B12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES SPORTSFRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2020
SCOREBOARD
BASKETBALLN.B.A. SCHEDULE
All games in Orlando, Fla.
Thursday, Aug. 6
Sacramento 140, New Orleans 125
Phoenix 114, Indiana 99
Milwaukee 130, Miami 116
L.A. Clippers 126, Dallas 111
Portland at Denver
L.A. Lakers at Houston
Friday, Aug. 7
Sacramento at Nets, 5 p.m.
Utah at San Antonio, 1 p.m.
Oklahoma City at Memphis, 4 p.m.
Orlando at Philadelphia, 6:30 p.m.
Washington at New Orleans, 8 p.m.
Boston at Toronto, 9 p.m.SOCCERM.L.S. IS BACK
TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
All matches played in Orlando, Fla.
Semifinals
Wednesday, Aug. 5
Philadelphia Union 1, Portland Timbers 2
Thursday, Aug. 6
Orlando City vs. Minnesota United FCW.N.B.A. SCHEDULE
All games in Bradenton, Fla.
Thursday, Aug. 6
Seattle 93, Atlanta 92
Connecticut at Dallas
Chicago at Phoenix
Friday, Aug. 7
Liberty at Washington, 7 p.m.
Indiana at Minnesota, 6 p.m.
Los Angeles at Las Vegas, 9 p.m.BASEBALLAMERICAN LEAGUE
East W L Pct GB
Yankees 9 3 .750 —
Baltimore 5 6 .455 3{
Toronto 4 5 .444 3{
Tampa Bay 5 7 .417 4
Boston 4 8 .333 5
Central W L Pct GB
Minnesota 10 3 .769 —
Chicago 7 5 .583 2{
Cleveland 8 6 .571 2{
Detroit 5 5 .500 3{
Kansas City 3 10 .231 7
West W L Pct GB
Oakland 9 4 .692 —
Houston 6 5 .545 2
Los Angeles 5 8 .385 4
Seattle 5 9 .357 4{
Texas 3 8 .273 5
THURSDAY
Philadelphia 5, Yankees 4
Pittsburgh 6, Minnesota 5
Oakland 6, Texas 4
L.A. Angels 6, Seattle 1
Cleveland 13, Cincinnati 0
Chicago Cubs at Kansas City
Houston at Arizona
Toronto at Atlanta
Baltimore at Miami,
Milwaukee at Chicago White Sox
Detroit at St. Louis, ppd.
FRIDAY
Yankees (Tanaka 0-0) at Tampa Bay (Snell
0-0), 6:40
Baltimore (TBD) at Washington (TBD), 6:05
Detroit (TBD) at Pittsburgh (Kuhl 0-0), 7:05
Toronto (TBD) at Boston (Weber 0-2), 7:30
Minnesota (Smeltzer 1-0) at Kansas City
(Junis 0-0), 8:05
Cleveland (Civale 1-1) at Chicago White
Sox (Cease 1-1), 8:10
L.A. Angels (TBD) at Texas (Lyles 0-1), 9:05
Houston (Greinke 0-0) at Oakland (Bassitt
1-0), 9:10
Colorado (Senzatela 2-0) at Seattle (Kikuchi
0-0), 9:40
NATIONAL LEAGUEEast W L Pct GB
Miami 5 1 .833 —
Atlanta 8 5 .615 {
Washington 4 5 .444 2{
Philadelphia 3 4 .429 2{
Mets 5 8 .385 3{
Central W L Pct GB
Chicago 10 2 .833 —
Milwaukee 4 5 .444 4{
St. Louis 2 3 .400 4 {
Cincinnati 5 8 .385 5{
Pittsburgh 3 10 .231 7{
West W L Pct GB
Colorado 9 3 .750 —
Los Angeles 9 4 .692 {
San Diego 7 6 .538 2 {
San Francisco 6 8 .429 4
Arizona 4 8 .333 4{
THURSDAY
Philadelphia 5, Yankees 4
Pittsburgh 6, Minnesota 5
Colorado 6, San Francisco 4
Cleveland 13, Cincinnati 0
Chicago Cubs at Kansas City
Houston at Arizona
Toronto at Atlanta
Baltimore at Miami
Milwaukee at Chicago White Sox
Detroit at St. Louis, ppd.
