Kobe Bryant scored 30 points to lift the Los Angeles Lakers to a 92-77 triumph over Detroit on Thursday, the Lakers’ first win on the Pistons’ home floor after a run of nine defeats.
“It feels good to finally walk out of here with a win,” said Bryant, whose Lakers seized control with a 30-5 scoring run to close the third quarter.
The depleted Pistons, who were again without injured Allen Iverson, Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace, missed 13 consecutive shots and didn’t score for the last 6 minutes, 42 seconds of the quarter.
PHOTO: AP
Los Angeles, who top the Western Conference, notched their fourth straight victory as they continued their bid to finish the season with the best record in the league to insure home court advantage through the playoffs.
The Pistons, in contrast, are battling to reach the post-season.
BULLS 106, HEAT 87
PHOTO: AP
In Chicago, John Salmons scored 27 points as Chicago beat Miami for their sixth win in seven games and moved into a seventh-place tie with Detroit in the Eastern Conference.
The Bulls took control in the third quarter, outscoring the Heat 32-14. Salmons scored 13 points in the period as the Bulls turned a two-point deficit into a 79-63 lead and sent the Heat to their fifth loss in seven games.
Miami star Dwyane Wade scored 31 points after hitting just five of 24 shots the previous night in a loss at Indiana.
TRAIL BLAZERS 129, SUNS 109
In Portland, Oregon, LaMarcus Aldridge scored a season-high 29 points and added 12 rebounds to help Portland end Phoenix’s winning streak at six.
Brandon Roy added 26 points and nine rebounds for Portland.
Shaquille O’Neal led the Suns with 20 points and seven rebounds.
Phoenix, making a late push for the playoffs, are ninth in the Western Conference — three-and-a-half games behind Dallas.
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