The Toronto Blue Jays' brief playoff appearance came to an end in blowout fashion on Wednesday evening.
The Tampa Bay Rays scored seven runs on Blue Jays ace Hyun-Jin Ryu, chasing him in the second inning of an 8-2 rout at Tropicana Field.
Mike Zunino hit a two-run homer and Hunter Renfroe belted a grand slam as the Rays advanced by winning two straight games in the best-of-three series.
Danny Jansen was one of the few bright spots for the visitors with two solo homers.
Tampa Bay will play Cleveland or New York in the American League Division Series. The Yankees took a 1-0 lead into Game 2 on Wednesday night.
The Blue Jays benefitted from Major League Baseball's expanded 2020 post-season structure by taking the eighth and final seed in the American League. The team's young core made strides this season in order to qualify for the playoffs but were overmatched upon arrival.
WATCH | Analyst Mike Wilner breaks down Blue Jays vs. Rays:
Blue Jays analyst Mike Wilner joins CBC News Network to discuss the Blue Jays first playoff appearance since 2016. 6:22
Tampa Bay had control in a 3-1 Game 1 victory a day earlier despite managing just four hits. The Rays had four hits in the opening inning of Game 2 alone.
Ryu was out of sorts from the start. His fastball didn't have its usual zip and his control was suspect.
The Rays took advantage with Manuel Margot driving in Randy Arozarena with an RBI single to open the scoring in the first inning. Ryu fanned Willy Adames with the bases loaded to limit the damage to one run.
Kevin Kiermaier led off the second with a single and scored when Zunino went deep on an 0-2 pitch. Ryu gave up a double and a two-out walk later in the frame and should have escaped when Margot hit a ground ball to Bo Bichette.
A grand start for the Rays. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Postseason?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Postseason</a> <a href="https://t.co/l1loK9Vzzz">pic.twitter.com/l1loK9Vzzz</a>
However the Toronto shortstop bobbled it for his second error of the game, leaving the bases loaded. Renfroe made the Blue Jays pay with a no-doubt grand slam.
That was more than enough cushion for Tampa Bay starter Tyler Glasnow, who opened the game by striking out Cavan Biggio on three pitches. The hard-throwing right-hander needed just seven pitches to retire the side.
"I got fast, I got slide, whatchu want?" - <a href="https://twitter.com/big_nate5?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@big_nate5</a> 😳 <a href="https://t.co/HPmtqdEZXy">pic.twitter.com/HPmtqdEZXy</a>
Glasnow struck out eight over six innings, giving up six hits, two earned runs and a walk. Ryu lasted one and two-thirds innings and allowed eight hits, three earned runs, four unearned runs and one walk while striking out two.
Toronto rookie Nate Pearson struck out five of the six batters he faced over two clean innings. The Rays outhit Toronto 12-7.
Tampa Bay entered Game 2 with a 7-4 edge in head-to-head matchups with Blue Jays this year although Toronto had outscored the Rays 49-47 overall.
Ryu had an extra day of rest after the Blue Jays gave Matt Shoemaker the surprise start in Game 1. Shoemaker and Robbie Ray were effective over six innings but the decision left Taijuan Walker — the team's clear No. 2 starter — on the outside looking in.
Travis Shaw started at first base Wednesday while Alejandro Kirk, the Game 1 designated hitter, returned to the bench. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who misplayed a foul pop-up in the opener, handled DH duties.
Tampa Bay made it to the ALDS last year before being eliminated by the Houston Astros. The Blue Jays were last in the post-season in 2016.
The top-seeded Rays were 40-20 in the regular season. The Blue Jays were 32-28.
WATCH | Blue Jays clinch 1st post-season appearance since 2016:
For the first time in four years, the Toronto Blue Jays will play in the MLB postseason. The team of young stars surprised many in the baseball world by clinching a playoff berth with a victory over the New York Yankees. 1:52
The Henrik Lundqvist era in The Big Apple officially ended Wednesday when the New York Rangers bought out the final year of the star goalie’s contract.
The 38-year-old Swedish star has been associated with the Rangers organization for the past 20 years after being selected by the team in the seventh round of the 2000 draft.
THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING! 15 years ago, I played my first game for @NYRangers I came here with high hopes and big dreams but in my wildest imagination, I could never have pictured the amazing ride that lay ahead.. pic.twitter.com/uo0HJMZnCj
Lundqvist finished top-six in Vezina Trophy voting in each of his first 10 NHL seasons, however his goals-against average has increased in each of the past six seasons so his $8.5-million annual salary cap hit became a burden for a Rangers team about to begin a new chapter in its history.
The Rangers — the team that won the 2020 NHL Draft Lottery and now hold the No. 1 overall pick — will roll with their two young Russian puck-stoppers, Igor Shesterkin and Alexandar Georgiev, starting in 2020-21. As for Lundqvist, it’s unclear what his future holds, at least in terms of his playing days.
Henrik Lundqvist had 1 year remaining on his 7-year, $59.5M deal. His $8.5M cap hit for 2020-21 would have been the 4th-highest among goalies, trailing Carey Price ($10.5M), Sergei Bobrovsky ($10M) & Andrei Vasilevskiy ($9.5M).
Will Lundqvist consider retirement? If not, will he want to earn a starter’s role in a new city? Could he thrive as part of a tandem? Might he be an ideal backup on a team with a young starter he could mentor?
Or, could the veteran struggle to find the right fit altogether? This off-season, after all, boasts a fairly crowded goalie market and with the salary cap not increasing it puts some teams in a budget bind.
With all that in mind, here are five teams that could be interesting fits for the decorated netminder.
The Avalanche were looking like a legitimate threat to emerge from the Western Conference before Philipp Grubauer went down with an injury. Backups Pavel Francouz and Michael Hutchinson struggled and Colorado was eliminated by Dallas. Adding some insurance in the form of a possible future Hall of Famer could contribute to Colorado reaching that next level.
GM Joe Sakic has plenty of cap space with which to work and Lundvist will prefer going to a team with realistic championship aspirations. Grubauer and Francouz are both under contract next season, with a combined cap hit of $5.33 million, which could complicate things slightly.
The Canucks have something potentially special cooking in B.C. They were the only Canadian team to advance beyond the first round of the playoffs this summer. A huge reason for that was the play of Jacob Markstrom, who is expected to be the most sought-after goalie available in free agency – it’s either him or countryman Robin Lehner.
If Markstrom does leave, Vancouver will need to fill that void and who better to mentor Thatcher Demko than someone like Lundqvist? If he isn’t interested in playing second fiddle to a 24-year-old, though, then Vancouver might not be the right fit. Lundqvist could join former Team Sweden teammates Alex Edler and Loui Eriksson, plus star forward Elias Pettersson and Calder Trophy runner-up Quinn Hughes, on a growing team that would benefit from his experience and leadership.
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With Braden Holtby hitting the open market, Lundqvist would make sense as a replacement. The Capitals will be handing the keys to the crease to 22-year-old Ilya Samsonov. Lundqvist could provide the Russian some valuable support. Lundqvist might’ve struggled in 2019-20 but his .905 save percentage was better than Holtby’s .897.
Did Anton Khudobin price himself out of town after his playoff heroics that fell a couple wins shy of a Stanley Cup championship?
