Canada earns Paralympic hoops berth

Patrick Anderson scored a game-high 23 points as Canada’s men’s wheelchair basketball team earned a spot for the Paris Paralympics with a 72-60 win over Italy at a repechage qualifying tournament.

Anderson added 12 rebounds for Canada. Colin Higgins had 14 points and 16 rebounds, while Vincent Dallaire and Nik Goncin added 11 points each in the wire-to-wire win.

The repechage tournament was the final opportunity for teams who did not qualify for the Paris Games through their zone qualifier.

Canada’s men’s senior basketball team has appeared in every Paralympic Games since 1968 and won gold in 2000, 2004 and 2012.

That run looked to be in danger when Canada lost all three of its group-stage games in the repechage tournament before downing previously unbeaten Italy in a must-win game.

“For the team, it was the perfect win in terms of getting contributions from everybody and building on the last three days, as crazy as that sounds,” said the 44-year-old Anderson, who has long been one of the sport’s biggest stars.

Hagen Danner has a bone to pick with trading card company Topps. The Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league pitcher, who made his major league debut with the team last August before immediately suffering a season-ending injury, took that beef public on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter. It seems that even after being told by Danner that the photo they had been planning to use of him in their trading cards wasn’t actually him, the company went ahead and issued the card anyway.

Danner’s message to the card company: “Definitely not even close to being me,” Danner wrote. “What do we got @Topps?? Told you guys it wasn’t me and still released.”