Jaylen Brown and Derrick White each scored 25 points and the Boston Celtics advanced to the Eastern Conference semi-finals, beating the short-handed Miami Heat 118-84 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Boston will face the winner of the Cleveland-Orlando series. The Cavaliers lead 3-2.
Brown also had six assists, and White hit five 3-pointers. Sam Hauser added 17 points and Jayson Tatum had 16 points and 12 rebounds, The top-seeded Celtics never trailed and led by 37 points. They also got a measure of revenge a year after the Heat routed them in Game 7 of the conference finals.
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Bam Adebayo scored 23 points and Tyler Herro had 15 for Miami, which made its first exit from the playoffs prior to the conference finals since 2021. The Heat struggled throughout, going three of 29 from 3-point range.
In other news, Luka Doncic scored 20 of his 35 points in the second half and added 10 assists and seven rebounds, propelling Dallas to a victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 and a 3-2 lead in their first-round series.
Maxi Kleber hit five 3-pointers and Kyrie Irving added 14 points for the Mavericks, who clamped down on the Clippers defensively and won decisively in Los Angeles for the second time in the series. Dallas moved to the brink of its first playoff series victory since 2022 and only its third since winning the NBA title in 2011.
Doncic is playing on a sprained right knee that limited him at times in the series, but he clearly got more comfortable and more dangerous as Game 5 went on. He had 14 points in the third quarter while the Mavericks stretched their lead to 25 and eventually took an 89-69 advantage into the fourth, where the Clippers never threatened to do an imitation of Dallas’ rally back from a 31-point deficit in Game 4.
In April last year, Taiwanese badminton ace Tai Tzu-ying finally opened up about her future in the sport in which she had competed professionally since 2009. “My plan is to retire after the end of next year’s season. Even if I’m still able to compete, I would prefer not to,” she said at a promotional event. If true, the Paris Olympics would be her last stab at an Olympic gold medal, a prize some might think a player who has topped the rankings in women’s singles for a record total of 214 weeks — between December 2016 and September 2022 — should
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POLYNESIAN FOCUS: The separate opening event welcomed visitors with Tahitian dancing, while athletes participated in rituals to mark the occasion Tahitian dancers in palm-leaf skirts mingled with Olympic surfers, locals and tourists as the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games commenced in French Polynesia on Friday, about 16,000km from the main ceremony in Paris. “The people of Tahiti, we are all enchanted to have these Olympics Games here and to welcome all our friends from all over the world,” French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson told reporters. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us. All the world is looking at us for this mighty wave.” Just steps from the ocean and set against the lush green mountains of Tahiti, the event was heavily