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…

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…

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…

DETROIT — Monty Williams’ honesty was both surprising and refreshing. When the elephant in the room is $100 million, for a coach, it would be disingenuous not to address it.

The 51-year-old head coach who was recently fired by the Phoenix Suns, still had millions coming his way and learned that his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, had little incentive to return to the sideline next year. That was until Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores offered to make Williams the highest-paid coach in NBA history and provide benefits — access to a health and welfare fund, as well as access to a private plane — that would help his wife and family be in the best position to handle any potential complications that could come with her diagnosis.

Gores’ pulled out all the stops to get the man he and others in Detroit’s organization felt was the right choice to get the Pistons back toward relevancy.

“The quick answer is, obviously, Troy, the players and the money,” Williams said when asked why he took the Pistons job on Tuesday during his introductory press conference. “That’s something people don’t talk about. I always laugh at that and think it’s disrespectful. When someone is that generous to pay me that kind of money, number one, that should be applauded and, number…

Detroit Pistons general manager Troy Weaver’s phone call to Monty Williams came at a vulnerable time for the former Phoenix Suns head coach. Williams’ Suns team, recently equipped with one of the greatest scorers to ever walk the earth, had just been eliminated in the second round of the NBA playoffs. It led to the 51-year-old being fired after turning an organization starting to be known for its stale popcorn, cold nachos and empty seats into an NBA title contender.

Williams doubted himself as a coach. He was pondering the future but couldn’t get unstuck from the present. While all of this was happening on a professional level, Williams’ wife, Lisa, learned she had breast cancer.

“For me, you marry yourself to the job,” Williams said. “There were many emotions that I was going through. To get that call from Troy, it kind of gave me a bit of confidence because you weren’t feeling great about getting fired.

“I had a situation, personally, in my family that needed attention. I talked to my wife today about whether or not we should talk about that publicly, but that was a huge part of my decision-making. The patience that Troy and Mr. Gores (Pistons owner Tom Gores) had with me as we navigated that told me a lot.”

Presser over pic.twitter.com/ljfNOUSipm

—…

CHICAGO — Brian Wright remained stoic throughout. There was no outburst, no wide smile, barely even a fist pump. As the San Antonio Spurs’ winning numbers were read off individually after flying out of a lottery machine in a conference room here he forced himself to sit still. The realization that the fate of his entire organization had just flipped came when Clay Allen, the Rockets general counsel sitting beside him, let him know those four numbers — 14, 5, 8, 2 — were the ones he had been waiting a whole season for.

It’s a remarkable thing, the NBA Lottery. The fortunes of men, women, franchises, and cities, all decided by the random procession of ping pong balls from a clear drum on the third floor of the McCormick Place West Convention Center. As representatives from 14 teams sat waiting for the final number to be drawn a little after six o’clock local time, the futures of six teams hung in the balance. Five of them needed just one more number to land the right to draft the prospected being discussed as the best since LeBron James. Another, the Wizards, had six different outs — if just one of them hit, they’d find glory.

Instead, as Wright sat unmoved, San Antonio found themselves atop the draft again, another generational big man in their sights. In 1987,…

The Detroit Pistons recently fired assistant general manager Rob Murphy, the team confirmed to The Athletic. The Detroit Free Press was the first to report Murphy’s termination. Here’s what you need to know:

• Murphy was placed on leave in October as the Pistons launched an investigation into a claim of workplace misconduct with a former female employee.
• Murphy was away from the team while on leave.
• He’d worked in this role since May 2022.

Backstory

Murphy was hired as president and GM of Detroit’s NBA G League affiliate last spring and was promoted to his Pistons assistant GM. Before joining the Pistons organization, Murphy spent 10 seasons as head coach of Eastern Michigan from 2011 to 2021.

(Photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)

The head coach of the WNBA’s worst team called his shot: “We’re going to win the championship next season.”

The offseason following the 2002 season, Detroit Shock head coach Bill Laimbeer went to the office of Tom Wilson, a longtime chief executive and officer of Palace Sports and Entertainment, and confidently declared that the team fresh off a nine-win season was going to be hosting a parade the following year. The additions the Shock made that offseason, coupled with the development of the young players in house, were enough for the former Detroit “Bad Boy” turned coach to plant his flag on the highest of hills.

“I saw something in Swin Cash as a leader, and (Deanna) Nolan was coming into her own,” said Laimbeer, who took over head coaching duties for former lead man Greg Williams after an 0-10 start in 2002. “We got Cheryl Ford in the (WNBA) Draft and Ruth Riley in the expansion draft.

“It was clear early in the season that we were going to be something special. Now, whether we won or not, that was up to the players. We changed the way basketball was played, a more physical style and fast-paced, up and down the floor.”

The 2003 Detroit Shock are in the building!

Welcome back to the 313 pic.twitter.com/0unLAK8FMj

— Detroit Pistons…

If you have questions about the future of your team’s live games on your local cable, satellite or digital provider, particularly those on Bally Sports channels, we’re here to answer with what we know so far.

Diamond Sports Group, the Baltimore-based corporate parent of the 19 Bally Sports channels that air 47 NBA, MLB, NHL and WNBA teams, announced Feb. 15 that it would skip a $140 million debt payment due that day and use the month-long grace period as part of its effort to financially reorganize itself.

Many observers interpret the move as a precursor to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, though that is not a certainty. Diamond has $8 billion-plus of debt, incurred as part of parent Sinclair’s 2019 purchase of the regional sports channels, and lost $1.2 billion in the most recent fiscal quarter.

“Certainly more likely that they will file bankruptcy because they did not make the payment,” said Schuyler Carroll, a bankruptcy attorney who is not connected to Diamond. “But not necessarily that they will file bankruptcy. They are still continuing discussions with their creditors to try and avoid bankruptcy. But those can often be difficult.”

Diamond in a Feb. 15 statement said it “intends to use the 30-day grace period to continue progressing its ongoing…