The full schedule for the NBA’s 75th anniversary season was released Friday, highlighted in part by what will be a yearlong tribute to some of the key moments in league history.

Opening night is Oct. 19. It’s back to a normal schedule for the NBA, with all teams playing 82 games after a 72-game slate last season because the calendar was compressed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Toronto Raptors will play at home after relocating to Tampa, Florida, last season because of Canadian border restrictions.

The NBA has prioritized player rest over the past several seasons, a trend that continues this year. Teams on average will travel about 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers), which would be a record low for a 30-team, 82-game season. Single-game road trips are down to about seven per team, a considerable drop from about 10 per team two seasons ago.

Also back from last season: There will be instances of teams playing two games on one trip to a city against the same opponent, something many teams enjoyed. There also are multiple instances of Eastern Conference teams flying to Los Angeles and playing both the Lakers and the Clippers on that leg of a trip.

And for the fourth consecutive normal season, excluding last year’s slate, no team is being asked to play four games in the span of five days.

A breakdown of some of the season highlights:

THE ANNIVERSARY

New York will play host to Toronto on Nov. 1, exactly 75 years to the day after the Knicks visited the then-Toronto Huskies in the first game of the Basketball Association of America’s inaugural season. The BAA was rebranded as the NBA three years later.

CELEBRATING LONGEVITY

New York, Boston and Golden State (which began as the Philadelphia Warriors) are the only three franchises that have been part of all 75 NBA seasons, and they’ll all face off in mid-December in nationally televised games. Golden State is at New York on Dec. 14, then the Warriors play at Boston on Dec. 17, and the Knicks visit the Celtics on Dec. 18.

WELCOME HOME

The Raptors haven’t played in Toronto since Feb. 28, 2020. They’ll be back on Oct. 20 against Washington. The NBA gave the Raptors five home contests in their first six games of this season, so there will be plenty of time for Toronto fans to see their team again finally.

CHRISTMAS

The NBA revealed the Dec. 25 games earlier this week: Atlanta at New York, Boston at Milwaukee, Golden State at Phoenix, Brooklyn at the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas at Utah.

MLK DAY

The NBA will celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with an all-day, 12-game slate on Jan. 17 that includes the traditional home games for Memphis and Atlanta: New Orleans at Boston, Charlotte at New York, Philadelphia at Washington, Brooklyn at Cleveland, Chicago at Memphis, Indiana at the Los Angeles Clippers, Milwaukee at Atlanta, Portland at Orlando, Toronto at Miami, Oklahoma City at Dallas, Phoenix at San Antonio and Utah at the Los Angeles Lakers.

SUPER SUNDAY

If the Falcons, Patriots, Vikings or Colts make the Super Bowl, fans in those cities may find themselves watching an NBA game instead of an NFL pregame show. The only two NBA games on Feb. 13 this season are Atlanta at Boston and Minnesota at Indiana.

FINALS REMATCHES

As expected, the 2021 NBA Finals rematches between the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns will be nationally televised. Milwaukee goes to Phoenix on Feb. 10; the Suns visit the Bucks on March 6.

WILT NIGHT

The Knicks will be part of another milestone game on March 2: They’ll visit the Philadelphia 76ers exactly 60 years after Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points to lead the Philadelphia Warriors past the Knicks in a game played at Hershey, Pennsylvania.

NO GAMES

The NBA has no games scheduled for Nov. 25 (Thanksgiving), Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve) and April 4 (the date of the NCAA men’s basketball Division I national championship game). The last games before the All-Star break are Feb. 17, All-Star weekend is Feb. 18-20 and then no games are played again until Feb. 24.

LOWRY RETURNS

Kyle Lowry returns to Toronto for the first time as a member of the Miami Heat on Feb. 3. Lowry spent nine seasons with the Raptors, helping them win the 2019 NBA title. He joined the Heat in a sign-and-trade earlier this month. The first time Lowry will oppose the Raptors is Jan. 17 in Miami.

