final game

Emmanuel Sabbi scored on Vancouver’s only shot on goal, Yohei Takaoka made four saves and the Whitecaps spoiled Olivier Giroud’s farewell match with a 1-0 victory over LAFC on Sunday night.

Giroud started and played 60 minutes in his final appearance for LAFC. The famed French forward is expected to sign with Lille after one disappointing year in Los Angeles during which he was largely an unproductive substitute, scoring just five goals in 38 matches.

Giroud had a chance to go out with a bang when Denis Bouanga fed him an exceptional cross while he was unmarked deep in Vancouver’s penalty area in the 50th minute, but Giroud volleyed it over the bar.

Giroud still left the field to a standing ovation 10 minutes later, but LAFC failed to equalize without him in its first match back from a winless three-game stint at the Club World Cup.

LAFC scored one goal in the entire FIFA tournament, but still netted at least $9.5 million for earning the final spot in the field. Back in Los Angeles, its nine-match unbeaten run in league play ended with even more offensive frustration against Vancouver.

Takaoka secured his 10th clean sheet for the depleted Whitecaps, who won for just the second time in six matches while falling out of first place in the Western Conference. Vancouver doesn’t have key contributors Brian White, Jayden Nelson and Sebastian Berhalter due to Gold Cup international duty.

Sabbi scored in the 20th minute with an exceptional effort, starting a counterattack with a midfield steal before controlling Jeevan Badwal’s pass in midair on the run and scoring his first goal since April 12.

Backup goalkeeper David Ochoa made his first appearance for LAFC in place of Hugo Lloris, who got the day off after playing the entire Club World Cup.

For the 20th time, there will be a Game 7 in the NBA Finals.

Indiana will play at Oklahoma City on Sunday night in the final game of the season, with the winner getting the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Home teams are 15-4 in Game 7 of the finals, but a road team — Cleveland, over Golden State — won the most recent of those games in 2016.

A look inside some numbers surrounding this matchup:

Odds are, nobody’s scoring 40

There have been only two 40-point scoring performances in Game 7 of the NBA Finals — and both came in losing efforts.

Jerry West scored 42 points in Game 7 of the 1969 series, but the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics in Bill Russell’s final game. And Elgin Baylor scored 41 points in Game 7 in 1962 — another Lakers-Celtics matchup — but Boston prevailed in that one as well.

Bob Pettit had the third-highest scoring total in a Game 7. He had 39 for the St. Louis Hawks against the Celtics in 1957 … and Boston won that game as well.

The highest-scoring Game 7s in a winning effort? Those would be by Boston’s Tom Heinsohn in that 1957 game against St. Louis and Miami’s LeBron James in the 2013 series against San Antonio. Both had 37; Heinsohn’s was a double-overtime game, James got his in regulation.

And no team might break 100, either

Yes, these are high-scoring teams. Oklahoma City was No. 4 in points per game in the regular season (120.5 per game) and Indiana was No. 7 (117.4). The Thunder are second in that category in the playoffs (115.2), just ahead of No. 3 Indiana (115.1).

In Game 7, that might not matter much.

No team has reached 100 points in Game 7 of the NBA Finals since 1988. Or even topped 95 points, for that matter.

Coach Pat Riley, left, gets a hug from Wes Matthews after the Lakers defeated the Pistons in Game 7 of the 1988 NBA Finals.

(Bob Galbraith / Associated Press)

The last five Game 7s:

— 2016, Cleveland 93, Golden State 89

— 2013, Miami 95, San Antonio 88

— 2010, Los Angeles Lakers 83, Boston 79

— 2005, San Antonio 81, Detroit 74

— 1994, Houston 90, New York 84

The last finals Game 7 to see someone hit the century mark was when the Lakers beat the Pistons 108-105 in 1988.

Expect a close one

The average margin of victory in Game 7 of an NBA Finals: 6.9 points.

Each of the last eight such games have been decided by single digits. Only four have been double-digit wins: Boston over St. Louis by 19 in 1960, Minneapolis over New York by 17 in 1952, Boston over Milwaukee by 15 in 1974 and New York over the Lakers by 14 in 1970.

The closest Game 7 in the finals was Syracuse beating Fort Wayne 92-91 in 1955. That was one of six Game 7s decided by three points or less.

By seed

The Thunder are the 22nd No. 1 seed to play in Game 7 of an NBA Finals. Their 21 predecessors on that list are 12-9 in the ultimate game; seven of those games have been ones where both teams entered the playoffs as No. 1 seeds.

The Pacers are the fourth No. 4 seed to make Game 7 of the title round. Their three predecessors went 1-2 (Boston beat the Lakers in 1969, Seattle lost to Washington in 1978 and the Celtics lost to the Lakers in 2010).

Game 7 experience

It’ll be the fourth Game 7 for Indiana forwards Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner. Siakam’s teams have gone 2-1 in Game 7s, Turner’s have gone 1-2.

