland in September.This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Gobert’s scoring is down this season, to 13.9 points per game from 15.6 per game last season in Utah.Chris Szagola/Associated PressWhat has it been like adjusting to playing with another center like Karl-Anthony Towns?I don’t really like to call him a center because I don’t think he’s a center. I think it’s more of a wing in a center’s body. But yeah, it’s been a fun process so far. Obviously, we knew there was going to be some ups and downs, and there is some ups and downs. But KAT has been a great teammate. He’s been a great human.People like to focus on the fact that it’s two big men that play together, but there is always a process of adjustment when a player like me joins another team. Building chemistry takes time.Is it hard when you’re going through that process and there are so many eyes on how it’s going?It’s not hard for me. I want to win, I’m a competitor, so it’s hard to lose. But at the same time, I’m able to understand the bigger picture and to understand that you got to go through pain to grow. I’ve said every time people ask me, it’s going to be some adversity. And when adversity hits, obviously everybody will have something to say. People are always going to have opinions.A lot of people celebrate my failures. It’s kind of like a mark of respect for me just to have people that just wait until I do something wrong or until my teams start losing. Then they become really, really loud. And when my teams do well it’s quiet again. You know, I kind of embrace that it’s part of the external noise that comes with all the success that we’ve had in Utah and over the last few years in my career.When did you first feel that people were celebrating your failures?Once I started to have success, when I started winning defensive player of the year, All-N.B.A., being an All-Star. When my team, when we started winning like 50 games and stuff. The people on social media are always the loudest. When I go outside, it’s usually all the interactions are positive.Social media is a different place, and the people that have a lot of frustration can put it out there. The fans are going to have opinions. I’m more talking about the media.A lot of people talk about Utah as being a difficult place for Black players, for Black people in general. Did you ever have experiences like that as a Black player when you were there?My family and I never had any bad experiences. I’ve always had a lot of love over there. But I can understand, for me being an N.B.A. player and for a young Black man that’s maybe the only Black guy in his school, treatment can be different. People talk about Utah, but it’s similar everywhere when there’s not a lot of diversity. It’s part of every society in the world that people that can be marginalized for being different color of skin, different religion. There’s always going to be kids at school that’s going to bully people for being different.Gobert has won three Defensive Player of the Year Awards.Alika Jenner/Getty ImagesYou went through a very strange experience a couple of years ago in Utah as the first N.B.A. player known to have tested positive for the coronavirus. You were blamed for spreading it within the league, even though no one really knew how it happened. How did that experience affect you?It was a really tough experience for me, dealing with all that, obviously, Covid, but also everything that came with it. Thanks to — yeah, it was a tough experience, but I think it made me grow.Did you say ‘thanks to media’?No, I stopped saying what I was going to say. But I remember a lot of things that happened. I won’t forget, you know. There was a lot of fear. There was a lot of narratives out there. I was a victim of that. But at the same time, a lot of people were going through some really tough moments. I had to get away from what people are saying about me. It was people that don’t even know me. And I know that when you have something like that that’s happening, people are really stressed out and it was tough for everyone.There was a lot of conversation about your relationship with Donovan Mitchell, at that time and afterward. How do you view how that relationship was?I think it was a tough situation for me, just like it was a tough situation for him. After that, we came back to have a lot of success as a team. As of today, Donovan is someone that I want to see him happy. I want to see him succeed. I want him and his family to be great. Things happen, and sometimes people can do things to you that can hurt you. A lot of times it’s out of fear, you know. So you just have to grow through that and see past that.You mentioned people will do things that hurt you. Do you mean Mitchell?I mean generally. That’s life. More

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      Nets Cut the Drama and Rekindle Championship Hopes

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      Kevin Durant’s trade request, a coaching change and Kyrie Irving’s suspension made the Nets look destined for another season of disappointment. Now, they’re the hottest team in the Eastern Conference.The Nets were a complicated franchise when Jacque Vaughn met with his players at a morning shootaround in Washington on Nov. 4.Before their game against the Wizards that night, the Nets had filled the early weeks of their season with substandard basketball. But it was their off-court issues that were worthy of a telenovela. The Nets had indefinitely suspended Kyrie Irving for refusing to disavow antisemitism. They had fired Steve Nash as their coach. And Ben Simmons was scuffling through his delayed debut with the Nets.Vaughn, a longtime assistant, was in a tenuous spot as the team’s interim coach at a particularly fraught moment for an organization that had already experienced its share of fraught moments in recent seasons. But Vaughn was hoping to act as an agent of change.“Our shootaround was the precipice of that,” he recalled, “me getting up in front of the group and being as vulnerable as I can be in explaining the situation and telling them that ‘I’m going to be as consistent as I can be with you every day, and as honest as I can be — and I’m always going to do what’s best for the group.’”As a self-described “simple person,” Vaughn wanted his team to rid itself of unnecessary clutter. So he stripped down the playbook. He began to stress just three defensive concepts — “I won’t say what those are,” he said — so that his players could focus on them rather than make huge adjustments from game to game. And he emphasized the purity of their pursuit: Why make life in the N.B.A. more difficult than it needed to be?“We kind of pledged to each other that it was going to be about basketball,” Vaughn said, “and hopefully not let any outside noise interfere with that. And our guys have done an unbelievable job protecting each other.”Nets guard Kyrie Irving was suspended for eight games in November after he would not disavow antisemitism. He apologized and has averaged 25.6 points per game since he returned.Kirk Irwin/Getty ImagesThe Nets won that game against the Wizards, which was the start of a trend — a trend that has them climbing the Eastern Conference standings and back in the conversation as, yes, a championship contender.The Nets, who extended their winning streak to nine games on Monday night with a 125-117 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers, have won 20 of their last 26 games under Vaughn, who was named the head coach on Nov. 9. The Nets’ resurgence has been notably drama-free, no small feat given their early challenges.Kevin Durant is assembling one of his finest seasons, averaging 30 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.3 assists a game while shooting a career-best 56.3 percent from the field. Simmons, after missing all of last season, has rebooted and found his footing as a pass-first facilitator and disruptive defender. And Irving, whose suspension lasted eight games, had 32 points and 5 assists in the Nets’ win over the Cavaliers.“I think we’re finding our identity off the court in terms of how we treat each other, and that’s looking good on the floor,” Irving said after the game. “It’s looking great on the floor, honestly. We just want to keep it up.”There is no denying the Nets’ talent, but everyone has already heard this story. They were talented last season, too, until their grand experiment blew up in spectacular fashion. Remember last season? Irving refused to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. James Harden asked to be traded. And the Nets crashed out of the playoffs when the Boston Celtics swept them in the first round. During the off-season, Durant asked to be traded, and Irving seemed to be on his way out, too.Both stars stuck around, but the Nets seemed bound for more dysfunction anyway in the wake of the early coaching change and Irving’s high-profile suspension. For his part, Durant blamed the news media, rather than Irving’s behavior, for creating a lot of the “outside noise” that had the team flailing. But Vaughn has operated as a calming influence.“Coach shored up our roles, pretty much letting us know each day what he needs from us,” Durant said. “I think that’s been our focus. It’s not like, ‘Man, finally we got the noise out of our locker room, and now we can play.’ I think we always been locked in on basketball to try to get this thing back on track.”The question now, of course, is whether the Nets can sustain their strong play. The answer will hinge in large part on Irving, a gifted player who is not known for being the most reliable teammate.“Any external negativity or praise, I really don’t care about it,” Irving said. “I think I’m just focused on being the best version of me and letting the results play out based on how well we trust one another as a group.”After Monday’s win, Irving reflected on the six seasons he spent with the Cavaliers at the start of his career. He recalled the pressure he put on himself when they made him the No. 1 overall pick of the 2011 draft and how he felt like a “lone superhero” for several lean seasons before LeBron James returned to the Cavaliers after four seasons away in Miami. Together, they delivered an N.B.A. championship to Cleveland in 2016.“I think the greatest lesson I learned throughout that process is that it’s not a lonely road that you’re supposed to take on your own,” Irving said. “It takes a lot of help.”In Brooklyn, Irving has help. He has help from Durant, who has outsize goals of his own. He has help from teammates like Simmons and Nic Claxton, a promising young center. And he has help from a coach who has urged the Nets to get back to basics.“And we’re not going to change that anytime soon,” Vaughn said. More

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      In LA Since the ’80s, the Clippers Are Finally Planting a Flag

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      Superstar players have chosen the oft-overlooked team, whose deep-pocketed owner is betting big — with his own money — that fans will choose it, too.LOS ANGELES — Steve Ballmer, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Clippers, is known for being a wacky guy. He sits courtside at home games and punches at the air wildly, leaping from his seat, dancing and shouting.He is intense.He once said he wanted to put spikes in the seats at the Clippers’ next arena to keep fans up and cheering. But he swears it was just a joke.What he really wants, and won’t get, is for the seats to vibrate.“Haptic feedback,” he said. “You know, BRRR.”If Ballmer had it his way, the whole city would buzz with excitement about the Clippers, the perennially unloved and underachieving little brother to the Lakers. He is spending his considerable energy, and billions of his fortune, to carve out real space for the Clippers in a crowded Los Angeles sports market.“What does it take to succeed when you’re behind?” Ballmer, 66, said. “Well, it takes a while. You have to be patient. It takes a while to capture people’s loyalties. You have to be successful. You got to build a good product, which means we have to have good teams out there year in and year out. Got to win championships.”He added: “I have to live a long and full life so we can get there.”The Lakers have spent decades establishing their identity as one of the N.B.A.’s glamour franchises. They are the team of Showtime, of championships, of the league’s biggest stars, like Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Hollywood’s elite come to their games to see the show and to be seen.The Clippers have struggled to define themselves, but since Ballmer bought the team in 2014 its reputation has started to change.Stars like Kawhi Leonard and Paul George have chosen to join the Clippers. The team is preparing to leave Crypto.com Arena, which it shares with the Lakers and other teams in downtown Los Angeles, for a glittering new arena 11 miles away in Inglewood in 2024. The once-dominant Lakers have made the playoffs just twice since Ballmer bought the Clippers, creating an opportunity for the Clippers to gain ground among local men’s basketball fans.They have a tough history to overcome.The Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has become known for his constant presence on the sidelines, though usually not like this: He’s often one of the most rowdy fans in the building.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressThe Clippers made only four playoff appearances between 1984-85, when they moved to Los Angeles from San Diego, and 2010-11, the season before they traded for the All-Star point guard Chris Paul. The Lakers won eight championships during that period.“The Clippers always been looked at as the other team,” said Paul Pierce, the Hall of Fame player who grew up in Inglewood and spent the final two years of his 19-year N.B.A. career with the Clippers.There were moments when the Clippers flashed into the imagination of the basketball world. In the early 2000s, a group of young players — Darius Miles, Lamar Odom and Quentin Richardson among them — earned fans’ adoration with their fun personalities and the playing style of an ultra-talented pickup team. But the Clippers made the playoffs only once in the first decade of the century.“The Clippers never really had a place, you know what I mean?” said Baron Davis, 43, a retired two-time All-Star guard who grew up in Los Angeles and played for U.C.L.A. “And I knew when I signed with the Clippers, my goals in three years, four years, we wanted to make it another destination in L.A.”They did not become serious contenders until they traded with New Orleans for Paul in December 2011 and ushered in the so-called Lob City era, named for the way Paul would connect with the high-flying forward Blake Griffin for thrilling dunks to punctuate fast breaks.That period coincided with a downturn for the Lakers, opening the door for some fans, particularly younger ones, to choose the Clippers.“The Lakers sucked when I first started watching basketball,” Charlie Muir, a high school senior, said at a recent Clippers game. He added: “I saw the Clippers. They had, like, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin. It was Lob City era so it was really exciting to watch.”The teams that included Paul and Griffin had their best shot at winning a championship in 2014, but fell short and had to deal with a scandal. During the playoffs that season, TMZ published audio of the team owner Donald Sterling making racist remarks about Black people.Blake Griffin, left, and Chris Paul, not shown, brought the Clippers into the so-called Lob City era in the early 2010s as they often connected for alley oops.Chris Carlson/Associated PressBallmer’s son called him within two days of that story breaking.“Dad, that team’s going to be for sale,” Ballmer recalled his son saying. “You need to buy it.”Ballmer, a basketball fanatic who is a former chief executive of Microsoft, lived in Seattle and had grown up in Detroit, so he wasn’t familiar with the dynamics of having two major teams from the same league in the same city.“The notion that, like, somebody you run into on the street might be against your team, to me, that was like, whoa, zany,” Ballmer said.For years, Loyola Marymount University published the results of an annual survey that asked Los Angeles County residents which sports team with Los Angeles in its name was their favorite. In 2014, when there were eight such teams, 6.7 percent of respondents chose the Clippers, significantly less than the Lakers (42.9 percent) and Major League Baseball’s Dodgers (33.8 percent) but still more than the five other teams.By 2021, the Lakers and Clippers had become less favored and the N.F.L.’s Rams, which re-entered the market in 2016 after two decades away, had picked up 6 percent of the vote. There are nine professional men’s teams that have Los Angeles in their name, a W.N.B.A. team, a National Women’s Soccer League team and two colleges with major sports programs — U.C.L.A. and Southern California — that all compete for attention.The Lakers have been bad more often than not over the past decade, but they won a championship — their 17th — in 2020, giving fans a reason to celebrate.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesThe Clippers, Lakers and Kings have shared an arena since 1999, when Staples Center — which was renamed Crypto.com Arena last year — opened in downtown Los Angeles. The W.N.B.A.’s Sparks joined them in 2001. The Clippers have third priority, so they have to build their schedule around the Lakers and Kings. They cover the Lakers’ championship banners with their own signage during home games. There are 10 statues in the plaza in front of the arena: six honoring Laker greats, three featuring Kings and one of the boxer Oscar De La Hoya. Los Angeles is the only city in the United States where multiple pairs of teams in the same sports share buildings.