{"id":217813,"date":"2024-06-11T07:39:29","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T11:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/?p=217813"},"modified":"2024-06-12T15:16:04","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T19:16:04","slug":"may-the-boston-celtics-win-their-18th-nba-championship-dominican-fans-behind-al-horford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/2024\/06\/11\/may-the-boston-celtics-win-their-18th-nba-championship-dominican-fans-behind-al-horford\/","title":{"rendered":"May the Boston Celtics win their 18th NBA championship; Dominican fans behind Al Horford"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img src=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo-1024x569.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-217877\" width=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo-1024x569.png 1024w, https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo-300x167.png 300w, https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo-768x427.png 768w, https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo-1536x854.png 1536w, https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Boston-Celtics-logo.png 1982w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The Boston Celtics has already won its first two games and needs two more wins in the best-of-seven NBA Finals. Dominican Al Horford is on that team. A former player on the Dominican national basketball team, in recent years he has declined competing for the Dominican national basketball team to concentrate on winning the NBA title. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Game three and four of the NBA finals are scheduled for Wednesday, 12 June and Friday, 14 June 2024 in Dallas, Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If Boston wins the NBA championship, then Al Horford could set sight next on being an Olympian with the Dominican national team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chris Duarte, who plays for the Sacramento Kings in the NBA Western Conference, has said he is available to join the team. Minnesota Timberwolves\u2019s start player, Karl Anthony Towns has had a stellar role on the Dominican national team in the past and is most likely to be available. Karl Anthony Towns and Al Horford played at the same time on the Dominican team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Duarte showed up for the mini-camp with players Andr\u00e9s Feliz and Jean Montero to show his commitment to the team. Duarte has played before for the team. The Dominican national team is aiming to qualify for the Olympic Games during the pre-qualifying tournament to be held in Greece from 2 to 7 July 2024 (Dominican time).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Likewise, Nestor (Che) Garc\u00eda recently announced his return to coaching the team after a stint with a Middle East team. He has to select the members of the team that will play in the qualifier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are four remaining places in the 12-team Paris 2024 Olympic field and these are reserved for the winners of the upcoming FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Twenty-four teams in six-team groups are participating in four Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, that are taking place from 2-7 July 2024. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The highest-placed team for each region of Africa, Americas, and Asia\/Oceania (three teams), after the&nbsp;eight teams directly qualified, will be selected before the 16 highest-placed teams from the&nbsp;FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023&nbsp;and&nbsp;five teams through the pre-qualifying tournaments. The winner of each tournament will qualify for the Men\u2019s Olympic Basketball Tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The DR (FIBA ranked 19th) is playing Greece (14th), Slovenia (11th), Croatia (30th), New Zealand (21st) and Egypt (ranked 20th) for a slot. The DR will play Egypt on 2 July and Greece on 3 July in Piraeus, Greece in the team&#8217;s last chance at getting into the 2024 Olympics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The four winners of the last qualifier tournaments will reach the Paris Olympics, where they\u2019ll join France, World Cup champion Germany, Serbia, Canada, the US, Australia, Japan and South Sudan in the Olympic field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next Olympic Games will take place in Paris in 2024 from July 26 to August 11.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more:<br><a previewlistener=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/eldia.com.do\/duarte-se-declara-listo-ir-con-rd-al-preolimpico\/\">El Dia <\/a><br><a previewlistener=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/forums\/threads\/hopes-high-boston-wins-so-maybe-al-horford-will-help-dr-qualify-for-the-olympics.410963\/\">DR1 News <\/a><br><a previewlistener=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/forums\/threads\/che-garc%C3%ADa-returns-to-coach-national-basketball-team.410808\/\">DR1 News <\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/forums\/threads\/boston-wins-game-2-in-nba-finals.411013\/\">DR1 News <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/olympics.com\/en\/news\/fiba-men-basketball-world-ranking-complete-list\">FIBA World Cup standings<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11 June 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Boston Celtics has already won its first two games and needs two more wins in the best-of-seven NBA Finals. Dominican Al Horford is on that team. A former player on the Dominican national basketball team, in recent years he has declined competing for the Dominican national basketball team to concentrate on winning the NBA &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/2024\/06\/11\/may-the-boston-celtics-win-their-18th-nba-championship-dominican-fans-behind-al-horford\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[330,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217813"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218016,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217813\/revisions\/218016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dr1.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}