Toronto Raptors Clinch Their First NBA Title, Denying Warriors A 3-Peat
The Raptors’ Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry celebrate after Toronto wins the NBA championship, defeating the Golden State Warriors 114-110 in Oakland, Calif.
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Garrett Ellwood/NBAE/Getty Images
The Toronto Raptors have snatched their first NBA title, edging out the Golden State Warriors, 114-110, in Game 6 of the finals at the Warriors’ Oracle Arena in Oakland. Toronto completed the series 4-2.
With the score 111-110 and just seconds left in the 4th quarter, the Warriors’ Steph Curry missed a 3-pointer. Golden State then called a timeout it didn’t have and was given a technical foul. After that there was some confusion. In the end, Toronto prevailed.
It was a close-fought game from beginning to end, with the two teams trading out the lead.
A fast-paced and entertaining first half featured 14 lead changes and four ties in the last professional basketball game played in Oakland.
Raptors fans party in Toronto as their team wins the NBA championship in Oakland, Calif.
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Toronto led 33-32 after one quarter in which the Raptors scored seven 3-point shots. But the Warriors’ Klay Thompson kept the Warriors in the game scoring 10 points.
The Raptors led by three points at the half, 60-57, largely on the strength of a 21-point effort by guard Kyle Lowry. Pascal Siakam had 13 points and Serge Ibaka scored 10 for Toronto. Raptor star Kawhi Leonard had nine points, but also picked up three fouls.
The Warriors’ Thompson had 18 points, followed by Andre Iguodala with 11 points. Curry had nine points.
The Warriors led 88-86 after three quarters. Golden State saw its top scorer Thompson injure his knee late in the quarter.
The Golden State Warriors, led by Splash Brothers Curry and Thompson, have won three of the last four NBA championships. They were early odds-on favorites to three-peat their way to another title and seal their claim to being one of professional basketball’s historic dynasties.
But Toronto got in the way of all that.
Going into Game 6, the Raptors had already accomplished what few other teams could dream of: they’d beaten Golden State on the Warriors home court, the Oracle Arena, three times this year—once in the regular season and twice in this series.
The Warriors had hoped to stretch the series to Game 7 and give the court they’ve called home for 47 seasons a proper send off. Next year, Golden State will play in the new Chase Center in San Francisco. It’s only a handful of miles away, but there are many die-hard Oaklanders who think their Warriors might as well be moving to Mars.
Trump Turns Trade Talks Into Spectator Sport
President Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping are expected to talk about trade on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, later this month.
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White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Thursday that the Trump administration is determined to make China play by the rules of international trade.
“You know how you get from here to there?” Kudlow told an audience at a pro-trade think tank in Washington. “You kick some butt.”
That’s not the kind of dry, technocratic language one usually associates with trade negotiations. But it’s another example of how President Trump has turned international commerce into a highly unusual spectator sport.
The next big spectacle is expected to be a faceoff between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, later this month.
This “Talka in Osaka” is another high-stakes showcase for the president, who has managed to turn trade talks into must-see television. Less WTO — more WWE, complete with heroes, villains, plot twists and plenty of trash talk.
“China wants to make a deal very badly,” Trump told reporters this week. “It’s me, right now, that’s holding up the deal.”
Trump said that before he took office, “China ate the United States alive, economically.” The president has imposed steep tariffs on Chinese imports. And he’s threatened to go further if China won’t throw in the towel.
Like last week’s tariff battle with Mexico, the showdown with China has kept the president on the front page, sent shock waves through the stock market, and turned dusty rules of international commerce into a hot topic around the dinner table.
“There will be no shortage of conversations in the early summer barbecues, boy, with people looking at their portfolios,” said Matthew Slaughter, a Dartmouth economist who studies international trade.
Trump has not only put trade front and center in the national conversation. Because the president is such a polarizing figure, he has managed to scramble the usual partisan cheering sections. Some Republicans are now defending tariffs and other protectionist measures while some Democrats are pushing in the opposite direction.
“There’s some Democrats who are now saying, ‘Boy, we need to be careful on levying these new trade barriers and we need to worry about trade wars,’ ” said Slaughter, who served in the George W. Bush White House. “The president and his policies are starting to muddy those waters again.”
A Quinnipiac poll last month found 53% of all Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of trade, while just 39% approve. The poll was taken about a week after talks between the U.S. and China broke down and Trump increased tariffs on some $250 billion worth of imports.
“Right now, China is paying us billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said. “They never gave us 10 cents.”
Never mind that most economists say the tariffs are largely paid by American businesses and consumers. Meanwhile, China has raised tariffs of its own on U.S. exports, while cutting the taxes on products it buys from other countries.
Kudlow calls himself a free trader but said he has come around to the president’s view that tariffs can be a useful economic weapon.
“It’s a negotiating tool, but it’s not a bluff,” Kudlow said. “As you’ve seen, he will actually execute or implement tariffs.”
A member of the audience asked Kudlow what happens if Trump’s tariffs don’t deliver a knockout punch. What if, instead, the two sides settle into a costly, rope-a-dope trade war?
Kudlow didn’t have a ready answer for that. The think tank’s director emeritus, Fred Bergsten, observed that for much of the past century, the U.S. has gone largely unchallenged in the global ring. In China, it is finally facing another economic heavyweight.
How One Father Became A Leading Activist In The Fight Against Opioids
When Greg McNeil’s son Sam died of a heroin overdose in 2015, after first becoming addicted to prescription pain pills, the father reinvented himself as an opioid activist.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
If we look at the opioid epidemic alone, it’s killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and damaged the lives of millions more. North Country Public Radio’s Brian Mann introduces us to a father who became a leading activist in the fight against opioids after his son died of an overdose.
GREG MCNEIL: All right, this way. Come on.
BRIAN MANN, BYLINE: I meet Greg McNeil at a fire hall in Green, Ohio, a suburban city outside Akron. He’s not a guy who ever expected to be on the frontlines of a deadly epidemic. He was a Web developer and IT specialist. Then, in 2007, his son Sam got sick.
MCNEIL: After an injury and surgery, he actually became addicted within 10 days because he was back in the ER within 10 days as a drug-seeking patient.
MANN: Like a lot of Americans, Sam became dependent on prescription opioids, on painkillers. In the years that followed, he turned to street drugs. The family tried to help intervening repeatedly. Greg says he thought his son was getting better.
MCNEIL: For whatever reason, he texted his old supplier. And they found him the next day. He had been given heroin that was laced with fentanyl.
MANN: Sam was 28. Greg still looks pretty much like a businessman and a father – white hair, trim suit – but he says his old life, the person he was, ended that day in October 2015. He started trying to understand the opioid epidemic, trying to get other people to do more to stop it.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: As a family, we thought we were prepared to help Sam fight addiction. We were painfully mistaken. Our mission is to arm others…
MANN: Working with his daughter Amy, Greg started a podcast in 2016 that emerged as a forum for information about the opioid epidemic. It features in-depth interviews with policymakers, members of Congress, scientists and public health experts like Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control.
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TOM FRIEDEN: Hey. This is a huge problem, folks. Pay attention. Let’s do everything we can to stop it.
MANN: The podcast reaches about 2,000 people a week nationwide. Greg McNeil also began organizing locally in Summit County, Ohio. He dragged government leaders like Green City Mayor Gerry Neugebauer into meeting rooms.
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GERRY NEUGEBAUER: I would have people come to my office – one woman who had lost three sons at three different times to opiate overdoses.
MANN: In 2016, the year Neugebauer was elected, there were 12 opioid overdoses a day in Summit County – 340 people died that year. He says he didn’t know what to do until Greg started bringing ideas, including a plan to equip local businesses with kits containing the overdose recovery drug Narcan.
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NEUGEBAUER: Some of those overdoses are taking place at those hotels. Others are at fast-food places nearby the hotels. And so we thought this was a great place to do that.
MANN: The city is training service industry workers to use the Narcan kits. Greg also convinced local leaders to organize outreach teams to counsel people who’ve survived an overdose.
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MCNEIL: They knock on doors of all the people that have overdosed. And they say, hey, we know you almost died this past week. We want to see you get help. Here’s all the resources. We want to help you.
MANN: Jeremy Chambers, a fire department medic, joined one of the teams a couple years ago.
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JEREMY CHAMBERS: I’ve had one door slammed in my face. For the most part, they are very welcoming. And I’ve had mothers crying. And they don’t know what to do. And they’re so thankful that we’re there, that we least give them some way, some path.
MANN: About a third of the people contacted this way get some kind of counseling, some kind of help. Chambers says he’s convinced the program is saving lives. And the number of overdose deaths here has declined. Greg McNeil says his volunteer work and activism also helped him survive Sam’s death.
MCNEIL: Every day that I go to work, I have a very real sense that I’m working with my son. I’m working with Sam. When we get wins in particular, it feels so rewarding.
MANN: A win, Greg says, is when someone who’s opioid dependent gets counseling or gets medical help in time. Brian Mann, NPR News, Green, Ohio.
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From Henry Ford To Elon Musk: The Past, Present And Future Of Cars
You know the feeling. The weather has just gotten warm. You get behind the wheel on a Friday afternoon and head into the weekend. Your favorite song is on the radio, you’ve got the windows down. Is there anything better?
American media have captured that scene for generations. Hundreds of songs have been written about driving and cars.
But would your feelings be the same if you weren’t the one driving? If instead, the car was driverless?
Journalist and car critic Dan Albert says that “how we understand the history of the American automobile and make sense of our automobile-dependent present will determine the driverless future.”
His new book “Are We There Yet?” traces America’s relationship with cars — from skepticism during the horse-and-buggy era, to the present, when the days of needing a person to operate a vehicle may be numbered.
Here’s part of a Forbes review of Albert’s book:
Are We There Yet? takes a linear, chronological path through American automotive history, and concludes with Albert’s bittersweet concession that we may indeed be on our way to new relationship with transportation. “When we embrace driverless cars, we will surrender our American automobile as an adventure machine, as a tool of self-expression, and the wellspring of our wealth and our defense,” he wrote. “We will be left with machines unworthy of love and unable to fill the desires our driven cars now do.”
And although car sales are soaring, interest in driving seems to be declining. A 2016 study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found “the percentage of people with a driver’s license decreased between 2011 and 2014, across all age groups,” according to The Atlantic.
How is the American relationship with cars changing? How does climate change factor into the success of the automotive industry? And will we ever be able to agree on the best playlist for a road trip?
We want to hear from you for this show. Tell us your car story! Was there a moment when cars made a big impact on your life? Leave us a voicemail, use our app, 1A VoxPop or send us an email.
