A winter basketball tournament for 16 Filipino teams yesterday started in Taoyuan, with hundreds gathering at a community center for the opening.
In the ceremony of the Confederation of Ilocano Association, Samahang Ilocano’s (CIASI) Nankan Linkou Winter Basketball League, more than 300 Filipinos who comprised the teams marched past the stands to be judged on best uniform and muse.
The Lian-Hwa team, made up entirely of workers from Lian Hwa Foods in Taoyuan, won best uniform, with their eye-catching red, white and blue jerseys.
The design of their jerseys was inspired by this year’s NBA All-Star Weekend uniform, which includes a tribute to the late basketball legend Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in January, Lian-Hwa captain Jayson Manipon said.
The jersey features an image of the shooting guard dribbling a ball, Manipon said.
“In basketball, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are our idols, and they will forever be legends who inspire us,” the 34-year-old player said.
TEAM SPIRIT
The Linkou Spartans won the Best Muse trophy, which was accepted by the team’s muse Barbie Fronda, a 26-year-old Filipina factory worker from New Taipei City.
In Filipino basketball culture, muses are women who whip up support for their teams at tournament openings.
The tournament, which did not hold any official games yesterday due to unfavorable weather, is expected to run for two to three months, with 56 games in the preliminaries before playoffs begin.
The league has raised NT$10,000 to buy stationery supplies for elementary schools in the Philippines, said Aristotle De la Cruz, president of CIASI Taiwan’s Nankan subchapter, which organized the competition.
HOMETOWN SUPPORT
The money, raised from tournament registration fees and a three-point shootout competition on the opening day, would go to elementary schools attended by players on the Guishan Tan-Star team.
The team, made up of players from the Philippine province of Bohol, earned the right to choose the schools after winning a raffle.
Meanwhile, 25-year-old Justin Cueto of the Quanta Ballers team, named after the Taoyuan-based Quanta Computer, won the three-point shootout contest, sinking seven out of 15 shots, among 50 contestants.
A runner who stopped during a marathon in China to pose doing the splits and another who hoarded energy gels have been banned for two years, the local athletics association said yesterday. The incidents happened during Sunday’s marathon in Sichuan Province’s Chengdu and were widely shared online. Videos showed a female runner stopping suddenly and dropping to the ground in the splits position, holding up her arms in a heart shape as she apparently posed for a photograph. She “committed obstructive fouls during the race, affecting the safe participation of other runners,” the Sichuan Athletics Association said in a statement, which identified
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli yesterday vowed to “keep raising the bar” after winning the Japanese Grand Prix to become the youngest driver in Formula One history to lead the championship standings. The 19-year-old Italian took advantage of a mid-race safety car to jump into the lead after a dreadful start from pole position, crossing the line ahead of McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Antonelli’s Suzuka victory came two weeks after the first grand prix win of his career in China, and sent him top of the championship standings after three races, nine points ahead of team-mate George Russell. Mercedes are struggling to
Liverpool star Mohamed Salah on Tuesday said that he would leave the English club at the end of the Premier League season, marking an earlier-than-planned departure for one of the club’s greatest-ever scorers and soccer’s biggest names. The 33-year-old Egypt forward, who has scored 255 goals in 435 appearances for Liverpool, “reached an agreement” to quit the team a year before his contract was due to expire, the Premier League champions said. Salah’s form has dipped in his ninth year at Anfield, to such an extent that he was dropped for a stretch of games late last year — leading to the
There were some big games to be played yesterday in the NBA, with the Atlanta Hawks to play the Detroit Pistons in a matchup pitting a Hawks team who are rolling against a Pistons team trying to lock up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed. The Oklahoma City Thunder were to play the Boston Celtics, a showdown featuring the two most recent champions, while the Houston Rockets faced the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that could factor mightily into Western Conference seeding. Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards were to play the Utah Jazz, with the Wizards on a 16-game slide visiting against a team
RSS