After pulling a disappearing act late in the first two games, Tracy McGrady made his presence felt, and the Houston Rockets came away with their biggest win of the season.
McGrady scored 20 of his 27 points late in the final quarter and Carl Landry blocked a potential game-winning layup just before the buzzer as the Rockets edged the Utah Jazz 94-92 on Thursday night in Game Three of their first round Western Conference best-of-seven playoff series.
“We did a lot of great things this season, winning 22 consecutive games, overcoming the season-ending injury to Yao [Ming] and able to make the playoffs, but this is the biggest win of the season,” McGrady said.
PHOTO: AFP
“Down 0-2, playing in a hostile environment, we played like we didn’t want to go home early. We played with a lot of passion and a lot of heart. We kept our composure and down the stretch we did a great job,” he said.
Despite their gritty win, the Rockets trail the Jazz 2-1 with game four at Utah today.
“Now our mindset is a little different,” Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. “We’re trying to get the second one here.”
Rafer Alston had 20 points for Houston, while Argentine Luis Scola collected 16 with 10 rebounds.
McGrady had made just one free throw in the fourth quarter of the two home losses. However, he scored seven straight points to spark a late 10-0 run, giving the Rockets a 93-86 advantage.
“I was waiting for the right time to be assertive,” McGrady said.
The Jazz refused to fold, however. Kyle Korver and Mehmet Okur nailed three-pointers, around an offensive foul by McGrady, drawing the hosts within 93-92 with 37 seconds remaining.
After a timeout Utah’s Deron Williams grabbed a rebound and with six seconds left drove to the basket for a layup.
However, Landry, who had his front tooth knocked out in the second quarter by Carlos Boozer’s errant elbow, swatted the ball away with 1.8 seconds left. Scola picked it up and made one of two free throws to save the Rockets’ season.
“That last play saved the day,” Alston said. “If Carl doesn’t block the shot, even if Deron misses, his man gets the ball and probably puts it in and we’re down 3-0. He gets hit in his nose, loses a tooth and comes back to play the way he played says a lot about his character.”
Williams led the Jazz with 28 points and 12 assists. Boozer had 15 points and 13 rebounds while Okur finished with 12 and 11 rebounds.
“We slipped up at home and now they feel like they can beat us in our gym, so definitely puts us in a pressure situation,” Williams said. “But I expect us to come out focused in game three.”
RAPTORS 108, MAGIC 94
T.J. Ford netted 21 points and Argentine Jose Calderon had 18 with 13 assists as the host Raptors trimmed the Magic’s deficit to 2-1 in the opening round of their Eastern Conference series.
The Raptors host the Magic in game four today.
Chris Bosh and Jason Kapono netted 15 points while Jamario Moon had 11 points with 10 rebounds for Toronto, which set a franchise-record for most points scored in a playoff game.
Turkey’s Hedo Turkoglu scored 24 points for Orlando, which trailed 61-40 at half-time.
Dwight Howard had 19 points with 12 rebounds while Rashard Lewis scored 19.
WIZARDS 108, CAVALIERS 72
DeShawn Stevenson scored 19 points, Roger Mason had 18 off the bench and the Wizards’ most-lopsided playoff victory in franchise history, cut the Cavaliers’ advantage to 2-1 in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
“We were feeding off the energy of our home crowd,” Wizards center Brendan Haywood said. “We knew our backs were against the wall.”
Caron Butler netted 17 and Antawn Jamison finished with 15 for the Wizards, who have been eliminated by the Cavs the last two post-seasons.
LeBron James had 22 points to pace the reigning Eastern Conference champions, who shot an icy 39 per cent and committed 23 turnovers en route to their worst post-season loss in team history.
Washington hosts game four tomorrow.
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