Ryan Wright left the rest of the field in the dust with two tremendous throw-downs that amassed 99 out of a possible 100 points in the final round to run away with this year’s Super Basketball League (SBL) Slam Dunk Contest trophy at the Kaohsiung Arena in Greater Kaohsiung last night.
The newest member of the Taiwan Mobile Cloud Leopards out of the University of Oklahoma, who joined the Leopards after the Lunar New Year break last month, defied gravity by launching himself high in the air for a pair of thunderous slams to win the coveted honor of slam-dunk champion, along with a hefty NT$30,000 check in prize money, capping off the first of the two-day weekend of festivities in the annual mid-season hoops gala.
“It’s been a long time since I took part in a contest like this, thanks to the great passes from Su Hsiang-yi [fellow Leopards guard],” Wright said after the contest.
Photo: courtesy of the SBL
He beat out Liu Tsan of Kinmen Kaoliang, Wu Fong-cheng of the Yulon Luxgens and Taiwan Beer’s Wang Jien-wei in the final round to win bragging rights in the event.
THREE-POINT SHOOTOUT
In the highly competitive three-point shootout, Pure Youth Construction’s Doug Creighton upset crowd-favorite Lu Cheng-rue of the Luxgens with 19 points in the final round to win the long-range shooting contest.
It was the first time the former star of the Taipei American School has entered the event, but that did not affect Creighton much as he downed three of the five shots from all five spots around the arc to surprise the 10,000 fans on hand.
SKILLS CHALLENGE
Despite being the youngest in a pool of seven, Chou Tzu-hua of Kinmen Kaoliang shook off his baby fat with an outstanding 30.5-second finish to take the title in the skills challenge contest.
The emotional guard out of Fu Jen Catholic University, who barely qualified for the final round with a 33.2-second time in the first round, beat out Chang Bo-sheng of Bank of Taiwan and Hsu “the Fool” Hao-cheng of the Dacin Tigers to win the all-purpose event that consists of dribbling, passing, driving to the hoop and three-point shooting.
SHOOTING STAR CONTEST
The first-ever shooting star contest was won by Bank of Taiwan coach Lai Liang-chung and Wang Nan-kwei along with Taipower’s Chang Shih-jeh of the Women’s Super Basketball League (WSBL).
Rookies Exhibition Game
Quincy Davis of Pure Youth Construction scored a game-high 14 points in the battle between the foreign players and an all-star rookie-and-sophomore team to win the game’s Most Valuable Player honor.
Two women from the WSBL must be in the lineup at the same time with the hired guns to play the top local rookies and sophomores in the league.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier