Sports briefs
By NewsPress Now
NBA average attendance was 18,322 this season
NEW YORK | Attendance was up 1.4% in the NBA this season, with the league setting a slew of records for ticket sales and sellouts.
The total attendance in the regular season that ended Sunday was 22,536,341, the league said — the second consecutive season in which the NBA set that record. Other records set this season included 872 sellouts, 71% of games selling out and the average attendance of 18,322.
The previous marks in those categories: 22,234,502 for total attendance, 791 sellouts, 63% of games selling out and average attendance of 18,077. All were set in the 2022-23 season.
In all, the league said arenas were filled to 98% capacity, another record.
Part of the reason for the attendance boost was the success of the In-Season Tournament, which was held this season for the first time in November and December. The NBA’s average attendance for those November games around the league was 18,208, another record.
There were 10 teams — Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Golden State, Miami, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Sacramento — that sold out every game. Fans from more than 150 countries and territories purchased tickets to games, the league said.
Ethiopia’s Sisay
Lemma wins Boston Marathon in runaway
BOSTON | Sisay Lemma scorched the first half of the Boston Marathon course on Monday, setting a record pace to build a lead of more than half of a mile.
Then the weather heated up, and the 34-year-old Ethiopian slowed down.
After running alone for most of the morning, Lemma held on down Boylston Street to finish in 2 hours, 6 minutes, 17 seconds — the 10th fastest time in the race’s 128-year history. Lemma dropped to the pavement and rolled onto his back, smiling, after crossing the finish line.
“Until halfway through I was running very hard and very good. But after that it was getting harder and harder,” said Lemma, who failed to finish twice and came in 30th in three previous Boston attempts. “Several times I’ve dropped out of the race before. But today I won, so I’ve redeemed myself.”
Hellen Obiri defended her title, outkicking Sharon Lokedi on Boylston Street to finish in 2:27:37 and win by eight seconds; two-time Boston champion Edna Kiplagat completed the Kenyan sweep, finishing another 36 seconds back.
Obiri also won New York last fall and is among the favorites for the Paris Olympics. She is the sixth woman to win back-to-back in Boston and the first since Catherine “the Great” Ndereba won four in six years from 2000 to ‘05.
“Defending the title was not easy. Since Boston started, it’s only six women. So I said, ‘Can I be one of them? If you want to be one of them, you have to work extra hard,’” she said. “And I’m so happy because I’m now one of them. I’m now in the history books in Boston.”
Lemma, the 2021 London champion, arrived in Boston with the fastest time in the field — just the fourth person ever to break 2:02:00 when he won in Valencia last year. And he showed it on the course Monday, separating himself from the pack in Ashland and opening a lead of more than half of a mile.
Lemma ran the first half in 1:00:19 — 99 seconds faster than Geoffrey Mutai’s course record pace in 2011, when his 2:03:02 was the fastest marathon in history. Fellow Ethiopian Mohamed Esa closed the gap through the last few miles, finishing second by 41 seconds; two-time defending champion Evans Chebet was third.
Each winner collected a gilded olive wreath and $150,000 from a total prize purse that topped $1 million for the first time.
On a day when sunshine and temperatures rising into the mid-60s left the runners reaching for water — to drink, and to dump over their heads — Obiri ran with an unusually large lead pack of 15 through Brookline before breaking away in the final few miles.
Emma Bates of Boulder, Colorado, finished 12th — her second straight year as the top American. Again, she found herself leading the race through the 30-kilometer mark, slapping hands as she ran past the Wellesley College students chanting her name before fading on the way out of Heartbreak Hill.
“I thought last year was crazy loud, but this year surpassed that completely,” Bates said. “It was such a nice day for the spectators. Not so nice for the runners; it was pretty hot.”
CJ Albertson of Fresno, California, was the top American man in seventh, his second top-10 finish.
Switzerland’s Marcel Hug righted himself after crashing into a barrier when he took a turn too fast and still coasted to a course record in the men’s wheelchair race. It was his seventh Boston win and his 14th straight major marathon victory.
Hug already had a four-minute lead about 18 miles in when he reached the landmark firehouse turn in Newton, where the course heads onto Commonwealth Avenue on its way to Heartbreak Hill. He spilled into the fence, flipping sideways onto his left wheel, but quickly restored himself.
“It was my fault,” Hug said. “I had too much weight, too much pressure from above to my steering, so I couldn’t steer.”
Hug finished in 1:15:33, winning by 5:04 and breaking his previous course record by 1:33. Britain’s Eden Rainbow-Cooper, 22, won the women’s wheelchair race in 1:35:11 for her first major marathon victory; she is the third-youngest woman to win the Boston wheelchair race.
