Hoyas

Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert has been named the 2023-2024 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced Tuesday night.
Gobert, 31, won the award over fellow Frenchman and Rookie of the Year Victor Wembanyama. He had 72 1st place votes (equivalent to 5 points), 24 2nd place points (equivalent to 3 points), and 1 3rd place point (equivalent to 1 point) to finish with a total of 433 points. Wembanyama got 2nd place with a total of 245 points while Bam Adebayo of the Miami Heat finished a distant third place with 91 points. Gobert is the first player in Minnesota Timberwolves history to win the award.
Gobert is the third player all-time to win the Defensive Player of the Year, joining Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace.&nbsp;
Anchored by Gobert&rsquo;s top defensive rating in the NBA of 106.6 (min. 25 minutes per game), the Timberwolves finished the 2023-24 campaign with the top-ranked defense in the NBA (108.4) after ending last season 10th with a defensive rating of 113.1. The gap between the Wolves&rsquo; defense and the second-ranked Boston Celtics is equivalent to the gap between the second-ranked and the 10th-ranked Houston Rockets. Minnesota finished this season with a net rating of 6.3, good for third in the NBA and the best net rating in franchise history. Teams took 6.4% less shots at the rim when Gobert was on the floor this season (94th percentile) and shot 6.6% worse at the rim when he played (92nd percentile).&nbsp;
The 7-1 center wrapped up his 11th season in the NBA and second with the Timberwolves, playing and starting in 76 games this season, the fourth-most appearances in his career and the most games played since he appeared in 81 games in the 2018-19 season. This season, Gobert averaged 14.0 points on 66.1% shooting, a team-best 12.9 rebounds, and a team-high 2.13 blocks per contest. His 2.13 blocks were his most blocks per game since 2020-21 (2.68 bpg). He ranked second in the NBA in rebounding (12.9 rpg), second in field goal percentage (.661), second in offensive rebounds (3.8 rpg), fourth in defensive rebounds (9.2 rpg), sixth in blocks (2.13 bpg) and fifth in double-doubles (54).&nbsp;

Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert has been named the 2023-2024 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the league announced.

Rudy Gobert named 2023-2024 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year

For a team that has endured losing for almost a decade, the Minnesota Timberwolves sure are savoring the early-season success they&rsquo;re experiencing right now.
After a series of underlying factors such as bad management, poor roster construction and player fallouts, the Wolves' success has been unprecedented (and sweeter than ever).
They are currently 30-12 at the halfway point of the season, which is the best mark in the West. They are the first team in the Western Conference to reach 30 wins, trailing only the Boston Celtics for the best record in the NBA.&nbsp;
Minnesota is on a 60-win pace, and they have the easiest schedule remaining in the entire league.
They are also on pace to surpass the franchise record of 58 wins in a season, which occurred in 2004 when they were led by Kevin Garnett (the best player in franchise history), Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell.
The next goal for this Wolves team? Win their first playoff series since that 2004 season.
After two decades of struggles, what changed for the Wolves? Let's break down their turnaround.
DEFENSE
The Wolves currently have the best defense in the league by a wide margin, allowing 105.8 points per 100 possessions (the runner-up is allowing 108.3 points per 100 possessions). 
They guard opponents unlike any other team in the NBA led by three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert at the rim. Surrounding Gobert are potential All-NBA-caliber defenders at the wings in Jaden McDaniels, Kyle Anderson, Anthony Edwards and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.
Although their offense is still suspect and a work in progress, the team knows how to lock down the opposition.
ALL-STAR-CALIBER TRIO PLAYING WELL
The Wolves' trio of Gobert, Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns have been terrific.
The team is led by Edwards, a charismatic and burgeoning young superstar who has drawn comparisons to all-time great shooting guards Dwyane Wade (due to their similar build and playing style) and Michael Jordan (due to some eerie resemblances in their aerial capabilities, footwork and bank shots).
Edwards constantly wows the crowd with highlight-reel plays, and he gives the Wolves a true alpha, leader and closer. He's someone they can count on in the clutch, delivering when it matters the most.&nbsp;
Bruce Brown, an adversary of the Wolves during their last playoff run when he was on the top-seeded Denver Nuggets, said that Edwards was the toughest guy he had to guard all postseason. He also added that Minnesota was the toughest team that Denver faced on their way to their championship.
The Wolves followed up this praise by beating the Nuggets in November and climbing to the No. 1 seed in the West.
The 22-year-old credited his stint with Team USA in the FIBA World Cup for being able to play in a system rather than just relying on isos all the time. Edwards was the leading scorer of the USA squad that finished just fourth, but the experience was invaluable for Edwards and prepared him for the season.
Gobert is thriving once again after a down season a year ago. The 31-year-old is turning heads and serving as the anchor of the best defense in the league. He is one of the front runners for the Defensive Player of the Year award, which would be his fourth (and tie him with Ben Wallace and Dikembe Mutombo for most all-time).
It wasn't long ago that fans were dubbing Minnesota's deal for Gobert as one of the worst trades in NBA history, but Gobert has bounced back beautifully as the front office&rsquo;s vision of playing him with Towns came to fruition.&nbsp;
Like Edwards, Towns is building off a strong stint in the World Cup and has been rock solid for the Wolves. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft is taking a backseat to Edwards for the good of the team.&nbsp; After plenty of losing seasons, Towns will do whatever is takes to win. He set his ego aside and committed to being the best second option in the league, which has had a huge impact on the Wolves.
There have been times when Towns is asked to shoulder more of the offensive load (such as when Edwards was struggling or absent) and he's stepped up in those moments. He has also been incredibly efficient, averaging 21.6 points while shooting 51.1% from the field and 43% from three-point range.
HIGH-LEVEL ROLE PLAYERS
The Wolves' trio is surrounded by quality role players, including starters McDaniels and Mike Conley. Both are nice supplementary pieces, with Conley providing stability as a floor general and shooting to space the floor and McDaniels giving them elite perimeter defense as well as spot-up shooting and occasional shot-making.
Minnesota arguably has the best eight-man rotation in the league, likely rivaled by just Boston and Denver.
In the playoffs, where rotations shrink and coaches tend to play their most trusted players, that's usually seven or eight players.
Off the bench, the Wolves have big man Naz Reid, a 6-foot-9 super scorer who&rsquo;s become a Sixth Man of the Year candidate by providing instant offense. There&rsquo;s also Anderson, a reliable Swiss army knife and point forward who is a playmaker on offense. Alexander-Walker does a little bit of everything, serving as a back-up ballhandler to Conley, lockdown wing defender and three-point shooter.
COMPETENT ORGANIZATION
A huge credit for the Wolves' success this season goes to president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, who is the engineer of this roster. His vision and willingness to swing for the fences have paid off in a major way.
Chris Finch, who was hired as the team's head coach in 2021, has done a terrific job and is currently garnering some Coach of the Year buzz for his efforts.
The same goes for new owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore, who went all in and weren&rsquo;t afraid to spend for a win-now team that wants to win.&nbsp;
After years of mediocrity, the Timberwolves are finally heading in the right direction. A small-market team that has exceeded all expectations, Minnesota has been one of the feel-good stories of the season &ndash; and they are just getting started.

The Minnesota Timberwolves have the best record in the West. What has changed for the Wolves and led to this turnaround?

The Wolves are reaching new heights, and they're just getting started

DENVER (AP) &mdash; At times, the Denver Nuggets were easy &ndash; sometimes, too easy &ndash; to love, with their rainbow uniforms, their rumpled grumposaurus of a coach and a defense-optional game plan that kept the scoreboard clicking into the 120s and 130s night after night.
At other times, loving them was more difficult, say, during those 50, 60 and 70-loss seasons in the &rsquo;90s that installed a revolving door on the coach&rsquo;s office, or even during a decade-long resurgence in the 2000s when they were led by a fickle superstar who ultimately bailed for New York City.
And even now, with the Nuggets the top seed in the Western Conference, Denver has yet to be mistaken for much beyond an NBA novelty. Such is life in a league driven by superstars who are on a first-name basis with fans &mdash; Magic, Michael, LeBron and Steph &mdash; but never by a team that doesn&rsquo;t win titles, doesn&rsquo;t even play for them, and doesn&rsquo;t get much love even when&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-mvp-jokic-embiid-antetokounmpo-award-finalists-befc47525340c68c47b50cf5ddcfdee5">the two-maybe-three-time MVP</a>&nbsp;is on its roster.
And yet, as any Denver fan of a certain age will tell you, there is something special about the Nuggets. While Denver may obsess over the Broncos, love the Avalanche and tolerate the Rockies, only one team really placed this dusty old cowtown on the map. That&rsquo;s the basketball franchise the NBA plucked from the dying ABA in 1976 to officially turn Denver into not just a major-league city, but a winning one.
&ldquo;There was always a sense of pride that that was the other professional sports franchise in town,&rdquo; said Ron Zappolo, the longtime Denver sports and news anchor, in recalling a long stretch when Denver&rsquo;s big-league teams were the Broncos and the Nuggets. &ldquo;And they never took a back seat to too much. And, yeah, they weren&rsquo;t champions, but they won a ton of games in the &rsquo;80s, and they made it entertaining for everybody.&rsquo;&rdquo;
Their welcome to the NBA came a year before the Broncos &mdash; still B-listers at best and seven years from landing John Elway &mdash; made their first Super Bowl. Denver&rsquo;s biggest sports star at that time: a gap-toothed undersized center with an awkward-but-effective head fake named Dan Issel.
Issel, Bobby Jones and the Skywalker, David Thompson, lost to the Blazers and Bill Walton in the conference semifinals that season. Ever since, part of the price of loving the Nuggets is that the fun always ends early. The Nuggets have been to the playoffs 29 times in their 47 years in the league. They have never played in the NBA Finals.
The player who could change that is Nikola Jokic, a 6-foot-11 force of nature from Serbia who finished 0.2 assists short of averaging a triple-double this season &ndash; something only guards Russell Westbrook and Oscar Robertson have done.
Yet, the national debate this season centers around whether the Lakers, Warriors or Denver&rsquo;s next opponent, the Suns, will win the West. Those discussions feel more like a rite of passage than a true insult in Denver.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been here since the &rsquo;70s, and there&rsquo;s always been a national feeling that what happens in Denver, it&rsquo;s in the Rocky Mountain time zone out there, it&rsquo;s kind of quirky, it&rsquo;s kind of crazy, but, ehhh,&rdquo; Zappolo said.
By 1980, Doug Moe had returned to Denver to take Larry Brown&rsquo;s spot on the sideline. He, along with high-scoring Alex English and Kiki Vandeweghe, made the Nuggets eminently watchable. They averaged more than 120 points a game for five straight seasons. They traded in their &rsquo;70s logo &mdash; a gold-digging mountain man named Maxie Miner &mdash; for those multi-colored rainbow threads with the outline of the Denver skyline. Today, those are among America&rsquo;s favorite throwback unis.
Moe was worth watching all by himself &mdash; a coach whose wry basketball brilliance was on par with his need of a good dry cleaner for his sports coats and a bar of soap for his mouth. Ten years into the gig, he popped champagne at the news conference on the day he was fired. He is still the team&rsquo;s most successful coach, with 432 wins.
What his team could never overcome was the unfortunate fate of sharing the Western Conference with the Lakers. The best Denver team of that era was the 1984-85 squad that fell 4-1 to Magic and Showtime in the conference finals.
Moe&rsquo;s firing led to the indignities of irrelevance that, it could be argued, have bled into today.
There were 12 coaches over the next 14 years. Twice, Issel manned the bench. The first time, Dikembe Mutombo helped the Nuggets rally from 0-2 against Seattle to become the first 8 seed to beat a 1.
George Karl, like Moe and Brown before him a product of the Dean Smith-North Carolina motion system, coached the Nuggets from 2005-13 and made the playoffs every year, including in 2009. That season, they lost to the Lakers and Kobe Bryant in Denver&rsquo;s third trip to the West finals.
Karl&rsquo;s tenure was marked by an uneasy alliance with Carmelo Anthony -- with Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups and even Allen Iverson making appearances in attempts to get the Nuggets over the hump. That group made news, but not the finals, and &rsquo;Melo eventually forced his way to the Knicks.
What put the Nuggets in the headlines again is a second-round draft pick whose selection barely registered across basketball or in Denver.
Title or no, the selection of Jokic &mdash; a two-time league MVP and a finalist for a third award &mdash; already&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/denver-nuggets-nba-sports-nikola-jokic-6b7dc34c311b6810ec67c76ee2208c2d">goes down as one of the best personnel moves in the history of the league</a>. Still, the Nuggets have won five and lost four playoff series since Jokic started taking the Nuggets to the playoffs in 2019.
So, as Denver prepares for Kevin Durant and Phoenix, some Colorado natives might be bracing for the worst. Few, however, will turn their backs completely.
&ldquo;There has always been a soft spot for this team,&rdquo; Zappolo said.
And if, after all these years, there really is gold at the end of all those rainbows, a real Nuggets fan would have to see it to believe it.

The top-seeded Denver Nuggets are flying under the radar, but that's nothing new.

Nuggets searching for NBA gold at the end of the rainbows

Fresh off the 2023 Basketball Africa League Combine and heading toward the NBA Paris Game between the Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons in France, retired 13-year basketball pro Joakim Noah is soaking up every second of the international scene.
With Noah on site for both, Basketball News had the chance to catch up with the longtime Bull and former national-champion Florida Gator to discuss the rise of the BAL, the Paris Game on Thursday, basketball expanding to a global stage and much more.
Being at the BAL Combine and seeing the momentum of the league going into its third season, what's the energy like there?
Joakim Noah: "Well, it's very special to be in Paris. This is a full-circle moment for me personally, and to be able to come to the Combine and to see the energy of the young men trying to get jobs and work in the BAL, I thought it was really special. Obviously, we're building a professional league and it's growing. To build something sustainable... to see the growth from year-to-year is really special, but also to see the energy of the kids who want to be a part of it. Kids who are from all around the world, and everybody, you can feel that the kids are just in really high spirits and want to be a part of it. This is obviously so much bigger than basketball, and everybody who was at the Combine felt that way."
There are many former players who are heavily invested in the BAL, including guys you've played with and against like Grant Hill, Dikembe Mutombo, Ian Mahinmi and Luol Deng to name a few. All of you coming together and contributing to this, how does that feel?
Noah: "I think the contributions of some of the players that were able to invest is great because it also changes our mindset. Because you know, we were raised as competitors and competition can be very divisive, and just to be able to be in a position to be able to grow and unite is special. Not everybody has an opportunity to have that, to be at the table with the big dogs and see how we can grow something from scratch is really special. And now that we have this platform, especially for African players, it's really powerful."
What is the ultimate goal for the league?
Noah: "I think just to have a really powerful league on the continent where African kids don't feel like they have to go anywhere to get paid off of basketball. The game is growing, it's the fastest growing sport in the world and a lot of the talent comes from the motherland. So just to be a part of this and to watch the growth and seeing it at the highest level, but also on a grassroot level, is what it's all about. And now, we're able to have those conversations at a table altogether and look at the big picture and see where the growth needs to happen.
"I mean, Africa's so big, so different culturally. I'm learning a lot, and I feel like not only am I involved in something that I know a little bit about &mdash; because basketball has been my whole life &mdash; but I feel like I found my purpose. And there's a lot to be proud of with that. I didn't grow up on the continent, I wasn't born on the continent, but this is my heritage, and I feel like a lot of people feel that way. I felt that at the Combine (Monday). It's like, people came from all around the world to be a part of this and the energy was that the people who were involved really understand that big picture, and just want to see this game grow. And it's bigger than them just playing and getting a check. A lot of the time with basketball, that's what it becomes, but with this opportunity, I think that people really feel the purpose and I'm proud to be a part of that."
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/2023_01_16_bal_combine_-151-1.png" alt="" width="732" height="366" />
You kind of mentioned it, but internationally, the game is becoming so popular and has a ton of momentum. Even in the NBA, you're seeing more of that at a rapid pace, as there were 58 European players and nine different players from France on opening night. We know that Victor Wembanyama is at the top of NBA Draft conversations. In general, the way basketball is growing across the world, why do you think it's happened so fast and is this going to continue in that trajectory?
Noah: "You know, I remember being in Paris and going to my first NBA game and seeing Michael Jordan play and the power of his influence all around the world. My father brought me to the game in Bercy. And 25 years later, the Bulls are coming to play in Paris again. The French players have had that kind of access. And now, the future of not just French basketball, but the future of basketball is this kid Wemby, who's an unbelievable talent. He grew up seeing a lot of winning, not just in basketball, but you think of France with winning the World Cup. He was raised and he saw what winning is all about and he knows that it's very possible.
"So when I was coming up, [Tariq] Abdul-Wahad was the only NBA player. And I remember seeing Tony Parker coming up at 15 years old playing at ABCD Camp and seeing the career that he had, that was my inspiration. And now, there's just a whole generation of French players and they're just taking it to the next level. But France is a country that has all the resources to be the best. They have everything. They have the coaching, they have the structures, they have the stadiums. They have everything. So you see the growth, and that's what we're trying to do in Africa. The structures aren't there yet, and we have to build it step-by-step."
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You brought up the Paris game. The Bulls are going to be taking on the Detroit Pistons, and Killian Hayes is a French player who's found his stride this year. How special is it to play in your home country in such an event?
Noah: "Well I can't even imagine how he feels, but it's a beautiful story being able to play in front of your family and friends in your country. Nothing gets better than that. So it's gonna be really special for him. And just understanding that there's gonna be younger kids there watching him, and he's gonna be inspiring as well. So not only is it an unbelievable feeling to play on that court, but understanding every layup, every dunk, every opportunity that he gets on the court is inspiring for the next generation."
Going back to finding your purpose in working with the BAL, but on a broader subject, what has your transition to retirement been like? It sounds like you have a solid feel of what you're trying to accomplish post-career.
Noah: "Oh, a hundred percent. I think that everybody who's in this position, our careers are short. It's crazy to know that I won't be playing basketball anymore. It happens so fast. You have a dream from when you're a kid and not everybody gets to live out their dreams as players, and I was able to do that. I got to do it at the highest level, and I'm really proud of that. Now, I have my family. I just got married this summer, I have my kids. So I'm really happy, trying to find that balance of working and working on my purpose work and raising my family."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Joakim Noah (<a href="https://twitter.com/JoakimNoah?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoakimNoah</a>) lending a hand to the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JrNBA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JrNBA</a> ‼<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBAParis?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBAParis</a> <a href="https://t.co/23ejEVVfqz">pic.twitter.com/23ejEVVfqz</a>
&mdash; NBA Cares (@nbacares) <a href="https://twitter.com/nbacares/status/1615701027122036736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 18, 2023</a></blockquote>

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

Do you still keep in touch with your college teammates like Al Horford who's still playing and Corey Brewer who's coaching in New Orleans and your old Bulls teammates?
Noah: "Oh of course. These are people that I shared some of the most special times of my life with. I love Corey. We just sat down not long ago. Obviously, I have strong relationships with everybody and was able to do a beautiful trip with Derrick [Rose] to Africa, where he brought the Simeon (Academy) kids to Senegal this summer. These are all trips, these are all moments that I'm really proud of the relationships that I build off the court. And I just want to keep building."
If there are any players in the NBA today that you have your eye on, who would you say stands out?
Noah: "I love Bol Bol. Bol Bol is probably my favorite player to watch right now. I love to see his growth. Obviously, his back story is unbelievable. His father was so much more than just a basketball player. And just to see him become the player that he is and you just see him... you're not used to seeing somebody who's that tall &mdash; 7-foot-2 African guy &mdash; with handles, with that kind of ability. It just shows how much the game has grown. I just love watching him play. He's just a really exciting player. I wish him nothing but the best."
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More infomation regarding the BAL and the NBA Paris Game:
<ul>
<li>The third BAL season will tip off on March 11 and once again feature the top 12 club teams from 12 African cities playing games in Dakar, Senegal; Cairo, Egypt; and Kigali, Rwanda over three months in 2023</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<ol>
<li>The 12 club champions will be divided into two conferences.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<ul>
<ul>
<li>The Sahara Conference will play a 15-game group phase at the Dakar Arena in Dakar from March 11-21.</li>
<li>The Nile Conference will play a 15-game group phase at the Hassan Mostafa Indoor Sports Complex in Cairo from April 26 &ndash; May 6.&nbsp;</li>
<li>The top four teams from each conference will advance to an eight-game, single elimination Playoffs and Finals at BK Arena in Kigali from May 21-27.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Each of the 12 BAL teams will have up to 13 players, at least eight of whom will be citizens in their respective team&rsquo;s home country and up to four of whom can be from other countries, with no more than two players per team from outside of Africa.&nbsp;</li>
<ul>
<li>One roster spot on each team is reserved for an NBA Academy Africa prospect as part of the BAL Elevate program, which will once again provide an opportunity for the next generation of African prospects to participate in a professional league, showcase their talent on a global stage and help their respective teams compete for the 2023 BAL Championship.</li>
</ul>
<li>The BAL, a partnership between the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and the NBA, is a professional league featuring 12 club teams from across Africa that completed its second season in May 2022.&nbsp;</li>
<li>Headquartered in Dakar, Senegal, the BAL builds on the foundation of club competitions FIBA Africa has organized in Africa and marks the NBA&rsquo;s first collaboration to operate a league outside North America.</li>
<li>On May 28, Tunisia&rsquo;s US Monastir defeated Angola&rsquo;s Petro de Luanda 83-72 to win the 2022 BAL Finals in front of a sold-out crowd of 10,000 at BK Arena.&nbsp;</li>
<li>The 2022 BAL season featured players from 23 countries across Africa, Europe, and the U.S, reached fans in 214 countries and territories in 14 languages - including all 54 African countries - and generated more than 600 million online engagements.</li>
</ul>
NBA Africa
<ul>
<li>With the support of strategic partners, in May the NBA launched NBA Africa as a new, standalone entity that conducts the league&rsquo;s business in Africa, including the BAL.</li>
</ul>
o&nbsp;&nbsp; The investors&rsquo; and strategic partners&rsquo; expertise in a wide range of industries and established relationships with African businesses, governments and NGOs will help accelerate the NBA&rsquo;s growth across the continent.&nbsp;
o&nbsp;&nbsp; The funding will contribute to the growth of the BAL, help expand the NBA&rsquo;s presence in priority African markets and Africa&rsquo;s basketball ecosystem, and deepen the league&rsquo;s engagement with players and fans through initiatives such as the launch of additional NBA Academies and social responsibility initiatives that improve the livelihoods of African youth and families.
<ul>
<li>The strategic investors include a consortium led by Babatunde &ldquo;Tunde&rdquo; Folawiyo, Chairman and CEO of Yinka Folawiyo Group; and Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation (HFP), led by Tope Lawani, Co-CEO of HFP and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Helios Investment Partners.</li>
</ul>
o&nbsp;&nbsp; NBA Legends Junior Bridgeman, Luol Deng (South Sudan), Grant Hill, Ian Mahinmi (France; ties to Benin), Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Joakim Noah (grandfather from Cameroon) have also invested in NBA Africa and will use their collective influence to contribute to our growth goals.
<ul>
<li>In July, the NBA announced that former President Barack Obama has joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner and will help advance the league&rsquo;s social responsibility efforts across the continent, including programs and partnerships that support greater gender equality and economic inclusion.</li>
<li>In December, global economist and New York Times best-selling author Dr. Dambisa Moyo and Academy Award-winning actor and social activist Forest Whitaker joined NBA Africa as strategic investors.</li>
</ul>
The NBA Paris Game 2023
<ul>
<li>The NBA Paris Game 2023 will feature the six-time NBA champion Chicago Bulls and the three-time NBA champion Detroit Pistons playing a regular-season game at the Accor Arena in Paris on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.</li>
<li>The NBA Paris Game 2023 will mark the first NBA game in Europe since 2020 and the league&rsquo;s 12th game in France since 1991.&nbsp; The NBA Paris Game 2020 &ndash; the first regular-season NBA game in Paris &ndash; took place Jan. 24, 2020, and featured the Charlotte Hornets and the Milwaukee Bucks.</li>
<li>The NBA Paris Game 2023 will mark the Bulls&rsquo; third game in Paris, having played two preseason games in the French capital in 1997.
<ul>
<li>The Bulls are among the top three most-popular NBA teams in international merchandise sales (No. 2 in Europe), among the top five most-popular teams on NBA League Pass outside the U.S. (No. 5), and among the top five most-popular NBA teams on social media in terms of following (No. 2 on Facebook, No. 4 on Instagram, No. 4 on Twitter)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The Pistons will be playing their first game in France, having previously played regular-season games in London (2013) and Mexico City (2019).</li>
</ul>
NBA in France
<ul>
<li>NBA games and programming have aired in France since 1985.</li>
<li>During the 2022-23 NBA season, fan in France can watch the NBA on beIN SPORTS, the NBA&rsquo;s exclusive Broadcast &amp; Digital partner in France, and NBA League Pass. beIN SPORTS airs up to 14 live games per week during the regular season, as well as the Play-In, Playoffs, all Conference Finals, Finals, All-Star Weekend, the Draft and Classic Games.</li>
<li>The 2022-23 regular season features 45 games that will air in primetime in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as part of &ldquo;NBA Saturdays and NBA Sundays presented by NBA 2K23,&rdquo; marking the 10th consecutive regular season that the league has scheduled weekend games that air in primetime in EMEA.</li>
<li>France ranks fourth among European markets in League Pass subscriptions.</li>
<li>Boulogne-Levallois Metropolitans 92 games &ndash; featuring French star and top 2023 NBA Draft prospect Victor Wembanyama &ndash; are available for free on the new NBA App throughout the 2022-23 including the LNB All-Star Game and select LNB Betclic ELITE Playoffs and Finals games.</li>
<li>The NBA&rsquo;s localized social media channels in France (Facebook and Twitter) have more than 1.5M collective followers.</li>
<li>The NBA Paris Game 2023 will mark the second regular-season game in France, the 12th NBA game overall in France (dating back to 1991) and the 94th NBA game in Europe (dating back to 1984).</li>
<li>Opening-night rosters for the 2022-23 NBA season featured 58 European players, including nine players from France.
<ul>
<li>France has had more players drafted into the NBA than other country outside North America and has been the most-represented European country in the NBA for each of the last 16 seasons.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The <a href="https://pr.nba.com/nba-fanatics-paris-store-open/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pr.nba.com/nba-fanatics-paris-store-open/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1674099893476000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2Pk9FJqixBAsT8n3qeg9n7">NBA Paris Store</a> &ndash; the first in France &ndash; opened&nbsp;in July 2022 and has featured player appearances by Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat and Alex Caruso of the Chicago Bulls. Top selling teams Los Angeles Lakers, Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors.</li>
<li>The NBA works with 18 marketing partners in France: adidas, EA, FDJ/ParionsSport, Foot Locker, Hennessy, Hotels.com/Expedia, ISG, Kellogg&rsquo;s, Microsoft, Mitchell &amp; Ness, New Balance, New Era, Nike, Rakuten, SAP, Tissot, Under Armour, Yop, and 2K Sports</li>
</ul>

Spencer Davies speaks with Joakim Noah ahead of the 2023 NBA Paris Game about his BAL passion, international hoops and more.

Joakim Noah Q&A: NBA Paris Game, investing in BAL, basketball's growth

DeMatha was leading Sierra Canyon by almost double digits in the fourth quarter, but the Trailblazers were mounting a comeback and chipping away at the lead.&nbsp;
The electrified crowd was enthusiastically cheering on the hometown Stags. It felt like an NBA-playoff atmosphere.&nbsp;
Senior point guard Jaden Winston led a very balanced DeMatha attack with 10 points, but his real impact was felt on the defensive end where he harassed the Sierra Canyon backcourt the entire night. The guards were visibly uncomfortable, which at times led to them struggling to get into their offensive sets and contributed to Bronny James being held to 11 points on just two field-goals.
Ashton Hardaway, who led Sierra Canyon with 14 points, had a very impressive night scoring in a variety of ways &mdash;from fastbreak dunks to offensive putbacks. Down the stretch, he displayed great footwork with a mid-post move to a turnaround fade that brought "ooohs" and "aaaahs" from the DeMatha-heavy crowd.&nbsp;
Unfortunately, a crowd disturbance caused the game to be cancelled with less than two minutes to go in the fourth quarter. (DeMatha was leading 52-51 at the time the game was called).
Following the game, Rashid Ghazi, the president of Paragon Marketing Group, issued the following statement through social media: "Given the incident in the stands tonight during the CBC vs. Stags game at Wise High School, we have cancelled Sunday&rsquo;s event. We are making the decision out of the utmost of caution to ensure player and fan safety. Refunds will be available via Go Fan."
I spoke to a group of teenage girls outside of the Wise High School gymnasium who were witnesses to what happened (including my daughter Imani Thomas) who told me:
&ldquo;I was walking by the concession line when I just saw everyone start running. They were jumping down from the bleachers and stampeding toward the exit. I have never seen anything like this before. People were so scared; they looked like they were running for their lives, so I started running too. Not like I was going to ask anyone what happened or what was going on. I saw running so I ran.&rdquo;&nbsp;
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Another teenager added: &ldquo;They should&rsquo;ve had this at a bigger place, like where the Mystics play in Southeast. That&rsquo;s a big arena, so you wouldn&rsquo;t have had to have people all in the aisles and packed around the balcony. That was just a bad set up. Someone could&rsquo;ve really gotten hurt.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Another teenage girl passionately chimed in with,&nbsp;&ldquo;This was all Sierra Canyon&rsquo;s fault. They were so busy trying to protect Bronny, they caused all of this themselves. Nothing even happened. There was no fight, not even any punches were thrown. It was some young boys running off at the mouth at each other.&rdquo;&nbsp;
One of Imani&rsquo;s schoolmates added, &ldquo;Hey, they gotta protect LeBron's son. They can&rsquo;t be having him out here risking it all.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Another girl responded: &ldquo;Yeah, but them being all scared for no reason caused all this and it wasn&rsquo;t even that serious. Nobody would&rsquo;ve reacted if they didn&rsquo;t see them start running for their lives off the court. Ain&rsquo;t nobody gonna do nothing to Bronny. I wanted to see them finish the game and send them back to Cali with an L.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Imani chimed back in with,&nbsp;&ldquo;There were just way too many people in there in the first place. Wasn&rsquo;t that a health-code violation or fire-marshall issue or something?&rdquo;&nbsp;
They were all absolutely correct in their assessments.&nbsp;
From where I was standing in the overly-crowded balcony they were referring to, I could see everything and what I saw was two young kids who couldn&rsquo;t have been any older than 6th or 7th grade start arguing with each other. Then, I saw security rush over toward them and everyone started to look up into the stands to see what was going on. I looked back onto the court and I saw Sierra Canyon literally running for their lives off of the court. What followed could only be described as complete panic and pandemonium. But as the teenager pointed out, this was 100% prompted by Sierra Canyon&rsquo;s sprint off the court.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s a shame because it was an amazing display of basketball being played by both teams filled with highlights.&nbsp;
A three-pointer from freshman phenom Ashton Meeks after Jaden Winston makes the defender almost do the splits:
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Jaden Winston finds Ashton Meeks for the 3-ball. Meeks is the younger cousin of former DeMatha star Earl Timberlake. <a href="https://twitter.com/DeMathaHoops?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DeMathaHoops</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Jaeewinston1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jaeewinston1</a> <a href="https://t.co/gmKfk4tUy3">pic.twitter.com/gmKfk4tUy3</a>
&mdash; Capitol Hoops (@CapitolHoops) <a href="https://twitter.com/CapitolHoops/status/1586567933886701568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2022</a></blockquote>

