Eagles

BOSTON (AP) &mdash; Clemson wasn&rsquo;t able to escape on the road this time.
Makai Ashton-Langford had two key driving baskets in the closing two minutes and finished with 15 points to help Boston College beat the 20th-ranked Tigers 62-54 on Tuesday night.
&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t get my guys under control. I couldn&rsquo;t get them to relax. That&rsquo;s my fault,&rdquo; Clemson coach Brad Brownell said. &ldquo;For whatever reason, we just didn&rsquo;t do a good job tonight. I didn&rsquo;t do a good job as a coach.&rdquo;
On Saturday, Clemson escaped with an 82-81 victory at Florida State.
Jaeden Zackery added 13 points for the Eagles (11-12, 5-7 Atlantic Coast Conference). BC held Clemson to one meaningful field goal &mdash; and that came with 18 seconds left &mdash; in the final 13:16.
Hunter Tyson led Clemson (18-5, 10-2) with 22 points and Chase Hunter had 12. The Tigers fell into a tie in the loss column atop the ACC with No. 6 Virginia (9-2 ACC).
&ldquo;It was one of those nights where the other team played better than we did,&rdquo; Brownell said. &ldquo;We had a lot of self-inflicted wounds. We didn&rsquo;t share the ball much. When we got behind, we kind of panicked and hoped Chase and Hunter would bail us out. That&rsquo;s poor coaching.&rdquo;
The Eagles used a 5-0 spurt &mdash; with T.J. Bickerstaff hitting a free throw and getting a driving layup &mdash; to pull ahead 50-45 with just over five minutes to play.
Clemson sliced it to 50-47 before Aston-Langford made his two big baskets. He followed that by making two free throws with 32 seconds left.
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just about digging deep honestly,&rdquo; Zackery said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s just all it was. We&rsquo;ve been kind of talking about it all season that we&rsquo;ve just got to come out and grind.&rdquo;
Trailing by 10 midway into the second half, the Tigers went on a 10-0 spree, tying it at 45 when RJ Godfrey hit both ends of a 1-and-1.
The Eagles had opened a double-digit lead twice in the opening six minutes of the second half, the later 45-35 on Prince Aligbe&rsquo;s foul-line jumper with 14:12 to play.
BIG PICTURE
Clemson: Off to a solid start in conference play, the Tigers were tested on the road for the second straight game after edging Florida State. It hasn&rsquo;t been easy for them away from home with a 4-3 record and with three away matchups against North Carolina, North Carolina State and Virginia to go, they&rsquo;ll need to get it straightened out of they&rsquo;re going to win the ACC regular-season title.
Boston College: The Eagles proved when they play defense that they&rsquo;re a tough out in coach Earl Grant&rsquo;s second season. A little more offense could make them very dangerous for top ACC teams to play.
&ldquo;I just tell the guys that we&rsquo;re just trying to build something,&rdquo; Grant said of his team&rsquo;s defense down the stretch. &ldquo;You are what you repeatedly do. You build habits.&rdquo;
ARRIVING LATE
In the first half, Clemson&rsquo;s man-to-man defense smothered the Eagles&rsquo; offense for the opening 10 minutes, holding them in single digits in scoring until just about the same time the student section finished filling up late, bringing some energy to a very quiet building.
BC&rsquo;s players then responded, closing the half with a 22-4 spree that turned an 11-point deficit to a 30-23 halftime edge.
SIDELINED
Both teams were missing key players. Guard Brevin Galloway, Clemson&rsquo;s fourth leading scorer at 10.6 points per game, was sidelined with an abdominal injury. For BC, guard DeMarr Langford Jr., who logs big minutes at the point, was out with a knee injury.
UP NEXT
Clemson: Hosts No. 23 Miami on Saturday.
Boston College: Hosts Syracuse on Saturday.

Makai Ashton-Langford had two key driving baskets in the closing two minutes and finished with 15 points to help Boston College win.

