Mighty Believers

Alex Kennedy goes 1-on-1 with Tyrese Haliburton, who opens up about getting traded, the Pacers' future, his offseason training, etc.

Tyrese Haliburton won’t let trade 'resentment' define new Pacers era

Is the NBA ready to add an expansion team? Evan Sidery explores what kind of team you could build in a present-day expansion draft.

NBA Expansion Mock Draft: What would a new expansion team look like?

Players like Andrew Wiggins make being a coach worth it.
The NBA&rsquo;s 2022 All-Star Weekend is in my hometown of Cleveland and even though I won&rsquo;t be there in person, I&rsquo;ll be paying close attention to the All-Star Game. I can&rsquo;t wait to see Wiggins take that court.
Being a coach can be a thankless job &mdash; long days, short nights and countless hours. Most of the time, coaches spend more time with their teams than they do with their families, and when things don&rsquo;t work out, we&rsquo;re usually the first to get blamed &mdash; whether fair or not. That&rsquo;s part of what makes it tough.
What also makes it tough is when you have players who don&rsquo;t want to be held to standards or don&rsquo;t want to work.&nbsp;
A good coach is supposed to push you and challenge you. A good coach is supposed to hold you accountable. And truth is, some players just aren&rsquo;t receptive to that&hellip;&nbsp;
But others? They&rsquo;re like Wiggins.&nbsp;
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I got to know him pretty well during our brief time together during the NBA Summer League in 2014, and I became a believer in him almost immediately.
Eight years later, I&rsquo;m going to be so proud to see him take the court as not only an All-Star from the Western Conference, but as a starter.
I first heard about Andrew when he was at Kansas, and I never imagined I&rsquo;d be one of his first NBA coaches &mdash; but that&rsquo;s how things worked out for us.&nbsp;
I was just coming off of my first season as an assistant with the Canton Charge, the Cavaliers&rsquo; G League affiliate. In May of that year, Cleveland won the draft lottery for the second year in a row (and third time in four years).&nbsp;
They had Kyrie Irving, who they picked first in 2011, and Anthony Bennett (selected first in 2012). Now, they had won the draft lottery again and were expected to select Wiggins first overall.&nbsp;
Me? I was fortunate to get the call to be an assistant coach for the Cavs in the Summer League. I was looking forward to it, especially to have the opportunity to help develop that young talent. I was still getting my feet wet as a coach, and when they did ended up picking Wiggins with the first pick, we were joined.&nbsp;
Andrew, believe it or not, made it easy for us.&nbsp;
With the hype surrounding him, it would have been easy for him to have an attitude or to have a big head or to not be receptive to being coached and pushed, but he was the total opposite. He was kind, patient and absorbed everything like a sponge. It was refreshing.
Even though I was an assistant coach, I worked with him a lot. I was constantly in his ear.
What I respected most about Andrew, and I&rsquo;m not sure I ever told him directly, was how he handled himself after LeBron announced that he was coming back to Cleveland. We had conversations about it, and I advised him &mdash; but he just handled himself like such an adult.
The main thing I tried to get him to understand was that there was going to be an adjustment period for him going from college to the pros and to not put too much pressure on himself. Focus on having fun and take your craft seriously. He did just that.
He was a rare combination of someone who was talented, gifted and confident &mdash; yet also calm, quiet and focused. That&rsquo;s not always the case with young players with promise.
Especially for those who have accolades and notoriety, those players can give off an impression that makes you wonder if they feel like playing in summer leagues or pickup games is almost beneath them. They don&rsquo;t give it 100% and don&rsquo;t seem like they&rsquo;re taking the lower levels of play seriously.
That wasn&rsquo;t Andrew.&nbsp;
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As a coach, you want the best for all your players, but there are some who you actually root for &mdash;&nbsp;whether it be because of their work ethic, their character or your personal relationship. And yeah, Andrew immediately became one of those players I rooted for.
In Vegas, after LeBron announced he was going back to Cleveland, Andrew immediately became the topic of discussion and rumors because everyone assumed that he would be traded for someone who could help LeBron win immediately.&nbsp;
During Summer League, he couldn&rsquo;t go anywhere without people asking him about the rumors, asking him if he was actually going to play for the Cavs and stuff like that &mdash; despite it all, he was so positive and upbeat. He remained focused on our common goal.
We had a few conversations about the situation and about his future in the NBA. I&rsquo;ll never forget Andrew&rsquo;s perspective. He considered himself blessed to be fulfilling his dream, and his sole focus was to become the best player he could be. He was looking forward to being LeBron&rsquo;s understudy and learning from him, but knew that it was possible that he wouldn&rsquo;t get that opportunity.&nbsp;
And if he got traded? He simply knew he was going to give it his all to become the best player he could be for that team that did acquire him.&nbsp;
Either way, he always wanted to be with his coaches in the gym. And he wanted us to push him. No wasted days.
I knew, even back then, that he was going to make it.&nbsp;
Attitude and humility &mdash; knowing that you&rsquo;ve got a lot to learn and taking what your coaches have to say seriously &mdash; that&rsquo;s a big factor when it comes to young guys becoming the best players they can be. And it often makes the difference between someone having a five-year career, and someone having a 15-year career.
Things didn&rsquo;t work out in Cleveland for obvious reasons, but Andrew developed nicely in Minnesota. There were a lot of questions about his drive and about his ability to fulfill his potential, and that probably contributed to Minnesota trading him to Golden State for D&rsquo;Angelo Russell.
At the end of the day, though, everyone lands where they&rsquo;re supposed to.&nbsp;
D&rsquo;Angelo is doing well in Minnesota with Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew looks like he just might be the piece that the Warriors need to get back on top.
The young Canadian kid, obviously &mdash; he&rsquo;s figured things out in San Francisco.
And you know what? I can&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;m surprised.&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve believed in him since fate brought us together in Las Vegas back in 2014.
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James Posey discusses the experience he had coaching Andrew Wiggins back in 2014, and how the young man made him a believer.

Coaching Andrew Wiggins in 2014 NBA Summer League made me a believer

The&nbsp;<a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/iman-shumpert-explains-how-lebron-ruined-basketball/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-stringify-link="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/giannis-antetokounmpo-shares-why-he-doesnt-associate-or-practice-with-other-nba-players-in-the-offseason/" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">following article</a>&nbsp;first appeared on&nbsp;<a class="c-link" tabindex="-1" href="http://basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="http://BasketballNetwork.net" data-sk="tooltip_parent" data-remove-tab-index="true">BasketballNetwork.net</a>:
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m gonna take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.&rdquo;
The infamous sentence by LeBron James that completely changed the NBA landscape back in 2010 had a greater effect on the league than you might think. Sure, it shifted the landscape of the league at that time, but the long-term impact was felt in the fact that players started to team up other more, forming super-teams and disbanding loyalty in the pursuit of a championship. LeBron&rsquo;s former teammate, Iman Shumpert, blames James for this shift in thinking. In fact, he believes James ruined the NBA.
&ldquo;'Bron ruined basketball. He thought he was making it better; I get him," Shumpert said. "Me personally, I loved the NBA for the loyalty that I thought was there. He basically knocked the fourth wall down like, 'The organization, they bullsh*tting, we doing what we want.' Great business move for sure, but when you think about it, outside looking in, like, I got people tweeting me right now [and] they're literally talking about owners and trades. It&rsquo;s like, bro, y&rsquo;all aren&rsquo;t supposed to be talking about none of this actually!"
It&rsquo;s ridiculous to say LeBron started super-teams with the 2010 Miami Heat because we have seen many teams with multiple All-Stars going all the way through history. But the Heat's Big Three was formed differently. Players didn&rsquo;t have the kind of power or leverage to go wherever they wanted and team up with their friends. Ownership groups and front offices had all the power, but LeBron broke the wall and showed that the players actually had the control.&nbsp;
Ever since then, players have been getting more and more power in the NBA, getting larger contracts, requesting trades, signing wherever they want, recruiting each other and simply sitting out if they don&rsquo;t want to play. All of this was unheard of in the NBA 15 years ago. But LeBron&rsquo;s push for player empowerment changed the complete hierarchy of the league and gave the steering wheel to the players. Some would argue that this was good for the league, while others would say it&rsquo;s destroying it. One thing&rsquo;s for sure: it has its perks and flaws.
While it&rsquo;s entertaining to see super-teams due to the abundance of transcendent talent playing together, some feel it kills the nature of the NBA. The league gets too centralized with only a few select elite teams, while the rest get the short end of the stick and no attention. That mainly happens to the small-market teams that don&rsquo;t have the appeal of the big cities to lure stars.&nbsp;
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It also killed loyalty and the romanticism that once graced the NBA, with every team having its star or two that were heroes of the city for their whole careers. Instead, nowadays, it&rsquo;s normal to see star players switch teams numerous times and look for their best situation, rather than sticking it out with their original team. Of course, there are exceptions; Damian Lillard is the obvious one.
Shumpert believes that fans look at the game differently and focus on the wrong things ever since James joined the Heat. Fans have always been interested in rumors and transactions, but there's no question that it reached a new level during the player-empowerment era. These days, some fans are more interested in what happens off the court than the actual games.
James' free-agency choice in 2010 will undoubtedly continue to be viewed as one of the most polarizing moves in NBA history.
Check out more articles from BasketballNetwork.net&nbsp;<a href="https://www.basketballnetwork.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Iman Shumpert discussed the effects of LeBron James' decision to join the Miami Heat.

Iman Shumpert lets loose on how LeBron 'ruined basketball'

Since he arrived to the NBA as the No. 1 pick in 2017 for the Philadelphia 76ers, there has been so much misreported about Markelle Fultz.
Fultz went through two tumultuous years of misinformation by the media and fans, conspiracy theories, unfounded rumors, criticisms and internet jokes, and he was labeled a bust by people who are paid a king&rsquo;s ransom on ESPN &mdash; namely Stephen A. Smith, who called Fultz &ldquo;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG8Vtvkq8Fo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the biggest bust in NBA history</a>.&rdquo;
But what actually happened is quite the opposite. Fultz wasn&rsquo;t a &ldquo;bust.&rdquo; He was dealing with an injury that is not only untraceable by an MRI, but also rarely (or hardly ever) seen in basketball players. In spite of all that, he was still trying to play through the pain because of his love for the game of basketball, and it's something that he does, in fact, regret doing.&nbsp;
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I spoke with Fultz on <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/podcasts/the-rematch" target="_blank" rel="noopener">my podcast</a>, "The Rematch," and the Orlando Magic guard opened up on everything that happened with his shoulder and finally put all of the incorrect rumors to rest. Below is a snippet of our conversation:
Etan Thomas: You mentioned your shoulder. You injured your shoulder, and you initially tried to play through it and not tell anybody about the injury, right? Am I correct?
Markelle Fultz: "Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely."
Etan Thomas: So walk me through that process because people don't really understand how it works sometimes. And I'm sure the pressure of being No. 1 was a contributing factor to why you wanted to play through the injury. But walk me through that process.
Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. Well, a lot of people just don&rsquo;t know my love for the game. Growing up in the area I grew up, you have bumps and bruises. But that's where it becomes a business, taking care of your body. And me being who I am, loving the game so much, I feel like, although my shoulder was messed up, I feel like I can still contribute to the game and help my team win. So I wanted to go out there and just compete and have fun with the game. And also, it's my first year. And I think that I did a poor job of communicating to my agent and my family what I was feeling, instead of just going out there and trying to compete without expressing what I was feeling. And all I was doing was making it worse. But when I realized that certain situations weren't going my way, I knew I had to speak up, and I had to do what's best for myself.
"And I think that was the toughest part about it, because I felt like I could still play and contribute to my team, but I wasn't myself. I wasn't 100%, and it wasn't what was best for the team. So I took that time and tried to figure out what was going on. And I went to go see certain doctors and started that rehab process then. But I think the biggest thing I learned from that is just taking care of my body, and communicating what I feel to not only my agent and my family, but also trainers and stuff like that."
Etan Thomas: So how long were you in pain before you told anybody?
Markelle Fultz: "Actually, my shoulder started hurting before training camp [in my rookie year]. &nbsp;But I just thought it was from how much work I was putting in, from me shooting so much that my shoulder was just sore. So I tried to work through it. I'm going in the gym, shooting thousands of shots, trying to shoot through it. And the whole time, I just continued to make it worse. But again, the mindset that I had, I'm just trying to grind. I'm trying to continue to work through these issues, and not knowing that I'm making it worse. Again, I'm just kind of being young and being selfish, I would call it, in a sense, not understanding my body. And I think that was a big part of it. And again, once I communicated, I started to get the help that I needed. And I started to work and rehab, and it started to get better."
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Etan Thomas: You mentioned you learned how to advocate for yourself. I want you to go a little bit more detail with that. And speak up because still, a lot of people don't really understand how it works with team trainers and team doctors, and how a lot of times players have to speak up and advocate for themselves. Just go into a little bit more detail about that point.
Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. And this is no knock on any team or anything like that, but it's a business, at the end of the day. And sometimes, again, it's a long season, so you have bumps and bruises. And sometimes, some people play through it, some people don't. Everybody's body is different. So especially not knowing a person and not knowing the situation, if you don't communicate and advocate for yourself, you never know what could happen. And it can be something as small as your toe hurting. But what I've learned so much about my body is your body compensates. And we're so good, as athletes and as humans, that if we're trying to do something, our body's going to find a way to do it. So it might not be the right way, but we can do certain stuff and hurt ourself, in the long run.
"And so my one thing would be: try to be in tune with your body as much as you can. And [it could be something] as small as your toenail hurting. I mean, you always get this phrase of 'You're soft' or you're whatever. But what I've learned is I'd rather overcommunicate about how my body's feeling and still be able to work out. I still want to work out, but I'm going to let you know, 'Hey, my big toe's hurting. Hey, my right hamstring is feeling like this today. My knee's feeling like this.' So they can start to know that you're caring about your body, and you're documenting certain stuff, so you don't end up compensating and hurting yourself in the long run."
Etan Thomas: Yeah, well, it's interesting. You go to different gyms, and they could be even as young as high school. And you see phrases on the wall like "Pain is weakness leaving your body" and stuff like that. And I hate that. I do, because it puts the wrong mentality into players, to thinking that them being injured is somehow their fault, like they're not being tough enough to play through an injury. And I just personally cannot stand that mentality at all.
Markelle Fultz: "Yeah. And I think that's how I kind of grew up. Not in a bad way. But growing up, I'm playing through whatever. I don't want to be soft. I want to show that I'm tough. But when you get to a certain point where your body is your brand... Your body is your car, so you need to take care of that thing like it's a Ferrari. You hear phrases like that, but it's true. You have to take care of your body.
"You have to get the right recovery. You have to get the right sleep. If not, it's going to end up hurting you. It might not hurt you right away, but down the road it can give you certain side effects. Or you never know, it can lead to something happening right away. But there are also freak accidents that happen. But I think that's the one thing that I would recommend to any player at any age, is just communicating about your body. [That] doesn't mean that you have to sit out of a drill, but it can start to put an awareness on people's mind. You can start to document certain things. And you'll have a better understanding, going forward, of why you do what you do."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Markelle Fultz&rsquo;s story is a great example for all younger players on fighting through adversity, having the right mentality, ignoring critics and perseverance. His testimony is something every young athlete should hear. Powerful interview <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheRematch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheRematch</a> <a href="https://t.co/25vHkql1Rj">https://t.co/25vHkql1Rj</a> <a href="https://t.co/LpHu9jQxfG">pic.twitter.com/LpHu9jQxfG</a>
&mdash; Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanthomas36/status/1464569831324332045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Etan Thomas: But I think that sometimes a player does have to sit down. A player does have to say, "Okay, I can't go. You're going to talk bad about me. You're going to tell..." So I use the example a lot with my son about Robert Griffin III. So when RG III first came to D.C., my son was the biggest RG III fan on earth. And then I took him to... you know when they have the open scrimmages? So he met him, and RG III was cool with him. And they took a picture, and he's been the biggest RG III fan forever since then. And you remember that game where RG III was limping out there? And so, I'm watching that game with Malcolm. And he was like, "Why is he playing? What is he doing? He's going to injure himself," and so forth. This is what a young Malcolm is saying.
And sure enough, in fact his entire career, the trajectory of everything, went downhill from there. And then you saw the trainer say, "Well, I didn't tell him to go out there." Nobody wanted to take responsibility. But it should be the trainer's job to tell you that you are going to hurt yourself more if you continue playing. And that's the problem that I personally have with a lot of NBA trainers. I'm not throwing anybody in particular under the bus; this is a league-wide issue. They're employers of the team, and they want to do what's best for the team, not what's best for the player.
Markelle Fultz: "Exactly. And that's where it comes back to a relationship. So you have to have the certain people in your corner that's going to always keep it real with you because at the end of the day, like I said, your body's your brand. And it's about the longevity. It's different if it's Game 7 in the playoffs or the championship, and you're sacrificing for that. What I've also learned is rest is a big part of recovery, and getting the right amount of rest. Some days you got to go hard, and some days you have to not do anything at all. I mean, you can do some light stuff. But I think you hit it right on the head. Some people&rsquo;s mind is set for the team. Not everybody has your best interest [in mind]. You have the best interest for yourself. So I think that's why it's huge to communicate how you feel to whoever it is &mdash; whether it's your mom, your dad, your trainer, whoever &mdash; and do what you feel is best because you know your body the best.
"Nobody else can tell you how your body is supposed to feel, how your body feels at that time. And I think that's where I learned how to advocate the most for myself. And I've gotten more respect from a lot of people when I do that. And again, it doesn't mean you're soft. It's just being smart about certain things. But at the same time, you do have to push yourself in certain limits to be able to... It's going to be certain days where you're sore, and you still have to push through. That's part of it, but it's a difference between sore and hurt. So just trying to learn... The sooner you start to communicate certain things, you start to learn what's pain, and what's okay to work through and what's not to work through. And that's where I think I've learned the most. I've learned how to identify what's going on in my body, and understand what I need to do to make that feel better, or if I need to take rest or if I need to go get treatment."
Etan Thomas: Yeah. I mean, I always heard the saying that there's a difference between being injured and hurting. So sometimes you're going to have to play through being hurting. That's just part of being an athlete. But being injured, you need to sit down.
Markelle Fultz: Exactly.
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Etan Thomas: So, I want to ask a few specifics. I remember seeing some videos of you, watching you play and seeing your different routines on the free-throw line. And I just wanted to ask: Was that when you was trying to push through it? Was it part of the rehab? So there was one where you would kind of pat the ball like this, and then shoot it. And then there were some where you would go up and it would be kind of like a hitch, kind of. What exactly was going on?
Markelle Fultz: "Yes. So what a lot of people don't know is, what TOS (Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) is. It's a nerve... It's when your nerves are getting pressured on, and you can start to lose feeling in your hands. So at the time when I was playing, I still had TOS. I wasn't diagnosed with TOS. I still was working through certain shoulder stuff. But again, with my love for the game, I still wanted to be out there.
"And another thing people don't know, TOS is not diagnosed through a MRI, CAT scan. It's very hard to diagnose TOS, which is a big part of why, in the beginning, I kind of thought that nothing was going on. And I just thought it was my shoulder, because when I got MRIs and I got the scans, I didn't see anything that was going on. But I had to continue. So I went from shooting 40% in college to coming into the NBA.... It's so funny, people were like, 'He changed his shot.' Like, what would I change my shot for? There's no reason. So that was one of the funniest things that I heard, then I used to hear all these rumors about me being injured on a motorcycle, but that's another story."
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&ldquo;JJ Redick stood up for me to the media. He went off on them in front of the camera and I really appreciated that a lot. He was like a big brother to me&rdquo; Markelle Fultz <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TheRematch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TheRematch</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/JJRedick?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#JJRedick</a> <a href="https://t.co/U5IHeV99rU">https://t.co/U5IHeV99rU</a> <a href="https://t.co/GwGJ3a3FSB">pic.twitter.com/GwGJ3a3FSB</a>
&mdash; Etan Thomas (@etanthomas36) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanthomas36/status/1464597794677743621?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2021</a></blockquote>

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Etan Thomas: Oh, man! There were so many different rumors about you... They got the story wrong so many times. I heard so many different stories.
Markelle Fultz: And that's what was the funniest thing because to me... I never went out to address it because I didn't care about that. Again, my main focus was getting back on the court, doing what I needed to do. But some of the stuff I used to see, I used to be like, 'Yo, that's crazy that somebody actually believes that.' But it also taught me another thing: You can't believe everything you read, right? But yeah. So pretty much what people didn't know is, so when I was going... The whole thing on my shoulder, when I would try to shoot, it almost felt like I had a too-small suit jacket on. So I would go, try to go up, and it felt like somebody was almost holding my arm there. I would try to move fast, but I felt like I couldn't move fast. So what I ended up doing is continue to try to shoot on it. I ended up building up more and more pressure on my shoulder where I'm not using... where I'm starting to hinge my shoulder up. I'm starting to use the wrong muscles, and I'm building bad habits.
"But what people don't understand is I'm out there playing, still. Still trying to shoot, still doing this. I was still making free throws. I wasn't very high percentage, but I was still making free throws. And so the first thing, when I would go up sometimes, I would lose feeling in my hand. And so, that's the reason I'd double clutch, because I would get here and I wouldn't feel like the ball was in my hand. But when I'd come up, my feeling would come back because the way it is &mdash; when I'm going through a certain motion &mdash; my muscles are pushing on my nerve, which is cutting my feeling off. And when I go through, it releases off the nerve, and that's when I would get my feeling back. So when I would do the double clutch, it was because when I would get here, I wouldn't feel the ball in my hand. So it was no way I was shooting if I don't feel like the ball [was] in my hand.
"So I would go up a little bit and it would come back, so I would just come from here and shoot the ball. And so when I went to practice, I'm like, 'Alright, that's not working, so let me try something else.' So another thing I tried to do was, this wouldn't have me holding the ball. So the desensitization of just moving the ball back and forth until I get into where I get feeling, which is right here, then I can just shoot. I was fine shooting from here. If I had just caught the ball here and shot up, it was perfectly fine. So that was why I went to that because I was just trying to be more efficient at the free-throw line. I didn't care what people were saying. I was just trying to get my flow in. So when I got to where I needed to go, I can just shoot the ball fine. But again, that was another realization of me compensating. And I said, 'Markelle Fultz, you don't need to compensate. You need to get healthy.'
"And another instance where I talked to my agent, I just told him I have no problem playing. I just feel like I want to be myself so I can just go out there and play without thinking, just playing my game, be who I am. And so, that's where it kind of went from. But just a lot of repetition of shooting the wrong way, it just builds bad habits and it builds your muscle memory wrong. And so, that was the biggest thing, trying to get back to... And I'm still working on it now. It's something I'm always going to have to work on. It's just trying to get my brain to process the ball being over my head the same way. And it's something that is a everyday grind, but I'm enjoying it. I feel way more comfortable now, and I feel the improvement. And again, I know my body, so I know what I need to work on.
Listen to the full episode of Markelle Fultz on The Rematch <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/podcasts/the-rematch/episodes/basketballnews-com-episode-39-markelle-fultz-talks-injuries,-dealing-with-criticism-his-love-of-the-game-and-more" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Markelle Fultz gives a behind-the-scenes breakdown of the shoulder injury he suffered as a rookie and how it affected his jump shot.

