The highly anticipated SBL All-Star weekend starts this afternoon, when more than 3,000 fans are expected to flock to the Hsinchu County Arena to cheer on their favorite stars.
Autograph-signing sessions will lead a variety of festivities outside the arena intended to bring the fans up close and personal with the top players in the league before they suit up for the one-of-a-kind friendly match between five frontcourt players (over 1.95m) and five backcourt players (under 1.8m). The match, which is being billed as “the Battle between the Heavenly Dragons and the Earthly Tigers,” will feature the 2.02m Yulon Luxgens center Lin Huan-chao and Bank of Taiwan’s 1.63m point guard Jien Ming-fu.
Following the battle of extremes will be the classic Mixed Shooting Star Competition, in which a retired basketball great will team up with a veteran player and a rookie or sophomore from each of the seven teams to try to make shots from seven locations of increasing difficulty in a set order as quickly as they can.
The first half of the annual All-Star Game will commence after the Mixed Shooting Star Competition, with the Scarlet Knights — made up of players from Taiwan Beer, the Yulon Luxgens and Pure Youth Construction — taking on the White Knights, made up of players from the Dacin Tigers, Kinmen Liquor, the Taiwan Mobile Leopards and Bank of Taiwan. Next up is the Three-Point Shootout and the annual Slam Dunk Contest.
Leading this year’s vote-getters for the honor to represent the Scarlet Knights’ starting five are Taiwan Beer’s Wu Dai-hao, Ho Sho-cheng and Yen Hsing-shu, the Luxgens’ Lee Hsueh-lin and Taiwan Beer’s Lin Chih-jeh, who will be standing in for the Luxgens’ injured Chen Hsin-an. The White Knights will send in the Tigers’ Byron Allen, Tien Lei and Chang Chih-fong, the Bankers’ Hsu Chih-chiang and Leopards great Wu Yong-ren.
The shootout is likely to be a three-way battle between Wu, Chen Shih-nian (Taiwan Beer) and Pure Youth’s Chen Jung-jeh, while the Slam Dunk Contest will feature four players with foreign connections: Allen (American), Doug Creighton (Taiwanese-American), Lin Jeh-min (Taiwanese-African) and New Zealand-born Taiwanese Chung Hsio-nai.
SS Lazio on Monday fired the far-right sympathizer who handles their eagle mascot after he posted online a series of videos and pictures of his erect penis. Falconer Juan Bernabe, who has been present at Lazio home matches with Olimpia the eagle since the 2010-2011 season, posted the footage on social media after having surgery on Saturday to implant a penile prosthesis to improve his sexual performance. Lazio said that they had “terminated, with immediate effect” their relationship with Bernabe “due to the seriousness of his conduct,” adding that they were “shocked” by the images. The Serie A club added that Bernabe’s dismissal
Doping fears prevented former US Open champion Emma Raducanu from treating insect bites on the eve of the Australian Open, she said, with players increasingly wary about ingesting contaminated substances. The British player was speaking in the wake of high-profile doping cases involving Iga Swiatak and Jannik Sinner. “I would say all of us are probably quite sensitive to what we take on board, what we use,” the 22-year-old said, recalling an incident on Friday. “I got really badly bitten by, I don’t know what, like ants, mosquitoes, something. I’m allergic, I guess,” she added. The bites “flared up and swelled up really a
Dubbed a “motorway for cyclists” where avid amateurs can chase Tadej Pogacar up mountains teeming with the highest concentration of professional cyclists per square kilometer in the world, Spain’s Costa Blanca has forged a new reputation for itself in the past few years. Long known as the ideal summer destination for those in search of sun, sea and sand, the stretch of coast between Valencia and Alicante now has a winter vocation too. During the season break in December and January, the region experiences an invasion of cyclists. Star names such as three-time Tour de France winner Pogacar, Remco Evenepoel and Julian Alaphilippe
TWO IN A WEEK: Despite an undefeated start to the year playing alongside Jiang Xinyu of China, Wu Fang-hsien is to play the Australian Open with a Russian partner Taiwan’s Wu Fang-hsien yesterday triumphed at the Hobart International, winning the women’s doubles title at the US$275,094 outdoor hard-court tournament, while McCartney Kessler lifted the trophy in the women’s singles. Fourth-ranked Wu and partner Jiang Xinyu of China took 1 hour, 15 minutes to defeat Romania’s Monica Niculescu and Fanny Stollar of Hungary, 6-1, 7-6 (8/6) at the Hobart International Tennis Centre, their second title in a week. Wu and Jiang on Sunday won the women’s doubles title at the ASB Classic in Auckland, beating Serbia’s Aleksandra Krunic and Sabrina Santamaria of the US. Their winning ways continued in Australia as they stretched
RSS