Day: September 13, 2020

The Los Angeles Lakers are going to the conference finals for the first time in a decade, ending the longest drought in franchise history. LeBron James is going there for the first time since 2018. For him, that also qualifies as ending a drought.   James scored 29 points and the Lakers wrapped up their first trip to the Western Conference finals since 2010 by topping the Houston Rockets 119-96 on Saturday night in Game 5 at Walt Disney World.   “It’s the reason I wanted to be a part of this franchise, to take them back to a place that they were accustomed to being — and that’s competing for a championship,” James said. “It’s an honor for me to wear the purple and gold, and for us, we just try to continue the legacy.”   Kyle Kuzma scored 17 points, Markieff Morris had 16, Danny Green added 14 and Anthony Davis finished with 13 for the top-seeded Lakers. They will play either the second-seeded Los Angeles Clippers or third-seeded Denver Nuggets for the West title in a series that won’t begin before Wednesday.   James is going to the conference finals for the 11th time overall — six with Cleveland, four with Miami and now with the Lakers. It’s his ninth time getting to this round in the last 10 seasons; the one miss in that stretch was last season, when his inaugural year with the Lakers fell apart because of injury and the team missed the playoffs.   “The opportunity to play for a championship, that’s what we’re all here for, that’s what we all signed up for,” James said.   James Harden scored 30 points, Jeff Green scored 13 and Russell Westbrook had 10 for Houston.   “Tough season for us,” Harden said. “Obviously, it didn’t end like we wanted it to. Just got to figure it out.”   And now that the offseason is here, the speculation about coach Mike D’Antoni’s future will ramp up. His contract with the Rockets is now complete, the sides couldn’t agree on terms of any extension a year ago, and he’s been mentioned as a candidate for the vacancies in Indiana and Philadelphia.   “We’ve got a great organization, great city, great fans, team’s great,” D’Antoni said. “I mean, everything’s good here. We’ll see what happens, but I couldn’t ask for a better situation. I had four years and hopefully it keeps going. You just never know.”   It was a tough end to a tough week for the Rockets.   Westbrook exchanged heated words with a fan in the family section during the fourth quarter; NBA security asked the man, identified by ESPN as a brother of Lakers guard Rajon Rondo, to leave the game.   “He started talking crazy,” Westbrook said. “I don’t play that game.”   Houston won Game 1 of the series and lost the next four. Saturday’s finale came a day after Danuel House — who averaged 11.4 points in nine playoff games this season — was told to leave the bubble. An NBA investigation showed he had an unauthorized guest in his room for several hours earlier this week, and he missed the last three games of the series.   “It affected us,” Harden said, who called the situation disappointing.   The Lakers ran out to a 33-11 lead, though Houston came right back with a 17-2 run to get within seven. The Lakers’ lead was 62-51 at the half after the Rockets turned 13 Los Angeles turnovers into 15 points, the biggest reason why Houston was still in the game to that point.   Houston got within seven on a drive by Westbrook 2:09 into the third, and that was the last real gasp of hope for the Rockets. The Lakers scored the next 15 points, and the lead was 95-69 going into the final quarter.   “I’m really proud of our whole team,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. 
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After one errant forehand in the first set of the U.S. Open final, Naomi Osaka looked at her coach in the mostly empty Arthur Ashe Stadium stands with palms up, as if to say, “What the heck is happening?”  Surprisingly off-kilter in the early going Saturday, Osaka kept missing shots and digging herself a deficit. But suddenly, she lifted her game, and Victoria Azarenka couldn’t sustain her start. By the end, Osaka had pulled away to a 1-6, 6-3, 6-3 comeback victory for her second U.S. Open championship and third Grand Slam title overall.”I just thought this would be very embarrassing, to lose this in less than an hour,” said Osaka, who dropped down to lie on the court after winning.A quarter-century had passed since the last time the woman who lost the first set of a U.S. Open final wound up winning: In 1994, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario did it against Steffi Graf.No fun”I actually don’t want to play you in more finals,” a smiling Osaka told Azarenka afterward. “I didn’t enjoy that.”Osaka, a 22-year-old born in Japan and now based in the United States, added to her trophies from the 2018 U.S. Open — earned with a brilliant performance in a memorably chaotic final against Serena Williams — and 2019 Australian Open.The 23,000-plus seats in the main arena at Flushing Meadows were not entirely unclaimed, just mostly so — while fans were not allowed to attend because of the coronavirus pandemic, dozens of people who worked at the tournament attended — and the cavernous place was not entirely silent, just mostly so.Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus, holds the runner-up trophy after losing to Naomi Osaka, of Japan, in the women’s singles final of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Sept. 12, 2020, in New York.Certainly no thunderous applause or cacophony of yells that normally would reverberate over and over and over again through the course of a Grand Slam final, accompanying the players’ introductions or preceding the first point or after the greatest of shots.Instead, a polite smattering of claps from several hands marked such moments.Osaka stepped onto the court wearing a black mask with the name of Tamir Rice, a Black 12-year-old boy killed by police in Ohio in 2014. Osaka arrived in New York with seven masks bearing the names of Black victims of violence and wore a different one for each match, honoring Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Philando Castile.  “The point is to make people start talking about it,” Osaka said during Saturday’s trophy ceremony.Focus on racial injusticeShe has been at the forefront of efforts in tennis to bring awareness to racial injustice in the United States. She joined athletes in various sports by refusing to compete last month after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin — she said she wouldn’t participate in her semifinal at the Western & Southern Open, then decided to play after the tournament took a full day off in solidarity.Osaka and her coach have said they think the off-court activism has helped her energy and mindset in matches.The win over Azarenka, a 31-year-old from Belarus also seeking a third Grand Slam title but first in 7½ years, made Osaka 11-0 since tennis resumed after its hiatus because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
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Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland,” a recession-era road trip drama starring Frances McDormand, won the Golden Lion for best film Saturday at a slimmed-down Venice Film Festival, which was held against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic.Zhao and McDormand appeared by video from the United States to accept the award, given virus-related travel restrictions made reaching the Lido in the Italian lagoon city difficult if not impossible for many Hollywood filmmakers and actors.”Thank you so much for letting us come to your festival in this weird, weird world and way!” McDormand told the masked audience as the Italian marketing team for the film actually accepted the award. “But we’re really glad you let us come! And we’ll see you down the road!”A favorite going into the awards season, “Nomadland” is screening at all the major fall film festivals in a pandemic-forged alliance involving the Venice, Toronto, New York and Telluride festivals.Britain’s Vanessa Kirby won best lead actress for “Pieces of a Woman,” a harrowing drama about the emotional fallout on a couple after their baby dies during a home birth. Italy’s Pierfrancesco Fabino won best lead actor for “Padrenostro,” (“Our Father”), an Italian coming-of-age story that takes place after a terrorist attack in the 1970s.Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the Silver Lion for best director for “Wife of a Spy,” while the Silver Lion grand jury prize went to Mexico’s Michel Franco for his dystopian drama “Nuevo Orden.”The Russian film “Dear Comrades!” about a 1960s-era massacre in the former Soviet Union, won a special jury prize while Chaitanya Tamhane won best screenplay for “The Disciple,” about an Indian man’s pursuit to be a classical vocalist.That the 10-day Venice festival took place at all was something of a miracle, given that northern Italy in late February became ground zero for Europe’s coronavirus outbreak. The Cannes Film Festival was canceled and other big international festivals in Toronto and New York opted to go mostly online.British actress Vanessa Kirby poses with the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress at the closing ceremony of the 77th edition of the Venice Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, Sept. 12, 2020.But after Italy managed to tame its infections with a strict 10-week lockdown, Venice decided to go ahead, albeit under safety protocols that would have previously been unthinkable for a festival that has prided itself on spectacular visuals and glamorous clientele.Face masks were required indoors and out. Reservations for all were required in advance, with theater capacity set at less than half. The public was barred from the red carpet, and paparazzi, who would normally chase after stars in rented boats, were given socially distanced positions on land.While it’s too soon to say if the measures worked, there were no immediate reports of infections among festivalgoers, and compliance with mask mandates and social distancing appeared to be high.”We were a little bit worried at the beginning, of course,” said festival director Alberto Barbera. “We knew that we had a very strict plan of safety measures and we were pretty sure about that, but you never know.”Hong Kong director Ann Hui almost didn’t make it after she couldn’t get on her flight because of virus border restrictions. In the end, she arrived to collect her Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award and to see her out-of-competition film “Love After Love” make its world premiere.Movie lovers applauded Venice’s effort and the symbolic significance of the world’s oldest film festival charting the path forward.”It’s a moment of rebirth for everyone, for the whole world,” said Emma Dante, the Italian director of the in-competition film “The Macaluso Sisters.” “This festival is really an important moment of encounter, of beginning to dream again and be together again, even with the norms and following all the safety protocols.”Film writer Emma Jones said aside from “a few teething problems” with the online reservation system, the festival went off better than she expected.”It feels safe in there, it feels socially distanced,” she said of the venues.Jones noted that the lineup of films lacked the usual Hollywood blockbusters – think “La La Land,” and “The Shape of Water” – that have used Venice as a springboard to Oscar fame. While the festival featured films from Iran, India, Australia and beyond, it was heavily European.”This is a COVID festival. There’s no use pretending anything else,” Jones said.But she added: “It would feel really off-note, I think, to have had a red carpet with screaming fans and celebrities walking down it and people talking about who wore what. 2020 is not the year for those kind of discussions.”Instead, she said, Venice focused on the integrity of the films and the diversity of the countries represented.”We were lucky to receive a lot of submissions from all over the world, and apart from a few missing titles from the Hollywood major film studios, most of the countries are represented in Venice and the quality of the lineup is really very high,” said festival director Barbera. 
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