Jayson Tatum scored 31 points, Jaylen Brown added 30, and the Boston Celtics held off a furious Dallas charge to take a record 18th championship with a 106-99 win over the Mavericks on Wednesday night, giving them a 3-0 lead in the NBA Finals.
Brown finished with eight rebounds and eight assists to help the Celtics win their 10th consecutive playoff game and improve to 7-0 on the road this postseason. They can win the series and break the tie with the Lakers for the most NBA championships with a victory in Dallas on Friday.
Boston also advanced to 10-1 in the playoffs without Kristaps Porzingis, who was ruled out about two hours before the game due to a rare tendon damage to his lower left leg sustained in Game 2.
Porzingis’ status for the rest of the series is unclear, but it may not matter. None of the previous 156 teams that faced a 3-0 disadvantage recovered to win an NBA playoff series.
The Mavericks nearly pulled off a stunning comeback to escape the massive hole, 13 years after the only previous rally of its kind in the NBA Finals fueled Dallas’ march to its only title against Miami.
Boston led 91-70 at the end of a 20-5 run early in the fourth quarter, but Dallas responded with a 22-2 run to pull within a point with 3 1/2 minutes left.
The problem was that Luka Doncic picked up his sixth foul with 4:12 left when a challenge failed before Kyrie Irving, who scored 35 points, hit a jumper to pull Dallas within one.
Tatum and Brown came through for the Celtics, with Derrick White adding 16 points. Those three combined for the remaining 13 Boston points, bringing the Celtics within one victory of their first title since 2008 and only the second since 1986.
In a game that appeared to be over early in the fourth quarter, the score remained 93-90 for more than three minutes. That featured Doncic being penalised for a blocking foul on a driving Brown.
The Mavericks had nothing to lose by taking on the challenge, which involved attempting to save their hero from disqualification.
Without Doncic, Dallas got within two before Brown made a pullup jumper with a minute left. P.J. Washington Jr., Irving, and Tim Hardaway Jr. all missed three-pointers in the last minute, extending Irving’s personal losing skid against his previous team to 13 games.
An energised Dallas audience was ready for the first finals game in 13 years, with Super Bowl-winning quarterback and Mavs fan Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs repeatedly standing up from his spot near midcourt.
Following two losses in Boston, the Mavericks used the needed lift to take their largest lead of the series, 22-9. Doncic and Irving drove for buckets and both nailed threes.
The Celtics responded with a 21-9 first-quarter score. Sam Hauser made two of his first-half three-pointers on three attempts to cap off a run that began with four points from Brown and a three from Tatum.
The defence dominated the second quarter, with Boston leading 5-2 nearly six minutes in before Irving and Tatum traded three-pointers to spark a scoring surge.