Markelle Fultz reveals what really happened with his shot, shoulder

On Aug. 3, 2021, the Chicago Bulls traded Thaddeus Young, Al-Farouq Aminu, a protected first-round pick and two second-round picks to the San Antonio Spurs for DeMar DeRozan, who inked a three-year deal worth $85 million with the Bulls.
Young was coming off of one of the most productive seasons of his career, having averaged 12.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 1.1 steals and 0.6 blocks in 24.3 minutes and winning the NBA's Hustle Award in 2020-21.
Recently, Young was a guest on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-alex-kennedy-podcast/id1528900732?i=1000543435681">&ldquo;The Alex Kennedy Podcast&rdquo;</a> and the 15-year NBA veteran revealed that he was blindsided by the Bulls-Spurs trade since the move didn&rsquo;t line up with what Chicago&rsquo;s front office had just told his camp.
&ldquo;It definitely caught me off guard. I actually learned about it in the parking lot of the Sports Academy in Frisco, TX. I was leaving a session and my phone was going crazy. I&rsquo;d seen that DeMar DeRozan had gotten traded to Chicago and I was like, &lsquo;Why is my phone going crazy for this?&rsquo; Then, I dive a little deeper into it and I see that the trade included me, Al-Farouq Aminu, some picks and stuff like that.&nbsp;
&ldquo;It definitely caught me off guard for the simple fact that I had just talked to my agent and my agent had just talked to everybody in Chicago, and we were being told that I was coming back. And they guaranteed my salary the day before or two days before or something like that and then used it as trade bait. It is what it is; it happens and it&rsquo;s part of the business. But the only thing I wish is that I had gotten the heads up before I found out from social [media].
&ldquo;I was getting ready to gather my family up and get everyone ready and situated to come back to Chicago. If I had signed another lease in Chicago, then I would&rsquo;ve been stuck in a lease for a year and trying to figure out how to get out of it. If I had moved my family up there and came back early because my kids had to go to school, then that would&rsquo;ve been a waste of money and a waste of time. The good thing was I was still at home and I was able to kind of maneuver through everything and it was still in the summer. But like I said, I would&rsquo;ve rather found out from them firsthand as opposed to finding out through social.&rdquo;
<iframe src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=BNI3085218416" width="100%" height="200" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Recently, Young&rsquo;s name has been <a href="https://theathletic.com/2789891/2021/08/30/ben-simmons-update-one-on-one-with-liangelo-ball-plus-more-nba-news-and-notes/?source=twitterhq" target="_blank" rel="noopener">surfacing in trade rumors</a> once again since the Spurs are rebuilding, and a number of contenders (including the Phoenix Suns) have expressed interest in his services.&nbsp;
The 33-year-old is used to popping up in trade rumors, and he&rsquo;s flattered that so many teams recognize his value. Also, he believes that a big reason why his name ends up in the rumor mill so often is because he can fit with just about every team around the league &mdash; on and off the court.
&ldquo;For me to always be in trade rumors or anything like that, it just says that there&rsquo;s a lot of interest from other teams and that teams see what I&rsquo;m doing,&rdquo; Young said. &ldquo;They see and understand who I am as a player, they see that I&rsquo;m always locked in, they see that I&rsquo;m always going to be a help and never be a nuisance, and they see that I&rsquo;m always going to be a key asset to a team. I might not always be the main piece, but I&rsquo;m one of the most important and valuable pieces that you can have.
&ldquo;The one thing I&rsquo;ve prided myself on is just continuing to be professional and making sure that if I&rsquo;m part of a team, I&rsquo;m part of that team. I&rsquo;m not one foot in and one foot out. If I&rsquo;m putting on that jersey and they&rsquo;re paying me and they&rsquo;re putting their trust in me, I&rsquo;m going to make sure that I&rsquo;m there for them. I think that&rsquo;s one of the biggest things.&rdquo;
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Young is playing just 15.6 minutes per game for San Antonio, while averaging 7.3 points, 3.6 rebounds, 2.9 assists and a steal (and shooting 59.6% from the field). He said he understands that the Spurs are in the midst of a rebuild, so they need to give their younger players significant playing time.
It remains to be seen if Young will be moved once again prior to the NBA&rsquo;s trade deadline on Feb. 10, 2022. If he is, hopefully the deal doesn&rsquo;t catch him off guard this time around.

Thad Young tells Alex Kennedy that last summer's trade was a shock since the Bulls had just told his camp that he'd be back in Chicago.

Thaddeus Young was blindsided by Spurs trade, Bulls said he'd be back

The Milwaukee Bucks earned the right to be called NBA champions.&nbsp;
Giannis Antetokounmpo could&rsquo;ve spurned the organization that drafted him for greener pastures as the national pundits were begging him to do last fall, but he instead stuck with it and signed a super-max contract before the 2020-21 season began. For the first time in what seems like a while, loyalty has been rewarded with gold.&nbsp;
"I just I couldn't leave. There was a job that had to be finished," Giannis said after the Bucks' title win. "The Bubble did not pay us justice. Give credit to the Miami Heat. They played great. But they did not pay us justice. Everybody was feeling homesick. We are a family-oriented team and we wanted to see our families.
"But coming back, I was like, 'This is my city. They trust me. They believe in me. They believe in us.' Even when we lost, the city was still -- went outside and [supported us]. You know, obviously, I wanted to get the job done. But that's my stubborn side. It's easy to go somewhere and go win a championship with somebody else. It's easy. I could go to a super-team and just do my part and win a championship.
"But this is the hard way to do it and this is the way to do it and we did it. F***ing did it. We did it, man."
Milwaukee&rsquo;s franchise face chose to work harder, honing in on his craft as he let Bucks general manager Jon Horst make the appropriate tweaks to the roster in the offseason prior to Giannis signing the dotted line. Horst boldly acquired Jrue Holiday as a part of a massive four-team deal that sent Eric Bledsoe and a boatload of future draft capital to the New Orleans Pelicans and George Hill to the Oklahoma City Thunder, as well as Milwaukee&rsquo;s No. 24 overall pick in 2020 (which became R.J. Hampton).&nbsp;
Horst nearly added Bogdan Bogdanovic to the mix as well via trade, except the NBA nixed that effort when it was learned that talks were being had prior to the moratorium period. Still, the Bucks were able to bring in Bobby Portis and Bryn Forbes (and ironically, Finals opponent Torrey Craig) to bolster the bench bunch, and PJ Tucker and Jeff Teague joined the fray late in the season for a playoff run.&nbsp;
The point is: Milwaukee wasn&rsquo;t resting on its laurels with Giannis&rsquo; commitment hanging in the balance, and the front office&rsquo;s sense of urgency was felt in a major way. Looking back, both parties have to feel great about how the offseason was handled, especially with so many rumors linking Giannis to different teams and head coach Mike Budenholzer&rsquo;s job potentially being in jeopardy. Vibes surrounding the team, at least on the outside looking in, were pretty negative.
"What Jon Horst has done to put together a team, he's the greatest GM in the league," Budenholzer said. "I'm a little bit biased, but to be his partner, for him to go out and get Jrue Holiday, to have the guts to make that [trade], to recruit guys, to get P.J. Tucker midseason, Bobby Portis in the offseason. Stick with Khris [Middleton], Giannis and Brook [Lopez] and Pat [Connaughton] and these guys, and you go up and down the roster. Jon has done an amazing job.
"Ownership, Marc Lasry, Wes Edens, Jamie Dinan, Mike Fascitelli, they give us what we need. We keep pushing. We try to get better as coaches, players, and here we are [celebrating]. It's special."
Fast forward to now, with a Larry O&rsquo;Brien trophy to show for withstanding those bumps in the road, and those concerns have vanished. This is a group that weathered a number of storms in multiple ways, so it shouldn&rsquo;t come as a surprise that the Bucks&rsquo; identity in this 2020-21 postseason was built on resilience and mental toughness.&nbsp;
"As a whole, we used a lot of our failures as experience. We've been in a lot of situations our past years here," Middleton said. "At the beginning of the year, we had a new team, a lot of new rotation guys, different guys step into the starting lineup and we knew it was going to be challenging, but we all said it was going to be worth it to learn and find out how to adjust and figure out what we needed to do in-game to win. We knew it wasn't always going to be pretty, we knew we were going to have to win different styles of ballgames, but that's the type of team you want to be, to throw different guys out there, different lineups out there, because you can't win the same way at this level."
"It took time. You could see it," Tucker added. "Everything kind of got -- Coach has to play it the right way. It's got to flow. And mind you, we didn't have Donte [DiVincenzo]. We're missing a big piece. Donte would have been huge for this series, especially a big series. But all that mattered. Even throughout the process, me, I got hurt early and being out. It was a lot of obstacles throughout the season. So it wasn't just like, Oh, we can win it. It's like, Oh, we got a really good team, we got a strong team, we got a chance. But I think honestly, after the Brooklyn series, it was like, All right, we here now. Ain't no need -- we here, we got to go for it. This is it, fellas; this is it. So everybody bought in.&nbsp;
Aside from a payback thrashing of the Miami Heat in the first round, Milwaukee&rsquo;s back was against the wall in every series the team played in. There were 0-2 deficits and inconsistencies in performances. Donte DiVincenzo was lost three games into the playoffs. There was even a nearly-devastating knee injury to Giannis in the Eastern Conference Finals when the outcome was far from determined. Though there were so many instances when the Bucks could&rsquo;ve thrown in the towel, they refused to.
"We were down 0-2 against Brooklyn and came together as a group within our film session and talked it out. We all wanted to be on the same page and realized how we needed to play and what we needed to do. It was the same thing in this series," Middleton said. "We never got down, we're still playing, we still have a chance. That's the way we felt, no matter if we were down in the game or the series, it didn't matter. We knew each time we took the court we had a chance to win. And we have everybody in the locker room and organization that believes and that is never going to give up until it's completely over. That's who you want to play with, guys who are going to fight to the end."
"It's incredible. It's a testament to the team," Lopez said. "I'm a team guy. I've always been a team guy. And so you know, like I was saying earlier, it's something that all our guys deserve, and to see them persevere, we went 0-2 against Brooklyn, 0-1 against Atlanta and 0-2 to open the series against the Suns, and to see our guys fight back and make adjustments and keep that belief in one another, that's special and not something you get with everything team. I've seen that through my 13 years in the league that this team is absolutely one of a kind and I am just fortunate and pleased to be part of that."
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Giannis persevered through his knee setback, ensuring he did everything in his power to ready himself for the Finals after the Game 4 injury occured in Atlanta nine days beforehand. The Finals opener definitely showed that the Greek Freak wasn&rsquo;t 100%; it didn&rsquo;t stop him from progressing with each night, and Giannis imposed his will in every game from there on out.&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s almost like the injury slowed things down for him mentally, and he was able to process the game more naturally as a result. He was at his best when off the ball and used as a screener in the halfcourt, and when coming full speed like a locomotive in transition. Giannis understood when the time was right to use his size on the block and didn&rsquo;t force the issue quite as much as he did in previous series. His decisiveness was arguably the best we&rsquo;ve seen since he&rsquo;s been in the league, quickly swinging the ball without bogged-down possessions and spraying it around to his teammates on drives to the rim. And if he ever received the ball in the vicinity of the rim, it was curtains for anybody that tried to stop him.
That&rsquo;s just the offense. As a help defender, Giannis wasn&rsquo;t outdone by a single soul. He didn&rsquo;t shy away from crunch time, making his biggest impacts when the lights shone the brightest. Instinctually, he was superb, racking up deflections and starting Milwaukee&rsquo;s fastbreaks on the regular. He bodied up Deandre Ayton inside, and challenged Devin Booker and Chris Paul on switches when needed. That goes without mentioning how he erased a plethora of shots at their apex and hustled back on transition defense with every possession the Suns had numbers. All-around, he was just magnificent, and it was a 120% effort from somebody who wasn't 100%.
"I think he embraces us being great defensively. Giannis does, the whole team," Budenholzer said. "When we get stops and get out and run and get Giannis in space, get our team in space, I think he's special. He was able to put his stamp on the game in the third quarter and flip the score. And then some big plays in the fourth quarter -- big plays, big blocks. It's hard to keep finding words for Giannis."
Giannis' journey throughout the playoffs culminated with an iconic showing in the Game 6 series finale, a 50-point, 14-rebound, 5-block signature performance to send Milwaukee to the promised land and earn himself the Finals MVP award. The Greek Freak joined Shaquille O'Neal as the only other player in NBA history to record three 40-point, 10-rebound games in a Finals series.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Giannis EXPLODES for 33 of his 50 points in the 2nd half of Game 6, fueling the <a href="https://twitter.com/Bucks?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Bucks</a> Taco Bell Comeback en route to their first NBA Championship in 50 years! 50 PTS 14 REB 5 BLK 17-19 FTM <a href="https://t.co/qDbk0nHWeb">pic.twitter.com/qDbk0nHWeb</a>
&mdash; NBA (@NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBA/status/1417721768287080448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 21, 2021</a></blockquote>

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"I don't know how many words you need to use beyond 50 points in a close out game in an NBA Finals. Pretty much sums it all up," Lopez said. "It's so indicative of who Giannis is as a player, as a person. He had to -- he has that mindset always to just take care of business and he's been our leader throughout my time. To have him as a focal point of everything we do and the way he goes about it, it's just contagious with the whole team, and he's so impressive night-in and night-out.&nbsp;
"This is stuff you don't want to take for granted. But that's Giannis. That's what he does, and it's just, I mean, completely aTwe-inspiring. His performance tonight, this whole series, this whole year, there's no words for that. You've just got to look at the numbers."
Khris Middleton had some mind-bogglingly off nights, as did Holiday, but there was never a question of what kind of effort they&rsquo;d bring on the defensive side of the ball. And the thing is, they&rsquo;d always bounce back in some way, shape or fashion. (Care to discuss the shots down the stretch in Game 7 in Brooklyn? Or the last two games of the East Finals without Giannis?)
For Middleton, he showed up when it counted most with the team in desperation mode. He was an excellent facilitator and pull-up magician, unafraid to take shots with a high degree of difficulty. There was an inherent clutch factor about his handy work as well, always seeming to come up huge in money time. As a lead handler and savant in the pick-and-roll, when Middleton turned the corner, it forced the opposition to make a swift choice to contest or stick with the roller -- oftentimes a lose-lose situation.
Yes, Holiday had head-scratching issues with finishing his layups, but he had plenty of gems as a pull-up three-baller and on-point dime man. There were just night-and-day occasions; you could tell the games he was &ldquo;on&rdquo; and the ones where he was way off. In spite of that, however, Holiday entirely flipped the momentum of the Finals with his defense on Chris Paul.&nbsp;
CP3 was a man possessed in Game 1 and Game 2, having his way with Milwaukee&rsquo;s bigs out on the perimeter and then adjusting to the extra attention that followed by involving his teammates. It didn&rsquo;t last long. Holiday started to pick up Paul from 94 feet starting in Game 2, and from that point on, everything changed. The former started to notice fatigue settling in, as he himself was exhausted. Holiday had Paul out of sorts, with the 36-year-old struggling with shot selection and offensive rhythm. Had it not been for that increased intensity, who knows where these Finals could&rsquo;ve gone?
"I think when it comes down to it, man, I guess I don't really even care what people think about my game. I think it's about the team. We have a great team," Holiday said. "How they put it together, we have two superstars who carried us this whole playoff series and the whole playoffs. We got great role players. We got the energy. We got Bobby. We got shooters. It's a great puzzle. I think every piece in that puzzle has contributed so much -- from Jordan Nwora to Giannis Antetokounmpo. So, it's been a heck of a journey."
We&rsquo;d be remiss to not mention the top to bottom contributions this team had on this run. Tucker injected the Bucks with grit and hustle, never backing down from a challenge no matter who it was. Pat Connaughton sunk a ton of critical threes, chased down 50-50 balls and rebounded his heart out. Bobby Portis fed off the Fiserv Forum&rsquo;s energy and channeled it into incredible, momentum-shifting production on the offensive glass and from long distance (and stepped up again in a huge way in Game 6). Brook Lopez had his role change with different matchups, but utilized his perimeter shooting and rim protection when the squad needed it; let&rsquo;s not forget the turn-the-clock-back post performance he had in Game 5 of the East Finals, either. Bryn Forbes played the role of a human torch in the Miami series. Just about everybody who was in the rotation, at some point of the postseason, contributed to this Finals victory.
"That's just the character of the team that we have. You know, it's the group of guys that make up the Milwaukee Bucks and not just the players but the coaches, the management, the ownership," Connaughton said. "At the end of the day, the guys that have been here for three years, we've had a taste of it, of what it looks like in the regular season, Brook and I's first year where he got a look at what it was like to get to the Eastern Conference Finals and take a lead, but some of the adversity from a four or five [game] losing [streak] we had in regular season to losing some games, the character of the team never wavered. We came together stronger and had each other's backs more and that's what makes up a championship-caliber roster and team and that's what wins you a championship.
"That is what made us better is just the character of the guys, the characters of guys like Brook, the characters of guys like P.J. and Bobby and guys that they don't really care what it looks like on the stats sheet. They just want to make winning plays. They want to be out playing and putting ourselves in the best position to win."
With a microscope on him, the oft-criticized Budenholzer showed a willingness to adapt and experiment throughout the season at the expense of a record. In the playoffs, he rode his best players and played them heavy minutes. Albeit sometimes at the last minute or in do-or-die time, there were adjustments made -- rotationally and schematically. For that, despite outcries to the contrary, Coach Bud deserves his own share of credit as well, in addition to his entire staff that's been by his side from day one.
There were countless amount of questions asked of the Bucks during the Finals about 2019, the furthest the franchise got in the postseason when it reached the Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Raptors. They were the ones who were up 2-0 and in the driver&rsquo;s seat before losing the eventual title-winners.&nbsp;
Giannis learned from that experience. Middleton learned from that experience. Budenholzer did, too, which is why those were the three with the strongest embrace when the buzzer sounded on Tuesday night.
"It's special for me to get the opportunity to coach those two guys," Budenholzer said. "The leadership they have shown since day one, from having breakfast together, you can see their desire to be great and their desire to push this organization to where we are tonight. To embrace those guys, and I love them. I love the players, I love the roster, I love the team. I'm incredibly fortunate to be where I am and just to be a small part of what's happening."
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
"There is nobody in this world I'd rather do this journey with than that guy." - Giannis on Khris Middleton<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBAFinals?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBAFinals</a> presented by YouTube TV <a href="https://t.co/5cMBAZlX4p">pic.twitter.com/5cMBAZlX4p</a>
&mdash; NBA (@NBA) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBA/status/1417730585678733317?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 21, 2021</a></blockquote>

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"I love Khris to death, man. I love him to death, man. It's crazy," Giannis said. "He doesn't realize how much he pushes me to be great. He pushes me to be great. I had people push me to be great and be persistent and just be dominant and just keep coming and keep working hard. He's one of those guys. You know, there was nobody in this world that I would rather do this journey with than that guy. He's been here since the beginning. He's been since the day since we were fighting for some minutes. He was yelling to me when I was 18. He was yelling to me to pass the ball and everything. We were fighting on the court when we were kids, and now we're on this stage doing it together.
"We have to enjoy this moment. We have to share this moment. Maybe we might not have another moment like this. Who knows, we can't predict the future. But we have to live in the moment, enjoy this moment. I hope Khris enjoys it with his family. And he played amazing throughout the whole playoffs, man. He led us when I was down. He gave me a chance to come back. But once we're done enjoying this, we got to get back to work. We got to do it again. That's how me and Khris operate."
"We formed a bond, a brotherhood since that first year we've been together. We struggled. We struggled together. But we both saw in each other there was no give-up," Middleton said. "It was all motivation to be better and not be embarrassed. Year after year we challenged each other to be better. Challenged each other to be better leaders, better teammates... It was all worth it for sure. Us challenging each other to be better, me being stubborn in some ways. But the thing I like, he challenged us all. I think we challenged him in certain ways to help us, but for the main part, he challenged us every day to be leaders, to fight through adversity, to change our games a little bit. It's all worth it."
In 2021, the Bucks reversed their role, and because of that, they are the last team standing.
NBA champions.

Spencer Davies looks back on the Bucks' NBA title run and the hardships the team went through from top to bottom to get there.

Battle-tested Bucks find redemption from past with NBA championship gold

Everyone who works here at BasketballNews.com has a crystal ball. And an opinion. On Saturday, after asking several of our writers to make an NBA Finals MVP pick and explain their choice, this columnist drove across the New York/New Jersey border and placed $10 wagers for each staff member.
Sadly, Patrick Beverley of the Clippers was not on the board at any of the big U.S. sportsbooks, nor was Kawhi Leonard. Fortunately, neither player was picked by our writers.
I took Jrue Holiday of the Milwaukee Bucks, because I have a thing for glue guys who play great defense under Adam Silver&rsquo;s new and, ahem, improved rules. If the Bucks get past the Hawks, somebody is going to have to defend Chris Paul or Devin Booker or whoever has the hot hand at guard for the Clippers.
And since defense wins championships, and since Holiday was 38-1, and since short odds do not exactly do it for me, I took the guy who most certainly won&rsquo;t have the jitters from the free throw line if the NBA Finals comes down to a Game 7.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is my colleague Nekias Duncan, who also loves great defenders and went with Giannis Antetokounmpo.
"I think I'm going to roll with Giannis here,&rdquo; Duncan said. &ldquo;There isn't a great option to throw at him from either West team, though Deandre Ayton (if the Suns make it) might have the best shot. His offensive prowess, combined with his defensive versatility, should make it easy for him to make a tangible impact on both ends. Great &lsquo;overcame-adversity&rsquo; narrative too.&rdquo;
Not a bad pick, as Giannis is the national favorite at odds of +115. Problem is, if Nekias wins his $10 wager, his winnings are $1.50. Years ago, 150 cents was worth a whole heck of a lot at the candy story. Today, it&rsquo;ll get you a Mars bar.
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The boss, Alex Kennedy, was initially tempted to go with Giannis, too. But Alex does not run with the pack, which is why he had more Twitter followers before he turned 21 than many celebrities have after a half-dozen major motion pictures. He has more contacts in his phone than an optician has in his shop.
&ldquo;Give me Devin Booker,&rdquo; Kennedy said. &ldquo;I think the Phoenix Suns have enough to win it all, and Booker has been incredible this postseason. I can see him shining on the Finals stage, scoring a ton of points and creating for others -- all while talking trash and winning over more fans with his brash personality. Prior to this season, Booker was often characterized as someone whose empty stats didn't translate into wins, and now it feels like he's taking out five years of pent-up frustration on his playoff opponents.&rdquo;
Booker is the second choice on the board at FanDuel, so Kennedy&rsquo;s $10 could turn into $32, enough to purchase a half-dozen frappuccinos at Alex&rsquo;s local Starbucks outside of Orlando.
Matt Babcock, our draft guru who is working the NBA draft combine in Chicago, went with Giannis, too -- apparently because Matt believes that airballs from the free throw line are merely a hazard of the business. (Just messin&rsquo; with you, Matt.)
&ldquo;At this point, I believe the Milwaukee Bucks are the front-runner to win the championship, making it a natural decision to pick their top player,&rdquo; Babcock explained. &ldquo;Also, with how much the Bucks depend on Giannis to carry such a heavy load for them, that&rsquo;s another reason as to why he is the natural choice.&rdquo;
In Chicago, Matt&rsquo;s $1.50 won&rsquo;t go as far as Nekias&rsquo; $1.50, but at least that buck-and-a-half will get Matt four slices of pepperoni at the original Uno&rsquo;s (but not an entire deep-dish pizza).
Columnist extraordinaire Moke Hamilton is a practicing attorney when he is not talking and writing hoops, so his decisions go through an IQ filter that the rest of us can only wish we had. He is also a non-insufferable New Yorker, which makes him an outlier &ndash; even if his pick is not.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take a flier on Chris Paul,&rdquo; Hamilton said. &ldquo;If he is able to help the Suns get past his old team, I think he&rsquo;ll take advantage of the opportunity to win his first Finals. I also liked him for regular-season MVP, but obviously fell short there. Maybe second time is the charm.&rdquo;
Paul&rsquo;s odds are +440, and if Hamilton wins, he can take that $44 to a Brooklyn Nets game next season and get a cheeseburger and a water and still have $15.32 cents left over. (Yes, a cheeseburger and water at Barclays Center costs $28.68. And no fries are included). But Hamilton will have to put that money into plastic form, because concession stands at the Nets home area do not take cash.
Last but not least is our own Hartenstein, Spencer Davies, who is counting down the decades until the Cavs are an NBA Finals team again.
Davies went with Paul George.
&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s be bold, shall we? If the Clippers continue to display the resilience they have through being battle-tested, what about Paul George? This is a man in the midst of an underappreciated playoff run,&rdquo; Davies said. &ldquo;Everybody&rsquo;s looking at the shooting numbers from deep, but George&rsquo;s mentality to put his head down and get to the rim has really opened up things for Reggie Jackson, Luke Kennard and company to fire away. That is how you impact the game, by drawing multiple defenders and making plays for your teammates, especially when your team is missing a former Finals MVP in Kawhi Leonard.
&ldquo;Defensively, he&rsquo;s been effective with deflections and multiple efforts as well. George has continued to answer the bell (aside from the two missed free throws in Game 2) when called upon, and it would be incredible to see him win the 2021 Finals MVP in a bounce-back postseason from the Bubble less than a year ago.&rdquo;
Davies&rsquo; wager is priced at +700, and if Davies wins, he can take that $70 and drive down to Dan Gilbert&rsquo;s casino across from the Cavs&rsquo; arena and play blackjack with house money. With a good run, Davies can have enough dinero to take Hartenstein out for dinner.
But it would have to be a heck of a blackjack run. Hartenstein, rumor has it, can put down a lot of food.
For help placing NBA bets, check out <a href="https://betql.co/nba" target="_blank" rel="noopener">BetQL</a>. And as a BasketballNews.com reader, you can get access to BetQL for 30% off when you use the code BBN30.

The BasketballNews.com writers make their early Finals MVP picks, and we put our money where our mouth is.

BasketballNews.com writers make early NBA Finals MVP bets

NBA, you&rsquo;re on the clock. How many deals can you make in 48 hours or less?
The March 25 trade deadline is two days away, and the rumors in these front-office streets are zooming in overdrive. The Boston Celtics reportedly want to make moves to bolster their lineup. Orlando Magic forward Aaron Gordon requested a trade on Monday morning, making him a target for a handful of teams. The Toronto Raptors, Miami Heat, Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Atlanta Hawks, and New Orleans Pelicans are among the teams that are expected to be active and aggressive.
As for the players, let's get into who could be moved on Thursday before 3 p.m. ET.
Lonzo Ball, New Orleans Pelicans
Playmakers who can provide both defense and auxiliary scoring are a premium, which is why Ball is among those high in demand as the deadline looms. The Pelicans guard is averaging 14.2 points and 5.6 assists per game, and is shooting a solid 38.5% from three -- just enough to keep opposing defenses honest.
Ball&rsquo;s game would fit with teams that value perimeter defense and playmaking in systems that are predicated on ball movement. However, there&rsquo;s a caveat here: Ball will be a restricted free agent after the season, and he is reportedly looking for a $20-million-per-year payday.&nbsp; Considering his improvements, perhaps teams could believe that he&rsquo;s worth it. Whoever trades for him would have the chance to match any offer sheet that he receives next offseason. If Ball is traded, it will be interesting to see if he has a long-term future with that organization or if he was just acquired as a rental.
INTERESTED TEAMS: Bulls, Clippers, Hawks, Knicks
Marcus Smart, Boston Celtics 
For about five years now, Danny Ainge has been the king of "almost" making trades. With the Celtics floundering this season, is this the moment that he finally pulls the trigger and completes a deal?
It's possible, according to recent reports. The Hawks have expressed interest in Marcus Smart, whom Atlanta believes would be a great defensive addition to coincide with the offense of Trae Young. Due to their cap situation, the Hawks would have to part with some players (likely Bogdan Bogdanovic) -- but for what Smart provides, the haul would be worth it.
Smart's offensive numbers don't jump off the page, but at 12.6 points per game on 40.1% shooting, they are at least productive. The draw here is defense. Smart is an excellent defender who is also capable as a playmaker. It remains to be seen if Boston is willing to part ways with him.
INTERESTED TEAMS: Hawks, Magic
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Aaron Gordon, Orlando Magic 
Aaron Gordon has been one of the most popular names mentioned in the rumor mill in recent years. Since he made a formal request for a trade, Gordon&rsquo;s demand has skyrocketed, and rightfully so.
Gordon is averaging 14.7 points and 6.8 rebounds, and is shooting a career-best 40.2% from deep. <a href="https://www.actionnetwork.com/nba/aaron-gordon-trade-deadline-boston-celtics-matt-moore?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=mattmoore" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matt Moore of the Action Network</a> reported that the Boston Celtics are the frontrunners in the Gordon sweepstakes. The two sides have discussed the framework of a deal where the Magic would send Gordon and Evan Fournier to Boston in exchange for a player, two first-round picks and the Celtics' $28.5 million Traded Player Exception. Moore reports that Orlando is asking for Marcus Smart to be the player included, but it's unclear if the Celtics are open to including him.
The Houston Rockets also reportedly offered two first-round picks for Gordon, but those talks concluded once it became clear that Gordon wasn't willing to sign an extension with Houston.
Gordon wants to be in a winning situation that will help him fulfill his potential; remember, he's still just 25 years old. The contending teams who are interested in the explosive, athletic forward should be able to help him grow.&nbsp;
INTERESTED TEAMS: Celtics, Nuggets, Blazers, Mavericks, Rockets 
Bogdan Bogdanovic, Atlanta Hawks 
Bogdanovic might be a casualty of whatever the Hawks decide to do leading up to the deadline. However, that doesn&rsquo;t mean that the Serbian guard doesn&rsquo;t have significant value. After coming back from an avulsion fracture in his right knee that kept him sidelined for two months, the 6-foot-6 guard is averaging 13 points on 51.2% shooting from the field and 43.5% from three.
The Golden State Warriors are reportedly interested in Bogdanovic, and the pairing makes sense. The Warriors need additional scoring and floor spacing for not only this season, but also next year when Klay Thompson returns. Any potential deal for Bogdanovic will center around Kelly Oubre, plus an additional player for salary-matching purposes (and probably a pick too). The question that the Warriors might want to ask themselves, however, is if this is their best option on the table.
The Boston Celtics have also shown interest in Bogdanovic (as well as Atlanta's John Collins). According to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nba/2021/3/21/22343488/nba-trade-deadline-rumors-kyle-lowry-lonzo-ball-john-collins" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kevin O'Connor of The Ringer</a>, Boston has apparently been a fan of Bogdanovic for a while, as they tried to acquire him back when he was on the Sacramento Kings too.
Bogdanovic was highly coveted as a free agent last offseason, so don't be suprised if other teams call Atlanta about the 28-year-old between now and Thursday afternoon.
INTERESTED TEAMS: Warriors, Celtics
Kyle Lowry, Toronto Raptors 
Since Lowry will be an unrestricted free agent after the season, the Toronto Raptors have a reason to trade him now rather than letting him walk for nothing. Finding a match for Lowry&rsquo;s $30.5 million salary will be tricky, but that won&rsquo;t deter contenders from trying to acquire the 34-year-old.
According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the Philadelphia 76ers have shown interest in Lowry. This makes sense considering Philadelphia&rsquo;s need for another playmaker to pair with Ben Simmons.
The Miami Heat have also pursued Lowry. The Heat have kept tabs on a potential trade, but the question remains what they'd be willing to give up in a deal.&nbsp;
INTERESTED TEAMS: 76ers, Heat

The NBA Trade Deadline is Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. Jannelle Moore takes a look at the top candidates to be dealt between now and then.

NBA trade deadline: 5 players who may get dealt before Thursday

With less than a week until March 25, the NBA Trade Deadline is fast approaching. There have already been a number of moves made to this point, with the most-recent deals sending P.J. Tucker to the Milwaukee Bucks and Hamidou Diallo to the Detroit Pistons.&nbsp;
There was no move &ldquo;noisier&rdquo; than the colossal four-team trade in February, when James Harden got his wish to split from the Houston Rockets and ended up with the Brooklyn Nets. That same blockbuster saw Caris LeVert go to the Indiana Pacers, Victor Oladipo land with the Rockets and Jarrett Allen wind up with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
It&rsquo;s highly unlikely that any move prior to the deadline will top that blockbuster deal, considering the magnitude of that particular trade. There&rsquo;s just not much star power on the market, and the biggest names that are available come with a steep price tag attached.&nbsp;
On top of that, this is a unique time in the basketball world. For the first time maybe ever, college conference tournaments and March Madness have coincided with NBA trade season.&nbsp;
&ldquo;We're all starting to miss calls and stuff,&rdquo; an Eastern Conference executive told BasketballNews.com. &ldquo;Obviously we've been making calls all year, but stuff's starting to pick up&hellip; We're all in flux of where we are across the country, and there's just a lot of phone tag going on just because you're trying to scramble to see some of these draft prospects for the last time.
&ldquo;It's just a little different than in the past where you could sort of sit at your desk and field phone calls and do it. So we're sort of a little all over the place. You're trying to do a whole bunch of stuff at once, but that's this year. That's what this year is."
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Currently sliding down the standings on a 18-game losing streak, the Rockets are the most active organization when it comes to trade talks, per sources. Tucker was the hot name not too long ago, and he&rsquo;s been moved. Now, Oladipo is another piece that could be traded.&nbsp;
Similarly on a lengthy eight-game skid and sinking in the East standings, the Orlando Magic are somewhat stuck in the middle as far as their team makeup goes. Aaron Gordon, who was recently linked to the Denver Nuggets by <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/19/aaron-gordon-nuggets-trade-possibilities/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mike Singer of the Denver Post</a>, and Evan Fournier have been mentioned as possible targets for numerous interested teams. Terrence Ross might be another player who draws interest.&nbsp;
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/sdw_lg.jpg" alt="" />
The Sacramento Kings are in a comparable predicament in a highly competitive Western Conference. Executives around the league are monitoring Orlando and Sacramento to see whether they decide to shake things up.
While quite a few contenders and playoff teams are looking to bolster their roster, the players they are targeting likely won&rsquo;t be stars.
"I just don't know who's available that way, right? I'm pretty certain someone like a Bradley Beal is unavailable right now,&rdquo; the East executive said. &rdquo;I don't see anything huge happening. I think a team might add around the edges. I think that might be what you see, to get ready for the playoffs. But I don't see anything monstrous happening, where you get a big name change teams. There were some big trades that have already happened.
"I think there will be some stuff around the edges, like what Sam [Presti] did to get another second-round pick for Hamidou [Diallo]. That&rsquo;s the kind of stuff I could see happening.&rdquo;
One Western Conference executive did mention one notable player to keep an eye on.
&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen Lauri Markkanen&rsquo;s name mentioned a lot, but he could be available,&rdquo; suggested the West executive.
<a href="https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1372925200757526531" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marc Stein of the New York Times reported</a> Friday morning that the Los Angeles Clippers are intrigued by Lonzo Ball of the New Orleans Pelicans. Speaking of New Orleans, one Eastern Conference general manager told BasketballNews.com, "New Orleans is a team to keep an eye on too," mentioning that J.J. Redick seems like a lock to change teams (either via a trade or buyout).
We do know that the San Antonio Spurs are attempting to find a new home for veteran big man LaMarcus Aldridge. Since mid-February, the <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-rumors-andre-drummond-trade-possibilities-destinations-no-contract-buyout-toronto-raptors-dallas-mavericks-brooklyn-nets-sacramento-kings-new-york-knicks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cleveland Cavaliers have been trying to do the same for Andre Drummond</a>, as the two parties mutually agreed upon.
It&rsquo;s going to take some real creativity for Cavs general manager Koby Altman to get a deal done with the All-Star big man&rsquo;s $28.7 million salary.&nbsp;
According to a source close to the team, Cleveland believes it will take a multi-team trade to make a Drummond move work. As days shrink between now and the deadline, the source feels there will be enough urgency to make it happen.&nbsp;
&ldquo;The hard part with [Drummond] is not so much the interest, it's the number,&rdquo; the source close to the Cavaliers told BasketballNews.com &ldquo;The teams that are interested in him are competitive teams that are in the playoffs, but they're not going to trade the contracts, they're not going to trade the good players to get there.&rdquo;
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Drummond&rsquo;s been linked to several contenders in the event that the Cavs buy out his contract. The West executive believes that the New York Knicks could be a &ldquo;sneaky&rdquo; option if he is bought out, and that the Knicks could try to secure Drummond in the long-term.
&ldquo;Would they throw him a four-year, $60 million offer and try to lock him up ahead of free agency?&rdquo; the West executive pondered.
Remember, there is an incentive for Drummond to be traded because he would keep his Bird rights and have a chance to sign an extension with his new team. A buyout for him means money left on the table and losing those Bird rights, although the West executive downplays that particular notion.
&ldquo;His Bird rights are overrated,&rdquo; the West executive said. &ldquo;So many teams have enough space and I don&rsquo;t know that he ends up being that expensive.&rdquo;
The Cavs source indicates that &ldquo;option one is to try to find a trade partner," and that both the team and Drummond are on the same page in that regard.&nbsp;
Per the same source, the Cavs have received calls on other players as well, including Swiss Army knife forward Larry Nance Jr.&nbsp;
"It's amazing how many people [have reached out]... he fits everybody, so it makes a lot of sense,&rdquo; the source said, adding that Altman&rsquo;s even joked that he&rsquo;d have to go with Nance if he traded him and that he&rsquo;d &ldquo;get run out of town.&rdquo;
The Cavs already made their major move by acquiring Allen in that aforementioned blockbuster deal, so there won't be any "groundbreaking" change, per the team source. That said, Cleveland will always welcome the opportunity to work around the margins and "keep hitting singles and "take swings at young guys" if the chances present themselves.
March 25 is right around the corner, and the stove is about to heat up.
BasketballNews.com's Alex Kennedy also contributed to this report.

What are executives saying ahead of the NBA Trade Deadline? Spencer Davies and Alex Kennedy spoke to several decision-makers.

NBA trade deadline notebook: Executives share rumblings ahead of March 25

Everyone who loves the NBA looks forward to filling out an All-Star ballot, and this particular columnist waited until the day after Groundhog Day because the same old, same old does not cut it this season.
Yes, there are names on my ballot that are there year after year. That list begins with LeBron James, who is finally back in Los Angeles following a two-week road trip in which he drew inspiration from hecklers at two stops -- in Cleveland from an overzealous Cavs&rsquo; front-office employee, and in Atlanta from a woman whom he believes may have had more than a drop too much of alcohol.
This is a season unlike any other with all of the COVID-related restrictions and postponements, but the James Harden trade made January quite worthwhile, and we should expect a J.J. Redick move any day now as the Pelicans clearly look to go in another direction. His playoff experience will be valued by someone, as 20 teams (counting play-in games) are headed to the postseason. So stay tuned on that one.&nbsp;
Back to the ballot.&nbsp;
We shall start with the Western Conference. As has been the case for the past several seasons, voters are required to select two backcourt players and three frontcourt players &ndash; a nod to the positionless nature of the NBA in an era where the three-pointer is more valuable than ever. Just ask the Utah Jazz, who have three-balled their way into first place in the West. They only made nine last night in a victory over Detroit, but the Pistons do not require anyone&rsquo;s A-game on most nights.
So here we go... 
WESTERN CONFERENCE STARTERS
Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers: "Dame Dolla" has let us all know that Hulu has live sports. So props to that smart TV service for latching on to the best player folks on the East Coast rarely get to see. We have been watching him bury 30-footers for so long now that he has surpassed Steph Curry as&nbsp; Player Most Likely To Hit From 38 Feet. Lillard is third in the NBA in scoring at 29.1 points per game, and his 11-9 team is the second-highest scoring team in the West despite the losses of CJ McCollum (fractured foot) and Jusuf Nurkic (fractured wrist). Lillard ranks eighth in the league in assists (7.2) and seventh in minutes per game (36). He also is making 94.7 percent of his free throws, only behind Jordan Clarkson, Chris Paul and Irving.
Donovan Mitchell, Utah Jazz: The temptation here is to give this spot to Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors, who is fifth in the NBA in scoring. But Mitchell is the best player on the West&rsquo;s best team, leading Utah with 23.3 points per game on a three-point-centric team getting double-figure scoring from six players. We all saw when <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-shaq-donovan-mitchell-shaquille-oneal-neal-utah-jazz-inside-tnt-turner-joe-ingles-rudy-gobert-mike-conley" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shaquille O&rsquo;Neal interviewed Mitchell on TNT to produce one of the season&rsquo;s most uncomfortable moments</a>, and we should expect the Jazz to continue to feed off that disrespect. They own the longest winning streak in the NBA this season at 11 games, and their 285 threes in January marked the most in a single month in NBA history. Mitchell has reached 600 career three-pointers faster than any player in NBA history...including Steph.
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/usatsi_15516353-1_lg.jpg" alt="" width="860" height="AUTO" />
LeBron James, Los Angeles Lakers: He never ages, does he? Some of his stats are down just a little from last season (most noticeably his assists) but the guy is making threes at a career-best 40.9 percent clip, and nobody has advocated more vociferously for allowing fans back into the arenas, something we are seeing more and more teams do. The Lakers have played only eight home games as opposed to 14 road games, and 11 of their next 14 will be at Staples Center. Remember last February and March when LeBron was starting to make a run at Giannis Antetokounmpo for MVP consideration before the pandemic shut down the season? Well, he is currently the 7-2 favorite for the award, just ahead of Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Joel Embiid and Kevin Durant. (Why the books have Lillard at 25-1 is perplexing.) Just as he never ages, it never gets old watching LeBron.
Kawhi Leonard, Los Angeles Clippers: He will never win any Most Quotatious awards, but his game does his talking, and he is at 26.3 points per game while also flirting with a 50-40-90 season. The Clippers are just a half-game out of first place in the West, and Leonard has played in 18 of 22 games as Ty Lue seems to be weaning the team&rsquo;s two superstars away from the load management that robbed them of team chemistry a year ago; they have used just seven different starting lineups after using 33 a season ago, and of Leonard&rsquo;s four missed games, two were for COVID protocols and two were for a mouth laceration. The Clippers lead the NBA in three-point shooting, with Kawhi hitting them at a 39.8 percent clip, his best in five years. He also is third in the NBA in steals, and get this: Leonard is the winningest player in NBA regular-season history with a 407-135 (.751) record.&nbsp;
Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets: The Joker went for 22 in the first quarter against the Jazz on Sunday and finished with a career-high 47points, and he is fifth in the NBA in assists at 8.6 per game. To put that in perspective, just behind him in the league-leader rankings are Ben Simmons, LeBron, Lillard, Kyle Lowry and Malcolm Brogdon. Slimmed down significantly after recovering from COVID-19, Jokic is the NBA&rsquo;s only player in the Top 10 in points, rebounds and assists, plus he is 11th in field goal percentage and 13th in minutes played a night -- a career-high 35.8. He also is averaging career-highs in field-goal percentage, rebounds, assists and steals. Jokic is currently on a streak of 11 straight games with at least 20 points, too. 
West Reserves: Luka Doncic, Mavericks; Steph Curry, Warriors; Paul George, Clippers; Anthony Davis, Lakers; Rudy Gobert, Jazz; Deandre Ayton, Suns; Devin Booker, Suns.
West's Left Out: Christian Wood, Rockets; De&rsquo;Aaron Fox, Kings; Zion Williamson, Pelicans; Brandon Ingram, Pelicans; DeMar DeRozan, Spurs; Ja Morant, Grizzlies. 
EASTERN CONFERENCE STARTERS
Bradley Beal, Washington Wizards: Good to hear that he is <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-washington-wizards-bradley-beal-wont-be-on-trading-block-in-near-future-trade-rumors" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not requesting a trade</a>, which is what general manager Tommy Sheppard has been telling everyone who has asked for the past two seasons. The news that Beal is NOT seeking a trade is not really news. Beal is leading the NBA in scoring at 35.0 per game, which is 4.2 points higher than his closest pursuer. He failed to reach 30 points in just two of the Wizards&rsquo; 10 games in January, and last night he went for 37 in his second consecutive game. It's a no-brainer pick despite his team having the league&rsquo;s worst record. His scoring average is up 4.5 points from last season, when it was up 4.9 points from the previous season.&nbsp;
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Jaylen Brown, Boston Celtics:&nbsp; This pick was not as easy, because despite his prolonged absence for personal reasons, Kyrie Irving may be the most talented point guard in the entire Eastern Conference (the dude went for 39 against the Clippers last night on 15-for-29 shooting, a season-high, and is well on pace for a 50-40-90 season). But Brown has produced more consistently for the Celtics without any of the Kyrie-esque drama that we all endured a couple of weeks ago. His 18-point game against Golden State last night tied his season-low, but he is at 26.6 points per game for the Celtics while shooting nearly 53 percent. Brown has played in all 19 games and is averaging career-highs in points, assists, blocks, steals and all three shooting categories.
Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets: With all due respect to Irving and Harden, the Nets are KD&rsquo;s team. He is averaging 30.8 points per game and is flirting with a 50-40-90 season himself, and his perseverance in pushing Sean Marks to make the Harden trade cannot be understated. Yes, the Nets are all-in on offense and still have to find an interior rotation defender (Iman Shumpert is not going to be that guy). But they are now the NBA&rsquo;s only team with a Big Three, and Durant has been remarkably efficient from the field. His 11-for-13 night against the Clippers marked the 10th time in 17 games that he has been well-above 50 percent from the field.
Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers: We would prefer it if he dropped all references to The Process, which is sooooo Sam Hinkie. The Sixers are 14-2 with Embiid and 1-4 without him, and he has dropped 33 or more points in five of his last seven games. The seven-footer from Cameroon is a 41 percent 3-point shooter, more than three percentage points better than Nikola Jokic. Also, he has attempted the second-most total free throws (152) despite missing five games, and he is making them at a career-best 84 percent clip. If he can keep this up, he is going to be very much in the MVP conversation, which bettors in South Jersey and Pennsylvania have been wagering on quite heavily. He may drop 50 on Cody Zeller tonight.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks: The reigning two-time MVP is still a thrill to watch every time he takes the court, and tonight&rsquo;s game against the Indiana Pacers will be a test for the Bucks. It's too bad that we might not see Giannis test the <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-myles-turner-outblocking-entire-teams-goal-all-defensive-first-team-dpoy-honors-blocks-steals-defense-nate-bjorkgren-scheme-indiana-pacers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shot-blocking prowess of Myles Turner</a>, who is questionable with a shoulder injury. We all get to watch that game on ESPN, which is nice because the Pacers &ndash; like the Utah Jazz &ndash; are not on national TV enough given the relative strengths of their teams. The Greek Freak is in the MVP conversation, but not dominating it as he did the past two seasons, perhaps because his turnovers are at a career-worst pace and his free-throw percentage (59.3) is at a career-low. But Giannis has shot below 50 percent just once in his past 13 games, and he is tied for sixth in scoring and is 10th in rebounding.&nbsp;
East Reserves: Kyrie Irving, Nets; James Harden, Nets; Domantas Sabonis, Pacers; Trae Young, Hawks, Nikola Vucevic, Magic; Jayson Tatum, Celtics; Zach LaVine, Bulls.
East's Left Out: Julius Randle, Knicks; Collin Sexton, Cavs;&nbsp; Gordon Hayward, Hornets; Fred VanVleet, Raptors; Russell Westbrook, Wizards; Malcolm Brogdon, Pacers.

Chris Sheridan selects his 2021 NBA All-Star starters and reserves for the Eastern Conference and Western Conference.

Sheridan's 2021 NBA All-Star starters: Beal over Irving, Mitchell over Doncic

Ethan Fuller ranks NBA teams by their success plans, with loads of parity through three weeks of action.

NBA Sour Rankings: COVID Chaos

When not sidelined by a sprained ankle (as he was on Saturday night), James Harden has going through the motions in Houston, waiting for the inevitable. In the meantime, many of the teams that could use him the most are struggling. We are less than two weeks into the young NBA season, the new year is here, and somebody is eventually going to act on their resolution to get better.
The Golden State Warriors got Draymond Green back on Friday night, but he went for a goose egg in a 25-point loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. The Warriors are 2-3 in a tightly-packed Western Conference led by the Phoenix Suns, who are 13-1 in their last 14 games counting their undefeated run through the bubble.
The Brooklyn Nets got John Collins&rsquo;d on Friday and defeated by the Washington Wizards on Sunday, and they are now sitting at 3-4 in an Eastern Conference in which they are looking up at four 4-2 teams that are supposed to be worse than them: the Orlando Magic, Indiana Pacers, Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks. Meanwhile, the Philadelphia 76ers are tied for the league&rsquo;s best record at 5-1.
In case you missed it, this is what it looks like when a young up-and-coming team posterizes your star center:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
OH JOHN COLLINS GODAAAAAAAAAAM:scream::scream::scream: <a href="https://t.co/p0QIfQlOcV">pic.twitter.com/p0QIfQlOcV</a>
&mdash; The Daily Dunk (@dailydunkfr) <a href="https://twitter.com/dailydunkfr/status/1345196308781559811?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 2, 2021</a></blockquote>
The Hawks are a damn good team, scoring a league-leading 125.8 points per game entering Saturday night&rsquo;s letdown against the Cavaliers. They also rank first among all NBA teams in offensive efficiency (119.6 points per 100 possessions) and True Shooting Percentage (.619), and they&rsquo;re winning by an average of 10.4 points per game, which is the third-highest in the league behind only the mighty Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. They have yet to be at full strength with their entire complement of veteran additions Danilo Gallinari, Rajon Rondo and Bogdan Bogdanovic joining the young nucleus of Trae Young, Collins and Clint Capela. If they can run the table this week with a schedule that includes two games against the Charlotte Hornets and one each against the Cavs and New York Knicks, there will be a Trae-Young-for-MVP dialogue trending next weekend.
Yes, the season is young and good teams have to prove themselves over a longer stretch than the first week and a half of the campaign. But Atlanta&rsquo;s Travis Schlenk was as aggressive as any GM this side of Rob Pelinka in retooling his team this offseason, and the Hawks are no mirage. Time will tell if the other 4-2 teams can keep up what they have done to start the season, but all of those teams are pretty much what they were a year ago personnel-wise.
In the West, the underachievers along with Golden State include the 1-4 Denver Nuggets, who cannot win despite Nikola Jokic getting triple-doubles more often than anyone not named Russell Westbrook. After what we saw from them in last year&rsquo;s postseason, they should not be residing in last place in the 15-team West.
But at least the Nuggets are whole, which is something the Warriors are not and will not be until next season when Klay Thompson finally <a href="https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-rumors-klay-thompson-golden-state-warriors-achilles-rehab-recovery-process">returns from his Achilles injury</a>. So the question for Bob Myers and Steve Kerr is this: Is it worth pursuing Harden to see if he and Steph Curry can replicate the success that the franchise had for so many successive seasons before it all fell apart in the 2019 NBA Finals?
Last year&rsquo;s disaster of a season at least brought James Wiseman with the No. 2 pick, but spending this year as a middle-of-the-pack team was never supposed to be an option. Obtaining Harden would be tough; any deal would likely have to include Andrew Wiggins, Minnesota&rsquo;s top-three protected 2021 first-rounder (which is unprotected in 2022) and some combination of future picks. However, it&rsquo;s worth noting that they owe their 2021 first-rounder to the Oklahoma City Thunder (protected 1-20) and their 2024 first-rounder to the Memphis Grizzlies (protected 1-4). Wiseman is a terrific trade piece as well, but it seems highly unlikely that Golden State would be willing to part with him.
One must presume that Brooklyn and Golden State are taking a harder look at Harden now despite The Beard&rsquo;s devaluation of himself with his training-camp shenanigans. He remains the only player in the NBA who we all expect to go out and score 40 points every single night, and when a player of that caliber is on the market, everyone is obligated to find out what it would take to get him and whether it would be worth the investment. He can turn 15 okay teams into very, very good teams.
Harden has sort of held the league captive with a month&rsquo;s worth of wondering where he will eventually land. He probably won&rsquo;t finish the season in Houston, but Rockets general manager Rafael Stone is driving the bus on this one and is not going to give him away for pennies on the dollar. He can wait all the way until the trade deadline in March if he so chooses (or even longer given that Harden can&rsquo;t leave as a free agent until the 2022 offseason at the earliest). It is merely a matter of how much internal drama the Rockets choose to endure.
<img src="https://basketballnews-media.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/images/story/body/hadr_lg.jpg" alt="" width="667" height="AUTO" />
Also, where Harden wants to play is not Stone&rsquo;s concern. His job is to get the most he can in return for Harden, then let someone else try to make the guy happy. And that allows him to say &ldquo;no&rdquo; to Philadelphia every time the name &ldquo;Tobias Harris&rdquo; is uttered instead of &ldquo;Ben Simmons.&rdquo; Same with half a dozen other potential trade partners who are not willing to give up a terrific young player along with multiple first-round picks.
In the case of the Nets, the need/desire to take another long look at Harden has been fueled by the season-ending injury to Spencer Dinwiddie, who was the anchor of a very strong second unit. Chris Chiozza is a solid replacement, but losing Dinwiddie is a big blow to Brooklyn. The question is: Would a package centered around Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen along with future first-round picks be too much to pay for Harden? (And Dinwiddie would likely have to be included to make the salaries match).
Golden State is hard-capped with a league-high $173,683,225 payroll, which complicates trade possibilities. But the Wolves&rsquo; 2021 pick is a terrific trade chip, and Wiggins&rsquo; $29.5 million salary makes it easier for Myers to make the money match. In terms of what else currently on Golden State&rsquo;s roster might intrigue the Rockets, that list likely begins with Wiseman (who is not going anywhere) and does not go much further. With that said, do the Warriors have enough to assemble a serious offer for Harden?
The bottom line is that there is a stronger possibility of Harden getting traded from Houston sometime between now and March than there is of him staying.
He could make at least a half-dozen semi-contenders into legit championship threats, and at some point somebody is going to meet Stone&rsquo;s asking price. It&rsquo;s more of a when, not an if. And then it becomes a question of where. And if Harden is unhappy with whatever deal eventually goes down, he&rsquo;s going to have to deal with it.
We&rsquo;ll all just have to stay tuned, and see who either gets desperate or believes they are one superstar away from a title run.

Should the Brooklyn Nets or Golden State Warriors try to pull off a blockbuster trade for James Harden?

With Warriors and Nets struggling, is it time to revisit Harden trade?

Where will Khris Middleton play next season? It might not be Milwaukee.
That is my personal opinion, but it is based upon conversations I have been having for the past several days with folks I know and trust. Disbelieve it if you want, but look at the facts.
The Bucks flamed out. Khris Middleton was not all that good in the postseason. And in order for Milwaukee to have a team capable of defeating the no-quit Miami Heat, the soon-to-be-healthy Brooklyn Nets, Doc Rivers&rsquo; Philadelphia 76ers and every other team in the East that is going to try to improve, the Bucks&rsquo; roster has to improve too.
This coming NBA offseason has thousands of unknowns, including whether Giannis Antetokounmpo will sign a super-max extension with the Milwaukee Bucks. He wants changes to the roster, one of which, the acquisition of Chris Paul, is a virtual impossibility.&nbsp;
But another change, dealing Middleton, is something the Bucks may take a long hard look at.
It is an open secret in the NBA that the Bucks are going to try to trade Eric Bledsoe, although no current trade discussions are taking place, a league source said on Thursday. What needs to be discussed in the days and weeks ahead is whether moving Middleton for a more proven playoff performer needs to happen, too. &nbsp;
Middleton didn&rsquo;t perform particularly well in the playoffs, as the Bucks lost to the Miami Heat 4-1 in the second round. What happens next is critical. Although Antetokounmpo and Middleton are close friends, the two-time MVP wants to win a championship and believes roster upgrades are necessary. However, he hasn&rsquo;t named specific players that he wants to see replaced.
Trade speculation about Bledsoe has been reported elsewhere, but the same cannot be said for Middleton, who is owed $146 million over the next four years. Middleton has not played well in each of the past two postseasons, as Milwaukee lost a 2-0 lead in the 2019 Eastern Conference Finals against Toronto and then got knocked out this year in five games by Miami.
While the Bucks are kicking the tires on just about every potential move, it&rsquo;s difficult to find a player with a comparable salary who would appeal to Milwaukee. Middleton is due to make $33.051 million next season, roughly the same number as the following players who theoretically could be available: Tobias Harris, 76ers ($32.7 million); Kevin Love, Cavaliers ($28.9 million), Al Horford, 76ers ($28 million), DeMar DeRozan, Spurs (27.7 million); Andrew Wiggins, Warriors ($27.5 million), and LaMarcus Aldridge, Spurs ($26 million) among others.
If you are the Bucks, do any of those players appeal to you? In my opinion, only one of them does: Love, if he&rsquo;s at full strength.
Love is three years older than Middleton and has played in 63 career postseason games, going to the NBA Finals three times. He is under contract for three more seasons, making $31.2 million each of the next two seasons and $28.9 million in 2022-23.&nbsp;
Whether Cleveland would be open to such a swap is unknown, but Middleton has been an All-Star each of the past two seasons, and the Cavs are now building around Andre Drummond, Collin Sexton, Darius Garland, Kevin Porter Jr. and an assortment of young players that soon will include the No. 5 pick in the draft. They had nine double-figure scorers last season, but nobody averaging the type of point production that Middleton is capable of.
Another upgrade option that the Bucks have to ponder is Jrue Holiday of New Orleans, who has been the subject of numerous trade rumors involving the Pelicans, who are changing coaches and looking to build around Zion Williamson, Lonzo Ball and this past season's Most Improved Player, Brandon Ingram. Holiday was recently selected by his peers as the NBA's Teammate of the Year, a testament to his value in the locker room.&nbsp;
Pelicans general manager David Griffin has only $83 million in committed salary for next season with Derrick Favors and E&rsquo;Twaun Moore coming off the cap, so a potential deal with the Bucks would not have to include matching salaries.
Combining the salaries of Middleton and Wesley Matthews ($2.56 million this season, with a player option for $2.69 million next season) would enable the Bucks to bring back a second player who could replace Matthews as a perimeter defensive specialist. That could happen through a trade or through free agency. They can use up to $5.8 million of the mid-level exception, but going above that number would make them hard-capped.
It can safely be said that no team aside from the Los Angeles Clippers had a more disappointing finish to the season than the Bucks, and standing pat with the same roster would not seem to be an option.&nbsp; Antetokounmpo and the Bucks have to adjust their roster to defeat the Heat, who will be playing in Game 6 of the NBA Finals tomorrow night.
Antetokounmpo missed the final game against Miami because of a right-ankle injury, and his supporting cast underperformed. Middleton shot below 40 percent during the postseason while averaging 20.3 points, and Bledsoe averaged only 11.7 points and 5.7 assists in nine games, shooting 38.8 percent from the field.
The second-round exit has led to speculation that Antetokounmpo will turn down the $254 million super-max extension and bolt for a different market, and Milwaukee&rsquo;s front office is expected to be proactive in scouring the league for upgrades. Based upon that assumption, Bledsoe (owed more than $54 million over the next three years) and Middleton (owed $147 million over the next four seasons) would be the most likely candidates to be dealt, with Middleton having the higher trade value.
Acquiring Paul from the Oklahoma City Thunder would be extraordinarily difficult, given the two years and $85.6 million remaining on CP3&rsquo;s contract. The only way a deal could be made would be through a third team that has major salary cap space (Atlanta, Detroit and New York have the most), but that is still very unlikely -- even with ownership telling Giannis that the team is willing to pay the luxury tax in order to keep the two-time MVP in Milwaukee. Giannis and Paul became close in the NBA bubble (particularly during the Bucks&rsquo; boycott), which is where this chatter originated.
The answer to many of the questions concerning the NBA is dependent upon what happens with the coronavirus pandemic, but starting the season in January (at earliest) now seems to be a virtual certainty, according to NBPA director Michele Roberts, who has been inside the NBA bubble since July.&nbsp;
&rdquo;Even before COVID happened, there was a conversation about starting our season later. Why compete with football in the fall? Why don&rsquo;t we start our season around Christmas? It may very well be that our regular schedule is going to change, not so much because of COVID, but because of the ability to experiment. I wouldn&rsquo;t bet on returning to the old normal,&rdquo; <a href="https://theathletic.com/2119417/2020/10/06/its-been-more-than-worth-it-michele-roberts-on-bubble-life-and-nbas-future/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Roberts told The Athletic</a>, noting that projections of $8 billion in revenue for the 2020-21 season are expected to come up 40 percent short.
So the league and the Players' Association must first figure out what the salary cap will be next season, along with when the season will start and whether fans will be allowed into arenas. That is the reason why the Bucks are not actively trying to trade Bledsoe. They are in a holding pattern, like every other NBA team.
It was curious to see that Antetokounmpo unfollowed all of his Bucks teammates on Instagram after they were eliminated, and it would have been nice to be a fly on the wall for Antetokounmpo&rsquo;s three-hour lunch with owner Marc Lasry before he returned to Greece.
Here is the big thing for the Bucks: When you lose, you make changes. And when you want a super-max-eligible superstar to stay, you try to put the best players around him.
Without any changes, Antetokounmpo may elect to play out his contract, after which suitors will tell him that even though he likes Milwaukee and does not care about playing in a major market, the caliber of teammates he wants to play alongside&nbsp;do care about those off-court factors. Milwaukee is not an attractive city for the majority of NBA players, so making the best trade(s) is just about the only option general manager Jon Horst has in order to keep Giannis with the Bucks for the next six seasons.
Also, Antetokounmpo is not the type of person to get overly specific when he requests changes. He is counting on Bucks management to be able to read his mind to a certain degree, so do not expect him to say anything publicly about Middleton, Bledsoe or anyone else on the Bucks.&nbsp;
But Milwaukee needs a second decision-maker and another outside shooter who can also defend on the perimeter, and it will be up to Horst to decide whether to keep Middleton or find a better fit.
If he doesn&rsquo;t, Antetokounmpo can turn down the super-max and keep his options open. And the Bucks want to avoid that at all costs.
Stay tuned, but do not expect Milwaukee to stand pat. They were a combined 2-6 against Miami in the regular season and the playoffs. They need to get better, and a change at point guard is probably not the only thing they need. Middleton is their best trade asset, and I do not think he&rsquo;ll be around when next season starts. We shall see.

Almost everything should be on the table for the Bucks this offseason to improve their roster around Giannis, writes Chris Sheridan.

Will Milwaukee Bucks trade Khris Middleton, Eric Bledsoe this offseason?

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

Sheridan’s Top 25 Free Agents: July 9 Edition – LeBron going to Cleveland

The word got out about the most recent Mal Mundy Hoops Fest Tour Statement Session.
Over 30 college coaches came down to South Side High in Youngsville, LA, to scout over 40 prospects on the last Sunday before school starts up. South Coast scout Chris Dodson was in the gym and came away impressed with a few players still looking for offers.
Most Impressive:&nbsp;I've got&nbsp;Jaylen Peters (Liberty) as the best player in the gym for long stretches, and it wasn't particularly close at times. The two-man game with&nbsp;Chris Birden (Newman) was clicking, but Peters was the player who made folks stop taking notes and just watch. It helps that it seemed the rest of the team started deferring to his leadership pretty quickly, and that the other teams seemed to want to avoid Peters. Yet he still erased mistakes, could correct actions on the fly, and made some impressive instinctual plays on pure athleticism.
You'll hear if Peters is on the court. A defensive leader, smart with instant energy; anyone recruiting on winning attitude alone should offer Peters immediately. He called plays for others and was a step ahead on both ends. Peters disrupted almost every action on defense and found ways to score without the ball on offense. Peters said his favorite part of the game is playing in transition because of all that can happen on a fast break.
&ldquo;When I&rsquo;m alone on the court, I like to work on tougher shots," Peters said. "I'm not the quickest with the ball so shooting, finishing over or through a defender is a big part of my game.&rdquo;
Self-aware and credited teammates without prompting, Peters says he is ready to run as senior, &ldquo;especially at Liberty where I have great guards who can find me at the rim.&rdquo; Social media is full of highlights. Now, I need to see a full game.
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Some highlights from AAU this summer <a href="https://t.co/gLXzsCkJV1">pic.twitter.com/gLXzsCkJV1</a>
&mdash; Jaylen Peters (@JaylenJaylen0) <a href="https://twitter.com/JaylenJaylen0/status/1686481786631569409?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 1, 2023</a></blockquote>

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Most Overlooked:&nbsp;Clayton Blackledge (St. Louis Catholic) bossed in the first game, just a solid performance knowing the situation. Not going to get a lot of shots early and was the only available big man; no one else on team above 6-foot-5 or 6-foot-6.
I talked to him about cardio afterwards. Somewhat stiff, he needs to take some yoga classes to get more speed and flexibility in the hips. Get him a new desk in class or stretching bands with a mat in the back for plyometrics. It would also help his second jump on the boards. He missed a few rebounds trying to reload and get balance. However, when he is fresh, there is some dominate tape.
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Big fella has been extremely efficient and effective today. Great opportunity for Clayton Blackledge! <a href="https://twitter.com/LHSBCANOW?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LHSBCANOW</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RecruitLouisiana?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RecruitLouisiana</a> <a href="https://t.co/EoOkflDDvP">pic.twitter.com/EoOkflDDvP</a>
&mdash; St. Louis Catholic Boys Basketball (@slchsboysbball) <a href="https://twitter.com/slchsboysbball/status/1673027017774710784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2023</a></blockquote>

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He moved opposing bigs completely out of the paint, then won the race back down the floor more than a few times. He held positions on offense, giving the perimeter-heavy roster room to work. Blackledge understands and enjoys the dirty work of basketball. He smiled after setting a solid screen, the same as he did after a short jumper.
Blackledge rolls to the rim well, with purpose. He sealed defenders with force and finished second chances on the first try with no trouble. He&rsquo;d be a winning culture staple in low D1 practice and could become a starter. He finished with both hands and hit a 14-footer after tossing something off the court. He wasn&rsquo;t fazed, just came back into focus for a pass and hit the shot in rhythm.
He had another pick and short-roll floater off glass that looked on purpose. If it was a fluke, the kid might have a career in poker if hoops doesn't work out. He talked more on defense when tired. No big man subs were available. but he was still doing work. He seemed to get a lot out of the run, but still wanted more when interviewed.
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Ok #130 - we 👀 you! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RecruitLouisiana?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RecruitLouisiana</a> <a href="https://t.co/RCbqi9nPt3">pic.twitter.com/RCbqi9nPt3</a>
&mdash; St. Louis Catholic Boys Basketball (@slchsboysbball) <a href="https://twitter.com/slchsboysbball/status/1672659460337147908?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2023</a></blockquote>

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Notables Needing Longer Looks:
Jordan Comanche (Wossman) works back on defense. Helps cover mistakes and runs the floor. Beats his man to spots, gets space. Shot-form consistency seems off but making me a believer with every made shot. The jumper form fluctuates, but he hits the open shots. A contested floater was wildly off the mark. Need to see more, but there are plenty of reasons to be more curious about Comanche.
Chris Shiflett Jr. (Evangel) has hands slower than head, but the talent to catch up. Sees passes but sometimes telegraphs because he sees that play so early. Needs a bit more deception to pull off the flashy stuff at 5-foot-9 or it seems more like trying to force plays even in traffic. Talent is there though. Can finish crafty layups. Nice touch on high-arcing floaters.
Javon Johnson (Bossier)&nbsp;will go chest-to-chest with anyone. Gets downhill, tough handles with someone on the hip. Attacks lazy defense, gets to the rim, stays in rhythm. Seemed a solid shooter.&nbsp;
Jeremiah Lucas (Bonnabel)&nbsp;and&nbsp;Gavin Lucas (Bonnabel) are similar to Johnson in that both play like they are comfortable on concrete courts outside in the heat. Handles, passing vision, anticipation and can shoot. Bonnabel's two-guard tandem will be a pair to watch.

On Sunday, over 30 college coaches came to Youngsville, LA, to scout over 40 prospects. Chris Dodson shares his scouting report.

Statements Made: LA Hoops Fest Scouting Report

Craig Porter Jr. is one of the most interesting prospects in the 2023 NBA Draft.&nbsp;
The 6-foot-2 guard began his collegiate career as a JUCO player, leading Vincennes (Indiana) to a 62-7 record over two seasons and winning the NJCAA national championship in 2019. After receiving interest from a number of programs (including Indiana, Kansas, UConn, Oregon, Ole Miss, West Virginia, Texas Tech and Indiana State), Porter ultimately transferred to Wichita State.
Over the next three years with the Shockers, Porter would make huge strides and continue his development. Last season, Porter filled the stat sheet, averaging 13.5 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.9 assists, 1.5 steals, 1.5 blocks and 1.2 threes, while shooting 47.8% from the field and 36.3% from three.&nbsp;
Porter became the first player in school history to lead the team in rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. There aren&rsquo;t many 6-foot-2 point guards who lead their team in blocks, but Porter&rsquo;s motor and 40.5-inch vertical allow him to erase shots regularly. Porter ranks sixth among Wichita State&rsquo;s all-time leaders in career blocks per game (1.08). Last season, he had 11 games with multiple blocks (including a pair of 5-block performances) and 14 games with multiple steals.
Porter is looking forward to starting the next chapter of his unique journey on Thursday night, when he hopes to hear his name called in the 2023 NBA Draft. He says that it&rsquo;s finally starting to sink in that his NBA dream may soon be a reality.
Throughout the pre-draft process, Porter has worked out for the Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons, Orlando Magic, Cleveland Cavaliers, Los Angeles Clippers, Miami Heat and Washington Wizards. He&rsquo;s been turning heads in workouts, and he hopes that a team is willing to take a chance on him in the second round.
Darryl Hepburn trained Porter in Tampa after Wichita State's season ended, and he believes the 23-year-old has what it takes to succeed in the NBA.
&ldquo;When he came to Tampa, he was flying way under the radar. But when I did my research on him, I immediately saw that he had a couple signature games against some good teams, so I felt like he was an [NBA] prospect,&rdquo; Hepburn told Basketball News. &ldquo;Since I first laid eyes on him &ndash; a 6-foot-2 guard with long arms &ndash; he impressed me with his athletic ability.&nbsp;
&ldquo;He shot 36% from three, but I saw some room for improvement there. Over the last seven weeks, he showed me that he&rsquo;s a proven shooter. I saw him make a lot of improvements. He went to the Portsmouth Invitational and was one of the best players there. There&rsquo;s a high ceiling for this kid &ndash; a very high ceiling &ndash; and he deserves an opportunity. I think he&rsquo;s going to get drafted.&rdquo;
Basketball News caught up with Porter to discuss his game, player comparisons, unique journey, pre-draft workouts, plan for draft night and much more.
What has the pre-draft process been like for you? I've talked to NBA veterans who say they're glad they never have to go through it again because of how hard it is with all of the workouts and traveling.
Craig Porter Jr.: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s been a lot of traveling, for sure &ndash; going from the east to the west to down south a lot. I mean, it&rsquo;s an interesting process, just getting to see a bunch of different cities and getting to play against a bunch of different prospects and players of all calibers. It&rsquo;s just an experience that you only get to go through once, so I&rsquo;ve just been going through it and just doing everything I can to get into the position that I&rsquo;m in now. But it&rsquo;s been pretty fun.&rdquo;
You have worked out for the Mavs, Warriors, Celtics, Pistons, Magic, Cavaliers, Clippers, Heat and Wizards. What were some of the biggest questions they were asking and what kind of feedback did you get from those teams?
Porter: &ldquo;I would say, at the beginning when I did my first few [workouts], the most questionable thing about my game was whether I could consistently shoot the outside shot. I feel like, as I&rsquo;ve done all of the workouts, everybody has noticed and realized that I can shoot the ball way better than they thought. And my complete game just surprised a lot of people once they saw [me pass] the eye test, I guess. A lot of the feedback has been pretty similar across the board. I&rsquo;ve been honestly doing really well in a lot of my workouts, and a lot of the teams have been saying that they expect me to go somewhere in that second round or, if not there, then for sure [I&rsquo;ll be] a two-way type of player.&rdquo;
Do you think you can be a knockdown shooter in the NBA?
Porter: &ldquo;I definitely think I can. I feel, eventually, [when players read] a lot of the scouting reports and things people go over about me, they won&rsquo;t necessarily see the numbers and think that I&rsquo;ll be able to [shoot], so it&rsquo;ll surprise a lot of people at the beginning. But even with the work I&rsquo;ve been putting in, I&rsquo;ll be able to just shoot the ball more confidently and do it at a high level.&rdquo;
You&rsquo;ve had a unique journey to this point, coming from JUCO, leading your team to a NJCAA national championship and spending five years in college. What was it like taking the JUCO route and what did you learn from it?
Porter: &ldquo;It really just showed me to never take anything for granted and that you have to work for everything you earn in life. Really, JUCO taught me almost everything I know. I mean, I went through just about everything in JUCO &ndash; going through five-hour practices, to Coach having to order us all pizzas after 8 or 9 p.m. because we practiced so long, to wanting to quit because things got so hard and difficult. I mean, it tests you, for sure. I pay a lot of my respects and dues to my coach and teammates there because of the grind we went through there and how it just prepares you. It puts you in a different position, and it prepares you for this level.&rdquo;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://cdn.basketballnews.com/images/story/body/craig_inside.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="396" />
When did you start to realize that playing in the NBA might be a realistic option?&nbsp;
Porter: &ldquo;Honestly, I think it was after my senior year once I was about to sign with my agent Ryan [Straining]. I got a text from him saying that he was going to try his hardest and do everything he could to get me into the Portsmouth Invitational, and this was before I even signed with him. Really, I was unsure of anything I&rsquo;d be able to do. I thought I would&rsquo;ve been an overseas player, for sure. But once he got me into Portsmouth, things have just been taking off and skyrocketing ever since everybody has been able to see me. I give a lot of credit to him for pushing my name so hard.&rdquo;
Each season, you&rsquo;ve made significant strides. From the start of your college career to now, how much do you feel you have grown as a player?&nbsp;
Porter: &ldquo;I think every aspect of my game has just gone to another level, especially the shooting, scoring and rebounding &ndash; pretty much every statistic. I really feel like I was just in a bunch of different roles and being asked [to do] different things on certain teams. But I feel like every role I was put in, I thrived and did everything I was supposed to do. I feel like being prepared for all of those things is really what [allowed] me to do that...
"Like I said, my role kind of changed every year. In JUCO, I went from being a spot-up shooter my freshman year to being the lead guard my second year and really just playing in a bunch of different roles. And the same thing happened at Wichita State. It just put me in a position where I didn&rsquo;t always have to be the person who scores or the person that the defense focuses on, and I just found ways to impact winning. I was the leading rebounder and shot-blocker; I just found ways to get on the court and I just did the extra things that some of the guys on my team didn&rsquo;t, and it just always paid off for me.&rdquo;
You&rsquo;re 23 years old and we know that teams typically fall in love with younger players and their potential during the draft process. But do you feel like there are some advantages to being an older and more experienced prospect?
Porter: &ldquo;I definitely do. I think [my experience] has already prepared me to be a pro and I feel like I&rsquo;m handling myself as a pro, so [I&rsquo;m not dealing with] a lot of the little hiccups that some younger players might have to go through &ndash; like needing a little bit more time to develop or anything off the court. I just feel like with me being older and being through things that they haven&rsquo;t experienced, it just prepared me a little bit more than they are.&rdquo;
Which players would you compare yourself to? Who do you like to study?
Porter: &ldquo;There are a couple players I study. Definitely Lonzo Ball, that&rsquo;s one of my top ones. One of my favorite players growing up was Rajon Rondo, just him being able to do a little bit of everything, even if he couldn&rsquo;t shoot the ball (which I feel like obviously I can do a lot better than him). I mean, just being able to rebound, get his teammates involved and score when needed. Really, those comparisons are probably my top-two, for sure.&rdquo;
If an NBA general manager asked why should they draft you, what would you say?&nbsp;
Porter: &ldquo;I&rsquo;d probably say that I&rsquo;m the type of person who doesn&rsquo;t necessarily need to be &lsquo;the guy&rsquo; or the face of something to impact it. I can impact winning in many different ways. You can throw me in there for one minute and I&rsquo;m going to make a big difference in that one minute or 30 seconds or [however long I&rsquo;m in]. My attention to detail is really high. I&rsquo;m just an older guy who needs a chance. I take this really seriously &ndash; this is honestly my life. Really, being able to show what I can do is life or death to me.&rdquo;
What do you bring to a team off the court? Do you think you can have an impact in the locker room as a leader or glue guy?
Porter: &ldquo;Definitely, I&rsquo;m a pretty calm person and, like I said before, there&rsquo;s almost nothing that I haven&rsquo;t been through. I know what it&rsquo;s like to win, I know what it&rsquo;s like to lose and I know what it&rsquo;s like to go through adversity. Really, my biggest thing is that I&rsquo;m able to lead and get guys to pay attention and listen, even if they&rsquo;re frustrated or whatever. That was one of the things I was challenged on over the last two years, so it&rsquo;s something that I&rsquo;ve definitely developed over the years. But yeah, I&rsquo;m definitely a good person off the court who can help guys keep their mental.&rdquo;
What are your plans for draft night?
Porter: &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m just going to have some of my family and friends over at my parents&rsquo; house, and we&rsquo;re just going to watch the draft. Hopefully, my name is called. If it&rsquo;s not, we&rsquo;re all still going to hang out and I&rsquo;ll spend some time with my family.&rdquo;

Former Wichita State guard Craig Porter Jr. opens up about his game, the pre-draft process, his NBA player comparison and more.

NBA draft prospect Craig Porter Jr.: 'I impact winning in many different ways'

LOS ANGELES (AP) &mdash; Although the Los Angeles Lakers&rsquo; late-season transformation is one of this NBA season&rsquo;s best stories, LeBron James and his teammates finally appear to be running out of steam in the Western Conference finals.
They&rsquo;ve also finally run into an opponent capable of making sure this story doesn&rsquo;t have a completely happy ending.
After looking weary and mistake-prone in Denver during their first back-to-back losses in over two months, the Lakers face a must-win Game 3 Saturday.
Los Angeles has been on a prolonged roll ever since the trade deadline, going 27-12 while surging into the playoff picture, winning a play-in game and knocking out two higher-seeded opponents in six games. But that roll has finally been slowed by Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and the respect-hungry Nuggets, whose superior late-game play was the reason they&rsquo;re up 2-0.
&ldquo;This is not the NCAA Tournament,&rdquo; James said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s the first team to four wins. We have an opportunity to go home and play great basketball and hold serve. Until a team beats you four times, you always have an opportunity to come out of it. So that&rsquo;s the confidence that we should have. I know it&rsquo;s going to be a tough hill to climb up, but we still have an opportunity to play the best basketball of the series in Game 3.&rdquo;
The Lakers insist they&rsquo;re not as tired as they looked for stretches of both games in Denver, when they settled for too many jumpers, ran the court less effectively and lost a fraction of their defensive intensity. James and Anthony Davis both say the fatigue of this relentless two-month sprint toward title contention isn&rsquo;t finally too much for a team that altered half of its roster just three months ago.
&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re not tired in the postseason...,&rdquo; James said after LA&rsquo;s 108-103 loss in Game 2. &ldquo;I mean, everybody&rsquo;s tired.&rdquo;
But James&rsquo; weariness appears to be evident in his jump shot &mdash; and in his reliance on that shot instead of the more physically demanding task of driving to the hoop. The top scorer in NBA history went 0 for 6 on 3-pointers in Game 2, making him 0 for 10 in the series. He has also missed 19 consecutive 3-pointers in the fourth quarter over the Lakers&rsquo; last 11 playoff games.
On top of the fatigue from the heavy workload for his 38-year-old body, James also sprained his left ankle in the third quarter of Game 2, although said he would be fine for Game 3.
Davis is prone to offensive inconsistency, and the stress of leading the Lakers&rsquo; defensive effort against mighty Denver may have affected him &mdash; although he insists it didn&rsquo;t. What&rsquo;s clear is that Davis&rsquo; 18-point performance on 4-of-15 shooting in Game 2 isn&rsquo;t enough from the Lakers&rsquo; franchise big man, particularly after his 40-point effort in Game 1, when the Lakers&rsquo; defense was much worse.
The Lakers are hoping for a big boost from their success-hungry home fans when they get back to their downtown arena, where they&rsquo;re 7-0 at home since the regular season ended.
&ldquo;The higher the levels you get to, you&rsquo;re going to face much, much tougher teams,&rdquo; Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. &ldquo;No disrespect to Memphis or Golden State, but (Denver) has been at the top of the food chain for a reason. Not just this year, but the last few years. So we&rsquo;ve definitely got our work cut out for us, but we&rsquo;re going to get better from this, as we always do, and we&rsquo;ll bounce back on our home floor.&rdquo;
The Lakers had lost back-to-back games just once &mdash; in mid-March &mdash; since the trade deadline. Their late-season turnaround is still stunning after the additions of D&rsquo;Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley along with the departures of Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley and Kendrick Nunn, opening up playing time for vital supporting players Austin Reaves and Dennis Schr&ouml;der.
But all that quick work might not be enough to overcome the steady togetherness of the Nuggets, who have handled the Lakers much better than their own inferiority complex.
Coach Michael Malone curiously punctuated their gritty Game 2 victory with sarcastic jabs about the basketball world&rsquo;s supposed ignorance of two-time NBA MVP Jokic&rsquo;s talents, along with criticism of a &ldquo;national narrative&rdquo; he believed was too impressed by the Lakers&rsquo; Game 1 rally.
The winningest team in the West is making its fifth consecutive playoff appearance after its sixth straight winning season, yet Malone appears to be paying close attention to television&rsquo;s talking heads while pounding the nobody-believes-in-us narrative that permeates sports, even for professional powerhouses like the Nuggets and the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
Perhaps that&rsquo;s because these Nuggets have never been here before: They&rsquo;re as close to the NBA Finals as this franchise has ever been, up 2-0 on a 17-time NBA champion franchise with a global brand and the sport&rsquo;s most accomplished active player.
Eliminating LeBron and the Lakers would be a signature achievement for this Denver group, and it has a chance to all but lock up the achievement with a win in Game 3.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s definitely going to be hostile there,&rdquo; Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. said. &ldquo;They still feel like they&rsquo;re in this series, obviously. It&rsquo;s the first to four. It&rsquo;s not the first to two. They&rsquo;re not going to just roll over, and now they&rsquo;re back in LA.&rdquo;

After looking weary and mistake-prone in Denver during their first back-to-back losses in over two months, the Lakers face a must-win.

Lakers look for boost after falling behind Nuggets in Conference Finals

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) &mdash; If the decision about whether De&rsquo;Aaron Fox can play through a&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-playoffs-fox-injury-kings-warriors-396489b0cbe9b76eeac4270c5ad07934">broken index finger</a>&nbsp;on his shooting hand is up to Fox, there is no doubt.
&ldquo;Right now, there&rsquo;s no ifs, ands or buts,&rdquo; he said Tuesday. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m playing.&rdquo;
While the Sacramento Kings are still listing Fox as questionable for Game 5 against the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night, all signs are pointing to the star point guard giving it a shot with the&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/hub/nba">first-round series</a>&nbsp;tied at two games apiece.
Fox took part in a non-contact practice with a splint on his left index finger and then spent significant time afterward&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://twitter.com/JoshDubowAP/status/1650957338977927171?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">working on his shooting</a>&nbsp;to get prepared for playing with a splint in a real game.
Fox said he had no problems dribbling and passing and the biggest question was making sure he could deal with the pain and make his shot.
He said he felt optimistic after the swelling in the finger went down in the past day and the pain has become manageable.
&ldquo;At the end of the day, I&rsquo;m fine,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I can shoot the ball. At this point in the season, everybody has something. Obviously a bone might not be chipped, but something is hurting on everybody. So you go out there and you still play the game. I&rsquo;m not worried about it.&rdquo;
Coach Mike Brown said the final decision about Wednesday night will be a joint one between him, Fox, the trainers and medical staff.
But Brown said it wasn&rsquo;t premature for Fox to say he &ldquo;believes&rdquo; he will play.
&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not saying I&rsquo;m going and I&rsquo;m going to play 40 minutes,&rdquo; Brown said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s going try to give it a go. I think that&rsquo;s what you just go with at the end of the day and you see what happens.&rdquo;
Warriors coach Steve Kerr said his team won&rsquo;t change its approach to defending Fox and isn&rsquo;t worried about overconfidence if Fox can&rsquo;t play.
&ldquo;If we let our guard down, there&rsquo;s something seriously wrong with us,&rdquo; Kerr said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll be ready to go.&rdquo;
Fox got injured on a drive midway through the fourth quarter. He remained in the game after the injury and even made a key 3-pointer in the closing minute before&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/kings-warriors-nba-playoffs-bd192d0880596bdfd13d35618f5fa254">Sacramento lost 126-125</a>. Fox passed out of a double team on the final possession and the Kings lost when Harrison Barnes missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Fox has emerged as a star in his first trip to the postseason, averaging 31.5 points, seven assists and six rebounds through six games.
His 38 points in a Game 1 win were tied for the second most for a player in his postseason debut and his 126 points so far are tied for the sixth most for any player in his first four career playoff games.
Fox had 38 points, nine rebounds and five assists in the Game 4 loss.
&ldquo;Whether Foxy plays or not, we all have to play better,&rdquo; Brown said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s how I look at it.&rdquo;
Fox was announced last week as the inaugural winner of the&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-clutch-player-award-fox-kings-f6179cafd2b2e9cc86c55ce2d46d1a66">NBA&rsquo;s clutch player of the year</a>&nbsp;award. He led the league in clutch-game scoring this season with 194 points in 39 such games; clutch games are defined as those where the margin between teams is five points or less at any point in the final five minutes.
Those were the most clutch points scored in a season since LeBron James had 197 in the 2017-18 season.

De'Aaron Fox has a broken index finger, but he expects to play in Game 5: “Right now, there’s no ifs, ands or buts. I’m playing.”

De’Aaron Fox on Game 5: ‘No ifs, ands or buts. I’m playing’

HOUSTON (AP) &mdash; There was a short list of believers in the potential of a rebuilt UConn roster before the season started.
It was made up mostly of the UConn players and coaches themselves.
The team that was among &ldquo;others receiving votes&rdquo; in the first AP poll of the season ended up cutting down nets after the last game &mdash; as sure a sign as any that in the new college landscape reconstituted by the transfer portal and name, image and likeness deals, anything is possible.
For anyone.
The Huskies not only won the title but won it in one of history&rsquo;s most dominating runs through the NCAA Tournament. They won their six games by an average of 20 points, closing it out Monday night with a 76-59 pasting of San Diego State.
&ldquo;We came into the season unranked,&rdquo; coach Dan Hurley said. &ldquo;So we had an edge to us to start the year to prove people wrong.&rdquo;
Nobody could really blame fans and pundits for overlooking UConn, just as it might have been hard to blame them for pumping up North Carolina, a national runner-up the year before that was bringing back the core of its roster.
UConn won the title. UNC didn&rsquo;t even make the tournament.
It&rsquo;s a testament to how quickly things can change in an era that looks more like NFL free agency than anything college sports has ever seen.&nbsp;
Hurley said he went back to work the day after the Huskies lost to New Mexico State in the first round last season and started looking at retooling his roster. The goal was to add more options from the perimeter. So, he got four new players, including Joey Calcaterra (two 3s for 6 points in the final), who had spent four years at University of San Diego, and Tristen Newton (19 points, 10 rebounds), who had spent three years at East Carolina.
Big East coaches still picked UConn to finish fourth in the conference. Even if the talent is there, it&rsquo;s hard to gauge how it might all come together.
The UConn story played out in different ways at different places all across the sport this season, and had a lot to do with a Final Four that included three underdog programs, seeded fifth (SDSU), fifth (Miami) and ninth (Florida Atlantic), that had never made it to the final weekend.
The Aztecs had two new players this year joining two others who came to San Diego State the year before.
Elsewhere, Kansas State was picked last in the Big 12 and ended up three points shy of making the Final Four, with the help of Keyontae Johnson, a transfer from Florida who was named a third-team AP All-American.
Creighton made its own run to the Elite Eight with big help from a transfer from South Dakota State, Baylor Scheierman, who was also getting looks from Duke and other bluebloods.
Texas withstood the midseason firing of its coach and made the Elite Eight with two transfer-portal players: Tyrese Hunter from Iowa State and Sir&rsquo;Jabari Rice from New Mexico State.
Arkansas made its third straight Sweet 16 with a semi-rebuilt roster.
&ldquo;I promise I wouldn&rsquo;t be sitting here if it wasn&rsquo;t for the transfer portal,&rdquo; Razorbacks coach Eric Musselman said earlier in the tournament. &ldquo;Really interesting, because eight years ago, when somebody was transferring, the process was a lot different.&rdquo;
Instead of having to sit out a year, players can now go freely from one school to another. Some coaches find it too destabilizing, too transactional.
No longer, however, is it a matter of faith that veteran teams that stick together &mdash; say, as recently as Villanova&rsquo;s 2018 team that crushed everyone on the way to the title &mdash; have a better chance of winning.
And even though FanDuel Sportsbook is listing UConn (11-1) and Duke (13-1) as the early favorites to win it all next season, there&rsquo;s little reason to put much stock in any &ldquo;way too early&rdquo; looks at next year&rsquo;s top teams.
&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t really know rosters, or how different players are going to fit in,&rdquo; said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas. &ldquo;Will they blossom, will they not? And preseason polls are done for fan interest and nothing else. You can&rsquo;t really predict anything based on those.&rdquo;
Certainly, nobody was picking Florida Atlantic, Miami or San Diego State to make the Final Four back in October.
And UConn with all those new players to win it all? Nobody saw that coming either.
Well, almost nobody.
&ldquo;We knew we were the best team in the tournament going in,&rdquo; Hurley said. &ldquo;We just had to play to our level.&rdquo;

Things can change quickly in an era that looks more like NFL free agency than anything college sports has ever seen.

UConn March Madness steamroller could be start of a new era

HOUSTON (AP) &mdash; Certainly, Jim Nantz could fill an evening weaving tales of the great games and buzzer-beaters he&rsquo;s had the privilege to see, and call, over a storytelling career that made his the voice of March Madness for nearly four decades.
But when asked about his favorite moments as he prepared for the 354th and final game of that journey &mdash; Monday&rsquo;s title game &mdash; he brought up Delaware State.
The Hornets were a 16 seed when they made what is still their only NCAA appearance back in 2005. They were going against Duke in a first-round game hardly anyone remembers now. Nantz was certain he&rsquo;d see those Duke players again.
&ldquo;But those Delaware State kids, they&rsquo;re on CBS, and I envisioned that someday, they&rsquo;re going to have the VHS tape to be able to show their grandchildren and say &lsquo;I played in the NCAA Tournament,&lsquo;&rdquo; Nantz said during a courtside conversation with The Associated Press the day before the start of his last Final Four. &ldquo;This tournament is their &lsquo;forever.&rsquo; I always wanted to make sure that I do justice to their story.&rdquo;
The 63-year-old traces his own path to the announcer&rsquo;s table to when he was 9 and living in New Orleans. His dad took him to his first college basketball game.&nbsp;
Working the sideline was a bear of a coach who had a red, polka-dotted towel draped across his shoulder. About 10 years later, that coach, Guy Lewis of the Houston Cougars, would give Nantz, who played golf at the school, a job as the public-address guy for home games at Hofheinz Pavillion. A year after that, Nantz was still living in the dorms at UH when Lewis asked him to host his coach&rsquo;s show.
Nantz&rsquo;s might very well be the voice American sports fans know best. He has guided them through six Super Bowls on CBS and walked with them among the towering pines at the Masters since 1986, when Jack Nicklaus won his sixth green jacket. He&rsquo;ll continue on those assignments for the foreseeable future, but this 37th run through March Madness will be his last.
Some said it might have been perfect if his alma mater, which came into the tournament as a No. 1 seed, was playing in its hometown in the final game of Nantz&rsquo;s basketball journey. That didn&rsquo;t happen, but Nantz believes there&rsquo;s something fitting about a Final Four that came out of the blue like this, with three schools that had never been this far before, and no team seeded better than No. 4 UConn.
He has always loved the underdog tales.
&ldquo;Storytelling paradise,&rdquo; Nantz called it.
It&rsquo;s been wild, emotional and a little awkward for a man who concedes he likes to tell the stories, not be part of them.
He got a key to the city Friday. Two streets on an intersection outside the stadium were renamed &ldquo;Jim Nantz Way&rdquo; and &ldquo;Hello Friends Boulevard.&rdquo;
&ldquo;Hello Friends&rdquo; is the comfy-as-a-slipper welcome he coined about 20 years ago. It gives Nantz a moment to connect with the audience and think of his dad, who passed away in 2008 after a long bout with Alzheimer&rsquo;s. The Nantz National Alzheimer&rsquo;s Center is based in Houston.
Nantz&rsquo;s welcome-in message to the telecasts might be planned. Other things aren&rsquo;t.
His call of Saturday&rsquo;s buzzer-beating shot by San Diego State&rsquo;s Lamont Butler in the semifinals &mdash; Nantz estimates he&rsquo;s had 20-something such last-second winners over his years in the tournament &mdash; plays back like a master class in what his job should be: simple, urgent, much more about the moment than the person talking about it.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Butler. With two seconds. He&rsquo;s gotta put it up. Aaand. He wins it! He wins it! With the jumper!&rdquo; Then, five seconds of silence, followed by, &ldquo;A San Diego State miracle!&rdquo;
Speaking of miracles, there&rsquo;s another announcer who made a name for himself by talking about one. Shortly after this interview was over and Nantz had started talking to some well-wishers, he lifted up his phone and smiled as he showed it to a few folks standing nearby: Al Michaels was calling.
Though many might consider Nantz and the 78-year-old Michaels as contemporaries, there was a sense of the unfiltered excitement Nantz felt about receiving that call. And it gave a glimpse as to why, even after all this time, he has such a strong bond with the millions of people who tune in. In some ways, he&rsquo;s just like us.
Moments earlier, Nantz had recalled hosting the Final Four studio show from the Kingdome in Seattle in 1989 when Magic Johnson popped by for a visit on the set. As Magic and Nantz, both 30 at the time, sat in the corner of the arena, watching the final seconds of the Michigan-Seton Hall title game tick down, the announcer asked Johnson if he ever stopped to soak in everything and reflect on the wonder of all he&rsquo;d been part of.
&ldquo;He nods and just says, &lsquo;All the time,&rsquo;&rdquo; Nantz said. &ldquo;And today, I think about that. I&rsquo;ve had the best seat in the house at the Super Bowl or the Masters or here for my whole career. And I&rsquo;ve never gotten over the fact that I&rsquo;m the one who&rsquo;s blessed with the chance to lend a voice to it, and to tell the story.&rdquo;

It’s been wild, emotional and a little awkward for Jim Nantz, who concedes he likes to tell the stories, not be part of them.

Jim Nantz bids a fond farewell to March Madness

Women&rsquo;s college basketball believes it has the makings for a hit reality TV show with star power driving a marketable product that has a growing audience.
So they&rsquo;re taking the ensemble on the road for the Sweet 16.
The NCAA changed the format of the tournament this year, featuring two regional sites instead of the traditional four. The games in Greenville, South Carolina, and Seattle are the latest step to grow the sport and show the ladies can stand on their own.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley believes the question of whether women&rsquo;s hoops merits its own March Madness TV contract has already been answered, even though the women&rsquo;s tournament loses money under the current deal.
&ldquo;Somebody&rsquo;s watching women&rsquo;s basketball,&rdquo; Staley said. &ldquo;Somebody feels like we&rsquo;re in high demand, and obviously the decision-makers that put us on now realize that they&rsquo;ve got to keep putting us on.&rdquo;
The women&rsquo;s title game will be broadcast on ABC &mdash; the first appearance on network television since 1995. Women&rsquo;s basketball is part of a current contract that bundles all NCAA championships under one deal except for men&rsquo;s basketball and football.
The NCAA is expected to decide by the fall if the women&rsquo;s tournament will become a separate entity after hiring Endeavor, a consulting firm, to determine how to take championships to market.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an exciting time. Year over year, we continue to demonstrate the value that women&rsquo;s basketball brings to that space,&rdquo; said Lynn Holzman, the NCAA vice president of women&rsquo;s basketball. &ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be exciting to see what the results are of this for the sport itself, but also for the NCAA more broadly in our championships.&rdquo;
TV ratings have been trending up over the last two years. This year&rsquo;s regular season was the most viewed on ESPN networks in eight years and was up 11% from last season. That came on the heels of last season&rsquo;s title game between South Carolina and UConn that averaged 4.85 million viewers &mdash; the most for a women&rsquo;s championship game since 2004. The first round had a 27% ratings increase from last year.
&ldquo;People enjoy watching close games. They like the fact that there&rsquo;s some semblance of uncertainty of who&rsquo;s going to win,&rdquo; UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s been so many changes in the top 10 all year long. ... Teams are in, they start out at the top they go out they come back in. I think all that creates a level of excitement.&rdquo;
People aren&rsquo;t just tuning in during March Madness, they have also been showing up.
Attendance at the NCAA Tournament has continued to rise the past five seasons, growing by 60% in the first two rounds from an average of 4,464 in 2016 to 7,240 this year. This season had the highest attendance ever for the first two rounds.
&ldquo;It makes us very bullish on women&rsquo;s basketball,&rdquo; Holzman said. &ldquo;It is demonstrative of the growth we&rsquo;ve been seeing in the sport.&rdquo;
Now the NCAA hopes that growth is reflected in increased television revenue.
ESPN pays $34 million per year for the championships package, which it agreed to in 2011, including women&rsquo;s basketball. But the law firm the NCAA hired to investigate equity issues in 2021 said in its report that estimated women&rsquo;s basketball annual broadcast rights would be worth $81 million to $112 million.
The NCAA said the 2019 women&rsquo;s tournament lost $2.8 million and those losses have multiplied the last two years since the the sports governing body increased spending after disparities between the men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s tourneys were pointed out.
If the NCAA can get close to the numbers projected in the 2021 report, it might be able to offer revenue shares &mdash; known as financial units &mdash; to women&rsquo;s teams in the tournament in a structure similar to what the men receive from their March Madness tournament.
Men&rsquo;s teams earn a slice of the money pie for their conference for every game they play excluding the championship. Each unit is paid by the NCAA over a six-year cycle. This year the NCAA will dole out $170 million to conferences from the men&rsquo;s tournament.
It&rsquo;s fair to say the women have a lot riding on this weekend at the two regional sites.
The NCAA is hoping the success of the Final Four &mdash; which sells out every year &mdash; translates to its new &ldquo;mini Final Fours.&rdquo;
Holzman believes the new format gave fans a better chance to know where their teams would be headed. The NCAA vice president of women&rsquo;s basketball also anticipated greater economic impact on host cities would lead to more bids to host in the future.
But for some coaches, it&rsquo;s all about location.
The regional sites the next two years will again be held in cities on opposite coasts. The closest team playing in Seattle this year is Colorado, located 1,300 miles away.
Texas coach Vic Schaefer is &ldquo;a little concerned&rdquo; about the distance some teams will have to travel, but eager to see how the tournament unfolds.
&ldquo;The powers that be believe it&rsquo;s going to be great, and I&rsquo;m hopeful that it will be,&rdquo; Schaefer said. &ldquo;Those are two opposite ends of the spectrums, west and east, three time zones between both of them. And there&rsquo;s just nothing in the Midwest. And we have a lot of teams in the Midwest. We&rsquo;ll see.&rdquo;

The NCAA is expected to decide by the fall if the women’s tournament will become a separate entity.

Women hope Sweet 16 next step to own March Madness TV deal

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) &mdash; The Sacramento Kings might just be riding the beam all the way to the NBA playoffs.
The resurgent Kings are on the verge of ending the longest postseason drought in league history, with first-year coach Mike Brown employing a fast-paced offense led by the dynamic duo of De&rsquo;Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis to put Sacramento in first place in the Pacific Division.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a great feeling. It&rsquo;s great because it&rsquo;s my first time,&rdquo; Fox said of being in the playoff hunt. &ldquo;This is something we want to make annual. We want to be contending for a title. ... It&rsquo;s great for the city and organization. We still want bigger things for ourselves.&rdquo;
The Kings (43-29) are in third place in the Western Conference and might be able to clinch the franchise&rsquo;s first playoff berth since 2006 during the final three games of a four-game homestand that ends Monday night against Minnesota.
The 16 seasons without a playoff berth are the longest in NBA history and the longest active postseason drought among any team in the NBA, NFL, NHL or Major League Baseball.
&ldquo;I do feel that that group believes in themselves, not just because I&rsquo;m telling them they&rsquo;re good, but because they&rsquo;ve actually gone out and proven it time after time after time, whether it&rsquo;s individually in certain situations or collectively as a team,&rdquo; Brown said. &ldquo;When you have a team that believes, they can be dangerous. You&rsquo;ve got a connected team that believes, they can be a very dangerous team and that&rsquo;s what our group is right now.&rdquo;
The Kings are also one of the best feel-good stories of the NBA this season with an entertaining style of basketball that leads the league in scoring at 120.9 points per game for the highest mark in the league since 1983-84.
Each win at home is punctuated with the lighting of the beam &mdash; a beam of light from purple lasers atop the Golden 1 Center &mdash; and fans have even chanted for the beam at road games around the country.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s like a playoff atmosphere every night,&rdquo; swingman Kevin Huerter, one of the key offseason acquisitions, said after a recent home win. &ldquo;The only thing that&rsquo;s missing is handing out the T-shirts and maybe some towels, whatever they&rsquo;re doing for the playoffs. But it really is this every night.&rdquo;
The Kings have been one of the most success-starved franchises since moving to Sacramento in 1985. They had a losing record in each of their first 14 seasons in California, winning just one playoff game.
That all changed in 1999 when general manager Geoff Petrie and coach Rick Adelman built a winner around players like Chris Webber, Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic that played an entertaining style in a grind-it-out era that nearly delivered a championship.
The Kings posted eight straight winning records and playoff berths under Adelman, but lost a heartbreaking seven-game series to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2002 and then saw their title hopes derailed the following year when Webber went down with a serious knee injury in the second round of the playoffs.
Adelman kept the team competitive through 2006 but was let go following a second straight first-round playoff exit.
Then the dark era began with 16 straight losing seasons under 11 coaches, an ownership change and fears that the city would lose its only major pro team to Seattle.
Vivek Ranadive bought the team from the Maloof family in 2013 and kept the team in Sacramento by building a downtown arena, but there was no on-court success until this year.
The Kings traded away star DeMarcus Cousins and botched several high draft picks. But they have been revived following last year&rsquo;s trade with Indiana that sent promising guard Tyrese Haliburton to Indiana for a playmaking big man in Sabonis and the decision to hire Brown as coach.
Sabonis proved to be the perfect piece to team with the speedy Fox, giving Sacramento a dynamic duo.
Fox is averaging 25.4 points per game and has been the best clutch scorer in the league this season, scoring double figures in the fourth quarter a league-high 25 times.
Sabonis, acquired in a controversial trade from Indiana midway through last season for promising guard Tyrese Haliburton, has been the perfect piece to team with Fox with his playmaking ability as a big man. Sabonis is averaging 19 points, 12.5 rebounds and 7.3 assists with 12 triple-doubles.
Add in outside shooting from Huerter and rookie Keegan Murray, the veteran presence of Harrison Barnes and scoring off the bench from Malik Monk and the Kings have gained the attention of other contenders.
&ldquo;Give a lot of credit to Mike Brown,&rdquo; Celtics star Jayson Tatum said. &ldquo;He has the guys playing a lot better. Fox is playing at an All-NBA level. Sabonis has been great for them. They play with so much pace. All those guys have a lot more confidence.
&ldquo;When you&rsquo;re playing with confidence, it naturally opens things up for the individual and the group.&rdquo;
___
AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report&nbsp;

The resurgent Kings are on the verge of ending the longest postseason drought in league history.

Success-starved Kings close in on long-awaited playoff berth

Princeton forward Tosan Evbuomwan spent his first three college seasons enduring one disappointment after another.
Reaching the NCAA Tournament and advancing to the Sweet 16 made it all worthwhile.
After the 2020 Ivy League Tournament was canceled, after the entire 2020-21 season was canceled, after losing by two points in the conference&rsquo;s 2022 tourney title game and after watching three friends transfer just to keep playing in 2022-23, this resilient 6-foot-8 Brit has taken the Tigers on their deepest NCAA Tournament run since 1967 and has emerged as survivor of one of college basketball&rsquo;s strangest journeys.
&ldquo;I think it did start with that COVID year,&rdquo; Evbuomwan said. &rdquo;There was a togetherness with that group. One of my favorite things about that time was the Zooms with one another, the Face Times, just talking about what we wanted the next season. We wanted a championship.&rdquo;
Now,&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/march-madness-princeton-3e7e64d87d64a24587f258af065e7ce0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Ivy League tourney champions are the talk of the nation</a>&nbsp;and an illustration of the impact two pivotal COVID years have had on the college basketball world.
Nobody outside the Princeton locker room expected this run &mdash; especially when three of last year&rsquo;s top five scorers left to take advantage of the NCAA&rsquo;s extra season. League rules allowed them only to use that season at a non-conference school.
But these Tigers pride themselves on perseverance. So instead of allowing the obstacles to derail their dreams or steal their spirit, they dug in, stuck around, forged a bond and finished the job.
&ldquo;We missed out on a whole year. That hurt, watching essentially every other team in the country play,&rdquo; Princeton guard Matt Allocco said. &ldquo;But I think it actually helped us in the long run. We were able to get together in the spring and practice, be with each other, build those relationships. It ended up being a great experience.&rdquo;
Not everyone remembers the COVID years fondly.
San Diego State and Dayton saw their 2020 title hopes dashed by the NCAA&rsquo;s announcement. Michigan State coach Tom Izzo thought he had a Final Four team, too.
Northern Kentucky coach Darrin Horn&rsquo;s long-awaited return to March Madness was extended by three more years, prompting him to acknowledge two weeks ago that winning the 2020 Horizon League crown almost seemed like it never happened.
There&rsquo;s no way to replace what was lost &mdash;&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/ncaa-march-madness-san-diego-state-charleston-orlando-0d6d6cd47a1ff1baa3bfb448286b0ff6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">even for this year&rsquo;s 16 regional semifinalists</a>.
Just ask San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher, whose team faces top-seeded Alabama on Friday in the Louisville Regional. The Aztecs were supposed to be a top-two seed three years ago.
&ldquo;As I said all those years ago, as good as Malachi Flynn and KJ Feagin and Yanni Wetzell were, they never played in the NCAA Tournament one time in their careers. That&rsquo;s unbelievable,&rdquo; Dutcher said. &ldquo;Sometimes we take for granted just going and losing in the first round. Just to have a chance to play would have meant the world to those guys so I feel bad for that, that they never got a taste of March Madness.&rdquo;
Meanwhile, at Creighton, it was a different scenario.
In 2021, the tourney provided the Bluejays with a bittersweet memory: Celebrating their first Sweet 16 appearance since 1974 inside the lonely Indianapolis &ldquo;bubble.&rdquo;
So when&nbsp;<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/march-madness-creighton-nembhard-d5b5da14046dffc8c7fb28e2f8b2da13" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sixth-seeded Creighton knocked off third-seeded Baylor 85-76 last weekend</a>&nbsp;to return to the Sweet 16, something suddenly felt far more satisfying about Friday&rsquo;s matchup against 15th-seeded Princeton in Louisville.
&ldquo;We had a lot of fans there to celebrate at the end of the game with us (in Denver) and then you go back to the hotel with family and friends and have a chance to celebrate rather than go back to your room and eat another piece of rubber chicken out of a Styrofoam box, which is what we did in Indianapolis,&rdquo; Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. &ldquo;To get to the Sweet 16 is a difficult thing to do, it was just a little more fun to celebrate that particular night.&rdquo;
What about 2021 national champion Baylor? Of course, the Bears had no complaints.
Kansas State coach Jerome Tang was an assistant on that title team and has used the lessons from that run as the model for his third-seeded Wildcats, who take on Izzo&rsquo;s seventh-seeded Spartans on Thursday at Madison Square Garden.
<a class="paragraph-link" href="https://apnews.com/article/march-madness-transfer-portal-0b9862a4e4e4b6da08ce56b3eb2c443a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tang believes the similarities in roster composition</a>&nbsp;will help Kansas State this weekend.
&ldquo;We spent 30 days in the &lsquo;bubble,&rsquo; right? And if you don&rsquo;t like each other, nobody wants to spend that amount of time together,&rdquo; Tang said. &ldquo;That team, we really liked each other. We loved being together. I mean, it was fun to be around them. I feel the same way around these guys. We could be in a bubble for 30 days and we&rsquo;ll be just fine. We&rsquo;re going to have a great time.&rdquo;
But nobody will have more fun than Princeton.
Just two years after watching everyone else&rsquo;s games, the Tigers need two wins to end a 48-year Final Four drought, two wins to become the first Ivy League team in the national semifinals since Penn in 1979 and two wins to cement their status as one of the greatest and most compelling advance-and-survive stories in tourney history.
And it might not have happened without Princeton&rsquo;s COVID experience.
&ldquo;Having to watch those games on TV, the tournament, hurt. I think looking back on it, it fueled us for the next year,&rdquo; Princeton guard Ryan Langborg said. &ldquo;I think this year, this Sweet 16 run so far, it&rsquo;s more than making up for it.&rdquo;

Princeton is on its deepest NCAA Tournament run since 1967 after surviving one of college basketball’s strangest journeys.

Princeton’s journey becomes face of March Madness’ COVID era

Longtime pro Jordan Crawford opens up to Spencer Davies about his unpleasant NBA experience, his Detroit connection and more.

Ex-NBA pro Jordan Crawford has a story to tell — and a whole lot more

PHILADELPHIA (AP) &mdash; Ben Simmons tilted his head in bemusement at the suggestion enough time had passed since his bitter split with the 76ers that his Philadelphia homecoming might be greeted with more affection than acrimony.
His look, which became an instant meme, had the appearance of a player who knew better.
The details of Simmons' long-building split with the Sixers are too fresh for that. Like the time former coach Brett Brown asked him to shoot just one 3-pointer per game, or coach Doc Rivers simply asked Simmons to report on time and participate in practice &mdash; Simmons did niehter.
Or when management and an entire fanbase that only wanted Simmons to embrace the city, play up to his contract and the talent that made him worthy of the No. 1 pick and chase championships with Joel Embiid could not get an honest answer on why he wanted out of Philadelphia.
Simmons knows that won't all be forgotten so fast.
&ldquo;You guys are going to make titles or headlines or whatever it is, but I&rsquo;m excited to go play,&rdquo; Simmons said.
Like it or not, Simmons is in for much worse than a scornful scowl from jilted Philly fans when he returns Tuesday night with the Brooklyn Nets to play the Sixers for the first time since a February trade.
The three-time All-Star <a href="https://apnews.com/article/brooklyn-nets-philadelphia-76ers-denver-nuggets-nba-sports-4b0e286599936f8029ce5ec2c2eb930a">watched from the bench</a> as he recovered from a back injury when the Nets played in Philly in March. Simmons drew derisive cheers from the moment he stepped on the court and was <a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/03/14/ben-simmons-dines-out-in-philly-after-getting-booed-at-sixers-game/?utm_source=P6Twitter&amp;utm_medium=SocialFlow&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow">heckled most of the game</a>.
&ldquo;I know what&rsquo;s coming,&rdquo; Simmons said to laughter following a win Sunday.
Just wait until he actually plays.
&ldquo;One thing about Philly fans, they&rsquo;re incredible,&rdquo; Simmons said. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re diehard Philly. Everything Philly, whatever it is. I respect that about the city. It&rsquo;s a sports town.&rdquo;
When Simmons sat out last season&rsquo;s home opener, fans mocked the absentee guard. The most popular form was a Mister Softee T-shirt with an ice cream swirl on Simmons&rsquo; head.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s great for him,&rdquo; Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll have his teammates behind him, he&rsquo;ll have a coach that believes in him and overall, we&rsquo;re looking forward to go play.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s still at times almost implausible to fathom that the 76ers and Simmons couldn&rsquo;t <a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/ben-simmons-jj-redick-podcast-shooting-layup-nets/veo3eypxhbort4svlulexqpn">patch up any differences</a> stemming from his refusal to take an open dunk in a Game 7 loss to Atlanta in the Eastern Conference semifinal.
Rivers and Embiid made passive criticisms of Simmons, and the relationship unraveled from there. Simmons had back issues and later said <a href="https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-76ers-brooklyn-nets-nba-entertainment-sports-032b7b7f897fb8d6adceb9eab88a720d">mental health woes</a> played a role in his trade demand in the <a href="https://twitter.com/APgelston/status/1573351303064977408">summer of 2021</a> that led to a contentious few days in training camp. Simmons was sent home for good, filed a grievance after the Sixers said he breached his contract (it was later <a href="https://apnews.com/article/brooklyn-nets-philadelphia-76ers-nba-sports-james-harden-58a598cadaefe1e56aca63210dfbd3d5?utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_medium=AP_Sports">settled in a confidential agreement</a> ) and then <a href="https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-76ers-brooklyn-nets-milwaukee-bucks-nba-sports-39696822486d3683a7d4d7a1fbf19e97">shipped to Brooklyn</a> in a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-76ers-brooklyn-nets-nba-sports-james-harden-2fea364a5cc35aa3515508d518cc08bc?utm_source=Twitter&amp;utm_medium=AP_Sports&amp;utm_campaign=SocialFlow">trade for All-Star James Harden</a>.
Simmons couldn&rsquo;t shake the drama in Brooklyn, either &mdash; though thanks to Kevin Durant and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/brooklyn-nets-nba-sports-race-and-ethnicity-700bac36ac5e889fdfec06894affff1e">Kyrie Irving</a>, there&rsquo;s plenty to go around in the borough &mdash; and has played only 12 games this season. He&rsquo;s rounding into form and coming off a season-high 22-point game against Memphis, his first 20-point game since for he played for the 76ers in the 2021 playoffs.
&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t had many opportunities to get the reps in, so I&rsquo;m getting my reps in now,&rdquo; Simmons said.
Simmons averaged 15.9 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.7 assists over four seasons with Philadelphia, which drafted him out of LSU, where he played only one season. His omnipresent headaches, such as his refusal to shoot beyond 15 feet &mdash; he was a 5-of-34 career 3-point shooter with the 76ers &mdash; outweighed his otherwise gifted defensive and playmaking talents.
Simmons made a surprise return to the Sixers shortly before last season opened but was promptly kicked out of practice and suspended for one game. The punishment didn&rsquo;t matter; the No. 1 pick of the 2016 draft never had any intention of playing.
He'll face a scuffling 76ers team playing without an injured Harden and Tyrese Maxey and now Embiid &mdash; his former All-Star partner and franchise cornerstone whose friendship has since dissolved.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of history, but there&rsquo;s really no history. It&rsquo;s just a regular game,&rdquo; Embiid said.
It&rsquo;s going to be loud and wild inside the Wells Fargo Center. Simmons insisted he won&rsquo;t get &ldquo;psyched out&rdquo; and vowed he will come to Philly ready to play.
Even if he feigns interest in what all the fuss is about.
&ldquo;Something going on?" he said, laughing.
__
AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in New York contributed to this story.

“You guys are going to make titles or headlines or whatever it is, but I’m excited to go play,” Ben Simmons said.

Ben Simmons preps for hostile return in first game in Philly

Spencer Davies details Jamal Cain's climb from Pontiac, Michigan to the NBA level through the lens of longtime friend Mychal Covington.

Outwork everybody: Two-way Heat rookie Jamal Cain catches you sleeping

MIAMI (AP) &mdash; The NBA made its voice heard during the 2020 election cycle. LeBron James&rsquo; &ldquo;More Than A Vote&rdquo; initiative, formed after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked a national protest movement, was everywhere. Players were leading get-out-the-vote marches and rallies, making themselves more visible politically than ever before.
This year, the approach is of a more grassroots variety.
All 30 teams are doing various things in advance of Tuesday&rsquo;s midterm election, like airing public service announcements, leading registration drives and having employees volunteer at polling locations. The league won't play any games on Election Day.
But the volume is lower than two years ago. The &ldquo;More Than A Vote&rdquo; campaign is dormant, <a href="http://morethanavote.org/">its URL says the site can't be reached</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/morethanavote/status/1480240992745885697?s=20&amp;t=2YCPWi0mHQ1lbdCS746MoA">its last tweet coming in early January</a>.
That said, Golden State guard Stephen Curry&rsquo;s still has a clear message: All elections, including Tuesday's that will decide control of Congress, very much matter.
&ldquo;I think the message has been broadcast loud and clear for a decade now in terms of how important these moments are,&rdquo; Curry said. &ldquo;Athletes can leverage their platforms to different politicians, different communities that are important to them, different causes, and that&rsquo;s happening.&rdquo;
Curry&rsquo;s 17 million Twitter followers have seen him post multiple times in recent weeks about voting &mdash; &ldquo;our future is on the ballot,&rdquo; he said. He also promoted a summit for young voters in California.
If there is a trend in the NBA in this election cycle, it&rsquo;s just that &mdash; getting young voters involved.
Francesca Pierre-Michel, an 18-year-old high school student in Miami, just voted for the first time last week.. She was with about 500 other students at an event organized by the Miami Heat that brought them all to an early voting location to cast ballots. They came in on a caravan of buses, the line snaking around the outside of the building.
The significance of the Heat getting involved wasn&rsquo;t lost on Pierre-Michel.
&ldquo;For me, that&rsquo;s not the reason why I went to go vote,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I feel like for the rest of my peers, seeing the Heat or their favorite basketball team being involved and encouraging young adults, that helps. I wanted to vote because I wanted to get my voice heard. I&rsquo;m 18. My vote really counts now.&rdquo;
The Heat arranged for the new voters to celebrate with pizza for lunch. Pierre-Michel also got the &ldquo;I Voted&rdquo; sticker, which has become her prized souvenir.
&ldquo;I put it on my binder,&rdquo; she said.
Boston guard Grant Williams also promoted &mdash; and participated in &mdash; early voting, flying home to North Carolina to make sure his ballot got cast last month.
&ldquo;I encourage everyone to go out and make a difference!! Our state and local elections are just as important if not more than the presidential so let&rsquo;s use that right for the better!!&rdquo; <a href="https://twitter.com/Grant2Will/status/1584961396176867329?s=20&amp;t=NgigKrquZYvovQmMXKYJxA">he tweeted.</a>
Taking a regular-season day off is a rarity for the NBA, which typically does not play on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and tries to avoid scheduling games on the day of the NCAA men&rsquo;s basketball championship game. It also has a few days off built around the All-Star Game, which takes place in February.
All 30 NBA teams are in action Monday, the night before Election Day, and there will be voting-themed messaging at many of those game sites.
In Chicago, the Bulls will have a player speak to fans about getting out to vote, and their opponent, the Toronto Raptors, will be wearing shirts encouraging voting, even though there is no national election in Canada on Tuesday.
Atlanta will encourage <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-race-and-ethnicity-atlanta-political-parties-5ca73a0e7aaa2022038281394e1ee6ea">Georgia voters to go to the polls</a> in a state where the race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker will help decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. In Dallas, the Mavericks partnered with several nonpartisan organizations to promote voter registration in a state where the governor's seat is on the ballot, as well as with Black churches to support &ldquo;Souls to the Polls&rdquo; efforts.
Curry believes that even if it's not as apparent as 2020, things are getting done.
&ldquo;Everybody has to do their part and you might not understand the ramifications of it in the moment but I think the trickle-down effect is really presenting itself in a loud way every year,&rdquo; Curry said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if it&rsquo;s because I&rsquo;m getting older, but it&rsquo;s more on my radar, front of mind, way more than it ever was. That matters.&rdquo;

All 30 teams are doing various things in advance of Tuesday’s midterm election. The league won't play any games on Election Day.

NBA teams' approach to Election Day more muted than 2020

When Franz Wagner heard his name called in the 2021 NBA Draft, he did not expect to be a lead ball-handler and playmaker this early in his career with the Orlando Magic.
&ldquo;No, not at all,&rdquo; Wagner told Basketball News in a locker-room interview in Cleveland. &ldquo;Obviously, it depends a lot on the situation and just what the team needs. I think all the players, but especially me, I think I'm very lucky to get so much responsibility so early. Obviously, it's a little learning on the fly too, but being able to [make] mistakes and [be] learning is the coolest thing for a young player.
&ldquo;It's just I haven't practiced a bunch at point guard, didn't grow up playing point guard, so some of the stuff is new to me that... I think I'm pretty fast at adjusting to stuff, but it's not like I grew up playing point guard all my life.&rdquo;
In three of the first five games of the year, Wagner has dished out five assists. If that doesn&rsquo;t quite jump off the page, maybe his counting numbers will: Franz is averaging 16.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 4.0 dimes per contest with a 24.4% usage rate.
Further, his 1 point per possession as a pick-and-roll ball-handler will illustrate his effectiveness. Just watch how he reads and reacts to certain situations in the half-court.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
Franz Wagner'ın Smacı &amp; &Ccedil;IĞLIĞI! 💥🗣️ <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NBA360?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NBA360</a> <a href="https://t.co/hsmyQEjc2q">pic.twitter.com/hsmyQEjc2q</a>
&mdash; NBA T&uuml;rkiye (@NBATurkiye) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBATurkiye/status/1583606211781349376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2022</a></blockquote>
Even against the defiant and aptly-named Tower City duo of Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley, the second-year forward went west often on his way to the paint and finished with his left and right hands on numerous possessions. To be fair, he was also blocked and challenged at the rim by his fellow draft classmate, but the fearlessness was on full display.
The 21-year-old exhibits impressive patience for his age, particularly with the timing of his decisions and his instincts. It&rsquo;s knowing when the screen is coming, how and when to use it and, ultimately, determining whether a pass or an attack is the best option.
&ldquo;I really do believe (it was) starting out early on in his years, playing in Germany, learning how to play basketball, and he's a student of the game,&rdquo; Orlando Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley said of Wagner&rsquo;s high basketball IQ. &ldquo;He loves to study film. He understands when to cut, when to move, how to move, the setups he has to use in a pick-and-roll. He does a great job of that, but it goes back to that studying of the game, and our development guys doing a phenomenal job with him.&rdquo;
<div class="mceNonEditable"><spike>&nbsp;</spike></div>
Wagner echoes Mosley&rsquo;s sentiments, giving the credit to all of his youth coaches in Berlin. In addition, he believes Juwan Howard&rsquo;s teachings at Michigan helped him mature in that department.
&ldquo;I was able to play some pick-and-roll there [in college]. And even there, I wasn't perfect and he let me make a couple mistakes, so I think that's super important for the confidence of a player,&rdquo; Wagner said. &ldquo;It's probably just from when I was really young. The coaches [in Germany], I think, did a really good job of making sure I know how to play, know kinda when to go, when to slow it down sometimes in games. And then I think it's just reps and a little bit of experience in playing in those situations for a little bit.&rdquo;
Terrence Ross is the veteran of this up-and-coming Orlando bunch, and he&rsquo;s watched Wagner&rsquo;s progression since he came in as a rookie. Assuming the point forward role is just another tool to add to the bag.
&ldquo;[He&rsquo;s adjusted to it] perfect, man &mdash; walked into it perfectly,&rdquo; Ross told Basketball News. &ldquo;He's really worked on his game, and you can kinda see it &mdash; it's speaking for itself. He's doing a lot of different things and he looks very natural and comfortable. He has a pro game and it's translated. Like, you didn't really see too much of that in college, but it translated a lot when he got to the pros. So it's just one of those natural things that you can't really teach.&rdquo;
Something else that looks unteachable is Wagner&rsquo;s newest unique turnaround jumper. Driving into the elbow area &mdash; again, usually on the left side of the floor &mdash; he&rsquo;ll stop in his tracks, plant, turn and fade away from 8-to-10 feet. It&rsquo;s almost reminiscent of a future Hall-of-Fame superstar that happens to hail from Germany.
&ldquo;You know, I wish I could take some type of credit for that, but he's seen and been around Dirk [Nowitzki] before,&rdquo; Mosley said. &ldquo;And I will tell you what &mdash; our player-development staff does such a phenomenal job with these guys. They have 'em ready before games, they're working after. They just do such a fantastic job of finding different wrinkles in the game of what he's capable of doing and using his height to his advantage.&rdquo;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-theme="dark">
"Franz Wagner doing the Dirk" <a href="https://t.co/IEgVK5ISNR">pic.twitter.com/IEgVK5ISNR</a>
&mdash; Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) <a href="https://twitter.com/OrlandoMagic/status/1583981428521730049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2022</a></blockquote>

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

&ldquo;It's just, I think, another good shot for me. I think it's tough for people to contest it. I know people are worried about me getting all the way to the rim; I think it's good to have counters to that,&rdquo; Wagner told Basketball News. &ldquo;And then, I think it's just a good shot. I'm a pretty tall player. Leaning back a little bit, it's hard to contest that.&rdquo;
Snakebitten by injuries and misfortune once again, the Magic are trying to turn a negative into a positive. Standout guard Cole Anthony is the latest to go down, as the team announced he sustained an oblique injury on his right side during Wednesday&rsquo;s game in Cleveland. He&rsquo;s the fourth player in Orlando&rsquo;s backcourt to get hurt, joining Jalen Suggs, Markelle Fultz and Gary Harris on the sidelines.
So what happens when you don&rsquo;t have point guards to organize your offense? You turn to your forwards to lead the pack &mdash; which is exactly what Mosley&rsquo;s had to do in back-to-back seasons with the Magic.
&ldquo;It changes the way we rotate a little bit, but what it also does &mdash; it provides opportunity,&rdquo; Mosley said prior to the team&rsquo;s game against the Cavaliers. &ldquo;I think I talked about it the other day &mdash; last year when Jalen went down and Cole went down, it provided us the opportunity to see Franz with the handle. And a similar situation happening now, you're gonna see the ball in Paolo [Banchero]'s hands a little bit more. So those are what they provide, the opportunity for other guys to do some things we might not see.&rdquo;
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Though the Magic have employed some large lineups by necessity, it also follows a league-wide trend of big-man combinations. For example, the Cavaliers started three 7-footers last season, the Toronto Raptors&rsquo; roster is littered with rangy wings that have plenty of height, and even the Minnesota Timberwolves have thrown Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert together in their frontcourt.&nbsp;
However, as we&rsquo;ve seen, having the personnel necessary to execute it successfully is the key.
&ldquo;It is about size and skill. I think it is very true, just guys that can make decisions,&rdquo; Mosley said. &ldquo;I don't care how small or big they are, you want decision-makers and high basketball IQs on the floor as much as you can have it.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I think one, defensively, I think you can switch ball-screens and stuff like that. I think it makes it hard for people to get easy shots. And then anytime you have skill and size on the floor, you can rebound better without losing good decision-making,&rdquo; Wagner added. &ldquo;Yeah, I think it's just good for any offense. At the end of the day, it's a skill game and if you have five players that can make decisions with the ball, it's really good.&rdquo;
Winless to this point, Orlando is learning good habits through unfortunate setbacks, and the players are developing not only individually, but also as a team. Wagner is encouraged with the direction the Magic are going, and eventually, it&rsquo;s going to all come together.
&ldquo;I think we're really confident. I think we've seen a lot of improvements already this season,&rdquo; Wagner said. &ldquo;Although we haven't won a game yet, I think we're playing good teams really close and we just gotta continue to build. Obviously, us players, we gotta continue to get better and keep building and doing what we've been doing.&rdquo;

Spencer Davies chats with Magic forward Franz Wagner about his pick-and-roll prowess, his high basketball IQ and more.

Franz Wagner showing his natural instincts as Magic's point forward

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) &mdash; Drew Timme wasn&rsquo;t ready to grow up, at least not without giving it one more shot at bringing an elusive national title to Gonzaga.
&ldquo;My heart&rsquo;s in Spokane,&rdquo; Timme said. &ldquo;And I wasn&rsquo;t ready to be an adult yet, I guess.&rdquo;
Timme is the leader of a Bulldogs team that should again be among the contenders to lift the championship trophy next April in Houston.
Gonzaga begins the season ranked No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25. Not being in the top spot in the rankings has been an outlier for the majority of Timme&rsquo;s career.
The standout forward played his first three seasons on Gonzaga teams that were ranked No. 1 in the country for more weeks than they were ranked below the top. The Zags were No. 1 for 30 weeks over the past three seasons, and were ranked lower for just 26 weeks.
&ldquo;We really believe if we stay true to who we are, the sky is the limit for us,&rdquo; Timme said. &ldquo;We demand a lot of ourselves.&rdquo;
Timme&rsquo;s decision to return was a bit of a coup for Gonzaga, especially after Chet Holmgren made the expected decision to enter the NBA after just one season in Spokane.
Timme will be joined by fellow returnees Julian Strawther, Rasir Bolton and Anton Watson to make up the core of this group of Zags.&nbsp;
Young guards Nolan Hickman and Hunter Sallis will take on bigger roles this season. And Gonzaga was active again in the transfer portal, landing Malachi Smith, the Southern Conference player of the year last season after he averaged 19.9 points at Chattanooga.
&ldquo;This team has a chance to do something special,&rdquo; Timme added. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be a fun, exciting, different team this year, and I&rsquo;m excited to be part of it.&rdquo;
Gonzaga went 28-4 last season before losing to Alabama in the NCAA Tournament. After reaching the national title game and losing in 2021, getting bounced in the Sweet Sixteen this year was a disappointing conclusion.
Timme averaged 18 points and nearly seven rebounds per game last season. In addition to his on-court skills, Timme&rsquo;s fun-loving personality has opened numerous name, image and likeness opportunities.
Timme has said his endorsements in Spokane, which include frequent comedic ads for a local casino, add up to what he might have earned as a second-round NBA draft pick.
&ldquo;He&rsquo;s the epitome of what&rsquo;s good right now with NIL and everything that&rsquo;s going on with the attention,&rdquo; Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve had some great characters over the years and also just incredible players, and he&rsquo;s certainly at the top of all those lists.&rdquo;
Few believes Timme&rsquo;s persona sometimes overshadows what he has accomplished on the floor.
The Zags are 90-7 in his first three seasons, including that trip to the national championship game last year. He is the reigning West Coast Conference player of the year and a two-time second-team AP All-America selection.
THE GAUNTLET
The gauntlet is what Timme has called a three-week span when Gonzaga plays some monster opponents. This season it begins with Michigan State in the Armed Forces Classic on Nov. 11, played on an aircraft carrier in San Diego. That&rsquo;s followed by a road game against No. 12 Texas on Nov. 16 and a date with No. 4 Kentucky at the Spokane Arena on Nov. 20. The Bulldogs play in the Phil Knight Legacy in Portland, Oregon, over the Thanksgiving holiday with a potential matchup against No. 7 Duke. They play No. 5 Baylor on Dec. 2 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They also play No. 20 Alabama on Dec. 17.
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think people give coach the credit for what he was able to pull off,&rdquo; Timme said. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how many people (would) do that because you could wind up losing all of them just as easily as you could win all of them.&rdquo;
UP FRONT
Gonzaga doesn&rsquo;t have a significant amount of depth in the front court aside from Timme and Watson. A big addition &mdash; literally and figuratively &mdash; was LSU transfer Efton Reid III. The 7-footer started all 34 games for LSU last season and averaged 6.3 points while playing about 20 minutes per game.
WCC FAVORITES
For the 11th year in a row, Gonzaga was selected by coaches as the preseason favorite to win the West Coast Conference regular season title. The Bulldogs will open conference play on Dec. 31 against Pepperdine.
BRING ON KENTUCKY
Gonzaga and Kentucky will play a six-game series beginning this year in Spokane. Gonzaga will go to Kentucky twice and there will be neutral site games in Nashville and Seattle before the series concludes in 2027 back in Spokane.&nbsp;

“We really believe if we stay true to who we are, the sky is the limit for us,” Drew Timme said. “We demand a lot of ourselves.”