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A rebound putback and-one by Malcolm Thomas brought the crowd to its feet:
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Jaden Winston steal on one end. Malcolm Thomas Follow up on the other. <a href="https://twitter.com/Jaeewinston1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jaeewinston1</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/princ3_thomas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@princ3_thomas</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/DeMathaHoops?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DeMathaHoops</a> <a href="https://t.co/QoBJoUmVTs">pic.twitter.com/QoBJoUmVTs</a>
&mdash; Capitol Hoops (@CapitolHoops) <a href="https://twitter.com/CapitolHoops/status/1586570558401138688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2022</a></blockquote>

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A pull-up three-pointer by Bronny James:
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Bronny James pull-up tonight for Sierra Canyon. <a href="https://twitter.com/DeMathaHoops?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DeMathaHoops</a> did a tremendous job on James defensively tonight. This was one of his buckets. <a href="https://t.co/RoFwUmN7oq">pic.twitter.com/RoFwUmN7oq</a>
&mdash; Capitol Hoops (@CapitolHoops) <a href="https://twitter.com/CapitolHoops/status/1586545569480179712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2022</a></blockquote>

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But the play that brought the house down was made by DeMatha&rsquo;s Chris McElveen. It&rsquo;s a play that will be talked about in the DMV for quite sometime. A fastbreak dunk over Bronny James that almost caused the game to be paused in itself:
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Bronny James and Sierra Canyon put on a show tonight at Wise before some unfortunate circumstances ended the game with 2 mins left and <a href="https://twitter.com/DeMathaHoops?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DeMathaHoops</a> up 1. But many will remember this game because Chris McElveen (<a href="https://twitter.com/iam_cris21?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@iam_cris21</a>) put one on Bronny&rsquo;s head!! 😱😱😱😱 <a href="https://t.co/CzYm5KHK45">pic.twitter.com/CzYm5KHK45</a>
&mdash; Capitol Hoops (@CapitolHoops) <a href="https://twitter.com/CapitolHoops/status/1586535252784095232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2022</a></blockquote>

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Regardless of the unfortunate ending, this was a great display of basketball played in Prince George&rsquo;s County on Saturday night. Yes, adjustments will have to be made the next time as suggested by the group of very astute and keenly aware teenage girls. But overall, the crowd definitely got their money&rsquo;s worth (even if it was a hiked up $15 a pop for a preseason scrimmage game).
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A few things impressed me with this play. The fact that Malcolm <a href="https://twitter.com/princ3_thomas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@princ3_thomas</a> challenged Bronny up top (yes he did foul him but he also got a lot of the ball too) but the fact that he didn&rsquo;t move out of the way and just allow the Bronny highlight <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoNo?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NoNo</a> (Shout out to Mutumbo) <a href="https://t.co/HK6fKMrSdg">pic.twitter.com/HK6fKMrSdg</a>
&mdash; Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanthomas36/status/1586712529421705217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2022</a></blockquote>

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Credit to <a href="https://instagram.com/tariqa1i?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tariq Ali</a>, who contributed the photo of Bronny James.

Etan Thomas was in attendance for Saturday's game between DeMatha and Sierra Canyon that ended due to a crowd disturbance.

DeMatha-Sierra Canyon game ends early after minor crowd disturbance

In the latest installment of his "Blazing the Trail" series, Mat Issa analyzes the two-way brilliance of Shawn Kemp.

Blazing the Trail: Shawn Kemp, the aerial artist

Michael Malone says the Denver Nuggets realize they won't transform into NBA title contenders simply by getting Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. back on the court.
Denver's coach said Wednesday the Nuggets need to vastly improve on defense, whether that's through attitude adjustments or player acquisitions.
Thanks to an historic season by reigning MVP Nikola Jokic, the Nuggets won 48 games despite Murray missing the entire season while recovering from ACL reconstruction and Porter missing the final 73 games and the playoffs following back surgery.
The Nuggets lost to Golden State in five games in Round 1 of the NBA playoffs with their two max players looking on in street clothes from the bench.
Malone called this &ldquo;<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/2022-nba-offseason-preview-whats-next-for-the-denver-nuggets" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a huge offseason</a>&rdquo; for the Nuggets, who aim to surround Jokic with the proper supporting cast to capitalize on his prime years.
"Everybody wants to just say, &lsquo;Well, it&rsquo;s just Michael and Jamal coming back healthy.&rsquo; And that's just a starting block, but it doesn&rsquo;t end there,&rdquo; Malone said. &ldquo;We have a window and I think windows are only open so long. We have a 27-year-old phenom who will hopefully soon be named a back-to-back MVP.
"We have to capitalize while we have a special player in Nikola and do everything that we can as an organization &mdash; and I know we will &mdash; to put the best players around him to give ourselves the best chance to win the world championship.&rdquo;
There's the draft, trades and free agency, Malone said, &ldquo;but I always tell our players they have to come back better players. We as a coaching staff have to come back and prove we can find ways to help this team.&rdquo;
That starts with becoming a tougher team to score on.
&ldquo;Our defense against Golden State was not good enough,&rdquo; Malone said. "I think we had the 16th-ranked defense in the playoffs, which is dead last."
During the season, Malone noted, Denver allowed 17&frac12; points per game on turnovers, &ldquo;so we fuel teams' breaks, we give them easy baskets."
&ldquo;And then in the half-court, our inability to guard one-on-one, contain the ball, led to a lot of rim attacks and I think we were 30th in opponents' rim field-goal percentage. We were 29th in blocks per game,&rdquo; Malone said.
&ldquo;That's a bad combination if you struggle to guard the ball on the perimeter and you don't have Dikembe Mutombo blocking shots behind you.&rdquo;
Malone said &ldquo;to be a dangerous, deep playoff team you have to have an elite defense, and that's one of the areas we have to really focus on.&rdquo;
Malone added that &ldquo;the best perimeter defenders are tough dudes&rdquo; and he has two on his roster in forward Aaron Gordon and guard Austin Rivers, a pending free agent along with center DeMarcus Cousins, guards Bryn Forbes and Facu Campazzo and forwards Vlatko Cancar, Davon Reed and Markus Howard.
Malone said his expectations for Murray and Porter next season are &ldquo;just to take it slow and not expecting &lsquo;bubble&rsquo; Jamal Murray and not expecting &lsquo;peak&rsquo; Michael Porter right away."
&ldquo;It's really an important offseason for both those guys,&rdquo; Malone said. &ldquo;They weren't able to play this year and that was tough for a lot of people to understand. But they weren't ready, and that's all there was to it.&rdquo;
Malone said that at different times he felt both players would return to action last season, but the patience the organization displayed with them will continue next season.
&ldquo;I think tempered excitement,&rdquo; is how Malone describes his outlook next season with his stars regaining their health. "And as the season goes along they're going to get more and more comfortable. They're going to get their rhythm back, their confidence back and then they're going to get back to their old selves.
&ldquo;But that's not going to be the case come October, whenever the first game comes around. We have to have patience.&rdquo;

Michael Malone said the Nuggets need to vastly improve on defense, whether that's through attitude adjustments or player acquisitions.

Nuggets need more than healthy Murray, Porter to contend

The&nbsp;<a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/top-5-longest-game-winning-buzzer-beaters-in-nba-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-stringify-link="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/giannis-antetokounmpo-shares-why-he-doesnt-associate-or-practice-with-other-nba-players-in-the-offseason/" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">following article</a>&nbsp;first appeared on&nbsp;<a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="http://basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="http://BasketballNetwork.net" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">BasketballNetwork.net</a>:
Devonte' Graham&rsquo;s 61-footer that beat the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday is the longest game-winning buzzer-beater in NBA history, but the shots that preceded it are equally impressive. Here are the top-five longest game-winners we&rsquo;ve ever seen.
5. Belus Smawley vs. Providence Steamrollers (1948)
Unfortunately, there&rsquo;s no footage of Belus Smawley hitting a long-range prayer to lead the St. Louis Bombers to an 84-82 victory over the Providence Steamrollers back in 1948. But <a href="https://www.basketball-reference.com/friv/buzzer-beaters.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to Basketball-Reference</a>, his 50-footer ranks fifth on the NBA&rsquo;s list of longest game-winning shots.
The best part is that Smawley&rsquo;s chuck only counted for two, as the league obviously still hadn&rsquo;t introduced the three-point line, and made it the longest game-winning two-pointer in history.
4. Tyreke Evans vs. Memphis Grizzlies (2010)
Tyreke Evans&rsquo; three-point heave from mid-court secured the Sacramento Kings a 100-98 win over Memphis on Dec. 29, 2010, snapping the team&rsquo;s eight-game losing streak. The shot was later reviewed by the refs before it, at the time, had officially become the longest-game winner in the NBA since 1992.
&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m the best on the team at doing it,&rdquo; Evans <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/recap/_/gameId/301229023" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said after hitting a 50-footer</a>. &ldquo;We practice that at the shootaround in the morning sometimes and I&rsquo;m glad we do that. It looked good but when it went in, that&rsquo;s when I knew it was good.&rdquo;
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3. Julius Erving vs. Dallas Mavericks (1986)
On Feb. 28, 1986, Julius Erving stunned the Mavericks&rsquo; crowd after hitting a 53-footer to lead the Philadelphia 76ers to a 123-120 victory. He finished the game with 20 points, 4 rebounds and 8 assists, and a single play worthy of NBA history books.
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2. Chris Wayne Jackson a.k.a. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf vs. Los Angeles Clippers (1992)
Dr. J held the record for the longest game-winner until 1992, but then Chris Wayne Jackson happened. After a block by Dikembe Mutombo on one end, with just under 3 seconds left on the game clock, the 6-1 point guard took a couple of dribbles and hoisted one up from 55 feet.
The ball went in, nothing but net, securing the Nuggets a 123-120 win over the Clippers. Jackson finished the game with 19 points on 2-for-3 from behind the arc.
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1. Devonte' Graham vs. Oklahoma City Thunder (2021)
&ldquo;I just wanted to get one up, honestly,&rdquo; Devonte' Graham said after hitting the longest game-winning buzzer-beater in NBA history. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to take the ball out. I waited. Then J-Hart (Josh Hart) passed it to me and I just let it fly.&rdquo;
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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had just hit a crazy 30-footer to tie the game with 1.4 seconds left on the clock. Hart inbounded the ball to Graham, who launched one from 61 feet to secure the New Orleans Pelicans a 113-110 victory, rewriting the history books with the longest "Hail Mary" the NBA has ever seen.
Check out more articles from BasketballNetwork.net&nbsp;<a href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Basketball Network lists the five longest game-winners we’ve ever seen in NBA history.

The 5 longest game-winning buzzer-beaters in NBA history

Saturday afternoon, I had a great time at the Syracuse-Georgetown men's basketball game. It was great to see all the alumni in the house from both schools. I took pictures with Rony Seikaly, Dikembe Mutumbo, Patrick Ewing and Louis Orr, who was my assistant coach at Syracuse.
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Great seeing the OG Rony Seikaly 🍊🍊🍊 <a href="https://t.co/eBacr6RKtC">pic.twitter.com/eBacr6RKtC</a>
&mdash; Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanthomas36/status/1469797832676806661?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2021</a></blockquote>

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My man Coach Orr and Coach Patrick Ewing. It&rsquo;s all love after the game. They got this one today though, good job coaches <a href="https://t.co/tl8D4WMOW8">pic.twitter.com/tl8D4WMOW8</a>
&mdash; Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanthomas36/status/1469793363469783047?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 11, 2021</a></blockquote>

