Southeast Asian Games spectators, even athletes and officials who want to sample them outside the Athletes’ Village, will be able to experience getting ferried around New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac during the two-week sporting event aboard self-driving shuttle busses.

This after driverless vehicles, manufactured by US-based mobility company Coast Autonomous, arrived Thursday at NCC for pilot testing.

About a dozen passengers can be accommodated by each shuttle, which is fitted with sensors — “high definition, 3D mapping machines —to be able to roam the roads and weave around objects with no hitches.

Coast Autonomous CEO David Hickey told ABS-CBN news:

“We have a series of sensors in artificial intelligence and machine learning and robotics. That’s basically how it operates, and so we use sensors, 7 different kinds of techniques, for the vehicle to know where it is. Through sensor fusion, we can pile those different techniques and knows what to operate,” he explained.

Since the vehicles require no petroleum-based fuel, they would have to be charged for six hours to ensure hassle-free mobility for 18 hours at speeds reaching 25 miles per.

“We charge it daily, in the morning we have a checklist, we check all the functions and then it drives. There is very few maintenance, no more mechanic side because it’s fully electric,” Pier Lefevre, technology officer of Coast Autonomous, told the TV network.

The bulk of this year’s SEA Games events will be held at NCC, including athletics and swimming, with the SEAG flame to be lit reportedly by boxing icon Manny Pacquiao from the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan from the torch handed him by gymnastics world champion Carlos Yulo during the opening ceremony on Nov. 30. 

Source: Manila Bulletin

By Waylon Galvez

The water polo national team got a good draw with regards to schedule as it will face Indonesia for its first game before it takes on defending champion Singapore in the 30th Southeast Asian Games here.

The national team meets Indonesia – silver medalist in the previous SEA Games in Kuala Lumpur – on opening day of competition on November 26 at the aquatic center of the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac.

The host team takes a break the following day November 27 before it returns to action on November 28 against Malaysia, which won the bronze medal when it staged the biennial meet two years ago.

That sets the Filipinos to probably the most important match in the tournament for the Filipinos when they face defending champion Singapore, which many believe the gold medal match since the two countries are expected to hurdle their respective initial games.

The game is set November 29.

“It’s a good draw for the national team in terms of schedule. We’ll be playing on opening day of water polo,” said Dale Evangelista, the former national team player who is now a member of the coaching staff headed by Reynaldo Galang.

“Ang maganda kasi, after our team plays on opening day, our players get a day break then returns to action against Malaysia, which prepares the team for our big game with Singapore.”

The event takes a break November 30 for the SEA Games opening ceremony at the Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan. The national team takes on Thailand on the final day of water polo action on December 1.

Evangelista said it’s important to win the first two games – against Indonesia and Malaysia – before thinking of beating Singapore.

Since the sports of water polo was introduced during the 1965 SEA Games, Singapore has won the gold medal a record 27 times. The national team came close to ending that dominance thrice, in 2005 when the Philippines last hosted the regional meet, in 2007 in Thailand and in 2009 in Laos.

In last September’s FINA Water Polo Challengers’ Cup at the OCBC Aquatic, the national team lost to Singapore 11-7 but based on Galang’s analysis, it was a good test since they were able to identify to the things that need improvement before the SEA Games.

“We’ve done a few things, particularly on defense, which was one of the things we saw during our game against Singapore in the Challengers’ Cup,” said Galang.

“Of course, we’re hoping too that with the crowd cheering our players not just against Singapore, but also in our other games, it would inspire our players to give it their best in this SEA Games.”

After the Challengers’ Cup in Singapore, the Filipinos had a 15-day training camp in Tokyo, Japan where it also played tuneup matches against several pro teams. Japan is among the top teams in the world.

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

ATLANTA — Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t concerned that the Milwaukee Bucks let the Atlanta Hawks back in the game late in the fourth quarter.

What mattered to Antetokounmpo was another road win for his streaking team.

“If you want to be a really good team in this league, you’ve got to win on the road,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where we play, as long as we come out there and give ourselves a chance to win every night.”

Antetokounmpo had 33 points and 11 rebounds, Eric Bledsoe scored 28 and the Bucks won their fifth consecutive game with a 135-127 victory over the Hawks on Wednesday night.

It marked the league-high ninth time this season that Antetokounmpo, the reigning NBA MVP, has had at least 30 points and 10 rebounds.

