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The BIG3, Ice Cube's professional three-on-three basketball league, is off to a terrific start in its sixth season, seeing substantial increases in television viewership and live attendance.
The league's games on CBS have seen viewership grow substantially compared to last season, and the audience continues to rapidly increase week to week.
Week 1 (June 25): 483,000 viewers
Week 2 (July 1): 501,000 viewers
Week 3 (July 9): 525,000 viewers
Week 4 (July 15): 600,000 viewers
Week 4 in Memphis earned a 0.31 rating and averaged 600,000 viewers during the league's 3.5-hour broadcast window from 3:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. ET. This represents a 46% increase from 412,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating in the same weekend time slot last year. BIG3 topped tough competition in the time slot, including the NBA Summer League on ESPN (309,000 viewers) and MLB on FS1 (369,000). Also, NASCAR on USA (609,000) and Wimbledon's Women's finals on ABC (762,000) had overlapping broadcast windows.
"We're thrilled to see this continued interest and growth as we start season six," said BIG3 co-founder Ice Cube.&nbsp;"It's a testament to the highly competitive and entertaining product we put on the court each week.&nbsp;This season is the best yet."
Attendance rebounded after two seasons impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. The first three weeks in Chicago, Dallas and New York drew close to 30,000 fans in total, with energetic crowds averaging over 9,000 per event.
"Our fans have been eager to get back to experiencing the BIG3 in person," said league co-founder Jeff Kwatinetz. "Their energy and excitement have been palpable in each city so far."
This season, the BIG3 is paying tribute to the 50th anniversary of rap and hip hop. The first four weeks have included musical performances by artists such as Ja Rule, KRS-One, M.O.P., NLE Choppa, Big Boogie, Twista, Dorrough, Mike Jones, Scar Lip and, of course, Ice Cube. Monster Energy athletes have also been featured, along with dancers, cheerleaders and dunkers.
The league features many of the most popular and skilled three-on-three players worldwide, including Joe Johnson, Leandro Barbosa and Michael Beasley. Hall-of-Fame legends such as Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Rick Barry, Lisa Leslie, Nancy Lieberman and Gary Payton are among the league's coaches.
The BIG3 continues this Sunday at the Kaseya Center in Miami, followed by stops in Boston, Charlotte, Detroit and Washington D.C. for the playoffs. This year's championship and All-Star game will be played at the famous O2 Arena in London. BIG3 games can be found on CBS, Paramount+ and <a href="http://tv.big3.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://TV.BIG3.COM&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1689970311421000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ao6QRso9oXC-5pMgFtdlc">TV.BIG3.COM.</a>

In its sixth season, the BIG3 has seen substantial increases in television viewership and live attendance.

BIG3 sees surge in TV ratings, attendance to start sixth season

PHOENIX (AP) &mdash; Brittney Griner won the opening tip and ran to her familiar spot in the low post.
There was nowhere else the ball was going to go on the Phoenix Mercury&rsquo;s opening possession of the season &mdash; not after what Griner had gone through to get here.
Her back to the basket, Griner faked as though she would shoot a turnaround, spun the other way and put up another up-fake. Chicago&rsquo;s Elizabeth Williams fell for the deke, Griner absorbed the contact and hit the shot to begin a three-point play.
After all the emotional buildup, Griner got off to the perfect start in her first regular-season home game since being released after more than&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/brittney-griner-wnba-mercury-russia-aeec9996a12eff831db54039a5e20545">10 months in a Russian prison</a>.
It didn&rsquo;t end quite the way she wanted.
Griner finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and four blocked shots, but the Chicago Sky held on for a&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/497be3792e2cf7f689f0bdb1d488a0cb">75-69 win on Sunday</a>.
Griner received a warm reception in her lone preseason game and again in&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/brittney-griner-wnba-mercury-russia-e3fe291486d48676e512ca6352f3a974">the Mercury&rsquo;s season opener</a>&nbsp;at the Los Angeles Sparks.
Her home debut had an entirely different vibe.
Many fans wore Griner&rsquo;s 42 jersey and some waved small black towels with &ldquo;BG&rdquo; on the front. One young fan held a sign that said &ldquo;We (heart) BG. Welcome home!&rdquo;
During warmups, Griner shared hugs with her teammates, Sky players and Chicago coach James Wade, who had coached her overseas. Just as warmups were winding down, Mercury guard Sophie Cunningham grabbed a microphone near midcourt and addressed the crowd.
&ldquo;Last year, all we wanted was to get BG home. We did that and we&rsquo;re all together now,&rdquo; Cunningham said, drawing roars from the crowd.
Just before player introductions, a poet paid tribute to Griner while being surrounded by the Mercury&rsquo;s dancers. Once introductions started, the fans gave each of the Mercury players loud cheers before Griner came out last.
The 6-foot-9 forward walked out from behind a wall and, surrounded by flashing lights, stepped into the bowel of the arena, drawing a massive ovation.
Griner had an immediate impact against the Sparks Friday night, finishing with 18 points, six rebounds and four blocked shots in the 94-71 loss.
She opened with the three-point play against Chicago, blocked a shot on the Sky&rsquo;s second possession and dropped a nifty bounce pass to Diana Taurasi for a backdoor layup.
Griner swatted another shot and sprinkled in some trash talk as she turned up the floor. She added another three-point play late in the second half to pull the Mercury within seven points.
Griner drew a laugh from the crowd early in the third quarter when, after fouling Courtney Williams, forcefully helped up Williams, who flew through the air to accentuate it.
The support turned into a roar when Griner hit a 3-pointer, the fans rising from their seats and to match the two-handed, three-fingered gesture she flashed while screaming on the court.
Griner scored on a three-point play to pull Phoenix within 69-67 with just under two minutes left, but it was hers and the Mercury&rsquo;s last gasp.
Phoenix had a couple of sloppy turnovers, Chicago&rsquo;s Dana Evans scored on a running bank shot and the Sky held on for the win.
Griner ended her home debut by hugging Sky players and Wade again before heading to the baseline to hug her wife Cherelle.

In her home debut, Griner finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and 4 blocks, but the Chicago Sky held on for a 75-69 win on Sunday.

Brittney Griner gets warm welcome in first home game since Russia

On Friday afternoon, the NBA G League announced the field of 45 prospects from the 2023 NBA Draft who will participate in the 2023 NBA G League Elite Camp, which will take place May 13 and 14 at Wintrust Arena in Chicago.
The NBA G League Elite Camp gives draft prospects an opportunity to display their skills in front of NBA and G League scouts, coaches and front-office executives by playing in five-on-five games and participating in strength-and-agility drills.
Based on performance, select players from the NBA G League Elite Camp will be invited to participate in the NBA Draft Combine, which will be held May 15-21 at Wintrust Arena.
NBA players who have participated in past G League Elite Camps include New Orleans Pelicans guard Jose Alvarado, Indiana Pacers forward Oshae Brissett, Memphis Grizzlies forward Kenneth Lofton Jr. (who won the 2022-23 G League Rookie of the Year award), Los Angeles Clippers guard Terance Mann and Miami Heat guard Max Strus.
Below is a list of attendees for the 2023 NBA G League Elite Camp (although its subject to change):
Bediako, Charles (Alabama) Black, Leaky (North Carolina) Bridges, Jalen (Baylor) Broome, John (Auburn) Bryant, Joe (Norfolk State) Burton, Tyler (Richmond) Campbell, Tyger (UCLA) Castleton, Colin (Florida) Da Silva, Tristan (Colorado) Davis, Antoine (Detroit) Davis, Johnell (FAU) Davis, Kendric (Memphis) Doss, Shaun (Arkansas Pine-Bluff) Evbuomwan, Tosan (Princeton) Fudge, Alex (Florida) Gortman, Jazian (Overtime Elite) Hall, PJ (Clemson) Hart, Hakim (Maryland) Hauser, Joey (Michigan State) Hodge, D&rsquo;Moi (Missouri) James, Josiah-Jordan (Tennessee) Jones, Dillon (Weber State) Kinsey, Taevion (Marshall) Larsson, Pelle (Arizona) Lawrence, Tyrin (Vanderbilt) Martin, Jaylen (Overtime Elite) Mayer, Matthew (Illinois) McConnell, Caleb (Rutgers) Miller, Emanuel (TCU) Murrell, Matthew (Mississippi) Newton, Tristen (Connecticut) Nkamhoua, Olivier (Tennessee) Nolley II, Landers (Cincinnati) Nowell, Markquis (Kansas State) Omier, Norchad (Miami) Omoruyi, Clifford (Rutgers) Peterson, Drew (USC) Reeves, Antonio (Kentucky) Rice, Sir&rsquo;Jabari (Texas) Rodgers, Spencer (Kennesaw State) Sears, Mark (Alabama) Sharavjamts, Mike (Dayton) Stevens, Isaiah (Colorado State) Tyson, Hunter (Clemson) Watson, Anton (Gonzaga)

The NBA G League announced the field of 45 prospects from the 2023 NBA Draft who will attend the 2023 NBA G League Elite Camp.

NBA G League announces 45 prospects competing in G League Elite Camp

The NBA announced that 242 players have filed as early-entry candidates for the 2023 NBA Draft. Here is the complete list.

NBA announces 242 early-entry candidates for 2023 NBA Draft

WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; Nikola Jokic had 31 points and 12 rebounds as the Denver Nuggets shook off a slow start and beat the short-handed Washington Wizards 118-104 on Wednesday night.
Michael Porter Jr. added 21 points and Jamal Murray had 17 for Western Conference-leading Denver. Trailing by two points af halftime, Murray was also among those with emotional words for the Nuggets.
&ldquo;We needed that,&rdquo; Jokic said of Murray&rsquo;s words. &ldquo;And we know what we needed to do. Because the postseason is going to be really short if we play like we played in the first half.&rdquo;
The Nuggets went 15 for 32 from beyond the arc and finished a season-high five-game trip with three wins.
The trip began with a loss in Toronto that was the last setback in a season-worst four-game slide.
&ldquo;Every team in the NBA, I think, has had that bad run,&rdquo; Jokic said. &ldquo;Hopefully it&rsquo;s done for us and we survive it. And hopefully we&rsquo;re going to play better now.&rdquo;
Kristaps Porzingis scored 25 points for the Wizards, who were without three-time All-Star guard Bradley Beal due to left knee soreness.
Deni Avdija added 16 points for Washington, which lost its fourth straight. Washington entered the game in 12th place in the East and 2 1/2 games back of Chicago for the final play-in spot.
Beal had played 31 minutes and scored 16 points in Tuesday&rsquo;s 122-112 loss at Orlando. Forward Kyle Kuzma (right ankle) also missed a second straight start.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s frustrating of course, but we can&rsquo;t control the circumstances,&rdquo; Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr. said &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just more, how do we respond to the circumstances? That to me is more important. It&rsquo;s an indication of who we are collectively and individually.&rdquo;
Neither team led by more than six before halftime. Denver opened up a 21-point lead after outscoring Washington 39-16 in the third quarter.
The Nuggets began the period hitting their first four shots &mdash; three from beyond the arc &mdash; and ended it with an 8-0 spurt, punctuated by Bruce Brown&rsquo;s running dunk followed by Jeff Green&rsquo;s corner 3 with 0.3 seconds left.
&ldquo;We cared, finally,&rdquo; Denver coach Michael Malone said. &ldquo;I challenged our guys in a big way at halftime. The way we played in that first half, that can&rsquo;t be who we are.&rdquo;
TIP-INS
Nuggets: Finished the season 8-7 on the road against Eastern Conference teams while improving to 19-18 in their travels overall. ... Jokic had seven assists, falling three short of his 29th triple-double this season. ... Murray had eight assists and six rebounds.
Wizards: Shot a season-worst 4 of 26 (15.4%) from beyond the arc. ... Jordan Goodwin scored 12 points and was the only other Washington player in double figures. ... Beal missed his 23rd game of the season and his first since a Feb. 6 home loss to Cleveland. Coach Wes Unseld Jr. said pregame that Beal is day to day.
HINT OF HOME
Wednesday felt slightly more like home two Nuggets.
Green hit two of his three 3-point attempts and finished with 11 points off the bench in the same building where he used to star for the Georgetown Hoyas. Jokic enjoyed support from a sizable Serbian fan presence, with the Wizards even hosting folk dancers of his home country&rsquo;s tradition at half.
&ldquo;I mean I love it,&rdquo; Jokic said. &ldquo;I always say the Serbian fans are probably the best fans in the world. Our language, our energy, our flags. I love it.&rdquo;
UP NEXT
Nuggets: Begin a three-game homestand Saturday against Milwaukee.
Wizards: Host San Antonio on Friday.

Nikola Jokic had 31 points and 12 rebounds as the Nuggets shook off a slow start and beat the Wizards 118-104 on Wednesday.

Nikola Jokic scores 31, Nuggets pull away from Wizards 118-104

NEW YORK (AP) &mdash; Rick Pitino is back in the Big East Conference.
St. John&rsquo;s hired the Hall of Fame coach Monday to boost a storied program that&rsquo;s been mired in mediocrity for much of this century.
The school announced the move on Twitter, and Pitino is expected to be formally introduced during a news conference Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.
Following a successful run at nearby mid-major Iona, the 70-year-old Pitino was plucked away to replace Mike Anderson, fired March 10 after four seasons in charge of the Red Storm without making the NCAA Tournament.
Reports quickly surfaced that indicated St. John&rsquo;s planned to target Pitino, who grew up on Long Island not far from the school&rsquo;s Queens campus in New York City.
Pitino has been to seven Final Fours and won a pair of NCAA championships, one each at Kentucky (1996) and Louisville (2013).
He was dismissed at Louisville in 2017 after an FBI investigation into college basketball corruption led to allegations of NCAA violations. It was the third scandal, professional and personal, in an eight-year period with the Cardinals &mdash; but Pitino was eventually exonerated in the FBI-related case.
Pitino has been coaching college basketball so long that he was on the opposing bench with Big East rival Providence when St. John&rsquo;s was a national power in the mid-1980s under Lou Carnesecca.
Now, he&rsquo;s tasked with invigorating a Red Storm squad that hasn&rsquo;t won an NCAA Tournament game &mdash; or even reached the Big East semifinals &mdash; since 2000. The school has made only three NCAA appearances over the past two decades, the most recent coming in 2019 under Chris Mullin.
During that time, through several conference reconfigurations, St. John&rsquo;s has fallen behind Big East foes with similar profiles such as Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall.
The Red Storm went 18-15 during a turbulent 2022-23 season, including 7-13 in Big East play to finish eighth in the conference standings. They blew a 14-point lead against sixth-ranked and top-seeded Marquette in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals, ending the season with a 72-70 loss in overtime that left Anderson with a 68-56 record at St. John&rsquo;s.
Pitino has a .740 winning percentage in 34 full seasons as a college basketball coach. He has guided five schools to the NCAA Tournament, including Boston University (1983) and Iona (2021, 2023).
He took a surprising Providence team on a memorable run to the 1987 Final Four, but the 2013 national title Pitino won at Louisville (then in the Big East) was later vacated by the NCAA after an investigation found that an assistant coach paid escorts and exotic dancers to entertain players and recruits in campus dorms.
After two years coaching in Greece, he got the job at Iona &mdash; a small, private Catholic school located in New Rochelle, just north of New York City.
Pitino went 64-22 in three years with the Gaels, guiding them to two regular-season titles in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference and a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. Seeded 13th this year, they led No. 4 seed UConn at halftime before getting knocked out in the first round with an 87-63 loss that snapped a 14-game winning streak.
Pitino posted tweets thanking Iona administrators and &ldquo;all those people who touched our lives.&rdquo;
&ldquo;To my players, the last three years. All I can say is you know how much I love you,&rdquo; he tweeted. &ldquo;Follow up, I&rsquo;m not sad it ended. I&rsquo;m so grateful it happened.&rdquo;
Leading up to Iona&rsquo;s NCAA Tournament game, Pitino said he hoped he can coach for 12 more years.
&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll take six or seven,&rdquo; he said.
He said it would take &ldquo;a special place&rdquo; for him to consider leaving Iona, but he also spoke about how much he admired St. John&rsquo;s president, the Rev. Brian Shanley, who previously worked at Providence.
Pitino had two stints in the NBA, one with the New York Knicks that featured a division title and a failed stretch with the Boston Celtics that didn&rsquo;t produce a playoff appearance.
But in college, he endured only one losing season (13-14 at BU in 1980-81).
And now, at a time when Hall of Fame coaching contemporaries like Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim have reached the end of their road, Pitino is going strong and getting new jobs.
St. John&rsquo;s has the ninth-most wins among Division I teams, with 90 winning seasons in its 116-year basketball history.
The school has reached two Final Fours (1952, 1985) and won the NIT a record six times &mdash; including back-to-back crowns in the 1940s when that event was still often considered the country&rsquo;s premier postseason tournament.
___
AP College Sports Writer Ralph D. Russo contributed to this report.

Following a successful run at nearby mid-major Iona, the 70-year-old Pitino was plucked away to replace Mike Anderson.

Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino accepts job at St. John’s

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) &mdash; Grant Sherfield scored a season-high 30 points, and Oklahoma beat No. 2 Alabama 93-69 on Saturday in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge to end the Crimson Tide&rsquo;s nine-win streak.
Jalen Hill added a career-high 26 points, helping second-year Oklahoma coach Porter Moser to his biggest win with the program. Tanner Groves had 14 points and 12 rebounds.
The Sooners (12-9) had lost three straight, but against the Crimson Tide shot 58% from the field.
Rylan Griffen led Alabama (18-3) with 15 points and seven rebounds. Freshman Brandon Miller, who came in averaging 19.5 points per game, finished with 11.
NO. 3 HOUSTON 75, CINCINNATI 69
HOUSTON (AP) &mdash; Jarace Walker had a career-high 25 points and seven rebounds, and Houston rallied from an 11-point second-half deficit to defeat Cincinnati.
Walker, who scored 13 points in the second half, was 10 of 14 from the field. J&rsquo;Wan Roberts added 14 points and six rebounds, and Jamal Shead scored 13 points for Houston (20-2, 8-1 American Athletic Conference).
Houston has won at least 20 games in eight straight seasons under coach Kelvin Sampson.
Landers Nolley II had 24 points, including 6 3-pointers. Vicktor Lakhin added 15 points, and David DeJulius had 14 points and nine assists for Cincinnati (14-8, 5-4).&nbsp;
NO. 4 TENNESSEE 82, NO. 10 TEXAS 71
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) &mdash; Olivier Nkamhoua scored 27 points and Zakai Zeigler had 22 points and 10 assists to lead Tennessee over Texas in an SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Josiah-Jordan James added 14 and Santiago Vescovi had 12 for Tennessee (18-3), which led by as many as 22 midway through the second half.
Sir&rsquo;Jabari Rice scored 21 to lead Texas (17-4). Marcus Carr and Brock Cunningham finished with 11 each.
NO. 5 KANSAS STATE 64, FLORIDA 50
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) &mdash; Keyontae Johnson had 13 points and 11 rebounds against his former team, Markquis Nowell flirted with the first triple-double in Kanas State history, and the Wildcats beat Florida in an SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Nowell finished with 13 points, nine rebounds and eight assists, and Nae&rsquo;Qwan Tomlin also had 11 points. The Wildcats improved to 18-3 to match the 1972-73 team for the best start through 21 games in school history.
Johnson struggled from the field, going just 5 of 16 and even getting stuffed by the front of the rim during a windmill dunk on a second-half fast break. But it was nevertheless a special night for the senior forward, who collapsed on the Gators&rsquo; sideline due to a heart condition during a game against Florida State just over two years ago.
Colin Castleton scored 13 points for the Gators (12-9). Myreon Jones and Will Richard had 11 apiece.
NO. 6 ARIZONA 95, WASHINGTON 72
SEATTLE (AP) &mdash; Azuolas Tubelis had 25 points and 10 rebounds, Oumar Ballo added 21 points and 12 rebounds, and Arizona used a big second-half run to pull away to win its fourth straight.
Tubelis topped 20 points for the first time in five games and his rebound putback while being fouled with 4:29 remaining gave the Wildcats a 78-63 lead and sent Washington fans headed for the exits.
Kerr Kriisa added 18 points, hitting six 3-pointers, and Courtney Ramey scored 14 for the Wildcats (19-3, 8-3 Pac-12).
Keion Brooks Jr. led Washington with 25 points and Keyon Menifield added 21. But the Huskies (13-10, 5-7) suffered from too many scoring droughts and didn&rsquo;t have an answer for Arizona&rsquo;s 19-1 run in the early stages of the second half.
NO. 7 VIRGINIA 76, BOSTON COLLEGE 57
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) &mdash; Armaan Franklin and Jayden Gardner scored 18 points each and Virginia used a big first-half run to take control over Boston College for its sixth straight victory.
The Cavaliers (16-3, 8-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) trailed 18-15 before starting an 18-4 run over the next 11 minutes. Virginia put the game away with a 16-4 second-half spurt.
Quinten Post scored 24 to lead the Eagles (10-12, 4-7) and Makai Ashton-Langford added 12 points.
Virginia&rsquo;s Isaac McKneely finished with 12 points and Reece Beekman had 11 and eight assists.
NO. 9 KANSAS 77, KENTUCKY 68
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) &mdash; Jalen Wilson scored 22 points, including one in a series of huge 3-pointers down the stretch, and Kansas avoided its first four-game losing streak under coach Bill Self.
Wilson made 9 of 18 from the field and grabbed eight rebounds for Kansas (17-4), which finished even with Kentucky at 49% shooting. K.J. Adams Jr. added 17 points, Dick had 13 and McCullar 11 with 12 rebounds as the Jayhawks edged Kentucky 34-29 on the glass.
Oscar Tshiebwe had 18 points and nine rebounds, and Jacob Toppin and Cason Wallace each added 14 for Kentucky (14-7), which had won its previous four.
MISSISSIPPI STATE 81, NO. 11 TCU 74, OT
STARKVILLE, Miss. (AP) &mdash; Tolu Smith had 27 points, 13 rebounds and five assists to lead Mississippi State to an overtime victory.
Dashawn Davis added 16 points to help Mississippi State (13-8) snap a five-game losing streak. Shakeel Moore had 11, including six in overtime, while Cameron Matthews had 10 points and 10 rebounds for the Bulldogs. Tyler Stevenson also added 10 points off the Bulldogs&rsquo; bench.
Damion Baugh led TCU (16-5) with 19 points and Emanuel Miller had 13. Shahada Wells and Jakobe Coles each had 12 for the Horned Frogs and Chuck O&rsquo;Bannon had 10.
Davis&rsquo; 3 pointer with 55 seconds left in the second half gave the Bulldogs a 66-64 advantage. Emanuel Miller scored with 32 seconds remaining and then both teams missed chances to win in regulation.
MISSOURI 78, NO. 12 IOWA STATE 61
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) &mdash; Kobe Brown scored 20 points, and D&rsquo;Moi Hodge scored 17 points to help Missouri take down Iowa State in the SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Brown scored 14 of his points in the first half and led Missouri (16-5) with 12 rebounds. Nick Honor added 12 points and DeAndre Gholston scored 10.
Jaren Holmes led Iowa State (15-5) with 19 points, and Gabe Kalscheur added 14.
The Tigers&rsquo; 78 points were a season-high for an Iowa State opponent in regulation; the Cyclones are 0-3 this season when allowing at least 70 points in regulation.
CREIGHTON 84, NO. 13 XAVIER 67
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) &mdash; Arthur Kamula scored 20 points, Creighton&rsquo;s four other starters finished in double-figures and the Bluejays earned their fourth straight Big East win.
Creighton (13-8, 7-3) steadily built a double-digit lead throughout the game and made 34 of its 60 field goal attempts (56.7%) before a sold-out crowd.
Ryan Kalkbrenner scored 17 points, Baylor Scheierman had 14, Trey Alexander finished with 13 and Ryan Nembhard added 11 for the Bluejays, who avenged a 90-87 loss at Xavier on Jan. 11.
Zach Freemantle led Xavier (17-5, 9-2) with 18 points, followed by Colby Jones and Adam Kunkel with 13.
NO. 14 GONZAGA 82, PORTLAND 67
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) &mdash; Julian Strawther had a career-high 40 points, including eight 3-pointers, and Gonzaga pulled away down the stretch for its 16th consecutive victory over Portland.
Anton Watson added 17 points for Gonzaga (18-4, 7-1 West Coast Conference).
Strawther is the first player to reach 40 points for the Zags since Kyle Wiltjer had 45 against Pacific in 2016.
Portland (11-13, 3-5) was led by Moses Wood with 19 points. Juan Sebastian Gorosito, a freshman, finished with a career-high 17 points.
WEST VIRGINIA 80, NO. 15 AUBURN 77
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) &mdash; Erik Stevenson scored a career-high 31 points and West Virginia withstood a furious late rally from Auburn to win an SEC/Big 12 Challenge matchup.
The Mountaineers (13-8) have won two straight for the first time in a month. Jimmy Bell Jr. added 15 points for the Mountaineers.
Charles Barkley cheered on his alma mater from a courtside seat, but Auburn (16-5) couldn&rsquo;t overcome another slow start. The Tigers have lost two straight for the first time in two years.
Jaylin Williams led Auburn with 18 points. Johni Broome added 15 and Allen Flanigan scored 13.
NO. 16 MARQUETTE 89, DEPAUL 69
CHICAGO (AP) &mdash; David Joplin went 8 for 11 from 3-point range for a career-high 28 points, Tyler Kolek had 24 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds, and Marquette defeated DePaul.
Marquette has won eight of its last nine games, and moved into a tie with No. 13 Xavier atop the Big East.
Marquette (17-5, 9-2) pulled away in the second half. Oso Ighodaro had 10 points, making all five of his shots, and Olivier-Maxence Prosper scored 13 and had 8 rebounds.
Umoja Gibson scored 25 points for DePaul (9-13, 3-8) on 8-of-12 shooting.
NO. 17 BAYLOR 67, ARKANSAS 64
WACO, Texas (AP) &mdash; Keyonte George scored 24 points, including seven in a row down the stretch, and Baylor beat Arkansas in an SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
Baylor (16-5) fell behind by as many as eight points in the second half after an early 11-point lead. But the Bears closed it out after Flo Thamba made two free throws for a 55-53 lead with 3:37 left.
LJ Cryer added 20 points and Jalen Bridges had 10 for the Bears, who won their sixth game in a row despite shooting a 34% (20 of 59) from the field. They offset the season-worst shooting from the field by making 21 of 24 free throws, including two by Cryer with 10 seconds left and two by George with 4.3 seconds remaining.
Ricky Council IV scored 25 points for Arkansas (14-7). Davonte Davis had 16 points, but missed the front end of a 1-plus-1 with 2.3 seconds left, though Joseph Pinion got the ball in the right corner only to miss wildly on a 3-pointer as time ran out.
HOFSTRA 85, NO. 18 COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON 81
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) &mdash; Aaron Estrada scored 25 points and Darlinstone Dubar added 18 as Hofstra ended College of Charleston&rsquo;s 20-game winning streak.
The Pride (15-8, 8-2 Colonial Athletic Association) were down 28-20 early before rallying past the Cougars (21-2, 9-1), who had not lost since falling to then-No. 1 North Carolina on Nov. 11.
Tyler Thomas had 17 points and eight rebounds for Hofstra.
Ante Brzovic finished with 18 points to lead Charleston.
PITTSBURGH 71, NO. 20 MIAMI 68
PITTSBURGH (AP) &mdash; Blake Hinson tipped in a Jamarius Burton miss with 31 seconds remaining and Pittsburgh rallied past Miami.
The Panthers (15-7, 8-3 ACC) held the Hurricanes (16-5, 7-4) scoreless over the final 2:26 while closing on an 11-0 run to beat a ranked team for the third time this season to bolster its increasingly impressive NCAA tournament resume.
Hinson finished with 21 points for Pitt. Burton had 19 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists as the Panthers stunned Miami in front of a rare sell-out crowd at the Petersen Events Center.
Jordan Miller led the Hurricanes with 18 points. Isaiah Wong added 14 but Miami committed three of its 12 turnovers in the final 35 seconds as the Panthers stormed back.
NO. 21 FAU 70, W. KENTUCKY 63
BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) &mdash; Brandon Weatherspoon scored 14 points and Florida Atlantic remained undefeated at home.
The victory extended FAU&rsquo;s winning streak to a program-record 20 games, which is now the nation&rsquo;s longest. The Owls&rsquo; 21 victories on the season ties their Division I record set in 2010-11. Western Kentucky (11-11, 3-8 Conference USA) has lost five straight.
Alijah Martin scored eight while grabbing seven rebounds for the Owls (21-1, 11-0).
Jordan Rawls led all scorers with 17 for W. Kentucky. Dayvion McKnight and Emmanuel Akot each had 16.
NO. 22 SAINT MARY&rsquo;S (CAL) 57, BYU 56
PROVO, Utah (AP) &mdash; Logan Johnson had 14 points and freshman Aidan Mahaney scored all 10 of his points, including a fade-away jumper just before the buzzer, in the second half and Saint Mary&rsquo;s (Cal) won its 10th in a row.
Mitchell Saxen had 11 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and two blocks for Saint Mary&rsquo;s (19-4, 8-0 West Coast Conference). Alex Ducas scored 12 points and Augustas Marciulionis added 10.
Dallin Hall was fouled on a driving lay-up attempt with 10.2 seconds left and made 1-of-2 free throws to give BYU a 56-55 lead but Mahaney took the inbounds pass, probed the defense before he drove the lane, stopped near the right block and pivoted away from the basket before hitting the winning jumper over the out-stretched arm of defender Fousseyni Traore.
Hall scored a career-high 23 points on 9 of 14 shooting but made just 3 of 6 from the free-throw line for BYU (14-10, 4-5). Fousseyni Traore added 11 points and eight rebounds.
NO. 24 CLEMSON 82, FLORIDA STATE 81
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) &mdash; Chase Hunter drove the lane and drew a foul, sinking the free throw, to help Clemson escape with a win over Florida State.
Hunter Tyson scored 27 points on 10 of 17 shooting for Clemson (18-4, 10-1 Atlantic Coast Conference), which halted an eight-game road losing streak to Florida State. Hunter finished with 25.
Matthew Cleveland scored 15 of his 18 points in the second half for Florida State (7-15, 5-6), which made a season-high 13 3-pointers. Caleb Mills and Darin Green Jr. each hit four 3-pointers for the Seminoles. Freshman forward Baba Miller had his best game, scoring 11 points and pulling down four rebounds in 20 minutes.

A recap of Saturday's action in men's college hoops includes five upsets in the AP top 15.

Oklahoma's rout of No. 2 Alabama one of many top-15 upsets on Saturday

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) &mdash; UConn star Azzi Fudd was battling for rebounding position in the first half Sunday when she banged knees with Georgetown&rsquo;s Ariel Jenkins. Fudd left the game and did not return.
It was just her second game back after missing eight games with an injury to the same right knee. It also came a week after injuries forced the fifth-ranked Huskies to postpone a game with DePaul because it did not have enough healthy players available &mdash; a step that became sadly familiar during the height of the pandemic but is rarely seen otherwise.
A few days later, Arizona State was forced to forfeit games against Utah and Colorado because the Sun Devils had too many injured players.
Programs such as Vanderbilt also have lost multiple starters to the injury report. Low roster numbers because of health issues led Lewis and Clark Community College in Illinois to cancel the remainder of its season just this week.
With injuries mounting in women&rsquo;s programs, experts note there are number of factors in play, including the specialization of sports at a younger age, and longer recovery times contributing to those thin benches. Certain knee injuries are more common in female athletes then men.
Whatever the reasons, the search for solutions is always on.
At UConn, just two players have been available for every game. Coaches have burned sage in the locker room, brought holy water to practice and had Native American dancers perform healing rituals.
Former national player of the year Paige Bueckers, who missed most of 2021-22 with a knee injury, and freshman Ice Brady both suffered serious knee injuries in the preseason. Two other players are sidelined with concussions. Other players have missed time with foot and hand injuries.
&ldquo;What kind of exercises do you do in the weight room to make sure you don&rsquo;t get a concussion?&rdquo; coach Geno Auriemma said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing, you know. What do you do to make sure that your teammate doesn&rsquo;t push a kid into you, a teammate knocks you on on the ground and you hit your head or where you catch your thumb and a kid shirt and break your thumb in the first first game of the year? So some of these are just weird.&rdquo;
Some injuries, sports medicine experts say, may be linked to the way elite athletes are preparing for college.
Nicole Alexander, the head trainer for the WNBA&rsquo;s Connecticut Sun and a former trainer at Notre Dame and North Carolina, said kids are specializing in one sport earlier and playing that sport year-round.
&ldquo;So, they&rsquo;re not getting a chance to rest their bodies,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re putting the same amount of mileage on the same body parts, over and over again. So, now you get these kids who are in college, but their bodies are such that it&rsquo;s almost like they&rsquo;ve been playing professional ball for 10 years because that&rsquo;s all they&rsquo;ve been doing.
Fudd missed two months last year with a foot injury. She also suffered ACL and MCL tears while in high school.
UCLA coach Cori Close has another theory. She said she thinks the apparent rise in injuries, especially knee injuries, can be linked to the pandemic.
&ldquo;I definitely think because of COVID &mdash; the interruptions of prehab and training and periodization and off times and prevention work,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I talked to Geno about this at UConn and several other coaches. And we think it&rsquo;s a dramatic effect for how the training regimens were interrupted from COVID.&rdquo;
Dr. Andrew Cosgarea, an orthopedic surgeon and sports injury specialist at John&rsquo;s Hopkins, said there is no data yet suggesting there are more injuries this year than in previous seasons. He said schools have been doing a lot of work teaching kids how to prevent ACL and other injuries by changing, for example, the way they cut, jump and land.
Cosgarea and other experts said one factor in the lack of available players is that athletes are sitting out longer because it leads to better outcomes when they return.
Dr. Anthony Alessi, UConn&rsquo;s team neurologist, declined to talk about specific players he&rsquo;s treated, but said the time it takes to return varies with each individual, but on average is now between 10 days and two weeks.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s multi-factorial,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But, what we&rsquo;ve found is that by making the investment in time, by gradually bringing them back to their full capacity based on their symptoms, you&rsquo;ll get them at full strength to the end of the season.&rdquo;
At top-ranked South Carolina, coach Dawn Staley said she&rsquo;s not going to overrule the recommendation of her trainer just to get a player back sooner.
&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not going to tell me when to put the 2-3 (zone) out there or when to do a triangle and two. I don&rsquo;t interfere in his business so that our players are ready to rock and roll. I&rsquo;m going to listen,&rdquo; she said.
Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said coaches have to take some of the responsibility for not having enough healthy players to put a full team on the court.
&ldquo;Women&rsquo;s basketball has 15 scholarships,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s a challenge sometimes but it&rsquo;s your responsibility as coaches to have a full roster. It&rsquo;s challenging when you have a new coach and the (transfer) portal and people leave and stuff but part of it also is keeping people healthy. That&rsquo;s a big part of the job.&rdquo;
Auriemma said coaches have already cut back on the length, number and intensity of practices on the advice of medical staff, sometimes to the detriment of play. He said he is learning to be more patient when it comes to injuries.
UConn guard Nika M&uuml;hl, who missed time last year with a concussion, said that&rsquo;s the hardest part for everyone involved.
&ldquo;We see everybody playing every day you just want to get out there already but you have to go through the protocol,&rdquo; she said.
___
AP Sports Writers Peter Iacobelli and Joe Reedy contributed to this story.

With injuries mounting in women’s programs, experts note there are number of factors in play.

‘Just weird’: Azzi Fudd among rash of injuries hitting women’s hoops

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) &mdash; Aliyah Boston missed the second half of No. 1 South Carolina&rsquo;s game against Hampton on Sunday with her right foot in a walking boot, but reserves Bree Hall and Ashlyn Watkins scored 14 points each in an 85-38 win.
Kamila Cardoso added 11 points and 14 rebounds for South Carolina. It was the 6-foot-7 forward&rsquo;s eighth career double-double.
Boston, the reigning Associated Press Player of the Year, took a hard fall on a drive to the basket late in the second quarter and needed several moments to stand up. Soon after, she headed to the locker room before the period ended.
Boston did not come out for the start of the third quarter, returning to the bench midway through the period with a walking boot on her right foot. Boston spent the rest of the game cheering on her teammates, who improved to 6-0 this season and 5-0 all-time against the Pirates.
No. 2 STANFORD 68, HAWAII 39
HONOLULU (AP) &mdash; Ashten Pretchel scored 12 of her season-high 17 points in the first half to help Stanford easily defeat Hawaii on the final day of the Rainbow Wahine Showdown.
The Cardinal (7-1) erased an early deficit and held the Rainbow Wahine (1-6) to a season-low scoring output.
Pretchel came off the bench and shot 6 of 10 from the field, including hitting five 3-pointers. She also grabbed 11 rebounds.
Lily Wahinekapu led Hawaii with 12 points.
NO. 3 UCONN 86, NO. 9 IOWA 79
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) &mdash; Azzi Fudd scored 24 points to rally UConn past Iowa in the championship game of the first Phil Knight Legacy women&rsquo;s tournament.
Fudd had plenty of help, with Aaliyah Edwards (20 points, 13 rebounds) and three other Huskies (5-0) scoring in double-figures. Edwards was named MVP of the tournament.
Iowa (5-2) star Caitlin Clark had 25 points, and Kate Martin added 20.
Edwards got UConn off to a strong start, scoring 10 points while the Huskies built a 20-14 edge.
Clark and the Hawkeyes then surged with a 13-2 run to begin the second quarter and led 41-35 at halftime. Clark scored 17 points in the first half.
NO. 4 OHIO STATE 105, NORTH ALABAMA 67
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) &mdash; Rebeka Mikulasikova scored 23 points and Cotie McMahon added 20 to lead Ohio State past North Alabama.
The Buckeyes (6-0) shot 58.6% from the field as all five starters reached double figures in scoring.
North Alabama (3-3) trailed by eight points with less than eight minutes to go in the second quarter, but Ohio State extended its lead on an 11-0 run keyed by five points from Madison Greene.
The Buckeyes held a 59-37 lead at halftime and stretched it to as large as 39 with less than three minutes remaining.
No. 8 NORTH CAROLINA 73, No. 5 IOWA STATE 64
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) &mdash; Deja Kelly scored 29 points to power North Carolina to a 17-point comeback over Iowa State and win in the championship game of the Phil Knight Invitational tournament.
Kennedy Todd-Williams added 17 points to help the Tar Heels (6-0) complete the comeback and remain undefeated on the season. Alyssa Ustby contributed 14 points, nine rebounds, three steals and two blocks.
Stephanie Soares led the Cyclones (5-1) with 19 points and 12 rebounds, while Ashley Joens had 18 points and nine rebounds as Iowa State suffered its first loss of the year.
NO. 11 VIRGINIA TECH 89, LONGWOOD 28
BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) &mdash; Elizabeth Kitley had a double-double, Kayana Traylor added a double-double off the bench, and Virginia Tech rolled over Longwood.
Kitley had 23 points and 14 rebounds for the Hokies. Traylor had 11 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and two steals. Ashley Owusu scored 21 points, making 4 of 5 3-pointers.
The Hokies established a program record by holding South Carolina Upstate to 24 points on Nov. 14. Longwood passed 24 points when Adriana Shipp-Davis made a layup with 4:44 remaining.
Shipp-Davis had seven rebounds for Longwood (1-5). The Lancers shot 16.7% overall, which was also their 3-point percentage (3-for-18).
NO. 14 MARYLAND 87, PITTSBURGH 63
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) &mdash; Abby Meyers scored 12 of her 23 points in Maryland&rsquo;s 36-point third quarter and the Terrapins rolled past Pittsburgh to finish the Ft. Myers Tip-Off.
Brinae Alexander hit three 3-pointers in the Terps&rsquo; biggest quarter of the season and was 5 of 7 from distance to finish with 17 points. Lavender Briggs contributed 10 points as the three transfers had their biggest outputs of the season for Maryland. Shyanne Sellers added 13 points for the Terrapins (6-2), who went 2-1 in the tournament.
Maryland went 7 of 10 behind the arc and shot 55% in the second half.
Maliyah Johnson had 15 points for the Panthers (5-2), who only had one less 3-pointer but was outscored by 13 at the foul line where Maryland was 20 of 23.
No. 18 OREGON 86, MICHIGAN STATE 78
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) &mdash; Endyia Rogers scored 19 points, including critical back-to-back 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, Phillipina Kyei had a double-double with career highs and Oregon held off Michigan State in the third-place game of the Phil Knight Invitational.
The Ducks led 29-12 when Rogers scored the opening basket of the second quarter but the Spartans slowly came back behind Kamaria McDaniel, who had a season-high 28 points. McDaniel hit a 3-pointer and Matilda Ekh had a steal and layup and Michigan State tied the game with 7:17 to play.
That&rsquo;s when Rogers, who had a career-high five 3-pointers, scored from distance, the first coming after a timeout and the Ducks regained control.
Isaline Alexander scored 15 points on 7-of-9 shooting and Ekh 12 for the Spartans (6-2).
NO. 19 TEXAS 74, PRINCETON 50
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) &mdash; Sonya Morris scored 15 points, Taylor Jones notched a double-double and Texas breezed to a victory over Princeton.
Morris sank 5 of 10 shots from the floor with two 3-pointers for Texas (3-3). Jones finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds. Rori Harmon had 11 points and Aaliyah Moore scored 10.
The Longhorns picked up their second straight win after a three-game losing streak. Texas fell 16 spots in the AP poll.
Kaitlyn Chen topped Princeton (3-2) with 15 points. Julia Cunningham added 10 points. Ellie Mitchell came into the game leading the nation with 16.2 rebounds per game. She didn&rsquo;t score and had seven boards.
No. 22 MICHIGAN 84, No. 21 BAYLOR 75
ESTERO, Fla. (AP) &mdash; Emily Kiser scored 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting and grabbed 13 rebounds, Laila Phelia added 20 points and Michigan scored the final 11 points to beat Baylor in the championship game of the Gulf Coast Showcase.
Maddie Nolan scored seven of her 12 points in a 20-5 run over the final 4-plus minutes and Leigha Brown finished with 11 points, eight rebounds and six assists forMichigan (7-0).
Ja&rsquo;Mee Asberry scored inside to give Baylor a 75-73 lead with 2 minutes to go but Brown made a layup and, after a missed 3-point shot on the other end, grabbed her own offensive rebound and kicked it out to Phelia for a 3 that gave the Wolverines the lead for good with 48 seconds to go.
Jaden Owens scored 22 points on 9-of-13 shooting for the Bears.
NO. 23 TENNESSEE 105, EASTERN KENTUCKY 71
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) &mdash; Rickea Jackson scored 15 points to lead a balanced attack and Tennessee coasted to a win over Eastern Kentucky.
Jordan Horston added 14 points for the Lady Vols (4-4), Jillian Hollingshead and Tamari Key 13 each and Karoline Striplin 10. Jackson and Horston both had five assists and joined Hollingshead with eight rebounds.
Antwainette Walker scored 18 points for the Colonels (4-3).
NO. 23 VILLANOVA 72, SOUTH FLORIDA 50
ESTERO, Fla. (AP) &mdash; Maddy Siegrist scored 25 points to surpass 2,000 for her career and Villanova used a hot start to beat South Florida in the third-place game at the Gulf Coast Showcase.
Siegrist scored 13 points in the first half and 10 in the third quarter as the Wildcats (6-1) took a 58-36 lead. Lucy Olsen scored 10 of her 13 before the break.
Siegrist became the third player in Villanova history to reach the 2,000-point plateau when she hit a jumper at 3:46 of the third quarter to put the Wildcats up 50-31.
Sammie Puisis scored 17 points for the Bulls (7-2). Dulcy Fankam Mendjiadeu had 14 points with 17 rebounds &mdash; matching her career high, and Elena Tsineke scored 11.

Boston, the reigning Associated Press Player of the Year, took a hard fall on a drive to the basket late in the second quarter.

Boston hurt in No. 1 Gamecocks’ win; No. 3 UConn tops Iowa

In 2006, I worked as a summer intern for a sports agency called Wasserman Media Group. With that job, I had a wide range of tasks and responsibilities. One of my duties was being the travel companion and, essentially, manager for Joel Freeland, a British NBA prospect who ultimately became the No. 30 pick in the 2006 NBA Draft.
Among the many stops that Joel and I made together prior to that draft was Memphis, Tennessee. He auditioned in front of then-Grizzlies general manager Jerry West ("The Logo" himself) and his staff. That was the first time I ever made a trip to Memphis, and little did I know at the time that I would come back to visit many more times throughout my career.
Well, this past week, I traveled to Memphis yet again. This season, in addition to my typical draft coverage, I will also be providing some NBA rookie coverage for BasketballNews.com.
So the first thing on my agenda, other than stopping by Gus&rsquo;s to get their world-famous fried chicken, was to take in a preseason game that had the Milwaukee Bucks facing off against the Memphis Grizzlies. In that contest, Ziaire Williams &mdash; who was selected No. 10 overall by the Grizzlies &mdash; was the highest pick from the 2021 NBA Draft who was playing.
I must say, I really enjoyed watching him lace 'em up and play in NBA threads for the first time. I have been following Williams since he was in high school, and it is a joy to watch players as they gradually tip-toe toward accomplishing their goals. Williams didn&rsquo;t start, but he was put into the game pretty quickly and got a steal right away. He ended up with 4 points on 2-for-4 from the field, playing 18 minutes in total. He had some rookie mistakes, but overall, I&rsquo;d say this was a productive first NBA game for the rookie.
Also worth mentioning is Sandro Mamukelashvili, the No. 54 pick by the Bucks. Last year, &ldquo;Mamu&rdquo; was among the favorites among our BasketballNews.com scouting staff. At 6-foot-9 and 240 pounds, Mamu is a fun player to watch, as he is extremely versatile for a big man; he can handle, pass and shoot the ball. He also plays with a high motor and a great pace. In that game vs. the Grizzlies, Mamu scored 9 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 3 assists in 29 minutes of floor time. I&rsquo;ll admit I&rsquo;m a bit biased here (my dad is <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/breakingnews/growing-up-a-buck-millewahque-milwaukee-bucks-nba" target="_blank" rel="noopener">director of player personnel of the Bucks</a>), but Mamu looks like a great pick considering he was taken at the tail end of the second round.
I'd be remiss if I didn&rsquo;t mention how incredible Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant was in this game, and in general. He scored a smooth 27 points in 24 minutes. I remember watching Morant score 27 points and dish out 12 assists at a Murray State home game against Southeast Missouri State a few years ago. In hindsight, even considering the lower level he was playing on, it was one of the most memorable performances that I&rsquo;ve ever seen by a draft prospect. It has been great to see Morant develop into the star that many of us thought and hoped he&rsquo;d become. It&rsquo;s crazy to think that he&rsquo;s still developing.
Perhaps the key storyline of the night was the game's abrupt end. Following the third quarter, the fire alarm went off, and the fans and teams subsequently evacuated the building, prematurely concluding the game. Although I attend games on a regular basis, that was quite different. Also, this was my first game of the 2021-22 campaign&mdash; certainly a strange way to kick the season off.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
I&rsquo;m set to watch many games throughout the 2021-22 season. The Bucks vs. Grizzlies game tonight was my first. It ended in an evacuation and cancellation after the 3rd quarter due to a fire alarm. And I thought things were getting back to normal&hellip; 😬 <a href="https://t.co/Fyh68OYWOs">pic.twitter.com/Fyh68OYWOs</a>
&mdash; Matt Babcock (@MattBabcock11) <a href="https://twitter.com/MattBabcock11/status/1445586285368729612?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 6, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Although I enjoyed attending the Bucks and Grizzlies game, let&rsquo;s not forget that I&rsquo;m an NBA Draft Analyst first and foremost, so my main focus when putting together my travel schedule is to see NBA prospects. Well, with that strategy in place, Memphis was naturally a top-priority destination for me, as the Memphis Tigers are loaded with NBA talent.
I attended the Tigers&rsquo; pro day on Wednesday afternoon and walked away impressed. Here are my thoughts on a few of their top NBA prospects:
<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/draft/2022-big-board/players/jalen-duren" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jalen Duren</a> | Center | 6-foot-11, 250 pounds | Freshman
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/usatsi_16853244_lg.jpg" alt="" width="649" height="432" />
I have watched Jalen Duren for years. I first saw him at a USA Basketball camp in Colorado Springs, Colorado. At the time, Duren&rsquo;s physical tools instantly popped, and they still do. However, he has grown physically since then, as he is now 6-foot-11 and a chiseled 250 pounds while sporting an impressive 7-foot-5 wingspan. He has also grown as a player and seemingly as a young man. In high school, I first questioned his motor and approach, but he has improved in those areas significantly.
From a skill-set standpoint, Duren's key attributes are certainly his physical tools; he is an absolute brute. He will be most effective utilizing his physicality and explosivenss. Expect a lot of powerful dunks, blocks and rebounds. However, he continues to show flashes of skill as well; he has a good feel as a passer and a soft touch as a mid-range shooter. In fact, on one possession during live-play at pro day, he made an incredible move in the mid-post where he jab-stepped into a stepback turnaround jumper. I looked over and gave a staff member a look and simply said, &ldquo;Wow." Duren is currently slotted as the No. 4 prospect on our <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/draft" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 NBA Draft Big Board</a>, and after attending that pro day, I can confidently say he&rsquo;s in a good spot.
<a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/fivestar-recruit-emoni-bates-commits-to-university-of-memphis-" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Emoni Bates</a> | Guard/Forward | 6-foot-9, 190 pounds | Freshman
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/wunnamed_lg.jpg" alt="" width="650" height="454" />
At this point I think anyone that follows basketball knows of Emoni Bates. I mean, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was 15 years old, with the headline being &ldquo;Born for This.&rdquo; In <a href="https://www.si.com/high-school/2019/10/29/emoni-bates-nba-draft-prospect-kevin-durant" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the article</a>, it suggested that he was a prodigy next in line to follow in the footsteps of LeBron James. The hype surrounding Emoni has taken on a life of it&rsquo;s own. In the last year or so, Bates has seemingly become a target of constant criticism due to the unreasonable expectations of him. Following the Memphis pro day, social media platforms went crazy over Bates&rsquo; physical measurements and testing. Although he was measured at an impressive 6-foot-9, his wingspan was measured only 6-foot-7 1/4, and his standing vertical was only 24.5 inches. I&rsquo;ll admit those numbers are very underwhelming but let&rsquo;s not lose sight of Bates&rsquo; talent, versatility, and upside. He&rsquo;s 6-9 and is just a natural scorer and playmaker.
I believe that long-term Bates would be best used as a shooting and scoring wing, but it seems as if head coach Penny Hardaway is going to use him at point guard &mdash; at least some of the time. Although I don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s his long-term position, it&rsquo;s impressive that at 6-9 they have the confidence to even try to use him that way. My biggest concern with Bates is not his short wingspan or his underwhelming vertical jump, it&rsquo;s his lack of physical strength. However, let&rsquo;s not forget Bates is only 17 years old; in fact, he is not even old enough to be eligible for the 2022 NBA Draft. Despite the criticism, I still think Bates is a big-time prospect. The good thing for Bates is that he has plenty of time to prove the naysayers wrong. Either way, I&rsquo;m looking forward to continuing to watch his development.
Earl Timberlake | Guard/Forward | 6-foot-6, 220 pounds | Sophomore
Although I had watched plenty of film of Earl Timberlake, I had not seen him in person prior to the Memphis pro day, so I was eager to see him. At 6-foot-6 and 220 pounds, Timberlake has a strong and physical profile for a wing. Aside from his physical tools, he has what seems to be a knack for passing and playmaking; I expect for those parts of his game to be utilized greatly this year, as the Tigers&rsquo; overall guard play is questionable. We do not currently have Timberlake on our Big Board, as I&rsquo;m still working toward a more conclusive evaluation of him. But I am indeed intrigued, and will be tracking Timberlake closely.
Landers Nolley II | Forward | 6-foot-7, 220 pounds | Junior
I spent a lot of time watching Landers Nolley II while he was at Virginia Tech. I first saw him at the Maui Invitational, and then saw him in Blacksburg as the Hokies played Florida State, which included current NBA players Patrick Williams and Devin Vassell. At 6-foot-7 and 220 pounds, Nolley's key attribute is a good one &mdash; he really shoots the ball well from outside. He&rsquo;s capable of putting the ball on the floor for mid-range pull-ups or straight-line drives; however, I view him as a shooter. Possessing a quick release, the issue has not been his ability, but more so his decision-making and shot selection. After watching him at the Memphis pro day, it seems as if he has improved his shot selection. He is not currenty on our 2022 NBA Draft Big Board, but like his teammate, Earl Timberlake, we will be tracking him closely.&nbsp;
DeAndre Williams | Forward | 6-foot-9, 205 pounds | Senior
If DeAndre Williams is able to put together another quality season for the Tigers, I would not be surprised at all to see him claw his way into the NBA somehow. As a senior, Williams will certainly be a high priority for the <a href="https://www.tampabayprocombine.com/">Tampa Bay Pro Combine</a> Player Selection Committee, which I am co-chair of alongside former coach and current ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla.
Lester Quinones | Guard/Forward | 6-foot-5, 208 pounds | Junior
A do-it-all glue guy, Lester Quinones is a great piece for the Tigers&rsquo; team. Since I first saw him at the Memphis pro day a couple of years ago, he has transformed his body; he looks great! I&rsquo;m looking forward to watching his progress this season.
Josh Minott | Forward | 6-foot-8, 205 pounds | Freshman
Josh Minott is a long and athletic hybrid forward worth keeping a pulse on. I&rsquo;m not certain of the role he&rsquo;ll fill for the Tigers this season, but I do like his upside long-term.
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During my time as a sports agent, I represented two former Tigers in D.J. Stephens and Chris Crawford. I came to Memphis multiple times to recruit each one of them, and I also had each of them train locally with my friend Frank &ldquo;Hell&rsquo;s Trainer&rdquo; Matrisciano following their senior seasons. I remember having dinner with D.J. at Itta Bena, a great restaurant above B.B. King&rsquo;s that is a speakeasy and can only be entered through a fire escape. I also remember signing contracts with Chris at the historic Peabody Hotel, which is known for their ducks that march throughout the hotel on a red carpet. I became fond of the city during that time.
Since leaving the agent business in recent years, I have continued to come back to Memphis as an NBA Draft Analyst somewhat frequently to scout NBA prospects. I attended the Tigers&rsquo; pro day a couple of years ago to see James Wiseman and Precious Achiuwa. In addition, I watched R.J. Hampton&rsquo;s team, the New Zealand Breakers, play an exhibition game versus the Grizzlies and Anthony Edwards&rsquo; Georgia Bulldogs play the Tigers. I also spent time with and watched local product Kennedy Chandler, <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/tennessee-volunteers-point-guard-kennedy-chandler-intent-on-showing-size-isnt-everything">who is now a freshman for the Tennessee Volunteers</a> and is currently slotted as the 13th-best prospect on our <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/draft" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 NBA Draft Big Board</a>.
Once again, attending the Tigers' pro day was certainly fruitful from a scouting standpoint. Memphis will certainly be a high priority for our scouting staff to keep an eye on moving forward.&nbsp;
I thoroughly enjoyed my latest trip to Bluff City: great food, great people, warm southern hospitality and even better basketball.
Until next time, Memphis.

Matt Babcock details his trip to Memphis for the Tigers' pro day and NBA preseason action, and what he took away from both events.

Babcock: Takeaways from a trip to Memphis for Tigers pro day

It had been more than 14 months since I had last entered an NBA arena when I approached Madison Square Garden's media entrance on the corner of 33rd Street and 8th Avenue on Sunday afternoon.&nbsp;
The last year has felt like a blur, tinged with excessive amounts of anxiety and grief. New York emerged as the United States-based epicenter of a devastating global pandemic that has claimed more than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">3.4 million human lives</a>. Yet, with vaccination rates rising and COVID-19 case counts plummeting, Manhattan has been starting to feel a bit more "normal."
And Sunday almost felt like a flashback to a happier, less stressful time, with the sun shining brightly down on the streets outside MSG that were teeming with unmasked smiling faces above blue and orange jerseys.
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It had been more than eight years since the New York Knicks had last participated in a playoff game when they stepped onto the floor Sunday night for their matchup with the Atlanta Hawks. Over the 2,927 days that separated postseason appearances, the Knickerbockers lost more games than any other team in the NBA. The first 20 years of the 21st century provided depressingly few opportunities for Knick fans to get genuinely excited about the present or the future of their favorite team. Between <a href="https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1396479786197950469?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">awful trades</a> and embarrassing <a href="https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1396479791881203725?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">off-court controversies</a>, it became increasingly difficult for New Yorkers to remain loyal to their hometown team. However, so many of them did.&nbsp;
For those reasons alone, this 2020-21 Knicks squad has engendered an incredible amount of love and affection from the Knicks fan base.&nbsp;
More than that, this particular team will forever hold a special place in the hearts of many fans due to everything going on outside the comfy confines of the court as the season played out. The season started in December, which coincided with a dizzying spike in coronavirus cases nationwide. By January, the COVID-19 crisis in the U.S. had reached a terrifying peak, with the country averaging more than 250,000 new infections and nearly 4,000 COVID-related deaths per day. Sports, which have long been considered a much-needed distraction from the weighty worries of the "real world," have been crucial to the mental health of so many of us during the dark days of the pandemic. Due to a tightly-packed schedule, Knicks fans have had the opportunity to tune into a game seemingly every other night for the past five months.&nbsp;
In seasons past, Knicks games had often been rendered meaningless by Christmas, as the team sank to the bottom of the standings, year after year. Shockingly, the team didn't follow the all-too-familiar script in 2020-21. Although multiple outlets projected New York to finish with one of the league's worst records, and Las Vegas set the Knicks over/under win total at 22, the 'Bockers got off to a solid start. Still, even the most optimistic fans assumed the team would come crashing back down to earth, sooner or later. But a funny thing happened on the way to the lottery: the Knicks kept winning.&nbsp;
And it felt as if New York's loving embrace of this team was about more than just its surprising success. It might have had something to do with parents, worried about COVID outbreaks at their kids' schools, cherishing the opportunity to get lost in the triviality of a basketball game for a couple of hours. Or New Yorkers choosing to worry about who Tom Thibodeau should start at point guard instead of stressing about the sputtering economy.&nbsp;
If there was ever a season Knicks fans needed something to be hopeful about, something to believe in, it was this season.&nbsp;
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It had been more than two decades since the Garden rocked and swayed and shook the way it did Sunday night during Game 1.&nbsp;
My first year covering the Knicks professionally was 2005. Over the past 15 years, I've sat through plenty of games when the loudest the building ever got was when the Knicks City Dancers would fire T-shirts into the crowd. With many fans unable to afford tickets and the team effectively eliminated from playoff contention by Thanksgiving, there wouldn't be a passionate "DE-FENSE" chant inside MSG for months at a time. If the Golden State Warriors or Cleveland Cavaliers were in town, the loudest cheers were often reserved for Steph Curry or LeBron James.&nbsp;
Yet, the cacophony of sound heard inside Madison Square Garden during Game 1 was reminiscent of an earlier era, when giants such as Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason roamed the paint inside the World's Most Famous Arena.&nbsp;
The electricity and energy inside the building was evident from the very start of the evening. As soon as the gates opened and patrons began flooding in, cheering and chanting began to emanate from all corners of the arena.&nbsp;
By the time the Knicks players sprinted out onto the floor for pre-game warmups, the clamor had reached a fever pitch.&nbsp;
I remember Jeff Van Gundy once telling me that one of his most enduring memories from his time spent in New York was how loud the Garden got some 30 minutes before games even tipped off during those epic playoff runs in the 1990s. I thought about JVG's observation as I looked around MSG Sunday night with the guttural shouts from 15,000 unleashed fans washing over everyone.&nbsp;
The Knicks got off to a slow start in Game 1, possibly jolted and jittery by the deafening crowd noise. It was something they hadn't experienced this season, as local municipalities had set a cap on the number of people allowed to attend sporting events held inside. Nonetheless, everyone knew the Knicks were going to make a run. The partisan supporters packed inside MSG would make sure of it.
Surprisingly, it was a pair of rookies that sparked the charge. With New York down seven points in the middle of the second quarter, Immanuel Quickley dropped in a floater. A minute later, Obi Toppin drained a three-pointer from the top of the key. When IQ sank a three-pointer from 30 feet on the following possession, the Garden erupted.&nbsp;
Born and raised on Long Island, I made many a pilgrimage to MSG far before I started covering the team. On special occasions throughout the '90s, my dad and I would hop on the LIRR and head into the city. For those who weren't fortunate enough to experience it, it's hard to describe how loud the Garden got during crucial playoff games in those days. The decibel level inside the Garden on Sunday night was likely the closest approximation.&nbsp;
Midway through the third quarter of Game 1, RJ Barrett broke free on a fast break and viciously dunked over Bogdan Bogdanovic. Those of us seated on the Chase Bridge felt it wobble and quake in the aftermath of that Barrett bucket.&nbsp;
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RJ BARRETT JUST DID 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 <a href="https://t.co/4LINVWk7nb">pic.twitter.com/4LINVWk7nb</a>
&mdash; NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) <a href="https://twitter.com/nyknicks/status/1396623627961917441?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 24, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Speaking with reporters on Monday, Obi Toppin said the players "<a href="https://twitter.com/YaronWeitzman/status/1396908224129945602?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">felt the floor shaking</a>" Sunday night. Barrett described the atmosphere inside MSG as "amazing," adding it was "better than [he] could ever imagine."&nbsp;
A buddy of mine, seated in Section 109, texted me a screencap after the game; it showed that the health app on his phone had detected increased heart rate and physical activity from 7 to 9 p.m., signifying he had been exercising strenuously. My friend, a season ticket-holder for more than a decade, also noted that there was a feeling of camaraderie and togetherness among those in attendance Sunday night that he hadn't experienced before.&nbsp;
The Knicks allowed 15,047 fans into MSG for Game 1, only 75% of the building's typical capacity of 19,812. However, it's important to note that most of those 15,000 fans were forced to spend the better part of the past 15 months inside, socially isolated. I don't think it's a stretch to speculate that it contributed to the heightened intensity inside MSG. For many fans, it was the first time they had the opportunity to gather and let loose in a community setting; the first time in a long time they had the green light to scream and cheer and high-five strangers.&nbsp;
The Knicks ended up losing the game, of course, with <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/breakingnews/trae-young-hits-runner-with-less-than-a-second-left-to-push-atlanta-hawks-past-new-york-knicks-nba-playoffs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trae Young turning raucous applause into eerie silence late in the fourth quarter</a>.&nbsp;
Yet, afterward, outside the Garden, there was still a palpable sense of excitement and exhilaration among many of the fans exiting the arena and heading out into the NYC night. And with Game 2 scheduled for Wednesday, it's safe to assume Knicks fans, whether they plan to watch the game inside the Garden or from their couch, will relish the opportunity to be pleasantly distracted once again.

Tommy Beer describes Sunday night's atmosphere inside Madison Square Garden for Game 1 and how it lifted the spirits of New York.

Game 1 of Knicks-Hawks was much-needed return to normalcy for New York

After a four-point first half that was shocking by his recent standards, Stephen Curry faked out Alex Len and tried a wide-open floater from the lane that clanked off the rim. He slapped his hands in frustration as he ran down the court.
A minute later, he tried another floater that Len swatted away.
Coming off a historic run in which he made 78 3-pointers, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-steve-kerr-basketball-kareem-abdul-jabbar-golden-state-warriors-cb9b047424187efc0648c0bbef12f247">the most in any 11-game stretch</a> in NBA history, Curry was bound to have a bad night eventually, and it happened Wednesday night as the Golden State Warriors closed out a five-game trip with a 118-114 loss at Washington.
Guarded primarily by Russell Westbrook, Curry was frigid early and cooled off again late, and Bradley Beal rallied the Wizards to their season-best sixth straight victory as Washington welcomed back fans for the first time in more than a year.
Curry, who came in having overtaken Beal for the NBA scoring lead, had 18 points on 7-of-25 shooting, including 2 of 14 on 3s. He hadn't scored fewer than 32 points in a game since March 17.
&ldquo;It was a great run. It was something that hadn&rsquo;t been done before, and it was going to end at some point,&rdquo; Curry said. &ldquo;Now you&rsquo;ve got to start another one.&rdquo;
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🐼 Bradley Beal with 29 points, 10 rebounds, four assists, and two steals tonight!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WizWarriors?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WizWarriors</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/RealDealBeal23?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RealDealBeal23</a> <a href="https://t.co/6aghvTEbiK">pic.twitter.com/6aghvTEbiK</a>
&mdash; Washington Wizards (@WashWizards) <a href="https://twitter.com/WashWizards/status/1385051347263819776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Beal scored 29 points as the glamorous matchup with Curry mostly fizzled until Washington rallied from 11 points down in the fourth quarter. He pounded his chest after scoring on a drive with 2:44 left and drawing a sixth foul on Draymond Green. Beal converted the three-point play to bring Washington within one, and he found Davis Bertans for a 3-pointer that put the Wizards ahead for good with 2 minutes remaining.
Westbrook had 14 points, a season-high 20 rebounds and 10 assists. The triple-double was his 27th of the season and 173rd of his career, second to Oscar Robertson&rsquo;s 181, but coach Scott Brooks was more thankful for Westbrook's defense.
&ldquo;That's the thing that Russell probably won't get a lot of credit for, but he did a great job of guarding him, putting pressure on him, making him take tough shots. It wears him out,&rdquo; Brooks said. &ldquo;Every now and then, an amazing player like Steph will have an off game, and a lot to do with it was Russell.&rdquo;
Kelly Oubre Jr. led Golden State with 24 points in his second game at Washington, and first with the Warriors, since the Wizards traded him to Phoenix in December of 2018. Jordan Poole added 22 points and hit back-to-back 3-pointers midway through the fourth quarter that put the Warriors up by 11.
Curry started 2 for 13 from the floor and 0 for 7 from 3-point range before he made a layup and a 3 in a 21-second span to get Golden State rolling midway through the third quarter. But he wasn't consistent enough to hold off Beal and Westbrook late. His final 3-point attempt from straight away with 1:17 left wasn't even close.
Fighting for a Western Conference playoff spot, the Warriors went 3-2 on their trip, also losing a close game at Boston despite 47 points from Curry.
&ldquo;I think it could have easily been a 5-0 trip, but yeah, tonight we definitely lost a game we should have won," Green said. &ldquo;That's never good.&rdquo;
The Wizards lost rookie Deni Avdija to a scary-looking right ankle injury late in the first half. The 20-year-old from Israel lay on the floor for several minutes before being taken off in a wheelchair. The Wizards did not provide any detail on the injury after the game, but Brooks would not rule out Avdija returning this season.
Reserve center Daniel Gafford had his best game for the Wizards since he was acquired in a trade with Chicago, finishing with 19 points and 10 rebounds. Bertans also scored 19 points and Raul Neto had 18.
PAYING CUSTOMERS
The District of Columbia agreed last week to allow 10% capacity at Capital One Arena, which equates to 2,100 per game.
Half the seats in the lower bowl remained covered by blue plastic and masked fans were sprinkled throughout all levels. Among those in attendance were 100 invited front-line health workers. The game hosts and dancers entertained fans virtually, and the national anthem was prerecorded.
Beal took a microphone at half court to thank the fans before tipoff.
TIP-INS
Warriors: F Juan Toscano-Anderson remains in the NBA's concussion protocol. He suffered the injury and a head laceration when he tumbled over the scorer's table while diving to save a loose ball in Saturday's loss at Boston. Toscano-Anderson required more than 30 stitches, coach Steve Kerr said. ... G Damion Lee sat Wednesday after Philadelphia's Joel Embiid stepped on his left foot Monday night. Lee cracked his big toenail &ldquo;and he's been in a lot of pain,&rdquo; Kerr said. ... Andrew Wiggins reached 10,000 points, the first player born in Canada to hit that milestone. Canada's Steve Nash, with 17,387 points, was born in South Africa.
Wizards: F Rui Hachimura sat for the second consecutive game with a sore left knee. He remains day to day, Brooks said.
UP NEXT
Warriors: Play nine of their final 13 games at home, starting Friday night against Denver.
Wizards: At Oklahoma City on Friday night. Washington beat the Thunder at home on Monday.
___
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Beal scored 29 points as the glamorous matchup with Curry mostly fizzled until Washington rallied from 11 points down in the fourth quarter.

Beal rallies streaking Wizards past Warriors as Curry finally goes cold

ESPN and former NBA All-Star Paul Pierce have parted ways, according to multiple reports.&nbsp;
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Paul Pierce is out at ESPN. The company declines comment. Credit <a href="https://twitter.com/sportsrapport?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@sportsrapport</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MMcCarthyREV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MMcCarthyREV</a> on news. But the two sides have parted ways.
&mdash; Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) <a href="https://twitter.com/richarddeitsch/status/1379212369084084225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 5, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Pierce's departure comes after he went live on Instagram over the weekend sharing a video of himself with exotic dancers at a house party.&nbsp;
During his time with ESPN, Pierce appeared on shows such as "NBA Countdown" and "The Jump."

The news comes after the former All-Star had a social media misstep over the weekend.

ESPN parts way with analyst Paul Pierce

Each day, BasketballNews.com scours #NBATwitter to bring you the best tweets from the previous day. Some are insightful, some are just hilarious (so we had to include them).
Without further ado, here are the tweets of the day for January 14, 2021.
Ball Don&rsquo;t Lie
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for those curious, KD, Kyrie, and Harden all rank inside the Top-20 ALL-TIME in career Usage Rate - among every player who has ever played in the league Per <a href="https://twitter.com/bball_ref?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@bball_ref</a>: <a href="https://t.co/2FUDnob9zg">pic.twitter.com/2FUDnob9zg</a>
&mdash; Tommy Beer (@TommyBeer) <a href="https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1349476481429344256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2021</a><a href="https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1349466748240670727?s=19">
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Career Usage Rate calculates the percentage of team plays a specific player was involved in. With Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden all nearing 30% -- nearly 10% higher than the average player -- it will be interesting to see how they work out together.
Too Many Cooks Spoil The Broth
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Brooklyn adding Harden to the Nets locker room <a href="https://t.co/NSCuUYWZvO">pic.twitter.com/NSCuUYWZvO</a>
&mdash; Mina Kimes (@minakimes) <a href="https://twitter.com/minakimes/status/1349468100601782281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2021</a></blockquote>

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This is a very accurate description of what the Nets' front office could be feeling right now, especially with a team that is being coached by *vibes*.
Old Tweets, Same Sentiment
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Congrats to my new teammate James Harden
&mdash; Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) <a href="https://twitter.com/KDTrey5/status/2336086647?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2009</a></blockquote>

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It seems like every situation has an old KD tweet to go with it. I&rsquo;m always curious about who finds them first, and how.&nbsp;
Earthworm Jim
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We don&rsquo;t deserve Steven Adams <a href="https://t.co/x9UNMhJ6U7">pic.twitter.com/x9UNMhJ6U7</a>
&mdash; Simon Hampton (@SimonHampton9) <a href="https://twitter.com/SimonHampton9/status/1349176000282816512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2021</a></blockquote>
Steven Adams is the most interesting and least problematic basketball player -- no, person-- on earth. Everything he does off the court is as perfect as every time he catches an opposing player who is about to fall.&nbsp;
Economic Collapse
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Houston strip clubs about to fly James Harden's jersey at half-mast this week
&mdash; sreekar (@sreekyshooter) <a href="https://twitter.com/sreekyshooter/status/1349447312594989056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2021</a></blockquote>

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We joke a lot about James Harden and dancers, but I&rsquo;m sure he got a fair number of them through a really difficult year in their industry. Some people start worm farms, some keep strip clubs afloat.&nbsp;
My Finger Slipped
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The NBA is incredible lol <a href="https://t.co/ESTmTOLNAF">pic.twitter.com/ESTmTOLNAF</a>
&mdash; Amit Mann (@Amit_Mann) <a href="https://twitter.com/Amit_Mann/status/1349542982068924417?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

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James Harden did say he loved the city of Houston, so there is reason to believe he will be back...for the scenery.
My My, How the Turntables
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Kyrie didn&rsquo;t want to be Robin for Lebron but now he is Alfred for KD and Harden Crazy how life works...
&mdash; Kendrick&rsquo;s Burner ➐ (@KendrickPBurner) <a href="https://twitter.com/KendrickPBurner/status/1349531197563662337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

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In his defense, Alfred is the only truly likable character from Batman. The difference though, is that Alfred just keeps his head down and does his job.
I&rsquo;m 36!!!!
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
How Lebron was when he found out James Harden went to the Nets 🏀🤣💀 <a href="https://t.co/BK9bb48nze">pic.twitter.com/BK9bb48nze</a>
&mdash; Mark Phillips (@SupremeDreams_1) <a href="https://twitter.com/SupremeDreams_1/status/1349573999429345280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

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LeBron either had absolutely no reaction, or it was exactly like this one. There is no in between.
100% From the Field
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NBA sea shanty twitter twitter 🤝 discussing nets haul
&mdash; Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich) <a href="https://twitter.com/SPianovich/status/1349468857413611520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2021</a></blockquote>

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A good pun will always make the list (I&rsquo;ve been laughing for 12 hours).
The Red Wedding
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Pelicans sophomore Nickeil Alexander-Walker was outstanding against the Clippers. NAW finished with 37 points, 8 rebounds, 5 threes, 1 steal and 1 turnover while shooting 15-23 from the field, 5-8 from three and 2-2 from the free-throw line). <a href="https://t.co/wADaG622Lh">pic.twitter.com/wADaG622Lh</a>
&mdash; Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexKennedyNBA/status/1349587837604286465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Once upon a time, the Los Angeles Clippers traded away their entire future, including Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (from Hamilton, Ontario) for Paul George. Last night, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, the cousin of the young star, avenged him. The Lannisters send their regards.
Willie Cooley-Stat
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The Mavs are 4-0 since starting Willie Cauley-Stein. <a href="https://t.co/ICfAhS6cml">pic.twitter.com/ICfAhS6cml</a>
&mdash; StatMuse (@statmuse) <a href="https://twitter.com/statmuse/status/1349540783876055040?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 14, 2021</a></blockquote>

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In my professional opinion, Willie Cauley-Stein is one of the coolest players in the NBA, and it&rsquo;s great to finally see his impact on display.&nbsp;
See a tweet that should be featured in tomorrow's Tweet of the Day piece? Send it to <a href="https://twitter.com/kelsea_lately" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@kelsea_lately</a>.

Every day, our Kelsea O'Brien scours #NBATwitter to find the best posts. Here are the tweets of the day for Jan. 14, 2021.

NBA Tweets of the Day: January 14, 2021

BROOKLYN &ndash; A security guard with colorful purple streaks in her hair was watching the third quarter of Wednesday's game between the Brooklyn Nets and Atlanta Hawks from an empty concession stand in the concourse at a deserted Barclays Center, then moved inside the upper-level later in the quarter because she wondered what all the noise was about.
Because the noise was quite something. As was the whole experience of covering an NBA game under the pandemic rules and procedures.&nbsp;
There might have been 300-400 people inside the Nets' home arena, but one of those people on the game operations crew had a hand on the fake-crowd-noise dial, and that person was pumping up the volume excessively.
I have covered literally thousands of basketball games all around the world in my three-plus decades as an NBA reporter, and I can honestly say I have never been to a louder arena than the one I was in last night in the borough also known as Kings County.&nbsp;
Tarps covered nearly all of the seats in the lower bowl, and every single concession stand was closed. Concourses usually teeming with people were barren. Usually, the place is an olfactory overload with all of the different culinary choices. But on Wednesday night, there was merely a skeleton crew of security guards, and I did not gain admittance until a pleasant young lady stuck a nasal swab up my right nostril to give me a rapid COVID-19 test. I was negative.&nbsp;
Every single NBA beat writer and national writer and broadcaster is going through this very same procedure every night they go to work at an NBA arena. The rules are clearly spelled out by the NBA, with everyone&rsquo;s safety the foremost concern. Masks are mandatory at all times. You want a sip of water? You have to drink it in the concourse.
&ldquo;You pick noses for a living?&rdquo; I cheerily asked the COVID-19 tester (because mirth and levity cure COVID fatigue).&nbsp;She smiled back, a rare moment of levity prior to what would be the game of the night, a 145-141 Nets victory that knocked the Hawks from the ranks of the unbeaten and reaffirmed Brooklyn as perhaps the best team in the East when playing nearly at full strength.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Of the six games on the NBA schedule, it was the only one decided by single digits. There has been a pattern of blowouts developing over the first week-plus of the NBA season, and it is not a good pattern.&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/img_5306_lg.JPG" alt="" width="600" height="AUTO" />
Many of this season&rsquo;s games have not been close, and the sights and sounds that everyone is getting on TV are different from what we all got back in the days of the bubble. Fans are barred from all but a handful of the 29 NBA arenas; large tarps cover huge swatches of the stands (sometimes adorned with advertisements so that viewers will see the team's sponsors). The audio and video quality varies tremendously from game to game (across different networks), and the fake crowd noise &ndash; which was kind of welcome in the bubble because it restored some sense of normalcy &ndash; is having a different effect this season.
It is too fake, if there is such a thing.&nbsp;
In Brooklyn, it was earsplitting. NBA players should be getting earplugs to deal with it, along with the masks that they and the coaches are wearing on the benches throughout these games during the 2020-21 season.
This is not a criticism of the Nets, who are doing everything they can to host games and accommodate media members working under extraordinary logistical difficulties. They must keep media members socially distanced from one another as well as from players and coaches, and all interactions between media and team members are conducted pre- and post-game via Zoom.&nbsp;
This has the impact of limiting the opportunities that reporters have to interact informally with coaches and players, and the quality of the reporting suffers because media members have fewer opportunities to mingle with coaches, players, scouts and folks sitting courtside as part of the news gathering process. The floor level at Barclays is a no-fly zone, so one cannot even tell if the team has exercise bikes in their usual spot just to the side of the exit tunnel, a place where the Nets have a dazzling array of photographs from games, concerts and events that have been held over the years at the arena.
Media members have no choice but to adjust, and some beat writers are choosing to cover their teams from home&nbsp; -- unthinkable in journalism theory, a necessity at times during a pandemic. Things are going to remain this way for the foreseeable future, and it will not make NBA reporting any easier; simply more challenging. The more intrepid among us can handle it.
New York is generally a grumpy city these days, but it should be noted that every single person I ran into at Barclays Center was cheerful and helpful. It is human nature for 99 percent of us to act that way, and whatever they are putting in the eater in Brooklyn is working.
Getting back to last night&rsquo;s epic game, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant combined for Brooklyn's final 20 points over the final five-and-a-half minutes of a contest that left everyone spent. But what it looked like in the locker room afterward -- something reporters routinely describe anecdotally in their coverage -- was a mystery.
"Yeah, I definitely need a beer," Nets head coach Steve Nash said afterwards via Zoom.
A colleague I have known for several years who works for CBS was in attendance, and I gave him a ride after the game back to Manhattan where his car was parked. He has been attending games all over the country in football stadiums where the roofs have been closed and the 80,000-seat arenas have been emptied. He said Indianapolis was boarded up, Las Vegas was dead (both inside and outside the Raiders' new retractable-roof stadium), but absolutely nowhere was the pumped-in crowd noise anywhere near the levels that we both experienced at Barclays Center. This was headache-inducing noise, and one headache in particular did not subside until 5 a.m. this morning after a couple hours of shut-eye.
We drove along 34th Street in Manhattan and spotted exactly one open business &ndash; a 24-hour convenience store. There were perhaps 30 pedestrians along that major crosstown thoroughfare, and we marveled at the ghost town aspect of Manhattan during this pandemic. It was eerie, and as Jeff Van Gundy said on The Sheridan Show earlier this week when <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-podcast-chris-sheridan-jeff-van-gundy-rockets-james-harden-hawks-team-usa-cuba">describing Staples Center in Los Angeles</a>, it was surreal.
Every hoophead in America is getting a taste of this from their sofas each evening, but to witness it in person was different.&nbsp;
Under new media rules, after you pass your COVID test, you go to your assigned seat and stay there. Period. Unless you need a bathroom break. From the Nets' media seats in the 200 level (think &ldquo;corner of the arena, halfway up&rdquo;) one could see a pair of security guards come onto the court during every timeout, but there was nothing for them to do except go through the motions and look busy. There was no one inside the arena for them to crowd control. 
Whatever was being said in timeouts was a mystery. Cameras could catch it for the TV audience, but from 80 yards away, you cannot see much in detail. Within view were the three rows of socially distant seating for the bench players and assistant coaches, a socially distant scorer's table with only a few folks keeping stats and making public address announcements, and perhaps the person with the fake crowd noise controller.&nbsp;
Since the floor level is off-limits to anyone not affiliated with the league or the teams, the usual NBA reporting practice of going to a locker room and mingling with the players and/or spotting which celebrities were in attendance was an impossibility. Not that any celebrities were in Brooklyn on Wednesday, unless they were spirited inside where no one was watching and kept out of camera range. It would not have been impossible, given the building&rsquo;s layout. (I once interviewed Bill Clinton on the loading dock after a Bucks-Nets game. He is buddies with Marc Lasry and likes the Bucks a lot).&nbsp;
The working press room is closed. The interview room is closed too. The luxury club down the hallway from the locker rooms is also closed. The dance team&rsquo;s room and the Team Hype cheer quad rooms are empty. Those folks are not working this season.&nbsp;
Outside Barclays Center on the streets of Brooklyn, there was zero pedestrian traffic. A supermarket across the street was virtually empty. The plaza leading to the subway and the Long Island Railroad station that serves Barclays Center was devoid of people, and even the ever-present pigeons were gone.
Surreal may not be a strong enough word. Again, eerie.
But this is the new normal in these tough times, and as we all should know by now, the new normal is often abnormal. This dynamic is taking place in all 28 NBA cities along with Tampa, the current home of the Toronto Raptors, and there is no way that it is financially sustainable.&nbsp;
Barclays Center was sucking electricity from the power grid in order to heat the massive arena. Inside, every concession stand was closed, which means that all of the people who used to work at those concession stands are now either out of work or have found other jobs.
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True story: When I was a young sportswriter covering a Utah Jazz-Houston Rockets playoff semifinal in Salt Lake City in 1996, former Commissioner David Stern was in attendance with his wife, Dianne, who was put off by all of the fake noise. Stern got things done, and he ordered one of his staffers, Todd Harris, to keep a decibel meter at courtside and to make sure the sound level did not exceed a certain threshold.&nbsp;
Harris was a dutiful foot soldier, and he followed the directive so closely that the Jazz dancers could not hear the soundtracks that they were dancing to. Odds are that Dianne Stern left the next game without a splitting headache.
Stern passed away exactly 366 days ago, and his successor, Adam Silver, is doing his utmost to have a 72-game NBA season that gives the league's fans at home enduring the pandemic something entertaining and unscripted to watch each and every night. But that manufactured noise is too phony.&nbsp;
Ironically, the Nets were one of the first teams to pop in fake crowd noise, doing it back when they played in East Rutherford before sparse crowds. When news broke of what they were doing, they were ridiculed. Now, it is the norm.
However, it would be interesting to see the NBA test this idea:&nbsp;
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Try televising a couple of games with no fake crowd noise.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Put microphones on the players so we can hear their interactions.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Open the broadcast with a disclaimer that there may be some off-color language picked up by the microphones.&nbsp;</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Let the viewers experience the on-court noises and what the players are saying to each other as these games are being played. If a cuss word sneaks in, so be it. We can handle it.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
Look, there comes a point where the product is too fake. The bubble served its purpose, and the fake noise made it seem familiar. But those games were played in very small arenas in Lake Buena Vista, FL, whereas the current games are being played in empty 20,000 seat-arenas with massive tarps covering the seats. The optics are unnerving, no matter how good or bad the games are.
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We all want to get bodies back into those seats as soon as possible, but in the meantime, over-faking it is too phony.&nbsp;
The NBA toyed with the idea of playing at G-League arenas and practice facilities, but for a variety of reasons, the idea was scrapped. Those reasons included the economic expense of outfitting new venues for NBA broadcast and other technology. The costs of implementing required health and safety protocol measures were significantly more feasible in the normal arenas &ndash; things such as entrance, egress, space for distancing, hand-sanitizing stations, plexiglass dividers, space for players, personnel to be physically distant on benches, locker rooms, weight rooms, etc. Also, it was less desirable from a revenue perspective as it was easier to implement the needed signage elements in existing arena setups, many of which have naming rights deals.
So the NBA will stay in the big arenas, come what may.&nbsp;
But it would be nice to see the NBA try something different at some point this season. You can turn the limited fake crowd noise back on when the arenas have fans in them. But until then, let viewers hear what's really happening.

Chris Sheridan shares his experience covering an NBA game during a pandemic, as he attended Wednesday's Nets-Hawks game.

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