Leave
it to Lionel Hollins to be unaffected by what was happening Monday
night at Barclays Center. Hollins has been around. He has famous
friends. And with British royalty choosing to watch his team play
against the during a foray into Brooklyn, Hollins took the opportunity to share his views on celebrity culture.
“I’m not impressed by people,” Hollins, the coach of , said an hour before the opening tip. “I know a lot of people with money that I wouldn’t want to hang with.”
It should be noted that Hollins was speaking generally and was not referring to Catherine, the , or ,
the Duke of Cambridge, who arrived in the third quarter. Nor was
Hollins referring to Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who were courtside for the
Cavaliers’ 110-88 victory.
Of greater concern to Hollins was
(also rich, also famous) and the play of Hollins’s own team (slightly
less rich, slightly less famous), although Hollins appeared to be in the
minority. Actual basketball merely formed the backdrop for an unusual
day of hoops-related activity in New York.
spoke. James soared. Protests were staged. Royals gawked. And the went a day without losing a game, if only because they did not play.
While
protesters gathered outside Barclays Center over the decision not to
indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, several players,
including James and the Nets’ Deron Williams, wore matching “I Can’t
Breathe” T-shirts during warm-ups — a reference to Garner’s words as he
was placed in a chokehold.
“As a society, we have to do better,” James told about 30 reporters in the visitors’ locker room before the game.
By the end of the night, Hollins was voicing his approval for the players’ actions.
“They should be political,” he said. “They should be about social awareness. Basketball is just a small part of life.”
James
had 18 points and 7 assists for the Cavaliers, who were beginning to
ease away from the Nets when the royal couple approached their seats
early in the second half. The Cavaliers’ Kevin Love was at the
free-throw line. He could sense the arena standing en masse, with people
reaching for their phones.
“Yeah,
it was a little bit more of a distraction than people waving towels,”
Love said. “I just tried to make the second shot. But it wound up being
about a foot short.”
Between
the third and fourth quarters, Jay-Z and Beyoncé traversed the 50 feet
to greet the royal couple. An armada of photographers captured the
moment. It was fairly surreal, given that the Cavaliers and the Nets
were trying to attend to their own business. Love huddled with his
coach, David Blatt.
“I
really wanted to talk to the royal couple, as a European,” Blatt said.
“But I missed my chance. Instead, I coached a good team in a good
basketball game.”
Some
seven hours before the start of the Nets’ game against the Cavaliers,
and about 30 miles north of Barclays Center, a spectacle of a different
and more muted sort played out when Jackson emerged from his
self-imposed cocoon of silence at the Knicks’ training facility in
Greenburgh, N.Y. Ahead of the team’s three-game trip to New Orleans, San
Antonio and Boston, Jackson opted to make his first public comments
since Nov. 10 — back when the Knicks had lost only five games.
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“There’s
some resistance to discipline, order and culture change, and things
like that,” Jackson said. “I’m calling it a crucible, what we’re going
through here.”
It
was part of a 20-minute debriefing that served as a portal into
Jackson’s thinking as he presides over a 4-18 team. Jackson, the son of a
minister, said his father would have encouraged the reporters sitting
in the back row to move to the front. (Jackson actually used the word
“pew.”)
But it was unnecessary. The room was small, and Jackson planned to be direct.
“I think you can hear me fine,” he said.
Jackson
tiptoed a fine line between being critical and hopeful, impossible to
pin down. He chastised J. R. Smith for lacking leadership on the team’s
second unit — “J. R. had a really bad week out in Texas and Oklahoma,”
Jackson said, referring to a recent stretch of games — before pivoting
and lauding Smith’s improved effort.
And
while Jackson said he was disappointed with how the team was playing,
he added that he was pleased with its competitive spirit. But instead of
relying on “rote memorization,” the players needed to “find the actions
that are credible” within the offense, he said. It was Phil-speak at
its finest.
“I think, right now, we have a loser’s mentality because we’re not finishing games,” he said.
Jackson
said that he had already determined which players on the team were
capable “learners,” as he labeled them, and those who were not. But he
said he would not make moves solely for the sake of making moves, and he
again stressed the importance of preserving financial flexibility in
moving forward.
Jackson
summoned one of his favorite words — process — in describing the team’s
struggles. Although he said he had been encouraged by some of the
Knicks’ recent games, including their narrow loss to the Portland Trail
Blazers on Sunday night, they have yet to figure out how to win games
consistently — or basically at all.
Still,
Jackson did not rule out a trip to the postseason. The Eastern
Conference is an incubator for foundering teams. The Knicks are one
among many. It counted as optimism on an otherwise bleak day in
Greenburgh.
And
while the atmosphere in Brooklyn was more charged, more volatile — and
partly for reasons that had nothing to do with the royal couple or Jay-Z
— it was abnormal in other ways. Most of the seats at Barclays Center
were filled once the game started at 7:40 p.m. Nets fans usually show up
late.
Among
the early arrivals was Jay-Z, in his customary spot near (and basically
on) the Nets’ bench. Beyoncé and the royal couple were fashionably
late.
It
was abundantly clear as the night wore on that two teams just happened
to be playing basketball. Everything else was the real theater. Dikembe
Mutombo, the former N.B.A. great, sat with the royal couple to help
promote their foundation’s new partnership with the league. The Giants’
Odell Beckham Jr. tossed footballs to fans.
Afterward, James presented the royal couple with Cavaliers jerseys and cupcakes.
“I gave them a present,” James said, “and I thanked them for coming here to America to watch our game.”
For
the Nets, who are accustomed to playing in front of uber-fan Mr. Whammy
and thousands of Brooklynites, it was an unusual scene. Only losing
felt familiar.
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