Dyson Daniels recorded his first double-double for the Atlanta Hawks in a huge upset road win over the East’s No. 1 seeded Cleveland Cavaliers 135-124.
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Daniels finished with 12 points and an equal career-high 10 rebounds for the second double-double of his career, also tallying two threes and two steals in 36 minutes.
It’s yet another personal best for the 21-year old Bendigo product, having hit career highs in points (28), steals (seven), blocks (four) and 3-pointers (four) this season in his new colours.
Meanwhile Trae Young, the league leader in assists, dished out a career-high 22 assists — one shy of a Hawks franchise record — to go with 20 points as Atlanta improved to 8-11 just a fortnight after downing the East’s No. 2 seeded Boston Celtics.
It makes Atlanta the only team to have beaten both the Cavaliers and Celtics this
It marked just Cleveland’s second loss of the season, the other coming against Boston, and the 17-2 Cavs’ first defeat at home.
“They are a really good team who have been playing well all year and I feel we have been a little inconsistent but the times that we have played well, we’ve played really well,” Young said of the Cavs.
Daniels was strong as alwaysd defensivley, in particular limiting Darius Garland to 19 points, while Donovan Mitchell top-scored with 30 and Evan Mobley put up 22 points and 13 rebounds. But the Cavs missed out on a chance to become the first team to start with an 18-1 record.
It came after a slow start for the Hawks, with Daniels scoring their first points with a 3-pointer after a 10-0 Cavs run where the ball was popping for the hosts.
Cleveland then raced out to an early 27-8 lead and looked ominous before the Atlanta bench helped get the visitors back in the
game, closing the first term on a 27-8 run.
The Cavs again threatened to push out their lead late in the second term — going up 50-42 midway through the period — before Atlanta again fought back, even momentarily taking the lead.
The game went down to the wire of the fourth term, with Daniels’ crafty spinning floater in the lane extending the Hawks lead to 121-114 with 3:38 left in the fourth.
That was followed by a big and-one play from DeAndre Hunter, who had eight of his team-high 26 points in the fourth quarter.
Cleveland kept fighting down the stretch including Ty Jerome’s triple getting the home side within four points, but Young responded with a huge dagger 3-pointer followed by an assist to Onyeka Okongwgu under the hoop to seal the win for Atlanta.
It snapped a three-game losing streak for Atlanta, who are now healthy following the returns of Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic (17 points), who helped the Hawks’ bench outscore Cleveland’s 62-28.
GIDDEY CATCHES FIRE AFTER SLOW START… BUT BULLS CAN’T RECOVER
Josh Giddey put a scoreless first half behind him to score 10 points in the third quarter but it was far from enough as the Orlando Magic breezed to a 133-119 win over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday.
Lonzo Ball was back in the line-up after missing nearly a month with a right wrist sprain, with the Bulls guard coming off the bench.
Chicago once again went with an incredibly small starting line-up, playing Giddey alongside Coby White, Ayo Dosunmu, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic.
The Magic jumped out to an early 5-0 game on the back of a strong start from an aggressive and attacking Franz Wagner.
Dosunmu answered the Wagner flurry with a 3-pointer but Jalen Suggs came right back with a triple of his own for the Magic, who went ahead 15-7 before Bulls coach Billy Donovan called his first timeout.
Ball and Matas Buzelis entered the game after the timeout, with Giddey and White heading to the bench, and the rookie made an immediate impact – first cutting to the rim for an emphatic dunk before then splashing a 3-pointer.
Buzelis was an early bright spot, at least on offence, in an otherwise one-sided first quarter from the Magic, who led 38-25 after shooting 6-for-11 (62.5 per cent) from deep.
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Orlando’s 38 points were a season-high for a first quarter, with Wagner (11 points) and Suggs (nine) leading the way while Giddey (zero points, two turnovers, one block, one rebound) had a rough start.
The Magic maintained the intensity to only increase their lead by halftime, going up 73-54 as Kentavious Caldwell-Pope enjoyed his best game since making the move to Orlando.
The former Nugget and championship-winning guard had a team-high nine points in the second quarter while Giddey remained scoreless by the half.
That changed late in the third quarter though as Giddey started to catch fire.
The Magic had already pulled so far ahead by that point that it didn’t really matter, but Giddey was finding multiple ways to score.
First, he drained a corner 3-pointer before later driving to the rim for the finish and soon after forcing a steal before finding Dosunmu for the fastbreak bucket.
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Giddey linked with Dosunmu again later in the quarter and finished the period with 10 points, four assists, one steal and one turnover.
