CHICAGO — No one involved in the 2020 NBA All-Star Game could predict how the new scoring format would affect the game. Chris Paul, head of the Players Association, lobbied the commissioner Adam Silver to adopt the Elam Ending this year — a rule change in which the teams play to a final number rather than against a dwindling game clock.
The league agreed and took the idea a step further, awarding charity money to the team that won each individual quarter before tallying up the cumulative scores in the final frame and playing to an extra 24 points (a tribute to Kobe Bryant) to determine the winner. The result was a thrilling fourth quarter that ultimately ended on an Anthony Davis free throw to give Team LeBron a 157-155 win over Team Giannis.
NBA All-Stars sounded off on the format change after the game. This is what the players and coaches in the game thought of the new scoring system.
KEMBA WALKER: Yeah, I thought it was cool. I had no idea coming into the game, I didn’t know what to expect. As we played, it was great. That’s what everybody wants to see. They want to see a competitive game. That’s what it was in the fourth. Hopefully, we can keep it going.
GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO: After the game, my brother came down, and he said, this has been the most fun All-Star he’s been a part of. And I asked him why, and he told me, “Because you guys were really competitive. You guys were playing to win.” Team Giannis, that’s what we were trying to do. We were trying to come out, set the tone, play hard. Especially in the fourth quarter, the defense got tighter. Guys were hitting one another. Every possession counts. We had a little bit of playoff intensity out there. So I loved it. I hope we can keep the same format for a lot of years, and I think people had fun, we had fun. So that’s what it’s all about.
JIMMY BUTLER: It was dope. Damn sure got to compete at the end. It’s still fun to go out there and be known as one of the best players in the world in this league. Hopefully it stays like that.
JOEL EMBIID: It was great. Fun weekend. Probably one of the best All-Star Games ever. Guys competed. It came down to basically the last shot. I don’t agree that you should be able to win on a free throw, but overall it was a lot of fun.
Reporter: Do you think they should stick with this format for future All-Star Games?
EMBIID: For sure. Besides the first quarter, I felt like everybody was playing hard. It was competitive.
KYLE LOWRY: We wanted to win. We’ll do anything it takes to win a basketball game. I think the format was great for everybody. The change helped the whole experience. I think it was one of those things where we innovated. In our league we always try to do different things, and it worked out perfectly.
ANTHONY DAVIS: I feel like playing in the end was a playoff game. It was a great competition. It’s 24 players who want to compete at a very high level and to do it in front of a crowd like this. New format, everybody in the game really loved it. Like I said, it was a fun competition. It was great.
Reporter: Now that the game is over, your opinion about the new format?
DAVIS: It was great. We love it. It brings competition back, especially during the fourth quarter — it’s about getting stops. You have to get stops to win the game. It was great. We all loved it.
Reporter: Is this something that you hope the league considers long term?
DAVIS: Absolutely. For the seven I’ve been in, this has been probably one of the better ones. You actually have to compete. You argue with the refs. It felt like a real playoff game and that’s what makes it fun.
Reporter: A lot of people seem to feel as if this format is good for the game, but some are saying the game maybe shouldn’t end on a free throw. I’m curious as to what you think about that.
KAWHI LEONARD: I mean, it’s a point, so we can’t take out free throws through the whole game. They pretty much made the last six or seven free throws towards the end. They kept giving them. So do we want to minus those points as well? But the new format was good. I felt like it was fun in that fourth quarter.
NICK NURSE: Well, I think it was really interesting. It was really fun. Each and every quarter was, from a coaching standpoint was really fun. I thought the quarters got really interesting really early in the quarters because the game was moving pretty quick. Not a ton of whistles in the first bit, right? So the thing kind of mattered a little bit. I think with the cumulative score, even though we were down in the first quarter, we thought we had to keep plugging to keep it close so it doesn’t get too far away. Then when we were on the other side of it, we said let’s keep increasing our lead and get as big of an advantage going into the fourth. Then, obviously, the end was amazing. I think everybody in the whole place was on their feet watching each possession, and they were really going at it. I mean, defensively it was hard to get anything — or offensively it was hard to get anything started. Even first passes were being denied. It felt like the end of a playoff game, which was really cool, I thought.
Reporter: Could you take us into the final quarter. We saw a very competitive game, which is something that we haven’t seen in the All-Star Game for a long time. What changed this year?
FRANK VOGEL: I think the format probably had something to do with it, but I do think that, while a lot of the All-Star games have not been competitive, usually when it’s close down the stretch, it becomes very competitive. I think with the format the way it was, first team to get to that 157 mark, I think it just became more competitive a little bit longer. But it’s not uncommon for All-Star games to get competitive down the stretch when they’re close.
Reporter: LeBron, did this format live up to what you were expecting? Other than maybe a Finals game, when’s the last time you played in a fourth quarter that had that much intensity, that much fight to it?
LeBRON JAMES: I didn’t know what to expect because it was a new format, new year. None of us knew what to expect. But throughout the whole fourth quarter and at the end of the game, everybody was like, “That was pretty damn fun.” That was fun. Having to play for a set number and seeing that — I’ve watched a lot of basketball in the summertime, and I forgot the name of the league where the guys, you know, their alma mater, they go back and play for their teams and things of that nature, they have a set number they have to get to that, that $2 million championship tournament. Maybe you don’t watch basketball in the summer.
Reporter: TBT.
JAMES: Yeah, that was extremely fun and a great way to end 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend.
Reporter: You’ve obviously played a lot of basketball in your career. What did you think of adding on a free throw instead of old playground rules with an actual bucket?
JAMES: It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you can win a Finals game at the free-throw line. There’s a lot of things that happen on the playground that you can’t do in our game too, where you can literally foul every single time and not get disqualified. I’ve been in games where you’ve won games at the free-throw line, and that’s all part of the game. If he would have missed both, no one would have been talking about it. It’s all part of the game, and it was a hell of a way to win a game just from an All-Star perspective.
Reporter: Do you think the All-Star Game is back because of the competitive game we saw?
CHRIS PAUL: I’m obviously biased. I don’t think it ever went anywhere. I know I’m always competitive whenever I play. But the good thing about our league is we’re always adding things and trying new things and trying to figure out from my fans what they like. This was an idea I brought to Adam. Thankfully, we tried it out, so I was asking the guys how they enjoyed it during the game and at the end of the game. So you all be sure to ask him.
RUSSELL WESTBROOK: It was good. We won.
JAMES HARDEN: It was different (than previous experiences) because being down, we had to get to a certain number. It made us play even harder to get to that number. There was no running the clock out. You had to actually score the basketball. No time — just shot clock and you gotta get a bucket. The charities, the fans, the game got exciting. I think the fans got more into it. It was cool. Everybody was so competitive, ready to win the game. We were coming up with different strategies every time to score, to get a stop. It was pretty cool to strategize on every possession.
Reporter: Do you think Kobe would have liked the competitiveness in the fourth quarter?
HARDEN: That was the competitive dog he was. He was a competitive beast. That right there made it.
It’s still difficult to put into words for reigning world decathlon champion Pierce LePage.
The 28-year-old from Whitby, Ont., had to withdraw from the Paris Olympics due to a herniated disc in his back. LePage suffered the injury in the spring but pushed to still compete. However, on July 17, he announced on social media that he would not be in Paris and needed surgery.
“I feel like there’s regret obviously — like, yes, I want to be there and things like that,” LePage said. “But I feel like there’s a lot of people and a lot of fans, friends, support, family, all the people that feeling I kind of let down, let myself down, let my coach down so I felt pretty guilty about that for a long time and still, you know going through the motions.
“Obviously it’s tough. I’m world champion. I had a lot of hopes and a lot of goals going into the Games,” he added. “It’s hard to put into words what I felt, but yeah, it sucked. But I was happy to push through as far as I could with the injury.”
LePage tweaked his back in the “end of March, early April,” doing an exercise in the gym. About two weeks later, while training for the long jump, he landed awkwardly, causing the herniated disc in his back.
LePage competed in several individual events in 2024, mostly indoors, but not a decathlon. He was also granted a medical exemption to not compete at Canadian national trials in June.
He said he knew it was “over” after a warm-up for his final competition in July before leaving for Paris. His pole broke prepping for the pole vault and hit the mat, but for the next couple of days had “a lot of nerve symptoms and a lot of pain” that stopped him from even jogging.
