Howard Bryant of ESPN The Magazine talks with Scott Simon about the Boston Celtics’ winning streak and how this Thanksgiving, a certain NFL team’s controversial name might draw some extra attention.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

And now it’s time for sports.

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SIMON: The Boston Celtics are on a 14-game winning streak. They even beat the gold standard Golden State Warriors this week. And they’re doing it without one of their best players. Joined now by Howard Bryant of espn.com and ESPN the Magazine.

Howard, thanks so much for being with us.

HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, Scott. How are you?

SIMON: I’m fine. Thank you. And of course…

BRYANT: (Laughter).

SIMON: …It’s still early in the – how should a Cavs fan be now?

BRYANT: (Laughter).

SIMON: This is my question. It’s still early in the season. But does this feel like there’s a changing of the guard in the NBA Eastern Conference?

BRYANT: Well, it was a lot of fun this offseason when you had the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors play for the third straight time in the NBA finals. And then after Golden State wins the championship, you have Kyrie Irving – who hit the big shot the year before to give Cleveland their championship that they hadn’t had since 1964 in any sport – say, I don’t want to be here anymore. I want out. And so massive trade to Boston. And yeah, I think you see what happens when you have one of the best players in the league change teams.

And the guard has – I don’t think it’s changed yet because they still have to play head to head for a full season. Cleveland won the first game between them. But if you’re the Boston Celtics right now, you got so much better. And you’ve been knocking on the door for the last couple of years in terms of building your team the way Golden State builds their team. So to have that game Thursday night be as exciting as it was – to be down by 17 points twice, to come back and win that game – gives – it didn’t mean nearly as much to Golden State, but it meant a lot to the Boston Celtics.

SIMON: I mean, when Gordon Hayward comes back from that grisly injury – I mean, will the Celtics say – sorry, we don’t have a place for you in this lineup right now.

(LAUGHTER)

BRYANT: No.

SIMON: We’re doing too well.

BRYANT: No, I don’t think so. I think this is a talent league. And when you look at basketball – and that’s why it’s different from any other sport – it’s a best-player-wins league. If you have the best players, you win. It’s not baseball where, if you have the best pitcher, that player pitches every five days and you may not be the best team in the league. Basketball, because it’s a two-way game, if you’ve got the talent, chances are you’re going to be one of the top teams.

And I think that you’ve got a dual effect this year in the Eastern Conference. You’ve got Boston getting much, much better, and you have Cleveland not quite being as good as they were. We’ll see what happens when Isaiah Thomas comes back. And obviously, they’ve got the best player in the world. They’ve got LeBron James. So who would ever count them out?

SIMON: Yeah. Not me, let me tell you.

BRYANT: Not you. Certainly not you.

SIMON: Let’s go to football now. For the first time in franchise history, I gather, the team of football players from Washington, D.C. – whose mascot name I will not utter – is hosting a Thanksgiving Day game. Now, the team already gets a lot of heat for its name. To play a home game with this team name on Thanksgiving somehow seems especially insensitive.

BRYANT: Well, it’s insensitive and a lot of people feel that it sort of spits in the eye of the city because one of the negotiations – of course, the city of Washington wants their football team back – because they play in Maryland. But one of the negotiating points is they’ve got to change the name. And of course, Daniel Snyder – the owner of the team – is not going to change the name. So that’s a battle right there.

But I think one of the big things is that you’ve got the World Series earlier this year with Yuli Gurriel being suspended for making that racial gesture at Yu Darvish during the World Series. And you have people say in sports constantly – there’s no room for racism in sports. And yet, you have these Native American mascots throughout all sports – whether it’s college, pro, whatever. There’s plenty of room for racism in sports. You see it with the Cleveland Indians. You see it with the Chicago Blackhawks. You see it with Washington. You see it with all of these different teams. And you wonder why is…

SIMON: But the Blackhawks say they’re named after Chief Black Hawk.

BRYANT: (Laughter) And the Indians say that their name is for Chief Sockalexis and it’s a sign of respect. But in any event, we know that in 2017, these mascot names have to go. The logos have to go at the very least. Enough is enough, really.

SIMON: Howard Bryant of ESPN, thanks so much, my friend. Talk to you later.

BRYANT: My pleasure. Happy Thanksgiving.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Russia is reacting angrily after the World Anti-Doping Agency said the country is still not in compliance with its regulations. The announcement could affect Russia’s participation in the Winter Olympics next February.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Russia’s sports programs have come under international scrutiny for illegal doping since the country hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, and today the World Anti-Doping Agency said Russia was still not in compliance with its regulations. NPR’s Lucian Kim reports from Moscow the ruling puts the country’s participation in the next Winter Olympics in doubt.

LUCIAN KIM, BYLINE: The president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Sir Craig Reedie, announced the decision in Seoul, South Korea, today. He said RUSADA, as Russia’s Anti-Doping Agency is known, had failed to meet international code.

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CRAIG REEDIE: We regret that RUSADA is not yet compliant. It would be better, from our point of view, that they were.

KIM: Reedie said Russia had made huge technical improvements, but was still denying access to blood and urine samples and refusing to admit that the government had sponsored a doping program in the past. The ruling was top news in Russia, where the country’s international sporting status is an object of national pride.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (Speaking Russian).

KIM: A well-choreographed show with a predictable ending – that’s how Russian state television described the decision. The TV news said Russia was being unfairly targeted and the victim of behind-the-scenes intrigue. Alexander Zhukov, the head of Russia’s Olympic Committee, called the ruling politicized.

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ALEXANDER ZHUKOV: (Speaking Russian).

KIM: Zhukov said it looked like artificial conditions were being invented to prevent Russia from coming into line with anti-doping rules. He denied the Russian government had ever run a doping program. The issue will dominate a meeting by the International Olympic Committee in December. That’s when the IOC will decide whether Russia should be allowed to participate in the upcoming Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The World Anti-Doping Agency tried to get all Russian athletes kicked out of last summer’s Rio Olympics, but the IOC left it up to individual sports federations. Last week, President Vladimir Putin suggested the United States is trying to block Russia from taking part in the Olympics.

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PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: (Speaking Russian).

KIM: Talking to workers during a visit to a factory in Chelyabinsk, Putin said he suspected the U.S. was using the doping scandal to create problems before Russia’s presidential election in March. Putin said, the Americans imagine that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election last year, and this is their response. Lucian Kim, NPR News, Moscow.

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Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

After a loss to Sweden Monday night, Italy will miss the World Cup for the first time since 1958. Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who played in his last international game, was in tears and La Gazzetta Dello Sport said for “Italy, this is the Apocalypse.”

ELISE HU, HOST:

Italy lost a playoff to Sweden last night. La Gazzetta dello Sport wrote this about the loss – Italy, this is the apocalypse – because it means the Italian men’s national soccer team will miss the World Cup for the first time since 1958. Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, who played in his last international game, was in tears.

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GIANLUIGI BUFFON: (Speaking Italian).

HU: He’s apologizing there and knows this loss was much bigger than him. The tears have been flowing all over Italy today. So what happened? Let’s ask Paolo Bandini. He’s a European soccer writer and joins us via Skype. Paolo, thanks for being with us.

PAOLO BANDINI: No problem.

HU: So what happened? This was obviously a historic loss. But was it a surprising one, too?

BANDINI: Yeah. I mean, I suppose because the game is played over two legs. Italy had lost the first leg. There was some anxiety that we’re in a tough spot now and that things could go wrong from here. But I think even despite that there was still a lot of expectation that Italy would go through. Italy are historically and traditionally a stronger soccer nation than Sweden. But there has been a sense of unease about this Italy side for a long time.

HU: How would you say Italy got to this point?

BANDINI: Well, I think the manager is a huge part of it. Gian Piero Ventura is an older manager – he’s now 69, he was 68 already when he took the job – who has never really managed at the top, top level of club soccer. He never competed in the Champions League. He never competed for trophies. And I think that the reality was he wasn’t up to this job.

HU: Now, when the U.S. team was eliminated from the World Cup last month, there was a lot of hair pulling over here and finger pointing. But we’re talking about Italy here. Italy, which has – what? – four World Cups. How are people in Italy dealing with this at this point?

BANDINI: Terribly, obviously. It’s – you know, it’s – this is – it’s a national crisis. You know, it’s something that generations and generations, including myself, of Italians have never experienced in our lifetime. You know, I think people looking from the outside sometimes imagine that Italians don’t love soccer like they used to because the crowds in the stadiums have gone down a little bit. There’d been some trouble with sort of violence in some of the stadiums.

But actually it’s just not true. I mean, soccer is still everything in Italy. And you see it in the streets everywhere you go. You feel it in the conversations you have with everybody. Every little bar you go into will have a copy of Gazzetta dello Sport on the table, which is the – you know, the national sports paper. It’s everything in Italy, soccer. And I think that it’s a huge blow to the national psyche to not be part of the World Cup, the one tournament that matters most.

HU: What about you? How are you doing?

BANDINI: It’s been a bit of a whirlwind today, to be honest with you. It’s one of those things – someone on a purely professional level had asked me earlier, oh, this is going to mean less work for you next summer, isn’t it? And I’m like, yeah, but today it seems to mean a lot more. But, yeah, it’s one of those things, I guess, being a journalist sometimes you slightly lose the sense in a moment. But last night I was pretty cut up about it, and today I’m just trying to get on with it.

HU: Paolo Bandini, we hope the shock wears off soon. Paolo writes about soccer for The Guardian, ESPN and other outlets. Paolo, thanks.