BC beats No. 20 Clemson 62-54; Tigers’ lead sliced atop ACC

Kyrie Irving has never been afraid of taking the road less traveled.
The only problem, in this instance, is that nobody knows where it leads.
With a few strokes of a keyboard, Sean Marks and his Brooklyn Nets took a <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nets-say-kyrie-irving-cant-play-or-practice-with-team-while-unvaccinated" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hard-line stance</a> as it relates to the point guard. In the quest for a championship, Marks declared that Brooklyn would not permit any of its players to serve in a part-time capacity &mdash; superstars be damned.
In other words, with respect to Irving, the messaging was clear: get vaccinated, or else.
Maybe betrayed is too strong of a word, but there&rsquo;s no way that Kyrie could have received the organization&rsquo;s decision positively.
Perhaps it&rsquo;s ironic that Brooklyn would decide that it would rather have none of Irving than half. Of Brooklyn&rsquo;s Big Three, he was the one whose joining the franchise was fairly and accurately declared a homecoming.
Of the three, it is Irving who was first to take his talents to Brooklyn, and it was he who was first to don the Nets' signature black and white threads.
Now, he is another first &mdash; the first to be sent away.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Sean Marks says the decision on Kyrie Irving was made by himself and Joe Tsai: <a href="https://t.co/vHvQ2UjF6B">pic.twitter.com/vHvQ2UjF6B</a>
&mdash; Nets Videos (@SNYNets) <a href="https://twitter.com/SNYNets/status/1447956798598680576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2021</a></blockquote>

<script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

When Irving signed with the Nets in 2019, nobody could&rsquo;ve ever predicted such an outcome. It was as unforeseen as it is unfortunate, especially if you&rsquo;re Kyrie or someone who&rsquo;s sympathetic to his cause.
Behind closed doors and away from the cameras and the microphones, scores of NBA players have expressed reluctance to get vaccinated against COVID-19. But over the course of the summer, it became clear that in order to fully participate and have some semblance of normalcy, the league&rsquo;s players had a simple choice to make.
And for players who call New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco home, the stakes were even higher: full participation with their teams depended on their willingness to get jabbed.&nbsp;
In the end, for the players as a whole, the want to be full-time members of their teams and to enjoy their lives as competitors in the NBA won out. As a class, the league&rsquo;s players understand that their careers are relatively short, and that their window to earn is, as well. Their future generations and familial legacies can be enhanced with the stroke of a pen, and when painted into a corner, invariably, they choose to perform. The decision to go into the Orlando Bubble and continue competition after the murder of George Floyd told us that.
All things considered, the league&rsquo;s players tend to fall in line.
...Only not this time.
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It&rsquo;s become quite cliche these days for head coaches and team leaders to refer to their teammates and one another as "brothers" or as "family," but there&rsquo;s some merit in those declarations. At least during the season, most players spend more time with their teammates than they do with their children. They&rsquo;re married to their coaching staff just as they are married to their spouses.
So whether they say it publicly or not, members of the Nets organization probably look at Irving&rsquo;s refusal to get vaccinated as a stubborn refusal in which he&rsquo;s choosing his personal principles over the team&rsquo;s collective goal. And if you disagree with that, ask yourself why more 95% of the league&rsquo;s players are vaccinated. Ask yourself why Irving is the only member of either New York team who isn&rsquo;t.
And while there are other players around the league who have opted against the vaccination, none of them are on a team that enters the season as a title favorite; none face the possibility of missing 43 of their team&rsquo;s 82 regular season games.
Kyrie made a choice to stand his ground.&nbsp;
Marks had no choice but to do the same.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Sean Marks on the future of Kyrie Irving as a Net: "The hope is that we have Kyrie back. We'll welcome him back with open arms." <a href="https://t.co/MivSnk9CmG">pic.twitter.com/MivSnk9CmG</a>
&mdash; Nets Videos (@SNYNets) <a href="https://twitter.com/SNYNets/status/1447958806466531337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 12, 2021</a></blockquote>

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A descendent of Gregg Popovich&rsquo;s tree, Marks saw firsthand the kind of culture that can be built by competent organizational leadership. True success in the NBA begins with standards and equitable administration of a team&rsquo;s ideals. Ask Erik Spoelstra, Tom Thibodeau and the great Popovich, and they themselves will tell you the same.
So when faced with the prospect of allowing Irving&rsquo;s refusal to get vaccinated hover over his team, Marks did what any leader in his position would have &mdash; he made a tough choice.
As a basketball player and personality, Irving is as large as they come. Whether he was available or not would impact not only head coach Steve Nash&rsquo;s game planning, but the team&rsquo;s rotations. Every player, including both Kevin Durant and James Harden, would have had to have two separate instructional sets, catering for life both with and without Irving.
Those situations obviously happen in pro sports, but unlike other scenarios, whether Marks and Nash would subject their team to that reality was completely within their control.
So in the end, it&rsquo;s easy to understand why Marks told Irving to stay away, just as it&rsquo;s easy to understand how Kyrie could be put off.
As a player, Nash gave up sugar. Amar&rsquo;e Stoudemire took wine baths. Chris Paul decided to go vegan. For the most part, players view their bodies as not only their temples, but their empires. They spend their pre-professional days doing all they can to develop and take care of their bodies. And although each team employs its own set of medical professionals to support their teams, most players maintain personal relationships with their own set of medical and training professionals whom they trust.
Being told that they must receive a vaccination that a fair amount of the public doesn&rsquo;t fully trust is a foreign concept to the league&rsquo;s players. Irving, in particular, has previously been outspoken in his desire to be, in his eyes, treated more like a person and less like an asset.&nbsp;
From his vantage point, it&rsquo;s not that difficult to understand why he feels that his right to choose should be absolute.
It&rsquo;s also not that difficult to see how, in asking him to stay away, Irving feels like &mdash; despite what is said in the statement released by the Nets &mdash; he&rsquo;s not being supported by the franchise he chose to call his own before either Durant or Harden had found their way to Barclays.&nbsp;
Declaring itself to &ldquo;support&rdquo; Irving while also not permitting him to play or practice with his team seems a bit hollow. By their deeds, the Nets are forcing Kyrie&rsquo;s hand in an attempt to get him to take the vaccine. The team is looking out for its best interests, while Kyrie is doing the same for his. Unfortunately, in this instance, the interests of the parties just aren&rsquo;t aligned.
Like everything else in life, there are two sides to the story. Two ways to look at the situation.
Perhaps it&rsquo;s fitting. Long a contrarian and one who isn&rsquo;t afraid of solitude on an island, Irving has fully embraced the path of most resistance.
Two sides to the story. Two outcomes, two possibilities.&nbsp;
As both a man and a competitor, Kyrie Irving has never avoided the fork. He&rsquo;s long made his choice to opt for the road less traveled.
In this case, though &mdash; despite their common dreams and desire &mdash; it&rsquo;s hard to see it leading back to Brooklyn.

The Nets will not permit Kyrie Irving to play or practice with the team unless he gets vaccinated. So where do the sides go from here?

It’ll be difficult for Kyrie and the Nets to come back from this

Some basketball &ldquo;fans&rdquo; did not watch this year&rsquo;s NBA playoffs because they were offended by the words "Black Lives Matter" being painted on the court inside the bubble. Ratings were down more than 40 percent, although it's worth noting that MLB also saw their ratings drastically decline and a new national poll indicated that the NBA's dip in ratings <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/10/15/nbas-ratings-drop-not-due-to-blowback-over-players-activism-poll-suggests/?sh=66b68b0e6b31" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wasn't due to politics</a>.
Recently, an assistant basketball coach at Fordham University said that he refused to watch the resumption of the NBA season out of principle because he thought the BLM aspect and the statements on the backs of players&rsquo; jerseys were just too much.
Many of us who love the NBA were watching bubble games religiously all the way through the Finals, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence like this. What would Michele Roberts, the director of the National Basketball Players' Association, say to these people who are tuning out?
&ldquo;Look, everyone has the right to change the channel," Roberts told BasketballNews.com. "I have no problem with that. You don&rsquo;t have to agree with anything you don&rsquo;t want to. But, alternatively, there&rsquo;s a view that if I don&rsquo;t agree with you, then you can&rsquo;t say it or have me be exposed to it. Because then you&rsquo;re in the wrong country.
&ldquo;The reality is that these issues have now come to a place in our national dialogue.&rdquo;
Roberts is a believer in freedom of choice and freedom of speech, and if people choose to protest the NBA because of the growing political activism of the players, so be it.
The players she represents are not going to stop being vocal about their beliefs, nor will they stop trying to fight the racial and social injustices that have been going on in America for decades.&nbsp;
Those political/existential beliefs manifested themselves this summer in the NBA bubble following the police slaying of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the subsequent police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, WI, events that spurred NBA players to use their global platform and collective voices to draw attention to racial injustice, voter suppression and institutionalized racism in society.
And if anyone believes that NBA players are finished fighting that fight, they would be incorrect. Nothing that happens next Tuesday in the United States Presidential Election is going to change that.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Donald Trump did not create these problems, and they are not going to go away if he goes away. All of these problems will persist,&rdquo; Roberts said in a wide-ranging phone interview that touched on numerous subjects.&nbsp;
&ldquo;There are countries and governments that say, &lsquo;These positions will not be tolerated and we will suppress them, and if you continue to try to agitate, we will not give up and we will kill you.&rsquo; I&rsquo;d like to think that the same people who say, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want to see Black Lives Matter on a court,&rsquo; would not want to live under a regime that says certain messages are not only inappropriate but are illegal, and you will be significantly, severely punished if you&rsquo;re saying stuff.&nbsp;I&rsquo;m most confident that those people would not condone seeing players dragged off the court and incarcerated."
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The NBA returned from a four-and-a-half-month hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic at a time when riots and other forms of civil unrest were taking place throughout the United States due to a number of factors -- some of them political, some racial, some historical. But issues involving racial injustice hit home with NBA players, a majority of whom are Black Americans who have experienced discrimination in different forms at various times in their lives.
Certain NBA players did not want to resume the season for a number of reasons. Some felt their voices needed to be added to the protests; others felt their jobs as entertainers would deflect attention from deeper problems in society; the rest were fearful of contracting COVID-19.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver argued that resuming the season would give the players a forum to disseminate their message, and the players eventually agreed. But as part of that agreement, the NBA emblazoned the courts at Disney&rsquo;s ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex with the words "Black Lives Matter" and players could choose to have different slogans adorn the backs of their jerseys instead of their last names.
It was the furthest any U.S. professional sports league had ever gone to introduce somewhat of an activist component into their product, and not everyone liked it. Some of those who were vocal in opposing it said they wanted sports to be an escape, while others complained that the BLM movement had been hijacked by radicals and that the NBA was wrong for not making it clear whether they were supporting the organization or simply the ideals.
Whatever the case, the NBA stuck with its decision and finished out its season. The players were exhausted by the end, yet empowered by their ability to foster a dialogue. That dialogue makes some people uncomfortable, but that sort of goes with the territory when matters of race, politics and social tensions are lumped together in an election year &ndash; which is what we have been living through most of 2020.
Next year, there will be a post-election dynamic, and many of the currently-existing problems are still going to be present. Voter suppression will likely be less of a focus, but racial inequality will presumably still exist, and police brutality will not magically disappear.
So what can the players do next season to advance the dialogue to a new and different place?
&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what is going to be interesting and exciting," Roberts said. "[In] the years I&rsquo;ve been involved in the NBA, I&rsquo;ve seen a steady progression and acceleration and an escalation of the players&rsquo; involvement and engagement in these issues -- from the hoodies, which compared to today&rsquo;s circumstances was quite benign, to players who are leading marches in their communities. So I think it will evolve to more direct action. One of the reasons the players wanted to have the owners and other third parties in our sport become a coalition is because there is now an evolving interest in direct action projects. I think that&rsquo;s the next phase, at least informally, as far as a collective effort is concerned, the players in tandem with the owners and some coaches.
&ldquo;Individually, the efforts will continue, and I think will become much more sophisticated in their approaches. Many of our players have aligned with either new community organizers or longtime community organizers to get to that next level. Collectively, the players are interested in finding out how they can together devote their resources, financial resources, their personal capital (and) their personal time and attention, to engage with similarly situated folks.&rdquo;
Roberts is entering her final season as Executive Director of the Players' Association, and the owners and players still have numerous unresolved issues relating to next season -- where games will be played, whether fans will be allowed inside, when the season will start and how the money will be divided. All of these remain open issues.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Even the assumptions that we can collectively agree on are controversial, such as what local markets will allow us to do. And I haven&rsquo;t even mentioned the virus yet," Roberts said. "Europe is in trouble, and we seem to be following in Europe&rsquo;s footsteps. How we can start, and when we can start? And if we start, what does it look like? Are we back in a bubble? Are we now? Is it bubble-like? What about travel? How many games? These are probably the most difficult questions that the game has faced, particularly because there are so many variables that we can&rsquo;t control,&rdquo; Roberts said.
A proposal for a 72-game season starting before Christmas has been presented to the union, but it is still being studied. Marc Stein of the New York Times reported that there could be a 50-game season if it begins in January. Naturally, the progression of the coronavirus pandemic will impact everything.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s some elements of what the league is proposing that in our view are not controversial, perhaps. Some things needed to have been verified, and some things are going to be hard," Roberts admitted.
&ldquo;But we&rsquo;ll get there. We have to. We&rsquo;re going to have another season. We&rsquo;re not going to stop playing basketball. And so we&rsquo;ll get there. These are decisions that have to be made together, but in the face of so many uncertainties, it just makes it a little more difficult."&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-news-nbpa-players-association-executive-director-michele-roberts-2020-2021-season-collective-bargaining-agreement-cba-revenue-meetings-black-lives-matter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Check out Michele Roberts' wide-ranging Q&amp;A with BasketballNews.com. She talked about whether a December start date for next season is realistic, finding her successor, the Milwaukee Bucks' boycott and more.</a>

Chris Sheridan speaks with NBPA executive director Michele Roberts about the NBA's activism, what next season could look like and more.

NBPA's Michele Roberts says NBA player activism is here to stay

Here is the latest news on the Top 25 Free Agents in the NBA for the 2014-15 season, as ranked by Chris Sheridan of SheridanHoops.