NBA NEWS - Russell Westbrook

With just over 40 seconds left to play in a fairly meaningless game between the playoff-bound Oklahoma City Thunder and the lottery-bound Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, Isaac Bonga, a 19-year-old Lakers rookie, badly missed a 15-foot shot. Russell Westbrook, the veteran Thunder guard, snatched the ball out of the air for a defensive rebound.

“That’s for Nipsey!” he declared, referring to the rapper Nipsey Hussle, whose fatal shooting over the weekend seemed to shake many N.B.A. players.

Westbrook’s presence on Russell Westbrook the floor in the closing moments of an easy 119-103 home victory for the Thunder would usually have been odd, but on this night the modern master of the triple-double was out there to grab his 20th rebound of the night.

Combined with his 20 points and 21 assists, the rebound made Westbrook the second 20-20-20 player in N.B.A. history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He joined Wilt Chamberlain, who had 22 points, 25 rebounds and 21 assists on Feb. 2, 1968.

Over the last few years, Westbrook’s triple-doubles have come so frequently that it is hard for one to stand out. He is in line for his third consecutive season of averaging a triple-double; Oscar Robertson, the only other player to compile such an average, did it just once. And along the way, Westbrook has set the record for triple-doubles in a season (42 in 2016-17) while recording a stunning 98 of them over a three-season span.

It was clear that Westbrook was headed for an interesting night when he recorded 10 assists in the first quarter.

Westbrook, a 30-year-old All-Star, had previously reached 20 rebounds in a game just once in his career, and he had topped 20 assists just four times. In his closest previous attempt at a 20-20-20 game, he had 17 points, 18 rebounds and 17 assists in a win over the Lakers during the 2016-17 season. No player other than Westbrook and Chamberlain has had even an 18-18-18 game.

In a postgame interview Tuesday, Westbrook described himself as humbled by the experience and brought the conversation back to Hussle.

“That wasn’t for me,” Westbrook said of the performance. “That was for my bro — that was for Nipsey. Twenty plus twenty plus twenty.”

LOS ANGELES — The criminal case involving one of President Trump’s leading adversaries and the world’s biggest shoe company has also ensnared an unlikely figure from the youth basketball world.

The coach, Gary Franklin Sr., started his club from scratch in Los Angeles and ran a program known for its rectitude, according to Sonny Vaccaro, the former Nike and Adidas executive who essentially forged the relationship between the shoe industry and the summer youth basketball circuit. What began as a team for Franklin to coach his then 10-year-old son became a powerhouse club that attracted future N.B.A. stars and major college recruits, and one that steered clear of any scandals.

“He was one of the guys who built it up through his own resources, and his program had a reputation as one of the ‘good guys,’” Vaccaro said of Franklin in an interview this week.

Franklin’s club, California Supreme, and others like it are major participants in a system involving youth basketball, shoe companies and colleges that supplies the professional game with a deep reservoir of talent. And Michael Avenatti knew it.

Now Franklin has become a central figure in the case against Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, in her lawsuit against President Trump. Whether Franklin, who has not been charged, is an accomplice, a co-conspirator or simply collateral damage is not yet clear, but prosecutors’ revelations about his involvement have stunned those who have known him for years.

The question in the club basketball world is, could Franklin have morphed from a stickler who played by the rules into the latest symbol of an amateur basketball world that has spun out of control?

“Cal Supreme was always the best team for doing things by the book, because there were a lot of other teams that didn’t do it by the book,” said Andy Brown, a former forward for Cal Supreme who went on to play at Stanford. “And Cal Supreme did it by the book.”

California Supreme reached its zenith at the 2016 Peach Jam, a summertime showcase for the best travel basketball teams and players in the country. In the final event of the Nike-sponsored league, Deandre Ayton, a towering Bahamian who was about to turn 18, helped the team reel off a huge winning streak before Cal Supreme fell to the eventual champions.

For Franklin, a soft-spoken coach from Los Angeles, the run was a triumph. His Nike-sponsored team was one of the best in the country in what is now known as grass-roots basketball.

Three years later, Franklin, 51, is in a different spotlight, with federal prosecutors accusing Avenatti of extortion for threatening Nike with the release of information that Avenatti had pledged would damage the company’s stock-market value to the tune of a few billion dollars. Specifically, Avenatti had told Nike lawyers this month that a coach in Nike’s grass-roots basketball league had approached him with information that company employees had paid the families of three players, prosecutors said. Avenatti, prosecutors said, demanded that Nike pay millions to make the whole thing go away.

Paying players and their families would violate N.C.A.A. rules, rendering the players ineligible for college play. Also, if the money was paid in exchange for players to commit to colleges Nike sponsors, it would resemble the behavior that recently led to federal fraud convictions for two former Adidas employees.

Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed that the unidentified coach in the complaint is Franklin. Nike had recently declined to renew its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme, which was worth more than $70,000 annually. Franklin could not be reached for comment.

Grass-roots basketball is often erroneously called A.A.U. basketball, even in prosecutors’ court filings. That is a misnomer because the elite leagues are not sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Rather, they are supported by sneaker companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to organize tournaments from April through July. The teenage players who participate are outfitted, from head to toe, in apparel made by and bearing the logo of the league’s sponsor.

Sneaker companies like Nike and Adidas also pay thousands of dollars each year to sponsor the teams themselves as a sort of long-term investment strategy: They hope to build brand loyalty among young players who could eventually become stars. Get players into your gear early, the thinking goes, and you may be more likely to land them as spokesmen when they turn pro and have even more influence over the world’s fans — and their wallets.

“Sneaker companies want to make money,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who was the executive producer of a 2016 documentary, “At All Costs: Life Inside A.A.U. Basketball.” “That’s their objective. And if you have a kid who’s good enough to go on to the N.B.A., and he chooses to continue wearing these shoes, you’ve made a long-term investment that could pay off for years.”

At the same time, the grass-roots basketball landscape has shifted in recent years as N.B.A. players like Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony have increasingly become involved in forming their own teams. These are players who already have partnerships with shoe companies and can help subsidize costs on their own. Last year, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who has an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand, organized a Los Angeles-based team that advanced to the playoffs at the Peach Jam.

Franklin was far from the N.B.A. when he started his team.

A flattering portrait of Franklin is included in “Play Their Hearts Out,” a 2010 book by George Dohrmann that details youth basketball culture in Southern California. Franklin, according to the book, played basketball and football at Los Angeles Valley College. Later, he doted on his son, Gary Jr., creating a club team he initially called the Runnin’ Rebels. He preached fundamentals during their practices at Manual Arts High School and spoke openly about his faith in God. Gary Franklin Jr. went on to play college basketball at Baylor.

Cal Supreme shaq lakers did not have lavish resources. When Brown, the Stanford player, was with the team, it practiced at various Los Angeles-area high schools. Parents subsidized costs. And players paid for their own meals at tournaments.

Yet neither Brown nor his teammates were naïve about the world they inhabited.

“Everybody who played knew what was going on,” Brown said. “We all knew people who were getting paid, we all knew people who were getting free stuff — we all knew it. Now, it’s all coming out. So it’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because we all knew it was happening.”

For years, the sponsorship deals have been heavily dependent on grass-roots coaches’ attracting the best players to their programs. Cal Supreme appeared to have enough talent over the years to keep Nike interested, producing players who ultimately landed at major college programs like Southern California, Oregon and Arizona, along with several who went to the N.B.A.

Big names circled in Cal Supreme’s orbit. Miles Simon, a guard who had won an N.C.A.A. championship while playing at Arizona, was one of the program’s coaches from 2011 to 2014. (Simon, who now works as an assistant for the Lakers, declined to comment through a Lakers spokeswoman.) Shareef O’Neal, a top-tier recruit and the son of Shaquille O’Neal, played for Cal Supreme before going to U.C.L.A. More recently, Percy Miller, the businessman and rapper known as Master P, was listed on Cal Supreme’s website as a team partner.

