The NBA has announced a five-year extension of its deal with Tencent, the league's digital partner in China.

Tencent is the NBA's largest digital partner outside the United States and has been connected with the league since 2009. The current deal, which now runs through the 2024-25 season, includes live NBA games, other league-related programming and interactive fan experiences.

"Tencent's commitment to NBA basketball in China is unparalleled," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. "The enormous reach and popularity of Tencent's platforms have been a driving force behind the growth of basketball in China, and we look forward to deepening our connection with NBA fans across the country through this expanded partnership."

Tencent, a strategic partner of ESPN for the NBA and several other sports, had 490 million fans watch NBA programming on its platform last season, which is nearly triple the number from just four years ago.

POCONO, Pa. – Denny Hamlin saved enough fuel to hold off his teammate Erik Jones and make it to the checkered flag on Sunday, winning the Gander RV 400 at Pocono Raceway in a thrilling finish.

Hamlin, who never led at the 2.5-mile Tricky Triangle until the start of the final stage, pitted for the final time with 45 laps left – after a caution for Ryan Preece’s crashed car in turn one – and turned the remaining distance into a perfect blend of economy running and power passes.

Kyle Busch, who led 56 laps on the day and won the first stage, stayed out when Hamlin pitted on lap 116 and held it until he had to make his final trip down pit road with 27 to go – stuck on an alternate strategy compared to the rest of his teammates.

Busch’s pit stop allowed Jones to assume command, which Jones held over Martin Truex Jr. and Hamlin until the latter decided to hit the button and take off. He quickly disposed of Truex for second and with 17 to go, Hamlin soared around Jones to take a lead he wouldn’t relinquish again.

That didn’t mean there weren’t nerves, however, as the stopped car of Josh Bilicki brought out a late yellow flag and a crash on the ensuing restart with four laps left – involving Kurt Busch and Michael McDowell – led to a nerve-racking overtime finish and concerns about fuel for all of the frontrunners.

Hamlin, however, stayed the course. He nailed the final restart and held off every advance that Jones tried to make over the final five miles, reaching the checkered flag in front by .341 seconds.

As he climbed out of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota on the frontstretch, Hamlin let out a visible sigh of relief.

“I was really worried … really worried,” said Hamlin of his concerns about having enough fuel to make it to the finish. “We just did a great job with the car. Once we lost track position there to the 19 (Truex) and the 20 (Jones), I thought it was over because we wouldn’t able to pass them. But we found a way.”

As much as he was trying to conserve precious ounces of gasoline behind his teammates, Hamlin knew inside of 20 to go that he had to make his move and hope for the best once he was out in front.

“I was in fuel save mode and still trying to get around those guys,” explained Hamlin of his mentality. “Once I got around them, then I really went into (fuel) conservation mode instead of stretching the lead out there. I knew the 20 (Jones) … he passed me on pit lane somehow. We actually dropped the car after that pit stop and packed it full of fuel with the car level, just to get a little bit more gas.

“I knew I was racing the 19 (Truex), if no caution came out, but I got the opportunity on the outside of turn three (to pass Jones for the lead) and we got it done from there. It feels really good.”

Sunday’s performance was Hamlin’s 34th career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win, his third of the season and his fifth at Pocono, snapping a nine-year drought at the unique, three-turn facility.

His last win at Pocono prior to this weekend came in 2010.

“We’re on a roll this year and we’re running our best right now,” noted Hamlin. “There’s no doubt about it. We’re just going to keep plugging along. That’s all I can say. We’re doing the best we can and today is proof that we’re in this fight (for the championship).”

Jones’ runner-up finish was his best effort since winning at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway last July and marks his third-straight run of third or better, with Truex next in line and completing a sweep of the podium for Joe Gibbs Racing.

William Byron crossed fourth and Kyle Larson finished fifth. Polesitter Kevin Harvick, who won stage two and led a race-high 63 laps, was the highest-finishing Ford driver in sixth.

Daniel Hemric and Brad Keselowski followed Harvick home, with Busch rallying back to ninth after his pit stop under green due to differing pit strategy. Ryan Blaney capped off the top 10.

KNOXVILLE, Iowa – Popular sprint car and midget racer Tanner Thorson, who rallied back from a highway accident in March that put him out of a race car for three months, will tackle the biggest stage in all of sprint car racing in two weeks’ time.

Thorson announced Sunday evening that he has joined forces with CJB Motorsports and will make his debut appearance at the NOS Energy Drink Knoxville Nationals with the team Aug. 7-10.

The Minden, Nev., native will drive the No. 88 entry for CJB, with Maestro’s Classic, Bn3th, Yuba-Sutter Aviation, Walker Performance Filtration and Factory Kahne serving as major sponsors of the effort.

He’ll be racing as a teammate to World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series regular Shane Stewart, who drives CJB’s primary No. 5 entry, at both the Capitani Classic and the Knoxville Nationals.

“This is something that we started working on a little while ago,” Thorson said. “I’ve been in contact with Barry (Jackson, CJB’s team manager) before and my crew chief out in California – Lee Lindgren – is pretty close with him and they seem to talk quite a bit. Barry’s stuff and CJB’s equipment … I feel like they’re one of the best out there and they’re a team that I wanted to be associated with somehow.

“We just started talking, and this deal came about,” Thorson added. “I’m really excited about it.”

Thorson first made a name for himself in midget racing, winning the 2016 USAC National Midget Series championship with Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports, but he’s focused more and more on his skills in winged sprint car racing over the past two years.

Most recently, Thorson drove for the Clyde Lamar-owned Tri-C Motorsports sprint car operation in California and on the West Coast, but Knoxville will mark his first race back in a winged sprint car since his highway accident in the spring.

“I’d like to say I’m a winged racer now,” noted Thorson. “Obviously, my history is in midget racing and that’s what I built my name up with, but I love winged sprint cars and the challenge they present. I feel like I’m a student of the sport, as well, and this is something that I feel that I’m ready for.

“I have no laps around Knoxville, but I feel that with everyone at CJB around me, it’ll be a bit easier.”

For more on Thorson’s upcoming drive at the Knoxville Nationals, subscribe to our sister site – www.sprintcarandmidget.com – to read an exclusive feature story detailing the announcement.

Click here to read Sprint Car & Midget’s feature on Thorson’s Knoxville Nationals debut.

At the lowest moment of a tumultuous first six months, mentoring a weakened Australian team through the troubles waters that followed the Newlands scandal, Justin Langer's wife Sue broke down in tears at the toll the job was taking on their family.

Over breakfast at the team hotel in Sydney, the Langer family was about to be separated again as the coach went to travel to the SCG for another day of being ground down by Virat Kohli's relentless Indian touring team, and Sue and their four daughters travelled home to Perth after being together for Christmas and New Year.

Still wrestling with the scrutiny of the job, a world away from what he experienced as coach of Western Australia and the Perth Scorchers for the preceding six years, Langer was confronted by a sight he could not recall in 23 years of marriage.

"We got to day three or day four of the last Test in Sydney and my family had been over for Boxing Day and for the SCG Test match," Langer told ESPNcricinfo. "I've known my wife since I was 14 years old, so she knows everything about me, and they were leaving. I had to get in the team car to go to the ground at 8.15am. They were leaving that day, and we were at breakfast at 8 o'clock and my wife started crying at the breakfast table in front of my daughters.

"I said what's going on, I had never see my wife cry - we know everything about each other. She said 'I just don't like what's happening here, I don't like what it's doing to you, I don't like what it's doing to us, people are so mean, what people are saying about you and the team and Australian cricket'. That was a real eye opener for me, that it was affecting my family."

A few days later, ahead of the ODI series that began Australia's run to the World Cup, Langer was confronted by some awkward questions about how Glenn Maxwell had been wrongly led to believe he would be playing long-from cricket for Australia the year before. The press conference exchange did not play well on camera, emphasising to Langer much of what Sue had told him. He now regards the period to be as critical to his coaching career as being dropped from the Test team in 1993 and 2001 was for his playing days.

"I got, I'd say two out of 10 grumpy with the journalist in Sydney, and I was also amazed at the backlash of that as well," Langer said. "I apologised straight after the event, that's me, but I realised then and the way people said 'he's getting angry, he's losing it'. I didn't feel that but my wife was getting upset, that was a real moment. I've said privately and publicly a few times if I look back to my career, 1993 when I got dropped for the first time, really tough time, but pivotal in my life.

"I got dropped in 2001, a really, really tough time, but pivotal in my life. I look to January 2019 in Sydney, really tough time, but I've got no doubt it'll be a massive part of my evolution as a coach. I got a really nice email from Malcolm Conn [former journalist and now New South Wales communications manager], just after that press conference. He'd obviously watched me grow from a young player to a player who retired however many years later and he gave me some really good advice. He knows what it was, but when I'm getting that sort of feedback from my wife, that sort of feedback from the team, I knew I had to find ways to get better and hopefully I've done that."