Indiana’s Aaron Nesmith is 2-0 in the pair of Game 7s in which he has played, with Indiana winning at New York last year and Boston beating Milwaukee in 2022. Both of those wins were in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Pacers forward Aaron Nesmith, driving agianst Thunder forward Chet Holmgren in a Game 6 win, has twice been on teams that won Game 7s.

(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)

Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s reigning MVP, has averaged 27 points in two previous Game 7s. Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton scored 26 points in his lone Game 7 to this point.

No player on either side has previously been part of a Game 7 in the NBA Finals.

New for some refs, too

The NBA doesn’t announce referee assignments until game day, so it won’t be known until Sunday morning who the three-person crew is for Game 7.

This much is certain: for at least two of the referees, it’ll be the first time on the NBA Finals Game 7 stage.

Scott Foster — who would seem a likely pick this year — worked Game 7 in 2013 alongside Dan Crawford and Monty McCutchen, and Game 7 of the title series in 2010 with Dan Crawford and Joe Crawford.

The most recent Game 7 was in 2016 and the crew for that game was Dan Crawford, McCutchen and Mike Callahan.

Outside of Foster, no referee in this year’s pool has been on the court for a Game 7 in the NBA Finals.

The Kings were playing for history Thursday and the Calgary Flames were playing for pride. Pride won, with Nazem Kadri scoring twice and and Sam Morton, Zayne Parekh and Mikael Backlund also scoring to give the Flames a 5-1 win in the final game of the NHL regular season.

Taylor Ward, making his NHL debut, got the only Kings goal late in the third period, long after the outcome had been decided. The goals by Morton and Parekh also came in their first NHL games.

The loss, the Kings’ first in five games, left them with 48 wins and 105 points for the season, matching the team record in both categories.

Still, the Kings will enter their first-round playoff series with the Edmonton Oilers on Monday as the hottest team in the Western Conference, having won eight of their last 10. Game 2 of the best-of-seven series will be played in Los Angeles on Wednesday before the series moves to Edmonton for Games 3 and 4.

The Flames, meanwhile, will miss the playoffs for the third season in a row after being eliminated earlier in the week in a shootout loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. But they didn’t go quietly against the Kings, taking the lead to stay on Kadri’s first goal two minutes and 15 seconds into the second period.

Morton doubled the lead 6:05 into the third period, opening the floodgates with Kadri scoring his team-leading 35th goal less than a minute later, followed by goals from Parekh and Backlund three minutes apart.

Ward got his goal with just more than six minutes to play. It marked the first time in five games the Kings failed to score at least five goals.

The Kings rested leading scorer Adrian Kempe and regular goaltender Darcy Kuemper as well as center Phillip Danault and winger Trevor Moore, which allowed Ward to become the first son of an NHL player to play for the team. Ward’s father Dixon, also a winger, appeared in 537 NHL games for six teams, including the Kings, between 1992-2003.

Thursday’s game was supposed to be played Jan. 8 but was postponed because of wildfires in Southern California. The Kings used the rescheduled date to honor first responders.

Shohei Ohtani is coming home as a World Series champion, and demand for tickets to the Dodgers’ season-opening series in Tokyo is fierce.

Want one? The lowest-priced ticket available on StubHub as of Wednesday afternoon: $1,855 for the series opener next week; $1,352 for the second and final game, in both cases including fees. By the time you read this, those tickets might no longer be available.

If you live in Japan, the Dodgers offered a shortcut: Pay $500 to join their new fan club, securing the right to buy two tickets to one of the games.

On the day they signed Ohtani, the Dodgers declared their intention to paint Japan in Dodger blue. On the day they signed Roki Sasaki, they shared their plan for a Dodgers fan club in Japan.

“That is something Premier League and European soccer clubs already do, amassing international fans,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said then. “We’re doing a pilot program to start that and see how it does.”

For now, the fan club offers four levels of membership. The top level — at about $500 per person, and sold out this year at 1,200 members — offered the chance to buy two tickets to a Tokyo Series game “on a first-come-first-served basis.”

Top level members also got what was billed as an “ultra rare collector’s item” — a ticket with Dodger Stadium dirt from the game in which the Dodgers clinched the National League West championship against the San Diego Padres. Ohtani had three hits in that game, including a double against countryman Yuki Matsui.

The other membership levels cost about $120, $100 and $45 annually. Of the four membership levels, the top three include Ohtani bobblehead dolls and other promotional items, plus discounts on Dodgers fan events in Japan. (Ohtani bobblehead dolls can sell for $100 or more on EBay. On the Dodgers’ website Wednesday, the cheapest ticket to the first Ohtani bobblehead night this season was $132.)

All fan club membership levels include discounts on tickets and merchandise at Dodger Stadium.

The Dodgers drive more international sales on StubHub than any other major league team, the company said. Dodgers tickets this year have been bought by fans in 29 countries outside the United States and Canada, the company said, but most often by fans in Japan.

Over the last five years, Ohtani merchandise has accounted for 57% of total Fanatics sales of Major League Baseball merchandise in Japan, Fanatics said. In the one year since the Dodgers signed Ohtani, the company said, its sales of Dodgers merchandise in Japan jumped “more than 2,000%.”

Joel Wolfe, the agent for Sasaki, said he had visited multiple ballparks in Japan with a team store for home team merchandise and a kiosk for Dodgers merchandise.

For the Tokyo Series, although MLB has set up a fan festival in Japan, the Dodgers have put up their own. The World Series championship trophy is on display, as are more than 200 bobbleheads. An area of the exhibition is devoted to Ohtani.

“We’ve done this, really for the first time, only in Japan,” Dodgers vice president Michael Spetner told the Japan Times, “and are bringing the Dodgers here to meet our fans.”

The Dodgers’ Japan fan club is not open to fans outside Japan. The Dodgers do not currently have a fan club for American fans.

The Lakers were again buried under an avalanche of Cleveland Cavaliers three-pointers, the spacing and the gaps on the court pulling the Lakers’ defense to all corners before it eventually snapped under tension.

The result was the same, but the process and team the Cavaliers beat Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena in the final game of 2024 was fundamentally different from the one they blew out on Oct. 30 in Cleveland.

The version of the Lakers that got smoked in Cleveland was the one trying to get the most out of a formula that had already shown it had a ceiling, losing during the previous two postseasons to the Denver Nuggets. It was one that hoped a core of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves and D’Angelo Russell paired with a new coach could find another gear, another level.

This week, the Lakers decided that vision wouldn’t end well. This week, the Lakers, at the very least, have fundamentally changed.

While the NBA’s best team at 29-4 swatted every Lakers push away, usually with some combination of backbreaking threes from Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley or reserve Max Strus, the Lakers showed glimpses of the ways they’ll be different moving forward. Better or worse remains to be seen.

Reaves, again seeing his volume spike with Russell now playing for the Brooklyn Nets, led the Lakers with 35 points and 10 assists, bouncing back from a bad first shift. Davis had 28 points and 13 rebounds. And James, playing for the first time since turning 40, scored 23.

But Cleveland took 11 more threes than the Lakers and made nine more. They scored 24 points off offensive rebounds to the Lakers’ 12. And, despite playing Monday in San Francisco, they set the tempo and physicality early as the Lakers quickly chased double digits.

Dorian Finney-Smith played 21 minutes in his Lakers debut, scoring on a putback dunk but coming up empty on his other three shots. Shake Milton, playing because guard Gabe Vincent missed Tuesday’s game with an oblique injury, hit a pair of threes in his 10 minutes, but the Lakers’ second unit without Russell was badly outscored 32-12.

Cleveland, looking very much like a fully-formed team as the calendar flips over to 2025, managed to have five players with at least 15 points led by 27 by Jarrett Allen.

Justin Wyatt, the football coach at Highland High in Palmdale, has enjoyed every moment coaching his son, Justin Jr., a 6-foot-4 quarterback headed to Nevada.

Their final game together will come on Friday when Highland plays St. Vincent de Paul in the Division 4-AA state championship game at 4 p.m. at Veterans Stadium.

Wyatt, who played football at USC, said it’s been a great joy coaching the oldest of his four sons.

“We got one more,” he said. “It will be a special moment.”

There’s more sons on the way. Charlie Jackson III is a freshman receiver. Jalen Wyatt is an eighth-grade quarterback. Isaac Jackson is a seventh-grade edge rusher.

“The next three or four years are going to be fun,” he said. …

The city of Palmdale and Golden League has a second team playing for a state football title. Palmdale High (10-5) is playing in the 5-A game at 11 a.m. Saturday at Veterans Stadium against American Canyon (12-2). Palmdale finished fourth and Highland was second in the league standings. Palmdale junior quarterback Joshua Suarez has passed for more than 2,000 yards. …

Layli Ostovar of Mater Dei has been selected the player of the year in Division 1 girls volleyball. Here’s the link to the All-CIF team.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

MEMPHIS, Tenn. —  LeBron James glared at the Lakers bench, another chance squandered, another run from the Grizzlies delivered.

There wasn’t much else he could do Wednesday night on the final game of the Lakers’ first road trip. He’d attacked mismatches. He’d swished home triples. He fought like hell with Memphis’ giant front line.

His team was short-handed. Anthony Davis’ heel contusion, an injury he suffered Monday in Detroit, kept him out of action. An illness did the same to Rui Hachimura.

Unlike the losses in Cleveland and Detroit that ensured this trip would be a clunker, this wasn’t about fight. The Lakers had shown up for that.