The Bucks, with the league’s second-ranked offense, have won nine of 10 and improved to an NBA-best 8-2 on the road despite a sloppy ending as Atlanta cut the lead to single digits in the final minute.

Rookie forward De’Andre Hunter finished with a career-high 27 points and Trae Young scored 25 for the Hawks, who have lost four straight and seven of eight. Atlanta was coming off a 1-4 road trip that included a 49-point loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.

“When we play at other teams’ paces, it’s tough for us,” Young said. “We’ve got to be better at dictating the speed of the game instead of letting them dictate it.”

This game was close in the first half, but Milwaukee led by 18 on Pat Connaughton’s 3-pointer with 9:53 remaining. The Hawks whittled a 19-point deficit to seven late in the fourth quarter, causing Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer to put Antetokounmpo back in the game before Sterling Brown hit a corner 3 to make it 129-119 with 1:48 left.

“They threw a different type of defense out, press and play hard,” Bledsoe said. “But I thought we did a great job of sustaining.”

Antetokounmpo took a fast-break pass down the right side for a big dunk on the baseline to make it 42-35 in the second quarter and scored on consecutive possessions to put the Bucks up 73-63 in the third, finishing off a 15-2 run with a fast-break dunk.

After the Hawks trimmed the lead to five a few minutes later, Antetokounmpo hit a 3 to cap a 17-point performance in the third. Connaughton’s short runner built the lead to 96-83 entering the fourth.

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs are in the midst of a seven-game losing streak, their longest skid since he took over as the team’s coach more than 20 years ago.

With little resistance at the defensive end from San Antonio on Wednesday night, Washington’s Bradley Beal shot 9 for 9 in a 21-point third quarter en route to scoring 33 in all, and the lowly Wizards beat the Spurs 138-132.

“All in all, if you score 132 points, you should probably have a pretty good chance to win a game. The bad news is, if you give up 138, you are not going to win,” Popovich said during a brief-as-can-be postgame session. “I’m a really smart guy. I’m figuring that’s logical. I could be wrong. … There’s not much else to say.”

It is the Spurs’ worst stretch since they had a pair of droughts that lasted seven and eight games in 1996-97, when David Robinson got injured and Popovich moved from the front office to the sideline about a quarter of the way through the season.

In the ensuing draft, the Spurs took Tim Duncan, who starred for the team and now is an assistant to Popovich. San Antonio has made the playoffs in each of the past 22 seasons, claiming five NBA championships in that time.

Put simply, the Spurs are not used to this sort of lose night-after-night thing.

“The streak that we’re on, every single game we’ve lost feels worse than the last game,” said DeMar DeRozan, who led San Antonio with 31 points but missed a pair of free throws with 9.9 seconds left and Washington up 136-132.

The Spurs fell to 5-10, despite being ahead 69-63 at halftime and having eight players score in double figures.

That included Patty Mills, who made his first start of the season and began the night 6 for 6 from the field but missed his next four shots and finished with 16 points.

“We’ve just got to stay positive. We’ve got to stick together,” Mills said. “We’ve got to find a way and we’ll get through it.”

Davis Bertans, acquired by Washington from San Antonio in the offseason, and Ish Smith each scored 21 for the Wizards, who came into the day with a 3-8 record, the worst mark in the Eastern Conference.

San Antonio led by 10 before Beal scored nine points in a 22-3 spurt over about 5½ minutes in the third quarter that put the Wizards out front 94-85.

It was quite a turnaround for Beal, who went just 3 for 9 in the first half.

“Brad took over,” Wizards coach Scott Brooks said, “and he’s hard to stop.”

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — For the second time in three nights, the Utah Jazz watched the Minnesota Timberwolves fire away from 3-point range. The result was different this time.

With the Wolves misfiring on 31 of their 45 attempts from the perimeter Wednesday night, Bojan Bogdanovic and Donovan Mitchell led a 3-point spree in the fourth quarter to help the Jazz to a 103-95 victory. Bogdanovic scored 30 points, Mitchell added 26 and the Jazz split the home-and-home series.

“I thought we touched a little bit tonight about the way we can play,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said. “We were able to generate some 3s, and obviously Bojan. We had two stretches where it was tough for us and I thought our guys responded when the game got close.”

Bogdanovic and Mitchell each hit three 3-pointers in the fourth quarter. Bogdanovic was 6 of 11 from 3-point range, and Mitchell 5 of 10 to help Utah rebound for the home loss to Minnesota on Monday night.