The Magic finished on top 133-119, with Suggs (31 points) their leading scorer while Caldwell-Pope (24) had his most productive game of the year.
Talen Horton-Tucker (20 points), meanwhile, provided spark late for Chicago while Giddey finished with 13 points, five assists and two rebounds in the loss.
Speaking before Thursday’s game, Bulls coach Donovan spoke about the early teething problems with Giddey and how the young point guard had grown more comfortable in Chicago’s system.
“He’s done a really good job of offensively helping us putting pressure at the basket but also when he’s got there he’s been able to find people and generate offence for other guys,” Donovan said.
“His adjustment period has been good and he’s smart. He’s been figuring things out as we’ve gone and I think he’ll only get better at that.”
SIMMONS STARES DOWN SUNS SUPERSTAR AFTER EARLY STATEMENT
Elsewhere, Ben Simmons flirted with a triple-double including a dropping a season-high 14 points in arguably his best game for the season in Brooklyn’s 127-117 upset of the Phoenix Suns.
It included a particularly hot start for the Aussie, scoring eight in the first five minutes of Thursday’s game despite averaging just 5.3 points per game going into it.
Simmons’ full line was 14 points on an ultra efficient 7-of-8 shooting from the field with nine rebounds and eight assists in an equal season-high 27 minutes.
The Nets withstood 61 combined points from Kevin Durant and Devin Booker to creep closer to .500 at 9-10, while the Suns fell to 10-8 amid six losses from their last seven games.
Simmons, who was given the early defensive assignment of Kevin Durant, also stared down the Suns superstar at one point early in the quarter after aggressively driving right at him for the finish.
It was exactly the kind of start Nets coach Jordi Fernandez would have loved to see from Simmons, having challenged him to shoot 10 shots per game earlier in the month.
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“I want him to shoot more. My goal for him is 10 (shots per game),” Fernandez said at the time.
“He’s gotta find a way to get there. He hasn’t gotten there, but I know he can… Those attempts need to go up… He’s more than capable.”
The Suns led Thursday’s game 37-34 after the first quarter against a Nets team that has quickly proven themselves to be far from easy beats despite entering the season with one of the lowest projected win totals.
Brooklyn was severely undermanned for the trip to Phoenix, without Nic Claxton, Bojan Bogdanović, Day’Ron Sharpe, Jaylen Martin, Noah Clowney and leading scorer Cam Thomas, who is out three to four weeks with a hamstring strain.
The Nets really stepped things up a gear in the third quarter, winning the period 33-21 to go up double figures at the last change.
Phoenix never got back into the game thereafter as Tyrese Martin, who poured in a team-high 30 points for Brooklyn off the bench, got hot with back-to-back threes that saw Brooklyn lead by as much as 18 at one stage.
ELSEWHERE …
The Houston Rockets needed overtime to beat the 3-14 Philadelphia 76ers, with Alperen Sengun scoring 22 points and claiming 14 rebounds and seven assists.
Half of Sengun’s points came in overtime where the Rockets made sure of moving to 14-6.
James Harden scored 43 points for the Los Angeles Clippers as they beat the struggling Washington Wizards 121-96.
Harden scored 23 of his points in the first quarter and left the game late in the third quarter with the Wizards already condemned to their 13th straight defeat.
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The Miami Heat defeated the Charlotte Hornets 98-94, with Tyler Herro scoring 27 points and Duncan Robinson draining six 3-pointers in the win.
Bam Adebayo claimed 10 rebounds and 10 assists for the Heat while LaMelo Ball had 32 points and 10 rebounds for Charlotte.
Miami’s star Jimmy Butler left the game in the third quarter with a tight back and did not return.
The Hornets were closing in on the lead with 10 seconds left but Herro grabbed Ball’s attempted pass to Brandon Miller for the crucial turnover.
-Via AFP
ALL RESULTS
HEAT 98 HORNETS 94
HAWKS 135 CAVALIERS 124
TRAIL BLAZERS 114 PACERS 121
BULLS 119 MAGIC 133
ROCKETS 122 76ERS 115 (OT)
CLIPPERS 121 WIZARDS 96
KNICKS 114 MAVERICKS 129
PISTONS 114 GRIZZLIES 129
KINGS 115 TIMBERWOLVES 104
RAPTORS 119 PELICANS 93
LAKERS 119 SPURS 101
NETS 127 SUNS 117
NUGGETS 122 JAZZ 103
THUNDER 105 WARRIORS 101
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