“Athletes go through injuries. It’s not anything new and I’ve always been someone who’s always been able to compete through injury, regardless of how severe it is,” LePage said. “So I thought that when it happened that that must be another case of small setback. I’ll be able to do it if I have some pain, like that’s fine, I’ll do whatever.
“But just the nature of the injury is that if it’s pushing on your nerves, you can’t get the results you want out of it.”
LePage, who will be one of 11 RBC Olympians who will be part of this year’s RBC Training Ground National Final on Saturday in Halifax, had surgery in August and says his progression in rehab has been good, although he doesn’t have a recovery timeline. However, he plans to be back well before the 2025 world championships in Tokyo next September.
LePage was coming off a massive 2023 season, claiming the first international title of his career in Gotzis, Austria, then winning his first world title in Budapest, Hungary, some months later. His mark of 8,909 points in Budapest was a personal best, world lead and sixth-best all-time score.
He also became the first Canadian to win a world title in the event. LePage earned his first worlds medal in 2022, with silver, behind world-record holder Kevin Mayer of France.
He finished 2023 as the top-ranked decathlete in the world, still holding that position until the Paris Olympics.
The 2023 season showed how tough LePage would be to beat, especially when healthy. He finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 dealing with a torn patella in his right knee. At the 2022 worlds, he competed through a torn patella in his left knee.
Many expected Canada to decathlon win gold and silver in Paris. Damian Warner of London, Ont., was the reigning Olympic champion heading into Paris and earned silver behind LePage at the 2023 worlds.
However, Warner withdrew with just a couple of events left in the decathlon in Paris after failing to clear the opening height of 4.60 metres in the pole vault on all three of his attempts. Warner fell from second to 18th, with no chance of climbing back into the mix.
LePage pointed to reasons for both men to be driven for redemption in Tokyo next year.
“I’m the world champion. I want to defend my title next year,” he said. “I’m sure Damian feels similar thoughts on not wanting to stop right there.
“No one likes to not finish decathlon. That is definitely drive to doing it again and kind of redeem ourselves, I suppose.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.
The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is launching its expansion process with plans to add two franchises for the start of the 2025-26 season, a league executive announced Tuesday.
Speaking at the ESPNW Summit in New York, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said the league will begin sending requests for proposals to several markets starting as early as next week, while also accepting applications.
”(We’re) looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity — so a lot of research to be done over the next couple months,” Scheer said, without specifying which markets the league might be targeting. “But yeah, looking to continue to build the league and grow the number of teams.”
Among the U.S. expansion candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL hosted neutral site games during its inaugural season last year. Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would also be regarded as candidates after both were considered before the league established teams in Boston, New York and Minnesota. Denver and Seattle are also considered potential candidates.
In Canada, where the league has teams in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Quebec City has already announced its intention of being a candidate for an expansion franchise. Calgary would be a potential option with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hocky League folded.
Scheer also announced the league plans to hold neutral site games in nine markets across North America, and is considering holding an outdoor game. Scheer added the league is also working on holding games in Europe, without specifying when that might happen.
The PWHL’s second season opens on Nov. 30, and features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games — up from 24 last year. The league has yet to announce where it’s neutral site games will be played.
Quebec City councilor Jackie Smith announced earlier on Tuesday that the PWHL has agreed to play a neutral site game at the city’s Videotron Centre on Jan. 19. The PWHL’s schedule has Ottawa playing Montreal on that day, with the site yet to be determined.
Smith called the development the first step in Quebec City landing an expansion team.
TORONTO – Canadian squash player Salah Eltorgman dropped a 7-11, 11-4, 11-9, 11-7 decision to Israel‘s Daniel Poleshchuk in quarterfinal play Tuesday at the Cambridge Group of Clubs Classic.
Eltorgman, from Toronto, was the lone Canadian left in the men’s draw of the Pro Squash Association tournament, which is a companion event to the Canadian Women’s Open.
The lone Canadian remaining in the women’s draw, Hollie Naughton of Mississauga, Ont., was scheduled to play Melissa Alves of France in the quarterfinals on Tuesday evening.
Naughton, the world No. 26, is ranked three positions higher than Alves, who dispatched top-seeded Nele Coll of Belgium on Monday.
Semifinals will be played Wednesday in the Allen Lambert Galleria at Brookfield Place.
The finals are set for Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.
