Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown on Saturday combined to score 61 points to fire the Boston Celtics to a bounce-back NBA playoff win over Cleveland Cavaliers as Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic led the Dallas Mavericks over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Tatum scored 33 points and Brown 28 as top seeds Boston, stunned by the Cavaliers on their home court in game 2, beat the Cavs 106-93 in Cleveland to take a 2-1 lead in their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semi-final series.
For Dallas, Irving scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half and Doncic scored 22 points and grabbed 15 rebounds as the Mavericks rallied for a 105-101 victory that put them up 2-1 against Western Conference top seeds Oklahoma City.
Photo: AP
The Celtics emerged from a nip-and-tuck first quarter with a two-point lead and never trailed again.
“We just wanted to bounce back,” Tatum said after they pushed their advantage to 23 points by opening the third quarter on a 14-0 scoring run.
“Essentially our back was against the wall, so it was a good test for us to see how we respond,” Tatum said. “We were up for the challenge.”
Donovan Mitchell scored 33 points for the Cavaliers, but appeared to tweak his troublesome left knee in the fourth quarter.
Cleveland halted Boston’s third-quarter spurt with a 9-0 run.
However, the Celtics had an answer for every Cleveland surge and the Cavs could not get any closer than nine points behind in the final period.
In Dallas, the Mavericks dug deep in the face of another bruising defensive effort from the Thunder.
Irving’s second-half star turn included a floater that pushed the Dallas lead to five points with 39.3 seconds remaining.
Slovenian star Doncic took another pounding, including a hard fall flat on his back after a mid-air collision with Luguentz Dort, and said he tweaked his sprained right knee as the game ended.
“We got the win, that’s all that matters,” said Doncic, who when asked what was hurting the most — his knee, his back or his sore ankle — said “everything.”
“I think I’m battling,” he said.
A day without travel before the Mavs host game 4 today was welcome, he added.
P.J. Washington led the Mavs with 27 points and Dereck Lively added 12 off the bench to help Dallas withstand a 31-point performance from Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Both teams struggled to get their offenses firing in the first quarter, which ended with Dallas up by three.
Oklahoma City connected on 60 percent of their shots in the second quarter to take a 52-51 half-time lead and pushed their advantage to 65-55 with an 11-0 scoring burst in the third.
The Mavs responded with a 16-0 run that featured a huge dunk by Washington and was capped by his three-pointer that pushed their lead to 71-65.
The run energized the American Airlines Center crowd, but Oklahoma City quickly cut the lead to one before the Mavs responded again.
Irving connected on a pair of three-pointers and fed Daniel Gafford for a dunk before Tim Hardaway Jr closed the third quarter with a three-pointer that put Dallas up 82-78.
Irving, who handed out seven assists as he focused early on getting his teammates involved, said one Dallas coach told him he would left it a bit late to make a scoring push.
However, Doncic said his contribution was “amazing.”
“He’s doing it all on both ends of the floor,” Doncic said.
Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said his young team got a little sloppy in the third quarter to squander a golden chance to grab a win in Dallas.
“There’s a lot of things we can learn from,” he said.
‘SOURCE OF PRIDE’: Newspapers rushed out special editions and the government sent their congratulations as Shohei Ohtani became the first player to enter the 50-50 club Japan reacted with incredulity and pride yesterday after Shohei Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball to record 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. The Los Angeles Dodgers star from Japan made history with a seventh-inning homer in a 20-4 victory over the Marlins in Miami. “We would like to congratulate him from the bottom of our heart,” top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo. “We sincerely hope Mr Ohtani, who has already accomplished feat after feat and carved out a new era, will thrive further,” he added. The landmark achievement dominated Japanese morning news
When Wang Tao ran away from home aged 17 to become a professional wrestler, he knew it would be a hard slog to succeed in China’s passionate but underdeveloped scene. Years later, he has endured family disapproval, countless side gigs and thousands of hours of brutal training to become China’s “Belt and Road Champion” — but the struggle is far from over. Despite a promising potential domestic market, the Chinese pro wrestling community has been battling for recognition and financial stability for decades. “I have done all kinds of jobs [on the side]... Because in the end, it is very
No team in the CPBL can surpass the Taipei Dome attendance record set by the CTBC Brothers, except when the Brothers team up with Taiwanese rock band Mayday. A record-high 40,000 fans turned out at the indoor baseball venue on Saturday for Brothers veteran Chou Szu-chi’s first farewell game, which was followed by a mini post-game concert featuring Mayday. This broke the previous CPBL record of 34,506 set by the Brothers in early last month, when K-pop singer Hyuna performed after the game, and the dome’s overall record of 37,890 set in early March, which featured the Brothers and the
Olympic bronze medalist Lee Meng-yuan has become the first Taiwanese athlete to top the International Shooting Sport Federation’s (ISSF) men’s skeet world rankings, while top Taiwanese shooters won golds in each of yesterday’s finals in Taoyuan. Lee’s 6,610 points put him ahead of fellow men’s skeet medalists from the Paris Olympics Americans Vincent Hancock and Conner Prince. Lee on Monday said that he was surprised by the result, although he had expected his ranking to rise after the Games, which was also the first time a Taiwanese athlete had competed in men’s skeet. Despite topping the rankings, Lee said he believed Hancock, who