The Houston Rockets came up with a stunning start to the game to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 95-80 on Thursday, sending their Western Conference semi-final series into a deciding Game 7.
Aaron Brooks scored 26 points and Luis Scola added 24 points and 12 rebounds as the scrappy, undermanned Rockets pushed the top-seeded Lakers to the brink.
The Rockets opened the game with a 17-1 burst, built a 52-36 lead by halftime, then fought off a Lakers rally to force Game 7 tomorrow at the Staples Center.
PHOTO: AFP
Kobe Bryant scored 32 points and Pau Gasol added 14 for Los Angeles, who lost for only the third time in the past 18 games when they had a chance to close out a series.
The Lakers have one more opportunity to finish off Houston, but they probably didn’t expect to need it, three games after Houston center Yao Ming exited the series with a broken left foot.
“We still have no chance,” Brooks said with a huge smile. “We’ll keep playing, though.”
The winner will play the Denver Nuggets, who finished off Dallas on Wednesday and now have a few extra days to rest.
Whereas Houston had built upon their first-half lead on Sunday, this time Los Angeles made a game of it, opening the second half with a 16-2 spurt.
But the Rockets hit their last eight shots in the third quarter and took a 75-65 lead to the fourth. Kobe Bryant came into the game with six minutes left and the deficit still at 10 points, but missed four of his next six shots.
“We got active again against Kobe. He’s going to make some shots. We toughed it out in the fourth quarter,” Brooks said.
The Rockets scored 40 points in the paint and held Los Angeles to 36 percent shooting (30-for-84). The Lakers went only 5-for-23 from three-point range.
MAGIC 83, CELTICS 75
In Orlando, Florida, Dwight Howard had 23 points and 22 rebounds after challenging Stan Van Gundy’s coaching strategy as Orlando beat Boston to force Game 7 in their Eastern Conference semi-final series.
Rashard Lewis had 20 points and Hedo Turkoglu made a three-pointer to highlight an 11-2 run to close the game for the Magic, who could dump out the defending champions and reach the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 13 years.
Rajon Rondo finished with 19 points, 16 rebounds and six assists, while Paul Pierce scored 17 for the Celtics, who led by 10 points in the second half before falling apart.
Game 7 is in Boston tomorrow.
The Celtics also failed to close out the Chicago Bulls in Game 6 of their first-round series, a triple-overtime epic. Boston will now go the distance in their first two series for the second straight year.
The two days off before Game 7 should give an older, worn out Boston team a chance to rest its tired legs. It’s still not enough for coach Doc Rivers.
“I would take a week off and do it like the Super Bowl,” Rivers said. “That would be terrific. But that’s not going to happen.”
The Celtics held the Magic scoreless for more than five minutes at the start of the third quarter, building a 10-point lead on a jumper by Glen Davis. But Howard led the Magic back, with a backspin alley-oop from Turkoglu that highlighted a spurt to end the third quarter.
Orlando took their first lead with 8 minutes, 38 seconds remaining in the fourth.
Pierce hit three straight jumpers to give Boston a 73-72 lead with about four minutes to play, but the Celtics were done in by their 3-for-18 shooting from three-point range and 19 turnovers. Ray Allen missed all seven attempts from behind the arc.
“The offense definitely struggled,” Pierce said. “But we still played enough defense to win the game. We turned the ball over too much.”
Howard blamed Van Gundy for not getting the ball more after the Magic’s Game 5 collapse, when they blew a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter.
“You’ve got a dominant player, let him be dominant,” Howard said.
He came out trying to back up his strong words.
Howard scored the first eight points of the game for the Magic, including a pair of dunks that pumped some life into the home crowd.
He finished with 9-for-16 shooting.
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