RODEO TRIP

The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo returns Feb. 10-27 — and that means the Spurs are packing their bags for a long time. They’ll go 27 days between home games, from Feb. 4 through March 3, playing eight road games in a span that also covers the All-Star break. (The All-Star Game is Feb. 20 in Cleveland.) San Antonio also has an unusual stretch earlier in the season: a seven-game road trip from Dec. 31 through Jan. 10, followed by a seven-game homestand from Jan. 12 through Jan. 23.

GRAMMY TRIP

The Lakers and Clipper must vacate Staples Center for the last couple of weeks of January in preparation for the Grammy Awards on Jan. 31. The Lakers play six consecutive road games in that span, the Clippers eight in a row — and when the Clippers finally do get back home, they’ll play host to the Lakers.

LONGESTS

The Clippers’ eight-game trip to close January is the longest uninterrupted road swing this season. Washington and Golden State have the longest homestands, an eight-game stretch for each (Jan. 11-25 for Washington, Oct. 28-Nov. 12 for Golden State).

GLOBAL GAME

The NBA said 46 weekend games will air in prime time in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

LAST DAY

All 30 teams are scheduled to play April 10, the final day of the regular season. The play-in tournament begins two days later and continues through April 15. The playoffs begin April 16, and the 2022 NBA Finals are scheduled to start June 2.

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A 9-year-old boy and a man were shot Friday afternoon in Roseland on the Far South Side — the fourth young child to be hit by gun violence this week in Chicago.

The pair were wounded in a drive-by shooting around 12:10 p.m. in the 400 block of East 111th Street, according to preliminary information from Chicago police.

The boy, shot in his arm, was in good condition, police said. Fire officials initially said he was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in serious condition.

A 22-year-old man was shot in the ankle and was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in fair condition, officials said.

Ashley Van, 30, the boy’s mother said she was walking out of a corner store with her three children when she was “caught in a massive crossfire.”

“I’m alright, I’m just grateful to God because that’s who saved my child,” she said at the hospital, holding back tears. “I’m just thankful my baby made it.”

Another family member said the boy was “doing okay. He’s scared. He’s a playful boy, likes to go swimming and record YouTube videos. He’s just a regular kid.”

This is the fourth young child to be shot in Chicago this week.

On Wednesday night, a 7-year-old boy was shot while sitting in a parked car with his mother in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood, according to Chicago police. He was hit in the abdomen but was stabilized at a hospital.

On Sunday afternoon, a 7-year-old girl was killed and her 6-year-old sister seriously wounded shortly before 3 p.m. in the 6200 block of West Grand Avenue.

“Unfortunately we’re out here again,” said Ald. Anthony Beale, whose 9th Ward covers the block where Friday’s shooting took place. “Another kid being shot with senseless gun violence here in the city of Chicago.”

The alderman blamed Supt. David Brown for diverting officers to the downtown and leaving his community more vulnerable. Beale said the 5th police district, which includes his ward, is down 120 officers.

“There’s no way we can continue to fight crime with those numbers,” he told reporters at the scene. Beale said other areas of the city are experiencing the same problems “except downtown.”

“Treat me like I’m downtown here in the community,” he said. “Treat the rest of the city like we’re downtown.”

Sun-Times photographer Patricia Nabong contributed

Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), right, speaks with Chicago Police Department officials after a 9-year-old boy and a man were both shot Friday afternoon in the 400 block of East 111th Street in Roseland.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

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Chicago sports fans apparently don’t need Google.

According to an analysis by US Bets, Chicago sports fans rarely turn to Google for sports-related information. The website’s analysis showed Google received 557 sports-related searches per 100,000 residents, apparently making Chicagoans the third-smartest sports fans online.

New York and Los Angeles were ranked Nos. 1 and 2.

The most-asked search-engine question in Illinois, according to the survey, is “What is the strike zone in baseball?”

Baseball-related questions were the most popular questions in 32 states, followed by football-related questions leading in 12 states.

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is pledging to Americans still trapped in Afghanistan: “We will get you home.”

