Categories: USA

Clippers Edge Kings, thumb towards the seeded of the top 6 with 7th consecutive victory – Orange County Register

Sacramento – The longest sequence of Victories of the Clippers of the season kept them in the heart of a eliminatory series of the Western conference, but the drama is almost finished.

James Harden managed a triple-double with 23 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists, Kawhi Leonard scored 28 points and the Clippers withdrew a late Rafale in the last two minutes to beat the Kings of Sacramento, 101-100, Friday evening for their seventh consecutive victory.

Ivica Zubac had another double-double (17 points and 10 rebounds) for the Clippers, and Norman Powell added 16 points.

With a regular season match, the Clippers (49-32) are tied with the Denver Nuggets (49-32) for the fourth place in the Western Conference, but the Nuggets have the seeded n ° 4 on the basis of a better conference record. The Clippers finished with a match on the road against the Golden State Warriors in sixth place (48-33) Sunday afternoon and would not be worse than seeded n ° 5 with a victory.

Minnesota (48-33) and Memphis (47-34) complete the group of five teams trying to secure the six tops and avoid the game tournament (Seeds 7-10). The Minnesota welcomes the last place in Utah (17-64), Denver plays in Houston (52-29) and Memphis welcomes Dallas (39-42) in other finals of the season on Sunday. The matching equality of matching equality could come into play to determine the final seeds.

The first three seeds are already locked up: Oklahoma City, Houston and the Lakers, in this order.

The Clippers conducted comfortably during most of the match on Friday until the Kings jumped in the fourth quarter and reach 100-98 with 1:04 to play. After Zach Lavine de Sacramento made two free throws with 3.9 seconds to play, the Kings stole the inbound pass of Harden and called a dead time with 2.2 seconds to play. But the 3 -point test disputed by DeMar Derozan at the Buzzer hit the panel.

Harden won his third triple-double of the season with a pair of offensive rebounds during the frantic finish. The clippers were unable to mark Harden boards, but with Powell adding another offensive rebound, they ate more than 40 seconds criticism.

The long sequence and a Harden franc launch helped them to survive a gathering of Kings which was fueled by the Torrid Lavine finish. The product of the UCLA scored 10 of its 26 points at the top of the team in 3:39 finals, in particular by overthrowing a pair of 3 points during their 12-4 end of match race.

Derozan scored 16 points and exceeded Reggie Miller in 25th place on the NBA career score list.

Domantas Sabonis collected 19 points and 16 rebounds and has become the sixth player since the Ab / NBA merger to have 60 doubles or more for three consecutive seasons, joining Moses Malone, John Stockton, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Dwight Howard.

Leonard crowned his first half of 20 points with a 3-point second point, sending the mowers at halftime on a 11-3 race. Leonard continued the Pivot push immediately after the intermission, while visitors scored the first six points in half to extend their race at 17-3.

Although he held the lead throughout the second half, the Clippers never led by more than 10 points.

With the Kings following 84-80 in the fourth quarter, the acting coach Doug Christie had to be selected and took a technical fault after the recruit Devin Carter was called for a defensive fault despite the reruns showing Harden’s arm striking Carter in the head.