The San Antonio Spurs edged the Toronto Raptors 110-107 on Wednesday, pushing their NBA winning streak to 10 games and closing in on Western Conference leaders Oklahoma City Thunder, who fell to the Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n
Devin Vassell scored 21 points and De’Aaron Fox added 20 for the Spurs, who overcame a lackluster offensive night from superstar Victor Wembanyama to push their win streak to double digits for the first time since the 2015-16 season.<\/p>\n
The French big man connected on just three of 12 shots on the way to 12 points in the face of a determined Raptors defense.<\/p>\n
But Wembanyama was five-for-six from the free-throw line, and his five blocks included a crucial denial of Jakob Poeltl with 44 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
The Spurs improved to 42-16, just two games behind Oklahoma City, who fell to 45-15 after their 124-116 loss to the Pistons in Detroit.<\/p>\n
Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren scored 29 points apiece to lead the Pistons in a battle of conference leaders touted as a possible NBA Finals preview.<\/p>\n
The clash lost some luster with Oklahoma City’s reigning NBA Most Valuable Player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander headlining a raft of Thunder absentees as he missed a ninth straight game with an abdominal strain.<\/p>\n
Isaiah Hartenstein, Chet Holmgren, Ajay Mitchell and Jalen Williams were also sidelined, and Isaiah Joe departed at halftime with a bruised hip.<\/p>\n
The depleted Thunder led 34-22 after a tight first quarter, but the Pistons out-scored them 36-18 in the second period to seize control and never trailed in the second half.<\/p>\n
Duren added 15 rebounds for his 27th double-double of the season. Cunningham handed out 13 assists for Eastern Conference leaders Detroit, who saw a 17-point lead whittled to four with 39.2 seconds left.<\/p>\n
Cunningham found Duren for a dunk and then drained a pair of free throws as the Pistons held on and at 43-14 slipped ahead of Oklahoma City for best record in the league.<\/p>\n
– Nuggets down Celtics –<\/p>\n
They strengthened their grip on first place in the East over the Boston Celtics, who fell 103-84 to the Nuggets in Denver.<\/p>\n
Nikola Jokic scored 30 points and grabbed 12 rebounds for the Nuggets, who prevailed despite the early exit of ailing Jamal Murray.<\/p>\n
Jaylen Brown returned from a one-game injury absence to score 23 points for Boston.<\/p>\n
In Milwaukee, the Bucks shook off the continued absence of superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 118-116.<\/p>\n
Jarrett Allen scored 27 points and pulled down 11 rebounds for Cleveland, but his last-gasp effort that would have forced overtime was ruled to have left his hand after the buzzer.<\/p>\n
The Cavs were without star guard James Harden, who suffered a broken thumb in a win over the New York Knicks on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Harden, who arrived in a trade from the LA Clippers this month, was listed as “questionable” up until game time but joined Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
With Antetokounmpo missing a 13th straight game with a calf injury, Kevin Porter Jr. led the Bucks with 20 points, delivering the game-winner with 20.2 seconds left after Dennis Schroder had tied it with 35.6 seconds to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs edged the Toronto Raptors 110-107 on Wednesday, pushing their NBA winning streak to 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[22985,7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534],"class_list":{"0":"post-625947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-afp","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-san-antonio","12":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","13":"tag-sanantonio","14":"tag-sanantoniospurs","15":"tag-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116136947611822871","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625947","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=625947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}