Langer has subsequently been steadily surrounded with more and more trusted allies to help him in the job while also balancing him personally. Ricky Ponting was recruited as an assistant coach for the World Cup, Steve Waugh as a mentor for the early part of the Ashes series, and Ben Oliver has been formally installed as the new head of national teams - a similar role to the one he performed successfully alongside Langer with WA.

In an interview with ESPNcricinfo to mark 10 years of coaching, Langer also reflected on the infamous 2009 "dossier" leak in which his frankest thoughts about English cricket and players such as James Anderson were splashed across the pages of the Telegraph, an episode that happened a matter of months before he moved from playing retirement to an assistant role with the Australian team.

Recalling what he had written about Anderson in what was originally intended as a personal email of advice to the then national team coach Tim Nielsen, Langer said that the evolution of the Englishman from youth to maturity and greatness mirrored how he had grown and changed so much, first as a cricketer and now a coach.

"If we get specific, I said in that email, which caused great headlines, that James Anderson was a pussy," Langer said. "Now that's my way of just talking about his body language. When we played against James Anderson as a young man, we felt that if we got on top of him, hit anything loose he bowled, because his body language would drop a little bit. I'd take back the word I used, that wouldn't be my style now, that's for sure, but it was two Aussie blokes talking to each other about someone's body language.

"Do I think that now about James Anderson? Absolutely not, and I hope you write this in the article, James Anderson has turned into a brilliant, great English fast bowler. He will be the person we talk about most when we go through our plans for winning this Ashes. He's a brilliant player. When he was a young man he was different than he is now, and that happens with most. When I was a young batsman, I was dour, I couldn't hit the ball off the square, I probably didn't smile much, and people would've said that about me when I was younger, to where I finished up playing.

"That was my interpretation of him, having played against him, I didn't know him at all, it's not personal. Would I say that now? No way in the world, he is a great bowler and we respect him enormously, I personally respect him for his longevity, for his skill. The greatest compliment we can give James Anderson now, the same person who wrote that 10 years ago, me as young and naive, wasn't expecting it to get into public hands, certainly wouldn't say that about him now."

The full ESPNcricinfo interview with Justin Langer will be published later on Monday

New Zealand have named four spinners in their squad for the two-Test series against Sri Lanka which marks the beginning of the World Test Championship for both teams.

Offspinner Will Somerville and left-armer Ajaz Patel are reunited after their role in helping New Zealand to their 2-1 victory over Pakistan in the UAE last year. They are joined by Mitchell Santner, who played his last Test in December 2017 before being sidelined by injury, and legspinner Todd Astle who made his debut in Colombo seven years ago.

Neither Santner or Astle were part of the success over Pakistan with Patel making his debut in the opening game of the series in Abu Dhabi where his 5 for 59 in the second innings secured a gripping four-run win. Then in the deciding match Somerville, making his Test debut at 34, bagged seven wickets in the game - alongside another five for Patel - as New Zealand won by 123 runs.

"Playing three spinners is an option in Sri Lankan conditions and we believe this group provides the best variations and skill mix on offer," New Zealand coach Gary Stead said. "England were playing three spinners against Sri Lanka on their successful visit there last year and the slow bowlers also dominated the previous series against South Africa."

The dominance of spin in the squad leaves just three frontline quicks - Trent Boult, Tim Southee and Neil Wagner - alongside the medium pace of Colin de Grandhomme. It means that Lockie Ferguson, who was one of the stars of the World Cup, will have to wait for a Test debut although with series against England, Australia and India to come over the next six months it is likely to just be a matter of time.

The rest of the squad is as expected with a settled top order. Tom Blundell, who was part of the World Cup squad, has been included as back-up to BJ Watling.

After taking time to reflect on the dramatic end to the World Cup, Stead said it is good to be able to get back to playing with a new structure to Test cricket under the WTC which begins with the Ashes series on Thursday. "It's good timing for us after the World Cup," he said. "It was an incredible time for the team and the country, but we're now excited to move forward as a group and sink our teeth into another opportunity."

Squad Kane Williamson (capt), Todd Astle, Tom Blundell, Trent Boult, Colin de Grandhomme, Tom Latham, Henry Nicholls, Ajaz Patel, Jeet Raval, Will Somerville, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, Neil Wagner, BJ Watling