NBA Finals Game 3 updates (2024)

The Boston Celtics are on the brink of the franchise's 18th NBA championship. Despite missing Kristaps Porziņģis due to injury, the Celtics absorbed a fast Dallas Mavericks start, surged to a 21-point lead and held off a late Dallas rally to earn a 106-99 win and a 3-0 series lead. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 61 points, and the rest of the Celtics stepped up to negate the strong play of Kyrie Irving (35 points) and Luka Dončić (27 points, six rebounds and six assists before fouling out with 4:12 remaining).

Scroll down to relive The Athletic's live coverage of Game 3. Here are some highlights:

• Jared Weiss: The rise of 'Mazzullaball': How Celtics coach’s philosophy has his team on verge of title
• Marcus Thompson: Luka Dončić is getting a hard lesson in the extra level the NBA Finals demand
• Jay King: Celtics show unselfish, championship mindset to put Mavs on ropes
• Steve Buckley: Joe Mazzulla isn’t coaching any suckers as Celtics have Mavs in a chokehold
• Tim Cato: As Mavericks teeter on brink of NBA Finals loss, Dereck Lively II offers a lifeline for the future

Earlier in the day, Jerry West, the legendary player and executive, passed away at the age of 86. Read David Aldridge's tribute to "The Logo."

DALLAS — In a more perfect world, the NBA would have figured out a way to retract the sixth foul call on Luka Dončić.

It’s not ideal to have the home team’s best player sitting out most of crunch time in a game that swings the NBA Finals. Not over a can-go-either-way blocking foul. Not after their furious rally to nearly erase a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit.

With 4:12 left on Wednesday and the Dallas Mavericks down a basket in the proverbial must-win Game 3, Dončić was whistled for a blocking foul — his sixth of the game — on a bang-bang play out near the 3-point line. Jaylen Brown, charging down the court in transition, had enough of a forearm in Luka’s chest to make it possible to be an offensive foul.

“I don’t want to say nothing,” Dončić added. “You know, six fouls in the NBA Finals. … C’mon, man. Better than that.”

The truth, though, is Dončić didn’t deserve the reprieve. This unfortunate break was earned. His perennial enmity with the officials has exhausted his grace. His bickering surprasses the NBA’s typical whining.

It’s he who has to be better. Not just because his 27 points came on 27 shots in Dallas’ 106-99 loss to the Boston Celtics. Not even because he fouled out. But because winning Wednesday, and getting his Mavericks back in these finals, required something different. For him to compete defensively. For him to play smarter, lock in and avoid lulls. For him to implore more from his teammates, somehow. It required him finding a way even while he was off.

Dončić is 25 years old and every bit magnificent. He is the truth. He’s putting up colossal numbers while playing through several ailments and had his team in back-to-back close games against what is clearly a better team. Yet Dallas still needs more from him.

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DALLAS — Joe Mazzulla, the once-upon-a-time second-row assistant who is now the second-year head coach of the Boston Celtics, didn’t just wake up one day and start saying things that bounce around from quirky to off-beat to head-scratching to comical and back again.

He’s been his own NBA Entertainment subdivision since the day he was named head coach going into training camp for the 2022-23 season. It’s just that you have to win, as in win it all, to become one of those coach/managers whose musings could fill a book. Think Bill Parcells in football, or Earl Weaver in baseball. Was does all that mean? It means get ready, world: With their 106-99 victory over the Dallas Mavericks Wednesday night at the American Airlines Center, Mazzulla’s Celtics are one step away from completing a four-game sweep of this fast-sunsetting NBA Finals.

Once it’s over, the jockeying by the late-night talk shows to get Mazzulla on their couch is going to be intense. Certainly more intense than this series has been.

And speaking of intense, let’s take you to what Mazzulla had to say early Wednesday night before Game 3. Now this cat is just 35 years old, too young to be too old-fashioned, and yet he’s got it in him to reach for outside-the-box gimmicks to motivate his players. It’s been noted that he’s been sneaking into the world of UFC for news Joe can use, and he expanded on that before Wednesday’s game.

“Like, if you’ve ever been in a fight with someone and you think you’re about to beat ’em, you usually get sucker punched,” Mazzulla said.

He’s been using UFC in film sessions. The examples he chooses illustrate a painful reality: “The closer you think you are to beating someone is the closer you are to getting your ass kicked,” is how he put it.

Given the way Game 3 played out, Mazzulla proved to be remarkably prescient. The Celtics turned a 1-point halftime deficit into a 21-point lead, and then, shockingly, saw that lead dwindle to just 93-92 with 3:37 remaining. Talk about a sucker punch! But just as the Celtics were playing all night without the injured Kristaps Porziņģis, the Mavericks played the last 4:12 without the disqualified Luka Dončić. With Dončić picking up his sixth foul, combined with the Celtics hitting their shots and making their free shows, Dallas’ punch didn’t leave a mark.

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DALLAS — When the Dallas Mavericks called an early fourth-quarter timeout, down 21 points in Wednesday’s must-win Game 3, the arena had gone silent. As the team plodded back to the bench, even the fans around them could not muster hope. How could they? It was an almost insurmountable advantage poised to put the Boston Celtics up three games to none, a lead no team has ever come back from in this league’s history.

Then Dereck Lively II’s voice broke through that hushed still.

“He rallied us tonight,” Kyrie Irving said. “Came to the bench and just told us to keep believing.”

It was after that timeout that the Mavericks began their 22-2 run that cut Boston’s lead to one point. It was a comeback that fell short in a result that almost certainly ensures Dallas will not finish this season with a championship. But it was one last surge against the odds that Lively, the team’s 20-year-old rookie center who has galvanized Dallas in these situations all season, helped speak into existence. One last rage against the dying light.

“D-Live was great during the timeout,” Kidd recalled. “He was still positive, telling guys that we could still get back into this. It turned into a one-possession game.”

What Dallas must grapple with when its season ends in defeat, barring some miraculous, never-before-seen comeback, is that the team’s roster was good enough to earn this matchup against the league’s best team but not nearly good enough to compete on the same level. There will be boundless offseason questions about the futures of various role players, about Derrick Jones Jr., who enters unrestricted free agency, about whether Luka Dončić’s emotional growth can catch up to his unmatched talent. There are questions that the team has about Lively, too.

About how much better he’s going to be.

Lively struggled in the first two games of the Finals. He’s the youngest player to ever play 20 or more minutes at this stage — the youngest to ever have a meaningful role — as he’s logged 67 thus far. On Wednesday, he played 30 while posting an 11-point, 13-rebound double-double. He’s the youngest to do that, too. But even in Games 1 and 2, Lively’s voice never left him. On Tuesday, it broke through the calm of a quiet Mavericks practice, too.

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DALLAS — When Joe Mazzulla was suddenly thrust into the Celtics coaching job, he wanted to bring a new perspective. His influences ranged from soccer to UFC to killer whales. Little about the way he conducts his job is conventional, which took some getting used to.

But even as many of the questions surrounding his ability to coach this team started to dissipate, one question remained: Do the Celtics take too many 3s?

“We got asked that question a lot because it was new,” Mazzulla said after the Celtics beat the Dallas Mavericks 106-99 in Game 3 of the NBA Finals. “Anytime you’re developing a new philosophy or a new style, it just takes time for understanding and execution.”

Even his own players would question it at times, conceding in moments of frustration that their embrace of perimeter shooting was taking away from their aggression. But as time went on, the philosophy started to take hold because Mazzulla let them in on the plan.

Coaches often simplify their messaging to players to make it digestible and memorable. They don’t want to overload players to the point they can’t remember the important details in the heat of the moment.

But Mazzulla didn’t hold back. He built the whole operation on the players being able to process a lot of information and calculate the optimal approach in any scenario at any time. He trusted them to handle the minutiae that goes into building a system and preparing a gameplan.

“Sometimes it’s like you’ve got the coaches, they game plan, but they don’t always let you know exactly what they are thinking,” Jaylen Brown said. “Like, they tell us everything. Super transparent and we trusted it.”

The Celtics built an approach based on reading every type of coverage and matchup and having a specific plan of attack. If the Mavericks are switching, Boston has all sorts of ways to attack a small in the post or a big on the perimeter. It’s allowed them to continuously create clean looks at 3s while their opponent keeps trying to score with tough shots in the paint.

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DALLAS — When the fourth quarter started, Mavericks star Luka Dončić had just two fouls and his team trailed the Celtics by 15 points.

Fast forward nearly eight game minutes, and an entirely different set of circ*mstances developed. Dallas was back in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, trailing Boston by a mere three points. And Dončić was gone for good, having fouled out.

That’s four whistles against arguably the league’s best player, in a finals game, in the fourth quarter. It’s just the third time Dončić has fouled out of a game — regular or postseason.

“(It’s) never happened to me, not that I remember,” said Dončić, who was disqualified from an eventual 106-99 loss with 27 points. He was speaking about being called for four fouls in eight minutes.

“We couldn’t play physical,” Dončić added. “I don’t want to say nothing. You know, six fouls in the NBA Finals, basically I’m like this (motions with palms out). C’mon, man. Better than that.”

Dallas, which had fallen behind by 21 in the fourth, was on a 20-2 run when Dončić was called for his sixth and final foul, at 4:12 of the fourth. He was guarding Jaylen Brown and there was contact, though it looked like Dončić stayed in front of Brown. Dallas challenged the call, and head referee Marc Davis said Dončić had not established position when Brown ran into him.

“I don’t think it was a foul; I don’t think any of us did,” Dereck Lively II said.

Brown also drew Dončić’s fifth foul with some questionable contact between the two players. Dallas coach Jason Kidd was asked afterwards why he didn’t challenge Dončić’s fifth foul, and he said “maybe we should have challenged all of them.”

