Key events
Mavericks 46-67 Celtics, halftime
Remember Game 2, at the end of the third quarter, when Payton Pritchard took the inbounds pass, covered more than half the court in a couple of seconds and put up a long buzzer-beater that went in?
Can you guess why I’m asking?
Horford gets the rebound off the missed Dallas free throw and gets it to Pritchard, who gets to midcourt and let’s fly.
It’s good.
Boston is 24 minutes away from its 18th title and first in a couple of decades.
Mavericks 46-64 Celtics, 3.0 left, 2nd quarter
Tatum comes back and immediately picks up his eighth assist on a dish to Holiday.
Mavericks lose the ball in a scramble, and Brown scores in transition. The bad news for the Celtics: Derrick White landed hard on his mouth and is checking his dental work.
Green and Brown trade 3s.
Irving misses. White hits a long 2. Guess he’s feeling better.
Dončić finally scores again. That’s 7 for him.
Irving leaps into the stands to save a ball heading out of play, landing on the ABC commentary crew. It’s an impressive effort, but the Celtics gain possession, and Dončić picks up a foul. That’s 2.
Tatum looks like he’s about to drive again. Instead, he pulls up and hits a 3. The lead is 20.
Dončić responds by driving on Tatum, scoring and picking up a phantom foul. He misses the free throw.
And then …
Mavericks 39-50 Celtics, 3:11 left, 2nd quarter
Tatum gets a break out of the timeout, and Boston misses three shots on one possession.
Washington turns it over, but Brown misses. Four in a row missed from the timeout.
Dončić misses. Boston breaks its mini-drought as Horford decides he’s had enough of these young guys, and he drives at Gafford and lays it in.
Turnover Dallas. Timeout Dallas.
Mavericks 39-48 Celtics, 4:53 left, 2nd quarter
Want high scoring? Check out what West Indies are doing against Afghanistan. They’ve posted a 36-run over. And there was a dot ball in the middle of it.
Back in sports in which a World Cup quarterfinal appearance is the minimum expectation for the US rather than a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, Dončić misses two free throws. Dončić is also 2-for-7 from the field, as is Irving.
Both teams miss a bit more, but Dallas scores on a … wait for it … alley-oop dunk. Washington to Gafford this time.
Boston has gone to a small lineup again. That was a disaster in Game 4. Right on cue, Gafford gets another dunk.
Fortunately for them, Hauser is playing big – he grabs a rebound and feeds Tatum.
But Washington and Jones score on either side of a Holiday miss. The lead is back down to single digits, and Boston calls timeout.
Mavericks 31-46 Celtics, 6:56 left, 2nd quarter
Jones hit a 3. Tatum drives and scores – he now has 8 points to go with his 7 assists.
Brown fouls Jones, who hits one of two free throws.
Tatum isn’t messing around with jumpers tonight. He drives, scores and gets the foul on Kleber, who’ll depart from the game in favor of Washington. Tatum adds the free throw, then fouls at the other end. Celtics call timeout.
Mavericks 27-41 Celtics, 7:56 left, 2nd quarter
Jones opens the second-half scoring with a layup, but Hauser puts up a 3-point shot that rattles in the rim and falls through.
Irving finally scores.
Tatum occupies the defense and flips it to Brown for a 3. That’s 6 assists for Tatum.
Don’t ask about the shots each team put up in the minute or so after that.
Also of interest – Washington grabs Porzingis from behind by both shoulders and flings him to the floor. The big man isn’t happy. He answers by scoring.
Kleber scores for Dallas.
Irving fouls Tatum on the mismatch. That’s two on Irving. Tatum makes both free throws, but Irving gets revenge by hitting a 3.
Game 2 hero Holiday, though, is on fire. He hits a 3.
Dallas dominated the rebounding department in Game 4. Tonight, Boston has a 13-9 edge. And that’s not attributable to the return of Porzingis, who has none.
The Mavericks’ starters have 7 points. The bench has 11.
All of the Mavericks have negative plus/minuses except Lively, who’s +7.
Tatum is shooting 2-for-7 but is on pace for a triple-double with 3 rebounds and 4 assists.
Mavericks 18-28 Celtics, end 1st quarter
Out of the timeout, White misses. Dončić pulls up for a fadeaway over Hauser and hits. The lead is one.
Porzingis gets clobbered inside. He’ll go to the line. Misses one. Makes the second.
A couple more misses, and then we have that rarest of NBA occasions – an offensive foul. This one’s on Dereck Lively, and it’s a bit of an obvious moving screen.
Brown misses, but Holiday gathers the rebound and Tatum makes his first shot of the night on a couple of circus moves in the lane.
Dante Exum, who has been strong off the bench for Dallas, answers with a 3.
