The Maine Celtics have advanced to the G League finals for the first time and will face Oklahoma City in a best-of-three series to determine a league champion starting on Tuesday at the Portland Expo.
Game 1 has a start time of 8 p.m. and will be broadcast on ESPN News. Game 2 is Thursday at 8 p.m. in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, starting at 8 p.m. and televised on ESPNU. The if-necessary Game 3 is schedule for Monday, April 15, at the Portland Expo. Start time is 9 p.m. with ESPNU providing the broadcast.
The Celtics went 2-0 against Oklahoma City during the regular season.
COLLEGES
NAIA: The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at its 241 mostly small colleges across the country.
The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote at its annual convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes competing in more than 25 sports, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, which goes into effect in August, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
BASKETBALL: Canisius University hired former Boston College coach Jim Christian to take over its men’s basketball program on Monday.
The 59-year-old Christian joins the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference program after spending the past two seasons as an assistant at Kent State.
BASKETBALL
NBA: Atlanta Hawks All-Star guard Trae Young, who has missed 22 games since suffering a torn ligament in his left fifth finger, is moving closer to his return to action.
The Hawks announced Monday Young has been cleared for team practice and contact. He had surgery on Feb. 27 following his injury on Feb. 23 and was cleared following his six-week evaluation.
• The NBA has acknowledged two officiating mistakes – one wrong call, one missed call – in the final minute of Miami’s 117-115 loss at Indiana on Sunday, a defeat that helped send the Heat into the No. 8 spot in the Eastern Conference going into the season’s final week.
Miami’s Tyler Herro, the league said, was fouled by Indiana’s T.J. McConnell while shooting a 3-pointer with about 55 seconds remaining. No foul was called on the play. And a foul called by official Marat Kogut against Heat center Bam Adebayo with 17.1 seconds left was made in error, the league said. Indiana’s Myles Turner made two free throws after that foul call.
• The NBA fined the New York Knicks $25,000 on Monday after Mitchell Robinson was listed as out on an initial injury report and then played in a game against Toronto.
Robinson’s 50-game absence because of a left ankle injury ended in the Knicks’ 145-101 victory over the Raptors on March 27. The 7-foot center scored eight points in 12 minutes.
TENNIS
RANKINGS: Novak Djokovic has surpassed another tennis record once held by Roger Federer, becoming the oldest man to be ranked No. 1 in the ATP Tour’s computerized rankings.
Djokovic is 36 – he turns 37 next month – and is now older than Federer was on his last day atop the rankings in June 2018. Monday gives Djokovic 420 total weeks at that spot, extending another mark Federer (who was there for 310 weeks) had at one time before Djokovic broke it.
SOCCER
PREMIER LEAGUE: Everton was docked two more points for its latest breach of the English Premier League financial rules, plunging the team back toward the relegation zone with seven games remaining on Monday.
Everton had already received a six-point deduction – reduced from 10 following an appeal – for the club overspending in a three-year spell up to the end of the 2021-22 season. This latest punishment, handed out by an independent commission, came after Everton was found to have spent too much in the three seasons up to 2022-23.
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