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…

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…

Former Stockton Kings G League player Chance Comanche was arrested Friday in connection with a “murder plan” around the disappearance of a woman named Marayna Rodgers and will face an open murder charge, the Las Vegas Police Department announced Sunday.

Comanche, a 27-year-old former University of Arizona big man who went undrafted in 2017 before playing for the Memphis Hustle and Canton Charge in the G League, is accused of “kidnapping” Rodgers with his 19-year-old girlfriend Sakari Harnden.

The police department, in a news release, said detectives recovered “human remains in a desert area in Henderson, Nevada” that “were later identified by the Clark County Coroner to be of Marayna Rodgers” based on information that was obtained after Comanche and Harnden were arrested.

Two individuals have been arrested in connection with the disappearance and killing of a 23-year-old female after executing murder plan.

Click below for additional information. pic.twitter.com/yI7LlCIcqG

— LVMPD (@LVMPD) December 17, 2023

Per the LVPD, detectives learned that Rodgers, 23, was out with friends on Dec. 5 and had a prearranged meeting with Harnden and Comanche. Rodgers had not been seen or heard from since then and was reported missing on Dec. 7. Comanche — who was arrested…

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…

Lindsey Harding, the No. 1 pick of the 2007 WNBA Draft, is the only woman serving as a head coach of an American men’s professional basketball team. And Friday night is her first game.

When Harding, 39, leads the Stockton Kings in a G League opener Friday against the Santa Cruz Warriors in Santa Cruz, she will be the only woman head coach in either the NBA or G League.

Harding, a former Duke standout who was the Naismith Player of the Year in 2007 and then was drafted first the same year by the Phoenix Mercury, spent the last four seasons as an assistant coach for Sacramento — Stockton’s parent organization. She is currently the head coach for the Mexican women’s national team, and before that served in the same role for the South Sudan women’s team. Her No. 10 jersey was retired by Duke.

Women coaching in the NBA is still rare, but less so, with more and more working as player development coaches or as second or third assistants. Becky Hammon was a top assistant to Spurs coach Gregg Popovich for years, and became the first woman to be the head coach in an NBA game when Pop was ejected against the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 30, 2020. She also was a head coach for the Spurs during the NBA Summer League, a showcase for rookies and young players hoping to make a team in…