“I think anyone, to some degree, that is not the Lakers or Dodgers, there’s a challenger status that is a little bit unique,” said Kevin Demoff, the Rams’ chief operating officer.After 21 seasons in St. Louis, the Rams returned to Los Angeles in 2016. They won the Super Bowl in the 2021 season, in Inglewood at SoFi Stadium, which they share with the Chargers.“Winning is the cover charge to getting people to appreciate you, especially if you’re in that challenger status,” Demoff said. But he added: “This is not a city where one championship can change your fortunes for a long time. That is just what’s expected.”Except for the Clippers, Chargers and the N.W.S.L. team Angel City F.C., which played its first season this year, all of the major professional sports teams in the Los Angeles market have won at least one championship.Thilo Kunkel, an associate professor at Temple University who studies sports branding, said it is possible, and necessary, for a team to build a brand independent of winning championships. He pointed to London, which has more than a dozen professional soccer teams, many of which have robust fan bases even when they are struggling.“Winning a championship is really putting all eggs in one basket, and that’s a basket everyone else wants as well,” Kunkel said. “A strategic way to build a brand community is creating a vision — who we are, what we stand for.”Both Kunkel and Demoff said the Clippers’ move to their own arena will be important to that end.“They’ve done a really nice job of finding their own lane in the sports brand world in Los Angeles, and now they can fully lean into that rather than having to take down signage from one game in 12 hours and put up something,” Demoff said.Ballmer’s financial commitment to differentiating the Clippers applies on and off the court. The team said it spent $10 million resurfacing 350 basketball courts in community parks around Los Angeles, and others in Inglewood, Moreno Valley (Leonard’s hometown) and Palmdale (George’s hometown). Ballmer spent $2 billion to buy the team, and he is financing the new arena, the $2 billion Intuit Dome.As the Clippers studied seating options for the new arena, they built more than 20 sets of small-scale grandstands, and Ballmer sat in all of them. In downtown Los Angeles at the Intuit Dome Experience Center, which includes sample suites and seating options, visitors can test the seats with haptic feedback (not spikes) that the team ultimately decided were too jarring. Ballmer’s goal is personalization: Clippers fans will even have some control over the temperature in their sections.To help amplify the crowd noise and create the kind of supporters section that is common in soccer stadiums, one side of the arena will have what Ballmer calls the “Wall of Sound”: 4,700 seats lined up without breaks for stairs or aisles.He has consulted his players and coaches about what to include in their new practice courts and locker rooms.Ballmer speaks during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Clippers’ new arena, the Intuit Dome, in September 2021.Ringo H.W. Chiu/Associated PressThe players, of course, are the key to the whole revitalization.There was a time when it would have been unthinkable that superstars would choose the Clippers. Paul, after all, arrived via trade, and the team drafted Griffin No. 1 overall in 2009. But both Leonard and George spurned overtures from the Lakers and have settled in with the Clippers.“People like Kawhi because he’s soft-spoken — he don’t speak,” said Darrell Bailey, the superfan better known as Clipper Darrell. He added that he loved Leonard’s attitude. “At the end of the day, Kawhi comes and does his job.”The Clippers have kept a talented supporting cast around their stars, giving them the second-highest payroll in the N.B.A. For Ballmer, that could mean a big luxury tax bill, the financial penalty for the league’s biggest spenders.“I’ll pay it,” he said with a little sigh and shrug. In September, Forbes estimated his net worth to be $83 billion.“I’ve been extremely blessed financially,” Ballmer said. “Am I kind of an open checkbook where, you know, nothing’s too big? I don’t know. No one’s tested me on that. But I’m willing to spend.”Darrell Bailey, a superfan better known as Clipper Darrell, has followed the team since the early 1990s.Morgan Lieberman for The New York TimesBailey’s custom Clippers car.Morgan Lieberman for The New York TimesThe Clippers said they had seen a return on Ballmer’s investment. They hired three sports and consumer research agencies to study their fan base and found that it had more than tripled between 2014 and 2021. The Clippers said ticket sales and sponsorship revenue had also increased during that time.“You’ve finally got an owner that cares,” Pierce said.Before the season, Ballmer was asked if he was excited that the Clippers seemed to be healthy. He clapped his hands and the sound boomed as though a large balloon had just popped. Then he grinned and stuck out his tongue, lifting both feet off the ground as he rubbed his hands together.“Ohhh, yes, I am!” he said. “Yes, I am!”But Leonard, who missed last season with a knee injury, has played in just six of the team’s 25 games this year because of injuries. George recently missed seven straight games with his injuries. The Clippers are 14-11 — better than the Lakers but below reasonable hopes for a team with such big-name stars.While they are not resting all of their brand-building hopes on winning championships, they know how important on-court success is. Lest they forget, there are constant reminders of the championship expectations for Los Angeles sports teams. Some have won quickly after joining the fray, while the Clippers have yet to win a title in nearly four decades in Los Angeles.On Nov. 12, members of Los Angeles F.C., an expansion soccer team that played its first game in 2018, visited the Clippers. They brought along a prop that Ballmer posed with: the M.L.S. Cup trophy — their first — they had won a week before.Sopan Deb More

