NBA Delays Releasing Ja Morant Gun Investigation Results

N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver on Thursday said that the league would wait until the conclusion of the finals to announce the findings of its latest investigation into the behavior of Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant, as well as any potential discipline of him.

On May 13, Morant appeared to brandish a firearm in public for the second time in just over two months, prompting the investigation. Silver declined to say whether Morant would be available to play for the Grizzlies at the start of next season.

“I would say we probably could’ve brought it to a head now,” Silver said at a news conference in Denver before Game 1 of the championship series between the Nuggets and the Miami Heat. “But we made the decision, and I believe the players’ association agrees with us, that it would be unfair to these players and these teams in the middle of the series to announce the results of that investigation.”

Morant is a two-time All-Star and already one of the league’s most exciting players at 23 years old. In March, the N.B.A. suspended him for eight games without pay for conduct detrimental to the league after he appeared in an Instagram Live video “holding a firearm in an intoxicated state” while visiting a nightclub near Denver, according to a league statement. Soon after the video’s streaming, Morant left the team and checked into a counseling facility in Florida. Following his return to the Grizzlies, Morant told reporters that he had spent his time at the facility learning how to better deal with stress and Improve himself.

But last month, a new Instagram Live video appeared to show Morant flashing a gun, this time while riding in a vehicle. The Grizzlies, who had already been eliminated from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, quickly suspended Morant from all team activities pending the league’s review of the video.

On Thursday, Silver said the league had “uncovered a fair amount of additional information,” but he did not elaborate.

Silver was also asked whether he thought the league’s initial eight-game suspension had sent a strong enough message to Morant. At the time, Silver said, Morant seemed “heartfelt and serious” in his conversations with league officials.

“But I think he understood that it wasn’t about his words, that it was going to be about his future conduct,” Silver said. “So, I guess, in hindsight, I don’t know. If it had been a 12-game suspension instead of an eight-game suspension, would that have mattered?”

He added: “It seemed appropriate at the time. Maybe, by definition, to the extent — we’ve all seen the video. It appears he’s done it again. So I guess you could say, maybe not. But I don’t think we yet know what it will take to change his behavior.”

The N.B.A. has penalized players for similar types of acts. During the 2009-10 season, for example, Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards was suspended 50 games for bringing guns into the team’s locker room, which violates league policy. Arenas, who was a three-time All-Star at the time, also appeared to make light of the situation by making finger gun gestures at a game while the league was still investigating his behavior.

Silver described Morant as “a fine young man” who has “clearly made some mistakes.”

“But he’s young,” Silver said, “and I’m hoping now that once we conclude at the end of our process what the appropriate discipline is, that it’s not just about the discipline, that it’s about what we, the players’ association, his team, and he and the people around him are going to do to create better circumstances going forward. I think that’s what’s ultimately most important here.”

Sopan Deb contributed reporting from Denver.

In the N.B.A. Playoffs, Flopping Is a Welcome Sideshow

In the 2023 N.B.A. playoffs, LeBron James got in on the act. And Stephen Curry, and the league’s most valuable player, Joel Embiid. Kyle Lowry keeps trying, but oh does he need help. Even Nikola Jokic has taken a bow.

Yes, this postseason has showcased the beauty of basketball. The upstarts, upsets and dominance. The Miami Heat putting the kibosh on the comeback of comebacks in the Eastern Conference finals. But it has also been marred by players of all stripes — ahem, Malik Monk, the sixth man for the Sacramento Kings — falling and flailing as if stung by a cattle prod.

All in desperate attempts to hoodwink referees into calling fouls.

Welcome to the National Basketball Floppers Association.

Flopping isn’t new, of course. In the 1970s, Red Auerbach, the Boston Celtics’s fabled and curmudgeonly leader, railed on national television against the “Hollywood acting” that was sullying the game.

“N.B.A. floppers are almost always overacting,” said Anthony Gilardi, a Hollywood acting coach. “You watch these guys with their pratfalls and their on-court stunts, and it’s so over-the-top cringeworthy as to be hilarious.”

I asked Gilardi to watch video clips of sham playoff tumbles and offer an exam. He had seen most of the plays and knew the subject well. He’s a Celtics fan who has seen all of Marcus Smart’s greatest flops.

There’s a vast difference, Gilardi said, between players reacting to contact in a way that creates an illusion that a foul has occurred and being so obvious that every fan in the arena can tell the reaction is fake. It is the difference between what we see from an Oscar nominee and an actor on a run-of-the-mill soap opera.

“In soap operas, it’s often the case you can absolutely tell they are acting,” he said, emphasizing the word the way Heat guard Max Strus would a shoulder bump. “There’s not enough subtlety to create the illusion.”

Gilardi offered a few suggestions for ways hardwood entertainers could refine their technique.

Do all of these, and the deception won’t be so evident as to embarrass officials or raise howls from fans, cackling criticism from television analysts or a clampdown by the suits in the league office.

“If they worked on this the right way,” Gilardi said, “there’s a world where some of these flops would be so good, they might not even be considered flops. Now that is good acting.”

After seeing the N.B.A. try, and fail, to stop flopping for over a decade, today’s players can’t seem to help themselves. I don’t have a number to back this up, but the eye test tells you all you need to know. Flopping pervades the playoffs like tumbleweeds on a dusty desert plain.

Google “Mat Ishbia Playoffs Ridiculous Flop” and you’ll see even the billionaire owner of the Phoenix Suns take a courtside dive.

Bearing witness to the Warriors’ flop-heavy loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference semifinals, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr made a personal plea to end the “gamesmanship” and canny ploys “to fool the refs.”

His solution: Have N.B.A. referees call technical fouls against floppers, as officials do in the international game. The league is now reportedly considering a test run at enforcement during summer exhibitions.

I say, not so fast.

N.B.A. referees have a hard enough time deciding whether James Harden’s carrying the ball 10 steps on his way to a layup is worth calling a travel. Now they would have the added burden of deciding, in real time, whether a foul was tried-and-true or hardwood chicanery. Odds of success? Slim.

And remember: 11 years ago, the league announced a plan to fine players for flops. Handing down $5,000 fines to obsessively ambitious, multimillionaire athletes who would walk on shards of glass to win a championship didn’t quite do the trick.

The flop, part acting and part competition, is now baked into the N.B.A. It shows off athleticism and skill, a deep thirst for winning as well as showmanship — attributes that define the league. It’s all part of the spectacle.

So why not have some fun with it? Maybe, instead of resisting and demonizing the flop, we should embrace it — but demand better acting.

Take, for instance, the back-to-back theatrics delivered by Jokic and James late in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals. James’s performance was a thing to behold.

After Jokic brushed against him — yes, brushed — while attempting a pass, James broke out the vaudeville. His face contorted into a grimace. He twisted his 6-foot-9, 250-pound body, backpedaled, leaped backward and slid halfway across the width of the court until he landed at the feet of courtside spectators, spilling the drink of one who even offered James a towel. He offered a syrupy thank you in response.

What a charade!

But the flop worked. A foul was called on Jokic and the ball awarded to the Lakers. James leaped up, alert, energetic and showing not an ounce of injury. In a flash, he took an inbounds pass and dribbled upcourt.

Jokic and the Denver Nuggets still won that game, and swept that series. With the dominant way Jokic has been playing to get his team to the franchise’s first N.B.A. finals, the concept of stopping him seems like pure theater.

MLB Takes Over Padres Broadcasts After Bally Sports Misses Payment

In a move that could signify the beginning of a new era in how Major League Baseball games are distributed, the league is taking over production and distribution of all San Diego Padres games starting with the team’s game against the Miami Marlins on Wednesday night.

The move, which was announced late Tuesday night, was made after Diamond Sports Group, a subsidiary of the Sinclair Broadcast Group that operates under the name Bally Sports, failed to make a payment to the team that had its grace period end on Tuesday.

“While we’re disappointed that Diamond Sports Group failed to live up to their contractual agreement with the club, we are taking this opportunity to reimagine the distribution model,” Noah Garden, M.L.B.’s chief revenue officer, said in a statement.

Garden said M.L.B. would remove blackouts of local games and expand the reach of Padres games by more than two million homes. The games will be available free through MLB.com, Padres.com and M.L.B.’s streaming app through Sunday and then will be available to in-market fans for $19.99 a month, a discount from the full price of M.L.B.’s streaming services. The games will also be distributed on television through cable services like Spectrum, Cox and DirecTV.

According to the new arrangement under M.L.B., the team’s primary TV broadcasters, Don Orsillo, Mark Grant and Bob Scanlan, will continue in their roles, as will the team’s radio broadcast crew of Jesse Agler and Tony Gwynn Jr.

M.L.B. had been preparing for this to happen, as regional sports networks across sports have struggled in accurate years and Diamond Sports Group, which controls the broadcast rights of 14 teams, declared bankruptcy in March.

At a meeting in April at M.L.B.’s offices in Manhattan, Commissioner Rob Manfred discussed the league’s desire to have Diamond meet its financial commitments, but also made it clear that the league was ready to move on without it. In declaring the league “ready to go,” he said they had prepared “down to details like what’s the graphics package going to look like on the broadcast.”

Part of that was hiring Billy Chambers, a former Fox Sports executive, as executive vice president for local media, a new position. In M.L.B.’s statement about the takeover of Padres broadcasts, Chambers said the league would be able to Improve picture quality on the broadcasts and offer better access during games.

“Usually when you have a crisis, there’s also sort of an opportunity attached to it,” Manfred said in April. “The opportunity that I see in the Diamond crisis is the opportunity to rework the media model.”

Manfred said, however, that he believed cable broadcasts would continue to exist in some form outside of streaming because “the Rob Manfreds of the world will go into their coffin gripping their cable remote control.”

“I know where everything is. And you know what, I kind of like that,” he said.

It is unclear whether the Padres are the first domino in a series of league takeovers, but the situation may play out fairly quickly. Diamond has missed payments and not honored its full commitments to four other teams besides the Padres — Cincinnati, Texas, Arizona and Cleveland — and has asked a bankruptcy judge to reduce the fees it owes teams to reflect a changing market, with a decision potentially coming Wednesday or Thursday.

In a statement about the missed payment and the termination of rights, Diamond claimed the company had the cash to honor its commitments but chose not to make the payment to San Diego because “the economics of the Padres’ contract were not aligned with market realities.”

Diamond’s statement said M.L.B. had refused the group’s offer to renegotiate the direct-to-consumer rights for all of the teams in its portfolio, but said the group intended to keep broadcasting games for other teams under contract.