DALLAS (AP) — Kyrie Irving’s 13-game losing streak against the Celtics is over.
Now he returns to the Boston hardwood to once again face his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, who are still alive in the NBA Finals after avoiding the sweep with a 122-84 blowout in Game 4 Friday night.
The first two away games of this series. They were not Irving’s bestThe two in Dallas are much better despite a loss in Game 3 that left the Mavs with a deficit that no NBA team has overcome to win a playoff series.
Combine that with a much greater impact from the role players around Irving and his co-star Luka Doncic, and maybe the constant booing of Irving from the abandoned fans in Boston won’t sound as loud in Game 5 on Monday night. .
Many green-clad Celtics fans were planning a celebration in Texas, but loud applause early when the game was close it didn’t last long.
“You saw all those Celtics fans there tonight. They travel in packs,” said Irving, who spent two seasons in Boston. “When we go to Boston, there will still be a lot of them yelling a lot of crazy things, but I think we’ve been able to grow and face this adversity head on.
“We’re discovering each other in a crazy way during the height of basketball,” Irving said. “So it’s a beautiful thing, but it can also be chaotic if you don’t know how to keep your balance.”
If the Mavericks want to become just the 12th of 157 teams to force a Game 6 after falling behind 3-0, and return the title series to Dallas, the supporting cast of Irving and Doncic will have to keep it up.
Animated Dereck II connected in a triple for the first time in his career, exactly seven months after the 7-foot-1 rookie center made the second of two regular-season attempts from beyond the arc.
At one point in the second half, Lively had 12 rebounds, her final total, compared to 16 for Boston. Not surprisingly, Dallas outscored the Celtics 60-26 in the paint, where Lively scored the other eight of her 11 points.
Dante Exum made two 3-pointers and had another taken away when replay revealed he had gone out of bounds. The deep shots came from so many Dallas players (14 of 23, although those numbers were skewed a bit by the blowout) that it didn’t matter that Doncic and Irving combined to go 1 of 14.
“It’s five people on the court,” Doncic said. “That’s huge for us. Everyone played with a lot of energy. This is how we have to do it. We have to think the same way in Game 5 in Boston.”
Doncic scored 25 of his 29 points in the first half, while Irving scored 10 of his 21 in the third quarter to help push a 26-point halftime lead to 38 before all the starters were out of the game for good. end of the third.
Lively’s games in the Finals have somewhat mirrored those of Irving, her Duke teammate. The 20-year-old was mostly quiet in Boston. The two games in Dallas put him in the company of Magic Johnson as the Only rookies with consecutive double-doubles. in the NBA Finals.
He replaced starter Daniel Gafford earlier than in any of the previous final games, and coach Jason Kidd said Lively was in the right spot, the right corner, when he hit the 3-pointer to put Dallas ahead for good about three minutes later.
Lively is unlikely to start right now, something she did early in her rookie season, but the crowd will likely notice when she heads to the scorer’s table for the first time in Boston.
“If they leave me open in the corner, I’m going to pick them up for sure,” Lively said. “It’s just about having that confidence. Luka is going to give me the ball. As soon as I shot him, he jumped for joy when he came in.”
Irving is still trying to find some joy in Boston and will get another chance this season.
___
NBA AP: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA