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FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2020
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - LeBron James says the
abrupt shutdown of the NBA season due to
the worldwide coronavirus pandemic has left
the Los Angeles Lakers feeling like they still
have something to prove.
The Lakers were in the midst of a
revival season, having made the playoffs
for the first time in seven years, when the
league suspended the 2019-20 season on
March 11 after Rudy Gobert tested positive
for COVID-19.
At the time of the postponement, the
Lakers were in first place in the Western
Conference and had the second-best record
in the league behind Milwaukee. If the season
doesn’t resume, James said there will be
a void.
“Closure? No. But to be proud of what we
were able to accomplish to this point, I’ll be
able to look back and say we did something
special in that small period of time,” James
said during a conference call with reporters
on Wednesday.
“Just the ups and downs not only on the
floor but off the floor everything that we’ve
had to endure as Laker faithful.”
James said he’s having trouble coming to
grips with the scale of the pandemic, which
has so far killed more than 14,700 people in
the United States (US), including almost 200
in his home state of Ohio.
“How do you assess what’s going on over
the last three weeks or however long this
pandemic has been going on? It’s unnatural,”
James said.
“It’s something that’s never happened
before. Some of you guys are older than me,
probably never seen this happen before. You
just kind of take all the information you have
on a day-to-day basis.”
James hopes Lakers
can eventually
rekindle their revival
season
LeBron James of Los Angeles Lakers handles the ball. PHOTO: AFP
He has been spending his self-isolating
time practising basketball with his son Bronny
and talking on the phone with teammates
and Lakers coach Frank Vogel.
“I got a couple friends that have their own
indoor facilities,” James said of his training
sessions with his son. “They strip it down,
wipe it down. It’s pretty much me in there
along with my son. It’s just us.”
He wants to get back to basketball but
adds it will be up to the experts to decide
when. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said
this week he doesn’t expect a decision on
whether they can salvage the season until at
least May.
“Once they allow us to resume some
type of activity, I would love to get things
back going,” James said. “If it’s Las Vegas or
somewhere else that can hold us and keep
us in the best possible chance to be safe,
not only on the floor but off the floor as well.
Those conversations will be had.”
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - If and when the NBA
resumes the 2019-20 season shut down in the
face of the coronavirus pandemic, Portland
star Damian Lillard wants the Trail Blazers
to have a chance to play their way into the
post-season.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said this
week that the league is considering multiple
scenarios for finishing out a season that was
halted on March 11 after Utah Jazz centre
Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19.
But with much of the United States (US)
still under stay-at-home orders in a bid to
slow the spread of the virus, he said that he
didn’t think any decisions would come until
May - well after the NBA playoffs were to have
begun on April 18.
One solution to a restart would be to go
straight into the playoffs, but with his Blazers
one spot out of the post-season Lillard said
Wednesday he wants a chance to advance.
“I think it’s only right to play it out,” said
Lillard, whose team trail the eighth-place
Memphis Grizzlies in the Western Conference
by three and a half games but have a much
easier remaining schedule.
“Not only are we the ninth seed, we have
one of the easier schedules in our final 15, 16
games and the team in the eighth spot has
the toughest,” he said.
“We’re looking at that like how can you
just go straight into the playoffs when we’re
in the position that we’re in and they’re up
against what they’re up against?
“I think you’ve got to play it out.”
That said, Lillard acknowledged that with
players unable to train as usual it will take
some time before they’re ready to produce
late-season form.
“Typically we would at least have access
to some form of training,” he said, adding
that for most working alone in home gyms or
going for runs outside aren’t enough “for us
to be ready to do what we do at the level we
do it at.
“There could be a lot of bad basketball,”
he warned. Lillard was speaking from home
in an interview with broadcaster TNT’s Ernie
Johnson that was live on the NBA’s Twitter
site. He’s staying in touch with coaches and
teammates by text and Facetime. Some, he
says, are optimistic the season will resume,
others are worried that the stoppage could
affect the coming free agent market and
some just miss playing.
“It’s a weird situation,” Lillard said. “I’m
training and all this stuff, and in my mind
I’m almost like, I’m just going to use this as a
head start for next season ... We really don’t
know what’s going to happen.”
Blazers’ Lillard wants playoff shot should NBA resume
Athletics
Track world
championships
rescheduled for
July 2022
AP - The first major domino tipped in the wake
of the Olympic postponement on Wednesday
when track leaders rescheduled next year’s
world championships for July 2022, setting
up a busy summer for a sport that would
normally be taking a breather.
The new dates for the event in Eugene,
Oregon: July 15-24, 2022.
Track worlds are one of the largest global
sporting events this side of the Olympics,
drawingaround 1,800athletes frommore than
200 countries. But unlike the International
Olympic Committee (IOC), which postponed
its centrepiece event by exactly 52
weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic,
World Athletics had to pick dates to
coordinate with other events already on the
2022 calendar.
MAEBASHI, JAPAN (AFP) - The postponement
of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was a heavy
blow for many athletes, but a team of South
Sudanese sprinters training in a Japanese
town are hoping to turn the delay to
their advantage.
The four athletes and a coach have been
in the city of Maebashi, north of Tokyo, since
November, taking advantage of training
facilities that aren’t available in their young
but poor home country.
And with news of the historic
postponement of the Games over the
coronavirus, they’ve decided to stay on until
at least July, hoping to beef up their skills.
“The Tokyo Olympics (have been)
postponed. It’s not a problem,” team coach
Joseph Rensio Tobia Omirok, 59, told AFP.
“I’m happy because I’m still training, and
in other countries they have no training.
They’re sitting in their house but here we are
OK... Training now is going okay.”
The decision to postpone the Games for
a year until July 2021 came after athletes
and sports associations heaped pressure on
organisers and Olympic officials.
Stranded in Japan, South Sudan athletes keep Olympic dreams alive
South Sudan Paralympic 100m, 200m runner Michael Machiek Ting Kutjang takes part in a
training session in Maebashi. PHOTO: AFP