NBA: Griffin's career game lifts Pistons over Sixers in OT

Blake Griffin scored a career-high 50 points, including a game-winning three-point play with 1.8 seconds left in overtime, and the Detroit Pistons edged the visiting Philadelphia 76ers 133-132 on Tuesday.

Griffin, whose previous career best was 47 points, made 20 of 35 field-goal attempts and 5 of 11 free-throw attempts. He added 14 rebounds and six assists.

Reggie Jackson supplied 23 points, Ish Smith tossed in 21 off the bench and Reggie Bullock added 17 for Detroit. Andre Drummond had 14 points and 16 rebounds before he was ejected late in regulation after picking up his second technical.

Joel Embiid racked up 33 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists, and JJ Redick had 30 points, six rebounds and six assists for Philadelphia. Robert Covington chipped in 16 points and eight rebounds.

Philadelphia point guard Ben Simmons missed the game with back tightness.

Griffin scored the first points of overtime, a three from the top of the key. He then found Smith in transition for another three.

Philadelphia then reeled off eight of the next 10 points, including a Redick three that tied it at 128-all. Redick missed a long two, then fouled Jackson with 20.5 seconds left. Jackson made both free throws.

Redick then came off a screen and drilled a three from the left wing while getting fouled by Jackson. Redick completed the four-point play to lead 132-130 with 5.6 seconds remaining and Detroit called timeout.

Griffin then took the inbounds pass, drove the lane and made a layup while getting fouled by Covington. Griffin hit the 50-point mark to give Detroit the one-point lead.

Philadelphia took its last timeout but Embiid missed a three at the buzzer.

Griffin scored 22 of his 28 first-half points in the second quarter, but the Sixers still emerged with a 64-61 halftime advantage.

Late in regulation, Griffin banked in a shot for a 120-all tie. Embiid then missed an open three, but Bullock followed by missing a runner in the lane. Philadelphia had the last shot in regulation and Dario Saric's 3-point try rolled off.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Barnes bomb breaks Sixers hearts as Warriors escape with win

Harrison Barnes dropped in a three-pointer with 0.2 left on the clock as the Golden State Warriors escaped with a 108-105 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers in a meeting of the NBA's best and worst teams on Saturday.

Guard Klay Thompson scored 32 points for the Warriors, defending league champions, who improved to 43-4. That matched the 1966-67 Sixers for the best 47-game start in league history.

The Warriors, who led by 24 points in the third quarter and 15 with 5:41 left in the game, saw the Sixers go on a 20-5 run that included seven points by guard Ish Smith.

Smith's steal and breakaway dunk with 22.3 seconds left tied the score at 105-105.

On the final Golden State possession, guard Stephen Curry fired a pass from the right wing to forward Draymond Green at the top of the circle. He found forward Barnes in the right corner from where he drilled his shot.

Curry finished with 23 points, while Green contributed 10 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists for the Warriors. Barnes finished with 11 points.

Guard Isaiah Canaan scored 18 points off the bench for the Sixers (7-41), including a four-point play with 38.6 seconds left. Smith had 16 points and nine assists.

Thompson, who notched a season-high 45 points in a victory over Dallas on Wednesday, had 21 in Saturday's first half, staking the Warriors to a 73-54 lead.

Golden State were up 100-85 after Thompson dropped in a layup with 5:41 left in the game, before the Sixers mounted their comeback.

The Sixers moved to an early 17-10 lead behind guard Nik Stauskas, who scored seven points, but the Warriors reeled off 15 straight and never trailed again.

Thompson had eight of those points, including a pair of three-pointers.

Golden State, up 34-28 after a quarter, saw Philadelphia creep within three early in the second quarter on a long-range effort by guard/forward Hollis Thompson.

The Warriors, however, outscored the Sixers 35-19 the rest of the quarter to take a 73-54 halftime lead.

It was the most points the Sixers have allowed in a half this season. The Warriors' 65.3-percent shooting was also the best by a Philadelphia opponent in any half this season.

Thompson had eight of his 21 first-half points in the quarter, while Green had six of the 10 he scored in the first 24 minutes. Green also had 10 rebounds and six assists in the half.

