Celtics 21-39 Mavericks, 10:27 left, 2nd quarter
I neglected to mention that Dončić has 13 already. Will he keep up the pattern of a midgame swoon?
Dante Exum scores inside. Mavericks lead by 15. Boston thinks fondly of the days of Robert Parish and Kevin McHale.
Dante Exum scores from 3-point range. Boston calls timeout.
Updated at 02.15 BST
If you were to watch the first quarters of all these games, you’d think Dallas was the team that was up 3-0 in the series. Tonight, though, it seems like a much more pronounced difference between the teams.
The big factor – the big men. Dallas has outrebounded Boston 16-6. And half of the Celtics’ rebounds were gathered by 6-foot-4 guard Derrick White.
Will we see Porzingis? Or might the Celtics figure they’re playing with house money at this point and avoid taking any such risks?
Updated at 02.11 BST
Celtics 21-34 Mavericks, end 1st quarter
Irving misses a 3-pointer, but Josh Green flies up to the rim for the putback dunk.
A wild sequence yields a jumpball between Sam Hauser and Josh Green. Hauser wins it, but the Celtics only have 2.7 seconds on the shot clock, so White has to rush a long 3. And he hits it.
Irving answers with another 3. Brown misses. P.J. Washington hits another 3.
Derrick Jones starts yapping at Tatum, who dismissively waves his hand and walks away without a word.
Boston ends up with the ball with 1.2 seconds left, so they bring in Payton Pritchard, whose one recent contribution was a dash up the court for a long 3 to beat the buzzer in the third quarter a couple of games ago. He gets the ball and steps out of bounds.
That kind of quarter for the Celtics.
Updated at 02.08 BST
Celtics 18-26 Mavericks, 1:47 left, 1st quarter
Dončić misses the third of his free throws, but Sam Hauser misses at the other end. Hauser had a few good shots in Game 3.
But Boston hasn’t been hitting these shots in the first quarter. They’re 1-for-7 from the 3-point line this so far.
Irving scores.
Dončić swipes the ball from Holiday, then somehow maneuvers his way around the stalwart defender to score inside.
Tatum bravely drives past Lively to stop the Dallas run. Then Dončić does another shot fake and draws another shooting foul on Horford – this one, a little cheap. Karma agrees, and he misses the first free throw.
Tatum promptly comes back and hits a floater. He has 11 already.
Updated at 02.03 BST
Celtics 14-21 Mavericks, 4:11 left, 1st quarter
Boston subs for Horford, and it’s Xavier Tillman, not Porzingis.
Tatum reclaims the lead for Boston with a tough drive. At the other end, Lively hits a 3.
Wait – Lively? Has he hit a 3 this year? (Checks stats.) Looks like he didn’t even attempt one.
The rookie then does the two things he does best – a block on one end, an alley-oop dunk at the other.
Tillman gets the old-fashioned three-point play for Boston, but here comes Dončić again, and then Derrick Jones pulls off a dazzling stepover-and-windmill move to score.
Wait – Jones? Where did this Dallas team come from?
Dončić draws a shooting foul, faking Tillman into the air and leaning into him to get the call. Somehow that was behind the arc. He hits his first two free throws, and now Boston would like a conversation. Timeout.
A little later than in the past two games, but Dallas has the first-quarter cushion again.
Updated at 01.55 BST
Celtics 9-10 Mavericks, 6:44 left, 1st quarter
Tatum drives and is fouled. He hits both free throws.
Dončić lumbers into the lane and somehow gets his shot up and over Horford.
Brown and Dončić trade baskets. Dončić already has 6. He has started quickly in the last couple of games, then fallen off. And, in Game 3, fouled out.
Long shots are missed.
Irving drives, Tatum gets the block (maybe with some contact). Lively gets the rebound, Horford definitely makes some contact.
Irving drives and finishes this time, and the Mavs lead.
Dončić commits Foul No. 1 at the other end, and we’re at the first timeout.
Updated at 01.47 BST
Celtics 5-4 Mavericks, 9:45 left, 1st quarter
Tatum drives but is sturdily defended.
Instead, the first scorer of the evening is Kyrie Irving. Then Luka Dončić.
But before we see a replay of the last couple of games, in which Dallas has leapt to an early lead, Brown makes a layup and Tatum hits a 3.
