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Former Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns men’s basketball star Shawn Long became the second alum in as many days to earn an invitation to the MGM Resorts NBA Summer League when he selected by the Chicago Bulls in an announcement Wednesday.
The Morgan City High alum and member of the 2015 U.S. Pan American Men’s Basketball Team will join former Ragin’ Cajuns great Jay Wright in the Summer League. Wright, a three-year letterwinner for the Ragin’ Cajuns, earned an invitation Tuesday with the NBA’s Orlando Magic.
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to play on a NBA stage and showcase what I can do,” Long said in a news release. “Hopefully, things will go up from there. Either way, I plan on making the best of it.”
In his second year at the professional level, Long averaged 14.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.4 blocks for the Delaware Blue Coats of the NBA G League. Long began the 2017-18 season with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association, where he averaged 12 points and six rebounds per contest.
Long played 18 games with the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers during the 2016-17 season, averaging 8.2 points and 4.7 rebounds. He was named a 2017 NBA D-League All-Star as a rookie after averaging 20 points and 11 rebounds in 39 games with Delaware.
Long, the 2016 Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year and honorable mention Associated Press All-American, led the Sun Belt Conference in scoring (18.9), rebounds (12.1) and blocked shots (1.8) as a senior in 2015-16.
Long finished as the all-time leading rebounder in both Ragin’ Cajuns and Sun Belt Conference history, pulling down 1,447 boards during his four-year career.
Long finished third in scoring in Ragin’ Cajuns history, trailing Dwight “Bo” Lamar and Andrew Toney, and was the Ragin’ Cajuns’ all-time leader in blocked shots (273), games started (131) and double-doubles (75). Long’s 75 double-doubles are the 12th-best total in NCAA history, and he finished second in Sun Belt Conference history in scoring and blocked shots.
His 411 rebounds during the 2015-16 season tied former Ragin’ Cajuns great Roy Ebron (1971-72) for the second-best total in a single-season in school history.
MGM Resorts NBA Summer League, which features all 30 NBA teams for the first time, will tip off with a record 10 games on July 6 and continue through July 17 at the Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. The first day of action will include five games on NBA TV and a tripleheader on ESPN.
The tournament-style format will culminate with the Championship Game July 17 at 9 p.m. on ESPN.
Last year’s event, won by the Los Angeles Lakers behind 2017 Summer League MVP Lonzo Ball and 2017-18 NBA All-Rookie First Team selection Kyle Kuzma, set records for total attendance, single-day attendance, combined viewership across ESPN and NBA TV, and traffic to the NBA’s social and digital platforms.
For the second consecutive year, ESPN will present every game from Las Vegas via the ESPN App, along with a record 46 games on its linear television channels (ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU). NBA TV, co-managed by the NBA and Turner Sports, will air 36 games, beginning with the Summer League opener July 6.
Each team will play a minimum of five games at MGM Resorts NBA Summer League, starting with three preliminary contests from July 6-10. The teams then will be seeded in the tournament, which starts July 11 and concludes with the Championship Game July 17.

NEW IBERIA (AP) — A judge has ordered a Louisiana man to pay $2,500 because his juvenile son killed a Louisiana black bear in 2015.
The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries also plans to sue Elie Dupre, 60, for $7,500 to make up the full assessed value of a Louisiana black bear, Adam Einck, a department spokesman, said in an email Thursday. His son was ordered to put in 100 hours of community service and retake a hunting education course. The teen also lost his hunting license for a year.
Dupre could not be reached for comment. Neither directory assistance nor an online directory had a phone number for him.
Judge Gregory Aucoin convicted Dupre on June 14 of contributing to juvenile delinquency and his son with killing an animal during a closed season, Einck said in a news release Thursday. Both are misde-meanors, he said.
Although the black bear subspecies is no longer considered threatened, there is no legal hunting season for it.
Einck said last year that the Dupres were implicated in the bear’s death after agents arrested the father in December 2015 in a separate night hunting case and confiscated three firearms, one of which matched the bullet in a 9-year-old female black bear found dead Nov. 4, 2015.
The 250-pound female had worn a tracking collar for eight years as part of state research, and had provided valuable information on black bear populations, productivity and population viability in the state of Louisiana