Khudobin is a pending UFA and if he leaves town the Stars will be left with Ben Bishop. The Stars should be contenders again next season. If they don’t think 2017 first-rounder Jake Oettinger is ready to be a full-time NHL backup next season and/or they don’t fully trust Bishop to stay healthy and perform at a high level consistently, then why not take a look at Lunqvist?
Henrik’s twin brother, Joel Lundvist, spent three seasons with the Stars from 2006-2009.
This would be a wild jump from one Original Six franchise to another.
Chicago needs an upgrade in net with Corey Crawford a pending UFA and both Malcolm Subban and Collin Delia unproven as starters. Lundqvist wouldn’t be their first choice, but if they miss out on their top handful of targets then Lunqvist could be an excellent contingency plan.
Chicago has plenty of proven winners on their roster and they upset the Oilers in the qualifying round. As mentioned above, Lundqvist will want to go to a place where he can actually start some games. If he thinks the Blackhawks will be a playoff-calibre team next season, then who knows?
Here's what you need to know right now from the world of sports:
The NBA Finals tip off tonight
This year's championship series features a lot of interesting characters and storylines for both avid and casual basketball fans. Here are a few things to know ahead of Game 1 between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat at 9 p.m. ET in the Disney bubble:
LeBron James is back — and facing his old team. After a one-year absence when the Lakers missed the playoffs in his first season with them, LeBron will play in the Finals for an incredible ninth time in 10 years and 10th time in his career. He made four straight appearances with Miami from 2011-14, winning the two in the middle. Then he ditched the Heat to return to Cleveland and reached the next four Finals (all vs. Golden State), going 1-3 to bring his lifetime Finals record to 3-6.
It's also LeBron vs. Michael Jordan. Some basketball fans like to argue that LeBron is the greatest player of all time. Thanks to all those deep playoff runs, the 35-year-old has scored more playoff points than anyone in NBA history, and it's not even close. He also ranks third all-time in regular-season points — two spots ahead of Jordan. But MJ is the all-time leader in points per game in both the regular season and playoffs, and he also leads LeBron in the all-important category of rings. Jordan went a perfect 6-0 in the Finals and, as that '90s Bulls documentary series reminded us, James can't touch him in terms of cultural importance. Some of that might be out of LeBron's control, but the bottom line is that Jordan is still the GOAT. Though if LeBron adds another title (with his third different team), the debate will heat up again.
The Lakers have the two best players. LeBron was the runner-up to Giannis Antetokounmpo in MVP voting this year, and he has an MVP-calibre sidekick in Anthony Davis. The ludicrously skilled, unibrowed big man leads all Finals players with 28.8 points per game in this year's playoffs. LeBron is second at 26.7. Both are also excellent defensively when they need to be.
But the Heat have more good players. If you drafted everyone in the Finals schoolyard-style, LeBron and Davis would definitely go 1-2. But L.A.'s roster really drops off from there. Mediocre Kyle Kuzma (10.5 points per game) is the only other Laker averaging double figures in the playoffs. Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo and former Raptor Danny Green are recognizable names, but they're just role players at this point in their careers. So in our hypothetical draft, the next four guys picked (at least) would be from Miami. Bam Adebayo is an elite two-way big man, Jimmy Butler is a fearless crunchtime scorer who also does a lot of the unnoticed things that help win basketball games, and veteran point guard Goran Dragic is averaging a team-high 20.9 points per game in the post-season. Plus, rookie Tyler Herro looks like a rising star off the bench. The ace three-point shooter scored a career-high 37 points in Game 4 of the East final and can carry the team for stretches when he gets hot.
Two Canadians are involved in the series (technically). Both are on the Heat, but it's unlikely they'll have much of an impact. Veteran big man Kelly Olynyk has seen his minutes cut from about 19 in the regular season to 12 in the playoffs. He's averaging six points. At least you'll see him on the court, though. Rookie Kyle Alexander appeared in only two games this season and hasn't seen any action at all in the playoffs.
The Lakers are heavy favourites to win. Miami's lineup is deeper, and it also has the edge in harder-to-measure stuff like toughness, team spirit and coaching (L.A.'s Frank Vogel is fine, but Erik Spoelstra is one of the best in the NBA). The Heat are also (sorry) red hot. Since entering the playoffs as the No. 5 seed in the East, they've gone 12-3 — including a stunning five-game takedown of top-seeded Milwaukee. But the Lakers have been great all year. They had the third-best regular-season record in the league and are also 12-3 in the playoffs. Plus, having the clear two best players in the series is, historically, a near-unbeatable formula in the NBA. The betting line reflects that. Though it's moved a bit in Miami's favour, the market says the Lakers have around a 75 per cent chance of becoming champions of this very weird NBA season. Read more about the Finals matchup here.
Heat guard 'Jimmy Buckets' is a fearless crunchtime scorer. (Ashley Landis, Pool/Getty Images)
Quickly...
The NFL postponed Sunday's Titans-Steelers game because of a COVID-19 outbreak. This follows yesterday's news that three Tennessee players (none of them stars) and five other team personnel tested positive. Another Titans player reportedly tested positive today. Luckily, no one has from the Minnesota Vikings, who played Tennessee on Sunday. But the NFL announced today that it will push back the Titans-Steelers game to either Monday or Tuesday to allow more time for testing. The league also leaked a memo it sent to all teams warning them to follow the mask-wearing rules and other health protocols or risk suspension and/or the loss of draft picks. Read more about the fallout from the Titans outbreak here.
The Genie Bouchard revival continues. For the first time since the 2017 Australian Open, the fallen Canadian tennis star is into the third round of a Grand Slam event. She battled back from a set down to win her second match at the French Open today. Bouchard is ranked 168th in the world. At 26 years old, she's unlikely to return to the heights she hit in 2014, when she made the Wimbledon final and the semis of two other Slams and reached No. 5 in the world. But she's having her second consecutive solid tournament after reaching a final in Istanbul earlier this month (caveat: the best players were playing in the U.S. Open at the time). Two other Canadian singles players can reach the third round of the French Open on Thursday: ninth-seeded Denis Shapovalov and 100th-ranked Leylah Annie Fernandez. Read more about Bouchard's latest win here.
Serena Williams' window is closing. She dropped out of the French Open today because of an Achilles injury, meaning she'll finish the year still one behind Margaret Court's all-time record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles. With four of the world's top 10 players opting out of the French, this was a good opportunity for Serena. So was the recent U.S. Open, where she lost in the semifinals of a depleted bracket and played like someone well past her physical prime. Williams turned 39 last week, which is ancient by women's tennis standards. And by the time the next Slam rolls around (January's Australian Open), a full four years will have passed since her last major title. Whether she matches Court or not, Serena will go down as the greatest of all time. But it's looking more and more likely she'll have to live without the record. Read more about Serena's latest setback here.
It's a do-or-die game for the Blue Jays. After dropping their playoff opener 3-1 to Tampa Bay yesterday, the Jays are facing elimination in the best-of-three series. Game 2 was just about to get underway at our publish time. Toronto ace Hyun-Jin Ryu is the starter after getting an extra day of rest to recover from some soreness.
The WNBA Finals are set. League MVP A'ja Wilson had 23 points and 11 rebounds to lead the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces to a 66-63 win last night in the deciding game of their semifinal series. The Aces will face the No. 2-seeded Seattle Storm in the best-of-five Finals, which start Friday night.
And finally...
