BASKETBALL
Suspended Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving met with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on Tuesday, a person with knowledge of the meeting said.
The Nets banned Irving for at least five games without pay on Thursday after he refused to say he had no antisemitic beliefs.
That came hours after Silver said Irving made a “reckless decision” to post on his Twitter feed a link to a film that contains antisemitic material and said he would be meeting with him within a week.
They finally did on Tuesday, the person told The Associated Press, speaking on anonymity because the meeting and its details were private.
Irving eventually deleted the tweet and issued an apology on Instagram, after failing to do so when he met with reporters earlier Thursday.
But by then, Silver said he was disappointed that it had taken so long for Irving to apologize, and that he hadn’t denounced the material in “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.”
Even after meeting with Silver, Irving has work to do to repair his relationship with the Nets. They were already angry enough by his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, leaving him ineligible to play in home games most of last season, that they refused to give him a contract extension over the summer. This time, he will have to complete measures they said would be necessary before he could return to play.
Irving will miss his fourth game Wednesday against the New York Knicks, and the Nets begin a four-game trip on the West Coast after that.
• For the third time this season, the NBA has told the Sacramento Kings that a critical call was blown in the final moments of what became a close loss. The latest entry on that list: that Kevin Huerter was fouled by Golden State’s Klay Thompson on a 3-point try as time was expiring in the Kings’ 116-113 loss to the Warriors on Monday night.
That was revealed in the NBA’s Last 2 Minute Report that was released Tuesday, with the league saying Thompson made contact with Huerter’s arm, affecting a shot that fell short of the basket.
The L2MR details all officiated events – calls and key noncalls – down the stretch of games where the margin was three points or fewer at any time in the final 2 minutes. The NBA uses it for transparency.
“Kevin got fouled,” Sacramento Coach Mike Brown told reporters after the game. “I know there are missed calls throughout the course of the game, missed calls on us, missed calls on our opponent. I just want, at the end of the game, somebody to step up and make the right call.”
Last Wednesday, Tyler Herro hit a go-ahead 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds left in what became a three-point win for Miami. The Kings argued that he traveled; the next day, the NBA said that indeed was the case.
The third instance wasn’t as dramatic as the Huerter-Thompson play or the Herro shot. On Oct. 22, Kings guard De’Aaron Fox was fouled by the Los Angeles Clippers’ Paul George on a shot attempt with 1:20 left. It wasn’t called; the NBA said the following day it should have been. The Kings wound up losing that game by two points.
The Kings are 3-6 this season, 13th in the 15-team Western Conference.
TAIWAN: Eight-time NBA All Star Dwight Howard is headed to Taiwan to play for the Taoyuan Leopards in the island’s top division.
“I can’t wait to see the fans, eat the food and have the best time ever … and bring a championship,” the 36-year-old center said in a social media post.
Alongside baseball, basketball is the most popular sport in Taiwan, with girls’ and boys’ high school championships broadcast island-wide.
Howard has collected league records with a clutch of teams, notably the Orlando Magic, and signed a one-year contract with the Los Angles Lakers in 2021.
The Leopards are among six teams in the T-1 league, which features numerous players from the U.S. and Europe.
SOCCER
WORLD CUP: An ambassador for the World Cup in Qatar has described homosexuality as a “damage in the mind” in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF only two weeks before the opening of the soccer tournament in the Gulf state, highlighting concerns about the conservative country’s treatment of gays and lesbians.
Former Qatari national team player Khalid Salman told a German reporter in an interview that being gay is “haram,” or forbidden in Arabic, and that he has a problem with children seeing gay people.
Excerpts of the television interview were shown Monday on the ZDF news program Heute Journal. The full interview, which is part of a documentary, will be shown Tuesday on ZDF.
Germany’s interior minister condemned Salman’s remarks.
“Of course such comments are terrible, and that is the reason why we are working on things in Qatar hopefully improving,” Nancy Faeser said Tuesday.
About 1.2 million international visitors are expected in Qatar for the tournament, which has faced criticism and skepticism ever since the gas-rich emirate was selected as host by FIFA in December 2010. Concerns about LGBTQ tourists attending the World Cup have also been expressed for a long time.
In the interview, Salman also said that homosexuality “is a spiritual harm.”
“During the World Cup, many things will come here to the country. Let’s talk about gays,” Salman said in English, which is simultaneously dubbed into German in the TV segment. “The most important thing is, everybody will accept that they come here. But they will have to accept our rules.”
The interview was cut short by a media officer of the World Cup organizing committee after Salman expressed his views on homosexuals, ZDF reported.
Faeser, who is also responsible for sports, said when she visited Qatar a week ago that the country’s prime minister had given her a “safety guarantee” for fans “no matter where they come from, whom they love and what they believe in.”
Faeser said there has been no change to that stance from the prime minister, who is also Qatar’s interior minister. She plans to go ahead with a trip to Germany’s opening World Cup match against Japan.
• Ecuador kept its place at the World Cup thanks to a Swiss court ruling, but will be deducted three points in qualifying for the 2026 tournament because of a false document being used to get a passport for a Colombia-born player.
The urgent ruling from CAS clears the way for Ecuador to play Qatar in the opening game of the tournament in Doha in less than two weeks. It also ended the hopes of Chile and Peru, who had each argued that they should replace their South American rival at the World Cup after accusing Ecuador of using an ineligible player in eight qualifying games.
But the CAS judges said Ecuador defender Byron Castillo was eligible according to FIFA rules to play in both the qualifying campaign and at the World Cup in Qatar “considering that the Ecuadorian authorities acknowledged Byron Castillo as an Ecuadorian national.”
However, the judges also said they accepted the argument that Castillo was born in Colombia and that false information about his date and place of birth had been used to get an Ecuadorian passport.
FRANCE: French club Troyes fired Coach Bruno Irles after a six-match winless run.
Irles had been appointed in January after Laurent Batlles was fired. He was under contract until June 2023.
Claude Robin has been named as caretaker, the club said.
MLS CUP RATINGS: Los Angeles FC’s victory over the Philadelphia Union on penalty kicks in the MLS Cup final was the second highest in the league’s 27-year history for combined U.S. viewers.
Saturday’s game averaged a combined 2.155 million viewers on Fox and Univision, a 38% increase from the 2021 final between NYCFC and the Portland Timbers, which also went to penalty kicks.
It was the second-most watched club soccer match of the season by English-language viewers in the U.S. at 1.487 million, trailing the May 28 UEFA Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid (2.76 million).
The Univision broadcast in Spanish averaged 668,000.
English viewership was fifth all time for an MLS Cup and second highest in Spanish.
MILAN: American right back Sergino Dest missed his third straight match, a day before U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter announces his World Cup roster.
Dest did not dress for Milan’s Serie A match at Cremonese. The club said last week Dest was bothered by adductor fatigue.
TENNIS
BILLIE JEAN KING CUP: Australia and Kazakhstan claimed victories on the opening day at Glasgow, Scotland, the biggest team event in women’s tennis.
The Australians, bidding for a first title in the competition in 48 years, beat Slovakia 2-1 in Group B thanks to victories by Storm Sanders and Ajla Tomljanovic in singles.
Kazakhstan won by the same score against Britain, the host nation, in Group C after Yulia Putintseva and Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina won their singles matches.
Australia is a seven-time winner of the competition formerly known as the Fed Cup. All of its titles came from 1964-74.
Sanders beat Viktoria Kuzmova 6-4, 6-3, and Tomljanovic was a 6-1, 6-2 winner over Anna Karolina Schmiedlova.
Kuzmova teamed up with Tereza Mihalikova to beat Sanders and Ellen Perez in the doubles.
Putintseva recovered to beat Katie Boulter 4-6, 6-3, 6-2. Rybakina, ranked No. 22, dispatched Harriet Dart in a 6-1, 6-4 win.
In the doubles, Rybakina and Anna Danilina lost 7-5, 6-3 to Olivia Nicholls and Alicia Barnett, who were making their tournament debuts.
DOPING
RUSSIA: The World Anti-Doping Agency said it sent the Beijing Olympics case of teenage figure skater Kamila Valieva to sport’s highest court, accusing Russian officials of making “no progress” toward resolving it.
Under a rarely used power, WADA can take cases out of national agencies’ hands and send them direct to CAS if it can show that they are not being resolved in a “timely” manner, according to international anti-doping rules.
The Russian anti-doping agency, known as RUSADA, had indicated last month it was preparing to hold a hearing but wouldn’t make the verdict public because Valieva was only 15 at the time she tested positive.
OLYMPICS
MARATHION TRIALS: The 2024 United States Olympic marathon trials will be held along the streets in Orlando, Florida.
The site for the rest of the track and field trials is still being determined.
The top three men and women finishers in the marathon race to be held on Feb. 3, 2024, will earn a roster spot for the Paris Olympics held that summer (provided they have met the qualifying standard).
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