Biden also said Friday the United States is committed to evacuating all Afghans who assisted the war effort — a potentially vast expansion of the administration’s commitments on the airlift so far, given the tens of thousands of Afghan translators and others, and their close family members, seeking evacuation.

Biden’s comments at a White House news conference Friday come as the U.S. government struggles to ramp up a massive airlift clearing Americans and other foreigners and vulnerable Afghans through the Kabul airport, rescuing them from a Taliban takeover of the country.

Biden is facing criticism for a chaotic and often violent scene outside the airport and crowds struggle to reach safety inside.

Evacuation flights at the Kabul airport had stopped for several hours on Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, U.S. officials said. However, flights resumed in the afternoon.

As many as three flights out of Kabul were expected in the next few hours, going to Bahrain and carrying perhaps 1,500 evacuees in all, said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military.

In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans can make it to the airport for evacuation. They also wanted Biden to make clear an Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops was not a firm one.

The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.

Tens of thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of the United States’ Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw its troops from the country, although the pace had picked up overnight. A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.

With desperate crowds thronging Kabul’s airport, and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. government renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside.

The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside. It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”

While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.

In July, more than 20 diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul registered their concerns that the evacuation of Afghans who had worked for America was not proceeding quickly enough.

In a cable sent through the State Department’s dissent channel, a time-honored method for foreign service officers to register opposition to administration policies, the diplomats said the situation on the ground was dire, that the Taliban would likely seize control of the capital within months of the Aug. 31 pullout, and urged the Biden administration to immediately begin a concerted evacuation effort. That’s according to officials familiar with the document who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal debate.

Biden has said that the chaos that unfolded as part of the withdrawal was inevitable as the nearly 20-year war came to an end. He said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other Afghans in danger for the past work with Americans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.

Biden also said that many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.

The administration has also portrayed its contingency planning as successful after the Afghan government fell much faster than publicly anticipated by administration officials. Yet the White House received clear warnings that the situation was deteriorating rapidly before the current evacuation push.

The Kabul airport has been the focus of intense international efforts to get out foreigners, Afghan allies and other Afghans most at risk of reprisal from the Taliban insurgents.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that U.S. citizens are able to reach the airport, but face an obstacle in the large crowds at the airport gates.

On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to try to control the crowds gathered at the airport’s blast walls. Men, women and children fled. U.S. Navy fighter jets flew overhead, a standard military precaution but also a reminder to the Taliban that the U.S. has firepower to respond to a combat crisis.

Sullivan acknowledged that there is the possibility of a hostage situation or terrorist attack, and said the government is working for safe passage for U.S. citizens. The administration has committed to ensuring that all Americans can leave, even if that means staying past the August deadline.

“This is a risky operation,” Sullivan told NBC Nightly News Thursday. “We can’t count on anything.”

There is no firm figure of the number of people — Americans, Afghans or others — who are in need of evacuation as the process is almost entirely self-selecting.

The State Department says that when it ordered its nonessential embassy staff to leave Kabul in April after Biden’s withdrawal announcement, fewer than 4,000 Americans had registered for security updates. The actual number, including dual U.S.-Afghan citizens along with family members, is likely much higher, with estimates ranging from 11,000 to 15,000. Refugee advocates estimate about 100,000 Afghan allies and family members also are appealing for seats on the U.S. airlift.

Compounding the uncertainty, the U.S. government has no way to track how many registered Americans may have left Afghanistan already. Some may have returned to the United States but others may have gone to third countries.

Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get negative COVID-19 results.

However, Afghans and the Americans trying to help them escape say the Biden administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete. Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible — such as requiring Afghans to go to a third-country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.

The head of a U.S. refugee organization working to get Afghans out accused Biden of ignoring repeated earlier warnings to speed up the evacuations while winding down the 20-year U.S. combat mission.

“The administration’s failure to heed the call of veterans and advocates months ago has put our nation in this unconscionable position. It cannot let innocent Afghans die by bureaucracy,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said Friday.

Additional American troops continued to arrive at the airport to safeguard and run the U.S. part of the evacuation. As of Thursday there were about 5,200, including Marines who specialize in evacuation coordination and an Air Force unit that specializes in emergency airport operations. Biden has authorized a total deployment of about 6,000.

Associated Press reporters Josh Boak and Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.

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The 26-year-old was standing near the back of his vehicle about 10:41 a.m. in the 2400 block of West Polk Street when someone opened fire, striking him in the chest, Chicago police said.

By

Sun-Times Wire

Aug 20, 2021, 12:52pm CDT

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is pledging to Americans still trapped in Afghanistan: “We will get you home.”

Biden’s comments at a White House news conference Friday come as the U.S. government struggles to ramp up a massive airlift clearing Americans and other foreigners and vulnerable Afghans through the Kabul airport, rescuing them from a Taliban takeover of the country.

Biden is facing criticism for a chaotic and often violent scene outside the airport as crowds struggle to reach safety inside. He called the past week “heartbreaking,” but insisted his administration was working hard to smooth and speed the evacuations.

“I don’t think anyone of us can see these pictures and not feel that pain on a human level,” Biden said, but “now I’m focused on getting this job done.”

Evacuation flights at the Kabul airport had stopped for several hours on Friday because of a backup at a transit point for the refugees, a U.S. airbase in Qatar, U.S. officials said. However, a resumption was ordered in the afternoon, Washington time.

As many as three flights out of Kabul were expected in the next few hours, going to Bahrain and carrying perhaps 1,500 evacuees in all, said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military.

In Washington, some veterans in Congress were calling on the Biden administration to extend a security perimeter beyond the Kabul airport so more Afghans can make it to the airport for evacuation. They also want Biden to make clear an Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops is not a firm one.

The deadline “is contributing to the chaos and the panic at the airport because you have Afghans who think that they have 10 days to get out of this country or that door is closing forever,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who served in Iraq and also worked in Afghanistan to help aid workers provide humanitarian relief.

Tens of thousands of people remain to be evacuated ahead of the United States’ Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw its troops from the country, although the pace had picked up overnight. A defense official said about 5,700 people, including about 250 Americans, were flown out of Kabul aboard 16 C-17 transport planes. On each of the previous two days, about 2,000 people were airlifted.

With desperate crowds thronging Kabul’s airport, and Taliban fighters ringing its perimeter, the U.S. government renewed its advisory to Americans and others that it could not guarantee safe passage for any of those desperately seeking seats on the planes inside.

The advisory captured some of the pandemonium, and what many Afghans and foreigners see as their life-and-death struggle to get inside. It said: “We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open.”

While Biden has previously blamed Afghans for the U.S. failure to get out more allies ahead of this month’s sudden Taliban takeover, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that American diplomats had formally urged weeks ago that the administration ramp up evacuation efforts.

In July, more than 20 diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul registered their concerns that the evacuation of Afghans who had worked for America was not proceeding quickly enough.

In a cable sent through the State Department’s dissent channel, a time-honored method for foreign service officers to register opposition to administration policies, the diplomats said the situation on the ground was dire, that the Taliban would likely seize control of the capital within months of the Aug. 31 pullout, and urged the Biden administration to immediately begin a concerted evacuation effort. That’s according to officials familiar with the document who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal debate.

Biden has said that the chaos that unfolded as part of the withdrawal was inevitable as the nearly 20-year war came to an end. He said he was following the advice of Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, in not earlier expanding U.S. efforts to fly out translators and other Afghans in danger for the past work with Americans. Ghani fled the country last weekend as the Taliban seized the capital.

Biden also said that many at-risk Afghan allies had not wanted to leave the country. But refugee groups point to yearslong backlogs of applications from thousands of those Afghans for visas that would let them take refuge in the United States.

The administration has also portrayed its contingency planning as successful after the Afghan government fell much faster than publicly anticipated by administration officials. Yet the White House received clear warnings that the situation was deteriorating rapidly before the current evacuation push.

The Kabul airport has been the focus of intense international efforts to get out foreigners, Afghan allies and other Afghans most at risk of reprisal from the Taliban insurgents.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that U.S. citizens are able to reach the airport, but face an obstacle in the large crowds at the airport gates.