Need a goalie? Good timing. The New York Rangers bought out Henrik Lundqvist today. Besides ending his 15-year run with the team, the move puts another Vezina Trophy winner on the free-agent market. Washington's Braden Holtby is also expected to be available when the signing period opens next Friday, along with 2019 Vezina finalist Robin Lehner. Other potential unrestricted free-agent goalies include Anton Khudobin, who just backstopped Dallas to the Stanley Cup final; Corey Crawford, a two-time winner of the Jennings Trophy for helping Chicago allow the fewest goals in the league; and Jacob Markstrom, who's coming off a strong year for Vancouver.
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We are only at the second game of the series, but the Jays are already facing elimination. Fortunately (?) they have their ace going today, so hopefully they’ll be able to pull out a win.
Here are today’s lineups. Both Shaw and Panik will get starts, Vladdy will DH and Gurriel has been moved up in the lineup.
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The Pittsburgh-Tennessee game originally scheduled for Sunday will be played either Monday or Tuesday after a new positive coronavirus test result Wednesday among the Titans, the NFL announced.
The NFL said a new date and time would be announced as soon as possible and that the postponement would allow additional time for further testing.
On Tuesday, the NFL said three Titans players and five team personnel had tested positive for COVID-19. The Titans have closed their facility at least through Friday and will not be able to practice in any fashion together until Saturday at the earliest. The league did not say Wednesday if the ninth positive test was a player or a personnel member.
Titans coach Mike Vrabel said soon after the announcement Wednesday: "Some of them are indeed experiencing flu-like symptoms, nothing I think out of the ordinary. We anticipate they will feel better shortly. Nothing of overly concern. But my concern is always with the health and safety of our players, our staff and their families."
As for a potential Saturday return to working out, Vrabel was skeptical.
"I wouldn't just assume that Saturday," he said. "We are preparing to play the football game now as early as Monday. Again, I think the focus and the understanding of this football team is now going to be shifted toward playing on Monday. I'm confident the league will allow us time ... to get some good practice in, to get on the field and move forward with the game."
Threat of suspensions for not wearing masks
In order to maintain safety, the league is threatening teams with possible suspensions for sideline personnel, including coaches, who do not properly wear face coverings during the pandemic.
Forfeiting draft picks also could be among disciplinary measures for teams that fail to comply with league/players' union protocols.
In a memo obtained by The Associated Press, Troy Vincent, who oversees NFL football operations, told the 32 teams Wednesday that "accountability" is required on the sidelines.
"We will continue to address lack of compliance with accountability measures that may also include suspensions of persons involved, and/or the forfeiture of a draft choice(s)," Vincent wrote.
The NFL has fined several coaches $100,000 for lack of compliance, including Sean Payton of New Orleans and Jon Gruden of Las Vegas, who both have said they contracted and recovered from the coronavirus. Teams were fined $250,000.
Showdown of undefeated teams
Both the Titans and Steelers are 3-0 and among the NFL's seven undefeated teams.
Tennessee beat Minnesota 31-30 on Sunday in Minneapolis, and the Vikings' team facility is closed at least through Wednesday.
"The Steelers-Titans game, originally scheduled for Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, will be rescheduled to allow additional time for further daily COVID-19 testing and to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and game day personnel," the NFL said.
"We're going to trust the medical experts," Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. "If they deem it safe for us to proceed, we're going to go down there with the intention of playing and playing to win."
Safety first
Cleveland Browns centre J.C. Tretter, the president of the players' union, said the outbreak was a reminder that everyone must be more vigilant despite low testing numbers across the league.
"It's easy to fall into a sense of ease or relax on some of the protocols," he said Wednesday. "But the protocols are what's keeping us going, making sure that we're making the right decisions. We have been going really smoothly for a long time and now there was some expectation that this was eventually going to happen. It's tough to keep the virus completely out."
The Titans placed a pair of key players, defensive captain and lineman DaQuan Jones and long snapper Beau Brinkley, on the reserve/COVID-19 list on Tuesday.
The Vikings said they had no positive test results on Wednesday and were planning to reopen their facility on Thursday. Players and coaches were set for virtual meetings on Wednesday, in lieu of practice for their scheduled game on Sunday at Houston.
After several rough years, Canada's Eugenie Bouchard is enjoying a September surge.
Bouchard, from Westmount, Que., advanced to the third round of the French Open with 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 win over Australia's Daria Gavrilova on Wednesday.
It will mark Bouchard's first appearance in the third round of a Grand Slam since the world's 168th-ranked player won two matches at the 2017 Australian Open.
A former world No. 5 after reaching the Wimbledon final in 2014, Bouchard's ranking has tumbled in recent years, falling below No. 300 at one point. But she has made some strides in recent months, reaching the final of a clay-court event in Istanbul before being awarded a wild-card into the French Open.
WATCH | Bouchard wins in 2nd round of French Open:
Eugenie Bouchard of Westmount, Que., defeats Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 and advances to the 3rd round of Grand Slam for the first time since the 2017 Australian Open. 1:51
"I think I've had tough moments, for sure. I think deep down, you know, still believing in myself no matter what, knowing my skill can't just go away, knowing that I've achieved success before," Bouchard said. "It's just something that I'll always have, reinforces my belief. That's what I use when I need to work hard, when times are tough.
"I have especially done that I think in the past year or so. Proud of this constant work really."
Gavrilova, playing just her second tournament this year after returning from a foot injury, rallied from a deficit to win the first set before Bouchard responded.
"The fact I was able to bounce back is something I'm super proud of. (It) is a testament to the mental strength I've been working on," Bouchard said.
Bouchard will face world No. 54 Iga Swiatek, a 19-year-old from Poland, in the third round.
Meanwhile, in women's doubles first-round play, the fifth-seeded team of Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia beat Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan and Arina Rodionova of Australia 7-5, 6-3.
Leylah Annie Fernandez of Laval, Que., and partner Diane Parry of France lost 6-2, 6-4 to Nina Stojanovic of Serbia and Jill Teichmann of Switzerland.
Fernandez also has advanced to the second round in women's singles, along with No. 9 seed Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., on the men's side.
Fernandez faces Polona Hercog of Slovenia on Thursday, while Shapovalov meets Roberto Carballes Baena of Spain.
Azarenka ousted
U.S. Open runner-up Victoria Azarenka is out of the French Open in the second round.
The 10th-seeded Azarenka lost to 161st-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2, 6-2.
Azarenka's exit means all four women who reached the semifinals in New York earlier this month already are gone in Paris. Serena Williams withdrew from the French Open because of an injured Achilles tendon, Jennifer Brady lost in the first round at Roland Garros and U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka did not make the trip to France.
Schmiedlova had lost 13 consecutive Grand Slam matches in a streak dating to 2015 until beating Venus Williams in the first round this week.
Azarenka is a former No. 1 and a two-time champion at the Australian Open.
Defending champ Nadal advances
Defending champion Rafael Nadal reached the third round by beating American player Mackenzie McDonald 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.
The No. 2-seeded Spaniard is looking to win his record-extending 13th French Open title and equal Roger Federer's men's record of 20 major titles overall.
WATCH | Nadal aiming for 13th French Open title:
12-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal advances to the 3rd round of the French Open with a 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 win over Mackenzie McDonald. 0:32
Nadal improved his record at Roland Garros to 95-2 when he sealed victory on his first match point.
He next faces either Kei Nishikori of Japan or Stefano Travaglia of Italy.
Top seed Halep through to next round
French Open top seed Simona Halep put in a disciplined performance to tame big-hitting Romanian compatriot Irina-Camelia Begu 6-3 6-4 in the second round on Wednesday, extending her winning run to 16 matches.
World No. 2 Halep arrived at Roland Garros having won her last three tournaments — two of them on clay courts in Prague and Rome — and started as the overwhelming favourite to add a second French Open title to her Grand Slam cabinet.
Halep, who skipped the U.S. Open due to the COVID-19 pandemic, began strongly on Court Suzanne Lenglen, jumping to a 3-0 lead against an opponent she had beaten in all her previous seven meetings.
"It's never easy to play against a Romanian and against Irina, we played so many times," Halep, who turned 29 on Sunday, told reporters. "It's never easy, she's a very strong opponent and she's also powerful, the serve is really strong."
WATCH | Halep defeats Romanian compatriot at French Open:
Simona Halep beats fellow Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu 6-3, 6-4 in the 2nd round of the French Open. 1:01
Despite the slow start, the 73rd-ranked Begu refused to give up and switched to a more attacking game plan and it paid dividends as the 30-year-old got the set back on serve with a break for 4-3.
Halep had to dig deep and the 2018 champion got the second break in the eighth game and then held serve to win the opening set.
Begu hit seven more winners than Halep in the match but also had 15 more unforced errors, and a second service break was enough for Halep to secure the second set and a spot in the third round.
Canada's Eugenie Bouchard is heading to the third round of the French Open.
Bouchard, from Westmount, Que., beat Australia's Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday.
It will mark Bouchard's first appearance in the third round of a Grand Slam since the world's 168th-ranked player won two matches at the 2017 Australian Open.
A former world No. 5 after reaching the Wimbledon final in 2014, Bouchard's ranking has tumbled in recent years. But she's made some strides in recent months, reaching the final of an event in Istanbul before being awarded a wild-card into the French Open.
WATCH | Bouchard wins in 2nd round of French Open:
Eugenie Bouchard of Westmount, Que., defeats Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 and advances to the 3rd round of Grand Slam for the first time since the 2017 Australian Open. 1:51
Bouchard will face world No. 54 Iga Swiatek of Poland in the third round.
Meanwhile, in women's doubles first-round play, the fifth-seeded team of Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia beat Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan and Arina Rodionova of Australia 7-5, 6-3.
Leylah Annie Fernandez of Laval, Que., and partner Diane Parry of France lost 6-2, 6-4 to Nina Stojanovic of Serbia and Jill Teichmann of Switzerland.
Fernandez also has advanced to the second round in women's singles, along with No. 9 seed Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., on the men's side.
Azarenka ousted
U.S. Open runner-up Victoria Azarenka is out of the French Open in the second round.
The 10th-seeded Azarenka lost to 161st-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2, 6-2.
Azarenka's exit means all four women who reached the semifinals in New York earlier this month already are gone in Paris. Serena Williams withdrew from the French Open because of an injured Achilles tendon, Jennifer Brady lost in the first round at Roland Garros and U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka did not make the trip to France.
Schmiedlova had lost 13 consecutive Grand Slam matches in a streak dating to 2015 until beating Venus Williams in the first round this week.
Azarenka is a former No. 1 and a two-time champion at the Australian Open.
Defending champ Nadal advances
Defending champion Rafael Nadal reached the third round by beating American player Mackenzie McDonald 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.
The No. 2-seeded Spaniard is looking to win his record-extending 13th French Open title and equal Roger Federer's men's record of 20 major titles overall.
WATCH | Nadal aiming for 13th French Open title:
12-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal advances to the 3rd round of the French Open with a 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 win over Mackenzie McDonald. 0:32
Nadal improved his record at Roland Garros to 95-2 when he sealed victory on his first match point.
He next faces either Kei Nishikori of Japan or Stefano Travaglia of Italy.
Top seed Halep through to next round
French Open top seed Simona Halep put in a disciplined performance to tame big-hitting Romanian compatriot Irina-Camelia Begu 6-3 6-4 in the second round on Wednesday, extending her winning run to 16 matches.
World No. 2 Halep arrived at Roland Garros having won her last three tournaments — two of them on clay courts in Prague and Rome — and started as the overwhelming favourite to add a second French Open title to her Grand Slam cabinet.
Halep, who skipped the U.S. Open due to the COVID-19 pandemic, began strongly on Court Suzanne Lenglen, jumping to a 3-0 lead against an opponent she had beaten in all her previous seven meetings.
"It's never easy to play against a Romanian and against Irina, we played so many times," Halep, who turned 29 on Sunday, told reporters. "It's never easy, she's a very strong opponent and she's also powerful, the serve is really strong."
WATCH | Halep defeats Romanian compatriot at French Open:
Simona Halep beats fellow Romanian Irina-Camelia Begu 6-3, 6-4 in the 2nd round of the French Open. 1:01
Despite the slow start, the 73rd-ranked Begu refused to give up and switched to a more attacking game plan and it paid dividends as the 30-year-old got the set back on serve with a break for 4-3.
Halep had to dig deep and the 2018 champion got the second break in the eighth game and then held serve to win the opening set.
Begu hit seven more winners than Halep in the match but also had 15 more unforced errors, and a second service break was enough for Halep to secure the second set and a spot in the third round.
Canada's Eugenie Bouchard is heading to the third round of the French Open.
Bouchard, from Westmount, Que., beat Australia's Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday.
It will mark Bouchard's first appearance in the third round of a Grand Slam since the world's 168th-ranked player won two matches at the 2017 Australian Open.
A former world No. 5 after reaching the Wimbledon final in 2014, Bouchard's ranking has tumbled in recent years. But she's made some strides in recent months, reaching the final of an event in Istanbul before being awarded a wild-card into the French Open.
WATCH | Bouchard wins in 2nd round of French Open:
Eugenie Bouchard of Westmount, Que., defeats Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 and advances to the 3rd round of Grand Slam for the first time since the 2017 Australian Open. 1:51
Bouchard will face world No. 54 Iga Swiatek of Poland in the third round.
Meanwhile, in women's doubles first-round play, the fifth-seeded team of Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia beat Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan and Arina Rodionova of Australia 7-5, 6-3.
Leylah Annie Fernandez of Laval, Que., and partner Diane Parry of France lost 6-2, 6-4 to Nina Stojanovic of Serbia and Jill Teichmann of Switzerland.
Fernandez also has advanced to the second round in women's singles, along with No. 9 seed Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., on the men's side.
Azarenka ousted
U.S. Open runner-up Victoria Azarenka is out of the French Open in the second round.
The 10th-seeded Azarenka lost to 161st-ranked Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2, 6-2.
Azarenka's exit means all four women who reached the semifinals in New York earlier this month already are gone in Paris. Serena Williams withdrew from the French Open because of an injured Achilles tendon, Jennifer Brady lost in the first round at Roland Garros and U.S. Open champion Naomi Osaka did not make the trip to France.
Schmiedlova had lost 13 consecutive Grand Slam matches in a streak dating to 2015 until beating Venus Williams in the first round this week.
Azarenka is a former No. 1 and a two-time champion at the Australian Open.
Defending champ Nadal advances
Defending champion Rafael Nadal reached the third round by beating American player Mackenzie McDonald 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.
