VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France — No one could tell how Giannis Antetokounmpo was feeling.

His Greek team had just made history, winning its first Olympic men’s basketball game in 16 years by downing Australia 77-71 on Friday afternoon and keeping hope alive of advancing to the knockout rounds in Paris. But as had been the case when Greece lost to Canada and Spain, Antetokounmpo walked briskly through the media mixed zone at Pierre Mauroy Stadium in the kind of silent and sullen way that made many people in the room wonder whether the 29-year-old Milwaukee Bucks star wasn’t enjoying his inaugural Olympics experience.

But 20 minutes later, Antetokounmpo made a surprising return to the press area, grabbed a stool before settling in, and finally began to speak. And by the time his 12-minute visit with reporters was over, it was quite clear this past week has been one of the most special times of his inspirational and fascinating life.

“I’m trying to enjoy every single day with my teammates,” said Antetokounmpo, the son of Nigerian immigrants who was born in Athens and would later become the subject of  a Disney movie. “I remember I came the first day and texted my wife, and I told her, ‘I cannot stop smiling.’ You know, just the atmosphere and the vibe, it’s just…

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….

The Milwaukee Bucks have let go of assistant coaches DJ Bakker, Sidney Dobner and Josh Oppenheimer, team sources told The Athletic.

Bleacher Report’s Chris Haynes first reported the news, the latest in a series of staff moves the Bucks have made since firing Adrian Griffin and hiring Doc Rivers as head coach in January. When he was hired as head coach, Rivers added Dave Joerger, Rex Kalamian and Pete Dominguez as assistant coaches. Returning from the February All-Star break, the Bucks dismissed Nate Mitchell, who was hired as an assistant coach last offseason as part of Griffin’s staff.

Heading into the offseason, Rivers told reporters he needed to evaluate the situation before making any decisions on his coaching staff’s future.

“I don’t know,” Rivers said during exit interviews about potentially trimming his coaching staff. “I’m going to make a lot of calls. I’m just going to evaluate the staff that I have here. And then we’re just going to move forward from there.”

Bakker joined the Bucks before the 2023-24 season, but Dobner and Oppenheimer had both been with the Bucks for years and won an NBA championship in 2021. Dobner started in the Bucks’ video room in 2018 and worked her way up to become the franchise’s first female assistant coach before this…

The NBA suspended Bucks guard Patrick Beverley four games without pay for throwing a basketball multiple times at Pacers fans in the final minutes of Milwaukee’s Game 6 elimination loss to Indiana and a subsequent “inappropriate interaction” with a reporter during media availability, the league announced Thursday.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the ball-throwing incident, which occurred with roughly two and a half minutes to play. Down 20, Beverley threw a basketball from the team’s bench at a fan sitting behind him. He appeared to miss his target, a male Pacers fan, instead hitting a female Pacers fan in the side of the head before asking for the ball back.

The man collected the ball and tossed it back to Beverley, who immediately over-the-head, double-hand chucked it back at the fan. The fan deflected the ball as Bucks staff and security stepped in, but the fan and Beverley continued to exchange words.

A case report was filed that night after an officer observed the interaction, and detectives are looking into the incident, a police spokesperson previously said. They are working with Gainbridge Fieldhouse to review video footage and plan to speak with those involved. The result of the investigation will be presented to the Marion…

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the ball-throwing incident involving Milwaukee Bucks guard Patrick Beverley that occurred during Game 6 of the Bucks-Pacers first-round playoffs series May 2.

A case report was filed that night after an officer observed the interaction, and detectives are looking into the incident, a police spokesperson told The Athletic. They are working with Gainbridge Fieldhouse to review video footage and plan to speak with those involved. The result of the investigation will be presented to the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, which will decide whether to bring charges.

With roughly two and a half minutes to play in the game, Beverley threw a basketball at a fan behind him from Milwaukee’s bench. He appeared to miss his target, a male Pacers fan, instead hitting a female Pacers fan in the side of the head before asking for the ball back.

The man collected the ball and tossed it back to Beverley, who immediately over-the-head, double-hand chucked it back at the fan. The fan deflected the ball as Bucks staff and security stepped in, but the fan and Beverley continued to exchange words.

According to one source who witnessed the incident and two others who were briefed on it, the exchange between Beverley and one of the fans…

Tensions seemed high near the end of the Bucks’ Game 6 matchup.

The Indiana Pacers thwarted Milwaukee 120-98 on Thursday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, capturing the series 4-2 and ending the Bucks’ season. With roughly two and a half minutes to play and down 20, Bucks guard Patrick Beverley threw a basketball at a fan behind him from the team’s bench. He appeared to miss his target, a male Pacers fan, instead hitting a female Pacers fan in the side of the head before asking for the ball back.

The man collected the ball and tossed it back to Beverley, who immediately over-the-head, double-hand chucked it back at the fan. The fan deflected the ball as Bucks staff and security stepped in, but the fan and Beverley continued to exchange words.

When asked about the exchange postgame, Beverley said: “Nah, don’t worry about that. Nothing.”

Patrick Beverley threw the ball at a fan at the end of Game 6.

@StephNoh pic.twitter.com/6rIKEDbIJu

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) May 3, 2024

Beverley — who averaged 8.6 points in the playoffs, peaking at 13 — scored six in Game 6, adding five assists and two rebounds.

The Pacers advanced to the second round and await the winner of the New York Knicks–Philadelphia 76ers series.

(Photo: Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty…

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…

In a nearly empty arena in late November 2020, Caitlin Clark shot her first college 3-pointer. Time was ticking down in the first quarter of the Hawkeyes’ matchup against Northern Iowa. Clark forced a steal at midcourt and weaved her way to the right wing. With two defenders around her, she rose up. Her attempt was blocked.

That didn’t discourage her.

Now a senior, Clark is perhaps the biggest star across both men’s and women’s college basketball. She’s made more than 400 3-pointers throughout her college career and re-written the record book — at Iowa and nationally. “We see it every single day in practice, she hits one (shot) that amazes you or makes one pass that makes your jaw kind of drop,” Iowa assistant Abby Stamp says.

Clark passes with pin-point accuracy. Teammates and coaches alike laud her work ethic and improved leadership skills. But it’s Clark’s 3-point shooting which often immediately jumps out to viewers. She has been compared to some other recent greats in the basketball world — Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard and New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, to name a few. But how does Clark actually stack up when compared to such sharp-shooters?

Though the NBA and college 3-point line are different…

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…