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The Syracuse fans all showed love. (We have the best fans in college basketball by the way.) This rivalry has so much history, and although Georgetown unfortunately came out with the win, I had an overall wonderful time watching the game.
I reached out to some Syracuse alumni &mdash; Lazarus Sims, Arinze Onuaku, Ryan Blackwell and Preston Shumpert &mdash; to get reactions after the two-game, old-Big East matchups against Villanova and Georgetown. It still pains me that we are no longer in the Big East, and yes, I am still holding out hope that, one day, we will return to the conference we belong.
Here is what all four Orange alum had to say on the team.
Lazarus Sims&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/screenshot-2021-12-14-103204_lg.png" alt="" width="575" height="576" />
Etan Thomas: How do you think we played against Villanova and Georgetown?&nbsp;
Lazarus Sims: "They were both great games, but we didn&rsquo;t have a consistent true point guard on the floor who put everyone in the right position. I&rsquo;ll go back to when they won the championship in '03. Many people will say it was 'Melo [Anthony], it was Gerry [McNamara] &mdash; but really if you go back and watch the tournament, when they played their best, it was Billy Edelin who was the key. He put Gerry in his right position, the 2. In contrast to this team, against Villanova and Georgetown, when they put Symir [Torrence] in &mdash; who is a pass first point guard &mdash; it puts your shooters and your scorers in the right position. It puts Buddy [Boeheim] at the 3. It puts Joe Girard at the 2, and allows them to do what they do best. What we&rsquo;re doing is forcing the 2-guard into [being] a point guard, so the flow isn&rsquo;t there. It lasts for awhile, but it&rsquo;s not sustainable."
Etan: I couldn&rsquo;t agree more, and I like Symir. It&rsquo;s crazy, I was watching [Seton Hall guard and 'Cuse transfer] Kadary Richmond play against Rutgers. And the way he was running the team, [he] put everyone in their positions first, then it opened it up for him especially in the first half.... then the second half, he focused on putting everyone in their positions. He should be in a Syracuse uniform. But I see him how I see Symir in [that] we need what he brings to the team and he needs to play more. What do you think?&nbsp;
Sims: "Definitely, and you have to let him play through certain mistakes like you do with Joe [Girard]. We need what he does. The offense flows better with a Symir-type of point guard running the team. That&rsquo;s no knock on Girard, it&rsquo;s just not playing him to his strength."
Etan: Symir should be playing more, the same way Kadary should&rsquo;ve been playing more last year. 
Sims: You&rsquo;ll get no argument from me.&nbsp;
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Etan: I saw the press conference after the Georgetown game, and Coach [Jim] Boeheim was saying the guys are worn down and they&rsquo;re tired. And I&rsquo;m thinking 'Well, you got guys on the bench ready to go.' The starters don&rsquo;t have to play ironman minutes.
Sims: "You saw with Symir, he got in [the game] at Georgetown. [He] made one mistake, and you didn&rsquo;t see him anymore for the rest of the game. It&rsquo;s hard to play like that. But we need what he brings, so we need to let him play through mistakes like we do the starters. I mean, let&rsquo;s be honest, sometimes Girard struggles to get the ball up the floor because that&rsquo;s not his strength. Well, we have someone on the bench whose strength that is, just like we did last year with Kadary. We gotta play guys to their strengths."
Arinze Onuaku&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/usatsi_3633058-1_lg.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="575" />
Arinze Onuaku: "It&rsquo;s totally different from when we were there because obviously, our responsibility was solely the paint area, so it&rsquo;s odd seeing Jesse Edwards run from corner-to-corner. I know they switched the defense to the 1-3-1 [zone] at times and we know it&rsquo;s the bottom man&rsquo;s job to run corner-to-corner, but to have Jesse be that person, it does take him out of rebounding position."
Etan Thomas: And that&rsquo;s the part that I question. I can see [that] if we had Quincy Guerrier still, but it&rsquo;s seems like quite a bit to ask of the Boeheims to be the ones to crash the boards, but that&rsquo;s our strategy. And we&rsquo;ve been getting beaten pretty badly on the offensive rebounds, which is one of the reasons why I&rsquo;m not the biggest fan of that strategy.
Onuaku: "Yeah, for sure and [Jesse] is exerting a lot of energy sprinting from corner-to-corner, three-point line to three-point line. That&rsquo;s a lot to ask of the big man."
Etan: Now, I would like to see him get the ball more, and I feel he has earned the right to get the ball more with the way he has been converting. I want them to play inside-out, and that may be a lot to ask, but the entire half shouldn&rsquo;t go by and he only gets the ball two times. That&rsquo;s ridiculous.
Onuaku: "I agree. Any good team has to have balance, and he has been doing a much better job of finishing as well. I think it may take guys a little more time to trust him. He started off slow last year, and this year, so that trust factor from the guards is a factor. But as he continues to improve, I would expect that trust factor to increase."
Etan: But my problem with the trust issue is, they can jack up three-pointers and they can brick 90% of them and nobody loses trust in them. The big men get two or maybe three opportunities, and if you don&rsquo;t convert or catch their pass, they don&rsquo;t trust you?
Onuaku: "Yeah, the game is always gonna be unbalanced for big men. Jesse is going to have to speak up more, and as he produces more, they will have no choice but to give him the ball."
Etan: Yeah, that&rsquo;s the story of being a big man. It was like that when I played and when you played. But that drag screen he does in early offense situation and [when] he rolls, I think that&rsquo;s an easy high pass to him and he finishes. They just do that a few times every half.&nbsp;
Onuaku: "I agree, and he has shown that he can catch it off the run and he does a great job of keeping the ball high and he has been scoring. So you&rsquo;re right &mdash; they should definitely utilize him much more. And shout out to Frank Anselem, who came in and really attacked the rim and provided a spark off the bench. He&rsquo;s someone we&rsquo;re definitely going to need him down the stretch." 
Ryan Blackwell&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/blackwell_lg.png" alt="" width="575" height="572" />
Etan Thomas: You watched both the Villanova game and the Georgetown game. What was your assessment?&nbsp;
Ryan Blackwell: "The Villanova game, we were right with them the first half. We were making shots, being aggressive, playing defense. Then the second half, it seemed like we just ran out of gas. Same thing with Georgetown; we were up [by] 10 at half, and we let them back in it. We&rsquo;re gonna have to shoot lights out to win games. I know Buddy was struggling a little, but if he&rsquo;s off and we&rsquo;re gonna rely on Jimmy Boeheim to post-up or go 1-on-1 or Joe Girard to go 1-on-1, it&rsquo;s gonna be tough. And if we&rsquo;re not gonna get much from the bench... I mean, the first half against Georgetown we got good production, but [in] the second half, for whatever reason, the production just wasn&rsquo;t there. Coach felt more comfortable going with his starters. And we faltered at the end, and that was unfortunate because it was a very winnable game."
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Etan: I heard Coach Boeheim at the press conference say that the guys looked tired and worn down, but then I&rsquo;m looking at the bench and they look pretty fresh to me. So I&rsquo;m thinking, well coach, there&rsquo;s a remedy for that. If the guys are tired and their shots [are] not falling, [they're] not closing out on defense, not getting back in transition, not rebounding, whatever &mdash; you have people on your bench who can help. 
Blackwell: "You and I both know, coach relies heavily on his starters and that&rsquo;s never going to change. And we know Benny Williams is extremely talented, but for whatever reason, he&rsquo;s not getting the minutes. Yes, he&rsquo;s young and he&rsquo;s a rookie, and with coach, he has a formula that he has always stuck to. But yeah, it&rsquo;s gonna be a real struggle for our starters to carry the full load."
Etan: I&rsquo;m at the Georgetown game &mdash; you can see it better in person &mdash; and I saw Georgetown literally wearing our guys down. And then, utilizing their bench and getting fresh legs in there to wear our guys down even more. Aminu Mohammed, who is just a freshman, was a holy terror against us. And he would get a break, then come back in fresh and terrorize us some more. I mean, you can&rsquo;t be surprised if guys are tired if they are playing ironman minutes, right?&nbsp;
Blackwell: "Yeah, it&rsquo;s tough. And yes, Buddy has improved so much, but he is being asked to do so much and carry the load offensively. And you&rsquo;re right, it&rsquo;s gonna wear on them as we get into the season. And you&rsquo;re right, Georgetown was getting in our shorts and wearing us down. I can&rsquo;t disagree with anything you said. And I worry about when we get into conference play, because it&rsquo;s not going to get any easier for us at all. And it&rsquo;s tough to knock down shots when you&rsquo;re worn down, no matter how great of a shooter you are, and we have great shooters. But yeah, you&rsquo;re right &mdash; hard to shoot threes when you&rsquo;re worn down. We may need to look to incorporate some other options and alternatives to go along with that."
Preston Shumpert&nbsp;
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/prestonshumpert_lg.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="575" />
Etan Thomas: The secret&rsquo;s out now with Buddy. Everyone knows he can shoot, and teams are devising schemes to make sure he doesn&rsquo;t get open shots. What would be your advice to him, as the elite shooter you were, as to how he can get open and get his shot off?
Preston Shumpert: "It&rsquo;s so different once you&rsquo;re on the other team&rsquo;s scouting report. It&rsquo;s great that he had the success he had last season, but now, like you said, teams are going to try to come up with a game plan to stop you from doing what you do best, which in Buddy&rsquo;s case, is knocking down shots. He&rsquo;s been doing a good job of moving without the ball; he just has to do more of it. Be a little more creative on getting open and what he does once he catches the ball."
Etan: You said move without the ball, so let&rsquo;s talk specifics. Do you mean off screens? Running the baseline?
Shumpert: "I think it&rsquo;s a combination of both. He&rsquo;s getting pin-down screens and curls. I just think he needs to stay consistent with it and know he&rsquo;s going to be hounded and [that] guys are gonna be on him, because he&rsquo;s an elite shooter. But at the same time, if he comes off a screen and two guys jump him, it&rsquo;s the point guard&rsquo;s job to find the open man. Once you start taking advantage of those situations, then you will be more open. But he&rsquo;s gonna have to fade, curl, post up &mdash; he&rsquo;s gonna have to do a lot of different things to get his shot off, and that&rsquo;s really a compliment to him because of how good of a shooter he is. On every scouting report, I&rsquo;m sure it says, 'No open shots for him.'" 
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Etan: That&rsquo;s definitely true. What is the best way to come out of a slump? With shooters, you&rsquo;re going to go through times where the ball just doesn&rsquo;t go in the hole. What would your advice be to Buddy or Cole [Swider] when they are not shooting well?&nbsp;
Shumpert: "My favorite quote is, 'Shoot when you&rsquo;re making it, and shoot when you&rsquo;re missing it.' You've gotta continue to be aggressive and have confidence in your shot. Now, your shot selection is definitely important, but if it&rsquo;s a wide open shot, and that&rsquo;s your shot, fire that 'thang up. That&rsquo;s what you do. If you&rsquo;re a shooter, you've gotta shoot the ball. Shoot 'til you make it, shoot 'til you miss. That&rsquo;s a shooter&rsquo;s mentality. No conscience."
Etan: One thing that you started to develop through your years was the one-dribble, two-dribble pull-ups because they were playing you so tight for the three-point shot, and Buddy has been doing good with that. Do you think he should keep doing that more especially if the outside shot isn&rsquo;t falling?&nbsp;
Shumpert: "Definitely, that&rsquo;s what I meant by being a little more creative and taking what they&rsquo;re giving you. Like you said, guys are gonna be pressing up on you and running out on you. They&rsquo;re not going to let you get a free look. So that&rsquo;s when you go to the pump fake, one-dribble, two-dribble pull-up. But another thing &mdash; which I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re gonna like this &mdash; throw it up to the big [man] or give him that little pocket pass, when they hedge on him or after he sets the pick a little more often, and let the big [man] hammer a few down and get all riled up like you used to. It will open you up more. And the more you involve the big man, the better your screens will be. The big man will have you wide open if you treat him right. I learned that myself when we played together. Keep the big man happy, and he&rsquo;ll rebound better, block shots better and work harder to get you open, and will roll harder which will ultimately help everyone."
Etan: That should be on the wall in every locker room (laughs).

Etan Thomas spoke with four Syracuse alum after the Orange took on Georgetown and Villanova this past week to get their thoughts.

Orange alumni react to Syracuse-Georgetown game

The NBA has announced a partnership with former president of the United States, Barack Obama. Obama will join the NBA's new 'NBA Africa' as a strategic partner. <a href="https://www.nba.com/news/former-president-barack-obama-joins-nba-africa-as-strategic-partner?%24web_only=true&amp;_branch_match_id=712679623240598614" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here</a> is the full release:
The National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced that former President Barack Obama has joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner.
President Obama will help advance the league&rsquo;s social responsibility efforts across the continent, including programs and partnerships that support greater gender equality and economic inclusion. &nbsp;In this capacity, President Obama will have a minority equity stake in the new venture, which over time he intends to use to fund Obama Foundation youth and leadership programs across Africa.
NBA Africa conducts the league&rsquo;s business in Africa, including the Basketball Africa League (BAL), which held its inaugural season in May featuring 12 of the top club teams from 12 African countries. &nbsp;NBA Africa is focused on expanding the NBA&rsquo;s presence in priority African markets, deepening the league&rsquo;s engagement with players and fans across the continent, and continuing to grow Africa&rsquo;s basketball ecosystem through programs like the Jr. NBA, Basketball Without Borders (BWB) Africa and NBA Academy Africa. &nbsp;In addition, NBA Africa has launched several social responsibility initiatives aimed at raising awareness of gender-based violence, supporting girls&rsquo; education, and improving the livelihoods of African youth and families.
&ldquo;The NBA has always been a great ambassador for the United States&mdash;using the game to create deeper connections around the world, and in Africa, basketball has the power to promote opportunity, wellness, equality, and empowerment across the continent,&rdquo; said President Barack Obama. &nbsp;&ldquo;By investing in communities, promoting gender equality, and cultivating the love of the game of basketball, I believe that NBA Africa can make a difference for so many of Africa&rsquo;s young people. &nbsp;I&rsquo;ve been impressed by the league&rsquo;s commitment to Africa, including the leadership shown by so many African players who want to give back to their own countries and communities. &nbsp;That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;m proud to join the team at NBA Africa and look forward to a partnership that benefits the youth of so many countries.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We are honored that President Obama has become a strategic partner in NBA Africa and will support our wide-ranging efforts to grow the game of basketball on the continent,&rdquo; said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. &nbsp;&ldquo;In addition to his well-documented love for basketball, President Obama has a firm belief in Africa&rsquo;s potential and the enormous growth opportunities that exist through sports. &nbsp;NBA Africa will benefit tremendously from his engagement.&rdquo;
&ldquo;We have ambitious growth plans for NBA Africa and having President Obama join our efforts is a recognition that through sport, Africa can take its rightful place on the world stage,&rdquo; said NBA Africa CEO Victor Williams. &nbsp;&ldquo;We look forward to working with President Obama and our strategic investors to use basketball as an economic growth engine across the continent and as a platform to improve the health and wellness of one of the world&rsquo;s youngest and fastest-growing populations.&rdquo;
Strategic investors in NBA Africa include a consortium led by Babatunde &ldquo;Tunde&rdquo; Folawiyo, Chairman and CEO of Yinka Folawiyo Group, and Helios Fairfax Partners Corporation (HFP), led by Co-CEO Tope Lawani. &nbsp;Additional investors in NBA Africa include NBA Legends Junior Bridgeman, Luol Deng (South Sudan), Grant Hill, Ian Mahinmi (France; ties to Benin), Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Joakim Noah (ties to Cameroon).
The NBA has a decades-long history in Africa and opened its African headquarters in Johannesburg in 2010. &nbsp;Since then, the league&rsquo;s efforts on the continent have focused on increasing access to basketball and the NBA through social responsibility, grassroots and elite development, media distribution, corporate partnerships, NBA Africa Games, the launch of the BAL, and more.
The inaugural BAL season was broadcast to fans in 215 countries and territories in 15 languages. &nbsp;On Sunday, May 30, Zamalek (Egypt) defeated US Monastir (Tunisia) 76-63 to win the first BAL Championship. &nbsp;Fans can follow @NBA_Africa and @theBAL on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

The NBA announced that former president Barack Obama has joined NBA Africa as a strategic partner.

NBA announces Barack Obama will join NBA Africa as strategic partner

In this series, Matt Babcock shares his experience growing up around the Milwaukee Bucks organization since his dad, Dave Babcock, has been an executive with the team for 23 years. He also provides an inside look at the rise and fall of the Bucks during the late 1990s and early 2000s. <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/breakingnews/growing-up-a-buck-millewahque-milwaukee-bucks-nba" target="_blank" rel="noopener">For Part 1, click here</a>. <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/growing-up-a-buck-george-karl-arrives-in-milwaukee" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> For Part 2, click here</a>. <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/growing-up-a-milwaukee-bucks-its-reggie-miller-time-indiana-pacers-nba" target="_blank" rel="noopener">For Part 3, click here</a>.
After finishing the 2000-01 NBA regular season as the top team in the Central Division, the Milwaukee Bucks were headed to the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Thanks to my dad&rsquo;s job within the Bucks&rsquo; front office, I was lucky enough to be along for the ride. As a 16-year-old kid, I routinely shot around with the team before games, spent time in the locker room before and after games, and even traveled with the team. Of all my fortunate experiences with the Bucks during that time, nothing compares to the emotional roller coaster of the 2001 playoff run.&nbsp;
Here&rsquo;s how I remember it happening...
The Bucks' first playoff series that year was against the seventh-seeded Orlando Magic led by head coach Doc Rivers. The previous season, the Bucks and Magic played a &ldquo;do-or-die&rdquo; game on the last day of the regular season. The winner would secure a playoff spot, and the Bucks won in a nail biter. George Karl and Doc Rivers seemed to regularly take jabs at each other in the media during that time and the two teams had suddenly established a testy rivalry with one another.&nbsp;
However, the 2001 Orlando Magic team was a little different than the team the Bucks beat the previous season. The previous Magic team was led by a group of underdog journeymen, including Darrell Armstrong, Bo Outlaw, and Ben Wallace &mdash; they were a scrappy bunch of overachievers, which was their clear-cut identity as a team. Following the 1999-00 season, the Magic really opened up their wallets, signing superstar Grant Hill from the Detroit Pistons and young budding star Tracy McGrady from the Toronto Raptors. Their idea was, presumably, to have Hill be the leader and the face of the team as they slowly brought along McGrady. However, after signing that big contract, Hill only played four games that season as he battled ankle injuries &mdash; injuries that derailed the rest of his career, unfortunately. Subsequently, the idea of slowly developing McGrady was scratched and, suddenly, the Magic were dependent on the 21-year-old to carry their team.&nbsp;
However, McGrady did not have any problems stepping into this role, averaging 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.5 steals, and 1.5 blocks per game that season. In the first-round playoff series versus the Bucks, McGrady was outstanding, averaging 33.8 points, 8.3 assists, 6.5 rebounds, 1.8 steals, and 1.3 blocks per game &mdash; superstar numbers. He did all of this while also holding All-Star Glenn &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; Robinson to only 14.8 points per game and 34.8% shooting from the field, which were well below his normal averages. I also remember McGrady relentlessly trash-talking &ldquo;Big Dog,&rdquo; infamously calling him &ldquo;Puppy Dog.&rdquo; Following that series, McGrady quickly became well known within the basketball world, and I guess you could say &ldquo;a star was born.&rdquo; He was a long, 6-foot-8 scoring machine who could essentially do everything on the offensive end.&nbsp;
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However, in hindsight, based on what I saw from McGrady in that series, I don&rsquo;t think he maximized his full potential over the course of his career (although he was an all-time great player). Although not a bad defender, he had the potential to be elite. He could have had a Scottie-Pippen-type of career on the defensive end and become a two-way star, if he had really applied himself. This was an early lesson for me in evaluating players: just because a player has the tools to be a great defender does not mean he will be. Intent and effort are absolutely necessary for a player to be productive on the defensive end. Regardless, McGrady was great during that series and it is still one of the best individual performances throughout a playoff series that I have ever seen. Nevertheless, despite McGrady&rsquo;s impressive performance during that series, the Bucks far outmatched the Magic talent-wise. The Bucks beat the Magic 3-1, and I suppose &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; got the last laugh in that matchup.
And on to the next round the Bucks went&hellip;
In the second round, the Bucks faced the Charlotte Hornets, who were led by star player Jamal Mashburn and second-year point guard Baron Davis. The first two games of that series went as expected; the Bucks protected their home court and won the tough games. The next two games were played on the road in Charlotte and that was an entirely different story.
As I mentioned, the Hornets&rsquo; top player was Mashburn. Having had somewhat of a roller-coaster career up to that point, the 28-year-old had really come into his own as a player. The Hornets traded for him the previous summer and it clearly seemed to be a good fit. At 6-foot-8 and a strong 240 pounds, the small forward from the University of Kentucky was a handful for any opponent. He could shoot from outside, handle the ball, post up, and pretty much score from all over the floor. He was simply a matchup nightmare due to his strength and versatility. He <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/roundtable-which-former-player-would-fit-perfectly-in-todays-nba" target="_blank" rel="noopener">would be perfect as a combo forward in today&rsquo;s modern style of play</a>. In Games 3, 4, and 5 of that series, his value really showed, as he was the top scorer in each contest and led the charge for the Hornets to win three games in a row over the Bucks.
And like a whirlwind, the Bucks went from being up a comfortable 2-0 to down a terrifying 3-2. The tide had turned quickly, and the pressure was on the Bucks.
Despite the Bucks having gone to the playoffs the previous couple of seasons, the 2001 playoffs were my first real taste of how intense playoff basketball can be for everyone involved -- including the families of the players, coaches, and management. The NBA is big business, and when a team goes far in the playoffs, everyone wins on some level or another. Player values in free agency increase, coaches and management get raises or new job opportunities, and, of course, playoff bonuses get bigger with each round. The family room at the Bradley Center following a loss in the playoffs felt like a funeral. Needless to say, stress levels were high now that the team&rsquo;s back was up against the wall, down 3-2.
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Game 6 was played in Charlotte and it did not start off well. The Bucks went into the locker room at halftime down 10 points. However, in the second half, the &ldquo;Big Three&rdquo; of Ray Allen, Sam Cassell, and Glenn &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; Robinson lit it up. The Bucks outscored the Hornets 61-44 in the second half and won the game by seven points. Allen, Cassell and Robinson combined for 85 points. When it comes to perimeter shooting and scoring, they were probably the NBA&rsquo;s best trio at the time (and they&rsquo;re arguably one of the best ever). When Ray, Sam and &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; got hot, good luck trying to stop them!
That intense series would come down to one final deciding game. By that point, the Hornets had earned everyone&rsquo;s respect and in Game 7, Baron Davis put on a show. The 6-foot-3, strong, explosive point guard diced up the Bucks&rsquo; defense off the dribble, scoring 29 points. But that game was played in Milwaukee, in our house, the Bradley Center. The Bucks closed out that series, winning by nine points. &ldquo;The Big Three&rdquo; came through in the clutch again, as Ray and &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; combined for 57 points, and Sam chipped in 17 points and 13 assists.&nbsp;
The Bucks were moving on again. Now, to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they matched up against the Philadelphia 76ers, who were coached by Larry Brown and led by that season&rsquo;s NBA MVP Allen Iverson.
The 76ers had the best regular-season record in the East that year, so Philadelphia had home-court advantage. After a few bogus calls, non-calls, and just poor overall officiating at the First Union Center, the 76ers unfortunately pulled out a win over the Bucks in Game 1. The matchup between Allen Iverson and Ray Allen quickly proved to be entertaining in and of itself, as Ray scored 31 points and Iverson had 34 in Game 1. It was pretty evident that this would be a showdown we would all remember.
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/ray_ai1_lg.jpg" alt="" width="680" height="412" />
The officiating in Game 1 was bad, but the team had to move on and get a win in Game 2 to tie up the series before heading back to Milwaukee &mdash; and that&rsquo;s exactly what they did. The Bucks&rsquo; defense was able to hold Iverson to 5-26 shooting from the field and just 16 points. Just as important, Ray absolutely went off, netting 38 points and hitting seven three-pointers. Heading back to Milwaukee for Game 3, tied up 1-1 with the Sixers, the Bucks&rsquo; confidence was already high, but then the news came out that Iverson was not even traveling with the team because of a sore hip. Going into Game 3 without their star player, Coach Brown clearly instructed his 76ers to &ldquo;muck it up.&rdquo; The team was built around Iverson and his scoring ability; the rest of the roster was made up of tough defenders with relatively little offensive talent and &ldquo;glue guys&rdquo; -- players such as Eric Snow, George Lynch, Tyrone Hill, Aaron McKie, and veteran center Dikembe Mutombo. 
The Sixers&rsquo; plan to make it a physical, sloppy game worked, as both teams struggled to score. Although it was an admirable effort, the Sixers could not overcome the Bucks&rsquo; talent without Iverson. Milwaukee defeated Philly 80-74, taking a 2-1 series lead. At that point, I couldn&rsquo;t help myself from getting excited about the idea of traveling with the team to Los Angeles, where they would most likely face Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O&rsquo;Neal, and the Los Angeles Lakers in the sacred NBA Finals.
The Bucks needed to get past the 76ers first though, and with Iverson returning, that wouldn&rsquo;t be an easy task. Iverson returned from his injury in Game 4 as expected, and the Sixers won the next two games. The officiating continued to become more and more of a focal point in that series and the referees came under major scrutiny, especially after Game 4. There started to be a lot of chatter in the media about a conspiracy theory that the NBA and NBC did not want a small-market team like the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Finals. Needless to say, this series was quite dramatic.
The Bucks were up against the wall, again, and they needed to win two games in a row in order for my dream trip to L.A. for the NBA Finals to become a reality.
Down 3-2, the Bucks were facing elimination in Game 6 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Before that game, rumors circulated that a bellman at the 76ers&rsquo; hotel had found Iverson passed out drunk outside of his room earlier that morning. I&rsquo;m not quite sure if that story is true or not, but I do know that I watched Iverson drop 46 points on the Bucks that night! Still, despite Iverson&rsquo;s incredible game (in which he may or may not have been hungover), the Bucks won. This meant there would be a Game 7 in Philly &mdash; winner goes to the NBA Finals and the loser &ldquo;goes fishing.&rdquo;
Many fans in Milwaukee theorized that the NBA was trying to clear a path for Iverson and the 76ers to make the Finals. Then, the suspension of the Bucks veteran big man Scott Williams only added fuel to that fire. In Game 6, Williams, the &ldquo;heart and soul&rdquo; of that Bucks team, was called for a flagrant foul on Iverson. The day after the game, the NBA notified the Bucks that Williams would be suspended for Game 7, which was a huge blow.
Game 7 went on without Williams and Iverson was great again, scoring 44 points. The 76ers beat the Bucks, and just like that, the Bucks&rsquo; playoff run was over.
It was devastating...
The saddest part? I don&rsquo;t think that Bucks team was ever able to fully recover from that loss. Within a couple of years, Milwaukee traded Ray Allen (to the Seattle SuperSonics), Glenn &ldquo;Big Dog&rdquo; Robinson (to the Atlanta Hawks), and Sam Cassell (to the Minnesota Timberwolves). The team fired head coach George Karl, and general manager Ernie Grunfeld left to join the Washington Wizards. The Bucks went into rebuilding mode.
I really don&rsquo;t have any interest in debating whether that 76ers series was fixed; I sincerely hope it wasn't. However, there is no question that the poor officiating directly affected the results of that series. Years later, I&rsquo;m still left with a lot of &ldquo;what if?&rdquo; questions that send my mind spinning. If the officiating was better in that series, would the Bucks have beaten the Sixers? Could the Bucks have defeated the Lakers? Would my dad have a championship ring? Would that Bucks core have stayed together longer? Would Ray have retired a Buck and have his No. 34 retired in the rafters? What would Michael Redd&rsquo;s career have been like if Ray was never traded? What number would Giannis Antetokounmpo be wearing right now if No. 34 was retired? Would we even have Giannis? And on and on...
Despite the disappointing conclusion of that 2001 season, I can say, without hesitation, that from 1998 to 2001 were the greatest years of my life from a basketball perspective. I was an impressionable teenager going through a critical time in my life from a developmental standpoint, as a basketball person and as a young man. I was lucky enough to be able to experience the ins and outs of the NBA, learn the game from some all-time greats, make many lifelong friends, and create memories that now seem more like a dream than reality, memories that will certainly last a lifetime.
<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/growing-up-a-buck-from-ray-allen-to-giannis-antetokounmpo-dave-babcock-remains-milwaukee-bucks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Check out Part 5 of this series, which fast forwards and looks at the present-day Bucks.</a>
Also, <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/draft" target="_blank" rel="noopener">check out Matt Babcock's latest 2021 NBA Mock Draft here.</a>

Matt Babcock provides an inside look at the rise and fall of the Milwaukee Bucks in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Growing up a Buck: The 2001 Playoff Run

Previously, <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/new-york-knicks-202021-report-card-guards-and-wings-" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I handed out grades for the New York Knicks' guards and wings</a> based on their performance this past season. In this final installment of the Knicks' 2020-21 report card, let's focus on the forwards and centers.
Julius Randle
Although his struggles against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round may have left a sour taste, it's important to remember that the Knicks would not have earned the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference and secured home-court advantage in the postseason if it wasn't for Randle's awe-inspiring play during the regular season.
Randle, named the NBA's Most Improved Player for the 2020-21 season, averaged 24.1 points, 10.2 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game, ranking in the top-20 in all three categories. He also led the NBA in minutes. (The only other players to average at least 24 points, 10 rebounds and 6.0 assists over an entire season are Wilt Chamberlain, Nikola Jokić, Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird and Russell Westbrook.)
Randle also averaged 2.3 made three-pointers and 0.9 steals while shooting 45.6% from the floor, 41.1% from downtown and 81.1% from the free-throw line. He became just the second player in NBA history to average at least 20/10/6 as well as two made treys per game, joining Westbrook, who matched those numbers during his 2016-17 MVP campaign.&nbsp;
<a href="https://stathead.com/basketball/pgl_finder.cgi" target="_blank" rel="noopener">According to Basketball-Reference</a>, Randle is also just the second player ever to average more than 10 rebounds and five assists while shooting over 40% from three-point territory and over 80% from the charity stripe. The only other player in this exclusive club is Bird, who posted those numbers in 1984-85 on his way to winning the MVP.&nbsp;
Earlier this week, Randle was named to the All-NBA Second Team, alongside Chris Paul, Damian Lillard, Joel Embiid and LeBron James.
Grade: A
Nerlens Noel
New York's performance on the defensive end was a critical factor in their success this past season. (The 2020-21 Knicks became just the second team in NBA history to lead the league in opponents&rsquo; points per game, opponents&rsquo; field-goal percentage and opponents&rsquo; three-point percentage.) And Noel was a crucial contributor to the team's surprisingly stout defense.&nbsp;
New York signed Noel to a one-year, $5 million deal last summer, and it turned out to be one of the team's best-value contracts. With Mitchell Robinson sidelined by a pair of significant injuries and available for only four of the team's final 44 games, Noel was asked to shoulder more responsibility than he or the team anticipated heading into the season. However, he significantly exceeded expectations.
Noel was the only player in the league to average more than two swats and one swipe this season, finishing the campaign with per-game averages of 2.2 blocks and 1.1 steals. Over the past decade, the only other players to average at least two blocks and a steal over a full season were Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard and Joakim Noah. Noel is the first player in NBA history to post those averages while logging fewer than 25 minutes a night. Considering his contributions to one of the best defensive teams in the NBA, it was surprising that he received only one vote for the All-Defensive Second Team.
Noel also grabbed 6.4 rebounds per game and shot over 61% of the floor. The Knicks could not have asked for much more.&nbsp;
Grade: B
Obi Toppin
It was assumed that one of the reasons the Knicks selected Toppin with the eighth overall pick in the 2020 draft was because of his NBA-ready game.&nbsp;
Toppin was named the NCAA National Player of the Year in 2020 due to his dominant play at Dayton, where he averaged 20.0 points per game to go along with 7.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists. He shot a scorching 63.3% percent from the field and 39% from behind the arc. Per Basketball-Reference, he was just the sixth underclassman in the last 25 years to average at least 20 points and shoot over 60% from the floor.
Considering he was already 22 years old on draft day, Knicks fans expected Toppin to make an immediate impact. However, the youngster got off to a disappointingly slow start. After shooting 3-for-12 in the season opener, Toppin suffered a right calf injury that sidelined him for the team's next 10 games. After returning to the lineup, he showed flashes of his impressive combination of size and athleticism but never fully found his rhythm. He scored in double-figures just three times over the entire regular season, never topping 12 points.&nbsp;
Yet, it's worth noting that Randle's breakout season undoubtedly impacted how the Knicks deployed Toppin. The rookie logged 24 minutes in the first game of the season, but by the time he returned from his injury, Randle was proving himself indispensable, and coach Tom Thibodeau wanted his All-Star on the floor as often as possible (hence, Randle leading the league in minutes). Thus, Toppin usually only played the first six minutes of the second and fourth quarters, making it challenging for him to contribute consistently.&nbsp;
Toppin finished the season averaging just 4.1 points and 2.2 rebounds, shooting below 50% from the floor and 31% from downtown.&nbsp;
However, Toppin encouragingly closed the season on a high note, providing the Knicks with a much-needed spark in their first-round matchup with the Hawks. He was aggressive throughout the series, scoring eight points in Game 2 and then poured in a season-high 13 points in 18 minutes in Game 4, becoming just the fourth Knick rookie to score more than 12 points in a playoff game over the last 35 years. Game 4 was the first time all year Toppin attempted at least four free throws and multiple three-pointers in the same contest. We'll see if he can build on that momentum heading into 2021-22.&nbsp;
Grade: C-
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Taj Gibson
After New York waived Gibson last offseason to clear cap space, they invited him to training camp but decided to keep Omari Spellman on the regular-season roster. However, by early January, Gibson was re-signed and reunited with Thibs. Taj saw only sporadic minutes early on, but became an important rotation player over the second half of the season.&nbsp;
By the time the playoffs arrived, the veteran was shockingly one of the Knicks' most consistent and reliable contributors. Thibodeau inserted Gibson into the starting lineup in Game 3 vs. Atlanta, and he ended up averaging nearly 28 minutes per game in the postseason.&nbsp;
At 36 years of age, Gibson has proven he can still hold his own, especially on the defensive end, due to his high-basketball IQ and veteran savvy. Fully expect New York to bring back Gibson next season, as he is also one of the team's leaders in the locker room.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Grade: B-
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/usatsi_16065595_lg.jpg" alt="" width="746" height="579" /> Mitchell Robinson
Drafted with the 36th overall pick in the 2018 draft, Robinson emerged as an absolute steal for the Knicks. During his first pro season, he led all rookies in blocks (2.4) and field goal percentage (69.4%) to go along with 7.3 points and 6.4 rebounds in just 20.6 minutes. His 2.4 blocks per game ranked second in the NBA and was the highest average by a rookie since Shaquille O'Neal in the 1992-93 season.
Robinson also led all rookies in PER and Win Shares, besting Deandre Ayton, Luka Doncic and Trae Young, who finished second, third and fifth, respectively. Robinson also ranked first in VORP and Box Plus/Minus, just ahead of Doncic in both categories.
As a sophomore in 2019-20, Robinson made 74.2% of all field goals he attempted, setting the all-time NBA record for the highest single-season field goal percentage ever, passing Wilt Chamberlain. Over his first two years in the league, Robinson had more blocks (280) than missed field goal attempts (177) and turnovers (72) combined.&nbsp;
Thus, Knicks fans had high hopes that he'd establish himself as a star in 2020-21. They would end up bitterly disappointed.
In February, Robinson underwent surgery after breaking his right hand. After returning to action in late March, he lasted just four games before fracturing the fifth metatarsal in his right foot and would remain sidelined the rest of the season.&nbsp;
Yet, not only did Robinson's durability issues cause consternation, but his regression on the court was also distressing.&nbsp;
Despite logging a career-high 27.5 minutes in his 31 appearances, his production dipped. Robinson averaged 14 points, 11.1 rebounds and 3.6 blocks per-36 minutes over his first two NBA seasons. (Only <a href="https://stathead.com/basketball/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&amp;match=combined&amp;order_by_asc=0&amp;order_by=ws&amp;type=totals&amp;per_minute_base=36&amp;per_poss_base=100&amp;is_playoffs=N&amp;ccomp%5B1%5D=gt&amp;cval%5B1%5D=13.9&amp;cstat%5B1%5D=pts_per_mp&amp;ccomp%5B2%5D=gt&amp;cval%5B2%5D=3&amp;cstat%5B2%5D=blk_per_mp&amp;ccomp%5B3%5D=gt&amp;cval%5B3%5D=11&amp;cstat%5B3%5D=trb_per_mp&amp;lg_id=NBA&amp;birth_country_is=Y&amp;age_min=0&amp;age_max=99&amp;height_min=0&amp;height_max=99&amp;season_start=1&amp;season_end=2&amp;as_comp=gt&amp;as_val=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">three other players</a> posted 14/11/3 per-36-minute averages over their first two seasons: David Robinson, ‪Dikembe Mutombo, ‪and ‪Hakeem Olajuwon.)
Yet, Robinson's numbers dropped to 10.8 points, 10.6 rebounds and just 1.9 blocks per-36 in 2020-21. And after vowing to expand his range, Robinson has shown no signs of a mid-range jumper, let alone a three-point stroke. Worse yet, after shooting 60% from the charity stripe as a rookie, he converted an embarrassingly low 49% of his free throws this past season.
New York has a team option to retain Robinson next season at just $1.8 million. Yet, if they exercise that option instead of signing him to a long-term extension this summer, Robinson would become an unrestricted free agent in 2022. It will be fascinating to see how negotiations are handled by both parties this summer.&nbsp;
Grade: D+
Kevin Knox
Like Robinson, Knox's Knicks career got off to a great start. In December of his debut season, Knox was named NBA Rookie of the Month after averaging 17.1 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.4 made three-pointers in 34.9 minutes a night. On Dec. 9, he joined LeBron James as the second-youngest player in NBA history to record at least 25 points and 15 rebounds in a game.&nbsp;
He finished the season averaging 12.8 points and 4.5 boards, but shot just 37% from the floor. As a sophomore, he was somehow even more inefficient. His scoring average dropped to 6.4 points per game, as he shot below 36% from the field, 33% from downtown and 65% from the free-throw line.&nbsp;
After starting 57 games as a rookie, Knox found himself out of the rotation for much of the 2020-21 campaign. Over the final three months of the season, Knox appeared in just 22 of the team's last 52 contests and averaged fewer than five minutes (mostly checking in during garbage time). Thus, it's probably unfair to give him a failing grade, considering he didn't have a chance to prove himself.&nbsp;
For fans looking for a sliver of optimism, Knox is still just 21 years old and shot a career-high 39.3% from behind the arc (35-for-89) and 80% from the charity stripe this past season. He also was effective camped out in the corner, converting 60.9% of his corner three-point attempts over the first month of the season while he was a regular part of the rotation.
Knox has only one more year of guaranteed money left on his rookie contract, so 2021-22 could be a make-or-break season, despite the fact he'll be just 22 years of age.&nbsp;
Grade: Incomplete
---
Although the 2020-21 season ended on a sour note for the Knicks, there were some positives, and contributions from their frontcourt were among them.
The NBA&rsquo;s Coach of the Year will now hope that his club takes another step forward in 2021-22.

Julius Randle admirably led the Knicks last season, and they got contributions from the other members of their frontcourt, as well.

New York Knicks 2020-21 Report Card: Forwards and Centers

Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert is the winner of the 2020-21 Defensive Player of the Year award, the league announced Wednesday night.
Gobert was the anchor of a top-three defensive unit that also lead the league in net rating and finished with the NBA's best record. He averaged a career-high in blocks (2.7) and defensive rebounds (10.1).
Here's the NBA's official press release:
Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert has been named the 2020-21 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year, the NBA announced today.
This marks the third NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award for Gobert, who also earned the honor in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons.&nbsp; The 7-1 French native is the fourth player to win the award at least three times, joining Dikembe Mutombo (four), Ben Wallace (four) and Dwight Howard (three).
Gobert received 84 first-place votes and earned 464 points from a global panel of 100 sportswriters and broadcasters.&nbsp; Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons finished in second place with 287 points (15 first-place votes).&nbsp; Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green, the 2016-17 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year, finished in third place with 76 points.&nbsp; Players were awarded five points for each first-place vote, three points for each second-place vote and one point for each third-place vote.
In his eighth NBA season, Gobert led the league in defensive rebounds per game (10.1), total defensive rebounds (720) and total blocked shots (190) and ranked second in blocked shots per game (2.70).&nbsp; He recorded six games with least 15 defensive rebounds and eight games with five or more blocks.&nbsp; Gobert grabbed a season-high 20 defensive rebounds against the Warriors on March 14 and blocked a career-high nine shots against the Chicago Bulls on March 22.
According to NBA Advanced Stats, Gobert ranked second in the NBA in defensive win shares, which measures a player&rsquo;s defensive impact on winning.&nbsp; He defended the most field goal attempts at the rim in the NBA (549) and held opponents to 50.1 percent shooting on those shots, the third-lowest mark among the 27 players who defended at least 300 shots at the rim this season.
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Behind Gobert, Utah finished third in the NBA in defensive rating (107.5) and second in opponents&rsquo; field goal percentage (44.7).&nbsp; The strong defense helped propel the Jazz to a league-leading 52-20 record and the top seed in the Western Conference for the 2021 NBA Playoffs.
Selected as an NBA All-Star for the second time, Gobert averaged 14.3 points and 13.5 rebounds in 71 games this season.&nbsp; Gobert led the NBA in total rebounds (960) and ranked second in rebounds per game.&nbsp; He also shot an NBA-high 67.5 percent from the field, leading the league in that category for the second time in the last three seasons.
Gobert, the 27th overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, has career averages of 12.0 points, 11.3 rebounds and 2.24 blocks in 545 games, all with the Jazz.&nbsp; He was voted to the NBA All-Defensive First Team in each of the previous four seasons.
The voting results for the 2020-21 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award are below:
<img src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/image-from-ios-34_lg.jpg" alt="" width="686" height="386" />

Rudy Gobert is the winner of the 2020-21 Defensive Player of the Year award.

Rudy Gobert wins 2020-21 Defensive Player of the Year award

Tobias Harris picked a pair of Philadelphia&rsquo;s deep reserves (Paul Reed and Rayjon Tucker) to knock him around and toughen his game on the low post. The trio talked smack, and their post-practice workout sessions resembled a kind of bully ball for most of the last three months, all so Harris was better equipped for the postseason grind.
&ldquo;I know the people who watch, the people who see, my teammates, they respect that,&rdquo; Harris said.
And the payoff?
&ldquo;You have a night like this,&rdquo; Harris said.
Harris showed why top-seeded Philadelphia might have its own Big 3 worthy of winning a championship. He scored 37 points, carrying Philadelphia&rsquo;s offense when it sagged early, and the 76ers survived the sub.-500 Washington Wizards in a 125-118 Game 1 victory on Sunday.
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Tobias (37 PTS) went off in Game 1 😤 <a href="https://t.co/Osk5l9QBK9">pic.twitter.com/Osk5l9QBK9</a>
&mdash; NBA TV (@NBATV) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBATV/status/1396554894480330752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 23, 2021</a></blockquote>

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&ldquo;We see him early on dominating the game and you want to keep giving him the ball because he&rsquo;s feeling it,&rdquo; guard Ben Simmons said.
Harris scored 28 points in the first half, making a case that Philly has &mdash; with All-Stars Joel Embiid and Simmons &mdash; three big stars that could rival the superstar trio of Kevin Durant-James Harden-Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn.
Embiid finished with 30 points. Game 2 is Wednesday in Philadelphia.
The Sixers needed Harris&rsquo; outburst to offset an upset-minded Wizards team that was within five points with 45 seconds left. Bradley Beal scored 33 points and Russell Westbrook had 16 &mdash; but neither sensational scorer took over in long enough stretches needed for an upset.
Westbrook even stepped out of bounds with 37 seconds left, cutting off a potential rally. He declined to say if the referees made the correct call.
&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter now. It don&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; Westbrook said.
Unable to create consistent offense outside of Harris, the Sixers finally put together a 3-point barrage late in the third quarter that had 11,160 fans &mdash; roughly half-capacity &mdash; sounding as if it was 20,000-plus packing the house.
Harris, of course, hit a tying 3, Seth Curry hit his first, Danny Green buried one and Curry pounded his chest and talked smack after another 3 made it 88-81.
The fans erupted soon after in a &ldquo;Trust the Process&rdquo; chant with Embiid at the free-throw line, and the Sixers closed the quarter with a 99-93 lead.
The Sixers hung on for their first playoff win in two years, even as Simmons went 0 for 6 from the free-throw line and scored only six points. He had 15 rebounds and 15 assists.
&ldquo;He created so many points for us,&rdquo; coach Doc Rivers said.
Embiid was whistled for three fouls and the Sixers missed 14 of 17 3-pointers in the first half, leaving it up to Harris to play up to his $180 million contract.
Harris spent the season believing he was worthy of an All-Star spot and opened some eyes with 28 points on 12-of-19 shooting in the half. He played the half like he was trying to win a game of HORSE &mdash; turnarounds, fallaway jumpers, pull-up jumpers in the paint, and in one instance, he drove the length of the court before he hit a little floater. He finished 15 of 29 from the floor and hit two 3-pointers.
Some of the credit to his success went to two Sixers not in the Game 1 box score &mdash; Rayjon Tucker and Paul Reed.
&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve got a lot of guys that can fill the stat sheet and Tobias was that guy tonight,&rdquo; Beal said.
Beal, who torched the Sixers for 60 points in January and has been bothered of late by a strained left hamstring, and Westbrook combined for just 20 points in the first half, but Washington led 62-61 at the break.
Washington advanced by routing the Indiana Pacers to emerge from the play-in round as the East&rsquo;s No. 8 seed, returning to the playoffs after a two-year absence. The Wizards were a disaster early in the season, dealing with injuries and a COVID-19 outbreak. They started 0-5 and were 17-32 in early April. They made the playoffs at 34-38 and are trying to become the first team with a losing record to win a playoff series since the 1987 Seattle SuperSonics.
Washington&rsquo;s must-win attitude down the stretch spilled into Game 1. The Game 1 trend this weekend had been heavy favorites with time off &mdash; such as Brooklyn against Boston &mdash; needing time to find their legs before putting the game away. The Wizards played Thursday &mdash; while the Sixers had a full week off &mdash; and played every minute as a team determined to steal one on the road.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think I played great. I don&rsquo;t think I had a good game,&rdquo; Beal said. &ldquo;I think we still got a couple levels we can tap into.&rdquo;
TIP-INS
Wizards: Went on a 10-0 run late in the first quarter with Embiid and Simmons on the bench. ... Washington and Philadelphia played each other for the first time in the postseason since 1986.
76ers: Dikembe Mutombo, who helped lead the Sixers to the 2001 NBA Finals, received a rousing ovation when he rang the ceremonial bell to start the game. .. They went 27-5 in the regular season with Simmons, Curry, Green, Harris and Embiid in the starting lineup. ... Harris&rsquo; 28 first-half points were the most by a Sixer in a playoff game since Allen Iverson scored 30 against New Orleans in 2003.
YOU&rsquo;RE THE MAN
Rivers went to each Sixer this week and told him how important his contribution this season was to their success.
&ldquo;I thought this year, every guy needed to know what their value was to this team and how important they were, and how important each guy&rsquo;s role was,&rdquo; he said.

Harris carried top-seeded Philadelphia’s offense when it sagged early and scored 37 points in the victory.

Tobias Harris scores 37, leads 76ers past Wizards 125-118 in Game 1

Amadou Gallo Fall wanted to make one thing especially clear on the phone Thursday as he discussed the new Basketball Africa League: this is not going to be a feeder league for the NBA. It could eventually be a competitor to the Euroleague and the Chinese Basketball Association for Americans looking to play overseas.
&ldquo;We already have [six] national champions and six other teams that got through a 30-team qualifying tournament. From the jump, that&rsquo;s where we are,&rdquo; Fall, the president of the BAL, told BasketballNews.com via WhatsApp from Johannesburg, South Africa. &ldquo;The BAL is not looking to be a stepping stone.&rdquo;
There are currently 17 African Players on NBA rosters. Precious Achiuwa (Miami Heat) and Udoka Azubuike (Utah Jazz) were among eight 2020 draftees from or with at least one parent from Nigeria, including Isaac Okoro (Cleveland Cavaliers), Onyeka Okongwu (Atlanta Hawks), Zeke Nnaji (Denver Nuggets), Desmond Bane (Memphis Grizzlies via Boston), Daniel Oturu (Los Angeles Clippers via New York and Minnesota) and Jordan Nwora (Milwaukee Bucks).
&ldquo;We want as many players as possible to go to the NBA, but then to come back and play at home. Africa has stable leagues where players are not trying to get out,&rdquo; Fall said.
The BAL will begin play Sunday, May 16 at the Kigali Arena in Kigali, Rwanda, with 12 teams from Angola, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Algeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique and Rwanda.
One of those teams is all but certain to produce an NBA-caliber player, but the existing Africa-to-American pipeline that produced All-Stars Joel Embiid and Pascal Siakam, along with dozens of others, will remain in place. What&rsquo;s different is that many retired NBA players are now part of the African domestic league and national team infrastructure, including Luol Deng (head coach and president of the national federation in South Sudan).
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Fall worked in the NBA league office after a stint with the Dallas Mavericks as Director of Player Personnel and Vice President of International Affairs. Prior to being named BAL President, Fall was Vice President and Managing Director of NBA Africa, where he worked with local federations, corporations, NGOs and other key stakeholders to grow the game of basketball across the continent.
This is his crowning achievement, and he repeatedly stressed that BAL is aiming to be one of the world&rsquo;s top destination leagues.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m confident that we will increase exponentially, and we will attract talent from around the world. They will want to come to Africa,&rdquo; Fall said. &ldquo;This is about building the ecosystem, not about growing the players so that they can play somewhere else.&rdquo;
Jonathan Kuminga of the G League Ignite is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and should be an NBA lottery pick next season. Baylor's Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua of Cameroon, Iona's Nelly Junior Joseph of Nigeria and Washington State's Efe Abogibi of Nigeria, are notable African players in college basketball.
Each team is permitted to have two players from a different African country. Also, they can have two "import" players, which will open opportunities for American players who typically try to find work in Europe or China if they are not quite NBA-ready.
Dikembe Mutombo, Manute Bol, Hakeem Olajuwon and Steve Nash (born in South Africa) are among the greatest NBA players of all time from the continent, and more will be coming from Africa. What&rsquo;ll be different from now on is that African players will have a league to return to should they choose to.
Nigeria (24) and Senegal (12) have produced the most NBA players. Former New York Knick Charles Smith has close ties to the federation in Cape Verde, and Tacko Fall of the Boston Celtics has been one of the league&rsquo;s most popular players over the past two seasons.
What is the next African hotspot?
&ldquo;Tunisia has to be talked about,&rdquo; Fall said, also mentioning Senegal, Mali, South Sudan and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). &ldquo;They are the reigning Afrobasket champion and have a very strong federation and player development.
The man would know.
Fall has a whole continent of basketball players under his wing now, along with a pro league that, if successful, will draw players in from around the world.&nbsp;

Chris Sheridan speaks with BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall about the goals of the new league and African basketball.

Basketball Africa League could be Euroleague, China alternative

NBA All-Star 2021 will take place on Sunday, March 7 at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, reaching fans in 215 countries and territories in more than 50 languages on their televisions, computers, mobile phones and tablets. This marks Atlanta&rsquo;s third time hosting the league&rsquo;s annual global celebration of basketball.
TNT&rsquo;s NBA All-Star coverage in the United States will begin at 5 p.m. ET with TNT NBA Tip-Off presented by CarMax, followed by the Taco Bell Skills Challenge and MTN DEW 3-Point Contest starting at 6:30 p.m. ET. NBA All-Star Game coverage on TNT will begin at 8 p.m. ET, with the AT&amp;T Slam Dunk Contest taking place at halftime. ESPN Radio coverage in the U.S. will begin at 7 p.m. ET.
Below are facts and figures about NBA All-Star 2021:
NBA All-Star Game
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">4 &ndash;&nbsp;The Phoenix Suns&rsquo; Chris Paul is the third player to be named an All-Star with&nbsp;four&nbsp;different franchises, joining Moses Malone and Shaquille O&rsquo;Neal.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">9 &ndash;&nbsp;The LA Clippers&rsquo; Paul George&nbsp;made a record&nbsp;nine&nbsp;3-pointers on his way to 41 points in the 2016 NBA All-Star Game while representing the Indiana Pacers.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">17 &ndash;&nbsp;The Los Angeles Lakers&rsquo; LeBron James has been selected as an NBA All-Star&nbsp;17&nbsp;times, third most in league history behind Kareem Abdul Jabbar (19) and Kobe Bryant (18).&nbsp; James is also set to start the All-Star Game for the&nbsp;17th&nbsp;consecutive year.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">20 &ndash;&nbsp;At&nbsp;20&nbsp;years old, the New Orleans Pelicans&rsquo; Zion Williamson is set to become the fourth-youngest player to play in the NBA All-Star Game, behind Kobe Bryant, James and Magic Johnson.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">27.3 &ndash;&nbsp;The Milwaukee Bucks&rsquo; Giannis Antetokounmpo has the highest scoring average in NBA All-Star Game history at&nbsp;27.3&nbsp;points per game.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">58 &ndash;&nbsp;As part of the game production,&nbsp;58&nbsp;cameras will be positioned around the arena, including more than 30 in robotic form in the tunnel, practice court and locker room.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">70 &ndash;&nbsp;This is the&nbsp;70th&nbsp;edition of the NBA All-Star Game, which was first played in 1951.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">385 &ndash;&nbsp;James is the leading scorer in NBA All-Star Game history with&nbsp;385&nbsp;points.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">7,424,951 &ndash;&nbsp;NBA All-Star Voting 2021 presented by AT&amp;T set a single-day record with&nbsp;7,424,951&nbsp;fan votes cast on Jan. 28.</li>
</ul>
AT&amp;T Slam Dunk Contest
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">1 &ndash;&nbsp;In the final round, the two competitors who advance that far will perform&nbsp;one&nbsp;dunk each and the winner will be determined by &ldquo;Judges&rsquo; Choice&rdquo; instead of individual score.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">2 &ndash;&nbsp;Two&nbsp;Slam Dunk participants, the Portland Trail Blazers&rsquo; Anfernee Simons and the Pacers&rsquo; Cassius Stanley, have NBA G League experience.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3 &ndash;&nbsp;Nate Robinson is the only player to win Slam Dunk&nbsp;three&nbsp;times (2006, 2009, 2010).&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">7 &ndash;&nbsp;This year&rsquo;s five Slam Dunk judges (Dee Brown, Jason Richardson, Josh Smith, Spud Webb and Dominique Wilkins) won a combined&nbsp;seven&nbsp;Slam Dunk titles.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">44 &ndash;&nbsp;Stanley recorded a maximum vertical leap of&nbsp;44&nbsp;inches in the 2020 NBA Draft Combine, tied for the third-highest mark since 2000.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">107 &ndash;&nbsp;Slam Dunk competitor Obi Toppin of the New York Knicks led Division I college basketball in dunks last season with&nbsp;107.</li>
</ul>
MTN DEW&nbsp;3-Point Contest
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3 &ndash;&nbsp;The 3-Point Contest will feature two shots in the deep &ldquo;MTN DEW Zone&rdquo; that are worth&nbsp;three&nbsp;points each.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">6 &ndash;&nbsp;The&nbsp;six-player field&nbsp;will be composed entirely of 2021 NBA All-Stars &ndash; Devin Booker of the Suns, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics, Zach LaVine of the Chicago Bulls and Donovan Mitchell of the Jazz &ndash; making it the first 3-Point Contest in which each participant is a current All-Star.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">7 &ndash;&nbsp;Curry, the 2015 champion, will compete for the&nbsp;seventh&nbsp;time, tying Dale Ellis for the second-most appearances behind Craig Hodges (eight).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">2,664 &ndash;&nbsp;Curry has made&nbsp;2,664&nbsp;career 3-pointers, second most in NBA history behind Ray Allen (2,973).</li>
</ul>
Taco Bell&nbsp;Skills Challenge
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">2 &ndash;&nbsp;Steve Nash and Dwyane Wade are the only&nbsp;two-time winner of the&nbsp;Skills Challenge.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">5 &ndash;&nbsp;Chris Paul is making his record&nbsp;fifth&nbsp;appearance in the&nbsp;Skills Challenge and his first since 2011.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">22 &ndash;&nbsp;Dončić, who turned&nbsp;22&nbsp;on Feb. 28, is the first player in Mavericks history to be voted as an NBA All-Star Game starter in two consecutive years.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">2013 &ndash;&nbsp;Robert Covington, who entered the NBA in&nbsp;2013,&nbsp;attended Tennessee State, an HBCU in Nashville, Tenn.</li>
</ul>
NBA All-Star in Atlanta
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;This is the&nbsp;third&nbsp;NBA All-Star in Atlanta, which previously hosted in 1978 and 2003.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">27 &ndash;&nbsp;The Buffalo Braves&rsquo; Randy Smith scored&nbsp;27&nbsp;points to lead the Eastern Conference past the Western Conference 133-125 in the 1978 NBA All-Star Game, the first time that Atlanta hosted.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">300 &ndash;&nbsp;The teams combined for&nbsp;300&nbsp;points in the 2003 NBA All-Star Game in Atlanta, where the Western Conference defeated the Eastern Conference 155-145 in the only double-overtime game in All-Star history.&nbsp; Kevin Garnett scored a game-high 37 points and Michael Jordan had 20 points in his final NBA All-Star Game.</li>
</ul>
NBA All-Star Entertainment
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">12&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;All-Star entertainers have earned a&nbsp;combined&nbsp;12&nbsp;GRAMMY Awards during their careers.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">7 &ndash;&nbsp;Gladys Knight, a&nbsp;seven-time GRAMMY Award winner, will sing the U.S. national anthem at NBA All-Star 2021.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3 &ndash;&nbsp;Three-time GRAMMY Award winner and Florida A&amp;M University alum Common will introduce the Clark Atlanta University Philharmonic Society Choir, which will perform an original rendition of &ldquo;Lift Every Voice and Sing.&rdquo;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">1 &ndash; GRAMMY Award winner and singer-songwriter Alessia Cara will sing the Canadian national anthem.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">1 &ndash; GRAMMY Award winner Anthony Hamilton will perform his song &ldquo;Fine Again&rdquo; in recognition of frontline workers.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">100&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;The nationally-recognized Grambling State University Tiger Marching Band and Florida A&amp;M University Marching&nbsp;100&nbsp;will play during NBA All-Star player introductions from their respective historic campuses.</li>
</ul>
NBA All-Star Around the World
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">1 &ndash;&nbsp;For the&nbsp;first&nbsp;time ever in Canada, TSN, Sportsnet and RDS will televise all the All-Star events.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">2 &ndash; Two&nbsp;international players have been named All-Star Game MVP: Tim Duncan (U.S. Virgin Islands; 2000) and Kyrie Irving (Australia; 2014).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">4 &ndash;&nbsp;Joel Embiid (Philadelphia 76ers; Cameroon) is one of&nbsp;four&nbsp;players born in Africa to be at least a four-time All-Star, along with Dikembe Mutombo (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Steve Nash (South Africa) and Hakeem Olajuwon (Nigeria).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">6 &ndash;&nbsp;A record&nbsp;six&nbsp;European players were named All-Stars this season: Antetokounmpo (Greece), Luka Dončić (Dallas Mavericks; Slovenia), Rudy&nbsp;Gobert&nbsp;(Utah Jazz; France),&nbsp;Nikola Jokić (Denver Nuggets; Serbia), Domantas Sabonis (Indiana Pacers; Lithuania) and Nikola&nbsp;Vučević&nbsp;(Orlando Magic; Montenegro).</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">9/5 &ndash;&nbsp;There are a record&nbsp;nine&nbsp;international All-Stars, including a record&nbsp;five&nbsp;international players voted All-Star Game starters.&nbsp; The nine international All-Stars are Antetokounmpo, Dončić, Embiid, Gobert, Irving, Jokić, Sabonis, Ben Simmons (76ers; Australia) and Vučević.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">14 &ndash;&nbsp;Fourteen&nbsp;active international players have been named All-Stars during their careers.</li>
</ul>
NBA All-Star on TNT
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">7 &ndash;&nbsp;TNT&rsquo;s announcing team of Marv Albert, Reggie Miller and Chris Webber will call its&nbsp;seventh&nbsp;straight NBA All-Star Game together.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">8&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;Analysts&nbsp;Shaquille O&rsquo;Neal (3), Isiah Thomas (2), Charles&nbsp;Barkley (1), Dwyane Wade (1) and Candace Parker (1) have won a combined&nbsp;eight&nbsp;All-Star MVP awards in the NBA and WNBA.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">19 &ndash;&nbsp;TNT will present the NBA All-Star Game for the&nbsp;19th straight year.</li>
</ul>
NBA All-Star on ESPN Radio
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">25 &ndash;&nbsp;ESPN Radio will broadcast its&nbsp;25th&nbsp;NBA All-Star Game.&nbsp; Commentator Marc Kestecher and analyst Jon Barry will call the game action, with Kevin Winter and analyst P.J. Carlesimo anchoring pregame, halftime and postgame studio coverage.&nbsp; ESPN Radio host and Los Angeles Sparks star Chiney Ogwumike will join the broadcast at halftime as a special guest analyst for AT&amp;T Slam Dunk.</li>
</ul>
Support for HBCUs and COVID-19 Equity Efforts
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">9&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;Throughout the game, members of the Divine&nbsp;Nine&nbsp;fraternities and sororities, a prestigious group of nine historically Black Greek letter organizations, will introduce step teams from Spelman College and Morehouse College.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">37/47 &ndash;&nbsp;As part of this year&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://pr.nba.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/46/2021/03/2021-NBA-All-Star-Game-Format-3-4-21.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pr.nba.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/46/2021/03/2021-NBA-All-Star-Game-Format-3-4-21.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1615047366969000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHdCojJOVRRBY1zllGkbqgXgB87Sg">game format</a>, the two All-Star teams will play for either UNCF (consisting of&nbsp;37&nbsp;member colleges) or Thurgood Marshall College Fund (composed of&nbsp;47&nbsp;publicly-supported HBCUs) as their respective beneficiary, with both providing scholarship funding to further HBCU students&rsquo; higher education.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3,400 &ndash;&nbsp;The Goodr NBA All-Star Grocery Pop-Up presented by Kaiser Permanente will benefit nearly&nbsp;3,400&nbsp;families in need across 16 locations in Metro Atlanta by providing them with free groceries and household essentials.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">3 Million &ndash;&nbsp;As part of NBA All-Star 2021, the NBA and National Basketball Players Association will commit more than&nbsp;$3 million&nbsp;in initial funds and resources toward HBCUs and support awareness around equity and access to COVID-19 care, relief and vaccines.</li>
</ul>

Here are some interesting facts and figures about the 2021 NBA All-Star Weekend.

2021 NBA All-Star Weekend: By the numbers

I&rsquo;ve never had basketball taken away from me.
I was eating well, playing good, feeling confident and having fun again.
Things were going really well. I remember Coach Ryan Schmidt signaling to either Jermel Kennedy or somebody to run a play to get the ball in my hands because I had just scored, and we wanted to run a specific play for me, so they handed the ball off to me and I went to accelerate and advance the dribble like I do every day.&nbsp;
And I fell.&nbsp;
My initial thought was that I slipped on a sticker. On the court they have those decals and sometimes they get slippery if they get wet or aren&rsquo;t put on properly. I had slipped on one four or five plays earlier, so I thought I had just slipped again.
Usually when I turn the ball over, I go after it. But my body couldn't even move to go after the ball this time. That&rsquo;s when I knew something was wrong. My teammate, Briante Weber told me that he heard a pop. Coach Ryan was turning away like he didn&rsquo;t even want to look. I looked at my teammates&rsquo; faces and they were all looking back in disgust. I thought, &ldquo;Oh no, is it something gruesome like what happened to my friend, Tyler Ennis?&rdquo; But it wasn&rsquo;t that, thankfully.&nbsp;
It didn&rsquo;t even hurt, because when you tear your Achilles, all of the nerve endings are just kind of&hellip;finished.&nbsp;
But inside, I knew something was wrong. I couldn&rsquo;t get up, and I just started crying on the court.&nbsp;
I thought about how hard I had worked to stay in shape throughout the pandemic, and about having the opportunity to play basketball again in the Canadian Elite Basketball League after a situation with the 905 where I wasn&rsquo;t playing a lot. We had just got Coach Ryan his first win as a head coach and we were on our way to securing a playoff spot, but I couldn&rsquo;t even finish the game. It was like I had let my teammates down.&nbsp;
How could I get hurt? It&rsquo;s not even a contact injury. I was in better shape than I was with the 905! This all went through my mind while I was lying on the court and my foot was just kind of&hellip;dangling there.&nbsp;
I was home in Canada, but none of this was familiar. I had to go to the hospital alone, talk to doctors alone, and tread all of these new waters alone while trying not to drown.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m fortunate that I was playing under my long-term mentor, and, for lack of a better word, rock, in Jermaine Anderson (the general manager of my CEBL team). He was able to get everything together for my insurance, get me second opinions, and get me the best treatment and doctors possible, because that almost wasn&rsquo;t the case.&nbsp;
Initially, I was in St. Catharines General Hospital and I was going to go do surgery the next day with someone there. But the doctor at St. Catharines was making jokes and making me really uncomfortable, saying stuff like, &ldquo;Is Kevin Durant your favorite player? I guess you guys have more in common now!&rdquo; I don&rsquo;t know if that was just his method, to use humor during a tough time, but like, my guy, this is not the time. It was only a day after, I hadn&rsquo;t even gotten through all of my text messages and phone calls from people. I was still in mental survival mode, thinking, &ldquo;This can&rsquo;t be real.&rdquo; The doctor came back in and told me, &ldquo;We can do the surgery, but tonight I have a gallbladder surgery to do, then another surgery to do, and then I&rsquo;ll do yours.&rdquo; I called Jermaine, and we were both like, &ldquo;Nah, we can&rsquo;t do the surgery here.&rdquo;
Jermaine came through, like he always does, and hooked me up with Dr. Desai, and he&rsquo;s a huge basketball fanatic. He actually saw Kevin Durant when KD tore his Achilles against the Raptors. It made me feel more comfortable to see somebody who actually specializes in orthopaedic procedures, and who works with basketball players on a regular basis.&nbsp;
But again, I was alone.
This was at the height of COVID, and it killed my mom and the rest of my family to not be able to be in the waiting room or anywhere close to the hospital. They had to wait outside, and I had to go in for surgery by myself. I was by myself when I woke up after the surgery and saw my foot in a cast for the first time. I was by myself when I had to face the reality that I was going to have to rebuild my body and pause my career.&nbsp;
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/duane2_lg.jpg" alt="" width="782" height="AUTO" />
My mom, my brother and I live by this family mantra, &lsquo;the 72-hour rule.&rdquo; When something negative happens, you can sulk about it for two-to-three days, but then after that third day, you have to snap out of it. So I took notes. I wrote down all of the things I was going to do, and then aligned it with the protocols that the doctor gave me and just made sure I kept my mind out of a negative space. I want to stay positive when it comes to attacking this rehab process.
And it&rsquo;s been a good process.
I&rsquo;m in Canada, so my surgery and post-op care was free, but they don&rsquo;t cover the cost of my lengthy rehab. But I have insurance through Team Canada, which covers some of my expenses (with the rest paid out-of-pocket).&nbsp;
I work with the Team Canada guys and their physical therapist Jason Meehan, who I see once a week. Four-to-five times a week, I do weights and stuff with Dr. Thomas Lam, who is someone I&rsquo;ve worked with since I was 13 years old. Dr. Lam works with my Team Canada teammate, Dwight Powell, who also tore his Achilles in January with the Dallas Mavericks. This is a strange coincidence, but it&rsquo;s one that I needed, to have somebody that is going through the exact same process that can coach me and be like, &ldquo;Hey, this is what you&rsquo;re going to experience. You&rsquo;re going to have good days and bad days...&rdquo; That was good for me. That made me really optimistic.&nbsp;
Dwight is a great person and he is a hard worker. That&rsquo;s something no injury can ever take away from him. He also plays for Mark Cuban, so he has access to all of the best resources. Even in the NBA bubble, there was talk that he looked so good that he could probably play, but the team just wanted to be cautious.
I was playing in the G League, living check to check. It&rsquo;s already hard to stay committed in the G League, where our per diem is $100 for a two-day road trip and our salaries are $30,000 before taxes. I thought about Dwight&rsquo;s injury, and I thought about my injury, and how if I just had a little bit more money (or an NBA organization footing the bill), I could have access to better resources too.&nbsp;
Fortunately, I did have a lot from a support standpoint.
The team I was playing for, the Hamilton Honey Badgers, features a number of people who I got to know during my time with the Raptors 905. Jermaine Anderson went from a player-development coach on the 905 to GM of the Honey Badgers. Coach Ryan was one of the main assistant coaches that I was really close with throughout my tenure with the 905.&nbsp;
Many people from the 905 reached out including their GM Chad Sanders, the new president Courtney Charles and the former president John Wiggins. Jama Mahlalela (who used to be the 905&rsquo;s head coach) hit me up as well. They offered words of support and told me that they were keeping me in their prayers. One of the 905&rsquo;s therapists, Graeme Campbell, was already there in the CEBL bubble because he was working with Coach Charles Kissi and the Guelph Nighthawks.&nbsp;
Everyone offered me so much. Rayhan Malik, our athletic trainer with the 905, was like, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see what the insurance is like, but if you want to work with me and work with Graeme, we can definitely help take care of you.&rdquo;
I couldn&rsquo;t work with the Raptors&rsquo; people because they were still in the bubble, so they were trying to figure that out and it wouldn&rsquo;t have been an option for me. John, Chad and Jama all brought up the idea of the 905 signing me as a practice player for the upcoming season. You don&rsquo;t get paid for that, and I would have had to travel to the arena by myself and they wouldn&rsquo;t provide housing, but the goal would have been to give me the opportunity to be around basketball, to be around the team, maybe even help coach some of the new guys, and at least get access to working out with Arsalan Jamil and Ryan Schmidt, and then get treatment there around the clock. But because of COVID-19 and what they&rsquo;re going to do with the G League season, and then with the Raptors moving to Tampa and the 905 possibly moving too, it wouldn&rsquo;t make sense for them to have to fly me out and house me if I&rsquo;m not going to get the opportunity to play with them.
And then they had a coaching change.&nbsp;
I haven&rsquo;t heard from the 905 since they hired Coach Patrick Mutombo and Brittni Donaldson, and Jama is on Nick Nurse&rsquo;s staff now, so he has other things to worry about. I don&rsquo;t know where I stand with them in terms of being a practice player or not. But regardless, I&rsquo;m still thankful that they reached out, thankful that they wanted to help out, and thankful for the two years that I spent there.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve been carrying it well, doing everything I can to get back out there, but this stuff is still heavy, man.
Even Employment Insurance is a grey area, because my job as a G League player doesn&rsquo;t really exist right now, and I can&rsquo;t find other work because I&rsquo;m still injured.&nbsp;
These are the kind of things that NBA guys, NBA fans, and just basketball fans in general don&rsquo;t really understand, or even think about.&nbsp;
And I can&rsquo;t blame them for that. I can&rsquo;t blame anybody for this situation since it was entirely out of anyone&rsquo;s control.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m blessed, so blessed, to be in an organization that has offered all they could in terms of support. But at the end of the day, I&rsquo;m not in a situation where I&rsquo;m making millions of dollars or receiving all of the same perks as an NBA player.&nbsp;
Don&rsquo;t get me wrong. I love my job. I get to play the game I love, and I get paid to do it. Not many people can say that.&nbsp;
And it&rsquo;s not all about money.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s just life, when I think about it.&nbsp;
The richer people always have access to better healthcare than the people who don&rsquo;t.
Growing up, people always talk about managing your money properly and getting your degree because you could get hurt. You hear those things and you take it in, but you don&rsquo;t really process it. Then, it happened to me. I&rsquo;m glad I got my degree. What if I had left school early and never went to the NBA? Then I&rsquo;m overseas and this happened to me. At least I have my degree to fall back on.
The window for undrafted players and G League players is so small. You can do everything right and still have your dream disappear before it even begins.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m lucky to have so many people in the basketball community that care about me and want to see me get back on my feet.
It&rsquo;s been a hard road, but I&rsquo;m luckier than most.&nbsp;

Former Raptors 905 guard Duane Notice details his recovery from a torn Achilles without having NBA resources at his disposal.

The expensive difference between rehab in the NBA and G League

I had a special relationship with Hall-of-Fame coach John Thompson, and it all started when he chose not to recruit me.&nbsp;
Anybody I grew up with will remember that I always wanted to go to Georgetown; Syracuse was actually my second choice. I remember my high school teammate, Ryan Humphrey, saying that I was like the kid in the movie "Rudy" who always wanted to go to Notre Dame. That was actually pretty accurate.&nbsp;
See, I grew up admiring Coach Thompson ever since I heard him speak out about the racism of the NCAA. I remember him being asked how it felt to be the first Black coach to reach the NCAA Final Four and he replied, "I resent the hell out of that question if it implies I am the first Black coach competent enough to take a team to the Final Four. Other Blacks have been denied the right in this country; coaches who have the ability. I don't take any pride in being the first Black coach in the Final Four. I find the question extremely offensive."
I remember reading about how Coach Thompson specifically recruited inner-city Black players and molded them, both on and off the court.
He focused on their education, enforced discipline and structure, and educated them about society and being a Black man in America. He was a father figure in that he actually cared about his players far beyond wins and losses (although he definitely wanted to win). He made sure he stressed that his players graduate and not squander their time allowing the system to use them. Of course that was the coach and program I wanted to be a part of.&nbsp;
Also, he coached one of my favorite players, Alonzo Mourning - someone who I wanted to pattern my game after. He also coached Patrick Ewing, one of my favorite players growing up (as a New York Knicks fan). I wanted to be able to block shots like Dikembe Mutombo and have defenses literally draw plans to avoid bringing the ball inside. I wanted to carry on the tradition and wear No. 33 at Georgetown (which is one of the reasons why I wore No. 33 at Syracuse, but I&rsquo;ll explain that later).
I even went to Georgetown's basketball camp when I was in the eighth grade. I remember reading about the next center who was going there, Othella Harrington, and seeing pictures of Coach Thompson with his arm around all of the aforementioned men. I dreamed of seeing myself in that same picture, in that same pose, alongside the great centers of Georgetown at the end of that line.
In the summer of my junior year, I was being recruited by every major program in the country except Georgetown. Coach Thompson called me and told me that they had a lot of big men, naming off five: Jamel Watkins, Boubacar Aw, Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje, Jahidi White and Ya-Ya Dia, so they really didn&rsquo;t need any more bigs. I was heartbroken, to be honest. I may have even shed a few thug tears, but I vowed to terrorize Georgetown for my entire college career and picked their biggest rival, Syracuse University.&nbsp;
Fast-forward to Feb. 8, 1997, during my freshman year at Syracuse. That day, we faced off against Georgetown. Syracuse fans remember this as the "Donovan McNabb game" since the star quarterback and two-sport athlete ignited the Carrier Dome with an electrifying performance en route to a win over the Hoyas. Meanwhile, as a young freshman who didn&rsquo;t receive much playing time after the beginning of the season - I was playing behind and learning from the great Otis Hill - I had one of the worst games of my career. I set a Syracuse record for the <a href="https://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/2013/02/syracuses_1997_win_over_george.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quickest foul out by a player in school history</a> (and maybe even Big East history).
After not playing for a long stretch, I was put into one of the biggest games of the season due to Hill's foul trouble. I found myself in the unfortunate position of having to guard an explosive, quick-off-his-feet, 300-pound monster named Jahidi White, who could have been called the Shaq of the Big East.&nbsp;
As soon as I checked into the game, Coach Thompson ran every single play for White - and apparently told him to dunk on me every play. Well, I had too much pride for that, so I fouled him every time he tried it. I attempted to block the first few dunks and almost got my arm ripped off in Jahidi&rsquo;s Shaq-like power moves to the rim. So the next two times, I just fouled him.
I ended up fouling out of the game after seven minutes in front of 30,000 people at the Carrier Dome in one of the biggest games of the year. I remember looking at Coach Thompson as I was walking to the bench. He gave me a little nod that said, to me, "That&rsquo;s why I didn&rsquo;t recruit you." I was destroyed inside. I wanted to head straight to the locker room and hide in the closet until everyone left.&nbsp;
After the game, a ball boy gave me a note from Coach Thompson that simply read, "Keep working, keep your head up, you&rsquo;ll be fine."
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/jc2_lg.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="AUTO" />
My sophomore year was really my breakout year, and one of the games I had circled on my schedule was the Georgetown game. I had a <a href="https://www.syracuse.com/orangebasketball/2013/01/in_1997-98_season_syracuse_get.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">monster night</a> - 23 points, seven rebounds, six blocks - and I was throwing down thunderous dunks, beating my chest, swatting shots into the stands and screaming into the crowd. I was so hyped, I couldn&rsquo;t even calm down to shoot on the free-throw line.
At the sound of the buzzer, my first thought was to run up to Coach Thompson. I shook his hand, looked him in the eyes and said, &ldquo;You could&rsquo;ve had me.&rdquo;
And he replied with a big smile: &ldquo;Yeah, I know."
That was the start of our relationship of mutual respect and support that spanned for two decades.&nbsp;
I came to D.C. in 2000 with the Washington Wizards. Coach Thompson would have me on his show and support my events around the city. He would offer advice, encouragement, chastisement and praise by call or text.
<a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcsportsbog/2007/09/etans_antiwar_speech.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shortly after the invasion of Iraq</a>, I spoke at a big <a href="http://politicalaffairs.net/the-speech-everyone-is-talking-about-etan-thomas-electrifies-anti-war-washington/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">anti-war rally</a> in D.C. Coach Thompson called me afterwards and said, &ldquo;You have no idea what you just stepped into young man, do you?&rdquo;&nbsp;
And honestly, I truly didn&rsquo;t. I had been speaking all over D.C. about the war. I wrote three different poems and two different speeches against the war all from my first poetry book, "<a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/561-more-than-an-athlete" target="_blank" rel="noopener">More Than An Athlete</a>."
&ldquo;You are lucky you play for [Washington Wizards chairman] Abe Pollin because if you didn&rsquo;t, this could be very bad for your professional career," Coach Thompson said to me. He also told me that he had the utmost respect for me, and if I needed some support when I felt the wrath of America after that speech, he was there for me.&nbsp;
For many years, I would have events around D.C. and when I looked into the crowd, I'd see Coach Thompson right there in the front row with his arms folded.&nbsp;
At Georgetown University, I had a debate with Bill Rhoden about his book, "40 Million Dollar Slave." Coach Thompson brought his entire team there - including a young Roy Hibbert, Jeff Green and Patrick Ewing Jr. - and had them all taking notes.
In my book, "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fatherhood-Ultimate-Challenge-Etan-Thomas/dp/0451414896/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1523315169&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=etan+thomas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge</a>," Coach Thompson wrote: &ldquo;In my life, I&rsquo;ve been fortunate enough to meet presidents, senators, congressmen, CEOs of major companies, cardinals of churches, heads of states from several countries and some of the finest athletes and coaches this world has ever known. I&rsquo;ve learned to respect them all and admired their accomplishments, but I&rsquo;ve never met a man who accomplished so much with so little as my dad. And I have come to realize that nothing has more meaning to me than the honor of being named after the finest man I have ever met, my Dad, John Robert Thompson.&rdquo;&nbsp;
I had never even heard him tell that story before and was honored by the fact that he felt comfortable telling me this for my book.&nbsp;
This past winter, I was watching a high school tournament at Wise High School and doing some recruiting for my AAU team, FBCG Elite Dynamic Disciples. Coach Thompson saw me before I saw him. He had someone chase me down and bring me to him. He said, "You better come over here and say hi to me."
He was in obvious pain with his walker, and I asked him how he was feeling. He smiled and said, "Just old, but you keep doing what you&rsquo;re doing."
I said, "Yeah, I'm looking at some players for my team." He responded, "That&rsquo;s great, but that&rsquo;s not what I&rsquo;m talking about. You keep using your platform and speaking and writing truth. I may not get around like I used to, but I&rsquo;m always watching you and I'm proud of you. Now move out my way, I gotta get out of here."
He left before I could even get a picture with him and my son Malcolm, who came up after the conversation. Afterwards, Malcolm asked me who the man in the walker was.
"One of the best coaches to ever walk the planet," I told him.
Rest In Peace, Coach John Thompson.

Etan Thomas looks back on his unique relationship with the late, great John Thompson.