The Los Angeles Clippers shone on their return home, cruising to an authoritative 115-92 victory over San Antonio in Monday’s clash of NBA divisional leaders.
Blake Griffin scored 27 points, hitting 11 of 15 free-throws, as the Clippers relished a return to Los Angeles following a seven-game road trip.
Chris Paul added 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists for the Clippers, who repelled several threats in the third quarter to maintain their lead.
Tim Duncan had 17 points and 11 rebounds for the Spurs, who snapped a four-game winning streak.
The Clippers’ performance was the highlight on a day when Detroit handed the Pacers their first home-court loss of the season, with Josh Smith scoring 30 points to lead the Pistons to a surprise 101-96 win at Indiana.
Greg Monroe finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds for Detroit, while Lance Stephenson had a season-high 23 points for the Pacers, who won their first 11 home games. The defeat left Oklahoma City as the only team unbeaten at home with a 12-0 record.
In Atlanta, Kyle Korver sank a trio of three-pointers in a dominant third quarter that set up the Hawks’ 114-100 win over the Lakers.
Al Horford scored 19 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for the Hawks, while the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant made only four of 14 shots for eight points.
Nick Young led the Lakers with 23 points and five three-pointers.
Miami’s LeBron James finished with 30 points, nine rebounds and nine assists to lead the Heat to a 117-94 win over Utah.
Dwyane Wade added 27 points for Miami, who notched their 17th straight victory over a Western Conference opponent, the second-longest regular-season streak by an Eastern Conference team in NBA history.
In Boston, Jared Sullinger had 24 points and 11 rebounds, including a tie-breaking three-pointer with 2 minutes, 22 seconds left that helped the Celtics hold off Minnesota and win 101-97.
Elsewhere in the NBA, Bradley Beal sank a driving layup with six seconds left to give the Wizards a 102-101 win over the Knicks, while Orlando’s Arron Afflalo scored 23 points to help the Magic beat slumping Chicago 83-82 and Brooklyn’s Joe Johnson made 10 three-pointers — the most in the NBA this season — and scored a season-high 37 points to lead the Nets to a 130-94 win over Philadelphia.
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