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…

PHOENIX — Mat Ishbia kept listing events.

The NCAA men’s basketball Final Four next month. The WNBA All-Star Game in July. The NCAA women’s Final Four in 2026. And, after Thursday’s announcement, the NBA All-Star weekend in 2027.

All coming soon to an arena in Arizona.

“Phoenix should be, and I believe is, the epicenter of basketball in the country. I think it’s really an amazing place,” said Ishbia, governor of the Phoenix Suns and WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

Ishbia and Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein discussed the All-Star Game and the past year on a conference call this week with The Athletic. The executives share common roots. A former walk-on, Ishbia played basketball at Michigan State. Bartelstein played at Michigan.

“We don’t have to acknowledge that on this call,” Ishbia said of Bartelstein’s alma mater, a nod to the in-state rivalry.

With Big Ten backgrounds, Ishbia and Bartelstein understand basketball passion. They know what it means to people in the Midwest. The obvious question: Can this be duplicated in the desert?

“Absolutely,’’ Ishbia said. “Now don’t get me wrong — the weather makes it a lot easier for these types of events. But at the same time, people love their basketball here in Phoenix. I’m telling you. Not just men’s basketball….

The NBA is nearing plans for the Phoenix Suns to host the 2027 All-Star Weekend at Footprint Center, league sources said Monday.

It will be the third consecutive All-Star Weekend hosted by a Pacific Division team. The Golden State Warriors are hosting the 2025 All-Star Weekend at Chase Center, while the Los Angeles Clippers will play host in 2026 at the Intuit Dome, their new home set to open next season.

The NBA is nearing plans for Phoenix and the Suns to host 2027 All-Star Weekend, multiple sources tell me and @MikeVorkunov. One year into new governor Mat Ishbia’s ownership, Suns win an NBA All-Star bid. The Phoenix Mercury will also host 2024 WNBA All-Star. pic.twitter.com/1sus5Ked8s

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 26, 2024

Footprint Center will see plenty of All-Star festivities this summer when the Phoenix Mercury hosts the WNBA All-Star Weekend from July 18-20.

The NBA last held the All-Star Game in Phoenix in 2009 when then-Suns star Shaquille O’Neal and the late Kobe Bryant co-won the game’s MVP award. Phoenix also played host in 1995 when Footprint Center was called America West Arena, and in 1975 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

(Photo: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)

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…

Tiffany Hayes, a 2017 WNBA All-Star and a two-time National Champion at UConn, has retired from the WNBA.

Hayes announced her retirement on the “Counted Me Out” podcast, making it clear that her season last summer with the Connecticut Sun was her final one in the league.

“It’s a lot of things. I really feel like I’m older now. I got a lot of stuff that I really always want to get into but I’m so busy ’cause I’m playing year-round,” Hayes said. “Plus, my body, playing 11 seasons straight with no breaks, every year, two seasons in a year every time, that’s a lot.”

Hayes, the No. 14 pick in the 2012 WNBA Draft, spent the first 10 seasons of her career with the Atlanta Dream. Over that time, she made the All-Star Game in 2017 and was named All-WNBA First-Team in 2018. She averaged nearly 14 points on 42.9 percent shooting from the field with Atlanta.

Last offseason, Hayes was traded from the Dream to the Sun. After playing only 32 games combined in 2021 and 2022, she played all 40 games last year, averaging 12.1 points and three rebounds per game. She said in her exit interview with the Sun that “the stars really aligned for me” in Connecticut. She repeatedly talked about the “gratefulness” she felt, noting that she had avoided a significant injury….

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…

Ann Meyers Drysdale still remembers making her way to Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler University. The car consisted of Drysdale and three male basketball players.

This wasn’t an ordinary car ride. Drysdale felt intimidated. This was new territory for the young American.

The Indiana Pacers were holding three-day tryouts to fill roster spots. Drysdale made history simply with her presence, as she was the first woman chosen to participate in tryouts for an NBA team. In 1979, she signed a $50,000, no-cut contract (an agreement that allows for opportunities within the organization for a specified period of time) with the Pacers — another first for a woman.

Drysdale believed she belonged, that she could make the team. When the Pacers informed Drysdale she didn’t make the final roster, she was upset.

As she reminisces more than 40 years later about what happened, Drysdale isn’t one to gloat about accomplishments. She doesn’t like the attention. Drysdale does, however, recognize her place in women’s basketball. She was the first player to make the U.S. national team while still in high school. She was a gold medalist at the 1975 Pan American Games and the 1979 FIBA World Championship, and she helped Team USA win silver at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Drysdale attended UCLA and…

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Three minutes before the weekly mental training session, motorized curtains drop and gradually erase the panorama of pines and aspens crawling up the side of Humphreys Peak. The lights go down. No vista of 12,000-foot mountains set against blue sky over the next 20 minutes. Only a smiling performance psychologist on the auditorium screen for the athletes in the first four rows, the lissome caretakers of a modern college sports dynasty, snacking on health bars and yogurt after a lift, ready to meditate.

Breath is meditation’s most basic focus, they’re told. For many cultures, breath is known as spirit. It’s a sermon to believers: The closed eyes and quieted minds in the room belong to Northern Arizona’s cross-country team, a group that obsesses over oxygen and generally has mastered what to do with it. The program has won six of the last seven men’s NCAA championships. It finished second the other time. Meanwhile, on this particular Wednesday in October, the school has the nation’s No. 1 men’s team and No. 1 women’s team. That hasn’t happened anywhere in 15 years.

As long as you’re breathing, intones Shannon Thompson, the performance consultant running the session, there’s more right with you than wrong with you.

From the top row, Mike…

The Phoenix Suns are working toward launching a new G League team as soon as the 2024-25 season, meaning all 30 NBA organizations will have G League affiliates.

“Bringing a G League team to the Valley has been a priority for us, and I am excited that we have begun the process and the wheels are in motion to have a team in Phoenix as early as the 2024-25 season,” Mat Ishbia, owner of the Suns and WNBA’s Mercury, told The Athletic in a statement. “Not only will this allow us to develop young players within our winning culture, but also will serve as an opportunity to expand our reach and connect with even more basketball fans across the region.

“This investment further strengthens our connection with the community and continues to elevate Phoenix as the epicenter of basketball.”

The Suns previously operated a G League affiliate called the Northern Arizona Suns, whom ex-owner Robert Sarver sold to the Detroit Pistons in 2020. The Suns have had recent success with the development of prospects in Ish Wainwright and Saben Lee over the past two seasons. Wainwright is now on a standard contract and Lee was re-signed on a two-way deal.

The Suns’ plan to begin a new G League team is just another move made by Ishbia and the franchise in the past two weeks. The Suns completed…

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

—…