NEW YORK — It may seem like a contradiction, but more adults in the U.S. say they are exercising at the same time more of them are becoming obese.
About 24 percent of adults last year said they exercise enough each week to meet government recommendations for both muscle strengthening and aerobic exercise, according to a large annual health survey. That was up from 21 percent in 2015.
The same survey says 31 percent of adults indicated they were obese last year, up slightly. Another, more rigorous government study has also found adult obesity is inching up.
So if more Americans are exercising, how can more also be getting fatter?
Some experts think the findings may reflect two sets of people — the haves and have-nots of physical fitness, so to speak.
“It’s possible the people becoming more active are already normal weight,” said John Jakicic, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Physical Activity and Weight Management Research Center.
The numbers come from an in-person annual national survey that for more than 60 years has been an important gauge of U.S. health trends. Roughly 35,000 adults answer the survey every year, including questions about how often, how long and how vigorously they exercise in their leisure time.
The survey gives a good sense of trends, but it’s not perfect. People generally overstate how much they exercise, just as they overstate their height and lowball their weight, Jakicic said.
Ten-year-old federal recommendations say adults should do weightlifting or other muscle-strengthening exercise at least twice a week. They also advise adults to do at least 75 minutes a week of high-intensity aerobic activity, such as running, or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, such as brisk walking, or a combination of the two.
In a report being released Thursday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at survey responses from 2010 through 2015 and found that level of leisure-time exercise was more common in some states than others.
Nearly a third of non-elderly adults in Colorado, Idaho and New Hampshire met exercise guidelines. Only about one-seventh in Mississ-ippi, Kentucky and South Carolina did.
Higher levels of exercise were more common in people who were working than those who weren’t, the study also found.
Nationally, exercise levels were flat during the years covered by the CDC report. But more recent data show more adults said they were exercising at recommended levels in 2016 and 2017.
It’s not clear why, said Jena Shaw Tronieri, a University of Penns-ylvania weight-loss expert.
One possibility: Many adults exercise to manage stress, and the last two years have seen increasing political and social turmoil.
“I don’t know if that will explain the increase recently, but we know those situational factors are part of the context,” she said.
Of course, unhealthy eating has a lot to do with obesity. Research indicates that “a change in diet is needed to see any dent or reduction in obesity,” said the CDC’s Tainya Clarke, one of the authors of the report.
—The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Berwick and Morgan City will both host Fourth of July celebrations Wednesday with food, music and a fireworks show.

Morgan City will have a Party in the Park in Lawrence Park from 4-8:30 p.m. Wednesday. The town of Berwick will host its Rockin’ the Riverfront celebration from 5-9:30 p.m.

A fireworks show over Berwick Bay starts at 9 p.m. Morgan City and Berwick officials are partnering to hold the show. The La. 182 bridge will close at 8:30 p.m. to accommodate the fireworks show.

Sponsors of Party in the Park are Morgan City Main Street, the city of Morgan City, Bay Ltd., the Parsiola family and Reverse My Fees LLC.

Lawrence Park will have live music with 5 Shot from 4-6 p.m. followed by Driftwood from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Food vendors are Xtreme Athletics for fair burgers, Tellman BBQ Team selling barbecue plate lunches, Immanuel Christian with a soft drink booth and Morgan City Main Street with a beer booth.

Purple Heart Outdoors will sell raffle tickets during the event at Lawrence Park as a fundraiser, Main Street Director Beth Portero said.

At Rockin’ the Riverfront, Berwick Volunteer Fire Department will sell burgers, cold drinks and beer, while The Big Chill will sell snow balls, kettle corn and fresh squeezed lemonade. Krossover will provide music from 5-8:30 p.m. The band will be set up at the Utah Street entrance to the riverfront, Event Coordinator Misty Pillaro said.

The Berwick High School girls’ basketball team will sell baked goods and drink insulating sleeves to raise money to buy new jerseys. Another booth will also sell nachos and Hurricanes, Pillaro said.