Updated at 01.41 BST
Reminder: I’m taking suggestions for matching up film characters with Celtics or Mavericks players.
Not sure why, but I’m starting to think of Dončić as Han Solo. Would Irving be Obi-Wan? Yoda? Or, given the fact that he has switched sides a few times in his career, Anakin?
Updated at 01.33 BST
The curious stat on which ESPN is focusing: Boston has not yet lost a road game in the playoffs this year. They lost twice at home.
No wonder they’re favored in this one.
Luka Dončić just headed the ball. Planning a trip to Euro 2024?
Updated at 01.29 BST
Preamble
Kyrie Irving is the Deadpool to Luka Dončić’s Wolverine, Andrew Lawrence writes in the highly recommended story linked below.
So which fifth-division English soccer team will Irving be buying?
On that note, which film characters are the Celtics? Maybe Jayson Tatum as Batman, always out to prove that he belongs in the pantheon of superheroes despite public skepticism? Or would that make him one of the Ghostbusters? Would Jrue Holiday be Reed Richards so that his wife – Lauren Holiday, a soccer Hall of Famer – would be Sue Storm? Wouldn’t Sue Bird be Sue Storm because she played for the Seattle Storm, which would make Megan Rapinoe … OK, I don’t know enough about extended cinematic universes to make this work.
The actual news: Kristaps Prozingis can play tonight. Well, maybe.
Joe Mazzulla says Kristaps Porzingis is available, but he will “only be used in specific instances, if necessary.”
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) June 14, 2024
What “specific instances” would those be? Maybe if Boston has an opportunity to close things out and sweep this series in tonight’s Game 4? Surely they’d want to save him for Game 5 … if necessary. Or Game 6 … if necessary. Or Game 7 …
That couldn’t happen, right? Don’t tell that to Boston fans. Superstition weighs heavily in the minds of that city’s supporters, the result of going more than 80 years between World Series victories, with many a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. And if you believe in karma or luck evening out, then Boston must be unnerved knowing that the only Major League Baseball team to come back from an 0-3 deficit to win any playoff series is … the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who went on to end the Curse and win the Series.
No one has ever come back from 0-3 down in an NBA playoff series. The last team to force a Game 7 was … let’s look this up …
Wait a minute …
The Boston Celtics.
Last year.
And then they lost Game 7 at home.
Sports are strange.
Updated at 00.56 BST
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Andrew Lawrence on Kyrie Irving’s series so far:
Late in Game 3 of the NBA finals on Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks were on the brink. They had mostly clawed back a 21-point deficit to get within three points of the Boston Celtics. Then Luka Dončić, the Mavs’ superstar scorer, fouled out – the first time he’d ever done so in a playoff game.
That left Kyrie Irving, the Deadpool to Dončić’s Wolverine, to carry the day. And when he went on to score Dallas’s next four points, including an 18ft jump shot that cut the Boston lead to one, it looked as if the Mavericks might actually make this a competitive series. But it was not to be. Boston are simply too good and too tough. The result, a 106-99 Celtics victory on Dallas’s home floor, puts the Mavericks in a 0-3 series hole, a margin from which no NBA team has ever come back. And it came just when Irving, who scored a game-high 35 points, had two quiet games to start the series.
This NBA season has been notable for Irving’s deafening silence in the face of endless opportunities to speak his mind. Forget the wars going on around the world and the protests on US campuses. Irving kept things low-key when LeBron James, the championship-winning running mate Irving seemingly couldn’t wait to get away from, went on his podcast days before the finals to say how much he missed playing with “the most gifted player the NBA has ever seen.”
And there are signs Irving is a much better teammate these days. After Wednesday’s loss to the Celtics, his first thoughts were for Dončić.
“You just got to let it breathe a little bit,” Irving said about what he wanted to tell his co-star. “Let the human emotions come out. Just give him a hug. That’s it, man. It’s easy to point the finger at just him, say, ‘You could be better.’ That’s easy to say. I think he knows that. But, yeah, it’s reiterating that I have his back, we all have his back.”
You can read the full story below:
Updated at 13.43 BST
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#NBA #finals #Game #Boston #Celtics #Dallas #Mavericks #live #NBA #finals