Lauren Jackson scored 17 of her 23 points in the first half and teammates Sue Bird and Tanisha Wright hit key shots in the final minutes to help the Storm open the season with an 81-67 victory over Los Angeles on Sunday.
Wright scored 17 points, Bird added 14 and Seattle outscored Los Angeles 22-5 in the final eight minutes. Tina Thompson, the lone player remaining from the inaugural WNBA season of 1997, led Los Angeles (0-2) with 19 points. Candace Parker was held to two points in the first half and finished with 10.
Liberty 85, Sky 82
At New York, Cappie Pondexter and Taj McWilliams-Franklin got the new-look Liberty off to winning start in their New York debuts.
Pondexter scored 22 points, McWilliams-Franklin had 20 and the Liberty won their season opener.
Mystics 87, Lynx 76
At Minneapolis, Minnesota, Monique Currie scored 27 points as the Washington Mystics spoiled Lindsay Whalen’s home debut for Minnesota.
Whalen, acquired in a January trade with Connecticut, finished with 12 points, seven assists and four rebounds, but the Lynx lost a 15-point second-quarter lead and faded in the second half, while Currie and former Lynx star Katie Smith led the Mystics to their second win in two days.
Dream 66, Fever 62
At Atlanta, Georgia, Erika DeSouza had 14 points and 11 rebounds as Atlanta held Indiana to four points in the fourth quarter.
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