When Jrue Holiday was a teenager, he needed to make some extra money.

He had a knack for bagging groceries, arranging cans of soup alongside bags of grapes to maximum efficiency. So, he went to his mother, Toya, the athletic director at his school, Campbell Hall in Los Angeles, and asked if he could apply for a job at his local grocer Vons.

“I wanted to go to the movies and get something to eat and not look lame. I had to have a little extra chicken on me,” Holiday said. “So, I tried. But my mom was like, ‘No, school is your job.’ So I ended up not having a job.”

But, when the women’s tennis team was looking for a manager, Toya volunteered her son. At the time, Holiday couldn’t tell a drop shot from a kick serve.

Holiday was one of the best basketball players in the country, but this was a new experience. He was no longer a star player. His job was to grab sandwiches and pack bags. He learned to sacrifice and do the things no one else wanted to do for the betterment of the team.

“We got out of school early, we’d go to Santa Barbara all the time, and I’m around a bunch of women, so I’m not mad,” Holiday said. “I got a state ring out of it. It was fun.”

As tennis manager, Holiday wasn’t on the court, so he had to find ways to build bonds away from it….

INDIANAPOLIS — There isn’t too much scoring in the NBA — 70-point games and record-breaking team offenses be damned.

The players don’t like to see what happened to Joel Embiid, or even Tyrese Haliburton, but they support the spirit of a league requirement for games played to determine eligibility for awards like MVP.

Clippers or Celtics? Joker, Embiid or even … LeBron? And who wants to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver for a day?

The Athletic again put on its collective hard hat, grabbed a lunch pail and jumped head first into All-Star media day, a savage, unruly affair in which players sit up on a dais, behind a gate, having questions shouted at them by YouTube influencers, goofballs on top of other goofballs’ shoulders, rappers, WNBA players and, yes, traditional reporters.

From the practice court at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Joe Vardon, Sam Amick, David Aldridge and Mike Vorkunov spoke to 18 players, most of them All-Stars, a couple from the Skills Challenge, 3-Point or Slam Dunk contests, and one second gentleman, to canvas them on who’s the NBA’s best player, the best team and what about the league needs to change.

Not everyone polled answered every question, but they all had plenty of ideas:

Who is the best player in the league?

Nikola Jokić, Joel Embiid — 3
Luka…

INDIANAPOLIS — Engraved on the inner side of Sabrina Ionescu’s debut signature sneakers, the Sabrina 1, are two words written in capital letters: ANYONE, ANYWHERE.

The message serves as a reminder to Ionescu and those who wear her shoes that dreams are limitless, no matter where someone comes from or what they look like. But even Ionescu, who once just dreamed of being the best player in her basketball-crazed family, wasn’t dreaming something this big.

She now is one of the best basketball players in the world, and her dominance on the hardwood with the New York Liberty has manifested into history on her feet. Ionescu’s signature sneakers are designed for men and women, marking the first time Nike has ever made a unisex shoe for one of its female basketball players.

Ionescu’s sneakers have been a hit among her WNBA counterparts and the young girls who look up to them. They’ve become one of the most popular sneakers in the NBA, as well.

“It was obviously something that we targeted,” Ionescu said. “Going in, it was just understanding the versatility of the shoe and what it is that we were trying to accomplish.

“Bridging the gap between women’s and men’s sports, and being able to do that by creating a unisex line that was available for everyone, that was…

Former NBA player Scot Pollard has been at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., since early February in need of a heart transplant. On Friday, his wife said he’ll finally get just that.

“Scot wanted me to let everyone know that the pre-heart transplant hair is gone, it’s go time!” Pollard’s wife Dawn posted on X. “Please keep the prayers coming for Scot, the surgeons, for the donor and his family who lost their loved one. This donor gave the most amazing gift of life and we are forever grateful.”

Scot wanted me to let everyone know that the pre-heart transplant hair is gone, it’s go time! Please keep the prayers coming for Scot, the surgeons, for the donor and his family who lost their loved one. This donor gave the most amazing gift of life and we are forever grateful pic.twitter.com/OQRGDma5e6

— Dawn Pollard (@DawnMPollard) February 16, 2024

The 6-foot-11, 260-pound Pollard was admitted to the intensive care unit after a genetic condition likely triggered by a virus he contracted in 2021 caused his heart to beat an extra 10,000 times per day, according to the Associated Press. Pollard’s father died at 54 years old, when Scot was 16, with the same condition.

“I’m staying here until I get a heart,” Pollard told the the…

LAS VEGAS — This week, the NBA will descend upon Las Vegas in full force. Even for a city used to spectacle, it’s bringing something novel along with it. For the first time in decades, the league will hold real, live, actual — yes, they count — regular-season games in Sin City. It is a step into the breach unlike any other for the NBA.

Professional basketball has come to Vegas before. There have been exhibition games, the 2007 NBA All-Star Game, NBA Summer League, even a few Utah Jazz games in the 1980s, a playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers in 1992, the NBA G League Ignite franchise since 2020 and, for the last six seasons, WNBA games. But the NBA has never put a product on display quite like the one it will on Thursday afternoon when the NBA In-Season Tournament semifinals tip off at T-Mobile Arena.

While it is a seminal moment for the league and the city, it is also one open to much conjecture and forecasting. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has tiptoed around expansion in recent years, and Las Vegas has come up as a potential home for a new franchise. This week will likely do little to silence those rumblings.

In July, Silver called Vegas “our 31st franchise;” now, everyone is waiting to see if Vegas will actually be the league’s…

Editor’s note: This story addresses mental health and addiction and may be difficult to read or emotionally upsetting. 

AVALON, N.J. — Phil Martelli eases back into his chair and sighs. He has been scrolling through his phone, reading text messages that span a two-year window. It is a one-sided conversation, all black and white from the sender, no blue responses from him.

It is a beautiful sunny day in New Jersey and just a week ago, Martelli and his wife, Judy, enjoyed an idyllic Jersey Shore weekend, their home stuffed with children and grandchildren as the kids’ exuberance ricocheted off the ceilings.

But on this August afternoon it is pin-drop quiet in the house. The kids have left and the mood is heavy as Martelli pages through the texts from a person he always considered part of his family. The messages all follow the same pattern: a desperate request for help, a pressing need for money – to pay the dope man, the bartender, or, to get off the streets and find safety.

Martelli used to answer, even send the money as requested. But then counselors advised him he wasn’t helping; that, in fact, he was hurting. Then the messages stopped, the last one coming more than a year ago now – in April of last year. “I’m really sad” is how it ends.

Martelli is sad, too….

Former Boston Celtics and Memphis Grizzlies guard Tony Allen was sentenced to community service and supervision Tuesday for his role in a scheme to defraud the NBA’s health and welfare benefits plan, according to reporter Pete Brush. Here’s what you need to know:

• Allen, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud in April, is among the 18 former NBA players accused of submitting $5 million in fraudulent medical and dental claims from 2017 to 2020, according to court documents. Allen paid back most of the $420,000 he illegally obtained before he was charged, per Brush.
• Terrence Williams, a first-round draft pick in 2009, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $650,000 and pay $2.5 million in restitution last week for leading the scam, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
• Charges were also filed against Allen’s wife, Desiree; another former Celtic, Glen Davis; Shannon Brown, a two-time champion with the Lakers; Melvin Ely, who won a title with the Spurs in 2007; Sebastian Telfair, one of the most celebrated high school players in history and 12 other former players. Keyon…

MIAMI — At the moment Derrick White’s buzzer-beating layup fell through the basket, his father, Richard, could not celebrate yet. The officials still needed to rule whether the putback bucket would count.

Few reviews have ever weighed more. If the referees waved off the basket, Boston’s season would end in a crushing fourth-quarter collapse. If they determined the score counted, Derrick’s shot would head straight to Celtics lore. He would be the savior of the season. The extender of the Eastern Conference finals. The humble, unassuming guard with the wherewithal to hustle his way into history. On the court, Derrick believed he released the ball just in time. In their Denver area home, his parents held their breath.

“Did he get it off?” Richard wondered.

Yes. Just barely. In the final fraction of a second, Derrick rescued the Celtics’ season. At the last possible moment, he crashed past Max Strus, flew toward the legends of John Havlicek and Larry Bird and finished a 104-103 Game 6 thriller with a putback of a Marcus Smart miss.

“I stood up,” Richard said during a phone conversation. “My wife and I slapped hands. And all we could say was, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Omg that’s my boy

— Richard White (@RamblinWreck34) May 28, 2023

None of the Celtics players had…

The Boston Celtics named Joe Mazzulla their permanent head coach, the team announced Thursday. Here’s what you need to know:

• Mazzulla had been serving as interim head coach since Boston suspended Ime Udoka for the 2022-23 season in September.
• Udoka’s suspension was a result of an intimate relationship with a female member of the organization, The Athletic reported.
• Mazzulla has led Boston to a first-place 42-17 record in the Eastern Conference this season. He agreed to a contract extension with the Celtics along with the promotion; terms of the extension were not disclosed.
• The 34-year-old is the 19th head coach in franchise history.

Backstory

Mazzulla stepped into the role this past fall after serving as an assistant coach for the Celtics since 2019. He was the only full-time assistant coach on Brad Stevens’ staff who remained during Udoka’s tenure, having also coached Boston’s NBA Summer League team in 2021. He was hired by Boston after serving as the coach at Fairmont State, a Division II school in West Virginia.

Mazzulla’s interim appointment came on the heels of Udoka’s suspension which the franchise said was due to violations of team policies. At the time, Boston said, “a decision about (Udoka’s) future with the Celtics beyond this season will be made at…