Accusations of dirty play were exchanged after the Denver Nuggets beat the Golden State Warriors 107-100 on Tuesday to avoid elimination from the NBA playoffs.
Needing a win to stay alive, the Nuggets played tough basketball, with fiery forward Kenneth Faried at the center of the action. Denver cut the series deficit to 3-2, sending it back to Oakland for Game 6 today.
Also on Tuesday, the Memphis Grizzlies won 103-93 against the Los Angeles Clippers to take a 3-2 lead in their series.
Photo: AFP
Denver slowed down Golden State’s guards, jumpstarted their transition game and got under Andrew Bogut’s skin in Game 5, jumping out to a 22-point lead before weathering the Warriors’ frenetic fourth-quarter rally.
Warriors coach Mark Jackson accused the Nuggets of trying to hurt Stephen Curry, his injured sharpshooter, who was just one for seven from long range and finished with a series-low 15 points.
“Some dirty plays early,” Jackson said. “It’s playoff basketball, that’s all right. We own it, but make no mistake about it, we went up 3-1 playing hard, physical, clean basketball — not trying to hurt anybody.”
Jackson mentioned Faried setting some “great screens and some great illegal ones, too.”
“He did his job. Hey, I played with guys like that. They get paid to do that. Dale Davis, Anthony Davis, Charles Oakley. You get paid to do it. So give them credit,” Jackson said. “As an opposing coach, I see it, and I’m trying to protect my guys.”
Jackson complained about one screen in particular on Curry being “a shot at his ankle, clearly. That can’t be debated.”
“I got inside information that some people don’t like that brand of basketball and they clearly didn’t co-sign it. They wanted to let me know they have no parts in what was taking place. Let the best team win and let everybody with the exception of going down with a freak injury, let everybody leave out of here healthy. That’s not good basketball,” he added.
“It’s basketball,” Faried countered. “I try to do the little things my team needs me to do. It’s physical. If you can’t stand the physicality, you shouldn’t be playing.”
Asked about accusations he tried to hurt Curry, Faried said: “That’s intriguing because I think they were purposefully trying to hurt me every play I went for a rebound — the hits, the grab to the throat.”
Curry said there were a few plays that went overboard.
“There were a couple, man. Going through the paint minding my own business and they come out of nowhere trying to throw elbows,” he said. “I got a [target] on me, I don’t know what it is, just got to keep playing and do your thing.”
The Nuggets said they were surprised the Warriors were the ones complaining about physical play.
“I’ve taken the hardest hit in the series, Game 1 or 2, when Bogut leaned in to me on a screen and I didn’t remember what happened the rest of the game,” Denver’s Andre Iguodala said. “They kind of brought the physicality to the series and we stopped being the receivers and we’re starting to hit back a little bit, but as far as anybody trying to cheap shot, I don’t condone that myself. It’s not my game.”
Faried said he has been beat up all series long.
“I’m surprised [that] tonight I didn’t get my hair pulled like before,” Faried said. “It’s all good. If we’re playing dirty, hey, it’s basketball. We’re just playing physical.”
“It’s the series, it’s physical, whether they’re taking cheap shots or not we need to match that physicality,” Bogut added.
“A couple of them could have been cheap shots. I thought Steph got cheat shot one time, he got a bloody nose. It’s not acceptable, but we’ve got to match that,” Klay Thompson said. “We can’t let it get in our heads, just do what we did in the second half.”
Andre Iguodala had 25 points and 12 rebounds for the Nuggets, Ty Lawson had 19 points and 10 assists, while Faried had 13 points and 10 boards.
Stephen Curry finished one of seven from three and scored 15 for the Warriors. Harrison Barnes led Golden State with 23 points.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Memphis moved within one win of a spot in the next round of the playoffs by beating the LA Clippers 103-93.
Zach Randolph scored 10 of his 25 points in the fourth quarter as the Grizzlies capitalized on Blake Griffin’s ankle injury.
Mike Conley added 20 points for the Grizzlies, who will try to wrap it up tomorrow at home.
The Pacific Division champions, who won their last seven games of the regular season to clinch home-court advantage for the first two rounds, would force a deciding seventh game on Sunday back at the Staples Center if they win in Memphis.
Chris Paul led Los Angeles with 35 points, tying a career playoff high.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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