Portal:Basketball/News

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• At the EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Utah Jazz defeat the Dallas Mavericks, 101-79, to earn head coach Jerry Sloan the 1000th win of his twenty-two-season National Basketball Association tenure; Sloan becomes, after Lenny Wilkens, Larry Brown, Don Nelson, and Pat Riley—all save Brown honorees in 1996 as amongst the NBA's ten best-ever coaches—just the fifth coach in league history to tally 1000 wins across his career.
• Miami Heat shooting guard Dwyane Wade, having in the 2005-2006 season of the National Basketball Association been selected as a starting guard in the league All-Star Game, been honored as a second-team all-league performer, and in part in view of his having averaged 34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game across the six games of the 2006 NBA Finals, been named Finals most valuable player for the Heat, winners of the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy, is selected by Sports Illustrated as the magazine's Sportsman of the Year; he becomes, after Chicago Bulls shooting guard Michael Jordan (1991), University of North Carolina Tar Heels head coach Dean Smith (1997), and San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson and power forward Tim Duncan (2003, shared), just the fourth basketballer to win the award since 1988.
• The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, to be situated at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, and to open in 2007, inducts its inaugural class, which comprises 180 players, coaches, and other contributors, each previously selected as a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame; the class are represented by five of their number—Dean Smith, with the University of North Carolina Tar Heels thirteen times a champion of the Atlantic Coast Conference, eleven times a participant in the Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I men's basketball championship and twice a winner thereof, four times an honoree as national coach of the year, and across his thirty-six-year career a winner of 879 games, more than any NCAA Division I men's head coach; John Wooden, as a guard with the Purdue University Boilermakers thrice an All-America performer and in 1932 the national player of the year, and as a head coach with the University of California-Los Angeles Bruins nineteen times a Pacific Ten Conference champion, ten times–each across the period betwixt 1964 and 1975–a national champion, six times a national coach of the year honoree, and a winner of 88 consecutive games, and the winner with the Bruins and the Indiana State University Sycamores of 885 games; Oscar Robertson, as a guard with the University of Cincinnati Bearcats thrice a unanimous All-America, thrice The Sporting News national player of the year, four times a Final Four qualifier, and ultimately the third-highest-scoring player in Division I history; Bill Russell, as a center with the University of San Francisco Dons a national champion in 1955 and 1956 and in the former year the Division I tournament's Most Outstanding Player and across his four seasons a tallier of an average of more than twenty points and twenty rebounds per game; and James Naismith, in 1891 whilst at the YMCA International Training School the inventor of basketball, between 1898 and 1907 the head coach of the University of Kansas Jayhawks and in such capacity an instructor of Phog Allen–ultimately a winner of 771 collegiate games–and a contributor to the creation of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics—selected by the National Association of Basketball Coaches as exemplars.
• Play for the 2006-2007 regular season of the American Basketball Association, which is to comprise 49 teams situated across the United States, Canada, and Mexico and divided amongst three conferences and six divisions, begins; the season is the sixth in the league's twenty-first century iteration and the first for which John Salley, for eleven seasons a National Basketball Association power forward and center, serves as league commissioner. Twenty-six expansion sides—the Anderson Champions, Arkansas Aeros, Arkansas Rivercatz, Big Valley Shockwave, Brooklyn Wonders, Centinelas de Mexicali (styled in English as the Mexicali Sentinels), Chicago Rockstars, The Hollywood Fame, Hammond Rollers, Houston Undertakers, King County Royals, Jacksonville JAM, Las Vegas Venom, Miami Tropics, Orlando Aces (styled briefly as the Orlando Orange Men), Peoria Kings, Quad City Riverhawks, Quebec City Kebekwa, Richmond Ballerz, San Diego Wildcats, Southern Alabama Bounce, St. Louis Stunners, Tennessee Mud Frogs (calendared originally to begin competition in the 2007-2008 season), Twin City Ballers, Veneno de Monterrey (styled in English as the Monterrey Poison), Wilmington Sea Dawgs, and Waco Wranglers—commence league play and six franchises—the Cape Cod Frenzy (formerly the Boston Frenzy), Detroit Panthers (during the 2004-2005 season the Motown Jammers and the 2005-2006 season the Detroit Wheels), Maywood Buzz (during the first half of the 2004-2005 season the Orange County Crush, during the second half of the 2004-2005 season and the 2005-2006 season the Orange County Buzz, and briefly thereafter the Carson Buzz), Mississippi Miracles (formerly the Mississippi Stingers), Tampa Bay Strong Dogs (briefly formerly the Harlem Revs and thereafter the Harlem Strong Dogs), and Tijuana Dragons (formerly the Tijuana Diablos)—continue league play under new names, whilst twelve teams—including the Orange County Gladiators, Ohio Aviators, and Birmingham Magicians, which suspend operations but announce the intention to contest the 2007 season—to have partaken of the body of the 2005-2006 season do not begin league play.
