SAN FRANCISCO — The Boston Celtics have been managing injuries to both Marcus Smart and Robert Williams for most of the last few weeks.

But, on the eve of the NBA Finals, both players said they were ready to go for the start of the league’s championship round against the Golden State Warriors here at Chase Center Thursday night.

“It’s manageable,” Williams said of the knee soreness that’s bothered him since the conference semifinals. “Kind of been getting in a routine the past couple games, what I have to go through to have myself ready to play.”

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The Celtics have officially listed Williams as questionable for Game 1 of the NBA Finals. Williams has been dealing with a bone bruise in his left knee — the same knee he had meniscus surgery on in late March — that has caused soreness that forced Williams to miss the final three games against the Milwaukee Bucks in the conference semifinals and Game 3 against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.

But after playing reduced minutes throughout the Heat series, Williams said he thinks that’s helped him get ready to make it through this series against the Warriors.

“Yeah, I feel like the reduced minutes helps obviously because with the injury I had, you know, not being able to take the time off, being such an important part of the season, the minute reduction definitely helped.”

Smart, meanwhile, has been dealing with a series of injuries to his right leg — including his quad, ankle and foot.

The ankle, though, was the most serious, and hampered Smart throughout the conference finals. But after scoring 24 points and playing 41 minutes in Game 7 in Miami, Celtics coach Ime Udoka said Smart will be good to go in this series, and Smart himself said if he’s playing, there’s no room for excuses.

“The ankle was a pretty serious injury,” Smart said. “I’m thankful to be able to play, let alone still be walking. It hurt, but my mom always told me, if you are going to be on the court, you can’t make excuses. If you’re hurt, then sit your tail down. If I’m going to be out there, no matter how much pain I’m in, I can’t let it affect me.”

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The Chicago Reader is published in print every other week and distributed for free to the more than 1,100 locations on this map.

The latest issue

The latest print issue of the Reader is the issue of May 26, 2022.

You can download the print issue as a free PDF.

The next print issue will be the issue of June 9, 2022, the Pride Issue with a Windy City Times insert.

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Chicago Reader print issue dates

The Chicago Reader is published in print every other week. Issues are dated Thursday. Distribution usually happens Wednesday morning through Thursday night of the issue date. Upcoming print issue dates through December 2022 are:

6/9/20226/23/20227/7/20227/21/20228/4/20228/18/20229/1/20229/15/20229/29/202210/13/202210/27/202211/10/202211/24/202212/8/202212/22/2022

Download the full 2022 editorial calendar is here (PDF). See our information page for advertising opportunities.

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The Chicago Reader is published in print every other week and distributed for free to the more than 1,100 locations on this map.

The latest issue

The latest print issue of the Reader is the issue of May 26, 2022.

You can download the print issue as a free PDF.

The next print issue will be the issue of June 9, 2022, the Pride Issue with a Windy City Times insert.

Subscribe

Never miss a copy! Paid print subscriptions are available for 12 issues, 26 issues, and for 52 issues from the Reader Store.

Please consider donating.

Chicago Reader print issue dates

The Chicago Reader is published in print every other week. Issues are dated Thursday. Distribution usually happens Wednesday morning through Thursday night of the issue date. Upcoming print issue dates through December 2022 are:

6/9/20226/23/20227/7/20227/21/20228/4/20228/18/20229/1/20229/15/20229/29/202210/13/202210/27/202211/10/202211/24/202212/8/202212/22/2022

Download the full 2022 editorial calendar is here (PDF). See our information page for advertising opportunities.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown said he believes joining up with Kayne West’s marketing firm is the start of a “beautiful collaboration.”

It became public this week that the Celtics forward was the first NBA player to sign with Donda Sports, a fledgling marketing company that is part of West’s larger clothing line. Los Angeles Rams star Aaron Donald recently said he’d joined the firm.

“It was time. For me, like I said, anytime I make a life decision, I contemplate. I think about things deeply,” Brown said a day before Thursday’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals (9 p.m. ET, ABC). “And from what I want to do, the missions I want to get accomplished, it was the right decision.”

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Brown recently became a shoe free agent after his long-term deal expired with Adidas, who signed him before his rookie season in 2016. He has been active in social justice causes and has said he prefers future endorsement deals to include investments in those areas.

Donda Sports is expected to handle Brown’s marketing deals. His current contract with the Celtics — a four-year, $106 million extension that went into effect in 2020 — was negotiated with NBA agent Jason Glushon.

West and Brown have had a relationship for some time and formalized a partnership late in the regular season. Brown is aware of the criticism West has taken and it doesn’t bother him.

“People have concerns or critiques, etc., but in the world we live in, there’s concerns and critiques in any and everything,” Brown said. “I feel like this is a good moment for me in my particular life. I’m excited to build and create and do things that I’ve always imagined I wanted to do on the court and off.”

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Chicago Cubs outfielder Jason Heyward has been activated from the COVID-19 injured list and is slated to start in right field against the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday.

Heyward was placed on the injured list on May 17. The five-time Gold Glove winner is batting .208 with four RBIs in 27 games this season.

In corresponding roster moves, the Cubs placed left-hander Drew Smyly on the 15-day injured list with a right oblique strain, sent outfielder Nelson Velazquez to Triple-A Iowa and activated right-hander Michael Rucker (turf toe).

Smyly is 2-5 with a 3.80 ERA and 34 strikeouts in nine starts for the Cubs this season.

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Among the assets gathered in the James Harden blockbuster trade, the Brooklyn Nets are deferring acquisition of the Philadelphia 76ers‘ 2022 first-round pick at No. 23 to the 2023 NBA draft, sources told ESPN.

Brooklyn informed the league office of the team’s decision on Wednesday, hours ahead of a midnight deadline, sources said.

Deferring the pick allows the Nets to keep flexibility over an extended period on using that pick in trades – and gives them a roll of the dice that the pick could land higher on the draft board next year based upon the success of the Sixers’ coming season.

The Nets traded Harden and Paul Millsap to the Sixers for Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Andre Drummond and the unprotected 2022 first-round pick and top-8 protected 2027 first-round pick at the February trade deadline.

The Sixers will pick No. 23 on June 23rd in the draft and can use the pick in trades beginning on draft night. The Sixers won’t be able to trade another pick for seven years, because of conditions owed to teams on several picks, including their 2025 first-round pick (top-6 protected to Oklahoma City), and 2027 first-round pick (top eight protected to Brooklyn).

The Nets’ 2022 first-round pick is owed to the Houston Rockets for the Harden trade.

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The 2022 NBA Finals begin Thursday with Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors taking on Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics. Judging by the ticket prices, there is a lot of excitement for this matchup.

According to VividSeats, a ticket resale marketplace, Game 1 of the finals (9 p.m. ET on ABC) is the most expensive average ticket price for any event at Chase Center since its opening in 2019.

The current average price sold for the first game of the series is $873, which is over $300 more per ticket than when the Los Angeles Lakers visited the Warriors in February — and these finals tickets are $300 more expensive than a Metallica concert, played in September, 2019, which had an average price of $542.

On the Warriors’ team website, linked to Ticketmaster, the only tickets available are resale tickets. They range from $590 to $6,900.

Finals tickets are typically more expensive than most other rounds in the playoffs and regular season games, so it’s also no surprise that game one is the most expensive ticket sold on VividSeats in the NBA so far this season. That same Lakers-Warriors game from February is No. 2 at $543 with Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals between the Dallas Mavericks and Warriors game two on May 20, coming in at third with an average ticket price of $418.

The Warriors have also been a part of the top-five games with the most expensive average ticket this season.

It will be difficult to compare the game one prices to the most expensive tickets from any NBA finals game, since the prices will likely go up as the series continues. The most expensive average ticket price from VividSeats since 2010 came in 2019, game five of the Warriors-Raptors series with a price of $1,550.

The Warriors, who moved into the Chase Center in San Francisco in 2019, have three of the top five games with the most expensive average ticket price for the NBA Finals since 2010. Golden State was in the finals played in five consecutive finals from 2015-2019 and won three NBA titles. Those series were played at Oracle Arena in Oakland.

The lowest price listed for Game 2 at Golden State is $749, according to Ticketmaster.

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In the past year or so, whenever a friend has asked me to recommend music, I’ve pointed them at Chicago multi-instrumentalist Jonn Wallen, who creates omnidirectional experimental electronic albums under the name Oui Ennui. A self-described hermit, he’d already spent decades making music largely in private and for his own satisfaction when COVID-19 hit. After Wallen contracted the virus in April 2020, though, he completely shifted his approach. As he told Reader editor Jamie Ludwig last year, he decided to release an album per month straight to Bandcamp, often on Bandcamp Fridays (monthly promotions when the site passes along its usual portion of sales revenue to artists and labels). It hasn’t been easy for Wallen. “I had long-haul COVID, and there were several times throughout my process of releasing an album every month where I thought that I wasn’t going to make it for the next one,” he told Ludwig. “I felt like shit for 13 or 14 months in a row.” 

Despite the physical and psychological challenges of long COVID, Wallen has kept the spigot open on this firehose of music. The cinematic and ambient Abyss, You Are My Mother, which came out on May 6, is his 31st release in the past two years. (All his albums come with detailed, almost diaristic liner notes, in case you’re looking for even more material from him.) Wallen pulls off daring stylistic leaps from album to album, so that his ever-expanding catalog is basically a one-man boutique record shop—there’s not exactly something for everyone, but if you like music that’s designed to envelop you, you’ll find plenty. I’d recommend beginning with L’esprit de L’escalier, a February 2021 collection of liquid house tracks tinged with psychedelia; the September; the September 2021 archival drop Reverse!, whose freewheeling, sun-bleached soul Wallen recorded with vocalist Clarence Spencer in 2006 under the name Cotton & Hate; and October 2020’s Message From the Daoui, a celestial jazz-rap collaboration with clarinetist, keyboardist, and vocalist Angel Bat Dawid. Wallen has the unusual ability to simultaneously overwhelm me with the volume of his output and soothe me with whichever one of those albums I’m listening to at the moment—which is lucky, because they just keep coming.

Oui Ennui Part of day one of Do Division, which runs Fri 6/3 through Sun 6/5. On the East Stage, Nnamdï headlines; Cadence Weapon and Oui Ennui open. On the West Stage, Oso Oso headlines; Carriers and Kate Stephenson open. Fri 6/3, 5:45 PM (gates at 5 PM), Do Division Street Fest, Division between Damen and Leavitt, $10 donation, all ages

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