Minnesota led by six in the fourth quarter before Utah used a 12-0 run to take the lead for good.

Mitchell hit a 3 with 5:09 left to give the Jazz a six-point lead.

“It all started with us penetrating the lane and having eyes out for our shooters,” Jeff Green said. “We have the shooters and if they try to take away one thing with a lob to Rudy (Gobert), it leaves shooters open. … It was big time for us.”

Andrew Wiggins had 22 points for Minnesota after missing three games because of personal reasons and an illness. Karl-Anthony Towns was held to 14 points and struggled with foul trouble most of the night.

It was a far cry from Monday night, when Towns hit tied a career-high with seven 3s and had 29 points in Minnesota’s 112-102 win. On Wednesday, he didn’t hit double figures until a 3 with 4:34 remaining, but Utah answered with back-to-back triples from Bogdanovic and Mike Conley to make it 94-85 at the 3:28 mark.

“You can tell … there was an emphasis on taking Karl out of it,” Wolves coach Ryan Saunders said.

Conley had 16 points for the Jazz, and Gobert had 12 points and 15 rebounds.

Utah led by nine before Kelan Martin keyed a 12-0 run that put the Wolves up early in the fourth.

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

NEW YORK — Without Kyrie Irving for the third straight game due to an injured right shoulder, the Brooklyn Nets used a trio of players to pick up the slack.

Jarrett Allen led the way with 22 points and a season-high 17 rebounds, and the Nets beat the Charlotte Hornets 101-91 on Wednesday night.

“I just thought (Allen) was huge,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said. “They went small, they put Marvin (Williams) at the 5. We said we’ll stick with JA, and I thought he did two great things. He guarded when we switched, he guarded their smalls, and then he punished them on the other end with his offensive rebounding.”

Taurean Prince and Spencer Dinwiddie added 20 points apiece for Brooklyn. It marked the first time the Nets had three players score 20 or more points in a game.

Terry Rozier had 18 points and Devonte’ Graham added 17 for Charlotte, which lost its second straight game.

Charlotte held the Nets to two points through the first five minutes of the fourth quarter to cut the deficit to 84-81.

“We’re struggling to score the ball,” Atkinson said. “We’re going to have to go to the drawing board and find some solutions there. It’s tough to defend when you’re not putting it in the hole. We have to get back to getting to the free throw line. I feel like we’ve slipped there. We’re hanging out hat on our defense right now.”

Prince agreed.

“I think our offense was sparked by the defense tonight,” Prince said. “I think we kept the lead when we needed to and it raised our level of intensity on the defensive end when we needed it to as well.”

The Nets regrouped from their offensive slump to start the quarter by holding the Hornets to five points over the next five minutes. Prince’s driving layup gave the Nets a 95-86 lead with 3:28 remaining during that span and they never looked back.

“I think they did a good job with their switching. I think their switching really slowed us down a little bit,” Charlotte’s Marvin Williams said. “We got a little stagnant out there. We just have to continue to move the ball and move bodies to combat some of that switching. So, give those guys a lot of credit. They played well tonight.”

Brooklyn held the Hornets to 73 points, the fewest the Nets have allowed through three quarters this season, to take a nine-point lead into the fourth quarter. Allen led the Nets with 11 points in the third.

The Nets took a 56-51 lead into the locker room at the half as Prince and DeAndre Jordan led all scorers with 12 points apiece

Both teams scored 26 apiece in the first quarter as Prince led the Nets with nine points and Bismack Biyombo scored eight for Charlotte.

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

DENVER — Rule No. 1 in defending James Harden: Throw different looks at him.

Rule No. 2: See above.

At least, that was Denver’s highly effective blueprint.

Nikola Jokic had 27 points and 12 rebounds, Denver played smothering defense on Harden and the Nuggets beat Houston 105-95 on Wednesday night to snap the Rockets’ eight-game winning streak.

“You have to have rules against James Harden,” Denver coach Michael Malone explained. “You can’t play him with your standard defense. Great player defense is required for great players.”

So, the Nuggets tried a little bit of everything to contain Harden, even rolling the 7-foot Jokic out high along with another defender.

The variety of schemes did the trick — as much as it can against Harden. Houston’s star playmaker finished with 27 points, snapping his string of eight consecutive games with 36 or more. He was 8 of 16 from the floor as the Rockets were held under 100 points for the first time this season. They were averaging an NBA-best 119.5 per game.