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      The Celtics Have Found a New Way to Be Better Than Everyone Else

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      Boston was the best defensive team last season en route to the N.B.A. finals. Not so much this year. A scorching offense has helped them to the best record this year.BOSTON — The Celtics have been many things this season.Explosive from the 3-point line. Unguardable in transition. A nightmare for defenders, who have witnessed another leap in the twin-pronged development of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, two young players who, around this time last year, were coping with criticism about whether they could coexist. Now, they have the Celtics positioned as a presumptive favorite to return to the N.B.A. finals — and perhaps win it all.Yet for all their pyrotechnics on offense, the Celtics have had their issues on defense. Through the early weeks of the season, Boston has been more pasta strainer than steel curtain when it comes to thwarting open looks. Considering everything else that the team can do — namely, score oodles of points — the Celtics have offered up some decidedly mediocre defense.But that may be changing, which is awful news for the rest of the league.Facing the Celtics last week, the Dallas Mavericks were trying to sustain a late-game surge when their All-Star guard, Luka Doncic, found a seam to the basket — only to have his finger roll rejected at the rim by Tatum. The Celtics came away with the ball and pushed it ahead to Brown, who sank a 3-pointer to seal the Boston win.As that sequence was playing out, Tatum and Doncic were left in quiet conversation at the other end.“I told him that I didn’t want him to dunk on me,” Tatum said later. “He looked at me and was like, ‘You thought I was going to dunk it?’ I was like: ‘You never know.’”The Celtics, who have won 13 of their last 14 games to improve their record to a league-best 17-4, still have a middle-of-the-pack, bend-but-don’t-break defense under Joe Mazzulla, their interim coach. Their defensive rating, which is a measure of points allowed per possession, ranked 14th in the league entering Tuesday. But over their past eight games, the Celtics have produced a top-10 defense — a sign of growth as they lean into Mazzulla’s up-tempo style while compensating for the injury absence of Robert Williams III, their starting center.Celtics guard Marcus Smart, right, who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award last season, is defending centers more often this year with center Robert Williams III out injured.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press“Our offense is so good that it hides some of our defensive flaws,” Marcus Smart, the team’s starting point guard, said in an interview. “But we’re continuously out here working, and it’s only going to get better with time.”And it will presumably improve even more later this season. After Williams underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee in late September, the team said he would resume “basketball activities” in eight to 12 weeks. There are no certainties about his health, of course, but even if Williams were to return at less than full strength, his mere presence around the rim would help. Last season, he was named to the N.B.A.’s all-defensive second team.In his absence, Smart, who is 6 foot 3, has spent more time guarding opposing centers than he would prefer. After he averaged 1.7 steals a game last season, when he won the N.B.A.’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, Smart is averaging just 1.1 steals this season, a dip that can be attributed to his playing out of position.“Because I’m guarding the post so much, you don’t want to gamble too much,” Smart said. “It’ll be different when Rob is out there and I can gamble. But without him, I have to be solid for my team and control that back line.”The Celtics were all about grinding opponents to smithereens last season, when they led the league in defensive rating. Ime Udoka, who was in his first season as the team’s coach, made defense his priority, and it was a winning strategy. In the playoffs, Boston advanced to the N.B.A. finals before falling to Golden State in six games.Mazzulla, though, was made interim coach on the eve of training camp after the Celtics suspended Udoka for the season for unspecified “violations of team policies.” (According to two people with knowledge of the situation who were not authorized to discuss it, Udoka had a relationship with a female subordinate.)But while Mazzulla was an assistant under Udoka last season, he has not tried to replicate Udoka’s approach. Instead, Mazzulla has done things his own way — by recognizing the team’s unique offensive abilities. Entering Tuesday, the Celtics were leading the league in scoring, 3-pointers, 3-point percentage and offensive rating.It is also worth noting that, as a part of Boston’s off-season trade for Malcolm Brogdon, the Celtics gave up Daniel Theis, a defense-minded center. The trade, of course, was worth it: Brogdon, a point guard, has been terrific coming off the bench, and Theis has yet to play for the Indiana Pacers this season because of an injured knee.In any case, the Celtics have essentially been daring opponents to keep up with them. Sometimes, Smart said, that may mean that the Celtics give up an extra offensive rebound or two as they look to break out and run.“When you’re not really boxing out as much and having as many guys stay back, your defense is going to take a hit,” Smart said. “But we’re going to get it together.”For his part, Tatum has clearly taken another step as a defender by averaging a career-best 1.2 blocks a game. He recently described himself and Brown as “two of the best two-way players in the league.”Tatum left his imprint on the Mavericks last week. Late in the second quarter, Tatum raced in as a weakside defender to swat a layup by the Mavericks’ Dorian Finney-Smith. Tatum corralled the rebound, brought the ball upcourt himself and got fouled attempting a 3-pointer. He made all three free throws.