Kawhi Leonard scored 41 points, grabbed eight rebounds and made four steals on Sunday to lead the Los Angeles Clippers in a lopsided 115-96 NBA victory at Minnesota.<\/p>\n
The 34-year-old forward, a two-time NBA champion, matched the second-best road scoring effort of his career as the Clippers improved to 25-27.<\/p>\n
“Just being aggressive. My teammates trust me,” Leonard said. “Every moment when I touch the ball — assist, shooting the basketball or getting a rebound — I’m just trying to help the team win.”<\/p>\n
Leonard made three steals in a row at the start of the contest.<\/p>\n
“Just wanted to come out early in the game and set a tone for us on the defensive end,” Leonard said. “I reached for the ball, I got it and we got off in transition.”<\/p>\n
After dealing away James Harden and Ivica Zubac at the NBA trade deadline, the Clippers played with spark as they awaited the arrival of new players.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a good group,” Leonard said. “Guys are level-headed. They love to play basketball. We’re just going out and competing every night.”<\/p>\n
Leonard delivered 24 points in the first half on the way to his fourth 40-point performance of the season for the Clippers, who closed the second quarter with a 20-6 run for a 54-42 half-time lead and never looked back.<\/p>\n
Days after French big man Rudy Gobert had called out teammates for “unacceptable” poor effort, the T-Wolves struggled again with their second-fewest points in any game this season.<\/p>\n
Anthony Edwards led Minnesota with 23 points while Julius Randle added 17.<\/p>\n
Kris Dunn of the Clippers was ejected late in the fourth quarter after shoving Randle in the back to spark a shoving match that was broken up by teammates.<\/p>\n
Jalen Brunson produced game highs of 31 points and eight assists to spark the New York Knicks over Boston 111-89 for their ninth win in 10 games.<\/p>\n
Brunson hit 12-of-21 shots from the floor and 4-of-8 from three-point range for the visiting Knicks, who improved to 34-19 to match Boston for second in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Josh Hart added 19 points for New York while Jose Alvarado had 12 off the bench in his Knicks debut and Karl-Anthony Towns contributed 11 points and 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Jaylen Brown led Boston with 26 points as the Celtics settled for a season low in points.<\/p>\n
The Knicks ended the third quarter with a 15-3 run for an 85-68 lead and cruised from there, the Celtics going 0-for-10 from three-point range in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Miami’s Bam Adebayo scored 22 points and Norman Powell added 21 to lead the Heat in a 132-101 triumph at Washington.<\/p>\n
Toronto’s Scottie Barnes scored 25 points and grabbed 14 rebounds while RJ Barrett added 20 points to lead the Raptors (32-22) over visiting Indiana 122-104.<\/p>\n
Former Raptors star Pascal Siakam of Cameroon scored 18 points to lead Indiana (13-40), which suffered a fourth loss in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kawhi Leonard scored 41 points, grabbed eight rebounds and made four steals on Sunday to lead the Los…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3789],"tags":[22985,7,559,126,563,4034,192,4032,251,135,4033,4031,736,189,1407,6,1408,191,279,476],"class_list":{"0":"post-591655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-clippers","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-clippers","11":"tag-indiana-pacers","12":"tag-karl-anthony-towns","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-la-clippers","15":"tag-laclippers","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-losangelesclippers","20":"tag-men","21":"tag-miami-heat","22":"tag-national-basketball-association","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-nba-teams","25":"tag-new-york-knicks","26":"tag-pascal-siakam","27":"tag-toronto-raptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116038340664948118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}