Ayton, who spent a season at Arizona before the Phoenix Suns made him the top overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, was Cal Supreme’s highest-profile player. But in a twist, after years of wearing Nikes, Ayton signed a lucrative deal to wear Pumas when he went to the N.B.A. For Nike, it was an investment that did not pay off.

It remains unclear whether Ayton’s deal played any role in Nike’s decision not to extend its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme.

Cassius Stanley, a top-30 recruit and a senior at Sierra Canyon High School outside Los Angeles, played for Cal Supreme in 2016 and for Westbrook’s team in 2018. His father, Jerome Stanley, who works as a lawyer, said that as far as he knew, Nike had never provided Cal Supreme players or their family members with benefits that would violate N.C.A.A. rules.

“It is very sad that Coach Gary has gotten himself tangled up in this mess,” Stanley said. “I feel bad for him and his family, and I pray that he and his lawyers can help him move on and not be damaged or used any more than he has been the past few days.”

This was the season “load management” became a common phrase in our basketball vocabulary. This was the season N.B.A. players finally began to feel a little bit safer publicly discussing their vulnerabilities in the arena of mental health.

This was the season, more than any other, that the well-being of those on the floor was a daily point of emphasis.

Yet here we are in the N.B.A. finals, at the sport’s supposed pinnacle, confronted by one of the most dispiriting injury sagas #thisleague has ever witnessed.

The legend of Willis Reed gamely hobbling onto the floor for Game 7 of the 1970 finals and inspiring the Knicks to a title-clinching victory can no longer be passed along to future generations without tacking on a reference to its sad new companion:

The cautionary tale of Kevin Durant.

What happened to Durant on Monday night was the unfortunate inverse of the Reed fairy tale. Durant was cleared to return to the Golden State Warriors’ lineup after a monthlong absence, amid some grumbling (and even criticism) about how long it was taking for him to get back, then suffered what has been one of the most daunting injuries for basketball players to face.

Durant’s ruptured Achilles’ tendon in his right leg will, at a minimum, sideline him well into next season. The Warriors are fond of insisting to reporters that they’ve seen it all over these past five years of title contention, but there has never been an injury in the finals of this magnitude, especially when you factor in Durant’s looming foray into free agency this summer.

Perhaps the emotion of the home crowd Thursday night, when the Warriors at last bid farewell to Oracle Arena after 47 years, can help the two-time defending champions keep these finals going against the Toronto Raptors, even though they will be without Durant and quite possibly Kevon Looney, who aggravated an upper body injury during Monday’s game. But Golden State is undeniably wheezing as it heads into Game 6, for which we can offer these six observations to get you ready:

We will surely learn more details, as time passes, about the decision-making behind the scenes that landed Durant back in the Warriors’ starting lineup Monday night.

The Warriors insisted that Durant’s clearance was decided collaboratively with the player and medical experts both inside and outside the organization — but was the team pushing for that clearance? Did a push to return actually come from Durant? What led the doctors Golden State consulted to advise, as Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said Wednesday, that Durant couldn’t do serious additional damage to himself by playing beyond re-aggravating last month’s calf injury? Were the Warriors or Durant, or both, swayed by external pressure about Durant’s absence? Or was there pressure from inside the Golden State locker room, real or imagined, after a number of fellow Warriors (Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Iguodala and Looney) were lauded for playing through various ailments?

Expect to hear such questions posed over and over for the rest of this series — and beyond.

What we know for certain is that Durant just made a very selfless and costly comeback. Three weeks before he is expected to become the most coveted free agent in the game, Durant stepped onto the Scotiabank Arena hardwood in Toronto and exposed himself to what can only be classified as a catastrophic injury.

Durant’s many critics conveniently forget that — even before this setback — all he had done as a Warrior was give and give to this organization while absorbing ceaseless scrutiny about his competitive nature and legacy after signing with the Golden State powerhouse in the summer of 2016.

Entering his second season as a Warrior, Durant consented to a contract discount in the $10 million range that helped Golden State re-sign Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. Coming into this season, Durant took another discount in the $5 million range, which helped facilitate the Draymond Green signing of Cousins.

Proper recognition for the contributions Durant has consistently made as a Warrior, while taking the supposed “easy way out,” is long overdue. As no less an authority than Stephen Curry put it after Game 5, “He went out there and sacrificed his body.”

It probably won’t be until after the N.B.A. finals that we find out whether Durant will seriously consider picking up his player option for next season valued at $31.5 million — or if he intends to go through with his long-term plans to become a free agent this summer.

All indications Tuesday, in conversations with various league insiders, suggest Durant will have no trouble commanding four-year maximum offers of $164 million from the teams that were already in pursuit, such as the Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers, even after getting hurt.

The way Kawhi Leonard has rebounded in Toronto this season, after losing almost all of the 2017-18 campaign to injury in San Antonio, has only amplified such notions.

The Raptors traded for Leonard without knowing if they could keep him for more than one season — or how he would hold up healthwise after he played just nine of 82 games in his San Antonio swan song. The Lord of Load Management is now right there with Durant at the head of the 2019 free-agent class — and still the favorite to win finals M.V.P. honors with the Raptors holding a 3-2 series lead.

N.B.A. teams will always take risks for difference-makers like Durant and Leonard. Always.

It may appear to outsiders that the Warriors rushed Durant back for Game 5 after falling into a 3-1 series deficit. But Game 5, as we reported last week, was indeed their initial target — before Golden State lost Games 3 and 4 at home.

Yet we repeat: Further probing and second-guessing are unavoidable for the Warriors. Durant played 12 of the game’s first 14 minutes after Coach Steve Kerr told reporters beforehand that he planned to use Durant in “short bursts.”

Durant sat out for 32 days after suffering a strained right calf in the Warriors’ second-round series against the Houston Rockets, practiced once Sunday and played all but 2 minutes 48 seconds of the opening quarter.

The question won’t soon fade: Was it too much too soon?

In the modern history of Achilles’ tears, no N.B.A. player has recovered faster than Indiana’s Wesley Matthews in 2015.

Matthews was injured with the Portland Trail Blazers in March 2015 and was back in time to start the next season with the Dallas Mavericks after signing a four-year, $70 million contract in free agency.

This year, Dallas is cautiously optimistic that Jose Juan Barea, who tore his right Achilles’ in January, has a shot at recovering in time for the start of training camp in late September.

Those who know Durant best expect him to be uber-diligent in his rehab. If he can recover in eight months, that would put him on course for a February 2020 return.

The bigger unknown, of course, is how long it would take Durant, who turns 31 in September, to regain peak form. It has long been assumed that Durant’s game would age gracefully, given his lean build and tremendous size, but no injury in basketball inspires dread like an Achilles’ rupture.

After going eight games without one, Green has been hit with a technical foul in each of the past two games of the finals to take his total for the postseason to six.

That means he has to get through Game 6 without a tech to avoid missing a potential Game 7 through suspension.

Seven technicals in the postseason for any player triggers an automatic one-game ban. The last thing the Warriors can afford, in their battered state, is losing Green to histrionics when they’re already down Durant and likely Looney.

Durant’s fate has invited so much focus on the Warriors that we’re not talking enough about the Raptors and the mammoth opportunity they squandered by losing to Golden State after Leonard’s fourth-quarter brilliance in Game 5.

The Raptors still appear to be a strong favorite to manufacture the last win they need for the first championship in franchise history. But there are lingering questions for them, too, despite winning 14 of 20 quarters in the series with their superior length and athleticism.

Such as: How will they respond mentally to their late collapse in Game 5? And: Can the Raptors, even with all their apparent advantages, really go 3-0 in Oracle in this series by winning Game 6?