• The 61st season of the National Basketball Association, the first in league history in which the All-Star Game is to be contested in a city in which a constituent side does not play (in Las Vegas, Nevada, at Thomas & Mack Center) and in the playoffs of which to a pool of regular season division champions the non-champion with the best winning percentage is to be added prior to the arranging of the top four teams in either conference by seed, begins as a game played at AmericanAirlines Arena betwixt the Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat, the latter the 2005-2006 Southeast Division champion and, after a playoff quarterfinal victory over the former, ultimately the 2006 league titlist, becomes the first official tie in which the basketball featured–a Spalding synthetic microfiber dual-panel ball–is not fashioned of leather.
• Arnold Red Auerbach, betwixt the 1946-47 and 1965-66 seasons a head coach in the National Basketball Association and betwixt those of 1966-67 and 1996-97 a general manager and team executive—with the Boston Celtics franchise, most prominently, in the former capacity nine times a league champion and the 1963-64 Coach of the Year and in the latter capacity the 1979-80 Executive of the Year—a 1969 inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame, and a 1996 honoree as amongst the league's ten best-ever coaches, dies in Washington, D.C., United States, aged 89 years.
• The 2006-2007 regular season of the Euroleague, the premier European club league, begins. Seven teams to have contested the league's 2005-2006 season—Strasbourg IG (Strasbourg, France), in 2005 the champion of the Ligue Nationale de Basketball (LNB); GHP Bamberg (Bamberg, Germany), in 2005 the champions of the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and the first German side to qualify for Euroleague play; AEK Athens BC (Athens, Greece), a 2004-2005 top 16 group qualifier; Olimpia Milano (Milan, Italy), thrice a Euroleague champion; Mens Sana Basket (Siena, Italy), in 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 a Final Four finisher and the 2004 Serie A champion; BC Lietuvos Rytas (Vilnius, Lithuania), the 2006 Baltic Basketball League and Lietuvos Krepšinio Lyga regular season and playoff champion and 2005 ULEB Cup titlist; and Joventut Badalona (Badalona, Spain)—do not qualify to contest the 2006-2007 season and are replaced by seven sides—Le Mans Sarthe Basket (Le Mans, France), the 2006 LNB titlist; RheinEnergie Köln (Cologne, Germany), the 2006 BBL victor; Aris TT Bank (Thessaloniki, Greece); Eldo Napoli (Naples, Italy); Lottomatica Virtus Roma (Rome, Italy); Dynamo Moscow (Moscow, Russia), the 2006 ULEB Cup champion; and Real Madrid Baloncesto (Madrid, Spain), on eight occasions the Euroleague champion and six times the Euroleague runner-up—who advance to the ultimate league in view of national league and ULEB Cup play; the league, as in 2005-2006, comprises twenty-four squads situated across thirteen nations. Play for the 2006-2007 iteration of the ULEB Cup, in which twenty-four squads, including 2004 champion Hapoel Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel) and 2005 champion BC Lietuvos Rytas, situated across fifteen countries participate, also begins.
• The NBA Europe Live Tour, a seven-day series of exhibition games and skills expositions sponsored jointly by the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Euroleague concomitant to the conducting of parts of NBA training camps and contested across five European nations amongst ten sides, concludes. In Barcelona, Spain, the Philadelphia 76ers lose, 104-99 to Winterthur FCB, in one of four standalone games, whilst the Los Angeles Clippers, having defeated BC Khimki, 98-91, fall to PBC CSKA Moscow, 94-75, in the decisive game of a single round-robin tournament played in Moscow, Russia; the two become, respectively, just the third and fourth NBA teams to have lost to non-North American clubs since 1988. In Cologne, Germany, thereafter, the 76ers, having overcome the Phoenix Suns, 103-100, in a semifinal match, defeat, 85-71, CSKA Moscow, victor of a semifinal, as of the 2006 Euroleague final, over Maccabi Tel Aviv–the 2004 and 2005 Euroleague titlist–90-81, to claim the four-team tournament; the Suns overcome Tel Aviv, 119-102, in a third-place game to become, in view of the team's having five days thither displaced Pallacanestro Virtus Roma in Rome, Italy, 100-93, beside the San Antonio Spurs, who garner two standalone victories—in Lyon, France, over ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne, 115-90; and in Paris, over Tel Aviv, 97-84—the second NBA side to post a win over each of two Euroleague clubs whilst on the Tour.

For other recent basketball news, see current sports events and the Wikinews Basketball portal.