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Los Angeles (AFP) – Kevin Durant scored 35 points and Royce O’Neal scored a decisive basket and led their team, the Brooklyn Nets, to a victory over the Western Conference leaders, the Portland Trail Blazers, 109-107, Thursday, in the NBA competitions.
O’Neal, who followed the tips of his fingers with a ball in the Portland basket, gave the Nets the lead 7 tenths of a second before the end of the match, which he ended with “Triple Double” (11 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists).
“I went to lay the ball,” said the 29-year-old, who moved to Brooklyn from the Utah Jazz this summer. “We had to do our best because it was the last game. I did what I had to do.”
And O’Neal managed to rise higher than his competitors, Damian Lillard (25 points) and Anferne Simmons (24), to return to the basket a ball that Durant hit and hit the arc.
And the Nets, who featured the newcomer from the Philadelphia Seventy Sixers, Australian Ben Simmons (15 points, 13 rebounds and 7 assists), reduced Portland’s success rate to 38.7 percent. Japanese substitute Yuuta Watanabe was an additional factor in the victory, scoring 20 points, including 5 successful three-pointers out of 7.
It is expected that the Nets, advanced to the eleventh place in the eastern region, will regain the efforts of its star, Kyrie Irving, on Sunday once morest Memphis, as according to several media outlets, the club’s management will raise the penalty for his suspension for publishing an anti-Semitic video, which lasted 8 matches.
Portland’s fifth loss in 15 games did not prevent it from retaining the lead in the Western Region once morest its direct pursuers, the Phoenix Suns (9-5) and the Denver Nuggets (9-5).
The Los Angeles Clippers inflicted their fifth consecutive loss on the Detroit Pistons, defeating them 96-91.
The match witnessed the return of Kawhi Leonard, who has been absent since October 23, to the starting line-up for the winner, knowing that he had suffered a cruciate ligament rupture that kept him out of action for a year and a half, and he only played two matches this season.
The Sacramento Kings achieved their fifth consecutive victory by defeating the San Antonio Spurs 130-112, in a match during which they starred in the ranks of the duo winner Daron Fox and Malik Monk with 28 and 26 points, respectively.
On the other hand, Spurs suffered its ninth loss in its last ten matches.
© 2022 AFP