LOS ANGELES — The criminal case involving one of President Trump’s leading adversaries and the world’s biggest shoe company has also ensnared an unlikely figure from the youth basketball world.

The coach, Gary Franklin Sr., started his club from scratch in Los Angeles and ran a program known for its rectitude, according to Sonny Vaccaro, the former Nike and Adidas executive who essentially forged the relationship between the shoe industry and the summer youth basketball circuit. What began as a team for Franklin to coach his then 10-year-old son became a powerhouse club that attracted future N.B.A. stars and major college recruits, and one that steered clear of any scandals.

“He was one of the guys who built it up through his own resources, and his program had a reputation as one of the ‘good guys,’” Vaccaro said of Franklin in an interview this week.

Franklin’s club, California Supreme, and others like it are major participants in a system involving youth basketball, shoe companies and colleges that supplies the professional game with a deep reservoir of talent. And Michael Avenatti knew it.

Now Franklin has become a central figure in the case against Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, in her lawsuit against President Trump. Whether Franklin, who has not been charged, is an accomplice, a co-conspirator or simply collateral damage is not yet clear, but prosecutors’ revelations about his involvement have stunned those who have shaq lakers known him for years.

The question in the club basketball world is, could Franklin have morphed from a stickler who played by the rules into the latest symbol of an amateur basketball world that has spun out of control?

“Cal Supreme was always the best team for doing things by the book, because there were a lot of other teams that didn’t do it by the book,” said Andy Brown, a former forward for Cal Supreme who went on to play at Stanford. “And Cal Supreme did it by the book.”

California Supreme reached its zenith at the 2016 Peach Jam, a summertime showcase for the best travel basketball teams and players in the country. In the final event of the Nike-sponsored league, Deandre Ayton, a towering Bahamian who was about to turn 18, helped the team reel off a huge winning streak before Cal Supreme fell to the eventual champions.

For Franklin, a soft-spoken coach from Los Angeles, the run was a triumph. His Nike-sponsored team was one of the best in the country in what is now known as grass-roots basketball.

Three years later, Franklin, 51, is in a different spotlight, with federal prosecutors accusing Avenatti of extortion for threatening Nike with the release of information that Avenatti had pledged would damage the company’s stock-market value to the tune of a few billion dollars. Specifically, Avenatti had told Nike lawyers this month that a coach in Nike’s grass-roots basketball league had approached him with information that company employees had paid the families of three players, prosecutors said. Avenatti, prosecutors said, demanded that Nike pay millions to make the whole thing go away.

Paying players and their families would violate N.C.A.A. rules, rendering the players ineligible for college play. Also, if the money was paid in exchange for players to commit to colleges Nike sponsors, it would resemble the behavior that recently led to federal fraud convictions for two former Adidas employees.

Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed that the unidentified coach in the complaint is Franklin. Nike had recently declined to renew its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme, which was worth more than $70,000 annually. Franklin could not be reached for comment.

Grass-roots basketball is often erroneously called A.A.U. basketball, even in prosecutors’ court filings. That is a misnomer because the elite leagues are not sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Rather, they are supported by sneaker companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to organize tournaments from April through July. The teenage players who participate are outfitted, from head to toe, in apparel made by and bearing the logo of the league’s sponsor.

Sneaker companies like Nike and Adidas also pay thousands of dollars each year to sponsor the teams themselves as a sort of long-term investment strategy: They hope to build brand loyalty among young players who could eventually become stars. Get players into your gear early, the thinking goes, and you may be more likely to land them as spokesmen when they turn pro and have even more influence over the world’s fans — and their wallets.

“Sneaker companies want to make money,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who was the executive producer of a 2016 documentary, “At All Costs: Life Inside A.A.U. Basketball.” “That’s their objective. And if you have a kid who’s good enough to go on to the N.B.A., and he chooses to continue wearing these shoes, you’ve made a long-term investment that could pay off for years.”

At the same time, the grass-roots basketball landscape has shifted in recent years as N.B.A. players like Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony have increasingly become involved in forming their own teams. These are players who already have partnerships with shoe companies and can help subsidize costs on their own. Last year, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who has an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand, organized a Los Angeles-based team that advanced to the playoffs at the Peach Jam.

Franklin was far from the N.B.A. when he started his team.

A flattering portrait of Franklin is included in “Play Their Hearts Out,” a 2010 book by George Dohrmann that details youth basketball culture in Southern California. Franklin, according to the book, played basketball and football at Los Angeles Valley College. Later, he doted on his son, Gary Jr., creating a club team he initially called the Runnin’ Rebels. He preached fundamentals during their practices at Manual Arts High School and spoke openly about his faith in God. Gary Franklin Jr. went on to play college basketball at Baylor.

Cal Supreme did not have lavish resources. When Brown, the Stanford player, was with the team, it practiced at various Los Angeles-area high schools. Parents subsidized costs. And players paid for their own meals at tournaments.

Yet neither Brown nor his teammates were naïve about the world they inhabited.

“Everybody who played knew what was going on,” Brown said. “We all knew people who were getting paid, we all knew people who were getting free stuff — we all knew it. Now, it’s all coming out. So it’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because we all knew it was happening.”

For years, the sponsorship deals have been heavily dependent on grass-roots coaches’ attracting the best players to their programs. Cal Supreme appeared to have enough talent over the years to keep Nike interested, producing players who ultimately landed at major college programs like Southern California, Oregon and Arizona, along with several who went to the N.B.A.

Big names circled in Cal Supreme’s orbit. Miles Simon, a guard who had won an N.C.A.A. championship while playing at Arizona, was one of the program’s coaches from 2011 to 2014. (Simon, who now works as an assistant for the Lakers, declined to comment through a Lakers spokeswoman.) Shareef O’Neal, a top-tier recruit and the son of Shaquille O’Neal, played for Cal Supreme before going to U.C.L.A. More recently, Percy Miller, the businessman and rapper known as Master P, was listed on Cal Supreme’s website as a team partner.

Ayton, who spent a season at Arizona before the Phoenix Suns made him the top overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, was Cal Supreme’s highest-profile player. But in a twist, after years of wearing Nikes, Ayton signed a lucrative deal to wear Pumas when he went to the N.B.A. For Nike, it was an investment that did not pay off.

It remains unclear whether Ayton’s deal played any role in Nike’s decision not to extend its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme.

Cassius Stanley, a top-30 recruit and a senior at Sierra Canyon High School outside Los Angeles, played for Cal Supreme in 2016 and for Westbrook’s team in 2018. His father, Jerome Stanley, who works as a lawyer, said that as far as he knew, Nike had never provided Cal Supreme players or their family members with benefits that would violate N.C.A.A. rules.

“It is very sad that Coach Gary has gotten himself tangled up in this mess,” Stanley said. “I feel bad for him and his family, and I pray that he and his lawyers can help him move on and not be damaged or used any more than he has been the past few days.”

This was the season “load management” became a common phrase in our basketball vocabulary. This was the season N.B.A. players finally began to feel a little bit safer publicly discussing their vulnerabilities in the arena of mental health.

This was the season, more than any other, that the well-being of those on the floor was a daily point of emphasis.

Yet here we are in the N.B.A. finals, at the sport’s supposed pinnacle, confronted by one of the most dispiriting injury sagas #thisleague has ever witnessed.

The legend of Willis Reed gamely hobbling onto the floor for Game 7 of the 1970 finals and inspiring the Knicks to a title-clinching victory can no longer be passed along to future generations without tacking on a reference to its sad new companion:

The cautionary tale of Kevin Durant.

What happened to Durant on Monday night was the unfortunate inverse of the Reed fairy tale. Durant was cleared to return to the Golden State Warriors’ lineup after a monthlong absence, amid some grumbling (and even criticism) about how long it was taking for him to get back, then suffered what has been one of the most daunting injuries for basketball players to face.