The No. 2-seeded Spaniard is looking to win his record-extending 13th French Open title and equal Roger Federer's men's record of 20 major titles overall.
WATCH | Nadal aiming for 13th French Open title:
12-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal advances to the 3rd round of the French Open with a 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 win over Mackenzie McDonald. 0:32
Nadal improved his record at Roland Garros to 95-2 when he sealed victory on his first match point.
He next faces either Kei Nishikori of Japan or Stefano Travaglia of Italy.
PARIS — Canada’s Eugenie Bouchard is heading to the third round of the French Open.
Bouchard, from Westmount, Que., beat Australia’s Daria Gavrilova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday.
It will mark Bouchard’s first appearance in the third round of a Grand Slam since the world’s 168th-ranked player won two matches at the 2017 Australian Open.
A former world No. 5 after reaching the Wimbledon final in 2014, Bouchard’s ranking has tumbled in recent years. But she’s made some strides in recent months, reaching the final of an event in Istanbul before being awarded a wild-card into the French Open.
Bouchard will face world No. 54 Iga Swiatek of Poland in the third round.
Meanwhile, in women’s doubles first-round play, the fifth-seeded team of Gabriela Dabrowski of Ottawa and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia beat Zarina Diyas of Kazakhstan and Arina Rodionova of Australia 7-5, 6-3.
Leylah Annie Fernandez of Laval, Que., and partner Diane Parry of France lost 6-2, 6-4 to Nina Stojanovic of Serbia and Jill Teichmann of Switzerland.
Fernandez also has advanced to the second round in women’s singles, along with No. 9 seed Denis Shapovalov of Richmond Hill, Ont., on the men’s side.
Bouchard, who defeated Anna Kalinskaya, entered the tournament ranked 168th in the world. In her most recent tournament appearance, she reached the finals in Istanbul, receiving a berth into the French Open a short time later. She was ranked 330th in the WTA in August.
The 26-year-old reached the semifinals at the French Open in 2014.
Carlos Boozer remembers the first time in his professional career that he took direction from a teenager. It was during a game in fall 2003, after a play designed to free up Zydrunas Ilgauskas worked exactly as intended, with every X and every O in its place. A precocious rookie then pulled Boozer aside; LeBron James, just months removed from playing for the Ohio high school title, had seen a moment of opportunity in the eyes of Boozer’s defender.
“Booz, your guy is looking at me,” James told him, per Boozer’s recollection. “If we run this play again, just duck in.” When Cleveland later returned to that set, Ilgauskas became the decoy, James the distraction, and Boozer the uncontested scorer. An already successful plan of attack sprouted another possibility—all through the cultivation of an idea from a first-year playmaker, and his insistence that the end of a possession was hardly an end at all. “Even if the play worked, he would see something else that could work the next time we ran that same play,” Boozer says. “That’s what made him so special to me. I don’t know how to explain it. I would just call it his mental Rolodex.”
It’s a fitting metaphor for the last remaining star of the analog age. When LeBron arrived on the NBA scene in 2003, cameraphones weren’t yet common nor sophisticated enough to capture the moment. Today, a picture of James walking to the bus in street clothes will beam directly into the pocket of his 72.6 million Instagram followers. At this point, there are more coaches and executives from LeBron’s draft class than there are active players. An entire wave has come and gone. “He’s got an old game,” former Cavs head coach Mike Brown toldThe Plain Dealer back in 2009. “That’s not anything negative. It’s powerful, it’s athletic, it’s energetic—the whole 9 yards. It just seems like he’s been doing it forever.”
To update the math, that’s now forever and a decade. James will compete this week in his 10th NBA Finals, cementing his standing as one of basketball’s living institutions. “It’s been like this for a very long time,” says Heat forward Jimmy Butler, who will guard James in the championship series. “If you wanna win, you’re going to have to go through a LeBron James–led team.” The triumph in that sort of constancy is the change it requires. The competitive landscape of the NBA is always shifting. For the better part of two decades, LeBron has managed to move with it, or at least to stomp with force enough to make tremors of his own. The only way to understand the nature of that progression is to see the game as LeBron does: as a playmaker first, in a league in which power forwards and centers—his natural pick-and-roll partners—are at risk of being phased out of the game entirely. The story of the NBA can be told through LeBron, but the story of LeBron can be fully understood only through the bigs he played with—the teammates who, with the right guidance, took a familiar play to new ends.
With unprecedented hype, a $90 million shoe deal, and a tattoo across his shoulders announcing him as the CHOSEN 1, LeBron James came into the NBA looking to defer to his veteran teammates. It was telling that James, then 19 years old, described himself to Ahmad Rashad as “a more explosive Penny Hardaway” rather than, say, “a perimeter-oriented Shaq,” though both descriptors would eventually turn out to be accurate. Penny is simply closer to LeBron’s default setting.
It took months of losing and the urging of his teammates for James to override it. “Coming in, I kind of didn’t know my role, what was I going to be for this team,” he told reporters in early 2004. His fellow Cavs took notice—both of the fact that LeBron was the team’s best chance of turning their season around and that he was reflexively yielding the offense to Ricky Davis, an unrepentant gunner who wore his operating principle, “GET BUCKETS,” on his wristbands. While productive, Davis was part of the reason Cleveland had lost enough games to draft James in the first place. With the Cavs stumbling along a similar trajectory, Boozer made an appeal to the rookie who saw the game more clearly than any other player in the locker room.
“At some point,” Boozer says, “I just asked him: ‘Bron, when are you gonna step up and be our best player?’”
The Cavaliers answered on LeBron’s behalf by first trading Davis to the Celtics, and then sending Darius Miles—another relatively high-usage wing—to the Trail Blazers. The entire offense tilted toward James, and more specifically, into the momentum of his pick-and-rolls with Ilgauskas. The two might seem an unlikely pair. James was a basketball prodigy with the kind of athleticism that transcended the bounds of his sport; during the Cleveland years alone, LeBron was described as (or compared to) a fullback, a tailback, a quarterback, a wide receiver, a tight end, a linebacker, and a safety, leaving him a stout line away from a one-man run at the Super Bowl. Ilgauskas, on the other hand, was one of the slowest players in the league—a 7-foot-3 center compromised by multiple foot surgeries who maxed out at a brisk shuffle. Together, they found chemistry in contrast. Working with Ilgauskas would become one of the most productive relationships of LeBron’s basketball career, resulting in 785 assists for 1,594 points parsed out over 500 games played for two franchises and four head coaches.
“Man, between the two of us, we’ve probably run the pick-and-roll 2 million times, including practice,” Ilgauskas said in 2010. An incredible majority looked something like this:
It is an utterly uncomplicated premise, given power by the fact that LeBron is the most dangerous player to ever run a pick-and-roll. Separating James from his defender for even a moment requires a task force in response: The big defending the immediate play has to shift their focus to LeBron, a teammate on the back line needs to veer into the lane in support, and LeBron’s actual defender must scramble around the ball screen and back into position as best they could. “Really, we don’t even need a play call,” Ilgauskas said. “We just need eye contact. Sometimes we’ll just keep running it until the other team stops it.” Some opponents never really did.
