By ASSOCIATED PRESS
DALLAS (AP) — Luka Doncic had 32 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, Daniel Gafford scored a season-high 18 points, and the Dallas Mavericks beat the Orlando Magic, 108-85, on Sunday night, Nov. 3.
The defending Western Conference champions outscored the Magic 30-9 in the first 9:30 of the second quarter en route to a 65-40 halftime lead. Dallas’ largest lead was 33 points.
Orlando played its second game without Paolo Banchero, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 draft and 2023 Rookie of the Year, who suffered a torn right oblique last Wednesday.
Another Magic starter, Wendell Carter Jr., was limited to nine first-half minutes, six points and a rebound because of a strain of his left plantar fascia.
Franz Wagner led the Magic with 13 points, and Orlando scored well below its average of 111.7 points per game.
Kyrie Irving had 17 points, and Dereck Lively II had 11 points and 11 rebounds off Dallas’ bench.
Meanwhile in New Orleans, Jalen Johnson scored 29 points and the Atlanta Hawks snapped a four-game skid with a 126-111 victory over the short-handed Pelicans.
Pelicans star forward Zion Williamson was scratched from the lineup with right hamstring tightness shortly before the game, leaving Brandon Ingram as the club’s only usual starter in uniform.
Ingram scored 32, but it wasn’t enough to overcome a Hawks squad with six players with at least 11 points.
Trae Young scored 23, while former Pelican Dyson Daniels, back from a two-game injury absence, added 16 for Atlanta. Larry Nance Jr. scored 14 against his former team.
New Orleans was also without starters Dejounte Murray, CJ McCollum, and Herb Jones, along with prominent reserve Trey Murphy III.
The Hawks played without starter De’Andre Hunter, plus rotation players Bogdan Bogdanovic, Vit Krejci and Kobe Bufkin due to injury.
Earlier in New York, Cade Cunningham scored 19 points to lead the Detroit Pistons to a 106-92 win over the Brooklyn Nets.
Cunningham was one of six players in double figures for Detroit. Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley scored 18 points each, Jaden Ivey finished with 15, Tim Hardaway Jr. added 14 and Jalen Duren had 13 for the Pistons.
Duren also grabbed 17 rebounds, and Detroit has won two of its last three games.
Despite a 26-point performance from Cameron Johnson, the Nets fell to 3-4. Cam Thomas, Brooklyn’s leading scorer, scored 17 points and only had six in the fourth quarter after entering the game as the NBA’s leader in fourth-quarter scoring.
Leading by six points entering the fourth quarter, the Pistons held the Nets to 15 points in the fourth to earn their second win of the season.