Durant’s ruptured Achilles’ tendon in his right leg will, at a minimum, sideline him well into next season. The Warriors are fond of insisting to reporters that they’ve seen it all over these past five years of title contention, but there has never been an injury in the finals of this magnitude, especially when you factor in Durant’s looming foray into free agency this summer.

Perhaps the emotion of the home crowd Thursday night, when the Warriors at last bid farewell to Oracle Arena after 47 years, can help the two-time defending champions keep these finals going against the Toronto Raptors, even though they will be without Durant and quite possibly Kevon Looney, who aggravated an upper body injury during Monday’s game. But Golden State is undeniably wheezing as it heads into Game 6, for which we can offer these six observations to get you ready:

We will surely learn more details, as time passes, about the decision-making behind the scenes that landed Durant back in the Warriors’ starting lineup Monday night.

The Warriors insisted that Durant’s clearance was decided collaboratively with the player and medical experts both inside and outside the organization — but was the team pushing for that clearance? Did a push to return actually come from Durant? What led the doctors Golden State consulted to advise, as Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said Wednesday, that Durant couldn’t do serious additional damage to himself by playing beyond re-aggravating last month’s calf injury? Were the Warriors or Durant, or both, swayed by external pressure about Durant’s absence? Or was there pressure from inside the Golden State locker room, real or imagined, after a number of fellow Warriors (Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Iguodala and Looney) were lauded for playing through various ailments?

Expect to hear such questions posed over and over for the rest of this series — and beyond.

What we know for certain is that Durant just made a very selfless and costly comeback. Three weeks before he is expected to become the most coveted free agent in the game, Durant stepped onto the Scotiabank Arena hardwood in Toronto and exposed himself to what can only be classified as a catastrophic injury.

Durant’s many critics conveniently forget that — even before this setback — all he had done as a Warrior was give and give to this organization while absorbing ceaseless scrutiny about his competitive nature and legacy after signing with the Golden State powerhouse in the summer of 2016.

Entering his second season as a Warrior, Durant consented to a contract discount in the $10 million range that helped Golden State re-sign Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. Coming into this season, Durant took another discount in the $5 million range, which helped facilitate the signing of Cousins.

Proper recognition for the contributions Durant has consistently made as a Warrior, while taking the supposed “easy way out,” is long overdue. As no less an authority than Stephen Curry put it after Game 5, “He went out there and sacrificed his body.”

It probably won’t be until after the N.B.A. finals that we find out whether Durant will seriously consider picking up his player option for next season valued at $31.5 million — or if he intends to go through with his long-term plans to become a free agent this summer.

All indications Tuesday, in conversations with various league insiders, suggest Durant will have no trouble commanding four-year maximum offers of $164 million from the teams that were already in pursuit, such as the Knicks and the Los Angeles Clippers, even after getting hurt.

The way Kawhi Leonard has rebounded in Toronto this season, after losing almost all of the 2017-18 campaign to injury in San Antonio, has only amplified such notions.

The Raptors traded for Leonard without knowing if they could keep him for more than one season — or how he would hold up healthwise after he played just nine of 82 games in his San Antonio swan song. The Lord of Load Management is now right there with Durant at the head of the 2019 free-agent class — and still the favorite to win finals M.V.P. honors with the Raptors holding a 3-2 series lead.

N.B.A. teams will always take risks for difference-makers like Durant and Leonard. Always.

It may appear to outsiders that the Warriors rushed Durant back for Game 5 after falling into a 3-1 series deficit. But Game 5, as we reported last week, was indeed their initial target — before Golden State lost Games 3 and 4 at home.

Yet we repeat: Further probing and second-guessing are unavoidable for the Warriors. Durant played 12 of the game’s first 14 minutes after Coach Steve Kerr told reporters beforehand that he planned to use Durant in “short bursts.”

Durant sat out for 32 days after suffering a strained right calf in the Warriors’ second-round series against the Houston Rockets, practiced once Sunday and played all but 2 minutes 48 seconds of the opening quarter.

The question won’t soon fade: Was it too much too soon?

In the modern history of Achilles’ tears, no N.B.A. player has recovered faster than Indiana’s Wesley Matthews in 2015.

Matthews was injured with the Portland Trail Blazers in March 2015 and was back in time to start the next season with the Dallas Mavericks after signing a four-year, $70 million contract in free agency.

This year, Dallas is cautiously optimistic that Jose Juan Barea, who tore his right Achilles’ in January, has a shot at recovering in time for the start of training camp in late September.

Those who know Durant best expect him to be uber-diligent in his rehab. If he can recover in eight months, that would put him on course for a February 2020 return.

The bigger unknown, of course, is how long it would take Durant, who turns 31 in September, to regain peak form. It has long been assumed that Durant’s game would age gracefully, given his lean build and tremendous size, but no injury in basketball inspires dread like an Achilles’ rupture.

After going eight games without one, Green has been hit with a technical foul in each of the past two games of the finals to take his total for the postseason to six.

That means he Draymond Green has to get through Game 6 without a tech to avoid missing a potential Game 7 through suspension.

Seven technicals in the postseason for any player triggers an automatic one-game ban. The last thing the Warriors can afford, in their battered state, is losing Green to histrionics when they’re already down Durant and likely Looney.

Durant’s fate has invited so much focus on the Warriors that we’re not talking enough about the Raptors and the mammoth opportunity they squandered by losing to Golden State after Leonard’s fourth-quarter brilliance in Game 5.

The Raptors still appear to be a strong favorite to manufacture the last win they need for the first championship in franchise history. But there are lingering questions for them, too, despite winning 14 of 20 quarters in the series with their superior length and athleticism.

Such as: How will they respond mentally to their late collapse in Game 5? And: Can the Raptors, even with all their apparent advantages, really go 3-0 in Oracle in this series by winning Game 6?

LOS ANGELES — The criminal case involving one of President Trump’s leading adversaries and the world’s biggest shoe company has also ensnared an unlikely figure from the youth basketball world.

The coach, Gary Franklin Sr., started his club from scratch in Los Angeles and ran a program known for its rectitude, according to Sonny Vaccaro, the former Nike and Adidas executive who essentially forged the relationship between the shoe industry and the summer youth basketball circuit. What began as a team for Franklin to coach his then 10-year-old son became a powerhouse club that attracted future N.B.A. stars and major college recruits, and one that steered clear of any scandals.

“He was one of the guys who built it up through his own resources, and his program had a reputation as one of the ‘good guys,’” Vaccaro said of Franklin in an interview this week.

Franklin’s club, California Supreme, and others like it are major participants in a system involving youth basketball, shoe companies and colleges that supplies the professional game with a deep reservoir of talent. And Michael Avenatti knew it.

Now Franklin has become a central figure in the case against Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, in her lawsuit against President Trump. Whether Franklin, who has not been charged, is an accomplice, a co-conspirator or simply collateral damage is not yet clear, but prosecutors’ revelations about his involvement have stunned those who have known him for years.

The question in the club basketball world is, could Franklin have morphed from a stickler who played by the rules into the latest symbol of an amateur basketball world that has spun out of control?

“Cal Supreme was always the best team for doing things by the book, because there were a lot of other teams that didn’t do it by the book,” said Andy Brown, a former forward for Cal Supreme who went on to play at Stanford. “And Cal Supreme did it by the book.”

California Supreme reached its zenith at the 2016 Peach Jam, a summertime showcase for the best travel basketball teams and players in the country. In the final event of the Nike-sponsored league, Deandre Ayton, a towering Bahamian who was about to turn 18, helped the team reel off a huge winning streak before Cal Supreme fell to the eventual champions.

For Franklin, a soft-spoken coach from Los Angeles, the run was a triumph. His Nike-sponsored team was one of the best in the country in what is now known as grass-roots basketball.

