Pacers blow out Hornets in East elimination game

Domantas Sabonis had 14 points, 21 rebounds and nine assists, and the short-handed Indiana Pacers routed the visiting Charlotte Hornets 144117 in the Eastern Conference’s first play-in game Tuesday night.

Led by Sabonis and Doug McDermott, who scored 16 of his 21 points in the first quarter, the ninth-seeded Pacers snapped a franchise-worst nine-game losing streak in the postseason. They also moved within one victory of making a sixth consecutive playoff appearance.

Indiana will visit the loser of Tuesday’s other play-in game, No. 7 Boston against No. 8 Washington, on Thursday.

It was Indiana’s first postseason win since a blowout victory against Cleveland in April 2018. And the Pacers won this one despite losing forward Caris LeVert to the league’s health and safety protocol.

Charlotte was led by Miles Bridges with 18 points and former Indiana University star Cody Zeller with 17. The Hornets finished the season with six straight losses.

WARRIORS-LAKERS

LeBron James and Steph Curry are used to meeting in the spring with an NBA championship up for grabs.

The stakes will be so much different when they face each other this time: they will just be vying for a playoff spot.

James and the seventhseeded Los Angeles Lakers host Curry’s eighthseeded Golden State Warriors on Wednesday night in a Western Conference play-in tournament game.

At 33, Curry this season became the oldest scoring champion since Michael Jordan did it at age 35 in 1998, averaging 32.0 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.8 assists in 63 games. That included 96 3s in

April alone, an NBA record for a single month.

James has said Curry should be this year’s MVP.

“I don’t know anything else if you’re looking for an MVP. If Steph is not on Golden State’s team, what are we looking at? We get caught up in the records sometimes,” he said. “Steph has had, in my opinion, the best season all year.”

James, who is averaging 25.0 points, 7.7 rebounds and 7.8 assists in 45 games, has played in only four games since originally suffering a sprained right ankle March 20.

ELSEWHERE

Upon further review,

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Indiana’s Myles Turner is the NBA’s blocked-shot champion for this season. The NBA said that Turner will be recognized as the winner in that category, even though he did not play in the required 70% of games that are typically needed for someone to qualify as a statistical leader. Turner averaged 3.4 blocks per game in 47 games. Utah’s Rudy Gobert averaged 2.7 blocks per game in 71 games.