The Dallas Mavericks shook off the absence of injured starter Dirk Nowitzki to defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers 102-95 in a meeting of division leaders on Sunday.
Tim Thomas, who started for Nowitzki, scored 22 points and Jason Terry had 19 for the Southwest Division-leading Mavericks, who ended Cleveland’s five-game winning streak.
“It is a huge win,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle told reporters. “Any time you can win without a guy like Dirk, it just says a lot about the group of guys and the team.”
LeBron James, who top-scored for the Cavaliers with 25 points, agreed: They have guys on that team that are All-Stars even without Dirk. Those guys stepped up.”
Nowitzki was rested after sustaining a cut on his right elbow in Friday’s game against Houston.
“I was going to try to step up and actually try to go a little bit and get a couple of jumpers up before the game, but I just couldn’t get my elbow up, couldn’t extend my elbow out, couldn’t really bend it,” Nowitzki said.
Thomas had seven points in the first four minutes of the third period to help Dallas to a 12-point lead.
James scored 18 points in a rampant first half for the Central Division-leading Cavaliers, but was checked late in the game and had little support from guard Mo Williams, held to eight points, or center Shaquille O’Neal, who managed just five.
Delonte West picked up some of the slack scoring 18.
LAKERS 93, PISTONS 81
Kobe Bryant scored 28 points and helped Los Angeles build a big lead in a victory over Detroit.
The Lakers took the lead with an 11-0 run midway through the first quarter, started the second ahead by 12, had an 18-point lead at halftime and a 21-point cushion after three quarters.
Los Angeles closed a trip with a four-game winning streak and an NBA-best 22-4 record.
Three of Detroit’s best players were out of action: Richard Hamilton, Ben Gordon and Tayshaun Prince. The Lakers, though, didn’t have much sympathy because travel woes led to them getting to their Detroit-area hotel at 4am on Sunday after beating the New Jersey Nets on Saturday night.
CELTICS 122, TIMBERWOLVES 104
At Boston, Paul Pierce scored 29 points and hit all six of his three-point attempts as Boston finished with a season high in points.
Kendrick Perkins had 14 points to go with 11 rebounds and Rajon Rondo had 13 points and 15 assists.
In other NBA action, it was:
• Knicks 98, Bobcats 94
• Grizzlies 102, Nuggets 96
• Trail Blazers 102, Heat 95
• Raptors 98, Hornets 92
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