Gasol ignites Lakers

Pau Gasol finally discovered how it feels to be on the winning side in a postseason game. The 7-foot Spaniard had a whole lot to do with his first victory.

Gasol established playoff highs with 36 points and eight assists and added 16 rebounds Sunday as the Los Angeles Lakers took command early in the third quarter and beat the Denver Nuggets 128-114 at Los Angeles.

Gasol, a 27-year-old forward/center acquired from Memphis on Feb. 1 after spending 6 1/2 seasons with the Grizzlies, was 0-12 in three previous postseasons.

Kobe Bryant scored 18 of his 32 points in the final 8 minutes to keep Los Angeles safely ahead. Lamar Odom had 17 points, 14 rebounds and six assists and Luke Walton added 16 points for the Lakers, who entered having won eight of their last nine regular-season games to earn the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.

Carmelo Anthony had 30 points and 12 rebounds for the eighth-seeded Nuggets.

Allen Iverson also had 30 points before picking up two technical fouls with 2:10 remaining, calling for immediate ejection. Linas Kleiza scored a career playoff-high 23 points and J.R. Smith added 15 before fouling out with 3:14 left.

The Nuggets should have it known wasn’t going to be their day when several players were stranded on the Santa Monica Freeway for about 30 minutes when the team bus broke down on the way to the game.

The bus left the team’s hotel about 2 1/2 hours before tipoff as scheduled, but experienced problems about 15 minutes into the trip, spokesman Eric Sebastian said.

The Nuggets’ second bus, which left the team hotel about 30 minutes after the first one, stopped to pick up their teammates. The entire team made the rest of the trip to the arena, arriving about 90 minutes before the game.

Denver had a 50-32 regular-season record, its best in 20 years. The Nuggets haven’t won a playoff series since 1994, when as the eighth-seed, they upset top-seeded Seattle.

Magic 114, Raptors 100: At Orlando, Fla., Dwight Howard had 25 points and 22 rebounds, and Jameer Nelson scored 24 points, and the Magic defeated Toronto in the opener of their first-round series.

Howard scored six straight points in a 10-0 fourth-quarter run that sealed Orlando’s first playoff win since 2003.

Howard had an NBA-leading 69 double-doubles during the regular season.

Celtics 104, Hawks 81: At Boston, Ray Allen scored 18 points and Kevin Garnett had 16 as the two newcomers who led the Celtics to the NBA’s best record sparked them to a win in their playoff opener against Atlanta.

Garnett stopped a 14-3 Hawks run with a jumper, starting a six-point Boston surge that made it 35-27 in the second quarter. Allen scored 10 straight Celtics points midway through the third that extended a 13-point lead to 67-48 with 5:39 left in the period.