Al-Hilal out to banish minor slump against Riyadh rivals Al-Shabab

LOS ANGELES: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 34 points as the Oklahoma City Thunder punched their ticket to the playoffs with an impressive 118-112 victory over the reigning champion Boston Celtics in a potential NBA Finals sneak preview on Wednesday.

Gilgeous-Alexander enhanced his credentials as favorite for the Most Valuable Player award with a superb performance to silence Boston’s TD Garden home crowd in an absorbing duel settled by a burst of fourth-quarter Thunder scoring.

The Canadian point guard shot 11-of-20 from the field to finish with five rebounds, seven assists and 34 points, including 10-of-11 from the free throw line.

The win lifted Western Conference leaders Oklahoma City to 54-12 and guaranteed their place in next month’s playoffs.

Wednesday’s win over a vastly more experienced Boston lineup marked another mature display from a Thunder side that is the youngest in the league.

Oklahoma City effectively sealed victory late in the fourth, pulling away to open up a double-digit lead with just under two minutes remaining after Cason Wallace nailed a superb 24-foot three-pointer followed by a driving reverse layup.

Gilgeous-Alexander said the Thunder’s defensive solidity amid a barrage of 63 attempted threes from Boston had provided the foundation for the win.

“We were able to get stops, and that’s been the trend for us recently,” he told ESPN.

“When you’re coming down the stretch against a good basketball team with good players, you’ve got to find a way, and we did so tonight and gave ourselves a chance.”

While Gilgeous-Alexander grabbed the scoring headlines, the towering Chet Holmgren caught the eye with a double-double of 23 points with 15 rebounds.

“We all know the player Chet Holmgren is,” Gilgeous-Alexander said of his 22-year-old teammate. “He’s a stud, and he’s going to be a stud for a very long time. He’ll continue to grow and continue to be special.”

Oklahoma City’s balanced offense meanwhile suggests that they are well-equipped to make a deep run in the postseason as they pursue the franchise’s first NBA title since 1979, when the club was the Seattle SuperSonics.

Despite missing Jaylin Williams from the lineup, the Thunder finished with seven players in double figures.

Boston’s scoring was led by Jayson Tatum with 33 points, while Derrick White had 22.

Jaylen Brown though had an off-night, shooting 5-of-15 from the field before fouling out in the fourth quarter with 3min 36 remaining.

Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said his team had failed to deal with Oklahoma City’s physicality.

“There were a lot of moments where we matched that and there were a few where we didn’t, and I think stuff like that’s the difference in the game,” he said.

In other games on Wednesday, the Phoenix Suns’ slipped further away from play-in contention after losing 111-104 to the Houston Rockets. The Suns are 11th in the West on 30-36 with the Dallas Mavericks 10th on 33-34. The Mavericks lost 126-116 in San Antonio.

The Memphis Grizzlies improved to 42-24 and are third in the West after downing the hapless Utah Jazz (15-51) 122-115.

In Denver, Nikola Jokic finished with 34 points but could not prevent the Nuggets crashing to a 115-95 defeat to the Minnesota Timberwolves, who romped to a wire-to-wire victory on the back of 29 points from Anthony Edwards and 25 points from Julius Randle.

AZAZGA, Algeria: In a gym in northern Algeria’s Kabylia, 15-year-old Cerine Kessal was driving her fists into a punching bag. The two-time national champion was dreaming of greater feats after Algerian Imane Khelif won Olympic gold last year.

Khelif’s victory generated newfound interest among Algerian girls and women in the male-dominated sport, with gyms across the North African country witnessing a surge in memberships.

She had emerged from the Paris Olympics as a trailblazer for aspiring women athletes in Algeria, despite a gender controversy over her eligibility.

“I want to compete in African and world championships,” Kessal said, speaking in a blend of Arabic, French and Tamazight, the language of the Amazigh people, also known as Berbers.

Her coach, Djaafar Ourhoun, said Khelif had become “a role model for the other boxers at the gym,” after winning her local club, Jeunesse Sportive Azazga, its only medal at a recent national championship.

The small gym, refashioned from a former municipal slaughterhouse with the help of local families, now trains 20 women boxers, said Ourhoun.

The young girls’ “hunger for results” has often sparked “competitiveness, even jealousy, among their male counterparts,” he said.

“I want to be like Imane Khelif and win an Olympic gold medal,” said Kessal.

In 2023, the International Boxing Association barred Khelif from its world championships after it said she had failed gender eligibility tests for carrying XY chromosomes.

The 25-year-old champion denounced the IBA’s “false and offensive” allegations and vowed last month to keep fighting “in the ring” and “in the courts.”

“I have seen adversity before,” she said in a statement, “but I have never stayed down.”

In Bejaia, further east of Algiers, clubs such as Dream Team and Sidi Ayad Boxing Club have also welcomed more women and girls.

Lina Debbou, a former boxer and now sports adviser, said this momentum started right after the Olympics.

“Imane Khelif brought so much to women’s boxing,” she said. “More girls are joining the sport thanks to her.”

Even in relatively more conservative parts of the country, like Djelfa in the Saharan Atlas range some 300 kilometers south of Algiers, more women are said to have taken up the sport.

“We first tried introducing women’s boxing in 2006, but it was not successful due to the region being conservative,” Mohamed Benyacoub, the director of local club Ennasr, said.

Now, “the women’s sports movement began to revive,” he said, adding that Khelif had “shattered the taboo that women can’t box.”

Nacim Touami, a boxing referee whose wife is also a professional boxer, said parents are playing a pivotal role in this “real obsession with boxing now.”

“Parents used to prefer volleyball or swimming for their daughters,” he said. “But after Khelif’s gold medal, we’ve seen a real shift.”

Manel Berkache, a former national champion who also coaches at JSA, said it was mothers, in particular, who were driving the change.

“Mothers are now the ones who register their daughters and attend training and matches, and this is a beautiful thing,” she said.

Hocine Oucherif, vice president of the Algerian Boxing Federation, called this “the Imane Khelif phenomenon.”

“She is the locomotive of women’s boxing in Algeria,” he said. “She gave us a strong momentum.”

He said over 100 junior girl boxers had turned up at this year’s national championship — more than double the number from last year.

It was at this competition that Kessal won gold, sparring against athletes from clubs including the Tiaret Civil Protection Club where Khelif debuted.

Like Kessal, 14-year-old Hayat Berouali, who picked up boxing less than a month ago, dreams of becoming a champion, too.

“I liked boxing after watching fights at the Olympic Games, especially those of Imane Khelif, and my parents encouraged me,” she said, smiling.