“We could have probably done a little bit something different on his fifth foul just to give us a little bit more of a grace period to set our defense and get him on a matchup,” Kyrie Irving said. “But hindsight is 20/20. We have to wash our hands of this and get ready for Game 4."

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It took so long for the Mavericks to see the Celtics' trap. Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving kept finding cross matches and attacking the Celtics defense all night. They hit so many big shots.

But Boston kept launching 3s, from everybody, as it looked Dallas could run away with Game 3. Then, when the Mavs finally went cold, Boston stuck with its plan and pulled away. Even when the Mavs launched a comeback, Boston stuck to its principles as Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum kept attacking while Dončić racked up fouls. This win was a testament to Boston's approach to the game and its principles.

The one play that changed everything was when Brown went at Dončić in transition to foul him out. Dončić was gaining control of the game and this could have been the sequence where he flipped it. Then Brown went at him and regained control.

"How can I explain Jaylen?" Joe Mazzulla said. "The guy just has a growth mindset and yearns to get better. He's just not afraid to face his weaknesses on the court."

With a 3-0 lead, Dallas would need to make history to make the first comeback of this kind. But there are no indications the Celtics are going to fall into that trap.

Was there a degree to which Joe Mazzulla enjoyed the Mavericks' fourth-quarter comeback?

"He's a sicko," said Derrick White. "So probably."

Jason Kidd on Luka Dončić's final foul:

"They called a foul. I was stuck. I had to challenge it. ... I had to challenge because the referee called it a foul."

Jayson Tatum knows the Celtics' 3-0 lead is not reason to assume this series is over.

"We was a sprained ankle away from having a real shot," Tatum said, referencing his injury in Game 7 against Miami in last season's East finals that hindered Boston's chances of rallying from 3-0 down in the series. "We're not relaxing or anything like that …

"However long it takes, that’s what it’s (going to) take."

Jayson Tatum on the lessons the Celtics learned from their loss to the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 NBA Finals:

"Experience is the best teacher. We learned from our mistakes. We learned from a team that was better than us ... We've grown from that. We really have."

Jayson Tatum was asked about his long embrace with Jaylen Brown at the end of Boston's Game 3 victory.

“I told him I was proud of him, and he said the same thing.”

Not that there was any doubt, but the moment symbolized the "sacred" partnership the two stars have.

In Game 3, both the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks made the same number of field goals overall (38) and non-paint / midrange 2s (3), while both had nine turnovers. Dallas had one more offensive rebound (7-6), made one more free throw (14-13) and outscored Celtics 52-36 in paint. The stars were basically even: Jayson Tatum (31) and Jaylen Brown (30) were outscored 62-61 by Kyrie Irving (35) and Luka Doncic (27).

But the 3s. The Celtics, the season leader in 3s made and attempted, made 17 of 46 from downtown at 37 percent. Dallas shot 36 percent from 3, but only on a volume of 9 of 25.

Now, the big number is the 3-0 lead the Celtics have in the NBA Finals.

Joe Mazzulla on why he was so confident trusting Xavier Tillman with more minutes against Dallas with Kristaps Porziņģis injured:

"He played in the Western Conference for three, four years, so he's had that experience. Memphis has used a similar gameplan that we have so he was used to that. And I thought with that comfort level of playing against those guys for so long he was going to be able to execute the things we needed to execute. So I thought he did a great job with our switching, he did a great job with our screening, getting to our spacing. That's what we talk about with those guys, regardless of who's in who's out, I trust the next man up because of the work they put in and the staff that prepares them."

Tillman logged 11 minutes while making one 3 and coming up with several key defensive stops.

It's all but certain: The Dallas Mavericks will not be NBA champions.

Dallas fought back in the fourth quarter with a 20-2 run, but it was too little, too late. It was the team leaning back on what worked best: Dereck Lively II at center while Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic led the way. No more unusual rotation decisions, just Dallas betting on its stars.

But when Doncic fouled out with about five minutes remaining, it was too much for Irving to carry the team by himself. Dallas has proven it isn’t on Boston’s level, not yet. The team’s entrance to the offseason, which could happen as soon as Friday’s Game 4, will still be an optimistic one after this team defied expectations to reach this stage. There’s no reason to feel dread about the team's future. But there’s pain to disappoint, of course, in a place that's so hard to reach and not guaranteed to happen again.

There were ways Dallas could have been more competitive in this series, but they weren't when they needed to be.

Luka Dončić on the not-so-great history of 3-0 teams in best-of-seven series:

"It's not over till it's over ... we just gotta believe."

Luka Dončić was asked if he can remember having four fouls called on him in that short of a span as he had in the fourth.

"Not really."

Joe Mazzulla's pregame comment is even more amazing, given what happened in the fourth quarter.

“…..if you’ve ever been in a fight with someone and you think you’re about to beat them, you usually get sucker-punched, The closer you are to beating them up, closer you are to losing.”