Tim Duncan had 28 points and 19 rebounds to lead the San Antonio Spurs past the Dallas Mavericks 92-91 on Thursday, giving them a season series sweep over their Texas rivals for the first time in 15 years.
Gary Neal added 16 points and Kawhi Leonard had 12 for San Antonio, who have the Western Conference’s top record at 50-16.
Dirk Nowitzki had 21 points and 11 rebounds for Dallas, who have a four-game winning streak broken. San Antonio last swept Dallas during the regular season in 1998, Duncan’s rookie season.
The Mavericks pulled within 92-91 on a 7-0 run capped by Nowitzki’s fall-away jumper with 28.2 seconds left. After the Spurs’ Manu Ginobili missed a jumper, Vince Carter missed a long, fall-away three-pointer at the buzzer that would have won the game.
TRAIL BLAZERS 105, KNICKS 90
In Portland, Oregon, Damian Lillard had 26 points and 10 assists and LaMarcus Aldridge chipped in 22 points and 10 rebounds as Portland handed New York their third straight defeat.
Nicolas Batum added 18 points for the Trail Blazers.
J.R. Smith had 33 points and Kenyon Martin added 12 to lead New York, who shot just 33 percent in the second half. The Knicks still lead the Atlantic Division, but have struggled on their recent West Coast road trip with a rash of injuries that has decimated their starting five.
Tyson Chandler suffered a bruised knee in a collision on Wednesday at Denver, joining Carmelo Anthony on the sidelines.
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