Rajon Rondo scored 17 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and passed out eight assists while Boston’s defense kept Orlando to a season-low for points in an 86-77 NBA victory on Friday.
However, a late-game stumble by Kevin Garnett threatened to steal the joy from a Christmas triumph by inflicting yet another injury upon the Celtics.
A Boston club playing without Paul Pierce because of a right knee injury also lost Garnett late in the game when he leaped to block a Vince Carter shot, fell awkwardly to the court, then rose and hobbled to the bench holding his back.
Garnett, who missed his first game of the season on Tuesday with a thigh bruise, had 10 points and seven rebounds. Celtics coach Doc Rivers said all that was wrong with Garnett was a bruise on his head.
Ray Allen scored 18 points and Tony Allen, replacing Pierce in Boston’s lineup, added 16 as the Celtics improved to 23-5 with their 14th triumph in 15 games.
“This was definitely a benchmark game for us because we have been talking about this game for a long time,” Ray Allen said. “We did what we had to do and took care of the game.”
Vince Carter scored a game-high 27 points in a losing cause while Rashard Lewis added 19 points and Frenchman Mickael Pietrus added nine for the Magic, who fell to 22-8, still one game ahead of Atlanta atop the Southeast division.
Magic center Dwight Howard, who pulled down 20 rebounds, was kept to only five points.
“You’ve got to play him physical. You watch other teams around the league, they pretty much let him set up shop,” Boston center Kendrick Perkins said. “You’ve just got to go in and be prepared to go to war. You’ve got to fight him first, hit him first. He likes to be physical but he doesn’t like anyone to be physical with him.”
Orlando trimmed the deficit to 78-75 before Ray Allen’s jumper and two free-throws pushed the Celtics out of range for good.
“It wasn’t the prettiest ball,” Rivers said. “It was ugly ball.”
The matchup between the two top clubs in the Eastern Conference was among five Christmas Day games on the NBA schedule, something that irked Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy.
“I actually feel sorry for people who have nothing to do on Christmas Day other than watch an NBA game,” Van Gundy said. “If I had my way, we’d take a five-day break at Christmas. Obviously basketball is very important to me, but there are some days of the year where it’s got to take a back seat to something.”
■SUNS V CLIPPERS
AFP, PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Amare Stoudemire scored 26 points and grabbed nine rebounds to power the Phoenix Suns past the Los Angeles Clippers 124-93 on Friday in an NBA rout that was the most lopsided Suns win of the season.
Jared Dudley and Jason Richardson each added 18 points and seven Suns were double-digit scorers in the romp, which snapped a two game home skid for the Suns (19-10) after they began the season with 10 home wins in a row.
The Clippers, led by Rasual Butler’s 22 points, lost to the Suns for the sixth time in a row, sliding to 12-17 after having won four of their prior six starts.
A Grant Hill bank shot from three-quarters of the court away at the halftime buzzer gave Phoenix a 67-55 lead and a 10-2 Phoenix run to end the third quarter put the Suns ahead 101-77 to secure the romp.
Canadian guard Steve Nash, who leads the NBA with 11.4 assists a game, had 14 points and eight assists for Phoenix.
■BLAZERS V NUGGETS
AFP, PORTLAND, OREGON
Brandon Roy scored 41 points to outshine NBA leading scorer Carmelo Anthony and spark the Portland Trail Blazers past Denver 107-96 on Friday, tightening their Northwest division rivalry.
The Blazers improved to 20-12 on the season, 11-4 at home, while the Nuggets fell to 20-10 but remained one game atop Portland in the division lead.
Hot-shooting Steve Blake scored 17 points for Portland, his three-pointers in the fourth quarter helping secure the victory. Andre Miller added 14 for the Blazers, who outscored Denver 33-20 in the final 12 minutes for the triumph.
Roy connected on 16-of-26 from the field and 6-of-6 from the free-throw line.
Anthony scored 32 points, hitting 11-of-23 from the field to better his NBA-best average of 30.5 points a game, but still not putting in enough points for Denver to win. J.R. Smith added 20 points and Kenyon Martin scored 12 points and grabbed 14 rebounds for the Nuggets.
■HEAT V KNICKS
AFP, NEW YORK
Dwyane Wade scored 30 points and grabbed nine rebounds to spark the Miami Heat past New York 93-87 on Friday, snapping the Knicks’ three-game win streak.
Wade, ranked fifth among NBA scorers with 26.6 points a game, scored 10 points in the third quarter to give Miami a 64-54 edge as the Heat held off a late New York rally for the Christmas Day victory, improving to 15-12.
Michael Beasley scored 13 of his 19 points in the second half, and Jermaine O’Neal added 11 points and eight rebounds for Miami, sinking a key jumper in the final seconds after the Knicks had trimmed the Heat’s edge to three points
Italy’s Danilo Gallinari scored 26 points and David Lee contributed 19 points and 16 rebounds for the Knicks.
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