Portland’s LaMarcus Aldridge reversed his previous decision to have thumb surgery and turned out for the Trail Blazers on Saturday, helping them to a 103-96 win against Washington.
The Blazers pushed their lead in the NBA Northwest Division back out to nine games, while the Wizards, second in the Eastern Conference, slipped further behind runaway leaders Atlanta.
Among other games, Memphis had a comfortable win against lowly Philadelphia, while Milwaukee used accurate perimeter shooting to easily beat Detroit.
Aldridge had said he was expected to miss from six to eight weeks for ligament surgery, but just hours before the game, the Blazers announced the three-time All-Star would play.
He had 26 points and nine rebounds, while Damian Lillard added 20 points and seven assists for the Blazers, who had to work hard to see off the persistent Wizards.
Scores were tied midway through the last quarter and Portland led by only two points with 3 minutes, 28 seconds left. The gap was at three points when Meyers Leonard sank three straight free throws with 1:07 left to push the lead out to six.
John Wall led Washington with 25 points and nine assists.
Memphis notched their sixth win in seven games by downing Philadelphia 101-83, opening their Southwest Division lead to one-and-a-half games.
Zach Randolph had 17 points and 14 rebounds and Jeff Green scored 18 for the Grizzlies, who led by 25 points in the second half before resting their starters in the fourth quarter.
Rookie Jerami Grant scored 16 points to lead the Sixers, who shot 38 percent and committed 24 turnovers.
Milwaukee hit 11 of their 17 three-point attempts to beat Detroit 101-86.
O.J. Mayo scored 20 points, including three three-pointers in just 47 seconds to spark an 18-2 run in the second quarter that turned a deficit into a 14-point lead.
Milwaukee also opened the second half with a 17-2 run. The Bucks led by as much as 30 in the third quarter of a rare easy victory.
Detroit’s Brandon Jennings scored 16 points before leaving late in the third with a lower left leg injury.
Utah’s Gordon Hayward scored 24 points to lead the Jazz to a 108-73 rout of Brooklyn.
Charlotte kept up their recent strong form with a 76-71 win against the New York Knicks, who have struggled all season yet won their previous three games.
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