Three years later, Franklin, 51, is in a different spotlight, with federal prosecutors accusing Avenatti of extortion for threatening Nike with the release of information that Avenatti had pledged would damage the company’s stock-market value to the tune of a few billion dollars. Specifically, Avenatti had told Nike lawyers this month that a coach in Nike’s grass-roots basketball league had approached him with information that company employees had paid the families of three players, prosecutors said. Avenatti, prosecutors said, demanded that Nike pay millions to make the whole thing go away.

Paying players and their families would violate N.C.A.A. rules, rendering the players ineligible for college play. Also, if the money was paid in exchange for players to commit to colleges Nike sponsors, it would resemble the behavior that recently led to federal fraud convictions for two former Adidas employees.

Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed that the unidentified coach in the complaint is Franklin. Nike had recently declined to renew its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme, which was worth more than $70,000 annually. Franklin could website not be reached for comment.

Grass-roots basketball is often erroneously called A.A.U. basketball, even in prosecutors’ court filings. That is a misnomer because the elite leagues are not sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Rather, they are supported by sneaker companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to organize tournaments from April through July. The teenage players who participate are outfitted, from head to toe, in apparel made by and bearing the logo of the league’s sponsor.

Sneaker companies like Nike and Adidas also pay thousands of dollars each year to sponsor the teams themselves as a sort of long-term investment strategy: They hope to build brand loyalty among young players who could eventually become stars. Get players into your gear early, the thinking goes, and you may be more likely to land them as spokesmen when they turn pro and have even more influence over the world’s fans — and their wallets.

“Sneaker companies want to make money,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who was the executive producer of a 2016 documentary, “At All Costs: Life Inside A.A.U. Basketball.” “That’s their objective. And if you have a kid who’s good enough to go on to the N.B.A., and he chooses to continue wearing these shoes, you’ve made a long-term investment that could pay off for years.”

At the same time, the grass-roots basketball landscape has shifted in recent years as N.B.A. players like Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony have increasingly become involved in forming their own teams. These are players who already have partnerships with shoe companies and can help subsidize costs on their own. Last year, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who has an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand, organized a Los Angeles-based team that advanced to the playoffs at the Peach Jam.

Franklin was far from the N.B.A. when he started his team.

A flattering portrait of Franklin is included in “Play Their Hearts Out,” a 2010 book by George Dohrmann that details youth basketball culture in Southern California. Franklin, according to the book, played basketball and football at Los Angeles Valley College. Later, he doted on his son, Gary Jr., creating a club team he initially called the Runnin’ Rebels. He preached fundamentals during their practices at Manual Arts High School and spoke openly about his faith in God. Gary Franklin Jr. went on to play college basketball at Baylor.

Cal Supreme did not have lavish resources. When Brown, the Stanford player, was with the team, it practiced at various Los Angeles-area high schools. Parents subsidized costs. And players paid for their own meals at tournaments.

Yet neither Brown nor his teammates were naïve about the world they inhabited.

“Everybody who played knew what was going on,” Brown said. “We all knew people who were getting paid, we all knew people who were getting free stuff — we all knew it. Now, it’s all coming out. So it’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because we all knew it was happening.”

For years, the sponsorship deals have been heavily dependent on grass-roots coaches’ attracting the best players to their programs. Cal Supreme appeared to have enough talent over the years to keep Nike interested, producing players who ultimately landed at major college programs like Southern California, Oregon and Arizona, along with several who went to the N.B.A.

Big names circled in Cal Supreme’s orbit. Miles Simon, a guard who had won an N.C.A.A. championship while playing at Arizona, was one of the program’s coaches from 2011 to 2014. (Simon, who now works as an assistant for the Lakers, declined to comment through a Lakers spokeswoman.) Shareef O’Neal, a top-tier recruit and the son of Shaquille O’Neal, played for Cal Supreme before going to U.C.L.A. More recently, Percy Miller, the businessman and rapper known as Master P, was listed on Cal Supreme’s website as a team partner.

Ayton, who spent a season at Arizona before the Phoenix Suns made him the top overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, was Cal Supreme’s highest-profile player. But in a twist, after years of wearing Nikes, Ayton signed a lucrative deal to wear Pumas when he went to the N.B.A. For Nike, it was an investment that did not pay off.

It remains unclear whether Ayton’s deal played any role in Nike’s decision not to extend its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme.

Cassius Stanley, a top-30 recruit and a senior at Sierra Canyon High School outside Los Angeles, played for Cal Supreme in 2016 and for Westbrook’s team in 2018. His father, Jerome Stanley, who works as a lawyer, said that as far as he knew, Nike had never provided Cal Supreme players or their family members with benefits that would violate N.C.A.A. rules.

“It is very sad that Coach Gary has gotten himself tangled up in this mess,” Stanley said. “I feel bad for him and his family, and I pray that he and his lawyers can help him move on and not be damaged or used any more than he has been the past few days.”

LOS ANGELES — The criminal case involving one of President Trump’s leading adversaries and the world’s biggest shoe company has also ensnared an unlikely figure from the youth basketball world.

The coach, Gary Franklin Sr., started shaq lakers his club from scratch in Los Angeles and ran a program known for its rectitude, according to Sonny Vaccaro, the former Nike and Adidas executive who essentially forged the relationship between the shoe industry and the summer youth basketball circuit. What began as a team for Franklin to coach his then 10-year-old son became a powerhouse club that attracted future N.B.A. stars and major college recruits, and one that steered clear of any scandals.

“He was one of the guys who built it up through his own resources, and his program had a reputation as one of the ‘good guys,’” Vaccaro said of Franklin in an interview this week.

Franklin’s club, California Supreme, and others like it are major participants in a system involving youth basketball, shoe companies and colleges that supplies the professional game with a deep reservoir of talent. And Michael Avenatti knew it.

Now Franklin has become a central figure in the case against Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, in her lawsuit against President Trump. Whether Franklin, who has not been charged, is an accomplice, a co-conspirator or simply collateral damage is not yet clear, but prosecutors’ revelations about his involvement have stunned those who have known him for years.

The question in the club basketball world is, could Franklin have morphed from a stickler who played by the rules into the latest symbol of an amateur basketball world that has spun out of control?

“Cal Supreme was always the best team for doing things by the book, because there were a lot of other teams that didn’t do it by the book,” said Andy Brown, a former forward for Cal Supreme who went on to play at Stanford. “And Cal Supreme did it by the book.”

California Supreme reached its zenith at the 2016 Peach Jam, a summertime showcase for the best travel basketball teams and players in the country. In the final event of the Nike-sponsored league, Deandre Ayton, a towering Bahamian who was about to turn 18, helped the team reel off a huge winning streak before Cal Supreme fell to the eventual champions.

For Franklin, a soft-spoken coach from Los Angeles, the run was a triumph. His Nike-sponsored team was one of the best in the country in what is now known as grass-roots basketball.

Three years later, Franklin, 51, is in a different spotlight, with federal prosecutors accusing Avenatti of extortion for threatening Nike with the release of information that Avenatti had pledged would damage the company’s stock-market value to the tune of a few billion dollars. Specifically, Avenatti had told Nike lawyers this month that a coach in Nike’s grass-roots basketball league had approached him with information that company employees had paid the families of three players, prosecutors said. Avenatti, prosecutors said, demanded that Nike pay millions to make the whole thing go away.

Paying players and their families would violate N.C.A.A. rules, rendering the players ineligible for college play. Also, if the money was paid in exchange for players to commit to colleges Nike sponsors, it would resemble the behavior that recently led to federal fraud convictions for two former Adidas employees.

Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed that the unidentified coach in the complaint is Franklin. Nike had recently declined to renew its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme, which was worth more than $70,000 annually. Franklin could not be reached for comment.

Grass-roots basketball is often erroneously called A.A.U. basketball, even in prosecutors’ court filings. That is a misnomer because the elite leagues are not sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Rather, they are supported by sneaker companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to organize tournaments from April through July. The teenage players who participate are outfitted, from head to toe, in apparel made by and bearing the logo of the league’s sponsor.

Sneaker companies like Nike and Adidas also pay thousands of dollars each year to sponsor the teams themselves as a sort of long-term investment strategy: They hope to build brand loyalty among young players who could eventually become stars. Get players into your gear early, the thinking goes, and you may be more likely to land them as spokesmen when they turn pro and have even more influence over the world’s fans — and their wallets.

“Sneaker companies want to make money,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who was the executive producer of a 2016 documentary, “At All Costs: Life Inside A.A.U. Basketball.” “That’s their objective. And if you have a kid who’s good enough to go on to the N.B.A., and he chooses to continue wearing these shoes, you’ve made a long-term investment that could pay off for years.”

At the same time, the grass-roots basketball landscape has shifted in recent years as N.B.A. players like Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony have increasingly become involved in forming their own teams. These are players who already have partnerships with shoe companies and can help subsidize costs on their own. Last year, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who has an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand, organized a Los Angeles-based team that advanced to the playoffs at the Peach Jam.

Franklin was far from the N.B.A. when he started his team.

A flattering portrait of Franklin is included in “Play Their Hearts Out,” a 2010 book by George Dohrmann that details youth basketball culture in Southern California. Franklin, according to the book, played basketball and football at Los Angeles Valley College. Later, he doted on his son, Gary Jr., creating a club team he initially called the Runnin’ Rebels. He preached fundamentals during their practices at Manual Arts High School and spoke openly about his faith in God. Gary Franklin Jr. went on to play college basketball at Baylor.

Cal Supreme did not have lavish resources. When Brown, the Stanford player, was with the team, it practiced at various Los Angeles-area high schools. Parents subsidized costs. And players paid for their own meals at tournaments.

Yet neither Brown nor his teammates were naïve about the world they inhabited.

“Everybody who played knew what was going on,” Brown said. “We all knew people who were getting paid, we all knew people who were getting free stuff — we all knew it. Now, it’s all coming out. So it’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because we all knew it was happening.”

For years, the sponsorship deals have been heavily dependent on grass-roots coaches’ attracting the best players to their programs. Cal Supreme appeared to have enough talent over the years to keep Nike interested, producing players who ultimately landed at major college programs like Southern California, Oregon and Arizona, along with several who went to the N.B.A.

Big names circled in Cal Supreme’s orbit. Miles Simon, a guard who had won an N.C.A.A. championship while playing at Arizona, was one of the program’s coaches from 2011 to 2014. (Simon, who now works as an assistant for the Lakers, declined to comment through a Lakers spokeswoman.) Shareef O’Neal, a top-tier recruit and the son of Shaquille O’Neal, played for Cal Supreme before going to U.C.L.A. More recently, Percy Miller, the businessman and rapper known as Master P, was listed on Cal Supreme’s website as a team partner.

Ayton, who spent a season at Arizona before the Phoenix Suns made him the top overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, was Cal Supreme’s highest-profile player. But in a twist, after years of wearing Nikes, Ayton signed a lucrative deal to wear Pumas when he went to the N.B.A. For Nike, it was an investment that did not pay off.

It remains unclear whether Ayton’s deal played any role in Nike’s decision not to extend its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme.

Cassius Stanley, a top-30 recruit and a senior at Sierra Canyon High School outside Los Angeles, played for Cal Supreme in 2016 and for Westbrook’s team in 2018. His father, Jerome Stanley, who works as a lawyer, said that as far as he knew, Nike had never provided Cal Supreme players or their family members with benefits that would violate N.C.A.A. rules.

“It is very sad that Coach Gary has gotten himself tangled up in this mess,” Stanley said. “I feel bad for him and his family, and I pray that he and his lawyers can help him move on and not be damaged or used any more than he has been the past few days.”

LOS ANGELES — The criminal case involving one of President Trump’s leading adversaries and the world’s biggest shoe company has also ensnared an unlikely figure from the youth basketball world.

The coach, Gary Franklin Sr., started his club from scratch in Los Angeles and ran a program known for its rectitude, according to Sonny Vaccaro, the former Nike and Adidas executive who essentially forged the relationship between the shoe industry and the summer youth basketball circuit. What began as a team for Franklin to coach his then 10-year-old son became a powerhouse club that attracted future N.B.A. stars and major college recruits, and one that steered clear of any scandals.

“He was one of the guys who built it up through his own resources, and his program had a reputation as one of the ‘good guys,’” Vaccaro said of Franklin in an interview this week.

Franklin’s club, California Supreme, and others like it are major participants in a system involving youth basketball, shoe companies and colleges that supplies the professional game with a deep reservoir of talent. And Michael Avenatti knew it.

Now Franklin has become a central figure in the case against Avenatti, the lawyer best known for representing Stormy Daniels, the adult film star, in her lawsuit against President Trump. Whether Franklin, who has not been charged, is an accomplice, a co-conspirator or simply collateral damage is not yet clear, but prosecutors’ revelations about his involvement have stunned those who have known him for years.

The question in the club basketball world is, could Franklin have morphed from a stickler who played by the rules into the latest symbol of an amateur basketball world that has spun out of control?

“Cal Supreme was always the best team for doing things by the book, because there were a lot of other teams that didn’t do it by the book,” said Andy Brown, a former forward for Cal Supreme who went on to play at Stanford. “And Cal Supreme did it by the book.”

California Supreme reached its zenith at the 2016 Peach Jam, a summertime showcase for the best travel basketball teams and players in the country. In the final event of the Nike-sponsored league, Deandre Ayton, a towering Bahamian who was about to turn 18, helped the team reel off a huge winning streak before Cal Supreme fell to the eventual champions.

For Franklin, a soft-spoken coach from Los Angeles, the run was a triumph. His Nike-sponsored team was one of the best in the country in what is now known as grass-roots basketball.

Three years later, Franklin, 51, is in a different spotlight, with federal prosecutors accusing Avenatti of extortion for threatening Nike with the release of information that Avenatti had pledged would damage the company’s stock-market value to the tune of a few billion dollars. Specifically, Avenatti had told Nike lawyers this month that a coach in Nike’s grass-roots basketball league had approached him with information that company employees had paid the families of three players, prosecutors said. Avenatti, prosecutors said, demanded that Nike pay millions to make the whole thing go away.

Paying players and their families would violate N.C.A.A. rules, rendering the players ineligible for college play. Also, if the money was paid in exchange for players to commit to colleges Nike sponsors, it would resemble the behavior that recently led to federal fraud convictions for two former Adidas employees.

Two people familiar with the investigation confirmed that the unidentified coach in the complaint is Franklin. Nike had recently declined to renew its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme, which was worth more than $70,000 annually. Franklin could not be reached for comment.

Grass-roots basketball is often erroneously called A.A.U. basketball, shaq lakers even in prosecutors’ court filings. That is a misnomer because the elite leagues are not sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. Rather, they are supported by sneaker companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to organize tournaments from April through July. The teenage players who participate are outfitted, from head to toe, in apparel made by and bearing the logo of the league’s sponsor.

Sneaker companies like Nike and Adidas also pay thousands of dollars each year to sponsor the teams themselves as a sort of long-term investment strategy: They hope to build brand loyalty among young players who could eventually become stars. Get players into your gear early, the thinking goes, and you may be more likely to land them as spokesmen when they turn pro and have even more influence over the world’s fans — and their wallets.

“Sneaker companies want to make money,” said Dr. Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who was the executive producer of a 2016 documentary, “At All Costs: Life Inside A.A.U. Basketball.” “That’s their objective. And if you have a kid who’s good enough to go on to the N.B.A., and he chooses to continue wearing these shoes, you’ve made a long-term investment that could pay off for years.”

At the same time, the grass-roots basketball landscape has shifted in recent years as N.B.A. players like Bradley Beal, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony have increasingly become involved in forming their own teams. These are players who already have partnerships with shoe companies and can help subsidize costs on their own. Last year, Russell Westbrook of the Oklahoma City Thunder, who has an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan brand, organized a Los Angeles-based team that advanced to the playoffs at the Peach Jam.

Franklin was far from the N.B.A. when he started his team.

A flattering portrait of Franklin is included in “Play Their Hearts Out,” a 2010 book by George Dohrmann that details youth basketball culture in Southern California. Franklin, according to the book, played basketball and football at Los Angeles Valley College. Later, he doted on his son, Gary Jr., creating a club team he initially called the Runnin’ Rebels. He preached fundamentals during their practices at Manual Arts High School and spoke openly about his faith in God. Gary Franklin Jr. went on to play college basketball at Baylor.

Cal Supreme did not have lavish resources. When Brown, the Stanford player, was with the team, it practiced at various Los Angeles-area high schools. Parents subsidized costs. And players paid for their own meals at tournaments.

Yet neither Brown nor his teammates were naïve about the world they inhabited.

“Everybody who played knew what was going on,” Brown said. “We all knew people who were getting paid, we all knew people who were getting free stuff — we all knew it. Now, it’s all coming out. So it’s shocking, but it’s not shocking, because we all knew it was happening.”

For years, the sponsorship deals have been heavily dependent on grass-roots coaches’ attracting the best players to their programs. Cal Supreme appeared to have enough talent over the years to keep Nike interested, producing players who ultimately landed at major college programs like Southern California, Oregon and Arizona, along with several who went to the N.B.A.

Big names circled in Cal Supreme’s orbit. Miles Simon, a guard who had won an N.C.A.A. championship while playing at Arizona, was one of the program’s coaches from 2011 to 2014. (Simon, who now works as an assistant for the Lakers, declined to comment through a Lakers spokeswoman.) Shareef O’Neal, a top-tier recruit and the son of Shaquille O’Neal, played for Cal Supreme before going to U.C.L.A. More recently, Percy Miller, the businessman and rapper known as Master P, was listed on Cal Supreme’s website as a team partner.

Ayton, who spent a season at Arizona before the Phoenix Suns made him the top overall pick in the 2018 N.B.A. draft, was Cal Supreme’s highest-profile player. But in a twist, after years of wearing Nikes, Ayton signed a lucrative deal to wear Pumas when he went to the N.B.A. For Nike, it was an investment that did not pay off.

It remains unclear whether Ayton’s deal played any role in Nike’s decision not to extend its sponsorship deal with Cal Supreme.

Cassius Stanley, a top-30 recruit and a senior at Sierra Canyon High School outside Los Angeles, played for Cal Supreme in 2016 and for Westbrook’s team in 2018. His father, Jerome Stanley, who works as a lawyer, said that as far as he knew, Nike had never provided Cal Supreme players or their family members with benefits that would violate N.C.A.A. rules.

“It is very sad that Coach Gary has gotten himself tangled up in this mess,” Stanley said. “I feel bad for him and his family, and I pray that he and his lawyers can help him move on and not be damaged or used any more than he has been the past few days.”

LeBron James has always had a knack for drawing superlatives. At 17, he was labeled “The Chosen One” on the cover of Sports Illustrated. At various points in his 13-year N.B.A. career, he has been called the most valuable player, a choke artist and a champion — sometimes all three in the same breath.

But after so many N.B.A. seasons of James in the spotlight, Mark Jackson, the ESPN analyst and former coach, still managed to come up with an even greater compliment for James, the Cavaliers’ 12-time All-N.B.A. forward. When asked on the air during Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals how far James could take a roster like that of the woeful Philadelphia 76ers, Jackson did not hesitate to declare that the broadcast crew would have been in Philadelphia that night for the conference finals game rather than in Cleveland.

Although there was no doubt some hyperbole involved in saying that James would be the difference between a 10-win season and an appearance in the conference finals, that faith is not totally misplaced. With Friday’s victory over the Toronto Raptors, James has done what Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird and a host of other greats never accomplished: led teams to six consecutive appearances in the N.B.A. finals. Outside Bill Russell and a few of his teammates with the Boston Celtics, it had never been done. In fact, no one else has ever even had five.

James’s success has coincided with his becoming a free agent before the 2010-11 season, when he was able to choose where he wanted to play. He first chose to team with the All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat, winning two titles in four years, and then he returned to Cleveland, where he has played with the All-Stars Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love.

Coincidentally, the aging, seldom-used gunner James Jones has also been along for the ride. Jones has been by James’s side on each of the Miami Heat and Cleveland teams that reached the finals, though he did not play beyond the Eastern Conference finals in 2011 because of injuries.

Even though James has played with such highly talented teammates, and given that the Eastern Conference has not been all that competitive in recent years, it is still a feat to accomplish a run of so many consecutive conference championships. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson never led the Lakers to more than the four straight finals appearances they had from 1982 to 1985. Jordan’s Bulls and Bryant’s Lakers never qualified more than three years in a row (Jordan’s retirement to play baseball broke up what might have been a longer run). The Tim Duncan dynasty in San Antonio topped out at two straight.

The biggest knock against James is that even though his teams have performed so well during the regular season, he has not found that much success once he reaches the finals. In his six previous appearances — James also led the Cavaliers to the finals in 2006-7 — he has come away with just two titles, as opposed to Russell, who played in the finals 12 times, including a stretch of 10 straight, and came away with 11 rings. Jordan had six titles in six appearances, Abdul-Jabbar won six times in 10 tries, while Bryant won five times in seven tries.

But if there is one player who provides an analogue to James, it is Jerry West. Like James, West was not a stranger to superlative nicknames, with people calling him the Logo, Mr. Clutch and Mr. Outside. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest players to grace an N.B.A. court, yet he won just one career title in nine trips to the finals despite playing with a legendary group of teammates that, at various points, included two other members of the N.B.A.’s 50th-anniversary team: Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain.

Just as James’s prime has coincided with some historically great teams like Bryant’s Lakers, Duncan’s Spurs and Stephen Curry’s Warriors, West found himself trying to win championships against Russell’s Celtics, 2011 NBA Finals Walt Frazier’s Knicks and Chamberlain’s 76ers.

James and the Cavaliers still have a realistic shot at winning a championship this season, which would perhaps settle any doubts for the remaining naysayers about James’s legacy. But if the widespread admiration for West all these years later is any indication, James’s consistent ability to lead his teams to great success, even if that does not always lead to a championship, will very likely have a lasting impact that goes far beyond audacious nicknames and praise from broadcasters.

Match 1: Thursday, 9 p.m. Eastern time

U.s.

The online games will air on ABC and can be streamed on WatchESPN.

Canada

The N.B.A.’s Canada web site has all the viewing particulars below.

The Warriors, for improved or worse, have often fed on question. Regardless of how invincible they may have seemed, they've managed to uncover slights to inspire them — usually gonna relatively comical lengths to take action.

The final time they faced sizeable doubt — and in some cases then, it had been barely from the majority of pundits — was ahead of the 2015 finals when, as a group of upstarts, the Warriors had to demonstrate their mettle versus LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers. But during the last 4 seasons, as they designed the change from powerhouse to dynasty, they have got used accidents, inexplicably sloppy performances and a few evident figments of Draymond Environmentally friendly’s imagination as ways to help make profitable really feel less inescapable and more like a chance to establish “Every person” Mistaken.

