By SCHUYLER DIXON AP Sports Writer
DALLAS — Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown shared a long hug after helpingBoston avoid the biggest collapsein an NBA Finals game since at least 1997.
The reward? The Celtics stars are on the brink of joining the litany of big-name predecessors to put a banner above the parquet floor back home.
Tatum scored 31 points, Brown had 30 and the Celtics held off a furious Dallas rally to move to the verge of a record 18th championship with a 106-99 victory over the Mavericks on Wednesday night for a 3-0 lead.
Brown finished with eight rebounds and eight assists as the Celtics extended their franchise record with a 10th consecutive playoff victory and moved to 7-0 on the road this postseason. They can win the series and break a tie with the Lakers for most NBA championships with a victory Friday night in Dallas.
And Boston can forget about nearly blowing a 21-point lead with 11 minutes to go.
“Not really trying to look too much into it,” Tatum said. “The game of basketball is about runs. It’s never going to go like you expected. If you want to be a champion, you have to be resilient in those situations, and we did that tonight.”
Boston also improved to 10-1 in these playoffswithout Kristaps Porzingisafter the 7-foot-2 Latvian was ruled out before the game because of a rare tendon injury in his lower left leg sustained in Game 2.
The status of Porzingis for the rest of the series appears in doubt, but it might not matter. None of the previous 156 teams to face a 3-0 deficit has rallied to win an NBA playoff series.
The Mavs almost pulled off a crazy comeback to avoid the big hole – 13 years after Dallas had the biggest fourth-quarter rally in the play-by-play era of the NBA Finals (since 1997) when a 15-point comeback in Game 2 started its run to the franchise’s only title against Miami.
Boston led 91-70 at the end of a 20-5 run early in the fourth quarter before Dallas answered with a 22-2 spurt to get within a point with 3½ minutes remaining.
Problem was, Luka Doncic picked up his sixth foul with 4:12 remaining when a challenge was unsuccessful before Kyrie Irving (35 points) hit a jumper to get Dallas within one.
Tatum and Brown saved the Celtics from there, with some help from Derrick White, who scored 16. Those three combined for the remaining 13 Boston points to get the Celtics within a victory of their first title since 2008, and just the franchise’s second since 1986.
The Celtics have led 3-0 in the NBA Finals only once, finishing off the Lakers in a sweep in 1959.
The first step for Dallas is trying to avoid getting swept in a seven-game series for just the second time in franchise history.
“We just got to make history,” rookie Mavs center Dereck Lively II said. “We got to go out there and we just got to play like our lives are on the line.”
In a game that seemed over early in the fourth, the score was stuck on 93-90 for more than three minutes. That included when Doncic was called for a blocking foul on a driving Brown.
The Mavs had nothing to lose with the challenge, since it meant trying to save their superstar from disqualification.
Without Doncic, P.J. Washington Jr., Irving and Tim Hardaway Jr. each missed a 3-pointer in the final minute as Irving’s personal losing streak against his former team reached 13 games.
“We had a good chance,” said Doncic, who had 27 points. “We were close. Just didn’t get it. I wish I was out there.”
An energized Dallas crowd was ready for its first Finals game in 13 years, with Super Bowl-winning quarterback and Mavs fan Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs frequently getting out of his seat near midcourt.
The Mavs used the needed boost coming off two losses in Boston, taking their biggest lead of the series while running out to a 22-9 lead. Doncic and Irving drove for buckets while also hitting a 3-pointer apiece.
The Celtics answered with a 21-9 finish to the first quarter. Sam Hauser hit two of his first-half 3-pointers – on three attempts – to help wrap up a run that started with four points from Brown and a 3-pointer from Tatum.
Defense dominated the start of the second quarter, Boston holding a 5-2 edge nearly six minutes in before Irving and Tatum traded 3-pointers to start a scoring burst.
“They came out swinging,” Tatum said. “That was to be expected. They were at home, the crowd was behind them. We expected their first punch.”
Once they withstood it, it appeared the Celtics would coast after outscoring the Mavs 35-19 in the third quarter, before the Mavs’ late rally. And the answer from Tatum and Brown.
“We’ve been in those moments a lot,” Brown said. “And we’ve been in those positions, and we’ve lost. It was great to overcome that with my brother, Jayson, and with our team. That was special.”
After it was over, pockets of Celtics fans screamed with delight in a mostly empty arena, seemingly starting the celebration of the inevitable.
To everyone but the Celtics.
“You’ve got to understand we are just as vulnerable if not more vulnerable than they are,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “When you understand that you’re vulnerable and your back’s against the wall, you’ve got to fight. And so that’s the mindset that we have to have.”
DONCIC FOULS OUT
Doncic was 1 for 7 from 3-point range before he fouled out for only the third time in his six NBA seasons – 400 regular-season games and 51 more in the playoffs. He had never had four fouls in the same quarter before his whistle-plagued 7½-minute span.
“I mean, I don’t know. We couldn’t play physical. I don’t know. I don’t want to say nothing,” Doncic said.
“You know, six fouls in the NBA Finals, basically I’m like this,” he said, motioning with his palms held out. “C’mon, man. Better than that.”
Brown missed a 13-foot shot after the replay challenge, and the Mavericks – who had charged out to a 22-9 lead in the first 6:12 of the game – got a 17-foot jumper from Irving to get within 93-92 with 3:37 left. That was the closest they got before Brown tipped in a miss by Tatum.
Doncic’s sixth foul came only 26 seconds after his fifth, also a play involving Brown when it appeared the Celtics guard might have hooked Doncic.
“Yeah, it looked … looks can be deceiving,” Kidd said.
There was no challenge then, but Kidd certainly had to try on the next one in an effort to keep Doncic in the game.
“I was stuck. I had to challenge it,” Kidd said. “Had to challenge because it was a close call. But the referee called it a foul. Got to move on, move forward.”
Doncic has hardly thrown in the towel.
“It’s not over till it’s over. We just got to believe. Like I always say, it’s first to four,” Doncic said. “We’re going to stay together. We lose together, we win together. So we got to stay together.”
BIRTHDAY GAME
The Celtics’ Jrue Holiday became the 12th player in NBA Finals history to play a game on his birthday. The former UCLA and Campbell Hall High standout turned 34 on Wednesday.
He was the first player to play in a Finals game on his birthday since Phoenix’s Jae Crowder in 2021, against Holiday and the Milwaukee Bucks. Before that, the most recent birthday-celebrating player who got minutes in a Finals game was Miami’s Udonis Haslem in 2011 (also in Dallas) and 2013.
Jack Nichols had three birthdays fall on Finals game days in which he played (1949, 1957 and 1958). Earl Lloyd (1954 and 1955), Sam Perkins (1996 and 2000) and Bruce Bowen (2005 and 2007) each had two birthday Finals games.
The others who played in one Finals game on their birthday: Med Park, Dave Gambee, Calvin Murphy, Kerry Kittles and Michael Doleac.
TITLE ANNIVERSARY
Wednesday was the 13th anniversary of Dallas winning its first, and still only, NBA title. The Mavericks beat Miami in Game 6 of the 2011 NBA Finals on June 12, 2011.
Mavs coach Jason Kidd was on that team and was reminded of the significance of Wednesday’s date in his pregame meeting with ABC broadcasters Mike Breen and Doris Burke.
“Time flies by,” Kidd said. “But it was a surreal moment to be able to win the championship. … When you’re playing so well, you don’t want it to stop. There was no one else to play. We were playing well. As an older player, you want to keep going because you just don’t know if you’ll ever get back there.”
LONG-RANGE RECORD
The 2023-24 Celtics have made more 3-pointers in a season than any team in NBA history.
Jaylen Brown’s 3-pointer with 11:29 left in the third quarter was Boston’s 15th of the night and 1,597th of the season. That’s one more than the Celtics made last year when they set the full-season (including playoffs) record.
MAZZULLA’S SOCCER UPDATE
Mazzulla is a big soccer fan, something he makes no secret of. On Wednesday, he revealed why he picked basketball over soccer to focus on during his playing days.
It seems he, well, might have been better at basketball. He played just about every position in soccer, and there was a reason for that.
“When you’re not that good, they just throw you around in a bunch of different places to see where you stick,” Mazzulla said.
Mazzulla has taken some concepts from soccer and applied them to how he coaches basketball, even though the games are obviously quite different.
“Soccer, you really have to pay attention to the game to recognize the impact each individual player is doing, because points are at a premium,” Mazzulla said. “Each guy in the right position has a direct impact on the guy in the next position.”
THE REFEREES
Marc Davis, James Capers and Kevin Scott were the referees assigned to Game 3 on Wednesday night.
That means, barring a change to the roster, Scott Foster, James Williams and David Guthrie would be in line to officiate Game 4 on Friday night.
The NBA picked 12 referees to work the series and six – Courtney Kirkland, Josh Tiven, Zach Zarba, Tony Brothers, John Goble and Bill Kennedy – have already worked a game in this series.