In their seven years in Cleveland, James and Ilgauskas worked as pick-and-roll artists in residence, and in the process helped to shape contemporary basketball strategy. Their connection was the standard-definition precursor of the modern pick-and-pop; next season, Luka Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis will take the same angles and dance the same steps, only stretched to the extremes of the 3-point line. More locally, Ilgauskas made a mark on whichever young bigs came into his orbit—which is to say he created a sort of fraternity of LeBron’s most frequent passing targets. When Anderson Varejão parachuted into Cleveland in 2004 with a tenuous grasp of the English language, Ilgauskas took him out to dinner and helped him order at restaurants. When Boozer had trouble getting his shot off over Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan during his rookie season, Big Z spent the summer with him in Cleveland and taught him the fadeaway.
“He always shared information,” Boozer says, an act less common in the NBA than one might think. Ilgauskas never seemed to mind sharing his best practices and signature moves, and because of that, most of the bigs to come through Cleveland—from Drew Gooden to J.J. Hickson—benefited from their proximity to Ilgauskas. So many of LeBron’s teammates in that era were glaringly imperfect; the supercut of would-be dunkers bobbling perfect passes might be an eight-episode miniseries. Yet Ilgauskas helped them to be better pros, and LeBron, through the compulsion of his playmaking, turned them into better players.
“A lot of scorers get tunnel vision, and you can help, and they’re kind of just looking at you and waiting for the opportunity to go,” Tyson Chandler (who would later play with James in Los Angeles) told Chris Ballard for his excellent book, The Art of a Beautiful Game. “But with him, you help and he burns you.” Throughout his time in Cleveland, LeBron would expertly—and consistently—find the other big out of a pick-and-roll. If Ilgauskas set a screen and popped out to the wing, Varejão might slink down the baseline and into a layup. Any big who ran the floor, screened hard, and knew when to cut to the rim could be a scorer next to LeBron. Just look at the crowd that would form when James would so much as approach the foul line:
Varejão was an awkward finisher who played big minutes for a contender. Gooden was a box-score stuffer who logged his most efficient seasons as a Cavalier. Hickson never seemed so viable as during his time in Cleveland, when a flash down the lane was as good as generating offense. When Hickson was on the floor with James for three seasons, he posted a 61.8 percent true shooting percentage—comparable to what Montrezl Harrell managed in his Sixth Man of the Year–winning campaign with the Clippers. When forced to do without the lift of LeBron’s playmaking, his true shooting cratered to 48.6 percent.
Bigs Most Dependent on LeBron
Player
Team
TS% with LeBron
TS% without LeBron
Differential
Player
Team
TS% with LeBron
TS% without LeBron
Differential
Erick Dampier
MIA
62.5%
42.9%
19.6%
Markieff Morris*
LAL
63.9%
47.0%
17.0%
Ben Wallace
CLE
46.3%
33.3%
13.0%
JJ Hickson
CLE
61.5%
48.6%
12.9%
Robert Traylor
CLE
48.2%
38.5%
9.7%
*Markieff Morris has played only 295 minutes with LeBron since joining the Lakers and 162 minutes without him. The usual small sample size warnings apply.Data from PBP Stats
James was able to elevate teammates out from the clutter. Cleveland would play Hickson alongside Shaquille O’Neal, or pair 34-year-old Ben Wallace with 33-year-old Ilgauskas. Even lineups with more tenable frontcourt pairings would sometimes run an offense in which every player but the one with the ball stayed inside the 3-point line, nearly tripping over each other at every turn. Yet through the vision of LeBron, the Cavs would score anyway:
Donyell Marshall, a herald of the stretch 4, was a clear exception. Prior to Marshall’s arrival in Cleveland in 2005, LeBron had assisted a big on just a smattering of 3-pointers. The NBA game was still rooted in the midrange, with its 4s and 5s tethered even more closely to the rim. Marshall dared to space the floor—the gall!—and immediately created a connection with James as a result. In each of their first two seasons together, LeBron assisted Marshall on more 3s than he did any other shooter. Most notable, of course, was a shot Marshall missed: one that came in the final seconds of the first game of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals, consummating a loss to the veteran Pistons. James drove, drew three defenders on the way to the rim, and did what he had always preferred to do: pass the ball, and the potential glory, to an open teammate. The pass itself became a strange public indictment.
“I missed, we lost, and everybody asked him why he gave it up,” Marshall toldSports Illustrated. “But what I remember was the next day at practice when we went over late-game situations. We ran the same play, and LeBron passed it to me in the corner again. I knocked it down, and he jumped on me like we’d won.” There are echoes of that pass throughout LeBron’s career. Some direct, like when he swung the ball to an open Udonis Haslem for a potential game-winner in 2012, again missed; and some indirect, like James screening so that Anthony Davis could take a gut-punch, buzzer-beating 3 to top the Nuggets in this year’s West finals. His career to date is, even now, a relentless search for the open man. Never was that clearer than in his first stint in Cleveland, when LeBron willed misshapen rosters into inexplicable contenders. Every assist was an omen. If a pass from LeBron could make a player out of Hickson, what might it do for a star?
For LeBron, the promise of joining the Heat was the opportunity to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. The payoff was a reimagining of what a team structured around him could be. After attempting a conveyor-belt center rotation of Ilgauskas, Joel Anthony, Erick Dampier, Jamaal Magloire, Dexter Pittman, and Ronny Turiaf for two seasons, Miami stumbled—through its desperation—into the smaller lineups and faster style that would become its signature. “Everything happens by accident,” Bosh told Zach Lowe, then of Grantland, in 2014. “It was just our instinct to survive. It came at a time when our backs were against the wall. But LeBron’s big and strong, and we had other guys who could guard the post. It was like, all right, we’re gonna make this a nightmare for somebody.”
In the following two seasons, James would play with fewer and fewer bigs as he effectively became one himself. There was a time in Cleveland when traditional power forwards and centers accounted for upward of 60 percent of LeBron’s assists in a season. During the Heat’s run to the 2013 title, that portion was nearly halved—a hard directional shift that reflected the broader state of the league. LeBron’s passes would go out to Bosh and Haslem as they helped space the floor, and later to Chris Andersen as he lingered around the rim. Yet his playmaking has never skewed so heavily toward guards and wings as when he was with the Heat:
Miami’s spacing was a silent killer. Opposing coaches had to pick and choose when they could even afford to have their own bigs on the floor, and during the 2013 playoffs alone, the Pacers and Spurs gave up devastating plays to the Heat in part because they had chosen to pull their centers. The smaller the game gets, the more it benefits LeBron—a 6-foot-9 point guard who, even in more traditional lineups, can already see over the top of the defense. Opening up the floor only made it easier for him to break every possession down to its moving parts.
“He doesn’t make the easy first pass, because he knows the other team can rotate and then get their defense set,” one general manager said of LeBron. “He waits for the opportunity to hit the one they can’t rotate to.”
Putting James on the block was usually enough to cause a defense some immediate distress, and any movement from Wade and the Heat’s 3-point specialists could push opponents into a blind panic. Bosh and Haslem were often the beneficiaries of that terror—they were shooters innocuous enough, in the commotion of a fully rotating defense, to be momentarily left alone. Most stars could pick out an open teammate on the weak side. LeBron, however, managed entire possessions in anticipation of it, at times throwing a pass to one of his bigs in the tiny window after a defender turned his attention but before the defender actually vacated his spot:
“LeBron James had the best basketball IQ I’ve ever seen from a player,” Haslem toldThe Undefeated in 2019. “The way I see the game now, I know everybody’s position. I know where everybody should be. I know what everybody should be doing. When I’m looking at the defenses, I’m not just looking at the man that’s guarding me. I’m looking at the other four defenders on the floor. That’s something I learned from LeBron.”
By that point, James had spent years thinking his way through overloading defenses, a coverage popularized by Tom Thibodeau and the Celtics that sent three defenders to the side of the court with the ball handler. Repetition showed LeBron every angle he needed to work those systems, and better floor spacing offered him the means to exploit vulnerabilities with the pass. That said, it wasn’t enough for James to keep an eye on the other four defenders on the floor; to beat more sophisticated schemes, LeBron learned to watch for when an opponent shifted their weight to their heels, stole a glance toward the ball, or inched in the direction of a cutter. He had always been an intuitive passer, but it was in Miami that LeBron found the control and precision to regularly fire the ball through the heart of the defense:
That kind of perspective opens up a different level of game management. “He could see so much,” says Boozer, who faced off with James and the Heat in two playoff series as a member of Thibodeau’s Bulls. In those matchups, Boozer recalls James systematically finding perimeter scorers like Wade, Ray Allen, and Mike Miller throughout the first three quarters, conditioning Chicago’s defense to a particular rhythm. “And then who was LeBron looking for in the fourth quarter?” Boozer asks. “Chris Bosh. That’s the brilliance of LeBron.” In the 2011 Eastern Conference finals against the Bulls, Bosh scored more fourth-quarter points than every player but James—topping not only Wade, but the reigning MVP, Derrick Rose. The Rolodex had become a supercomputer. LeBron’s strength and speed allowed him to overwhelm matchups, but it was through raw processing power that he was able to overwhelm entire teams.
When James returned to Cleveland as a free agent in 2014, he immediately vaulted a young, talented roster with minimal postseason experience into position as a conference favorite. Kevin Love had to rework his entire game to function as the Cavs’ third star, but LeBron had already facilitated one such transition with Bosh and the Heat. Kyrie Irving had to grow up on the job under intense public scrutiny, but James could steady the offense in the interim and take over whenever necessary. In all, it was messy. It was combative. Eyes rolled, tweets were sent, and along the way, Cleveland dismissed all comers in the East for four consecutive seasons and pulled off the most dramatic comeback in the history of the NBA Finals.
“We were a team that thrived under chaos,” Love said last spring in an appearance on FS1. The All-Star forward would know better than most. Playing with LeBron is ostensibly easy; open shots will never come so frequently as when running with basketball’s greatest playmaker, as so many of the shooters and dunkers to benefit from the passing of James can attest. Former Heat center Chris Andersen once put it quite elegantly: “If you can’t make a shot a foot away from the basket, I shouldn’t be playing this sport.” Yet to get to the point when he could even complete a LeBron assist, Love needed to remap where and how he participated in the offense.
“Bron is just a one-in-a-generation talent,” Love told JJ Redick on the Old Man and the Three podcast. “Arguably the greatest player ever. Playing downhill, he’s just a freight train. So it’s like: All right, this is how we’re gonna set up. We’re just gonna get out of the way.” Love’s role was often to run to the corners, where he would rank as one of the most prolific shooters in the league from 2014-18. Whenever Love discusses this, he returns to the same ideas: that he didn’t understand what it meant to sacrifice as a basketball player until he came to Cleveland; that finding comfort in that role required personal growth; and that he regards James, a player he once spoke of quite tepidly, as a brother. There is little doubt that it was the chaos that bonded them.
During his second stint in Cleveland, no teammate shared the court with James more than Love. The kind of spotting up that felt reductive for a former All-NBA forward helped turn the Cavs into one of the most formidable offenses ever assembled. A quality shot for Love—and thus a quality shot for Cleveland—could be dialed up on command.
A narrow role could never be fully comfortable for Love, but it could at least be justified. “If you can get through it, good things can happen,” Bosh said of working as a superteam’s third star. “But it never gets easy. Even up until my last year of doing it, it never gets easier.”
Life as a Cavalier was a bit simpler for Channing Frye. Years earlier, Frye had taken to long-range shooting at the urging of Alvin Gentry, then the head coach of the Phoenix Suns. Stepping his jumper back beyond the arc changed the course of his entire career. The mandate from Gentry was this: If Frye stopped shooting, he would come out of the game. End of discussion. When Frye was later traded to Cleveland after a detour in Orlando, he took his standing as a reserve as reason enough to keep firing.
“Shoot that thang,” says Frye, who now works as a broadcaster for Turner Sports. “What’s the worst they’re gonna do? Send you back to the bench?”
In the playoffs, Frye became the kind of contributor that, under the right circumstances, could break open a series. Mike Budenholzer’s Hawks were absolutely flummoxed by Frye in 2016; his 27-point eruption in Game 3 destabilized their entire coverage, balling up a carefully designed plan to contain James and Irving and tossing it—from deep—into the garbage. Other matchups were too fast or too physical for Frye to do much good. Still he would come in for spot minutes, ready to shoot if the ball ever came his way.
The regular season was more forgiving, to the point that in Frye’s first full campaign with the Cavs, he became LeBron’s second most common assist target behind Love. “While I was out there,” Frye says, “my biggest thing was: Nobody’s gonna get double-teamed or else I’mma make this. So when Kevin would play, or Bron, I would be there. You wanna post up? If you get double-teamed, I’ll make it. If I make it once, they’ll stop double-teaming you, and then you can score all you want.”
“I would sit in the corner, and a guy would have to have his hands on me, like on my chest,” Frye says. “Coaches would be like, ‘Touch his chest. You have to be this close.’ That’s fine, but you’re a rotational guy. So who was gonna rotate all the way over to stop LeBron going full speed?”
Given the preposterous extent of LeBron’s accomplishments, it’s easy to gloss over the smaller realities of his basketball life—like the fact that he has assisted more total 3-pointers than any other player in NBA history. Part of his growth as a playmaker came from understanding that shot to its fullest. James has never himself been a volume 3-point shooter; the 6.3 attempts per game he averaged with the Lakers this season, a career high, ranked tied for 38th leaguewide. Yet his game is built on the systematic creation of 3s and exploiting the space they provide.
“You help on LeBron at the rim, and he gets them a corner 3,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts said in 2016. “You help from the weak side, and he finds a guy and you give up a 3. Sometimes you’re in good team defensive position, and the ball zips out of his hands and there’s a 3-pointer. I don’t know how you defend that.”
When LeBron came back to Cleveland in the prime of his career, the Cavs invested in two modes of bigs: shooters like Love and Frye who would give James the most physical space possible; and offensive rebounders like Tristan Thompson and Timofey Mozgov, who would give him as many chances to interrogate the weaknesses of the defense as they could. Cavalier bigs were coached specifically to look for LeBron after hitting the offensive glass—to wear down opponents with the full weight of his continued scrutiny. Cleveland staked its contention on the idea that if there were any flaw to be found—the slightest lapse, some unseen deficiency—James would root it out.
“He controls everything,” says one executive, “from the way he positions his body to the tempo and the way he dribbles the ball. He’ll put it down in a totally different rhythm for a team that’s really active in the paint versus a team that’s slow to react in the paint. He’s as big a basketball savant as I think has ever existed in the league, and he couples it with the best physical gifts.”
