NBA Playoffs Results

vs(From the Associated Press) - The first order of business after Game 3 for Doc Rivers was making a plea to his Boston Celtics, begging them to not fixate on finishing off a first-round sweep.

Good luck, Doc.
These Celtics have everything going their way against the Miami Heat—and a big chunk of rest before the second round starts might be Boston’s just reward.

Paul Pierce’s 21-footer at the buzzer Friday night gave Boston a 100-98 win over Miami in Game 3 of the teams’ Eastern Conference first-round series. The Celtics lead 3-0, and will try for a sweep in Miami on Sunday afternoon.

“We’re going to be a team that’s tough to beat four times,” