Sports monitoring and analysis have seen significant advancements by integrating cloud computing and continuum paradigms facilitated by machine learning and deep learning techniques. This study presents a novel approach for sports monitoring, specifically focusing on basketball, that seamlessly transitions from traditional cloud-based architectures to a continuum paradigm, enabling real-time analysis and insights into player performance and team dynamics. Leveraging machine learning and deep learning algorithms, our framework offers enhanced capabilities for player tracking, action recognition, and performance evaluation in various sports scenarios. The proposed Cloud-to-Thing continuum-based sports monitoring system utilizes advanced techniques such as Improved Mask R-CNN for pose estimation and a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm combined with a generative adversarial network (GAN) for classification. Our system significantly improves latency and accuracy, reducing latency to 5.1 ms and achieving an accuracy of 94.25%, which outperforms existing methods in the literature. These results highlight the system's ability to provide real-time, precise, and scalable sports monitoring, enabling immediate feedback for time-sensitive applications. This research has significantly improved real-time sports event analysis, contributing to improved player performance evaluation, enhanced team strategies, and informed tactical adjustments.