Derrick Rose had 23 points and seven assists in his first postseason game in three years, and Jimmy Butler scored 25 points as the Chicago Bulls opened the playoffs with a 103-91 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday.
Rose was at his fearless best, driving hard to the rim in the early going, and mixed in three three-pointers in the second half. The Bulls believe they are poised to make a run now that they finally have Rose playing in the postseason. The last time they had him for the duration of the playoffs in 2011, he led them to the Eastern Conference finals.
The Bulls won despite committing 19 turnovers. They outrebounded Milwaukee 52-41, with Pau Gasol grabbing 13, and Joakim Noah and rookie Nikola Mirotic 11 apiece.
Photo: Jerry Lai-USA TODAY
Khris Middleton scored 18 points and Zaza Pachulia had 15, but Michael Carter Williams finished with nine on four-of-13 shooting as the sixth-seeded Bucks came up short after jumping from 15 wins to 41 this season.
WARRIORS 106, PELICANS 99
Stephen Curry scored 34 points as Golden State went up big before holding off New Orleans in their playoff opener.
Klay Thompson added 21 points, and Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut dominated down low as the Warriors looked every bit like the NBA’s top seed — at least for three quarters.
The Warriors led by 15 after the first quarter, 18 at the half and 25 late in the third. The Pelicans pulled within four in the final minute behind Davis, who scored 20 of his 35 points in the fourth quarter, to make the contest seem closer than it really was.
Elsewhere, the Washington Wizards Wizards beat the Toronto Raptors 93-86, while the Houston Rockets defeated the Dallas Mavericks 118-108.
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