The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Suns pull away from Lakers in fourth quarter for victory
It’s no surprise that the Phoenix Suns were led by a Big Three on Sunday.
The twist is that those three players were Grayson Allen, Royce O’neale and Jusuf Nurkic.
Allen scored 24 points, Kevin Durant added 22 and the host Suns pulled away late in the fourth quarter to beat the Lakers 123-113.
Allen and O’neale hit crucial 3-pointers on backto-back possessions to put the Suns up 116-104 with three minutes left. Nurkic added one of the best allaround games of his career with 18 points, 22 rebounds and seven assists.
“Those three guys were the stars of the game tonight,” Suns coach Frank Vogel said.
The Suns have built their roster around the so-called Big Three of Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal — a group that’s made a combined 21 All-star teams. As expected, they’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting this season, but the emergence of role players such as Allen, O’neale and Nurkic has made the Suns a much deeper team.
Allen said he’s learned to pick his scoring spots when playing with the Suns’ stars. Sunday was one of them.
“It’s a little bit of a feel, but a lot of it is that I understand our team goes where (Booker, Durant and Beal) go,” Allen said. “They’re going to lead us on both ends of the floor. So offensively, whatever shot-making I’m doing has to help the offense as a whole.”
Said Durant: “He’s been making the right plays all season.”
The Lakers trailed by 20 points late in the first quarter, but slowly cut the deficit to 92-90 by late in the third. Phoenix responded with the next six points and didn’t trail in the fourth, snapping a two-game skid.
Lebron James led the Lakers with 28 points on 12-of-19 shooting and also had 12 assists. Anthony Davis had 22 points and 14 rebounds.
Four Phoenix starters scored at least 20 points and the Suns had a 5134 rebounding advantage.
Booker scored 21 and O’neale added 20 on 6-of10 shooting on 3s. Bol Bol had 11 points in 24 minutes off the bench.
The Suns took a 38-18 lead late in the first quarter before settling for a 4528 advantage going into the second. The 45 points were the most Phoenix has scored in a quarter this season. The Lakers cut into that advantage in the second but still trailed 72-63 at the break.
“Super slow start for us, offensively and defensively,” James said. “We give up 45 points in a quarter and it’s an uphill battle. From that point on, we played some really good basketball, but their role players did a good job shooting the ball.”
D’angelo Russell led Los Angeles with 18 points in the first half while Booker had 13 for the Suns.
Suarez wins NASCAR Cup ace in Atlanta
Daniel Suarez edged Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch in a three-wide finish to win a crashed-filled NASCAR Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday.
Busch, who won Saturday’s Trucks race, moved to the middle between Blaney, the 2023 Cup champion, and Suarez to set up the dramatic finish. Suarez, 32, earned his second career Cup win in his Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet. Blaney was second, only 0.003 seconds behind, and Busch was third.
There were 10 cautions and an Atlanta-record 47 lead changes.
A massive pileup of at least 16 cars on the second lap was the biggest in the history of Atlanta Motor Speedway and set the pace for a procession of wrecks. The crash left many cars heavily taped for the remainder of the afternoon.
The intensity picked up when Austin Cindric went to the bottom of the track in his Team Penske Ford for a four-wide pass to take the lead with 50 laps remaining.
Tight racing led to the eighth caution of the day when Kyle Larson and Brad Keselowski were part of a crash. Another crash with 21 laps remaining ended Chase Briscoe’s race and damaged the hopes of Denny Hamlin, who had been a top contender.
Carson Hocevar was sent spinning and Josh Berry also crashed, leading to the 10th caution with 10 laps remaining.
Michael Mcdowell, who on Saturday won his first pole in his 467th start, won the first stage but collided with Daytona 500 champion William Byron while trying to slow down to enter pit row on lap 134. Mcdowell suffered right front damage and each car fell one lap behind before Mcdowell made his way back to the lead midway through the final stage. He finished eighth.
Kings beat visiting Ducks in a shootout
Pierre-luc Dubois and Trevor Moore scored in the shootout as the host Kings defeated the Ducks 3-2 on Saturday night.
Leo Carlsson scored for the Ducks in the shootout.
Kevin Fiala, who had a goal and an assist, could not convert in the third round. It was up to David Rittich to stop Alex Killorn to preserve the victory for the Kings, who have nine straight victories over their Southern California rivals and have won six of eight games since the All-star break.
It was only Los Angeles’ second win in seven shootouts this season.
“We haven’t been great at shootouts all year, so that was big for confidence. And I think, overall, deserved the two points,” said Adrian Kempe, who had a pair of assists to extend his points streak against the Ducks to 10 games. “Maybe wasn’t our best performance overall, but it was a big win. And especially to get it in OT slash shootout was good for the confidence moving forward in that situation.”
The win also tied the Kings with the Edmonton Oilers for third place in the Pacific Division with 68 points. The teams play Monday night in Edmonton.
“That was huge. Every point matters right now. We dug ourselves a bit of a hole there in January, so we need to take what we can get now,” said defenseman Matt Roy.
Drew Doughty also had a goal and an assist and Rittich stopped 22 shots for the win.
Jakob Silfverberg and Sam Carrick scored for Anaheim while John Gibson made 48 saves.
“The first two periods had strong play from both teams. We both had zone time. In the third period they picked it up and had more energy than we did,” Ducks coach Greg Cronin said.
The Kings outshot the Ducks 50-24 and scored two power-play goals.
“We generated 50 shots, plenty of chances. Their goalie played very well. But having said that, our goalie had to play well,” Kings interim coach Jim Hiller said. “Not as many chances, but they had some real looks off the rush that we didn’t like, but the goalie was there to make the saves.”