Nuggets brush aside Hornets in first round
With a little help from the hometown kid, Carmelo Anthony is finally moving on.
Behind Anthony’s 34 points and the floor leadership of Chauncey Billups, the Denver native who came home this season and galvanized a city and a team, the Nuggets advanced to the second round of the NBA playoffs, 107-86 over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday night at Denver.
After five straight first-round flameouts, Anthony led the Nuggets to their first playoff series win since 1994. They’ll face the Dallas Mavericks in the second round.
Dallas advanced to the Western Conference semifinals by defeating San Antonio in five games. Denver swept the season series with the Mavericks 4-0.
•Hawks outfight Miami: On a night of hard fouls, plenty of banging and staredowns galore, the Atlanta Hawks moved closer to reaching the second round of the NBA playoffs for the first time in a decade, beating visiting Miami 106-91 to take a 3-2 series lead.
Joe Johnson had his best game of the postseason with 25 points, and the Hawks took control during a couldn’t-miss second quarter that pushed them to a 63-40 halftime lead. Flip Murray added 23 points off the bench.
Miami’s Dwyane Wade had 29 points but didn’t get going until the game was already decided.
•NBA suspends Magic’s Howard: Dwight Howard’s elbow has given the Orlando Magic’s playoff hopes a major hit.
Howard has been suspended for Game 6 of the Magic’s playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers for his elbow on Sixers center Samuel Dalembert, the NBA announced.
The two got tangled up going for a rebound in the first quarter in Game 5 on Tuesday night. Replays showed Howard threw an elbow that hit Dalembert above the shoulders. Howard drew a technical foul for the hit.
The Magic have another problem. Starting guard Courtney Lee will miss Game 6 with a fractured sinus after taking an elbow to the head from Howard in Game 5.
•Rondo won’t be punished: The NBA said Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo won’t be penalized for his hard foul on Chicago’s Brad Miller in the closing seconds of Game 5.
•Nets stick with Frank: The New Jersey Nets announced that Lawrence Frank, who is the longest-tenured coach in the Eastern Conference, will return for a sixth full season despite missing the playoffs for two straight years.
Swine flu
Outbreak affects sports
Every professional soccer game in Mexico this weekend – 176 matches in all divisions – will be played without fans in an effort to slow the spread of swine flu.
Texas officials, meanwhile, postponed all public high school athletic and academic competitions until May 11 because of the outbreak.
The move suspends the baseball and softball seasons and eliminates the regional track championships that were to start Friday.
And the Nationwide Tour has postponed the Mexico Open golf tournament scheduled for May 21-24 because of the outbreak.
Olympics
Bolt crashes car
Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt was in a car crash in Jamaica, but police and his manager said he was not seriously injured.
Bolt was apparently speeding on a rain-slicked highway when he lost control of the BMW M3 and it went off the road, police Sgt. David Sheriff said. Sheriff was the first officer to arrive at the scene in St. Catherine parish and found the car heavily damaged.
Bolt and an unidentified female passenger were taken to the hospital, though neither was seriously hurt, Sheriff said.
•Gold medalist busted: With a gold medalist in one of its top events busted for doping at the Beijing Games, the troubled sport of track and field is once again at the center of an Olympic drug scandal.
Bahrain’s Rashid Ramzi, the 1500-meter champion and his country’s first gold medalist in track, was among three track athletes – and a half-dozen Olympians in all – snagged in the latest game of cat-and-mouse between cheaters and those who try to nail them.
The twist in the nabbing of Ramzi and the rest was their drug of choice. It’s called CERA, a new form of EPO, which increases endurance by stimulating production of red blood cells.
Miscellany
Armstrong rides again
Lance Armstrong felt some jitters at the start, when he saddled up for his first race since breaking a collarbone during a crash in Spain last month.
He left satisfied after the opening stage of the five-day Tour of the Gila.
He came to New Mexico, he said, to regain a feel for the peleton, work at racing pace and boost his conditioning for the Giro d’Italia, which begins May 9.
“You definitely feel stiff or blocked a little bit,” Armstrong said after his eighth-place finish. “That’s to be expected. You can train those intense intervals, but it doesn’t replicate a race.”
•Sweden edges U.S. team: The United States blew a three-goal lead in the third period and lost 6-5 in overtime to Sweden at the ice hockey world championship at Bern, Switzerland.
A single point earned by the U.S. was enough for the Americans to win Group C and avoid facing Russia just 18 hours later in a second-round match on the same rink.
•Saints approve extension: The New Orleans Saints have agreed to a lease extension that will keep the NFL team playing home games in an improved Louisiana Superdome through the 2025 season.
•Qualifier shocks Murray: Fourth-ranked Andy Murray lost for only the fourth time this year, upset by Argentine qualifier Juan Monaco 1-6, 6-3, 7-5 in his opener at the Rome Masters.