This article was originally published on March 27th, 2020.
Here is this week's dose of “5-Point Friday”. A weekly round-up of the sports news and stories that I find most interesting and enjoyable.
Basketball news I am following -
The Clippers have taken a significant step towards building a new arena after the team’s owner Steve Ballmer agreed on a deal with the Madison Square Garden Company to buy The Forum in Inglewood, California.
Soccer news I am happy to see -
Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, and Bayer Leverkusen have agreed to forego their share of the national media revenue, around $22 million, to support other German clubs who have been affected by the coronavirus.
"We want to send a signal of solidarity to all clubs in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2," Bayern chief executive Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said.
Major Olympics news I have been waiting for -
The IOC and the Japanese government officially postponed the Tokyo Games because of the COVID-19 pandemic, promising to hold the event at some point in the first nine months of '21.
"The leaders agreed that the Olympic Games in Tokyo could stand as a beacon of hope to the world during these troubled times and that the Olympic flame could become the light at the end of the tunnel in which the world finds itself at present," the IOC's statement reads. "Therefore, it was agreed that the Olympic flame will stay in Japan."
Soccer story I enjoyed -
English National League side Torquay United have had their players ‘self-training’ during the coronavirus. The players are using an app that records what they get up to while training, with the data, fed back to physio Kai Hepworth, who had given each player an individual program.
This includes one player who seems to have broken all records by running ten kilometers (13 miles) in 21 minutes. Which the app recorded included the player being able to run on water.
Gary Johnson, Torquay manager explained how the team has been using the app: “We give them a five-kilometer run, for instance, and they have to send it back on the app, which shows you where they ran, how fast they ran, and how many calories they have lost. It’s a good bit of kit and we know exactly what they have done.
"There’s no hiding place. We have one player, that shall remain nameless, who was supposed to have done ten kilometers in 21 minutes or something. Well, I think that broke the world record. We are looking into it, let’s say – part of his map shows that he went across the water in the bay. We don’t know quite what he was doing but we’ll get to the bottom of it.”
App I am using right now -
Home Court harnesses artificial intelligence and computer vision to turn a mobile iOS device into an app tracking a variety of basketball skills: shooting, dribbling, agility, and more.
Have a wonderful weekend, all!
Jonathan