Luka powers Mavs
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Luka Doncic scored 27 points to lead the Dallas Mavericks to a 115-98 NBA victory in Brooklyn Saturday, snapping the short-handed Nets’ eight-game winning streak.
James Harden scored 29 points for the Nets but ran out of steam late as he carried the load in the absence of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Durant missed his seventh game with a strained le hamstring while Irving sat out to rest his surgically repaired right shoulder.
Harden had just four points in the second half, sitting out most of the fourth quarter in which Dallas led by as many as 22.
The Mavs were buoyed by the return of Kristaps Porzingis, who scored 18 points in his first conFor test since missing three games with back trouble.
‘’We played like a team today,’’ said Doncic, who was able to celebrate the victory on the eve of his 22nd birth anniversary.
‘’They have an amazing team,’’ added Doncic, who added that even with two stars out the Mavs knew the Nets remained a dangerous adversary.
‘’We just kept going as a team,’’ he said.
Brooklyn remained half a game behind Eastern Conference leaders Philadelphia, who fell 112109 to the Cleveland Cavaliers in overtime in a rare home defeat.
Guard Collin Sexton scored 28 points and Darius Garland added 25 with nine assists for the Cavaliers, who came into the contest missing half a dozen players due to injury or personal reasons.
Despite having just nine players in uniform, Cleveland led 28-23 a er the first quarter and 56-47 at hal ime.
An 18-9 third-quarter run saw the Sixers pull level at 65-65 and the lead changed hands eight times in the fourth.
Joel Embiid’s dunk with 1:38 left in regulation knotted the score at 92-92, but he missed a potential game-winner at the buzzer.