FRIDAY
Miami (Alcantara 1-0) at Mets (Wacha 1-1), 7:10
Baltimore (TBD) at Washington (TBD), 6:05
Atlanta (Wright 0-1) at Philadelphia
(Velasquez 0-0), 7:05
Detroit (TBD) at Pittsburgh (Kuhl 0-0), 7:05
Cincinnati (Bauer 1-0) at Milwaukee (TBD), 8:10
Chicago Cubs (Lester 1-0) at St. Louis
(TBD), 8:15
Arizona (Weaver 0-2) at San Diego (Davies
1-1), 9:10
Colorado (Senzatela 2-0) at Seattle (Kikuchi
0-0), 9:40
San Francisco (Samardzija 0-1) at L.A.
Dodgers (Urias 1-0), 9:40HOCKEYN.H.L. STANLEY CUP
QUALIFIERS SCHEDULE
All games played in Edmonton and Toronto
Thursday, Aug. 6
Vancouver 3, Minnesota 0
Philadelphia 3, Washington 1
Las Vegas 6, St. Louis 4
Columbus vs. Toronto
Winnipeg vs. Calgary
Friday, Aug. 7
Florida vs. Islanders, noon
Nashville vs. Arizona, 2:30 p.m.
Montreal vs. Pittsburgh, 4 p.m.
Chicago vs. Edmonton, 6:45 p.m.
Columbus vs. Toronto, 8 p.m.
Vancouver vs. Minnesota, 10:45 p.m.TRANSACTIONS
N.B.A.
N.B.A. OFFICE — Announced that the Nets
have been fined $25,000 for failing to comply
with league policies governing injury reporting.GOLFL.P.G.A. MARATHON CLASSIC
At Highland Meadows Golf Club
Sylvania, Ohio
Purse: $1.7 million; Yardage: 6,555; Par: 71
First Round
Danielle Kang...............31-33—64 -7
Lydia Ko..................31-33—64 -7
Megan Khang.............. 30-35—65 -6
Sophia Popov ..............31-35—66 -5
Angel Yin..................32-34—66 -5
Ally McDonald..............33-33—66 -5
Jenny Shin ................32-34—66 -5
Kristen Gillman..............33-34—67 -4
Angela Stanford.............32-35—67 -4
Cydney Clanton.............33-34—67 -4
Cheyenne Knight............33-34—67 -4
Andrea Lee................32-35—67 -4
Maria Fassi ................32-35—67 -4
Jodi Ewart Shadoff...........34-33—67 -4
Nelly Korda................ 32-35—67 -4
Lindsey Weaver.............32-36—68 -3
Jennifer Song...............33-35—68 -3
Minjee Lee.................33-35—68 -3
Xiyu Lin...................34-34—68 -3
Carlota Ciganda.............34-34—68 -3
Christina Kim...............32-36—68 -3
Mariah Stackhouse...........34-34—68 -3
Peiyun Chien...............34-34—68 -3
Isi Gabsa..................33-35—68 -3
Charlotte Thomas............31-37—68 -3
Austin Ernst................32-36—68 -3
Yui Kawamoto..............32-36—68 -3ISTANBUL — In the end, the
question feels inappropriate. A
little ridiculous, even. Arda Turan
is sitting on the terrace of an
impossibly lavish hotel, picking
at a platter of fat
grapes and sweet
oranges and slices
of fresh watermel-
on. The Bosporus
shimmers a perfect
blue. The sky is
bright and glorious and it
stretches all the way to Asia.
It is not the time, or the place,
to ask anyone where it all went
wrong.
Besides, Turan does not have
an answer. Or, rather: as he sits
and he picks at the fruit and he
talks, it becomes clear Turan has
only part of the answer. He can
explain why he has not played a
minute of soccer since Dec. 1.
His loan deal at Istanbul
Basaksehir, the newly minted
Turkish champion, was canceled
after a court issued him a sus-
pended sentence for offenses
related to a fight in an Istanbul
nightclub in October 2018. Turan
was found guilty of “intentionally
injuring” a Turkish singer, before
later firing an illegal firearm at
the floor in a hospital.
Turan does not make excuses
for the incident. He has “made a
lot of mistakes.” He accepts that
he had to be punished. “I have
faced what I needed to face,” he
said. He knows — he under-
stands — that it made him toxic.
There had been talk of a move
back to his boyhood team Gala-
tasaray early this year, but the
club’s president decided Turan’s
baggage was too great. “It was
not because of my qualities as a
player, it was because of what I
lived before,” he said. As a “son”
of the club, Turan added, “I did
not want to force it.”
But the lowest moment of his
career, and his life, does not
explain everything. It does not
explain how he has found him-
self, at 33, idling away his days in
Istanbul playing basketball and
watching handball on television.
It does not explain why he has
not played for Turkey’s national
team since 2017, or why Bar-
celona — the team that spent $40
million to sign him in 2015, the
team with which he won his
second Spanish title — had been
paying him for two and a half
years to play first for another
club, and then not to play at all.
And most of all, it does not
entirely explain the curious,
tangled reputation that arguably
the most talented player Turkey
has produced — and certainly
the most successful player it has
exported — has in his homeland.
Turan is at a loss there, too.
“There is a thin line between love
and hate,” he said.
Life as a Golden Boy
Turan tells a story about one of
his earliest games for Gala-
tasaray. It was a Champions
League qualifier, at home — in
the old Ali Sami Yen stadium —
against the Czech team Mlada
Boleslav. Turan was 19, just es-
tablishing himself in the team. “I
scored twice,” he said. “And
made two assists. They said I
was too young, that I would be
spoiled, that I would be arro-
gant.”
He has a lot of stories like that.
“When I continued to play for
Galatasaray, they said I would
not be in the team for long,” he
said. He was 21 when he was
named the club’s captain. “They
said I was too young,” he said.
“When I signed for Atlético Ma-
drid, they said it was the highest
I could go in Europe, a midrange
club.
“When I played for them, they
said I could not win anything. I
won 10 trophies. Each one: ‘This
is the last one he will manage.’ ”
It is not entirely clear, as he
reels through the dismissals and
the disdain, exactly who he
means by “they.” And it is strik-
ing that no admiring coverage
has stuck with him in quite the
same way. There must, after all,
have been plenty of it.
No other Turkish player — not
even the great striker Hakan
Sukur, now excommunicated and
mentioned only in whispers —
has achieved what Turan did in
any of Europe’s major leagues,
and he is proud of that success.
He has enjoyed its fruits.
But it has also come, in his
mind, at a price. Turkey, he said,
is not a country that has “lots of
stars in every field.” There is no
roster of world-renowned ath-
letes, racing drivers, tennis play-
ers. “Why don’t we have Rafael
Nadal?” he said. “Why do I have
to support someone else in the
Wimbledon final?”
Instead, there are only a hand-ful, and at his peak Turan was
prime among them. He became a
barometer not only for other
players — “any Turkish player
who does well in Europe, they
say after three games he is bet-
ter than Arda” — but something
beyond a soccer player. Turan is,
more than anything, a celebrity.
That is how he is treated: by
the news media, which he said
nurtures an obsession with “how
much my shirt cost, how much
my watch cost, that I go to the
airport in sunglasses,” and by the
public, too. Turan is, to some
extent, better understood as the
star of a reality show he does not
really want to be in. “I know
people love me,” he said. “If I
walk in the street, everyone tells
me to wake up, to come back.
Until I was 24, I was good. I was
Arda, the golden boy.
“But then when the success
comes, the good cars, things
change. Now, people are happy
with me being in crisis."Peace in the DarkThere was something about
flying into Madrid at night that
always appealed to Turan. Re-
turning from a late-night Euro-
pean game, or coming back after
a vacation, the Spanish capital
always seemed to be surrounded
by nothingness. “You can’t see
lights when you fly over Madrid,”
he said.
Turan felt “free” in that dark-
ness. Freedom, to him, did not
mean the chance to go wild; if
anything, what appealed most
was mundanity. “I could go to
restaurants and not have to
explain what I was doing,” he
said. “I didn’t have to convince
everyone that the woman I was
with was not my girlfriend, just a
friend. Nobody knew me. Here,they want me to be the person
they want to see. In Spain, I was
the person I wanted to be.”
He spent the peak years of his
career in Spain, helping Atlético
Madrid to a Spanish title, a Copa
del Rey and a Europa League,
earning a reputation as a rare
combination of grace and grit in
Diego Simeone’s team and, in
2015, catching Barcelona’s eye.
For two years, under Luis
Enrique, Turan thrived there,
too. Lionel Messi was the squad’s
leader, so Turan did not mind
taking a supporting role. He
grew close to the team’s Brazil-
ian contingent — he regards
Neymar and Daniel Alves as “my
brothers” — and describes An-
drés Iniesta as “the most special
guy I have ever met, someone
with a special place in my heart.”
When Enrique left in 2017,
replaced by Ernesto Valverde,
Turan found himself ostracized.
“He did not give me a minute to
show myself,” Turan said. “I
asked why I was not playing. He
gave me a political answer.” In
retrospect, that was the moment
when the brightest phase of
Turan’s career ended, and an-
other bleaker one began.
He was never told, precisely,
why he was no longer in favor;
he simply was not selected to
play. In January 2018, he was
sent on loan to Basaksehir. The
message was not subtle: the loan
extended across the remaining
two and a half years of his con-
tract. “The most important thing
is to feel valued,” Turan said. “I
do not want to be inside an orga-
nization that feels I am not im-
portant to them.”
His first season in Turkey
ended in ignominy: Turan was
banned for 16 games — the
harshest punishment ever im-
posed on a player in the SuperLig — for pushing an assistant
referee. He was waiting out his
ban when the brawl in the night-
club happened, when the inci-
dent in the hospital happened.
Basaksehir stood by him for a
year, but a few months after the
sentence was handed down —
Turan will avoid prison if he does
not commit another offense in
the next five years — his loan
agreement was canceled. Bar-
celona spoke to his agent, but
Turan said nobody reached out to
him. He still had six months left
on his contract. The club would
pay him not to play soccer at all.
“Sometimes,” Turan said, “stories
are over.”
Now, he said, as he looked out
at the Bosporus, it is time to start
a new chapter. His belief that he
still has something to offer has
never wavered. He is still, he
said, “the best player in this
country.” It was spring when we
spoke; he would, he knew, have
to wait until his contract expired
on June 30 for a new team, and a
new start. On Wednesday, he
would find it: He will return to
Galatasaray, the only team in
Turkey he wanted to join.
There was one question,
though, that still hovered when
we spoke in the spring, one ques-
tion the setting made it impossi-
ble not to ask.
He had been talking for an
hour or more about all the things
soccer had done for him and
done to him. He had, by his own
admission, achieved far more in
his career than he might ever
have thought possible. His rela-
tionship with soccer, now,
seemed to be conflicted. This
could be his life, sitting here,
under this glorious sky, picking
at a platter of fresh fruit. So why
go back?
Turan thought. “I still love it,”
he said. “That will be the same
all my life. It is something magi-
cal for me. I will play for as long
as my body lets me play. Every-
thing I have had in my life, the
good and the bad, come from the
magic of soccer. If I am playing, I
am happy. If I am not, I am not
happy. I will play again. And if I
am there, the people will enjoy
it.”Why Can’t the Best Player in Turkey Find a Job?
RORY
SMITH
ON
SOCCERArda Turan in 2019 with Istanbul Basaksehir. Above right, Turan in happier days with Barcelona.ALBERTO LINGRIA/REUTERSLLUIS GENE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
— GETTY IMAGESSOCCER
PRO BASKETBALL
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. —
LeBron James of the Los Angeles
Lakers provided a pointed re-
sponse on Wednesday night to
President Trump’s criticism of
players’ kneeling during the na-
tional anthem: The games will go
on without you watching.
After Trump said earlier
Wednesday that he regarded
N.B.A. players’ kneeling during
the national anthem as “disgrace-
ful” and vowed to stop watching
games, James said that the bas-
ketball community was not “sad
about losing his viewership.”
In a Wednesday morning tele-
phone interview with Fox &
Friends, Trump said he turned off
N.B.A. games “when I see people
kneeling” and “disrespecting our
flag and disrespecting our na-
tional anthem.” Asked about
Trump’s comments after the Lak-
ers’ 105-86 loss to the Oklahoma
City Thunder later in the day,
James fired back.
“The game will go on without
his eyes on it,” James said at his
postgame news conference from
the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble at
Walt Disney World in Florida. “I
can sit here and speak for all of us
that love the game of basketball:
We could care less.”
The practice of teams lining up
and kneeling during the nationalanthem to protest systemic rac-
ism and police brutality has be-
come a standard feature of every
game at the N.B.A. restart since
the league officially resumed its
season July 30. There have been
only a few exceptions; Orlando’s
Jonathan Isaac, Miami’s Meyers
Leonard, San Antonio Coach
Gregg Popovich and his assistant
coach Becky Hammon have cho-
sen to stand.
Adam Silver, the N.B.A. com-
missioner, said last week that he
would not enforce the league’s
rule — which dates to 1981 — man-
dating that players, coaches and
team staff members line up and
stand in a “dignified” posture for
the playing of the national anthem
before every game.
“I respect our teams’ unified act
of peaceful protest for social jus-
tice and under these unique cir-cumstances will not enforce our
longstanding rule,” Silver said.
Trump tweeted last month that
he would turn off games if players
knelt, then broadened his criti-
cism in Wednesday’s Fox &
Friends interview.
“It’s not acceptable to me,”
Trump said, expressing disap-
pointment because the White
House, he said, worked “very
hard” with the N.B.A. to help the
league reboot after the season
was suspended on March 11 be-
cause of the coronavirus pan-
demic.
“When I see them kneeling, I
just turn off the game,” Trump
said. “I have no interest in the
game.”
Trump has often criticized ath-
letes for kneeling during the an-
them in what is broadly seen as astrategy to appeal to to his politi-
cal base. In 2017, Trump urged
N.F.L. team owners to fire anyone
who would not stand for the an-
them. In June, he said he would
not watch the N.F.L. if players con-
tinued to kneel.
James had criticized Trump be-
fore, calling him “U bum” in a 2017
tweet in which he said it had been
“a great honor” to go to the White
House — a tradition for champion
sports teams — until Trump took
office.
In Wednesday’s Fox interview,
Trump said that no president had
done more for Black people than
he had — “with the possible ex-
ception of Abraham Lincoln.”
When told of those comments,
James said: “You trying to make
me laugh right now? I appreciate
that.”Trump Says He Won’t Watch. James Replies That He Doesn’t Care.
By MARC STEINLeBron James, center, brushed off the president’s objection to kneeling during the national anthem.POOL PHOTO BY KEVIN C. COXBAY RIDGE
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