This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, which is CBC Sports’ daily email newsletter. Stay up to speed on what’s happening in sports by subscribing here.
By Sunday, a first-time Canadian Elite Basketball League champion will be crowned.
An all-Ontario final four — pitting the Niagara River Lions against the Scarborough Shooting Stars, and the Hamilton Honey Badgers against the Ottawa BlackJacks — begins on Friday in Ottawa, with the winner of each meeting in Sunday’s championship game.
The Niagara-Scarborough contest is available live at 4 p.m. ET on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem, with a replay airing Saturday at 2 p.m. ET on the CBC-TV network. The Hamilton-Ottawa game is live across all four platforms tomorrow at 7 p.m. ET, while the final will also be made available live across all platforms on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET.
The 2022 season — the CEBL’s fourth — marked a step in a new direction for the league. It grew from seven teams to 10 with the additions of Scarborough, Newfoundland and Montreal. It welcomed more international talent than ever before, adding a designated spot for a non-Canadian, non-American player on each roster. It saw three-time reigning MVP Xavier Moon graduate to the NBA. It even saw rapper J.Cole play five games with the Shooting Stars, while Canadian music star Drake wore league merchandise in a music video.
Now, the championship trophy is headed east after the Saskatchewan Rattlers won the inaugural title in 2019 and Moon’s Stingers claimed each of the next two.
WATCH | CBC Sports’ Vivek Jacob previews CEBL championship weekend:
Here’s everything else you should know for championship weekend:
The Honey Badgers and River Lions should be favourites. The only two of the league’s “original six” teams from 2019 that are still alive finished first and second in the regular-season standings. But with their history comes baggage: each team has been to the final and lost, and each has been eliminated in its other two seasons by a total of three points. And so there would be plenty at stake if Hamilton and Niagara were to meet in the 2022 final. The Honey Badgers led the league with a 14-6 record on the strength of their depth, led by sixth man of the year Koby McEwen, as well as coach of the year Ryan Schmidt, who recently accepted a head coaching job in the British…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CBC | NBA News…