Paul George on Wednesday drained a season-high eight three-pointers en route to 36 points, as the Los Angeles Clippers crushed the Cleveland Cavaliers 121-99 to remain the only team in the NBA not to have experienced back-to-back defeats this season.
On Tuesday, the Clippers could not handle the trio of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving as hosts the Brooklyn Nets beat them 124-120, sending the Clippers to just their second defeat in the past 10 contests.
However, rather than dwell on bad games, George sees an opportunity to learn about himself and improve his skills.
Photo: AP
“Last night was great preparation for tonight,” he said, after making eight of nine attempts from beyond the arc. “I did a bad job of shooting my shots. I told myself if I get the same looks, I am going to knock it down. My teammates did a great job of looking for me. They set me up and screened for me.”
It was a tired Clippers team that beat the Cavaliers, as they finished off their six-game road trip on a winning note in front of a pandemic-limited crowd of 2,000 at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio.
“We wanted to end this trip on a great note. We didn’t want to lose two in a row,” George said.
Kawhi Leonard scored 24 points, while Croatia’s Ivica Zubac delivered 10 points and 16 rebounds off the bench for the Clippers, who finished 4-2 on the road trip.
The Clippers started the trip without George and Leonard, who were sidelined by COVID-19 protocols.
Collin Sexton scored 16 of his 27 points in the first half for the Cavaliers, while Darius Garland contributed 23 points in the loss.
“Paul George had more threes than our team,” Garland said. “I don’t think we’re going to win many games shooting just twos.”
George sank his eighth three-pointer with 5 minutes, 9 seconds left to give the Clippers their biggest lead of the contest at 110-93.
“We’re getting better,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said. “We’ve got some things we’ve still got to get better at. We’ve still got a long way to go.”
The Clippers were without Patrick Beverley, who missed every game on the road trip with a sore knee.
In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, two-time reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Giannis Antetokounmpo delivered a triple-double of 21 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists to fuel the Bucks’ 130-110 rout of the Indiana Pacers.
Antetokounmpo connected on seven of eight shots from the field and seven of eight from the free-throw line, and the Bucks led from wire-to-wire, taking a 106-72 advantage into the final period — when Antetokounmpo sat out along with the rest of Milwaukee’s starters.
Domantas Sabonis led the Pacers with a career-high 33 points and 12 rebounds, but Indiana, coming off Tuesday’s 134-116 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, could not slow a Bucks team that made 21 three-pointers.
In Atlanta, Georgia, Luka Doncic, Kristaps Porzingis and Tim Hardaway combined for 73 points to help the Dallas Mavericks snap a six-game losing streak with a 122-116 win over the Atlanta Hawks.
Doncic scored 27 points, posting his 11th double-double with eight rebounds and 14 assists.
Porzingis tallied 24 points and 11 rebounds, while Hardaway came off the bench to score 22.
In New Orleans, Zion Williamson scored 28 points as the New Orleans Pelicans defeated the Phoenix Suns 123-101. Williamson made 12 of 14 field-goal attempts, while grabbing seven rebounds and dishing out six assists.
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