Bogdanovic leads Kings past Pelicans 140-125
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Bogdan Bogdanovic scored a career-high 35 points to help the Sacramento Kings beat the New Orleans Pelicans 140-125 on Thursday.
De'Aaron Fox had 30 points and 10 assists and Harrison Barnes added 22 points for the Kings, who got their first win in four tries since the restart. The Kings shot 54%.
Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram each scored 24 points for the Pelicans. Williamson made his first eight shots and ended up making 10 of 12 overall in just under 22 minutes.
JJ Redick scored 18 points and Jrue Holiday added 17 for the Pelicans, who shot 57%. New Orleans fell to 1-3 in the restart.
Both teams are chasing a spot in the Western Conference playoffs. The Kings pulled even with the Pelicans in the standings and now are 2 1/2 games behind eighthplace Memphis with four games remaining. A team needs to be in ninth place and within four games of the eighth-place team to force a playoff.
Sacramento led 49-39 after one quarter, the most points the Kings have scored in any period since moving to Sacramento for the 198586 season. Bodganovic scored 19 points in the quarter and made 5 of 6 3-pointers.
The Kings led 77-70 at halftime and extended the lead to 117-103 at the end of the third quarter.
BUCKS 130, HEAT 116
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton scored 33 points each, and the Milwaukee Bucks overcame a huge early deficit to get a win over the Miami Heat on Thursday to clinch the top seed in the Eastern Conference.
The Heat led by as many as 23 points in a first half where the team piled up 73 points despite playing without Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic. Miami cooled off after the break and the Bucks took the lead in the third quarter but were down by 6 to start the fourth.
Antetokounmpo sat out about five minutes of the fourth quarter after collecting his fifth foul with 11 minutes to go. Milwaukee trailed by 1 with about five minutes remaining before using a 20-0 run, with three dunks from Antetokounmpo, to make it 130-111 with less than a minute to go and cruise to the victory.
Antetokounmpo and Middleton played 30 and 34 minutes respectively after the stars both sat out the entire second half of their last game on
Tuesday.
Duncan Robinson had 21 points for the Heat.
The Heat led by 6 with about 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter when Antetokounmpo picked up his fifth foul on a charge and headed to the bench.
Andre Iguodala made a 3 for Miami before the Bucks scored the next 13 points, capped by a 3 from Bledsoe, to take a 107-103 lead with about seven minutes remaining.
Robinson made a 3-pointer to end a scoring drought of almost four minutes for Miami with about 6 ½ minutes to go and Antetokounmpo re-entered the game soon after that.
The Heat led by 12 with about 10 minutes left in third quarter before Milwaukee used a 16-3 run to take an 82-81 lead with five minutes left in the quarter.