The otherwise sleepy New England town of Hopkinton celebrated its 100th anniversary as the starting line for the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathon, sending off a field of 17 former champions and nearly 30,000 other runners on its way. Near the finish on Boylston Street 26.2 miles (42.2 kilometers) away, officials observed the anniversary of the 2013 bombing that killed three and wounded hundreds more.
Sunny skies and minimal wind greeted the runners, with temperatures in the 40s as they gathered in Hopkinton rising to 69 as the stragglers crossed the finish line in the afternoon. As the field went through Natick, the fourth of eight cities and towns on the route, athletes splashed water on themselves to cool off.
“We couldn’t ask for a better day,” former New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, the grand marshal, said before climbing into an electric car that would carry him along the course. “The city of Boston always comes out to support, no matter the event. The weather is perfection, the energy is popping.”
The festivities began around 6 a.m., when race director Dave McGillivray sent about 30 Massachusetts National Guard members off. Lt. Col. Paula Reichert Karsten, one of the marchers, said she wanted to be part of a “quintessential Massachusetts event.”
The start line was painted to say “100 years in Hopkinton,” commemorating the 1924 move from Ashland to Hopkinton to conform to the official Olympic Marathon distance. The announcer welcomed the gathering crowds to the “sleepy little town of Hopkinton, 364 days of the year.”
“In Hopkinton, it’s probably the coolest thing about the town,” said Maggie Agosto, a 16-year-old resident who went to the start line with a friend to watch the race.
The annual race on Patriots’ Day, the state holiday that commemorates the start of the Revolutionary War, also fell on One Boston Day, when the city remembers the victims of the 2013 finish line bombings. Before the race, bagpipes accompanied Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and members of the victims’ families as they laid a pair of wreaths at the sites of the explosions.
Eagles lock in WR DeVonta Smith with three-year contract extension
PHILADELPHIA | The Philadelphia Eagles agreed to terms with wide receiver DeVonta Smith on a three-year contract extension through the 2028 season on Monday.
The move included the Eagles picking up the fifth-year option on Smith’s 2025 season.
Smith has 240 receptions for 3,178 yards and 19 touchdowns in three seasons with the Eagles. Smith was the 2020 Heisman Trophy winner who helped Alabama win two national championships in his four seasons with the Crimson Tide.
He’ll get a reported $75M contract extension that includes $51M guaranteed with his new deal. His best season came in 2022 when he helped lead the Eagles to the Super Bowl with 95 catches and 1,196 yards.
Smith’s extension continues a busy offseason for the Eagles.
They signed former Giants running back Saquon Barkley and linebackers Bryce Huff and Zack Baun, three key free-agent additions that were part of a rapid roster overhaul in the wake of the Eagles’ late-season collapse. Safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson is back a year after the team let him walk away in free agency. Wide receiver DeVante Parker will receive a $4.69 million guarantee in his one-year deal, and the Eagles also signed offensive lineman Matt Hennessy.
The Eagles also agreed to a one-year deal worth $7.5 million with former Tampa Bay linebacker Devin White
Also, kicker Jake Elliott, two-time Pro Bowl guard Landon Dickerson and defensive end Brandon Graham all signed deals that will keep them with the Eagles.
Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox retired and left the Eagles with just four players remaining from the 2017 Super Bowl season.
Nadal says he’s ‘ready enough’ to play in his
last Barcelona Open
BARCELONA, Spain | Rafael Nadal is “ready enough” to play on Tuesday in what he expects to be his last Barcelona Open.
Nadal on Monday confirmed his participation in his first clay-court tournament this year.
“It was a positive week of training and I’ll be on the court,” said Nadal, who will face Flavio Cobolli in his opening match. “It’s a gift to be here. I have a feeling that it will be my last time here and I want to enjoy it.”
Nadal, a 12-time champion in Barcelona, had hip surgery last summer and this year has played only three competitive matches, all in Brisbane before skipping the Australian Open.
“I’m ready enough to play,” Nadal said. “It is what it is right now. I have to keep going day by day.”
The Spaniard said he was in a unique situation after “two tough years” of injuries and felt he can still “be competitive.”
The 37-year-old Nadal pulled out of last week’s Monte Carlo Masters before it started because of a lingering injury, saying “ my body simply won’t allow me.”
In early March, the 22-time Grand Slam champion played an exhibition match against Carlos Alcaraz in Las Vegas but days later pulled out of the Indian Wells tournament.
Nadal is a 14-time winner at the French Open which doesn’t begin until May 25.
Alcaraz won’t play in Barcelona because of an injury. Stefanos Tsitsipas, who defeated Jannik Sinner in the Monte Carlo final, has entered Barcelona.
—From AP reports
