An emphatic win over first-placed opponents had LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers talking confidently again.
“We haven’t had a win like that in a very long time,” James said. “That’s what happens when we don’t let up.”
James on Monday scored 16 of his 18 points in the first quarter as the Cavaliers made 11 three-pointers in the first half on the way to a 116-88 rout of the Detroit Pistons.
Photo: AFP
Cleveland led 73-46 at halftime thanks to an overwhelming shooting performance, an indication that Detroit’s stay at the top the Central Division might not last much longer.
The Pistons still lead the Cavaliers by a game, but Cleveland have won five straight and scored at least 110 points in eight of their past nine.
“That was 48 minutes of game planning and execution right from the beginning,” James said. “They’ve been playing extremely good basketball. They were coming off a great win [on Sunday] night in Minnesota, so we knew that they were going to come out here and try to give us their best shot, and had to be ready for that.”
The Cavaliers led 27-22 when James went to the bench late in the first quarter. By the time he came back in, it was 50-30.
Cleveland’s reserves ended up outscoring Detroit’s 26-8 in the first half.
The Cavs shot 62 percent from the field in the first two quarters and 11 of 17 from three-point range. They finished the game 16 of 33 from beyond the arc.
“I’m not upset at our guys. I didn’t see our guys quitting or anything like that,” Pistons coach Stan van Gundy said. “We got a little bit shell shocked.”
This had the feel of a big game before it started. Although there were still some empty seats at Little Caesars Arena, the Pistons’ new home seemed closer to full than on previous nights and the attendance was announced as a sellout.
The Detroit Pistons played well on offense at the start. A three-pointer by Avery Bradley put Detroit ahead 18-17.
However, James answered with two three-pointers and a turnaround jumper, and the Pistons were not able to keep up with Cleveland’s torrid shooting.
“He definitely did set the tone,” Detroit’s Tobias Harris said of James. “Made some really tough, contested shots — threes. Got himself going, got his team going and then they were able to just pretty much fuel off that.”
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