“We were locked in,” said Jokic, whose team is 7-0 this season when keeping an opponent below 100 points.

Still, Jokic found it funny that his team was being lauded for “stopping” Harden.

“That’s crazy when a guy scores 27 and it’s bad,” Jokic said. “We know he’s going to score. He’s going to be aggressive. Just make it harder and try to be there. … Just to give them different looks.”

It worked — this time.

“They just double-teamed every possession,” Harden said. “They got lucky. They got away with one. We didn’t execute how we needed to.”

The Rockets struggled from 3-point range, hitting 12 of 38. They did make at least 10 for a 71st straight game dating to last season.

Russell Westbrook finished with 25 points on 8-of-22 shooting and Clint Capela grabbed 21 rebounds.

“We had open shots,” Westbrook said. “We just didn’t make them.”

Will Barton scored 15 points, while Torrey Craig and Juancho Hernangomez provided boosts off the bench as Denver’s reserves outscored the Rockets’ backups by a 32-21 margin.

One of the key sequences came in the third quarter, when Paul Millsap blocked Harden’s shot and Barton turned it into a dunk on the other end. That energized the Pepsi Center crowd and sent the Nuggets on a pivotal run.

It’s not easy making things difficult for Harden, who’s seen just about every defensive scheme imaginable.

“He’s one of those guys that when you’re watching film it’s like watching a horror movie,” Malone said. “He’s that talented.”

Source: Manila Bulletin

By the Associated Press

DALLAS — The front of their jerseys said “San Francisco” and the names on the back weren’t the same Golden State Warriors that reached the past five NBA Finals.

The Dallas Mavericks took full advantage.

Luka Doncic scored 33 of his 35 points in the first half and had yet another triple-double to help Dallas hammer short-handed Warriors 142-94 on Wednesday night.

Doncic fell a point short of matching Dirk Nowitzki’s team record for points in a half, set Nov. 3, 2009, against Utah. Doncic was 10 for 11 from the floor, making 6 of 7 3-pointers, and hit 7 of 8 free throws.

The second-year star from Slovenia was coming off a 40-point triple-double Monday. With his team up big on this night, Doncic played only 25 minutes total, but still managed 10 rebounds and 11 assists. He has an NBA-best seven triple-doubles in 14 games.

“If he had kept playing today, he probably would have had 50 (points),” teammate Tim Hardaway Jr. said. “He’s doing a great job playing with the utmost confidence.”

Doncic had 22 points, five assists and five rebounds in the first quarter alone.

“I see (the stats), but I don’t know what to say,” Doncic said. “It’s great to read about. I just enjoy the basketball.”
The Mavericks tied a franchise record with 22 3-pointers while sending Golden State to its worst loss since a 1973 playoff game.

“Flush it down the toilet,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said when asked what his team can take away from the game. “Literally, you just move on. You don’t take anything from a game like this.”

Rookie Eric Paschall led the Warriors with 22 points.

Tim Hardaway Jr. added 20 for Dallas. Kristaps Porzingis had 14 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth-straight double-double.

Wounder Warriors

The Warriors are an NBA-worst 3-13. Their five-year run of at the top of the NBA has collapsed under a weight of injuries, with Draymond Green out Wednesday because of right heel soreness.

With Green out, Golden State dressed only eight players, none of whom suited up for the team last season when it made the NBA Finals for the fifth consecutive year.

Kerr could at least find humor in the Warriors’ result.

“Tough to lose by 48 points, but a break here or there and it only would have been 42 points,” Kerr said, then paused and added, “Nobody caught the sarcasm? I was trying to be funny.”

Supernovas

Paschall, Warriors teammate Omari Spellman and the Mavs’ Jalen Brunson all started for Villanova during their run to the 2018 national championship. All finished in double figures on Wednesday, with Brunson scoring 15 on a perfect 6-for-6 shooting night. Spellman had 11 for Golden State.

“It’s always great playing against all my Villanova guys,” said Paschall, holding Brunson’s Dallas jersey that his former teammate had given him after the game. “It proves what Coach (Jay) Wright has done.”

Hardaway makes it look easy

Hardaway got the start in place of Seth Curry, who was ill, and he took advantage of the assignment, tying his season high with 20 points.

“I just wanted to see a couple go in,” Hardaway said. “I wanted to go in there and make a presence for myself and for the team.”

Source: Manila Bulletin