LAS VEGAS -- The first order of business for USA Basketball on Friday night was thanking its fans, so Donovan Mitchell grabbed a microphone to deliver the pregame message.

He got right to the point.

"We look forward to going out to China, representing the USA, and winning the gold," Mitchell said.

And now, the first step of getting ready for an unprecedented third straight Basketball World Cup title is complete.

USA Basketball held its Blue-White game to wrap up a week of training camp in Las Vegas, and the Blue squad -- the national team candidates, for the most part -- had little trouble in beating the White squad composed mostly of young up-and-coming NBA players, 97-78. Jayson Tatum scored 17 points for the Blue, which got 14 from Kemba Walker and 12 from De'Aaron Fox.

Everybody who was supposed to play did, new U.S. coach Gregg Popovich got to tinker with a lot of combinations and no one got seriously hurt -- thankfully, there was no reprise of the scene like the one five years ago during a USA Basketball exhibition game in Las Vegas, when Paul George suffered a horrible lower leg injury.

In short, that made the night a success. Everything else was just details.

Derrick White -- who plays for Popovich in San Antonio, and was getting coached up by him a bit during Friday's scrimmage as well -- finished with 12 points and seven assists for the White team, coached by Jeff Van Gundy. John Collins also scored 12 and Jonathan Isaac added 11 points for the White squad.

Popovich and his staff will have to move quickly over the next few days to figure out which 12 players to take to China for the World Cup, which starts Aug. 31. The Americans open group play on Sept. 1 against the Czech Republic in Shanghai.

Popovich started Mitchell, Walker, Jaylen Brown, Myles Turner and Khris Middleton. The next five into the game was Tatum, Fox, Brook Lopez, Joe Harris and Kyle Kuzma.

From there, Harrison Barnes, P.J. Tucker, Mason Plumlee, Bam Adebayo and Thaddeus Young eventually got worked in.

The Blue led by as many as 30.

LOWRY UPDATE

Kyle Lowry of the NBA champion Toronto Raptors told NBA TV during the game that he will meet with his surgeon, Dr. Michelle Carlson from the Hospital for Special Surgery, on Monday -- at which time he may know when he can return to action. Lowry, who had surgery last month to repair a torn tendon in his left thumb, is hoping to participate in national team workouts next week. "Hopefully she gives me some good news," Lowry said. He's been in a splint for about four weeks.

K COURTSIDE

Former USA Basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski and his wife Mickie were courtside. Krzyzewski led the Americans to an 88-1 record and five gold medals -- three Olympics, two World Cups -- in his 12 years at the helm before being succeeded by Popovich for this Olympic cycle. Also in attendance was Vegas regular Floyd Mayweather, a big basketball fan, along with U.S. Olympic basketball gold medalists Sam Perkins and Chris Mullin.

UP NEXT

The Americans will reconvene at the Los Angeles Lakers' practice facility in El Segundo, California on Tuesday to resume camp. The U.S. will play Spain in an exhibition at Anaheim, California on Aug. 16 before flying to Australia the next day.

NEW YORK -- Todd Frazier clobbered a tying, three-run homer and Michael Conforto then lined a game-ending single as the New York Mets stormed back in the ninth inning to stun the Washington Nationals 7-6 Friday night for their seventh straight win.

Trailing 6-3, the Mets rallied against closer Sean Doolittle to win for the 14th time in 15 games at pulsating Citi Field -- New York had been 0-44 this year when trailing after eight innings. The Nationals hold the top spot in the NL wild-card race, the Mets are 1 1/2 games behind them.

In what was once considered a lost season for each club at different points, a playoff atmosphere was palpable both in the stands and between the lines. It was arguably the biggest tilt at the ballpark since the 2016 NL wild-card game, with a near-sellout crowd seemingly hanging on every pitch.

Mets rookie Pete Alonso homered in his fourth straight game, hitting his 38th of the season off Stephen Strasburg. J.D. Davis also connected.

Davis and Wilson Ramos led off the ninth with hits off Doolittle and Frazier sent a drive into the second deck in left, sending the fans into a frenzy.

Newly signed Joe Panik followed with a single and was wiped out by a fielder's choice. After Jeff McNeil was retired, Amed Rosario singled. Conforto followed with a hard liner over the head of right fielder Adam Eaton, scoring Juan Lagares for the victory with his first career walk-off hit.

His teammates ripped the shirt off his back in the ensuing celebrations.

Doolittle (6-4) blew his fifth save in 30 chances. He has allowed 19 runs this season -- 10 against the Mets, allowing 16 hits and two walks in just six innings over seven games.

Acquired from Toronto for two minor leaguers on July 28, Mets starter Marcus Stroman struck out a season-high nine in his first home game since the trade. The All-Star righty from Long Island exited to a standing ovation after walked Trea Turner to begin the seventh.

Stephen Strasburg struck out six in seven innings, setting a Nationals/Expos franchise record with 1,625.

Washington temporarily silenced the raucous 39,602 in attendance when Anthony Rendon hit an RBI triple in the fourth. Juan Soto homered two pitches later, giving the Nationals a 3-0 lead with his 22nd homer.

Alonso launched a two-run homer in the bottom half and Davis followed with a drive that made it 3-all. Alonso bounded out of the dugout while Davis was rounding the bases and waved his hands in the air to encourage the fans to cheer even louder.

Rendon hit a two-run homer, his 25th, in the seventh for a 5-3 lead. Reliever Luis Avilan (3-0) allowed the speedy Turner to race home and score on a wild pitch in the top of the ninth for a three-run lead.

Signed by the Mets on Friday afternoon after his release from San Francisco, the Yonkers-born Panik manned second base and was 1 for 4.

TRAINER'S ROOM

Nationals: RHP Max Scherzer (mild strain in upper back) threw on flat ground and might throw a bullpen session Saturday, according to manager Dave Martinez. ... 1B Ryan Zimmerman (plantar fascitis in right foot) has started running at about 75-80 percent. He has continued to hit and field ground ball but has yet to run the bases.

Mets: 2B Robinson Cano (torn left hamstring) hopes to play again at this season but noted that there is no timetable for his return, a sentiment echoed by manager Mickey Callaway and general manager Brodie Van Wagenen. ... OF Brandon Nimmo (bulging cervical disc) is continuing baseball activities and "ramping up," per Callaway. There is no date set for Nimmo to begin a rehab assignment.

UP NEXT

Nationals: LHP Patrick Corbin (9-5, 3.43 ERA) will make his fifth start against New York this season. He is 1-1 with a 3.60 ERA in those contests.

Mets: RHP Noah Syndergaard (8-5, 3.96 ERA) is 2-1 with a 1.78 ERA in five starts since the All-Star break, striking out 39 over 35 1/3 innings. He has not allowed a homer since July 6.

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP-Sports

LEXINGTON, Ohio – Close battles at the top of the fields for the Trans-Am Series presented by Pirelli highlighted qualifying for the FirstEnergy Muscle Car Challenge and the FirstEnergy Mid-Ohio 100 at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on Friday.

With Trans-Am season reaching the midway point of the season with an active schedule of iconic tracks, the championship races are beginning to emerge as drivers weigh risk and reward at every corner.  A hallmark of the TA2 powered by AEM has always been close, hard, exciting action. Friday’s qualifying session was no exception, with the top spots changing on every lap late in the session.

When the dust settled, Rafa Matos had placed his No. 88 3-Dimensional Services Group Chevrolet Camaro on the pole position of the 30-car field for the second time this season, with a lap of 1:24.938 seconds. Matos will have no relief at the start of the 45-lap, 100-mile race on Saturday, as championship-leader Marc Miller and his No. 40 Prefix/Stevens-Miller Racing Dodge Challenger will start alongside, a mere .074 seconds back.

NASCAR Xfinity Series regular Ty Gibbs held the top spot for one lap midway through the session, as did Detroit race winner Misha Goikhberg and two-time winner Thomas Merrill.

The 20-minute session was abbreviated due to an incident for No. 29 Mitch Marvosh, who found the wall in turn five just as the field completed two qualifying laps. By the time the green flag flew again, only 10 minutes remained – albeit 10 minutes of wild, nonstop action at the top of the speed charts.

Scott Lagasse Jr. will start third, with Goikhberg fourth, Merrill fifth and NASCAR Xfinity regulars Justin Haley and Gibbs sixth and seventh.

“There are 30 plus cars here so to get a clean lap is a big struggle,” said Matos. “We focused on getting a clean lap, but the red flag messed up our plans. But we were able to get into a groove and find that clean lap and get the pole position. Hopefully it will be like last year and we can win the race! The 3-Dimensional Services crew has worked so hard on the car to ensure that it’s reliable and working well. But we’re playing catch-up a bit here, we’ve got some points to recover to Marc, he’s our benchmark. We’ll keep plugging away.”

The TA class shot out of the gate with current championship leader Chris Dyson exchanging the top spot with last year’s Mid-Ohio winner – and second place in the title chase – Ernie Francis Jr. But the session was stopped before the midway point when third-place runner Doug Peterson landed his No. 3 Elavon/Burtin Racing Chevrolet Camaro into the sand in turn four. The green came back out with mere minutes remaining in the session as Dyson and Francis re-engaged the fight.

“It was pretty stressful out there,” said Francis. “Chris Dyson was really close behind and putting down some pretty good laps. It was a close battle and we only got him by 5/100s of a second. It was fun and awesome, and I think the race tomorrow is going to be great. We’ve always been good here at Mid-Ohio: the track is very technical, and you don’t need a whole lot of horsepower to really get around this place, and that helped us out there. We’re going for the win tomorrow and maximizes our points so we can get on the road to this championship.”

When the checkered flag flew, Francis Jr. had placed his No. 98 Frameless Shower Doors Ford Mustang into the pole position for the second time this season with a lap at 1:22.287-seconds, a mere .054 seconds ahead of Dyson and his No. 20 Thetford/Norcold Ford Mustang.

The SGT and GT qualifying session conducted its 20-minute session completely under green but with a similar duel for the pole, as Mark Boden and Ken Thwaits swapped the position throughout the session. In the end, it was Boden taking his third pole of the season with a quick lap time of 1:26.560-seconds.

“The Fall Line Porsche has been fast all weekend,” said Boden. “We made a few adjustments for qualifying and I was able to lay down a good lap on the third lap. It was happily uneventful! It should be a fun race; we’ve got four or five fast cars that will be up front.”

Ohio native Larry Funk in the No. 64 Business Advisory Services Ford Mustang is the single entry in the GT class and set his fastest time on Lap 5 with a time of 1:33.588-seconds.

LIVE from the Knoxville Nationals
Presented by Mobil 1 Truck & SUV Oil
Pit Karts & Quick Fixes

Anytime a driver has an issue at the very fast half-mile Knoxville Raceway, the pit crews have to be ready to help fix the car and fix it in a hurry! To aid in this process, each team has their pit karts equipped with all the items they might need and they are strategically placed for quick access. With more on this topic, Brian Brown’s crew chief, Chad Morgan, gave us some good info.

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For all the talk of financial might, this summer's transfer window saw the Premier League's collective net spend fall by more than 25%.

Whether you use Transfermarkt figures (showing a drop of 24%, from €1.019 billion to €774 million) or the numbers put out by Deloitte (a fall of 26.4%, from £850m to £625m), it's pretty clear that 2019 saw a sharp U-turn in spending compared to years past. In fact, Deloitte says this was the lowest net spend since the summer of 2015, which is rather remarkable when you consider that Premier League revenues have risen by 22% since then. And bear in mind, the window has closed in England but remains open elsewhere, which means that the net spend number can only go one way: down.

- Premier League fixtures 2019-20 in full
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Even more remarkable is net spending by the Premier League's wealthiest clubs: Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester United. They have traditionally driven spending, as you would expect, yet collectively, in the summer of 2019, their net spend is around £241m. Because that number can only go down in the next three weeks, don't be surprised if we end up with the lowest Big Six net spend since the summer of 2012.

To give you an idea about how long ago that was, Sir Alex Ferguson was managing Manchester United and signing Robin Van Persie to win one last title before retirement.

Obviously Chelsea's transfer embargo affects the total and coupled with Liverpool's decision to effectively sit out this window, it accounts for a big chunk -- though by no means all -- of the shortfall relative to last season. And we're still some £260m down on the summer of 2016.

Two other factors come into play that would have suggested greater net spending from the Premier League big boys. One is that the Premier League supplied both Champions League and Europa League finalists last season. That translates into a prize money windfall, as well as (usually) greater commercial and sponsorship revenue down the road.

The other is that this summer, more than any other in recent memory, has seen superstars, mostly at continental clubs, finding themselves on the market. Some have effectively had "for sale" signs around their neck (Gareth Bale, Mauro Icardi, Paulo Dybala), others had release clauses (Antoine Griezmann) and others still, you suspect, would have been available at the right price (Neymar, Matthijs De Ligt, Philippe Coutinho). In the past, you would have expected interest from English clubs, but not this summer. For a variety of reasons, and much to the frustration of agents and intermediaries, they tended to stay put, whether it was onerous contracts, excessive commissions or, in some cases, a feeling that a big name might disrupt harmony and chemistry.

So why did the big English clubs suddenly stop spending? And is this a sign of things to come?

There are, broadly, two answers. One is, for lack of a better word, circumstantial. Clubs tend to spend big when they are underachieving, need to rebuild and/or when they have new managers (who have often been given assurances of transfer budgets). That's not the case for Manchester City, Liverpool or Tottenham (though Spurs did spend relatively big, which was understandable after doing nothing last year). With Chelsea on the sidelines, that leaves Manchester United and Arsenal. The former were rather conservative by their standards, possibly because they're still not clear on whether Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is a long-term solution. The latter had one of their biggest windows ever but still are hamstrung by a high wage bill and mega-contracts for players such as Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Mesut Ozil, who eat up a vast chunk of the wage bill.

And that brings us to wages and revenues, the macro trend. Wages and transfer fees of course come out of the same pot. In the Premier League, salaries have grown faster than revenue over the past three seasons and after years of vertical growth, you suspect owners are starting to think the Gold Rush is ending. This may explain why, as a proportion of revenue, this summer's net spend of 12% (and, remember, that figure will only go down) is the lowest since 2012.

The value of the Premier League's most recent domestic TV deal fell by 8%, from 2016-2019 to 2019-2022, despite a 19% increase in the number of games being sold for broadcast. And while revenue from overseas rights is up 30%, more than making up for the shortfall, that's less than the Premier League had predicted five years ago. Piracy and illegal streaming are a big factor here, as is the fact that, in many markets, there is a dominant broadcaster exercising a monopoly.

There are only so many ways you can grow revenue and with gate receipts pretty much maxed out -- except for Tottenham, who will benefit from their new ground -- if media rights income goes flat, that leaves only commercial revenue as a potential growth driver. And that's already a pretty saturated market. It's not a reason to despair -- it remains head and shoulders above other domestic leagues -- but there is a sense that if you want to be profitable you need to keep an eye on costs. And this is especially true given the nature of Premier League owners, particularly at the Big Six.

For better or worse, Arsenal, Liverpool, United and Tottenham are owned by businessmen who expect to make money in the long term (and often the short term too). Chelsea and Manchester City, after years of free spending and "vanity ownership," are in the same boat too. Which, incidentally, is why all these clubs back Financial Fair Play: It keeps the costs down and the profits up.

Financially, this may be remembered as the transfer window when England's Big Six were reasonable, level-headed and far-sighted. Football-wise, you wonder if maybe it won't be remembered as a missed opportunity to hoover up even more talent and consolidate their power at the top even further.

TORONTO -- Apparently even silence can have its consequences.

New York Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner learned that the hard way Friday night when he was ejected from inside the first-base side dugout in the fourth inning of the Yankees' game at Rogers Centre against the Toronto Blue Jays.

At the exact moment Gardner was tossed by home-plate umpire Chris Segal, cameras showed the center fielder sitting quietly on the Yankees' bench with a bat in one hand and the other holding a water bottle.

In the foreground, Yankees manager Aaron Boone could be seen voicing his displeasure at a strike call Segal made seconds before the tossing. At the same time, outfielder Cameron Maybin, sitting near Gardner on the bench, shouted a couple of words to Segal, too.

Gardner's ejection came in the middle of an at-bat by Yankees outfielder Mike Tauchman. After ruling a close, low pitch a strike, Segal seemed to show that he had had enough of the chirping from the New York dugout.

Immediately after calling the first-pitch strike, Segal took his mask off, glanced quickly in the Yankees' direction and motioned forcefully with his right arm as he shouted: "Dugout. Gone."

Boone hopped off his first-step perch in response, with his hands out, trying to figure out who exactly had been ejected. Segal told him it was Gardner. Boone began to argue the ejection, telling the umpire that it was he who had been shouting at him, and not the player.

Time went by before Gardner realized he had been kicked out of the game. About 45 seconds after the ejection, a Yankees assistant sitting next to him on the bench told Gardner he was the one who had been booted. In disbelief, Gardner jogged out onto the field to find out the news for himself.

"I didn't say anything," Gardner could be seen saying to umpires. "I didn't say a word. Not one word. Not one word."

Very quickly, his plea for innocence turned into anger. Upset over the ejection, Gardner started hopping in the direction of Segal and crew chief and first-base umpire Dan Iassogna as Boone and Tauchman tried holding him back. Gardner slipped their grasps a couple of times but never got particularly close to the umps.

Eventually, Gardner was walked back toward the Yankees' dugout by Boone and Iassogna before collecting his batting gloves and a bat and walking down the steps that led back toward the New York clubhouse.

It was the fifth career ejection for the 35-year-old Gardner, and his first since Sept. 9, 2018.

While Gardner might have been silent during the at-bat that led to his ejection, moments prior he could be seen making a racket in the dugout as the Yankees bemoaned a called third strike on outfielder Maybin, the hitter who batted one spot before Tauchman.

As Maybin took a pitch that was just below the strike zone tracker used by game broadcasters YES Network and Sportsnet Canada, Gardner was in the dugout jamming his bat into its roof. At the same time, Boone and bench coach Josh Bard were yelling at the umpire about the call.

Gardner was sitting in about the same spot in the dugout during both close calls.

Following his ejection, Gardner was replaced in the batting order by Aaron Judge, who had been getting the day off. Judge checked in in right field, forcing Maybin, who started in right, to move to left field, and Tauchman to move from left field to center, where Gardner had been playing.

Tauchman's fourth-inning at-bat ended with a different set of fireworks. He homered to right to put the Yankees on the scoreboard for the first time in the game. It was his 12th homer of the season.

Naomi Osaka will return to the top of the women's tennis world rankings after Karolina Pliskova lost in the quarter-finals of the Rogers Cup in Toronto.

Pliskova, number one for eight weeks in 2017, needed to win the tournament to regain top spot but lost 6-0 2-6 6-4 to Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu.

Ashleigh Barty replaced Osaka at the top in June, but the Australian's run ended with her loss in round two.

Osaka plays 23-time Grand Slam singles champion Serena Williams on Saturday.

Their quarter-final will be their first meeting since last year's US Open final when Williams argued with the umpire late in the match and Osaka was awarded a game as a penalty on her way to winning a first Grand Slam title.

Andreescu, 19, is currently 22nd in the rankings and will play Sofia Kenin in the semi-finals after the American defeated Ukrainian sixth seed Elina Svitolina 7-6 (7-2) 6-4.