James has stated before that he can tailor the delivery of a pass to whether a shooter wants their fingers on the seams when they catch it, a claim ridiculous on its face until LeBron goes through the entire rotation, player by player, and explains his teammates’ individual preferences. While walking reporters through the lineup in 2017—how J.R. Smith likes to catch the ball low so he can dip into his shot, why James Jones needs a higher pass since he releases at the top of his jump—LeBron cut himself off with a smirk. “That is all I’m giving you,” he said. “Get out of my mind, please.” Many current and former teammates have stories of LeBron, as an opponent, calling out their team’s plays on the floor in real time. “He’s always been a guy that could literally do the 29 other walk-throughs in the league,” Love told reporters after a game against the Lakers earlier this year. “He’s just a cerebral guy. He’s a sponge. I think that allows him to grow every single year, even if he is a quarter-step slower or whatever you want to say. He’s not. He just seemingly keeps getting better.” Some minds are just worth deferring to.
In the lead-up to his first NBA Finals, James bypassed prediction for self-fulfilling prophecy. “I’m going to be a GM someday,” he said in 2007, perhaps not realizing at the time that those aspirations would be fulfilled even before he finished playing. Since 2010, no professional athlete has done more to mold the team context around them than LeBron. Players he likes wind up on the roster; those he doesn’t care for so much are shipped out for another shooter, another big, or another “fucking playmaker.” His will be done, even if it isn’t articulated directly or explicitly to management on those terms.
For years he denied this, shrugging off the suggestion as he has so many overmatched defenders. Yet when the Lakers secured their place in the Finals with a Game 6 win against the Nuggets, James—as careful an interview as you’ll find in the NBA—took on a slightly different tone when referring to his partnership with Anthony Davis. “This is the reason why I wanted to be a teammate of his,” James said, “and why I brought him here.” It was both warm sentiment and stark truth. LeBron didn’t hop on the trade call with the league office to finalize the particulars, but he delivered Davis to the Lakers in most every other sense. As he navigated a new challenge in Los Angeles in the face of his inevitable decline, James handpicked Davis as the star he wanted to play with.
And why wouldn’t he? No team in the West could muster the collective size and speed to combat both Davis and James at once, a predicament as glaring in these playoffs as it was on the day the season began. Basketball is a game of beautiful complexity—a synthesis of scheme, talent, and ego that can lead to some unexpected results. (Enter the Miami Heat.) Yet sometimes, it can all be as simple as the fact that the greatest playmaker of all time wears the same uniform as one of the most dynamic bigs of the modern era.
“The pick-and-roll that we create has been very successful for us,” Davis says, “because he’s able to attack downhill and get attention from either my man or the weak-side guys.” As Davis explained all the opportunities that could result from a defense’s reaction to a single LeBron drive, he shook his head in disbelief. “His playmaking ability is insane,” Davis says.
In their first season together, James assisted Davis more than he had ever assisted any other teammate in any other season. It’s a connection that begins at the moment of the rebound. If an opposing team isn’t quite on top of its matchups in transition—and how could they be when two of the most daunting athletes in the league are involved?—LeBron will sail a pass 80 feet downcourt, over the head of every defender, and directly into the hands of Davis:
James has worked every variation of the two-man game with Davis: He has fed him dutifully for post-ups, found him diving into space, and worked with him to engineer the ideal mismatch. LeBron doesn’t allow his teammate to dominate so much as he insists upon it. Even top defenses have only so much say in the matter. Given his height, James is operating at a level that is literally above most of his defenders; where other point guards could have their line of sight blocked or their passing angle denied, LeBron continues on his way completely unbothered. “It’s a lot different,” Davis says, “just because of his size.” Establishing Davis in scoring position is often just a matter of patience.
Yet in some ways, their relationship is defined by the fact that Davis doesn’t need LeBron in the same way other teammates do.
Davis has scored well all season long, no matter if he’s finishing an easy lob or carving out an edge in isolation. The fact that the Lakers have found ways to thrive in their minutes without LeBron, however, has been the single most important development of the entire playoffs. Those minutes were precarious in the regular season. Now they provide the sustenance for an extended run. Against Miami, the Lakers will hope to rest the 35-year-old James just enough that he can meet the most challenging basketball puzzles at his best. He may be the only point guard in the league who could take a team this big this far; every half-court possession Davis plays alongside another center is a potential traffic jam, which makes it a wonder that the Lakers do any driving at all.
It helps, as it turns out, to run an offense through the world’s most overqualified post-entry passer:
In the tao of LeBron, the big who runs the floor into a deep seal around the basket is rewarded. So is the off-ball screener, the patient threat in the dunker spot, and the trailer on the play who cuts all the way through to the baseline. “Especially as a big who isn’t really a dominant on-the-ball big, you’re just able to be out there and look for the ball,” says JaVale McGee. “It really drives your motor.“ No other star can so seamlessly translate his teammates’ activity to production as LeBron. And as he surveys the floor for the right moment to deliver a pass, his bigs gauge how and when they should make their move. “It’s just picking and choosing when to roll, when to get out the way, when to set a good screen,” Dwight Howard says. “It’s just all-around reading the defense.”
The Lakers offense stands as a monument to precision, which is to say it probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. A team like Miami will use high-level 3-point shooting as a means to run an adaptive blend of cuts and handoffs. The threat of Duncan Robinson or Tyler Herro coming off a screen might clear a path for Bam Adebayo to romp down the lane for a dunk. So much of L.A.’s continued success, on the other hand, comes down to whether LeBron can drive into four defenders, turn across his body, and launch a pass to the opposite corner with enough force to beat the quick-twitch reflexes of some of the world’s best athletes.
A perfect pass can be its own kind of burden. Those who play with James have spoken about the public expectation that they should hit every shot and convert every dunk he serves up; there is an added pressure on every attempt due to the magnitude of what a LeBron team plays for. “I don’t really feel that pressure,” McGee says. “But I feel the importance.”
Frye, in spotting up to clear space for LeBron in Cleveland, felt both. “When you play with a Hall of Famer like ... LeBron,” he says, “you don’t wanna be the guy that fucks up. You do not wanna be the guy that ruins their legacy.”
There will be times in the Finals when the Lakers move at the pace of a stale dribble while LeBron surveys a muddled floor. Yet the more he watches, the more he absorbs. “The further you go in a playoff series, the harder he is to beat,” one general manager says. “Because he’s learned more than you the whole time.”
The same idea could apply to the past 17 years of NBA basketball. LeBron has seen every form of coverage during his time in the league, and led teams of almost every possible construction. The Lakers are effectively a composite of his basketball experience: a superteam with the flexibility to play bigger than the throwback Cavs or smaller than the pace-and-space Heat. “Think about the players he played with,” Boozer says. “Big Z, Drew Gooden, and obviously Chris Bosh and Kevin Love, and now with Anthony Davis and the new-generation Lakers with Kyle Kuzma and those guys. Obviously the big man has changed from being a post-up, pick-and-roll guy to being a 3-point-shooting, transition kind of guy. But the bottom line is: LeBron’s IQ is so phenomenal he finds the big man whatever the game style is.”
In a way, joining up with Davis feels like the culmination of a life’s work. There’s no need to worry about whether the first-team defender will hold up in rotation, or whether one of the game’s great finishers will be able to convert under duress. There isn’t a transformative sacrifice to be made and managed, nor any apparent friction to date. The game can finally be as easy for James as he made it for everyone else.
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