But as his team saw a two-point deficit turn to a 11-point deficit after Memphis his three straight threes, James looked at the bench.

It wasn’t anger. It was exasperation. The Lakers were going to eventually lose 131-114, and he couldn’t stop it.

James was terrific — he scored 39 points, made six threes and played with force. His team did too. They just couldn’t make any shots. And they didn’t do enough of the other things that their leader was doing.

“I think LeBron was fantastic tonight,” coach JJ Redick said postgame. “Biggest thing that stood out. I had no idea he’d hit 39 [points] until [after]. I’m not looking at the box scores during the game. But he played hard. Almost 40 years old and played the hardest on our team.

“It says a lot about him.”

And it says a lot about the rest of the Lakers, save for a few like Cam Reddish, who had his second strong game in a row.

“None of us are [satisfied with the effort],” Redick said.

Asked later how he addressed it with the team, Redick said it was the first thing he did postgame.

“At the end of the day, especially when you lose bodies, you got to compete. You got to compete even harder,” James said. “You got to be out there giving it everything that you got and on both ends. I think there were times that we did that, but the majority of the time, I don’t think we sustained energy and effort.”

Maybe it was all the shots they missed.

D’Angelo Russell put his hands to his head in disbelief as one three rattled out. Austin Reaves yelled at himself after one of his seven misses. And Dalton Knecht, getting his first career NBA start, missed all but one of his seven shots from three, including an airball.

Meanwhile Memphis punished the Lakers with mini-flurries from their role players. Rookie Jaylen Wells hit back-to-back threes. So did former Lakers two-way center Jay Huff. Scotty Pippen Jr., another former Lakers two-way prospect, posed at his former bench after hitting one of his three threes.

Redick later pulled Russell from the game midway through the third quarter.

“Just [his] level of compete, attention to detail, some of the things we’ve talked with him about for a couple of weeks,” Redick said when asked about the decision. “And at times he’s been really good with that stuff. And other times, it’s just reverting back to certain habits. But it wasn’t like a punishment. It just felt for us to have a chance to win this game, that was the route we wanted to take.”

Ja Morant, who scored 20 points, had to leave the game with a hamstring injury. But with Grizzlies making 17 threes, they had more than enough.

In addition to the cold shooting, Knecht had to leave the game after being elbowed in the jaw by Jake LaRavia. After having his jaw examined on the sideline, he went back to the locker room.

He didn’t receive X-rays in Memphis, but the Lakers didn’t have additional information.

The Lakers finished their road trip 1-4. They play Friday at home against Philadelphia, a stretch where six of their next eight games are in their building.

Pregame, Redick said the ups and downs of the NBA season and the problems that emerge present exciting problems to solve. As the team headed home, dealing with its first set of adversity of the season, Redick challenged his players.

“It goes back to choices. I think [that’s] something that we’ve discussed as a group. And you have a choice every night for how you play — and it has nothing to do with making shots,” he said. “…There’s got to be a group of people, seven, eight guys, that make that choice. And [then] we’re a really good basketball team. [When] we have a handful, we have two or three, we’re not gonna be a good basketball team that night.

“So that’s just the reality. That’s, that’s my biggest takeaway, to be honest.”

PORTLAND, Ore. —  Christine Sinclair scored in her celebratory retirement match and the Portland Thorns clinched a playoff spot with a 3-0 victory over Angel City on Friday night.

Sinclair, who is playing in her final season, scored in the 16th minute in front of 23,212 fans at Providence Park. Sophia Smith and Morgan Weaver also scored for Portland in its last regular-season match.

Sinclair’s club career was extended with the victory, but Portland won’t know its opening round opponent until this weekend’s final games are wrapped up.

Sinclair, who retired from the Canadian national team last year as international soccer’s most prolific scorer, helped the Thorns win the inaugural NWSL championship in 2013 and additional titles in 2017 and 2022.

She is among just three active players in the NWSL who have played for the same team since the league launched in 2013. The others are Jess Fishlock and Lu Barnes of the Seattle Reign.

Sinclair has scored a club-record 66 regular-season goals, ranking third in league history. Friday night’s game was her 200th appearance for Portland.

After Sinclair’s goal, Smith added her 12th of the season in the 26th minute and Weaver scored in first-half stoppage time.

Sinclair was subbed out in the 83rd minute to a lengthy ovation and toasted in a postgame ceremony.

“Some of the best moments of my life have been on this pitch. So just a massive thank you,” she said to the crowd.

She finished her international career last year as the world’s top goal scorer among both women and men with 190 goals. Sinclair won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics and bronze medals at the 2012 and 2016 Games.

She’s also among just five players to appear in six Women’s World Cups, and one of three players to score in five.

A native of Burnaby, British Columbia, Sinclair won NCAA championships with the University of Portland in 2002 and 2005.