Arron Afflalo had 20 points and 13 rebounds, while Tobias Harris added 18 points as the Orlando Magic ended a season-high 10-game losing streak with a 93-91 win over the Boston Celtics on Sunday.
After several ties in the fourth quarter, Harris hit a pair of free-throws with 10.1 seconds remaining to give Orlando the victory, which also ended a 10-game regular-season losing streak to the Celtics.
Jeff Green scored 22 points to lead the Celtics, who have lost nine straight on the road and 11 of 12 overall.
In Phoenix, Arizona, Channing Frye scored a season-high 30 points before sitting out the final 9.5 minutes to watch the Suns wrap up their 117-103 rout of the Denver Nuggets.
Frye, who missed all of last season to receive treatment for an enlarged heart, made 12 of 16 shots — including five of seven three-pointers — to fall three points shy of his career-best.
Markieff Morris scored 16 and Goran Dragic 15 for the Suns, who never trailed and improved to 3-0 against Denver this season with one game to play.
Anthony Randolph scored a season-best 19 for the Nuggets, who have lost four of five and were without guard Randy Foye.
Elsewhere on Sunday, Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant scored 30 points to lead the Thunder past the Sacramento Kings 108-93.
Durant, coming off a career-high 54 points on Friday, shot 10 for 15 from the field and had nine assists as he scored at least 30 points for the seventh straight game.
Serge Ibaka added 20 points and Reggie Jackson had 16 for the Thunder, who won their third in a row.
Isaiah Thomas scored a career-high 38 points for the Kings, but slowed in the second half as the Thunder pulled away.
In Toronto, the Los Angeles Lakers downed the Raptors 112-106 for just their third win in 15 games after Nick Young returned from suspension to score 29 points and Pau Gasol had 22.
Young scored 14 in the fourth quarter as the Lakers overcame a 19-point first-half deficit to win their first back-to-back games since beating Memphis on Dec. 17 last year and Minnesota three days later.
Ryan Kelly scored 17 in his first career start, while Kendall Marshall had 10 points and 11 assists to bring the Lakers to 16-25 at the season’s midpoint.
In the NBA’s other game, San Antonio’s Patty Mills had 20 points, while Tim Duncan had 11 points and 13 rebounds, as the Spurs beat the Bucks 110-82 to keep Milwaukee winless so far this year.
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