Dwyane Wade scored 19 points and Miami used a big third quarter to pull away to a 97-70 victory over Minnesota on Sunday night.
Shaquille O'Neal had 16 points for Miami, which allowed a season low in points, set a season high for margin of victory and held the Timberwolves to their lowest point total this season.
James Posey had 11 points for the Heat, who moved to a season-high six games over .500 (19-13).
Wally Szczerbiak scored 19 points and Kevin Garnett matched a season low with 11 for Minnesota, which has won two of its last 10 games but remains atop the Midwest Division.
Miami outscored Minnesota 25-6 in the opening 7:30 of the third quarter, turning a three-point halftime deficit into a 66-50 lead. Wade had nine points in the run and O'Neal added six.
Clippers 100, Trail Blazers 94
At Portland, Oregon, Elton Brand had 20 points and 11 rebounds and the Clippers snapped a losing streak at the Rose Garden that dated to 1999.
The Clippers had lost 12 straight in Portland since an 89-83 win on April 11, 1999, and 26 of 29 since the start of the 1991-1992 season.
After getting off to a 10-5 start this November, the Clippers went 6-7 in December, wrapping up the month with a 111-92 loss to Boston on Saturday.
Cuttino Mobley had 23 points for the Clippers and Sam Cassell added 22.
Juan Dixon had 24 points for the Blazers.
Jazz 98, Lakers 94
At Los Angeles, Andrei Kirilenko scored 23 points, Keith McLeod scored four of his 15 points in the final 78 seconds and Utah took full advantage of Kobe Bryant's suspension.
Bryant was suspended for two games without pay by the NBA after committing a flagrant foul against Mike Miller during last Wednesday's overtime loss to Memphis. The Lakers' star will forfeit US$289,943 in salary. Bryant won't accompany the team to Salt Lake City for the second half of the home-and-home set with the Jazz, but will return to the lineup on Friday night to face Philadelphia.
Brian Cook connected on his first eight shots and finished with 19 points for the Lakers, who lost their fourth straight game after winning nine of their previous 11. The third-year forward finished 8-for-10 while playing a season-high 40 minutes.
Mavericks coach Avery Johnson talks about consistency day to day, practice to practice, game to game.
String together enough consistent performances, and certain objectives begin to fall into place. One such aim can easily be graded with each new moon.
"We have a goal to win 10 games a month," guard Marquis Daniels said.
So far, the Mavs (22-8) are 2-for-2. They followed up a 10-4 November with a 12-4 march through the last month of 2005, setting the franchise record for wins in December.
The only time any Mavs team bettered last month came in 2002, when coach Don Nelson's squad went 14-1 in November. The Mavs have won 10 or more games in five consecutive months, the longest such streak in team history.
By comparison, the Mavs won at least 10 in a month only once for the entire decade of the 1990s. They lost at least 10 in a month 27 times.
Extending the streak to six consecutive months and beyond will be a challenge, considering how the schedule plays out the rest of the way.
The Mavs have 15 games this month, beginning Tuesday against Portland at American Airlines Center. Nine of the games are on the road, where the Mavs are 11-4.
February features only 11 games, though nine are at home. Of the 17 games in March, 11 are away.
If, somehow, the Mavs manage to hit double-figure wins in each of the next three months, the run is sure to end in April. Nine games are on the docket for the last month of the regular season.
Should the Mavs continue on their current pace, the second 60-win season in franchise history is within reach. That should put them in contention for the Southwest Division crown and the top seed in the Western Conference.
Though that sounds like another lofty aim, the Mavs haven't lost sight of the big picture.
"We're just focused on achieving our goals, and that's to continue to get better for the playoffs," Jerry Stackhouse said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier