James' World 2

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On the N.F.L.’s march to complete a 269-game schedule amid a pandemic, more than 700 players, coaches, and other team personnel tested positive for the coronavirus. It upended rosters, with the Denver Broncos starting a game without any of their three quarterbacks and the Cleveland Browns once fielding a team with nearly all of their receivers out, and it postponed games, with some outbreaks pushing them into midweek or to a bye week.

Through it all, only one of the league’s 32 teams remained untouched by the virus: the Seattle Seahawks. And how they made it through the long season virus-free, in Washington State, where the United States’ first positive case was reported, is a testament to innovative thinking and procedures. The team’s devotion to following health guidelines became a guidepost for the N.F.L. and other leagues grappling with how to proceed as the deadly virus continued to grip the country.

“They invented a playbook for a safe practice environment at a time when the future was deeply uncertain and people were questioning the wisdom of pro sports starting up,” said Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist who has helped organizations respond to the coronavirus and informally advised the Seahawks. “You have to be willing to absorb some costs, and you need leaders who can communicate in a crisis.”

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The N.F.L. rolled out a grand experiment to play a not-at-all socially distanced sport in a pandemic. The Times went behind the scenes with the Seattle Seahawks and the Cleveland Browns to understand how the science and the upheaval played out. credit credit…Pool photo by Ted S. Warren

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On Thursday, July 11, 2019, without a dollar in his pocket, Anthony Estes flew from Charlotte to Las Vegas for a basketball tryout. He didn’t have a place to stay in Vegas, but then he hadn’t had one in Charlotte either, so “what difference does it make,” he thought to himself, “the street is the street.”

Estes was 26 years old and since his freshman year in high school, he hadn’t played longer than a single season for any one team or coach. Shuttling between Long Island, Washington DC, and North Carolina, he grew from a gangly kid into a 6’6, 220lb force of nature. Scouts marveled at his potential—“The sky is the limit,” one recruiting service touted—but Estes lacked the consistent adult presence in his life to help him reach it. He ended up playing one year of Division 1 at North Carolina A&T, then bounced around the junior college ranks before landing behind bars a few times.

Now he was homeless.

The tryout in Vegas was the three-day “TBL Pro International Exposure Event,” hosted by a nascent pro circuit called The Basketball League. The stated mission of TBL is to help unheralded players gain a foothold in the slippery underworld of pro basketball: Find an agent, impress a scout, and grind their way up the food chain, to a team overseas or maybe, if all goes right, a shot at the G League, the NBA’s official development arm.

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Anthony Blasko

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Something strange was in the air at the Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. It wasn’t just that deadlines loomed—that was typical. A shareholders meeting was just around the corner, which never brightened the mood, but that wasn’t it, either. Tinker Hatfield Jr., a 35-year-old sneaker designer, couldn’t quite put his finger on it. His boss, Nike’s creative director, and lead shoe designer, Peter Moore, typically blasted music in his office while he sketched new ideas for shoes. But this summer morning in 1987, the music wasn’t playing.

A few weeks prior, Rob Strasser, Nike’s vice president, suddenly handed in his resignation. Nobody had seen it coming. Strasser was an industry veteran who’d spent nearly two decades as Phil Knight’s marketing guru. He’d become a local legend, “the man who saved Nike.” In three years, he’d turned the company’s fortunes around by signing Michael Jordan to the most high-profile and successful athlete endorsement deal in history. Soon, Jordan’s contract would be coming up for renegotiation. Wherever Strasser was about to go, he seemed poised to take Jordan with him.

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Photo by Rick Stewart/Stringer/Getty Images

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In the end, the Houston Rockets didn’t get the blue-chip young player they boasted they would receive in return for James Harden — the second-greatest player in franchise history, behind only Hakeem Olajuwon, and one of the league’s all-time best scorers.

Victor Oladipo, acquired in exchange for Caris LeVert as part of this monstrosity, does not quite qualify. Oladipo is almost 29, two years, and one major leg injury removed from his only All-NBA season. He has looked more like his old self this season; he is getting to the rim at a pre-injury level. But he also is eligible for free agency this summer, when there will be oodles more cap space than available stars.

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Harden deal

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