Remember how Boston hadn’t had any dunks that I could recall? They just got one, with Holiday flipping the ball to the onrushing Brown.
Dallas miss … Hauser 3.
Dallas turnover … alley-oop to Brown is off the mark, but Brown puts it back in anyway.
Dallas turnover … Tatum scores in transition.
Dallas misses … Tatum misses.
The lead is 10.
Mavericks 13-16 Celtics, 3:56 left, 1st quarter
Tatum wins a jump ball and feeds White for a 3.
But Porzingis and Tatum misfire, and Irving tosses an alley-oop to Lively for another emphatic slam as the shot clock runs down. Timeout Boston.
Mavericks 11-13 Celtics, 5:08 left, 1st quarter
Dončić, Irving, Tatum and Brown are four of the best players in the NBA over the past 10 years. They’re 0-for-10.
But Dončić hits a shot coming out of the timeout, and he draws a foul on Horford, who went about 30 feet into the air on a Dončić pump fake. Free throw good.
Irving fouls White, who hits the first free throw and … here comes Porzingis! The TD Garden crowd erupts.
White makes the second, too.
Irving misses a long shot, and Brown scores at the other end on a tough shot.
Keeping up the color theme, Josh Green hits a 3, gets a rebound, and hits another 3. All of a sudden, the lead is two.
Mavericks 2-9 Celtics, 7:26 left, 1st quarter
Nifty cut down the lane from Holiday, who takes another Tatum pass and flips it up and in.
The Mavericks love their alley-oops dunks, don’t they? Jones takes this one from Dončić.
Tatum puts up an airball. But after another wasted Dallas possession, Holiday gets out in transition and lays it in. He has the first six Boston points.
Dončić is 0-for-3. Brown is 0-for-4.
The crowd has a few words for former Celtic Kyrie Irving, who also has not scored.
Dončić drives and flips the ball over his shoulder to the corner, but Jones misses.
At the other end, Al Horford hits a 3. That’s enough to make Dallas call timeout. For once, the Mavericks don’t have the early lead.
Mavericks 0-2 Celtics, 9:34 left, 1st quarter
Tatum feeds Holiday for the first points of the game, but more worryingly for the Mavericks, Dončić has already picked up his first foul.
More worryingly for the Celtics, Jaylen Brown is already 0-for-3. But Dončić is 0-for-2.
No surprises in the starting lineups. Porzingis awaits on the bench.
Tipoff …
Did you know that the phrase “I don’t know who you are” aligns perfectly with the first line of the national anthem? Try it.
Tonight’s singer is Joelle James, a Grammy-winning songwriter with a powerful voice who went to Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Before Berklee, she made it to the not-quite-final group of American Idol.
I still wish I’d bought the “Berklee Football: Undefeated Since 1945” T-shirt I once saw.
Tipoff in … 11:30? Or at 11:30? We’ll assume it’s the former.
If not, consider watching Afghanistan v West Indies in a battle of unbeatens in the T20 World Cup.
What’s at stake …
The teams with the most NBA championships are, in reverse order starting from No. 5:
The Celtics, though, haven’t won it since 2008.
Mavericks fans are taking credit for breaking the internet with a meme of Luka Dončić mimicking Lebron James wearing sunglasses and headphones that look like IV lines.
Anyone else not really understand a lot of alleged memes?
The Porzingis update
Boston’s 7-foot-3 Kristaps Porzingis is available and expect to play without restrictions tonight.
That should help a Celtics team that has had a lot of trouble answering the 1-2 punch of Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively in the paint, especially in Game 4.
Preamble
Anyone else just have a feeling we may be on the verge of seeing history?
Coming back from an 0-3 series deficit doesn’t happen in the NBA. Literally.
But after Dallas routed Boston in Game 4, trepidation amongst the most superstitious fan base in the US is surely rising.
Perhaps it’s just the circles in which I run, but the Celtics fans I know seem to be demanding rather than cheering. And they’re demanding it from a team that was outplayed in Game 4 – and, perhaps more disturbingly, outcoached. Joe Mazzulla simply had no answers for all the wrinkles Jason Kidd threw at him, relying instead on his iron eight-man rotation to save the day even though they were physically overmatched.
So are we going to see a self-fulfilling prophecy? If enough people say the Celtics are bound to blow it, will they?
Or does the series end tonight?
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Kyrie Irving on returning to the Garden:
“Now being older with hindsight looking back, I definitely would have taken time to know the people in the community and talked to some of the champions that have come before me,” Irving told reporters on Sunday. “They have championship pedigree here … They expect you to seamlessly buy into the Celtics’ pride, buy into everything Celtics.
“And if you don’t, then you’ll be outed. I’m one of the people that’s on the outs. I’m perfectly fine with that, you know what I mean. I did it to myself.”
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