Kobe Bryant scored 28 points to move past Elgin Baylor into 20th place on the NBA’s career scoring list as the Los Angeles Lakers outlasted the Minnesota Timberwolves for a 111-108 victory on Sunday.
Lamar Odom had 25 points and 14 rebounds, and Pau Gasol added 25 points for the team with the league’s best record.
Ryan Gomes had 20 points and seven rebounds and Craig Smith scored 19 on 9-for-10 shooting for the Timberwolves, who committed 20 turnovers and lost their sixth straight home game.
PHOTO: AP
Bryant’s breakaway layin with 10:42 to play in the third quarter pushed him past the former Lakers great Baylor into third in franchise history, behind only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jerry West.
CELTICS 128, SUNS 108
At Phoenix, Rajon Rondo scored a career-high 32 points to go with 10 assists on his 23rd birthday as Boston beat Phoenix without Kevin Garnett.
Ray Allen scored 31 and Paul Pierce 26 in Boston’s first game since Garnett went down with a strained muscle in his right knee that is expected to sidelined him for at least two weeks.
Jason Richardson scored 21 for the Suns.
RAPTORS 111, KNICKS 100
At Toronto, Andrea Bargnani had 28 points and 10 rebounds to help Toronto beat New York two days after absorbing a 30-point loss against the Knicks.
Each of the Toronto starters reached double figures and four of the five had double-doubles. Anthony Parker scored 24 points, Shawn Marion had 16 points and 15 rebounds and Chris Bosh added 11 points and 12 boards. Jose Calderon had 13 points and 11 assists.
Al Harrington scored 31 points and David Lee had 17 points and 15 rebounds for the Knicks, who have lost nine straight games in Toronto.
ROCKETS 99, BOBCATS 78
At Houston, Ron Artest scored 26 points, Yao Ming added 19 points and seven rebounds and Houston beat Charlotte in another win without Tracy McGrady.
Luis Scola had 12 points and 10 rebounds and Shane Battier sank three 3-pointers for the Rockets, who’ve won four straight games and eight of the last nine McGrady has missed with a sore left knee.
McGrady announced on Wednesday that he’ll have season-ending surgery, but Houston is 15-6 without him this season.
Raymond Felton, Boris Diaw and Emeka Okafor scored 13 points apiece for the Bobcats.
In other NBA games it was:
• Pacers 98, Bulls 91
• Magic 122, Heat 99
• Trail Blazers 116, Clippers 87
• Bucks 120, Nuggets 117
• Cavaliers 99, Pistons 78
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