PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jalen Brunson scored a career playoff-high 47 points, added 10 assists and the New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia 76ers 97-92 on Sunday to take a 3-1 lead in their first-round playoff series.
OG Anunoby added 16 points and 14 rebounds, and took on some of the defensive assignment against Joel Embiid in the fourth quarter as the Knicks moved within a victory of getting to the Eastern Conference semifinals for the second straight year.
The No. 2-seeded Knicks can do that with a victory at home on Tuesday night.
Embiid played the entire second half after the 76ers faltered badly when he sat in the first. But the All-Star center, who has been dealing with lingering problems from his surgically repaired left knee that he appeared to reinjure after a dunk in Game 1, and was recently diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis, couldn’t muster a basket in the fourth quarter.
Embiid finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Tyrese Maxey added 23 points for the 76ers, who will try to force another game at home, which would be Thursday.
CLIPPERS 116, MAVERICKS 111
DALLAS (AP) — Paul George and James Harden each scored 33 points while playing key fourth-quarter roles to help Los Angeles hold on after blowing a 31-point lead and beat Dallas, evening the first-round series at 2-2.
The Clippers won again without Kawhi Leonard, who missed the series opener with right knee inflammation before playing in the two Dallas victories.
The teams have split a pair on each other’s home court in the third Western Conference first-round meeting between them in the past five seasons. Game 5 is Wednesday night in Los Angeles.
Kyrie Irving scored 40 points for Dallas, including an acrobatic layup with 2:15 remaining for a 104-103 lead that was the first for the Mavericks since the middle of the first quarter.
Luka Doncic had 29 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists in his fourth career playoff triple-double — all against the Clippers.
George scored 26 points in the first half, when the Clippers’ lead reached 55-24 on a 3-pointer by Harden. The high-scoring stars combined to go 11 of 16 from long range as LA finished 18 of 29 overall.
PACERS 126, BUCKS 113
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Myles Turner scored 29 points, Tyrese Haliburton added 24 and Indiana made a franchise playoff record 22 3-pointers as they pulled away late for a victory over Milwaukee.
The win gave the Pacers a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. Indiana has won three straight since losing the opener and can reach the Eastern Conference semifinals for the first time since 2014 — with a win Tuesday at Milwaukee.
Indiana is 7-2 this season against the Bucks, who are trying to avoid a second straight first-round exit.
Haliburton posted a career playoff scoring high for the second straight game while Turner matched a playoff career high that he set in Friday night’s overtime win. Turner also had nine rebounds and four assists against a Bucks squad that was missing two injured All-Stars, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard.
It’s unclear if either will be available in Game 5. Antetokounmpo hasn’t played since straining his left calf April 9. Lillard injured his Achilles tendon Friday night and had a protective walking boot covering his right foot this weekend.
Brook Lopez led the Bucks with 27 points and nine rebounds, and Khris Middleton added 25 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.
TIMBERWOLVES 122, SUNS 116
PHOENIX (AP) — Anthony Edwards scored 40 points, Karl-Anthony Towns added 28 and Minnesota pulled away late to beat Phoenix and sweep the first-round playoff series.
Edwards scored 31 of his points in the second half and finished 13 of 23 from the field, including 7 of 13 from 3-point range. Continuing his ascent into superstardom, the 22-year-old threw down a powerful, one-handed jam to give Minnesota a 115-111 lead with 2:14 left.
Phoenix would never recover.
The Wolves finished off the Suns despite Devin Booker’s 49 points on 13 of 21 shooting. He also made 20 of 21 free throws. Kevin Durant added 33, but the rest of the team struggled.
Minnesota won despite coach Chris Finch leaving the game late in the fourth after an inadvertent collision with Wolves guard Mike Conley.
It was a tight fourth quarter and the Suns tied it at 107 on Royce O’Neale’s 3-pointer with 4:30 remaining. Edwards and Jaden McDaniels hit back-to-back corner 3s to put the Wolves up 113-109 with 3:20 left.
The Wolves now wait to see if they will face the Denver Nuggets or Los Angeles Lakers in the second round.
New York Knicks' Jalen Brunson grimaces as he walks off the court after the third quarter of Game 4 in an NBA basketball first-round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers, Sunday, April 28, 2024, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians across the Middle East on Wednesday are marking the anniversary of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel with protests and other events across the region at a time of mounting concern over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what today is Israel before and during the war surrounding its creation in 1948.
More than twice that number have been displaced within Gaza since the start of the latest war, which was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into Israel. U.N. agencies say 550,000 people, nearly a quarter of Gaza's 2.3 million people, have been newly displaced in just the last week, as Israeli forces have pushed into the southern city of Rafah, along the border with Egypt, and reinvaded parts of northern Gaza.
“We lived through the Nakba not just once, but several times," said Umm Shadi Sheikh Khalil, who was displaced from Gaza City and now lives in a tent in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah.
The refugees and their descendants number some 6 million and live in built-up refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In Gaza, they are the majority of the population, with most families having relocated from what is now central and southern Israel.
Israel rejects what the Palestinians say is their right of return, because if it was fully implemented, it would likely result in a Palestinian majority within Israel's borders.
The refugee camps in Gaza have seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war. In other camps across the region, the fighting has revived painful memories from earlier rounds of violence in a decades-old conflict with no end in sight.
At a center for elderly residents of the Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Amina Taher recalled the day her family’s house in the village of Deir al-Qassi, in today's northern Israel, collapsed over their heads after being shelled by Israeli forces in 1948. The house was next to a school that was being used as a base by Palestinian fighters, she said.
Taher, then 3 years old, was pulled from the rubble unharmed, but her 1-year-old sister was killed. Now she has seen the same scenes play out in news coverage of Gaza.
“When I would watch the news, I had a mental breakdown because then I remembered when the house fell on me,” she said. “What harm did these children do to get killed like this?”
Daoud Nasser, also now living in Shatila, was 6 years old when his family fled from the village of Balad al-Sheikh, near Haifa. His father tried to return to their village in the early years after 1948, when the border was relatively porous, but found a Jewish family living in their house, he said.
Nasser said he would attempt the same journey if the border were not so heavily guarded. “I would run. I’m ready to walk from here to there and sleep under the olive trees on my own land," he said.
The latest war began with Hamas' rampage across southern Israel, through some of the same areas where Palestinians fled from their villages 75 years earlier. Palestinian militants killed some 1.200 people that day, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostage.
Israel responded with one of the heaviest military onslaughts in recent history, obliterating entire neighborhoods in Gaza and forcing some 80% of the population to flee their homes.
Gaza's Health Ministry says over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, without distinguishing between civilians and combatants in its count. The U.N. says there is widespread hunger and that northern Gaza is in a “full-blown famine.”
Israel says its goal is to dismantle Hamas and return the estimated 100 hostages, and the remains of more than 30 others, still held by the group after it released most of the rest during a cease-fire last year.
Israeli troops pushed into Rafah last week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has portrayed the city on Gaza's southern border with Egypt as Hamas' last stronghold, promising victory.
But the militants have regrouped elsewhere in Gaza, even in some of the hardest-hit areas, raising the prospect of a prolonged insurgency.
The fighting in Rafah has made the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing — Gaza's main cargo terminal — mostly inaccessible from the Palestinian side. Israel's capture of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt has forced it to shut down and sparked a crisis of relations with the Arab country. Aid groups says the loss of the two crossings has crippled efforts to provide humanitarian aid as needs mount.
In a statement on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry accused Israel “distorting the facts” and condemned its “desperate attempts” to blame Egypt for the continued closure of the crossing. Egyptian officials have said the Rafah operation threatens the two countries’ decades-old peace treaty.
Shoukry was responding to remarks by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who said there was a “need to persuade Egypt to reopen the Rafah crossing to allow the continued delivery of international humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Egypt has played a key role in months of mediation efforts aimed at brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and the release of hostages. The latest round of talks ended last week without a breakthrough.
Sewell reported from Beirut and Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press reporter Wafaa Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Palestinians pray by the bodies of people killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians pray by the bodies of people killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians pray by the bodies of people killed during Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians carry the body of a person killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians pray by the bodies of people killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip next to the morgue in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike on a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians stand next to the site hit by an Israeli strike on a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli strike on a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians search debris after an Israeli strike on a school run by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians hold the body of a dead baby rescued from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians rescuers dig around the body of man in the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians rescuers dig around the body of man in the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Palestinians hold the body of a dead baby rescued from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - A Palestinian holds the body of a dead baby rescued from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians hold the body of a dead baby rescued from the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
