Six-time NBA All-Star Jermaine O’Neal decided he didn’t want to spend one of his remaining seasons in the league watching Miami’s new star trio sort themselves out.
So he’s moving from the Heat to the Boston Celtics, just when a welter of players are lining up for a chance to play alongside the Heat’s newly formed super group of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh.
“I knew what they were trying to do and I could have re-signed back with those guys, but it comes down to fit,” he said on Wednesday after passing his physical with the Boston Celtics. “It comes down to personalities and style of play, and I thought Boston has all that for me. It came down to winning now and not worrying about chemistry.”
O’Neal agreed last week to a two-year deal. For the time being he is expected to start in place of injured center Kendrick Perkins. He said once Perkins is healthy, he’d be happy with a reserve role.
“Being a part of something great is what matters to me,” O’Neal said at Boston’s training facility. “I know what the city represents. I know what the organization represents. I know what the guys on the court represent. Obviously, those guys they have a ring already, but they want another one. I don’t have one and I want one. They know what it takes to get one.”
Perkins was injured in Game 6 of the NBA finals against the Los Angeles Lakers and missed the deciding Game 7 in which the Lakers triumphed.
He had surgery on his right knee on Monday and will likely be out until February.
“When he comes back, it’s his position to have,” O’Neal said. “I’m just here to do my job. I’m not trying to step on anybody’s feet. I’m not trying to do anything to cause any issues. I’m here to win. That’s just really what it boils down to.”
While O’Neal admits that he is in “the stretch run” of his career, he said he believed he could still contribute.
“I believe that my play will speak for itself,” he said.
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