Timme back as No. 2 Gonzaga seeks elusive national title

LOS ANGELES (AP) &mdash; Darvin Ham was still a fringe NBA player during the first two seasons of LeBron James' career. While James went on to forge the glittery path that's likely to make him the top scorer in league history this winter, Ham carved out a coaching career that has brought them together with the Los Angeles Lakers just in time for James' 20th season.
The Lakers hope that Ham's fresh leadership will produce big results for the 17-time NBA champions, because that's the most substantial change this franchise has made despite its dismal finish to last season.
&ldquo;This year, we&rsquo;ve turned the page,&rdquo; said Ham, the longtime Milwaukee assistant who took over for Frank Vogel. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re looking out through the windshield. Not so much through the rearview mirror.&rdquo;
None of the Lakers want to see what's behind them, and with good reason: LA went 33-49 last season and missed the playoffs despite being a hot preseason pick for title contention after adding Russell Westbrook to team up with James and Anthony Davis.
The Lakers were unable to move Westbrook and his $47.1 million contract in the summer, so they're returning with the Big Three surrounded by a mostly new supporting cast that's much younger and more athletic than last year's group of 30-something veterans.
But the biggest addition is the 49-year-old Ham, who paid plenty of dues on the way to his first head coaching job. His big messages to the Lakers are oriented around hard work, a team-first mentality for every player and an overall commitment to defense that waned last year after LA was an elite defensive team in its last championship season.
&ldquo;Every single day continues to get better and better,&rdquo; James said. &ldquo;The transparency that we have, from the day he was granted the head coaching job here, it&rsquo;s been great. We&rsquo;ve had multiple conversations. I think it was well overdue for him to be a head coach, and (I&rsquo;m) overjoyed to be part of his journey.&rdquo;
FIXING RUSS
After Vogel and Westbrook clashed, Ham landed one of the most glamorous coaching jobs in sports by setting out a plan to get the most out of the 2017 NBA MVP. Ham and Westbrook have stayed close since the coach's arrival, and both say the high-scoring guard is eager to play whatever role is required to rescue his career and his Lakers tenure.
&ldquo;Just being able to communicate and connect, to me, is already a positive,&rdquo; Westbrook said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve talked about many different things which don&rsquo;t always pertain to basketball. It creates a relationship.&rdquo;
Lakers fans are skeptical after Westbrook's much-derided play in 2021-22, but Ham is confident.
&ldquo;He&rsquo;s ours,&rdquo; Ham said. &ldquo;We love him, and we want him to do well.&rdquo;
INJURED A.D.
Davis' injuries are the single biggest reason Los Angeles has struggled for the past two seasons. The eight-time All-Star has played in only 81 of the Lakers' 160 games since they raised the trophy, and he managed to play together with James and Westbrook only 21 times last season.
Davis doesn't apologize for injuries, and he says he's doing everything possible to stay healthy this year. He scoffs at fans who &ldquo;want me to be this Greek god. I&rsquo;m not going to put that pressure on myself. I&rsquo;m going to go out there and compete at the highest level and do my best to help this team win.&rdquo;
LEBRON OVER KAREEM
If James stays healthy and typically productive, he will surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career scoring record by early February. Although James and Abdul-Jabbar have a frosty relationship, James said the chance to be mentioned with the great Lakers center will be &ldquo;just super-duper dope. When it gets here, I&rsquo;m not going to put too much pressure on it throughout the season, but it&rsquo;s going to be a historical moment, as long as my friends and family are there.&rdquo;
SUPPORTING CAST
The Lakers are likely to have at least eight newcomers on their roster, headlined by two dynamic veteran point guards: Patrick Beverley and Dennis Schr&ouml;der, who is back in Hollywood after a year away. Big men Damian Jones and Thomas Bryant also returned to the Lakers after stints elsewhere, while Troy Brown Jr., Juan Toscano-Anderson and Lonnie Walker IV will get a chance to become the dynamic wing scorers that James' Lakers have usually lacked. While the roster isn't objectively better than last year's group, GM Rob Pelinka believes it's more athletic and hopefully more durable.
STARTING FIVE?
Jones began the preseason as the Lakers' starting center alongside the Big Three and Kendrick Nunn, the point guard who missed the entirety of last season with a bone bruise. Davis' annual reluctance to play center could mean more playing time for Jones and Bryant, but Ham also might be successful in persuading Davis that the Lakers are at their best when Davis is dominating slower defenders as the tallest LA player on the floor.

The Lakers hope that Darvin Ham's fresh leadership will produce big results for the 17-time NBA champions.

LeBron, Lakers counting on revival from new coach Darvin Ham

HOUSTON (AP) &mdash; From the outside, it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for a Houston Rockets team that finished with the NBA&rsquo;s worst record for the past two seasons.
Inside the organization, however, optimism abounds because those last-place finishes have allowed Houston to stockpile talent as the Rockets look ahead.
Jalen Green, the second overall pick in the 2021 draft, is certain this rebuild will lead to success in the future.
&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a lot of young talent,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A lot of guys that want it to be a great team. We&rsquo;ve all got the mentality to do it. So yeah, it&rsquo;s going to happen sooner than later.&rdquo;
Green leads this extraordinarily young team that isn&rsquo;t predicted to do much this year but is laying the foundation to return to contention.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m super excited about this season,&rdquo; coach Stephen Silas said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m excited for a bunch of reasons. I&rsquo;m excited that we have a group that I&rsquo;ve been with for a little while and they have more experience than they had in the past.&rdquo;
The Rockets went 20-62 last season after winning just 17 games the season before. The nosedive came after the team reached the postseason for eight straight seasons before trading away all its stars and most of its veterans, including James Harden.
A year after opening the season with four 19-year-olds on the roster, the Rockets will again field one of the youngest teams in the league. There are 10 players who are 21 or younger, including three starters in Green and Alperen Sengun &mdash; both 20 &mdash; and 19-year-old rookie Jabari Smith, Jr., who was the third overall pick in this year&rsquo;s draft.
And while they likely won&rsquo;t be very good again this year, their youth and speed could make them a difficult matchup for some teams, Silas said.
&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to use our quickness and athleticism on the offensive end, but we&rsquo;re going to use it on the defensive end as well,&rdquo; he said. "So look for improvement on both ends.&rdquo;
FITTING IN
Smith is ready to contribute immediately after a freshman year at Auburn where the power forward averaged 16.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and two assists per game to win SEC freshman of the year, All-SEC first-team and second-team All-America honors.
He believes the youth of the team and his skills will allow him to fit in seamlessly.
&ldquo;With my defense, my versatility, I feel like with me being able to play the five, being able to play four, I feel like I&rsquo;ll be able to help with spacing for Jalen &hellip; to work,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Also, just adding that spark on offense. Just overall playing hard and just my will to win will help us tremendously.&rdquo;
FIRST-ROUNDERS
The Rockets didn&rsquo;t have a first-round draft pick from 2016-20 but have had six in the last two drafts thanks to their bad finishes and trades.
Smith was one of three first-round picks the Rockets had in this year&rsquo;s draft. Houston added LSU forward Tari Eason with the 17th pick, which the team received as part of the trade for Harden, and picked up Kentucky&rsquo;s TyTy Washington at No. 29 in the opening round.
Along with nabbing Green last year, they added Usman Garuba with the 23rd pick and Josh Christopher at No. 24 in the first round.
THE ELDER STATESMAN
The Rockets have just three players over age 30 on their roster and the only one expected to start is 33-year-old Eric Gordon.
Entering his 15th season and seventh in Houston, he&rsquo;s the only holdover from the team&rsquo;s years of success. He&rsquo;s certainly still productive on the court after averaging 13.4 points last season but his greatest value to this team might be his leadership off it.
It&rsquo;s a role that Gordon has embraced.
&ldquo;For me is it&rsquo;s all about setting an example day to day and being consistent,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Sometimes talking doesn&rsquo;t solve it. With so many young guys you need to set that example.&rdquo;

“I’m super excited about this season,” Rockets head coach Stephen Silas said. “I’m excited for a bunch of reasons."

Rockets far from contention, but excited about young talent

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) &mdash; Doc Rivers is at ease using his platform as an NBA coach to fight bigotry and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-lakers-orlando-magic-milwaukee-bucks-covid-nba-a0eb7661e235e49472f8fe634e5694f7">racial injustice</a>, campaign for politicians he believes in and advocate for social change on themes ranging from poverty to police brutality.
Sometimes, his speeches sound like they were delivered by someone running for office. Might the 60-year-old Rivers, the son of a Chicago police officer, someday stump for change as an actual politician?
&ldquo;Oh God, no. I wouldn&rsquo;t win, number one,&rdquo; Rivers said. &ldquo;And number two, that&rsquo;s not what I want to be.&rdquo;
Rivers is fine with wading into political waters &mdash; and the older he gets and the more he learns about modern issues and Black history with deep meaning to him, the more he speaks out. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/clippers/la-sp-election-doc-rivers-20161109-story.html">At Donald Trump</a>. At police misconduct. At the horrors of racism that have shadowed him his entire life. At the idea that, even as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, it can still be hard to find his place as a Black man in America.
&ldquo;When you hear, &lsquo;America first,&rsquo; that scares me, because I&rsquo;m a Black man and that&rsquo;s not including me,&rdquo; Rivers said last week in an interview with The Associated Press. &ldquo;I want us to all be included. I want us all to function with each other.&rdquo;
Rivers has become an agent of change in the NBA and found his voice as an activist, trying to contribute perhaps more to the league than he has already, first as an All-Star guard and then with a coaching career that includes the 2008 championship with Boston and a spot this year on the list of the <a href="https://www.nba.com/news/nba-75-top-15-coaches-league-history">15 Greatest Coaches in NBA History</a>. That outreach starts at home &mdash; or perhaps, on this point, on the road &mdash; where Rivers used training camp not just as the usual time to rehash X&rsquo;s and O&rsquo;s but as a daily history class. The Sixers practiced at The Citadel, the military college where tanks and jets and plaques dedicated to prisoners of wars dot the campus, an education all part of Rivers&rsquo; plan to squeeze more out of camp than basketball.
&ldquo;All of it is good for us,&rdquo; Rivers said.
The Sixers usually hold camp at their New Jersey complex but Rivers wanted to strengthen team bonding with a road trip. The Sixers gathered last week for team dinners, played card and video games, and had serious conversations, the type of day-to-day activities largely shelved the last two seasons because of COVID-19 protocols.
&ldquo;When you have camp at home, you don&rsquo;t get that,&rdquo; Rivers said. &ldquo;They go home at the end of practice and they don&rsquo;t spend time with each other.&rdquo;
Rivers was a guard with the Knicks in the early 1990s when the team held camp at the College of Charleston. Back then, coach Pat Riley made the players walk from the team hotel to the arena.
The 76ers stuck to the team bus last week.
Rivers and the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CjNiiDBOzeX/?hl=en">Sixers organized field trips to the Old Slave Mart Museum</a>, often staffed by individuals who trace their history to the enslaved people of Charleston, and to the Avery Institute of Afro-American History and Culture. Citadel President Gen. Glenn Walters and retired professor and historian Bernard Powers both spoke to the team.
&ldquo;My people, my African people coming here, the people that gave up their lives for us to be able to be in this position, it was good to learn about all of that,&rdquo; said center Joel Embiid, who was born in Cameroon and recently <a href="https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-76ers-nba-sports-basketball-joel-embiid-84c7239b1fd373687d0e4efba7688623">became a U.S. citizen</a>.
Powers said by phone that he talked to the Sixers at their team hotel about such topics as the role Charleston played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the slave revolt of 1739 and the descendants of enslaved people known as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lawsuits-georgia-property-taxes-savannah-2037b8ba08c5aad82cc3ebbb89849874">Gullah</a>, who live in small island communities scattered over 425 miles (684 kilometers) of the Southern Atlantic U.S. coast.
&ldquo;This was the port where a greatly disproportionate number of Africans were brought here,&rdquo; Powers said. &ldquo;This place, more than any other, might be very likely a source of their ancestry. They could think about perhaps having a personal connection to this place.&rdquo;
Rivers believed the experiences resonated with a team full of 20-somethings all the way up to coaching staff veterans.
&ldquo;Teaching American history is under assault right now. And it&rsquo;s not Black history or teaching about slavery, it&rsquo;s American history,&rdquo; Rivers said. &ldquo;And so I was amazed. The first thing that I was taught the other day was, how many players, and not only players, coaches, came up to me and said, &lsquo;Wow, I never was taught that in my history class.&lsquo;&rdquo;
Rivers referenced learning about shameful historic chapters such as the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tulsa-massacres-race-and-ethnicity-af589e8c37a31bcd30f0f7977a9ca4c0">Tulsa Race Massacre</a> as an adult rather than learning about the white mobs in school as one reason he has pushed for more Black history to be taught in all schools.
&ldquo;You should know your history. You really should,&rdquo; Rivers said. &ldquo;Could you imagine if we were not taught the history of Germany and the Holocaust? There really is no difference. I want to make sure we&rsquo;re taught the same history.&rdquo;
History matters, but it's today&rsquo;s headlines that trouble Rivers.
Before he took questions from reporters after Wednesday&rsquo;s practice at The Citadel, Rivers addressed the death of a 14-year-old shot in the chest near a northwest Philadelphia high school athletic field. The <a href="https://apnews.com/article/shootings-philadelphia-710cc55cdb89fa8a946db84d3cb74924">shooting occurred</a> hours after Mayor Jim Kenney signed an executive order banning guns and deadly weapons from the city&rsquo;s indoor and outdoor recreation spaces including parks, basketball courts and pools.
Rivers, as he has in the past, urged for stricter laws on firearms.
&ldquo;Obviously, if anybody knew the answer, we would try to find the answer there, you know, other than taking guns off the street,&rdquo; Rivers told reporters. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s too political. So we&rsquo;ve got to figure it out.&rdquo;
Rivers mentioned a few times during his AP interview that he doesn&rsquo;t want to get &ldquo;too political&rdquo; but matters of state matter to him. He was invited before the 2020 election to <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2020/11/02/doc-rivers-joe-biden-rally-philadelphia-76ers-donald-trump-election/">speak at a Joe Biden rally</a> after the <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/76ers/news/presidential-candidate-joe-biden-quotes-76ers-doc-rivers">Democratic presidential candidate used Rivers&rsquo; words</a> on the Jacob Blake police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in his own speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, calling for racial unity. Rivers later <a href="https://apnews.com/article/nba-joel-embiid-doc-rivers-philadelphia-76ers-michael-jordan-fdc9df2eb2206acf110a02d6d51d5c5d">decried the riotous Jan. 6 attack</a> on the U.S. Capitol, though he said at the time that &ldquo;democracy will prevail.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t used to be&rdquo; political, Rivers said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always been aware of politics, I&rsquo;ve always been involved. But what got me involved is, we have this separation of race now, of pitting races against each other.&rdquo;
Rivers <a href="https://coalition.nba.com/about/">serves on the board</a> of the NBA Social Justice Coalition. The advocacy organization called members of Congress in support of an executive order designed to improve accountability in policing. Rivers was in Washington when <a href="https://apnews.com/article/death-of-george-floyd-biden-covid-health-law-enforcement-agencies-10587efaf2a8858261ad00c92a575aef">Biden signed the order</a> on the second anniversary of George Floyd&rsquo;s death at the hands of Minneapolis police. The order was meant to reflect the challenges in addressing racism, excessive use of force and public safety when Congress is deadlocked on stronger measures.
&ldquo;I think we need police reform,&rdquo; Rivers said. &ldquo;Our training has to be better. The thing that bothers me is that everyone should want that, including the police.&rdquo;
The Sixers coach said today&rsquo;s NBA players are more politically aware and involved in societal change than when he played in the 1980s and '90s but he wanted more of the wealthy players, especially ones with millions of social media followers, to speak up on thorny current events. Rivers talked to the Sixers about the power of voting &mdash; the NBA this season scheduled no games on <a href="https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-nba-sports-voter-registration-827945d5b94f984baa992d71809a1c6b">Nov. 8, which is Election Day</a> &mdash; but won&rsquo;t force his players to vote.
But he can make them listen.

Doc Rivers is at ease using his platform as an NBA coach to fight bigotry and racial injustice.

76ers' Doc Rivers merges Black history lessons into camp

HOUSTON (AP) &mdash; The Houston Rockets still have a long way to go after finishing with the league&rsquo;s worst record for the last two seasons as they embarked on a complete rebuild.
This season is likely to be another tough one for this extraordinarily young team, but one of its rising stars issued a guarantee ahead of training camp.
&ldquo;This year the Houston Rockets will be better than last year,&rdquo; Jalen Green, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 draft, said Monday. &ldquo;If we buy and stay together and I think the team will take off.&rdquo;
These Rockets aren&rsquo;t banking on winning a lot of games or vying for a playoff spot. What they are focused on is improvement and building toward the future.
General manager Rafael Stone made it clear that this team won&rsquo;t be one that anyone can take lightly.
&ldquo;If we are a team that is very hard to play at both ends of the court ... I think for a team like us, for a young and up-and-coming team, I think that&rsquo;s the measure of success,&rdquo; he said.
The Rockets went 20-62 last season, and just 17 the season before. They aren&rsquo;t predicted to have a much better record this year, but coach Stephen Silas needs to see growth every time his team takes the court.
&ldquo;There has to be a level of improvement,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The team that we see next Sunday against San Antonio and the way that we play is going to be different than the team that we see post-All-Star break. So having some level of patience, obviously. But there has to be steady, marked improving as the season goes on.&rdquo;
A year after opening the season with four 19-year-olds on the roster, the Rockets will again field one of the youngest teams in the league. Their training camp roster features seven players who are 20 or younger, including three starters in Green and Alperen Sengun &mdash; both 20 &mdash; and 19-year-old rookie Jabari Smith, Jr., who was the third overall pick in this year&rsquo;s draft.
Kevin Porter Jr., who at 22 is like a big brother to others, loves the youth on the team.
&ldquo;Our team is filled with young guys and we&rsquo;re filled with fire,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We want to get better and want to be the best. I think that all of us being around the same age and working together is a big part of our chemistry and growth.&rdquo;
GETTING DEFENSIVE
It might take some time for Smith to settle in offensively in the NBA, but the Rockets are convinced he&rsquo;ll make an immediate impact on defense.
&ldquo;He is such a gifted defensive player right now ... him as a defender is what I&rsquo;m so, so excited about,&rdquo; Silas said. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s the thing that I&rsquo;m going to really hone in on him with because as I said ... last year at the end of the season, our defense needs to be better. And he&rsquo;s a big piece to that.&rdquo;
STILL GROWING
Green spent the offseason trying to add some bulk to his slim frame, proudly noting he&rsquo;s &ldquo;officially 182 pounds." The 6-foot-6 guard said he played at just 172 pounds as a rookie, but spent a lot of time in the weight room and hired a personal chef that had him eating four meals a day to beef up.
Smith, meanwhile, believes he might have gotten taller since he was last measured before the draft. Listed as 6-10, Smith said both he and his father, former NBA player Jabari Smith Sr. think he might have added at least an inch.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m really curious to see if I have, but I think I have,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I feel taller.&rdquo;
LEARNING THE LANGUAGE
Sengun, who is from Turkey, conducted his interviews in Turkish with a translator during his rookie season. On Monday, he sat down to meet the media and announced that he&rsquo;d answer questions in English, with his translator there in case he needed a hand.
The center took some classes for a couple of months last year to work on his English, but he said his learning was helped much more by simply practicing with his new friends in Houston.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a shy guy,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m always talking, and I can make mistakes. But that&rsquo;s it doesn&rsquo;t matter. I don&rsquo;t care actually.&rdquo;

The young Houston Rockets team is focused on improvement and building toward the future behind Jalen Green and Jabari Smith, Jr.

Young Houston Rockets focused on growth and improvement

It's been three years since Kevin Durant left the Golden State Warriors in a bittersweet fashion, which left two championships in the rubble of a rocky exit for the superstar scorer. Time has passed and it seems feelings have healed.
In the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-curry-kevin-durant-politics-activism-rolling-stone-cover-preview-1234589722/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">most recent feature from Rolling Stone magazine</a>, Steph Curry revealed that the Warriors not only explored the possibility of a KD trade, but he was interested and open to the idea as well.
&ldquo;I was never hesitant," Curry <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-curry-kevin-durant-politics-activism-rolling-stone-cover-preview-1234589722/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. "The idea of playing with KD and knowing who he is as a person, from our history in those three years, I think KD&rsquo;s a really good dude. I think he is misunderstood. I think he has had certain things happen in his life that hurt his ability to trust people around him, in a sense of making him feel safe at all times. So all of those things, I understand, having played with him and gotten to know him. I love that dude."
Steph went on to highlight that he believes anyone would have given a KD blockbuster serious thought.
"And if anybody&rsquo;s saying that you wouldn&rsquo;t entertain that conversation &mdash; no disrespect to anybody on our team &mdash; but you don&rsquo;t know how things work," Curry <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-curry-kevin-durant-politics-activism-rolling-stone-cover-preview-1234589722/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
Steph also talked to his brother Seth about the possibilites that a KD trade would bring up, and the latter touched on the obvious with Rolling Stone if a Brooklyn Nets and Warriors deal were to go down.
&ldquo;Who knows? I might be in the trade with him,&rdquo; Seth <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-curry-kevin-durant-politics-activism-rolling-stone-cover-preview-1234589722/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pondered</a>.
Steph even discussed the possibility of a KD trade with celebrity Snoop Dogg. He agreed with Snoop that the best move for him was to stay with the Nets, as the haul of a trade required to move for him would have left whatever team he went to in a much different state than he evisioned.
&ldquo;Man, he thinks that they&rsquo;re gonna go to teams &mdash; like if he went to Phoenix &mdash; that they&rsquo;re gonna be the same team if he&rsquo;s there,&rdquo; Curry told Snoop.
Of the Boston Celtics, Steph said, &ldquo;They have a little bit of everything, but they would have to deal with the organizational transition to get rid of Jaylen [Brown]. He&rsquo;s such a pivotal piece... If they would have done that..." (Curry broke apart his fingertips in an explosion.)

Steph Curry confirms that the Golden State Warriors explored the possibility of a Kevin Durant trade.

College of Faith Mighty Believers