James, Durant choose All-Star teams
LeBron James has faced Giannis Antetokounmpo as an opponent in the last three All-Star Games.
The Los Angeles Lakers’ star got him as a teammate this year.
James used the No. 1 overall pick on Antetokounmpo — the NBA’s two-time reigning MVP from Milwaukee — in the draft for Sunday’s All-Star Game in Atlanta. Kevin Durant, who will not play in the All-Star Game because of injury but still is the captain for Team Durant, took Brooklyn teammate Kyrie Irving with his first pick.
The other starters for Team LeBron will be Stephen Curry of Golden State, Luka Doncic of Dallas and Nikola Jokic of Denver. The other starters for Team Durant will be Joel Embiid of Philadelphia, 2020 All-Star MVP Kawhi Leonard of the Los Angeles Clippers, Bradley Beal of Washington and Jayson Tatum of Boston.
This is the fourth year of the NBA’s playing captain format for the All-Star Game. James is 3-0, beating teams captained by Curry in 2018 and Antetokounmpo in the last two seasons.
“I just try to pick players that can complement one another,” James said during the draft that was taped Wednesday and aired Thursday night on TNT. “When we’re on the floor, we’ll try to play the game the right way. It’s the All-Star Game, so there’s going to be some shenanigans out there. But for the majority of the game, we’re going to try to play the right way and come out with a win.”
Durant had the first pick of the reserve round and took another Brooklyn teammate, James Harden with the opening selection there. James’ first pick among the reserves was Damian Lillard of Portland, Durant followed by taking Devin Booker of Phoenix, and James countered by selecting Ben Simmons of Philadelphia.
“I wanted Ben Simmons. I wanted Ben,” Durant said.
The remaining Team Durant subs: Zion Williamson of New Orleans, Zach LaVine of Chicago, Julius Randle of New York, Nikola Vucevic of Orlando and Donovan Mitchell of Utah. James’ final selections were Chris Paul of Phoenix, Jaylen Brown of Boston, Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers, Domantas Sabonis of Indiana and Rudy Gobert of Utah.
Mitchell and Gobert, respectively, were the last two players taken despite being the only AllStars from the Jazz — who hit the break with the NBA’s best record at 27-9.
“This is slander, America,” TNT analyst Charles Barkley said during the taping.
Durant took Mitchell, which left Gobert to James as the final selection. And James did his best to diffuse what he knows will inevitably be a topic of conversation — how the Jazz got snubbed during the draft.
“Listen, I just want to say something,” James said. “There’s no slander. There’s no slander to the Utah Jazz. But you guys got to understand, just like in video games growing up, we never played with Utah. Even as great as Karl Malone and John Stockton was, we never picked those guys in video games. Never.”
The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association have committed more than $3 million to aid historically Black institutions as part of All-Star Sunday, with at least $1.75 million coming from the game itself.
Team LeBron will play on behalf of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Team Durant will play for the United Negro College Fund. Both organizations will receive $500,000 to start, and the winners of the first, second and third quarters will collect another $150,000. The team that reaches the target score and wins the game first will get $300,000 more.
“It’s an honor that we get to represent so many people and use this platform to help advance education, our youth, just the world in general,” Durant said.
A few notes from the draft:
LEBRON VS. PHILLY
For the fourth consecutive year of this format, Embiid was not drafted by James. But it’s not an anti-Philadelphia bias: James drafted Embiid’s teammate Ben Simmons for the second consecutive year and will have him as an All-Star teammate for the third time; he swung a trade to get Simmons after Antetokounmpo originally drafted him in 2019.
GOBERT HISTORY
Team LeBron might have defaulted into a pretty good last pick. All Gobert did last year in his All-Star debut was shoot 10 for 11, score 21 points and grab 11 rebounds in 19 minutes.
JAZZ REACTION
The Jazz, on Twitter anyway, took the high road after Mitchell and Gobert were the last two players selected. “The All-Star nod is a credit to the Jazz’s success this season, but also to the work it has taken to get here,” the team wrote. Mitchell will play for Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers on Sunday; Gobert will play for Jazz coach Quin Snyder.
OPPOSING TEAMMATES
Mitchell and Gobert won’t be the only All-Stars from the same franchise playing for different teams Sunday. Phoenix (Paul and Booker), the Los Angeles Clippers (George and Leonard) and Philadelphia (Embiid and Simmons) will be in the same boat. Technically, James and Lakers teammate Anthony Davis are on different squads as well; Davis, who is injured and will not play, was placed on Team Durant.
THE COACHES
Rivers, who played in one AllStar Game, is coaching the game for the third time. It’s Snyder’s AllStar debut as a head coach.
Islanders 5, Sabres 2
UNIONDALE, N.Y. — Matt Martin scored twice and New York beat Buffalo in the opener of a three-game series.
Noah Dobson, Anthony Beauvillier and Jordan Eberle also scored for New York, and rookie Ilya Sorokin stopped 16 shots. The Islanders improved to 5-0-1 in their last six overall and 8-0-2 at the Nassau Coliseum to remain the only team without a regulation loss at home.
Taylor Hall and Rasmus Ristolainen scored for Buffalo.
Hurricanes 5, Red Wings 2
RALEIGH, N.C. — Jordan Staal and Jesper Fast scored early in the third period to help Carolina beat Detroit.
Andrei Svechnikov, Svechnikov, Martin Necas and Nino Niederreiter also scored for the Hurricanes.
Filip Zadina scored twice for the Red Wings.
Rangers 6, Devils 1
NEWARK, N.J. — Chris Kreider had his second hat trick in five games and the Rangers beat the slumping New Jersey Devils 6-1 on Thursday night in a game marred by a late injury to New York goalie Igor Shesterkin.
Kreider, who scored three times in a loss to Philadelphia on Feb. 24, has nine goals in his last six games, and 13 overall. He completed his natural hat trick 23 seconds into the final period after scoring twice in the second. His fourth career hat trick came on five shots.
Shesterkin seemed to hurt his right leg with just under six minutes to play when he stretched to stop a 2-on-1 break and shot by Damon Severson. He went down without contact and had to helped off the ice, dragging the leg.
Shesterkin kept the Rangers in the game in the first period by stopping 13 of 14 shots. He finished with 32 saves in helping the Rangers win their second straight and their fifth in seven. Pavel Buchnevich, Brendan Smith and Alexis Lafreniere also scored for New York.
Jack Hughes scored for the Devils.
Flyers 4, Penguins 3
PITTSBURGH — Claude Giroux scored his second goal of the night on a tap-in with 2:08 remaining and Philadelphia overcame an early Pittsburgh deluge.
Scott Laughton and Sean Couturier also scored for the Flyers. They trailed by three following a 71-second first-period onslaught by Pittsburgh.
Brian Elliott overcame a rough start to stop 26 shots as Philadelphia won its first game after falling behind 3-0 since earning a shootout victory over Buffalo on Oct. 25, 2016.
Kris Letang, Mark Friedman and Jared McCann scored during Pittsburgh’s early binge.
Jets 4, Canadiens 3, OT
MONTREAL — Pierre-Luc Dubois scored at 4:29 of overtime to give the Winnipeg Jets a 4-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night in the opener of twogame series.
Dubois fired a rolling puck past goalie Jake Allen for his fifth of the season. Winnipeg improved to 5-0 in overtime this season, and Montreal fell to 0-4.
Allen stopped Kyle Connor on a breakaway in overtime before turning away Blake Wheeler on a 2-on-1. Winnipeg’s
Connor Hellebuyck also came up big on Montreal’s Paul Byron in the extra period.
Montreal’s Corey Perry forced overtime with his third goal of the season at 18:36 of the third. It came with Allen on the bench for the extra attacker.
Paul Stastny put Winnipeg ahead 3-2 with his second goal of the game at 3:39 of the period.
Hellebuyck made 33 saves, and Mathieu Perreault also scored for Winnipeg in the first of five straight road games. The Jets have won six of seven to improve to 15-7-1. Panthers 5, Predators 4 Lightning 3, Blackhawks 2, OT Columbus at Dallas, late
Ottawa at Calgary, late
Toronto at Vancouver, late
Lawrence Otis Graham, an Ivy League-trained lawyer whose incisive, often searingly self-aware explorations of class identity and divisions among African Americans made him one of the most widely read, and widely debated, Black writers of the 1990s, died Feb. 19 at his home in Chappaqua, New York. He was 59.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham, who said the cause had not been determined.
Graham had already made partner at a Manhattan law firm and written 11 books when, in 1992, he deleted his Princeton and Harvard degrees from his resume and took a job in the restaurant at the Greenwich Country Club in Connecticut, an experience he then recounted in a cover article for New York magazine.
“Quite frankly, I got into this country club the only way that a Black man like me could,” he wrote. “As a $7-an-hour busboy.”
Graham recounted the racism, sexism and anti-Semitism he encountered while clearing tables for white club members. But he also admitted that he had a desire to be seated alongside them, a tension to which he returned repeatedly in his subsequent work.
“When I talk to my Black lawyer or investment-banker friends,” he wrote, “I learn that our white counterparts are being accepted by dozens of these elite institutions. So why shouldn’t we — especially when we have the same ambitions, social graces, credentials and salaries?”
The article, “Invisible Man,” became one of that year’s most-talked about pieces of journalism. Graham sold the film rights to Warner Bros. for $300,000 (the equivalent of about $560,000 today), and Denzel Washington was slated to play Graham. But the project fizzled.
Graham never went back to his law firm, choosing instead to be a full-time writer. He became a fixture of talk shows and the lecture circuit, picking apart both the intricacies of class among African Americans and the difficulties that educated, connected Black people like him had in navigating a white elite that still only grudgingly admitted them.
“This is the problem with being raised in the Black upper middle class,” he told Malcolm Gladwell, then a reporter at The Washington Post, for a 1995 profile. “You are living in a white world but you have to hold on to Black culture. You have to please two groups. One group says you have sold out, and the other never quite accepts you.”
In 1995 he published “Member of the Club: Reflections on Life in a Racially Polarized World,” an essay collection that included “Invisible Man” and several similar pieces of immersive, experiential journalism.
One essay explored his decision to have plastic surgery to make his nose less prominent, and his Black friends’ reactions to it. For another piece he spent a month living in Harlem, long before it was gentrified, as a way to explore the tension between his skin color, which let him fit in, and his class mores, including his preference for Izod polo shirts, which made him stick out.
Graham made waves again in 1999 with “Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class,” a Times Notable Book that documented the way wealthy African Americans perpetuated a quiet aristocracy through exclusive clubs, vacation enclaves and organizations like Jack and Jill of America, a social and cultural organization for children that, he said, served to inculcate Black elite values.