Kevin Durant had 28 points and eight assists, while Serge Ibaka scored 17 points and blocked three shots as the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Los Angeles Clippers 105-91 in a matchup of Western Conference powers in the NBA on Thursday.
Russell Westbrook added 12 points for Oklahoma City, who have won their first five home games of the season for the first time since the 2004-2005 season, when the franchise was located in Seattle.
Oklahoma City led all the way, taking a quick 10-point advantage and never leading by less than six points after that.
Photo: AFP
Blake Griffin had 27 points and 10 rebounds for the Clippers. He has had a 20-10 double in 10 of the past 12 games and has posted an NBA-high 100 such games since the start of the 2010-2011 season.
In the only other NBA game on Thursday, the Denver Nuggets ended the Chicago Bulls’ five-game winning streak with a 97-87 win at home.
Nate Robinson, who spent last season with the Bulls, and Jordan Hamilton each hit back-to-back three-pointers to open the fourth quarter and put the Nuggets ahead for good.
Hamilton finished with 17 points to lead the Nuggets, who won their seventh straight against the Bulls at home.
J.J. Hickson had 14 points, Kenneth Faried had 12 points and 11 rebounds, while Randy Foye also scored 12 points.
Derrick Rose had 19 points for the Bulls.
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