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, a one-time child soldier who morphed into a brutal LRA commander of dozens of war crimes and crimes against humanity, ranging from multiple murders to forced marriages.OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Indiana’s Tyrese Haliburton weren’t expected to ever be starring in leading roles on the NBA Finals stage.

Well, at least not by many.“It’s been a roller coaster,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “I had nights where I thought I wasn’t good at basketball, had nights where I thought I was the best player in the world before I was. It’s been ups and downs. My mentality to try to stay level through it all really helped me. Once I figured that out, I really saw jumps in my game.”Those jumps have made Gilgeous-Alexander the face of the Oklahoma City Thunder. This, after he was cut from his junior varsity team as a ninth grader. He came off the bench for most of the first two months of his freshman season at Kentucky, wasn’t a top-10 draft pick and was traded from the Los Angeles Clippers after his rookie year.

Haliburton has traveled a similar road to NBA stardom.Now a favorite son in the state of Indiana, Haliburton didn’t get attention from major college programs until his senior year of high school when he led Oshkosh North High School (Wisconsin) to a state title. The slender guard was visited schools such as Ohio and Indiana University-Indianapolis before Iowa State offered a scholarship. He wasn’t a one-and-done, wasn’t a top-10 pick and got traded from Sacramento during his third year in the league.

“This is a franchise that took a chance on me, saw something that other people didn’t see in me,” Haliburton said of the Pacers. “Sometimes I think they saw more in me than I saw in myself.”

Haliburton and Gilgeous-Alexander aren’t the household names that familiar to casual basketball fans are accustomed to seeing in the Finals, like LeBron James or Stephen Curry. But they will be the engines for their squads when their teams meet in Game 1 Thursday night in Oklahoma City — and for good reason.She had intended to return to international competition this month in the Eindhoven Box Cup in the Netherlands.

NEW YORK (AP) — The magic created by the vocal blend of Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe, collectively known ashas opened many doors for them in the music industry.

Sometimes quite literally — like when they arrived at the home ofto sing at one of her “Joni Jams,” and