“That’s what’s going to make him an even greater player — being able to do it on both ends,” Smart said. “We know what he can do on the offensive end. Everybody knows. But it’s even more detrimental to a team when you’re locking them up.”There are times, though, when it may not even matter.On Monday, the Celtics hosted the Charlotte Hornets, an injury-marred team that has taken up residence in the Eastern Conference basement. With Brown and Al Horford sitting out the second game of a back-to-back, Mazzulla went with a deeper rotation. Blake Griffin, who had been collecting dust bunnies on the bench for nearly two weeks, made his third start of the season and scored on the team’s opening possession. The Celtics sank 10 3-pointers in the first quarter and led by as many as 30 points before halftime.They were well on their way to another rout in a season full of them. More

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      The Milwaukee Bucks Are Betting on Déjà Vu

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      Of course Giannis Antetokounmpo is back this season — but so is almost everyone else. Continuity could give Milwaukee an edge amid the N.B.A.’s roster upheavals.PHILADELPHIA — After Khris Middleton spent his first season in professional basketball with the Detroit Pistons and the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the N.B.A. Development League, he was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks. At the time, he was merely hoping for steady employment.A few weeks later, when Middleton arrived in Milwaukee for training camp before the start of the 2013-14 season, he was not the only fresh face. He was joined by Giannis Antetokounmpo, a precocious draft pick who proudly professed his love for fruit smoothies and was similarly awe-struck to be in the presence of veteran teammates like Caron Butler, O.J. Mayo and Zaza Pachulia.“They were basketball gods to us at the time,” Middleton said, “just because they’d been so successful in the league for so many years and we were trying to learn everything we could from them.”Even then, Middleton was savvy enough to understand that it would take time to build winning habits. Milwaukee went 15-67 that season to finish with the worst record in the league while ranking last in home attendance. The Bucks were not a product that many people wanted to buy.“It wasn’t going to be an overnight success story,” Middleton said. “We settled in for the long haul.”On Thursday night, as the Bucks christened their new season with a 90-88 win over the 76ers, their days of hard-won habit-building were the stuff of ragged memories. Milwaukee has made six straight playoff appearances, winning a championship in 2021, and figure to be in the mix to win it all again this season.Brook Lopez is in his fifth season with the Bucks. He’s been a steady scorer and defender.Matt Slocum/Associated PressIt helps that Antetokounmpo is one of the best players in the world. After a busy summer that included the release of “Rise,” a Disney+ biopic about his life, and a run in the EuroBasket tournament with Greece’s national team, Antetokounmpo crammed 21 points, 13 rebounds and 8 assists into 36 minutes against the 76ers.“They know how to play with their star,” Sixers Coach Doc Rivers said.But that only comes with continuity, patience and stability — concepts that are increasingly foreign in pro sports.Antetokounmpo and Middleton have been with the Bucks since the dark ages. Brook Lopez and Pat Connaughton, two other members of the team’s core, came to Milwaukee before the start of the 2018-19 season, which was also Mike Budenholzer’s first season as coach. And 14 of the 17 players on the current roster were with the team last season. One of them, Wesley Matthews, made the go-ahead 3-pointer against Philadelphia.“I think it helps us to start the season when other teams have new players, new additions, new coaching staff — all those kinds of changes,” Matthews said. “For the most part, we’re the same team. So being in moments like this, we’ve been there before.”Now in his 15th season, Lopez has played for teams where it took time “to figure stuff out,” he said. Where players needed weeks, or even months, to feel comfortable in new systems. Where training camps included exercises designed to enhance chemistry.“They’re good things, and that’s why people do them,” Lopez said. “But we don’t necessarily need to make people do team bonding or anything like that. It’s very natural around here. We have people hanging out, enjoying each other’s company, and we’re all glad to be a part of this.”Not that the Bucks have been immune to disappointment. In 2018-19, they had the league’s best regular-season record, then lost to the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference finals. It was more of the same the following season: best record, early exit (this time to the Miami Heat in the conference semifinals).“We were disappointed in ourselves,” Lopez said. “We knew we had more to give and more to achieve as a group. We knew we could be better.”After a period of uncertainty for the team and collective anxiety for the Milwaukee area, Budenholzer returned as coach, the Bucks bolstered their backcourt by trading for Jrue Holiday, and Antetokounmpo agreed to a mammoth contract extension. Several months later, the Bucks were N.B.A. champions for the first time since 1971.“The fact that the franchise stuck with us and kept the team together shows that they believed in what they were trying to build,” Middleton said. “And we all wanted to stay and get the job done.”They all were part of Milwaukee’s championship team in 2021: Jrue Holiday, center; back, left to right: Khris Middleton, Lopez, Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis.Morry Gash/Associated PressThe Bucks have that feeling again after losing to the Boston Celtics in the conference semifinals last season. It hardly helped that Middleton missed the series with a knee injury. And they are not yet whole this season, either: Middleton is rehabilitating from wrist surgery, and Connaughton has a strained calf.Still, the Bucks have their foundation in place.“We’re not talking about our basic defensive or offensive principles,” Connaughton said. “Everybody already knows them. Instead, we’re talking about how to improve.”This is a critical season for Milwaukee. Lopez is in the final season of a four-year deal, and Middleton, who signed a five-year contract with the Bucks in 2019, has a player option for next season. Their futures are uncertain. But nothing lasts forever, and the Bucks want to capitalize while they can. It has taken a long time for them to reach this stage, to have so much familiarity with one another.“It’s rare,” Middleton said. “It’s definitely rare.”On Thursday morning, as the team wrapped up a pregame workout, Middleton was accosted by Joe Ingles, one of the team’s newcomers. After edging Middleton in a friendly shooting competition, Ingles wanted to make sure everyone knew it: “We’ve got 81 more games, and it’s 1-0 to Joe.” Middleton shook his head and laughed.“This,” he said, “is one of the reasons I wish we didn’t make any changes.” More

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      What to Know About the New NBA Season

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      Much of the conversation around the league the past few months hasn’t been about basketball.The N.B.A. will begin a new season Tuesday under a cloud of scandals and drama that has distracted from the basketball and that has challenged the progressive image the league has long cultivated.“I think right now the best thing that can happen is the season start on the court,” said Chris Mullin, a Hall of Fame former player.Last season’s finals teams — Golden State and Boston — are navigating internal crises. Two teams in top media markets — the Nets and the Los Angeles Lakers — are trying to integrate their stars.And a situation in Phoenix has brought the league’s leaders and image under scrutiny. The majority owner of the Suns and the W.N.B.A.’s Mercury, Robert Sarver, was found to have used racial slurs and engaged in sexist behavior over many years, but the league’s punishment — a $10 million fine and one-year suspension — was immediately criticized by players and fans as being too light. Soon, under public pressure, Sarver said he would sell the teams.Though there are still many things for fans to be excited about, such as a new rule to speed up games and the improved health of some injured stars, several issues are lingering as the season gets underway.Here’s what you need to know:How will Draymond Green’s punch affect Golden State?Suns owner Robert Sarver’s misconduct casts a shadow.Celtics Coach Ime Udoka’s suspension is a mystery.The trade rumors of the summer aren’t over yet.A new rule and stars’ returns could up the excitement.How will Draymond Green’s punch affect Golden State?Golden State’s Jordan Poole, left, and Draymond Green, right, played together Friday for the first time since an altercation during practice this month.Jeff Chiu/Associated PressAfter defeating the Celtics in six games to the win the N.B.A. championship in June, Golden State looked poised for a strong campaign in pursuit of a repeat. Then TMZ posted a video of forward Draymond Green punching his teammate Jordan Poole during a practice this month.“I don’t think anyone could watch that and not say that it’s upsetting,” said Mullin, who spent most of his 16-year career with Golden State and is now a broadcaster for the team. “It’s unacceptable behavior.”After Green was fined and agreed to stay away from the team for about a week, Golden State welcomed him back and publicly put on a “Nothing To See Here” face. Green apologized privately and publicly, and Poole said Sunday that they would coexist professionally.What to Know: Robert Sarver Misconduct CaseCard 1 of 7A suspension and a fine. More

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      Soccer’s Return to Ukraine Is Marred by Broken Contracts and Bad Faith

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      European soccer offered support to Ukrainian teams when Russia invaded the country. Now, as rivals bargain shop in wartime, one top club says the sense of solidarity is gone.Like his fellow chief executives at soccer clubs across Europe, Sergei Palkin of the Ukrainian team Shakhtar Donetsk spent weeks this summer negotiating player trades.He and Fulham, a team newly promoted to England’s Premier League, settled on a fee of about $8 million for Manor Solomon, Shakhtar’s Israeli attacker. Then Palkin agreed to accept a payment around double that amount from Lyon, in France’s Ligue 1, for another of Shakhtar’s foreign-born stars, the 22-year-old Brazilian midfielder Tetê.The deals were a financial lifeline for Shakhtar: They would deliver a vital cash infusion to club accounts battered by war with Russia in exchange for valuable talents who, in some cases, no longer wanted to play in Ukraine.But just when the contracts for the deals, and others, were about to be signed, world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, announced that it had extended a regulation allowing foreign players under contract with Ukrainian clubs to temporarily go elsewhere without penalty. The rule — created in March as an interim measure when Ukraine’s season was suspended — would now remain in place for the entire 2022-23 season, FIFA said.And with that, both Lyon and Fulham informed Palkin that they were scrapping the multimillion-dollar deals the sides had discussed. Instead, they would take the players for nothing.“They just talk about the football family,” Palkin said. “But in real life there is no football family.”The Shakhtar chief executive Sergei Palkin.Bradley Secker for The New York TimesA Lyon spokesman said the club disputed Palkin’s recounting of events, but declined to provide details. Fulham declined to comment.Both teams abided by the rules, but the incidents — and others — have left Palkin frustrated and angry. In July, Shakhtar announced plans to sue FIFA for $50 million — the value, it says, of deals that vaporized when the rule allowing players to break their Ukrainian contracts was extended.The situation is a far cry from the widespread messages of solidarity with Ukraine from soccer’s leaders and rival teams in the days and weeks after Russia’s invasion began in February. Instead, Palkin says he has been left with a distaste for the way some in the soccer community have treated Ukrainian clubs like Shakhtar. Shows of support and kind words have been replaced by broken promises and the poaching of players and youth prospects, all of it, in his view, driven by the oil that lubricates the industry: money.The State of the WarZaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant: After United Nations inspectors visited the Russian-controlled facility last week amid continuing shelling and fears of a looming nuclear catastrophe, the organization released a report calling for Russia and Ukraine to halt all military activity around the complex.Europe’s Energy Crisis: European leaders are pushing through economic relief packages to soften the blow of soaring costs tied to the war. In Germany, officials are trying a range of measures to alleviate the crisis, including extending the lives of two of the country’s last nuclear reactors.Russia’s Military Expansion: Though President Vladimir V. Putin ordered a sharp increase in the size of Russia’s armed forces, he seems reluctant to declare a draft. Here is why.Relying on Old Tech: Russia’s new cruise missiles and attack helicopters appear to contain low-tech components, analysts found, undercutting Moscow’s narrative of a rebuilt military that rivals its Western adversaries.Lyon, for example, recently offered to pay Shakhtar 3 million euros, or about $3.01 million, for the permanent transfer of Tetê, Palkin said — less than one-fifth of what Shakhtar believed it had agreed on as a fee for him earlier this summer. Palkin turned down the offer.“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It’s peanuts. It’s not respectful from FIFA or the clubs.”FIFA said its position of allowing foreign players under contract with Ukrainian teams to play elsewhere temporarily is better than the alternative: players’ unilaterally breaking their contracts. But while there appears to be no sign that the war is ending, there is now also little likelihood that many of the players will ever return to their Ukrainian clubs.When Shakhtar takes the field on Tuesday for its first game on Ukrainian soil since last December — part of the long-delayed restart of the country’s top league — very little will be the same beyond the team’s familiar burnt orange colors. For the first time in two decades, a team known for stocking its roster with imported stars will be almost exclusively Ukrainian. There will be no fans at the stadium in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital and Shakhtar’s latest temporary home, for the match against Metalist 1925. And the players from both teams will have gone through drills of what to do in the event they hear the air raid siren while they are on the field.Nothing is normal, Palkin admitted, but for the sake of Ukrainian soccer, the games must be played. If the season does not start, he said, some soccer clubs in the country would probably fold.Two clubs are already gone from the 16-team league: F.C. Mariupol and Desna Chernihiv, which both announced they their withdrawals ahead of this season. Chernihiv, near the border with Belarus, has been battered by Russian forces, and Mariupol, a southern port city, is now under Russian control. The city, besieged for weeks, has been described by the United Nations as the “deadliest place in Ukraine.”Even in other cities, though, signs of war will be hard to avoid. Palkin said the threat of a Russian attack on matches cannot be discounted.“They can target anything in Ukraine,” he said of the Russian military and its allies in the war. Shakhtar will play its games in Kyiv and Lviv, the city where, at the start of the war, the club helped pay to convert the soccer stadium it had been using into a shelter for refugees.Families living inside the Arena Lviv, which will host some of Shakhtar’s matches when Ukraine’s top soccer league opens its delayed season this week.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesShakhtar also will play in Europe’s top club competition, the Champions League, but those games will be held in Warsaw because European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, has barred Ukraine from hosting international games as a safety precaution.Shakhtar officials had proposed playing the Ukrainian league games outside the country, too. But the government overruled the idea, deciding that live games, even in empty stadiums and in the comparatively safer western part of the country, would serve as an important prong of the propaganda war.“Ukrainian sports and the will to win on all fronts cannot be stopped!” Ukraine’s sports minister, Vadym Gutzeit, wrote on his Facebook page last week. His post, heralding the return of the Ukrainian Premier League, outlined a list of protocols that must be followed at each game, including evacuation plans, fixed shelters no more than 500 meters, or about 1,640 feet, from each stadium, and a script for stadium announcers in the event that air raid sirens sound: “Attention! Air alarm! We ask everyone to follow us to the shelter!”While Gutzeit’s post highlighted the extraordinary conditions in which soccer will return to Ukraine, it also underlined why many players were not eager to return and take part.Palkin said about 10 players from Shakhtar’s under-19 team had refused to return to Ukraine, where a youth league is also being organized. “I understand them,” he said. “I can’t guarantee they will be safe.” More