The 2025/26 National Basketball Association (NBA) play-offs began last weekend, but the dizzying list of sporting news over the last seven days has everyone’s head on a swivel. Along with the NBA play-offs, the top teams from the National Hockey League (NHL) started their play-offs also, but the cornucopia of sporting highlights over the past week has spanned the globe and included an array of sporting disciplines.

In track and field, World Athletics reportedly denied the switch of allegiance of four Jamaican athletes to Turkey — Roje Stona, Rajindra Xampbell, Wayne Pinnock, and Jaydon Hibbert — citing a clamp down of “the commercialization of national allegiance”. The possible consequences of this ruling are still being played out and could have far-reaching effects. Then on Sunday, April 19, five-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time Olympic double sprint champion Elaine Thompson Herah posted a season-best 10.92 seconds in the women’s 100m at Velocity Fest 19 at the National Stadium, while Bryan Levell equalled the second-fastest men’s 100m time of 2026, with a scorching 9.90 meet record. Thompson Herah’s time is the third fastest of the year, behind the British Virgin Islands’ Adaejah Hodges (10.77) and Jamaican Shenese Walker (10.80), set the previous day at a meet in Florida.

Still on the track, so to speak, for the second year running, China hosted a half marathon last Sunday featuring both humans and robots. The winning robot this year, “Lightning”, developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor, outpaced last year’s by almost two hours, but the attention-grabber is that the winning robot blazed through the 13-mile race in just 50 minutes and 26 seconds, besting all 12,000 human competitors and even surpassing the human world record, set by Ugandan long-distance runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon last month, by nearly seven minutes. Maybe the next frontier is the “Robot Olympics”? Regarding marathons, Kenya’s John Korir and Sharon Lokedi successfully defended their crowns by repeating as men’s and women’s champions in the 2026 Boston Marathon on Monday, with Korir having the fastest finish in the race’s 130-year history, winning in two hours, one minute, 52 seconds. It was 70 seconds faster than Geoffrey Mutai’s record time in 2011, and the fifth-fastest marathon of all time.

Football fans were not left out of the drama, on Sunday there was a top-of-the-league clash between Manchester City and Arsenal, and the result blew the Premier League title race wide open, after a thrilling 2-1 win by the ‘Blues of Manchester’. JustBet has Manchester City favoured to win the league, but with five matches each left to play, the title can go either way. Also on Sunday, Bayern Munich recovered from a goal down to get past VfB Stuttgart 4-2 and clinch their 35th Bundesliga title, with four games left to play. Following Borussia Dortmund’s defeat at Hoffenheim the previous day, Bayern needed only a point against Stuttgart to be crowned German champions.

And after that whirlwind tour of the major sports highlights, the focus is now turned to the NBA play-offs. It is said that a play-off series truly begins when a game is won on the opponents’ home court. If that is true, then only the series between the Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic got started in Game 1, as all other home teams had fairly convincing wins, particularly the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder and the Boston Celtics, who beat down the Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers, respectively, by 35 and 32 points.

The home loss by the Pistons took them to an NBA record 11 straight home play-off losses, a skid that dates back to May 2008, spanning 18 years without a home postseason victory. Game 2 for the Pistons on Wednesday night saw a bit of redemption, with a dominating win to break the ominous spell. As for the Thunder, they achieved a rare feat in Game 1 by posting back-to-back 30 plus point wins in a playoff opener, becoming only the second team in NBA history to do so since the 1986/87 Los Angeles Lakers.

The three Most Valuable Player (MVP) finalists for this season showed up for their Game 1 encounters, especially Nikola Jokic (25 points, 13 rebounds, 11 assists) and Victor “Wemby” Wembanyama (35 points, 5 rebounds, 2 blocks), while the reigning MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (25 points, 7 assists, 4 rebounds), was very instrumental in his team’s win. The 35 points by Wemby set a franchise record for a playoff debut, bettering Tim Duncan’s 32 points in 1998, and Jokic’s triple double put him at 21 in NBA play-offs, edging him closer to LeBron James (28). Magic Johnson holds the all-time NBA record for most career playoff triple-doubles with 30.

Monday saw the start of the second game in each series, with all home teams leading, with the exception of Detroit, but that would not last very long. By Wednesday night, when the second game in each series ended, the tables were turned. Only the Cleveland Cavaliers, Lakers, and Oklahoma City came away with a 2-0 lead, as all the five other series had wins for the away team. Sadly, the San Antonio Spurs, who looked like the most likely threat to the Thunder’s throne, not only lost Game 2, but they also lost Wemby, the newly minted Defensive Player of the Year, who is the first-ever unanimously voted as such. He was hurt about three minutes into the second quarter on Tuesday, after falling face-first on the floor and sustained a concussion. The MVP candidate’s head bounced on the floor several times during the mishap, and he remained on the floor, motionless, for several seconds before getting up, then ran to the locker room. The Spurs were 12-6 without Wemby during the regular season and their play-off hopes would be in serious jeopardy if he is not able to get past this…soon.

The play-offs continue this weekend and there are games every day. Predicting the result for each series is going to be tricky as each possession can be the one that makes the difference, and any player can produce fireworks like VJ Edgecombe did for the Philadelphia 76ers in their Game 2 win over the Boston Celtics on Monday night — 30 points, 10 rebounds, two assists, two steals. He became the first rookie guard since Magic Johnson in 1980 to record at least 30 points and 10 rebounds in a play-off game. Edgecombe also became the youngest player to do so, beating out Magic Johnson by 11 days. These playoffs are high drama, and you never know what might happen next as the only teams that really appear outmatched are the Toronto Raptors, Houston Rockets, and Phoenix Suns.

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NBA 2025/26 Champion Team Odds Oklahoma City Thunder 1.80

Boston Celtics 7.50

San Antonio Spurs 8.00 Cleveland Cavaliers 13.00 Denver Nuggets 13.00

New York Knicks 25.00 Detroit Pistons 25.00 Los Angeles Lakers 30.00 Minnesota Timberwolves 90.00 Philadelphia 76ers 150.00

*Only Top 10 odds shown (see website for full list)

Note: Odds are subject to change