The Orlando Magic easily handled a Phoenix Suns team playing without point guard Steve Nash in a 105-89 win on Thursday.
Jameer Nelson had 15 points and a season-high 12 assists, Dwight Howard added 20 points and 12 rebounds and every starter scored in double digits for the Magic, who built a 32-point lead and blew past the Suns from the opening tip.
Orlando has won three straight.
With Nash sidelined because of a sore groin, backup point guard Goran Dragic had 10 points, four assists and four rebounds.
Grant Hill scored 21 points in the lone bright spot for the Suns, who lost on consecutive nights in Florida by a combined 43 points.
TRAIL BLAZERS 86, NUGGETS 83
In Portland, Portland rallied in the second half to edge Denver.
LaMarcus Aldridge scored 24 points and Wesley Matthews added 20 for the Blazers, who trailed by as many as nine points after halftime, but outscored Denver 17-12 in the fourth quarter to pull out the win.
Aldridge hit 9 of 20 shots and grabbed 10 rebounds during a 41-minute performance. Matthews, starting his second consecutive game in place of injured Brandon Roy, hit three consecutive 3-pointers during the second quarter.
PACERS 107, CLIPPERS 80
In Indianapolis, Danny Granger scored 22 points as an undermanned Indiana overwhelmed the lowly Los Angeles Clippers.
Roy Hibbert had 18 points and eight rebounds, while Brandon Rush and A.J. Price each added 14 points for the Pacers, who shot 51 percent from the field to make up for the absence of starters Darren Collison and Mike Dunleavy. Collison sat out with a sprained ankle, while Dunleavy missed the game because his wife was in labor.
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