DALLAS (AP) — There were two options for the Dallas Mavericks. Pack your bags for Boston or pack for vacation.
Boston is waiting.
These NBA Finals aren’t over, thanks to one of the biggest title-round blowouts in history. Luka Doncic scored 25 of his 29 points in the first half, Kyrie Irving added 21 and the Mavericks emphatically extended their season Friday night, fending off elimination with a 122-84 rout of the Celtics in Game 4.
The final margin of 38 points was the third largest ever in an NBA Finals game, behind Chicago who beat Utah 96-54 in 1998 and the Celtics who beat the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 in 2008.
” It is very simple. We don’t need to complicate things. It’s not surgery,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said. “Our group was ready to go. They were ready to celebrate and we took a stand. We were desperate. We have to keep playing hard.” This way. They try to close the door. The hardest thing in this league is to close the door when you have a group that has nothing to lose. Tonight, you saw that.
The Mavs stars were finished by the end of the third quarter, and for good reason. It was all Dallas from the start, with the Mavs leading by 13 after one quarter, 26 at halftime and as many as 38 in the third before both teams emptied the benches.
Before Friday, the worst NBA Finals loss for the 17-time champion Celtics was 137-104 to the Lakers in 1984. That was worse. Much worse, sometimes. Dallas’ largest lead in the fourth was 48 – the largest deficit the Celtics have faced all season.
The Celtics still lead the series 3-1 and Game 5 will take place in Boston on Monday.
“Preparation doesn’t guarantee automatic success,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought we had a great process. I thought we had a great shoot. I thought we had a great movie session yesterday. I thought the guys went out with the right intentions. I just didn’t think it went our way, and I thought Dallas dominated us. They just played harder.
The loss — Boston’s first in five weeks — ended the Celtics’ 10-game playoff winning streak, the longest in franchise history, and also took away the chance they had being the first team in NBA history to win both the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals. 4-0 sweeps.
Jayson Tatum scored 15 points, Sam Hauser 14 while Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday each finished with 10 for the Celtics.
Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 15 points, all in the fourth quarter, and Derek Lively II had 11 points and 12 rebounds for Dallas. It was Lively who suggested it would be a good night for the Mavs early on. He made a 3-pointer – the first of his NBA career – midway through the first quarter, a shot that gave the Mavs the lead for good.
They were off and running. And kept running.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Doncic said. “Like I said at the start of this series, it’s the first four. And we will believe it until the end. We’ll just keep going. I have great confidence in this team and we can do it.
It was 61-35 at halftime and Dallas also left a ton of points unclaimed in the first 24 minutes. The Mavs entered the break having shot just 5 of 15 from 3-point range, 10 of 16 from the foul line — and they were in complete control anyway.
“I think winning is difficult. I think winning any match is difficult. But winning Game 4 of the NBA Finals is damn tough,” Holiday said. “I think they came out desperate and I think they hit us in the mouth, and we couldn’t recover like we wanted to.”
There were many low points in the first half for Boston, some of them historic:
— The 35 points represented the Celtics’ lowest point total in a half, in either half, in Mazzulla’s two seasons as coach.
— The 26-point halftime deficit was Boston’s second-largest of the season. The Celtics trailed Milwaukee by 37 at halftime on Jan. 11, one of only eight instances in their first 99 games this season where they trailed by double digits at halftime.
— The halftime deficit was Boston’s largest ever in an NBA Finals game, and the 35-point tally was the Celtics’ second-worst in the first half. They made 31 against the Lakers on June 15, 2010, Game 6 of the series which the Lakers won with a victory in Game 7.
Teams with a halftime lead of 23 points or more, even in a season where comebacks seemed easier than ever, were 76-0 this season as of Friday night.
Make it 77-0 now. Doncic’s jersey number, coincidentally.
The Celtics were surely thinking about how making a small dent in Dallas’ lead to open the second half could have made things interesting. Instead, the Mavs put things away quickly; a 15-7 run in the first 4:32 of the third pushed Dallas’ lead to 76-42.
Whatever hope Boston had of pulling off a huge rally and capping a sweep was long gone. Mazzulla retired all starters simultaneously with 3:18 left in the third and Dallas leading 88-52.
“I expect us to be a lot better on Monday,” Celtics center Al Horford said.
The Mavs still have the steepest climb possible in this series – no team has come back from 3-0 in NBA history – but the first step has been taken.
“We have nothing to lose,” Kidd said.
___
APNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