[Activity one Are living Coverage: The Warriors and Raptors face off in Toronto]

Even final 12 months, because they pulled off Probably the most dominant sweeps in finals background, they appeared to be run by a reserve of question created because of the workforce hardly acquiring survived a clash with the Houston Rockets during the Western Conference finals.

The exception will be 2016, after they won a report 73 game titles from the regular season and had been in a position to roll to A 3-video games-to-a single lead from the overmatched Cavaliers inside the finals. Golden Point out’s domination manufactured question fall absent solely, along with the discussion turned to which with the Warriors could be named most respected participant on the finals.

You could remember the Warriors misplaced that sequence. There's a meme over it.

As Golden Condition comes from a nine-day break, looking to get its 3rd consecutive championship plus a fourth in 5 years, the question produced by injuries to Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins — question that assisted inspire some of the finest basketball of Inexperienced’s job — has pale away. In what must be ringing the “insufficient doubt” alarm in Inexperienced’s head, the gamers and coaches have put in the last few days remaining questioned about the chance that Stephen Curry will eventually gain a finals M.V.P. Award.

[Read: Kawhi Leonard Proves He Was Value Jeopardizing All of it]

Shaun Livingston and Curry answered questions on the award on Monday, taking part in down the importance of Curry turning into the M.V.P., even though neither pushed back again from assumptions the Raptors have merely a slight chance of successful the series.

Steve Kerr, for his aspect, looked as if it would recognize that the line of questioning may very well be counterproductive for his squad. “We’re endeavoring to acquire” the series, the mentor stated when questioned two consecutive questions on the award. “So we’re not referring to any awards. We just would like to win four games.”

This Raptors workforce, In any case, is way more comprehensive than any of the James-led groups that faced off With all the Warriors of their former four excursions into the finals.

Following five years of looking at his workforce dominate within the regular time only to crumble in the playoffs, Masai Ujiri, the Raptors’ president, blew things up, trading DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Eco-friendly. The move didn't shell out tangible dividends inside the frequent time — the Raptors played somewhat worse in excess of the eighty two-video game grind than they'd the year right before — even so the killer intuition that they had previously lacked grew to become a defining attribute on the workforce after the playoffs commenced.

You noticed it in Each and every collection, because the Raptors systematically eradicated Orlando, Philadelphia and Milwaukee, actively playing suffocating defense as Leonard led how on each ends from the court docket.

Leonard, who may have a finals M.V.P. Award on his shelf from his days in San Antonio, has already justified the expense of trading absent DeRozan, a franchise icon. Regardless of whether Leonard indications elsewhere as being a cost-free agent this summer time, he has taken Toronto more than it has ever been before.

His buzzer-beater to finish the next-round collection towards the 76ers was A very powerful shot in franchise background, and Leonard followed it up by averaging 29.8 details and nine.five rebounds a match against the very best-seeded Bucks while in the Japanese Meeting finals, totally outplaying Giannis Antetokounmpo, the presumptive winner of the season’s Most useful Player Award.

And Leonard is rarely alone. Pascal Siakam, who may Steph Curry highlights have the makings of a superstar, is really a deserving sidekick on offense and protection. Marc Gasol, a rugged veteran obtained through the period when Ujiri sensed once more that his franchise desired a shake-up, may be a challenge to the undersize Warriors. And Kyle Lowry, after a centerpiece from the franchise in conjunction with DeRozan, has appeared like his previous self in spurts, even though he has experienced additional mediocre playoff games than fantastic kinds.

Fred VanVleet likely can’t sustain the eighty two.4 per cent he shot from 3-issue variety in the final 3 video games from the series in opposition to the Bucks, but He'll still supply a scoring risk in the bench that has to be accounted for.

The Raptors have extra length than the Warriors and, at least until finally further more discover, much better health. They have residence court docket benefit — a luxurious Golden State had in each of your past four finals — and, with help from their raucous supporters, could get Games 1 and a couple of in advance of Durant’s anticipated return.

If Environmentally friendly and Curry can pick up exactly where they still left off from the Portland series, Durant’s return could be a formality. In the final six online games, Curry has quieted talk about his “disappearing” from the playoffs by averaging 34 details, seven.3 rebounds and 6.3 helps. In those same 6 video games, Eco-friendly, in the most beneficial form of his job thanks to some late-season fat loss, has just about averaged a triple-double, with 13.four factors, 11.5 rebounds and 8.eight helps, while also playing elite defense at a number of positions. The Warriors ability to go galactic, plus the probability that Klay Thompson has a handful of big scoring nights in him also, could make fast do the job of Toronto.

But Curry’s activity is mercurial plenty of to help make 1 speculate if he is because of for your tough extend, and Green is unstable enough the endeavor of tangling with Leonard and Gasol could place him in regular foul difficulties — or worse if he had been to acquire three far more technological foul details, earning a 1-video game suspension.

If the two of People items come about, the Warriors should hope they are able to depend on Durant, currently reduced to currently being an incredibly tall enthusiast, to fly in for the rescue, putting the team on his back and securing the 3-peat. The only problem, of course, is Durant’s return is a relocating focus on. Pinning an excessive amount hope on a participant who has become out considering the fact that May 8 appears unwise.

Because it stands, both of these teams are more evenly matched than the typical fan would presume, although a combination of leading-shelf expertise and finals working experience really should give Golden Condition a slight advantage. However, if Eco-friendly is seeking some motivational doubt, there isn't a should manufacture it this time about. The Warriors, the initial workforce to play inside of a fifth consecutive finals Considering that the Celtics appeared inside their 10th straight in 1966, are nowhere close to a certain detail.

Warriors in six

Soon after not too long ago labeling himself a “tedious All-Star,” LaMarcus Aldridge can add “starter” to that moniker. He replaces the wounded Anthony Davis, who just happens to generally be Paul George game winner one of the most exciting youthful gamers while in the N.B.A.

Steve Kerr, the Western Convention mentor, announced the switch once the two groups practiced Saturday in a packed Madison Square Yard.

It arrived as a shock to several who imagined that final calendar year’s league most respected participant, Kevin Durant, would phase in for Davis, an early contender for this yr’s M.V.P. with the New Orleans Pelicans.

Alternatively, Kerr selected Portland’s Aldridge to start Sunday’s sport. A 4-time All-Star, Aldridge however will not very provide the identify recognition of Durant or Davis, partly on account of his variety of Perform.

“I don’t leap high,” Aldridge claimed. “I don’t windmill. I don’t do anything flashy. It’s me getting regular.”

Averaging 23.six points (tied for seventh in the N.B.A.), ten.3 rebounds (tied with Davis for 10th) and one.1 blocks for every activity has gained him lots of respect inside the league.

“I feel there’s exhilaration to his video game,” his Portland teammate Damian Lillard said. “I think he’s not quite possibly the most outspoken individual, he doesn’t Engage in the sport where by he’s seeking to dunk on folks, things like that. But I don’t Believe he’s boring whatsoever.”

Definitely no one would contemplate Davis in that gentle. Though He'll skip Sunday’s activity by using a shoulder sprain, he remained an attraction on Saturday. His quantities (24.5 points, ten.three rebounds, two.seven blocks, 1.5 steals for every recreation) don't account for that highlight-reel plays he has actually been producing in New Orleans this period.

1 in particular — a double-clutch three-pointer above Durant to defeat the buzzer on Feb. 6 — was even now a chatting place on Saturday.

“I don’t know the way I designed it,” Davis reported. “It absolutely was a singular instant. To get it done on the highway made it a lot better.”

It had been Davis’s first successful 3-pointer in the year, in 9 tries, but his university coach, John Calipari, has normally claimed that the 6-foot-10 Davis, a previous guard who now performs ahead, is effective at earning 3-ideas consistently. He has thought of extending his assortment as Durant did.