On Thursday, Taliban militants fired into the air to try to control the crowds gathered at the airport’s blast walls. Men, women and children fled. U.S. Navy fighter jets flew overhead, a standard military precaution but also a reminder to the Taliban that the U.S. has firepower to respond to a combat crisis.

Sullivan acknowledged that there is the possibility of a hostage situation or terrorist attack, and said the government is working for safe passage for U.S. citizens. The administration has committed to ensuring that all Americans can leave, even if that means staying past the August deadline.

“This is a risky operation,” Sullivan told NBC Nightly News Thursday. “We can’t count on anything.”

There is no firm figure of the number of people — Americans, Afghans or others — who are in need of evacuation as the process is almost entirely self-selecting.

The State Department says that when it ordered its nonessential embassy staff to leave Kabul in April after Biden’s withdrawal announcement, fewer than 4,000 Americans had registered for security updates. The actual number, including dual U.S.-Afghan citizens along with family members, is likely much higher, with estimates ranging from 11,000 to 15,000. Refugee advocates estimate about 100,000 Afghan allies and family members also are appealing for seats on the U.S. airlift.

Compounding the uncertainty, the U.S. government has no way to track how many registered Americans may have left Afghanistan already. Some may have returned to the United States but others may have gone to third countries.

Although Afghanistan had been a hotspot for the coronavirus pandemic, the State Department said Thursday that evacuees are not required to get negative COVID-19 results.

However, Afghans and the Americans trying to help them escape say the Biden administration has clung to visa requirements for would-be evacuees that involve more than a dozen steps, and can take years to complete. Those often have included requirements that the Taliban sweep has made dangerous or impossible — such as requiring Afghans to go to a third-country to apply for a U.S. visa, and produce paperwork showing their work with Americans.

The head of a U.S. refugee organization working to get Afghans out accused Biden of ignoring repeated earlier warnings to speed up the evacuations while winding down the 20-year U.S. combat mission.

“The administration’s failure to heed the call of veterans and advocates months ago has put our nation in this unconscionable position. It cannot let innocent Afghans die by bureaucracy,” Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said Friday.

Additional American troops continued to arrive at the airport to safeguard and run the U.S. part of the evacuation. As of Thursday there were about 5,200, including Marines who specialize in evacuation coordination and an Air Force unit that specializes in emergency airport operations. Biden has authorized a total deployment of about 6,000.

Associated Press reporters Josh Boak and Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington.

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Florida Georgia line on Friday became the latest tour casualty due to COVID-19.

The band announced it is canceling its I Love My Country Tour 2021, a 29-city trek that included an Oct. 29 date at the United Center.

“There is nothing better than seeing all of your faces from the stage, feeling your good energy, and making memories together,” said FGL’s Tyler Hubbard, in the official announcement. “We were hopeful we could get back on the road this fall, and are so bummed to have to cancel this tour, but we know in our hearts that we still have to make sure we’re keeping our fans and crew safe. It’s unfortunate that we have to cancel but we hope y’all understand. We love our fans and can’t wait to be back out when the time is right.”

The trek, which was kicking off Sept. 24 in Atlanta, also featured openers Russell Dickerson, Lauren Alaina and Redferrin.

Refunds will automatically be issued via the original method of payment.

On Monday, Garth Brooks announced he was canceling his 2021 arena tour, which had already sold 350,000 tickets across its five announced dates.

“In July, I sincerely thought the pandemic was falling behind us. Now, watching this new wave, I realize we are still in the fight and I must do my part,” Brooks said at the time. “It is with a heavy heart we announce the decision to cancel all 5 shows but with a hopeful heart, we will reschedule and start over when this wave seems to be behind us.”

On Wednesday, Neil Young announced he was withdrawing from the Sept. 25 Farm Aid lineup due to COVID concerns. Young is a Farm Aid board member with still-scheduled-to-perform artists Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews.

Michael Buble and Stevie Nicks have also canceled the remaining dates on their 2021 tours.

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