Towns leads Timberwolves past Booker-less Suns
Karl-Anthony Towns’ scoring actually meant something this time.
Two days after his coach characterized his late points as “meaningless” in a listless loss to Miami, Towns led a balanced offensive attack for Minnesota with 32 points and 12 rebounds and the Timberwolves beat Phoenix 119-108 at home on Sunday.
Towns kept the Wolves from another bad loss, this one against a Phoenix team missing top scorer Devin Booker.
“Whatever the game plan is offensively, I try to go out there and execute as best as possible,” Towns said. “Whether it is shoot 30-plus shots, or shoot five shots.”
Coach Tom Thibodeau criticized Towns for not moving without the ball on Friday night, when his star big man got rolling too late. On Sunday, he scored 30 points for the third time this season and recorded his league-leading 16th double-double.
“I thought Karl had great activity today, so that was good,” Thibodeau said. “We need that from him.”
The Suns announced shortly before the game that Booker — who scored 35 points in Phoenix’s home victory over Minnesota on Nov. 11 — would sit out because of an injured big right toe.
With Booker out, the Suns got another big game from their bench, led by Mike James with a career-high 26 points. But Minnesota started the third quarter with a 22-11 run, and Phoenix couldn’t find an offensive spark to seriously threaten the rest of the way.
“He’s one of our best scorers, so it’s a big chunk offensively,” Suns interim coach Jay Triano said about Booker. “But at the same time we shot 50 percent. I thought our movement was pretty good. We shared the basketball, so I’m not disappointed with how we played at the offensive end without him. We weren’t very good defensively.”
Miami overcomes slow start to beat Chicago
The Miami Heat followed
the lowest-scoring first quarter in team history with the highest-scoring one of the season to beat the Bulls in Chicago.
After scoring seven points in the first quarter, Miami had 38 in the second to take a 45-42 lead en route to a 100-93 victory Sunday.
Goran Dragic scored 24 points and the Heat bench produced 54 points to extend the team’s winning streak to three.
“They (the bench) inspired the whole team,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We were looking for some kind of energy, some kind of separation. We understand that it was going to be a 48-minute game and they played some inspiring basketball, not only in the fourth quarter but in that second quarter. That’s what really changed the momentum and brought us back into it.”
Steve “Snapper” Jones dies at 75
Steve “Snapper” Jones, the former ABA and NBA player who had a long career in broadcasting, died Saturday after a lengthy illness. He was 75.
The Portland Trail Blazers said family members and friends confirmed that Jones died in Houston.
Jones was a three-time All-Star in eight ABA seasons, averaging 16.0 points in 640 regularseason games for Oakland, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, Carolina, Denver and St. Louis. He finished his career with Portland in 1975-76, averaging 6.5 points in 64 games in his lone NBA season.
“Steve was as positive and good-natured a broadcasting partner as I could have had,” Blazers broadcast partner Bill Schonely said. “He loved to call me ‘Pops’ as a nickname, and we worked very well together on Trail Blazers games during some of the early years of the franchise. He was a terrific guy.”