Washington: The Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets won their opening games in the NBA play-offs with relative ease on Saturday, while the Washington Wizards pulled off an upset on the road in Toronto.
The Chicago Bulls were also winners in Derrick Rose’s first post-season appearance since he tore a knee ligament in the opening game of the 2012 playoffs.
Stephen Curry scored 34 points and the Warriors went up big before holding off the New Orleans Pelicans 106-99 in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series.
Klay Thompson added 21 points, and Draymond Green and Australian center Andrew Bogut dominated down low as the Warriors looked every bit like the NBA’s top seed - at least for three quarters.
They smothered Anthony Davis and the Pelicans with the league’s best defense, leading by 15 after the first quarter, 18 at the half and 25 late in the third.
Curry finished 13 of 25 shooting, though he was just 4 of 13 from 3-point range.
“I was locked in and focused the whole night,” he said. “In those situations, you want to get the crowd back into it. There’s a weird kind of tension, especially in the second half when they made a couple runs. But in the playoffs, you have to expect anything.”
The Pelicans pulled within four in the final minute behind Davis, who scored 20 of his 35 points in the final quarter, to make the contest seem closer than it really was.
In Houston, James Harden had 24 points and Corey Brewer scored 13 of his 15 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Rockets past the Dallas Mavericks 118-108.
Brewer made three 3-pointers in a three-minute span in the fourth to keep the Mavericks at bay. He added another three points when he made a layup and a free throw to give Houston a 109-95 lead with three minutes left.
Dirk Nowitzki had 24 points for the Mavericks, who are in the playoffs for the 14th time in the last 15 seasons.
It’s the third time these Texas rivals have met in the postseason and the first time since Dallas won their first-round series in 2005.
In the East, Paul Pierce scored five of his 20 points in overtime as the Wizards beat the Toronto Raptors 93-86 in Game 1 of their series.
Pierce hit a 3-pointer, his fourth of the game, to begin the extra session, further tormenting a Raptors team he eliminated with Brooklyn in last year’s playoffs, then derided this week by saying, “I don’t feel they have the ‘It’ that makes you worried,” in an interview with ESPN.
Pierce was badgered by taunts from the sellout crowd in Toronto, and drew the ire of Toronto’s general manager. Masai Ujiri, who was fined $25,000 (Dh91,807) after he used a profanity about Brooklyn at the start of last year’s series, used another profanity in a pregame speech to thousands of fans watching on a big screen outside the arena. This time, Ujiri’s off-color comment referred to Pierce’s recent “It” remark.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who attended the game, told Canadian broadcaster TSN that Ujiri’s comments were “not appropriate.”
Amir Johnson scored 18 points and DeMar DeRozan had 15 points and 11 rebounds for the Raptors, who have yet to win the opening game of a first-round series in seven postseason appearances.
In Chicago, Derrick Rose had 23 points and seven assists in his first postseason game in three years and Jimmy Butler scored 25 points as the Bulls topped the Milwaukee Bucks 103-91.
“I only had three goals tonight - to have fun, to have no expectations and to compete,” Rose said.
The Bulls believe they are poised to make a run now that they finally have Rose playing in the postseason. The last time they had him for the duration of the playoffs in 2011, he led them to the Eastern Conference finals.
The Bulls won despite committing 19 turnovers. They outrebounded Milwaukee 52-41, with Pau Gasol grabbing 13 and Joakim Noah and rookie Nikola Mirotic 11 apiece.
