LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon twice Tuesday acknowledged what Jalen Brunson accomplished in leading the New York Knicks to the NBA championship was historic and her “opinion was wrong,” but no apology for her previous comments was forthcoming.
Hammon spoke to reporters at the Aces shootaround earlier in the day and then before Las Vegas' home game against the New York Liberty. In the pregame news conference, Hammon opened by making a point to say she was wrong that the 6-foot-2 point guard was too small to lead the Knicks to the title.
Brunson earned NBA Finals MVP after guiding the Knicks to a five-game victory over the San Antonio Spurs. He scored 45 points in the title-clinching game on June 13.
Hammon made her original comments on ESPN in December 2023, saying Brunson wasn't a “1A dude.”
She was asked about her remarks at Aces shootaround.
“Jalen, all he did was prove history wrong," Hammon said. "He proves he’s an outlier, so you can put his name next to Steph Curry and Isiah Thomas. I thought he played brilliantly, especially down the stretch.
“I mean, he was that 1A dude. But apologize? I’m never going to apologize for having an opinion. That’s what ESPN pays me for.”
This isn't the first time in recent weeks she defended her original comments. Hammon also was asked her opinion after Brunson was named Eastern Conference final MVP when the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers.
“I think Jalen Brunson’s a hell of a player, a hell of a player,” Hammon said on May 26. "I’m speaking historically on the NBA with what I said. I don’t know why everybody’s so stuck on that. I said it two years ago.
“I said what I said. If he proves me wrong, he proves me wrong.”
Associated Press freelance reporter W.G. Ramirez contributed to this report.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson holds the MVP trophy after the Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA Finals basketball series, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
BERLIN (AP) — A problem with a communications system forced Germany’s railway network to halt all trains late Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded across the country.
Trains were held at stations and would-be travelers stood in long lines at information desks as they tried to figure out how to get to their destinations.
The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said shortly before 1 a.m. — nearly 2 1/2 hours after it first reported the outage — that the problem had been resolved and service was resuming “step by step.”
The company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R digital communication system, which is used for internal communication on the railway network. It later said that the cause had been identified, but didn't specify what it was.
The Bild newspaper quoted Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla as saying that they "were able to stabilize the situation with an emergency system.”
Deutsche Bahn said during the outage that it was giving taxi and hotel vouchers to passengers and, where possible, making available trains at stations for travelers to sit in. It apologized for the situation.
At Berlin's central station, Reyna Ghoshal and a friend were trying to get back to Munich after a trip to the German capital and saw "unhappy faces” as they arrived at the station.
“The train conductor was very nice, but he was just like, ‘we don’t know,’” said Ghoshal, who is from Atlanta. She said that “we booked a bus for 8 a.m. just in case, but generally we don’t know what’s going on."
In recent years, complaints about train delays and disruption in Germany have become increasingly frequent.
Government-owned Deutsche Bahn has started conducting thorough but disruptive overhauls of major routes after years of underinvestment in a bid to improve its performance.
The German railway system has on rare occasions in the past halted all or most trains, but because of storms rather than for technical reasons.
GSM-R, short for Global System for Mobile Communications–Railway, offers voice and data services needed to operate railways, including communication between train drivers and control centers.
According to the European Union Agency for Railways, it has been introduced across Europe since 2000 as a common standard for railway operations.
A train is parked on a platform at Hannover Central Station, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Moritz Frankenberg/dpa via AP)
Passengers stand in line at the DB information desk at the Munich train station, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP)
A passenger stands on a platform in front of a train at Duisburg Central Station, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Christoph Reichwein/dpa via AP)
Passengers line up at the DB information desk at the Duisburg train station, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Christoph Reichwein/dpa via AP)
Passengers line up at the DB information desk at the Duisburg train station, Tuesday, June 23, 2026, (Christoph Reichwein/dpa via AP)
FILE - The logo of Deutsche Bahn is pictured at the central station in Munich, Germany, Jan. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, file)
