{"id":374659,"date":"2025-12-28T20:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T20:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374659\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T20:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T20:01:10","slug":"kevin-durant-scores-30-points-to-lead-the-houston-rockets-to-a-dominant-win-over-the-cleveland-cavaliers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/374659\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant scores 30 points to lead the Houston Rockets to a dominant win over the Cleveland Cavaliers"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSTON, Texas — Kevin Durant scored 30 points in three quarters to lead the Houston Rockets to an easy 117-100 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

The Rockets won their second straight game after losing four of their previous five.<\/p>\n

Durant, who also had seven assists and four rebounds, didn’t play in the fourth quarter with Houston up by 27 points after three.<\/p>\n

\"Rockets<\/a><\/p>\n

Rockets forward Kevin Durant (7) dribbles as Cavaliers guard Jaylon Tyson defends during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025, in Houston.<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Eric Christian Smith<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers cut the lead to 12 on a basket by Darius Garland with about seven minutes left in the third quarter before Houston used a 15-0 run to make it 85-58 about two minutes later. After a dunk by Durant in that stretch, Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson received a technical for yelling at the officials, and Durant made the free throw.<\/p>\n

Jabari Smith Jr. capped the run with a 3-pointer before Dean Wade made a 3 to give the Cavaliers their first points in more than four minutes.<\/p>\n

Reserve Jaylon Tyson had 23 points and a career-high 14 rebounds. Donovan Mitchell added 16 points on 7-for-17 shooting for the Cavaliers, who dropped a second straight game and their fifth in the last seven games.<\/p>\n

The Rockets scored seven straight points, with 3s from Tari Eason and Smith, to take a 16-12 lead and never trailed again.<\/p>\n

Tyson hit a shot for the Cavaliers after that, but Houston then used a 12-2 spurt, with nine points from Durant, to push the lead to 28-16 late in the first.<\/p>\n

Reed Sheppard added 18 points and eight assists off the bench for the Rockets. Smith had 15 points to tie a career high with his fifth straight game with at least 15 points.<\/p>\n

Houston’s Steven Adams had nine points and eight assists, starting in place of All-Star Alperen Sengun, who missed the game with calf tightness.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2025 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas — Kevin Durant scored 30 points in three quarters to lead the Houston Rockets to an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[183303,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-374659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-183303","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}