# 2022 - 2023  NBA News



## PamfromTx (Sep 27, 2022)

‘Community impact event’ scheduled for Oct. 8​
Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs know they cannot erase the pain that the residents of Uvalde, Texas have felt since May 24.

They can, however, continue reminding the city of 16,000 people that they’re not forgotten.

The Spurs are planning what they’re calling a community impact event in Uvalde on Oct. 8; details are still being finalized, but it seems likely the entire team and Popovich will be making the 85-mile trip from San Antonio to the place where 21 people — 19 of them students — were killed at Robb Elementary School by a gunman four months ago.

Popovich, a five-time champion coach during his Spurs tenure and the NBA’s all-time leader in coaching wins, has spoken out often about his desire for tougher gun control laws. He also spoke at an event in Uvalde in June, and the Spurs are one of many teams who have pledged support for the community.


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## Lethe200 (Nov 19, 2022)

*How Marcus Smart’s support for cancer patients transformed children’s hospitals*
The Athletic.com Oct 24, 2022

(excerpt)
BOSTON — Marcus Smart of the Celtics has spent far too much of his life sitting beside a hospital bed. He endured years watching his brother Todd battle Leukemia when Marcus was in elementary school in Texas. He held his mother, Camellia, as she faced bone marrow cancer a few years ago. He is all too familiar with the last place most people want to be.

And yet, he keeps going back.

When he arrived in Boston as a rookie in 2014, he began making hospital visits quietly — no cameras, no media, no tweets. Smart wanted to spend time with kids who needed a friend and a distraction. Doctors and nurses would introduce him to those who had chemotherapy treatments that morning. They would explain to him how rough the past few days had been for their patients, hoping he could make their day a little easier.

“Then I get there and everything that the doctor just told me goes out the window,” Smart said as a smile finally began to peek through. “The kid has the biggest smile on her face. They’re getting up, they’re talking, they’re getting out of bed and that right there is what it’s all about for me.”

Katie Devine, the associate director of donor relations for Boston Children’s Hospital Trust, gets emotional telling the story of the day Smart walked into the room of a young girl undergoing chemotherapy and was immediately pelted by a Nerf gun. Smart took on the foam friendly-fire and asked, “Well, where’s mine?” He was instead gifted a bracelet and some pink extensions the patient was given after her hair loss, which he wore proudly.

Years later, when Smart was being honored by the Celtics as their community hero, he invited the patient to the gala as his guest. As he stepped on stage donning a bracelet she had given him, he pulled those same hair extensions from his pocket. “It was just such a poignant reminder of the impact he can have on people, but also the impact that these patients have on their special visitors,” said Devine.

When visiting a patient’s room, Smart gets deja vu. The beeping equipment, IV drips, the linoleum floors, it’s all familiar. He remembers how it felt when his family was in the same situation, so he tries to be the shoulder he needed to lean on when he was younger.

“When you go to the hospital, you see how the treatments are being done and how it’s making the patients feel, how it’s affecting not only their lives, but their families and their loved ones’ lives,” Smart said. “That really clicked, because I’ve been in that situation and I understand what it feels like to be just looking and wishing for anything.”

Smart goes about things quietly, spending one-on-one time with the patients he visits so he can establish a real connection. After his mother died in September 2018, he hosted a private dinner for families staying in Boston Children’s Hospital’s patient housing and sat down with each and every person there.

“I think it’s so personal to him and it’s a very emotional time for him, going through flashbacks and reliving some of that as he sees kids with their parents,” longtime friend Phillip Forte said. “He knows exactly what they’re going through and the conversations they’re having with those doctors. He understands how personal it is to those families and he doesn’t want it to seem like he’s doing it for attention.”

Kenny Boren, his longtime confidant who helps manage his foundation YounGameChanger (YGC), sometimes doesn’t find out about Smart’s trips until weeks later. Boren and YGC director Bill Wilk have had to convince Smart to do even the most basic promotion for the foundation and his Smart Carts program. “If no one knows what’s going on, then no one knows what’s going on,” Boren said.

Smart explained that he was taught that if he is going to genuinely do something for somebody, he shouldn’t expect anything back.

“As long as you can change one person’s life, put a smile on one person, then I’ve done my job,” he said. “Some of them go through it alone and it’s just really tough and people don’t really understand that. We get so caught up in our own lives that we forget that there’s somebody out there fighting and battling something way worse than what we’re going through here. And maybe just saying hello is all they needed to keep going.”


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## Lethe200 (Dec 1, 2022)

*Warriors star Stephen Curry’s insane workout had Trae Young struggling, unnamed NBA player throwing up*
MSN Sports/ClutchPoint 01Dec2022

Don’t let the nice-guy persona fool you. Stephen Curry is a killer on the basketball court. The Golden State Warriors also didn’t become the GOAT shooter that he is without putting the necessary work in. Just ask his trainer, Brandon Payne.

As it turns out, Curry’s workouts are so intense that it once had Atlanta Hawks All-Star Trae Young struggling hard. Another unnamed NBA player, however, gave up altogether after literally throwing up just five minutes into the session.

Payne recently guested on the Basketball Illuminati podcast where he provided a preview of Curry’s work behind the scenes. They once invited Trae Young to join in on one of the sessions, and apparently, the Hawks guard was barely able to keep up at the start of the workout:

“We never do anything from one range,” Payne said. “We’ve done alternating range form shooting, which for us, is deep twos and semi-deep threes, we work in that range. We immediately go corner-to-corner, we start running and you run for four shots at a time. Then when we have two guys going, you shoot four shots corner-to-corner but we’re playing until the first guy hits 12. Well, if you’re not making a lot of shots, there’s a lot of running involved. It’s corner-to-corner then it’s free throws, then it’s something off the dribble.”

Reading through that is exhausting already. I can only imagine having to actually go through it. For his part, however, Trae Young was able to recover quickly after getting his second wind: “And then after he caught himself, he was good, he was ready and he finished the entire workout,” Payne said. “But that initial burst of those initial few minutes was a little tough on him, but he recovered extremely well.”

Another mystery NBA player wasn’t as lucky as Trae, though. It took him just a few minutes before throwing in the towel. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, though, as the unnamed player was literally puking after attempting to go toe-to-toe with Stephen Curry: “We’ve had a player who’s still in the NBA go through the first five minutes, sat down on the floor beside the door for about 30 seconds and went outside and threw up and was done. It was a good player too …”

That’s pretty insane. NBA players are some of the most physically fit athletes in all of sport, which clearly speaks volumes of just how insane Curry’s workout sessions truly are.


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