BANDINI: Any time.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Terrible news out of Princess Margaret Hospital – little drag car driver Anita Board, 8, has died

MORE: https://t.co/zk7gQ2fLjp#perthnews#wanewspic.twitter.com/JcCjjtpifI

— The West Australian (@westaustralian) November 12, 2017

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Diana Nyad, the champion long-distance open water swimmer, opened up about her past as a victim of sexual assault. Her op-ed in the New York Times is yet another case of a woman speaking out about sexual violence and harassment.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

On Twitter today, women all over the country are posting pictures of themselves at 14 with the hashtag #meat14. The photos underscore just what a serious violation it is when girls so young are targeted for sexual attention, especially by someone older and more powerful. The campaign is one response to accusations against Judge Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama. The Washington Post reported he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old when he was a 32-year-old prosecutor. Moore says the accusation is, quote, “completely false,” unquote.

But all of this comes at a time when women around the world and across professions are speaking up about sexual abuse. And in response to that, some are asking, why now? Why bring this up years after the events are alleged to have taken place? Our next guest offers some perspective on that. Diana Nyad is known for her record-breaking long-distance swimming, but this past week, she wrote an essay for The New York Times about the swim coach who started molesting her when she was just 14 years old and the effect it had on her life for years.

Diana Nyad joined me earlier today from NPR West in Culver City, Calif. And let me say here this conversation may be upsetting to some for obvious reasons. We’ll begin here at the point where I asked her what it means to her to see so many women coming forward with stories like hers.

DIANA NYAD: I am heartened, I’ll tell you, Michel, that after all the years of trying to prosecute my perpetrator, even though I had corroborators – there were other people who went through the same thing with the same coach – we couldn’t break through the system. But look at this. I am so heartened by these past few weeks of the education of the public. You just brought up the Roy Moore case.

People say, now, come on. If this were true, if this 14-year-old story were true, she – and it was that disturbing to her, she would come out with it sooner. She’s waited all these years. Well, now, in just this short time, we’ve had a little bit of a cultural shift in the last few weeks in discussing all this to say that we get it. You are so traumatized. You think it’s your fault, especially young people.

MARTIN: Why did you want to write this essay now? Was it in part to answer the why now question?

NYAD: It sort of started with just joining the me too, you know, movement. What we’ve started here is the archiving of the voices. And so many of those voices, I’ll tell you right now, I am more angry about being silenced than I even am about being touched. You know, it’s hard to say that, but let’s just say it’s equal to be pinned down and to be told, don’t you ever tell anybody. You’ll never have a life. You’ll be thrown out of school. Your entire life will collapse if you tell anybody about our beautiful special secret. So I want to be one of the leaders of the voices who collect the archiving. And next, I want to be one of the leaders as to what the heck we’re going to do about this to change this in our culture.

MARTIN: One of the things that really struck me is how very graphic you are about the effect that it had on you. I mean, I’ll just start by reading the top of the essay. You start by saying, (reading) here I was, a strong-willed young athlete. There he was, a charismatic pillar of the community. But I am the one who after all these many years later at the age of 68, no matter how happy and together I may be, continues to deal with the rage and the shame that comes with being silenced. Talk about that a bit if you would. Talk a little bit about that rage. I mean, you said it just used to just come on you?

NYAD: Yeah, it can still. I don’t like to admit it, but now I’m at the point that I’ve just got to be an open book because all – you know, the thousands of people I’ve heard from over these past 48 hours since that Times op-ed piece hit are saying, you know, these precise same symptoms. And one of them is that you’re in a rage. You’re in a rage that it happened. You’re in a rage toward your perpetrator. And unfortunately, you’re in a rage toward yourself for not stopping it.

So I have to admit that I have an imprint. I wake up, you know, with joy. I have a strong will. I have an iron will. And still there’s that region side of no, you do not silence me. You don’t pin me down. You don’t make me touch your disgusting body. I just – you know, that man’s deceased now, but I’ve been going through this all my life. And I think one of the little cultural shifts that’s happening out there when people are getting educated is they’re saying, you know what? It isn’t a momentary thing. You don’t just suffer that trauma and then you’re over it. It’s a life-long deal.

MARTIN: Do you feel free now?

NYAD: Oh, no. I’ve been speaking about this for 50 years, so I don’t feel freer for speaking about it again this week. What I feel is gratification that this country is addressing this issue. I don’t feel freer. I feel gritty. I’m going to get down to the work of trying to make a big change in the United States.

MARTIN: That’s Diana Nyad. She’s a record-breaking swimmer, author and motivational speaker. You can read her latest essay, “My Life After Sexual Assault” in the New York Times Opinion section. Diana Nyad, thank you so much for speaking with us.

NYAD: Thank you, Michel. I appreciate it.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.