(Editing by John O'Brien)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Celtics limp into showdown with Heat

BOSTON—It took seven games against the No. 8 seed in the East. But at long last, with Saturday’s bruising 85-75 Game 7 win over the Sixers, the Celtics are finally moving on. And for many an NBA observer, that means the Eastern Conference finals will be the matchup we’ve wanted all along, one that we’ve wanted to see since the unforgettable summer of 2010—Miami and Boston, the New Big Three vs. the Old Big Three, with a shot at the Finals on the line.

OK, this all didn’t come together the way one might have expected. The Celtics, after all, did play Miami in the playoffs last year, and lost humbly in five games in the second round. Besides, it’s highly unlikely that this showdown would be taking place at all if not for the knee injury to Derrick Rose, the star point guard for the top-seeded Bulls. Boston’s win over the Sixers was downright unsightly at times, with the two teams each averaging fewer than 90 points and combining to shoot 42.6 percent from the field.

The Celtics’ struggles were clear in Game 7, when they started off missing 14 straight 3-pointers and, after repeatedly putting Philadelphia on the ropes, kept allowing the Sixers to make a game of it. That left coach Doc Rivers to pull together lineups with duct tape and chicken wire. Rivers, after speculating before the game that he might dip into his reserves and use Sasha Pavlovic or Marquis Daniels, instead played each of his five starters 37 minutes or more. He got just seven points in a combined 30 minutes from his bench.

The problem was compounded when captain Paul Pierce, who was 6-for-14 with 15 points on the night, fouled out with four minutes to play, at which time Sixers coach Doug Collins said he thought, “We have a chance to win this.”

Indeed, they did. It wasn’t until Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo—who had an 18-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist triple-double, but also committed seven turnovers—made a 3-pointer with a little more than two minutes to play in the game that the Celtics were able to breathe some relief.

And now, as was the case after their grinding first-round series with the Hawks, the Celtics get one day to breathe some relief before they play again. That’s problematic. Shooting guard Avery Bradley is out because of shoulder surgery, and Ray Allen probably should be out, too, gimpy as he is with bone spurs in his ankle—Allen made two huge fourth-quarter 3-pointers for the Celtics in Game 7, but he is still shooting just 26.9 percent from the arc, down from 43.5 percent during the year. Throw in the wear-and-tear that this lockout-shortened season has left on 36-year-old Kevin Garnett and 34-year-old Pierce, and this Celtics bunch is going into the next round with a hobble.

“It’s been taxing,” coach Doc Rivers said. “Obviously, we would have loved to have won in Philly. We would have loved to have won in Atlanta and finished it off. But, you know, those teams are good and they’re hard to play. We’ve done, I’m hoping, a good enough job of rest. We didn’t practice one time in this entire series, which is unheard of in a playoff series when you think about it. We walked through stuff. Literally, we didn’t run in the walk through. Tomorrow we’ll watch film. And then we’ll go play a game. The way we look at it with this team is, tomorrow is off and most of Monday off, and then we play. We just don’t have the bodies; don’t have the legs to do anything else.”

Many figured that the Celtics would be going to Miami for the conference finals last year, facing the newly formed Heat trio of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. Boston was the defending East champ, and had been within a few minutes of beating the Lakers for the 2010 championship—and they did not take kindly to the celebratory atmosphere around the fusing together of the Heat’s stars. But that was before the rise of the Bulls, and the second-half decline of the Celtics, which took some of the luster out of the Heat-Celtics playoff matchup.

This will be different, if only because the Heat and Celtics have managed to survive into the league’s Final Four. Sure, Miami seems to have gotten its act together, but the series against the Pacers was no cakewalk, with Indiana at least rattling the Heat in the first three games. The Celtics figure to take a similar approach, and with it looking doubtful that the Heat will have Bosh (abdominal strain) available, Boston could go ahead and muck up the conference finals the way they did the first two rounds.

It was, for both the Heat and the Celtics, a winding road to this point. But they’ll take it.

“I love where we’re at,” Rivers said. “I told them after the game, this is exactly where we thought we’d be. We’re going to Miami.”

source: aol.sportingnews.com