Good evening!

Some fun news to start us off today – Matildas icon Mary Fowler now has her own Barbie. It is fitted with Fowler’s classic black gloves and bubble braid hairstyle. You can see it here!

U.S. tennis champion Venus Williams and Brazilian Olympic gymnast Rebeca Andrade are among some of the other athletes who now have their own doll replicas too!

I’ve got 10 seconds

Quote of the day

"I am an ambitious guy. I know it is almost impossible to break Novak's records but I’m playing tennis for myself, for joy and I want to do great things. I want to be part of tennis history."
21-year-old tennis star Carlos Alcaraz, after being asked by the BBC if he can break Novak Djokovic’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles. Alcaraz has won two so far. At 21, Djokovic had won one.

Stat of the day

21
The age of Wil Parker, who is set to play his first AFL game for the Collingwood Magpies on Friday. Parker was previously a professional cricket player and moved to AFL full-time only last year.

Random fact of the day

For the first time, the Tour de France won’t finish in Paris because of a clash with the upcoming Olympics. Instead, the race will conclude in the city of Nice on 21 July.

I’ve got 1 minute

In the qualifying final (similar to a semifinal) of the Indian Premier League, one of India’s domestic cricket competitions, the Kolkata Knight Riders beat the Sunrisers Hyderabad to secure their spot in the final.

Mitchell Starc, an Australian fast bowler who plays in the competition and is the highest-paid player across all teams, was named Man of the Match.

What is the Indian Premier League?

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a T20 competition with Indian teams that features players from all over the world. It is a 10-team round-robin competition that lasts two months.

The competition has a huge live and television audience - a reported 510 million TV viewers this year - and is extremely lucrative for players, sponsors, and broadcasters.

Australian Mitchell Starc is being paid $4.43m to play in the competition.

Starc stars

Cricket experts and fans have been disappointed with Starc’s performances for his team throughout the season, especially considering his top price tag. However, in this match, Starc took three wickets for only 34 runs, and was named Man of the Match. One of the batsmen he got out was a teammate of his in the Australian national team, Travis Head.

Kolkata could now play either the Rajasthan Royals, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru, or even the Sunrisers again, in the final on Sunday night (AEST).

I’ve got 2 minutes

The final four teams in the NBA, the men’s professional basketball league in the U.S, have been set.

With the conference finals starting today, we thought we’d give you a quick rundown of how this competition works.

Eastern Conference and Western Conference

The first thing to know is that the NBA is split into two groups - the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference.

Each Conference has 15 teams, which is then split into three smaller groups of five, called ‘Divisions’. The teams are mostly grouped based on their location to reduce travel time.

During a regular season, each team plays 82 games.

If you finish in the top six of the Conference, you qualify for the playoffs. This is the next round of the competition. The teams who placed between 7 and 10 (remember, out of 15) will then compete in something called the play-in tournament, which is a knockout tournament to see which two teams will fill the remaining two spots in each of the Conference playoffs.

The playoffs

In the NBA, each Conference (Eastern and Western) has three stages of Playoffs: the ‘First Round Playoffs’, the ‘Conference Semifinals’, and the ‘Conference Finals’.

A Playoff is not just one game - it is a best-of-seven series.

First-Round Playoffs: The top eight teams in each Conference are split into four groups of two. Each group plays a series of seven games against each other. The first team to win four games wins that playoff.

Conference Semifinals: Four winners from each Conference will progress to this next round. The four teams will be separated into two groups of two teams. The two teams in each group will then play against each other in a best-of-seven series.

Conference Finals: Two teams from each conference will emerge from the Semifinals. This means there are four teams left across both Conferences. The two teams in each Conference then face off (yes, in another best-of-seven series). This is the stage we’re at now - the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers are playing in the Eastern Conference Final, and the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves are playing in the Western Conference Final.

The next stage is the NBA Championships! The winners of both Conference finals will play each other (you guessed it, in a best-of-seven series) for the final prize: the NBA Championship.

2024 Finals

Of the four teams to have made it to their Conference Finals this year, none were in the NBA Championship last year. The other thing that makes this year different is the absence of many of the NBA’s highest-paid stars.

According to Spotrac (a U.S. sport news website), only one of the fifteen top paid players will play in the Conference Finals (Rudy Gobert, a player for the Minnesota Timberwolves who is the 13th highest-paid player in the league).

Today, the Boston Celtics beat the Indiana Pacers 133-128 in Game One of their series. The Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves play their first game tomorrow (10:30am AEST).

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