Julia Koch has an agreement to buy a 15 percent stake in BSE Global, the parent company of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty and the Barclays Center, said a source briefed on the deal. The deal puts the valuation of the company at near $6 billion.

This is Koch’s first foray into sports ownership. She is the widow of David Koch, a billionaire who ran Koch Industries. David Koch became one of the richest men in the United States and was a prominent donor to the Republican Party.

Julia Koch will invest into BSE herself but intends to include her three children into the endeavor. She is the 23rd wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes, with personal holdings valued at $64.3 billion. She inherited a 42 percent stake in Koch Industries when David died in 2019, according to Forbes. She sits on the board of directors for Koch Industries but her public profile has been muted.

Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai will maintain control of BSE and will still run both teams, but the transaction will also give Koch a right to make a first offer if there is a sale of control of the franchises.

Tsai bought control of the Nets from Mikhail Prokhorov, the franchise’s erstwhile owner, in 2019 in the second half of a two-stage sale. That transaction valued the franchise at $2.35 billion. He…

A new class of basketball legends is headed to Springfield, Mass.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced its latest class Saturday, featuring 13 new members. Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups and Seimone Augustus headline this year’s group, but they are not the only names on the marquee.

Michael Cooper, Walter Davis, Bo Ryan and Charles Smith are headed to the Hall of Fame too. Former Knicks guard Dick Barnett was elected through the men’s veterans committee. Harley Redin, a longtime women’s basketball head coach at Wayland Baptist University, was chosen by the women’s veteran committee. Michele Timms, a longtime Australian National Team member and a former WNBA All-Star who had her number retired by the Phoenix Mercury, was voted in by the international committee.

Jerry West, Doug Collins and Herb Simon will go to the Hall of Fame as well as contributors. The Athletic reported earlier in the week that Carter, Billups and Barnett would be part of this year’s class, which will be formally enshrined in August.

Carter is inarguably the biggest name headed to the Hall this year. Carter made eight All-Star Games during his 22-year career and will be remembered as one of the best dunkers in NBA history, including his memorable dunk over Frederic Weis at the 2000…

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…

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…

FUENGIROLA, Spain – Josh Hart stared into the blue light of his computer screen at a desk in his hotel room.

He was on a training table at the Team USA hotel getting treatment before practice, with his wife Shannon watching him on FaceTime.

Where Hart is in the world right now, on the southern coast of Spain, in a resort community in the province of Malaga, with the Mediterranean Sea nearby and Morocco just 25 miles across the water, and with the Sierra La Blanca mountain range glistening in the sun behind the hotel, is easy on the eyes.

Even easier, the blinking cursor, over the blank line, on the DocuSign version of his four-year, $81 million contract extension with the New York Knicks.

One click on Thursday morning, and Hart and his wife would remember Malaga forever, even though she isn’t here and his reason for the trip is to get ready for the FIBA World Cup with Team USA.

“It was actually pretty cool, I was just laying down on the training table, getting some treatment, on FaceTime with her and signing the contract,” Hart said. “It meant a lot. I wasn’t highly touted coming out of high school, wasn’t highly regarded in the draft, went through free agency the first time and I was restricted, it was a terrible experience for me, so to be able to do this, it’s a…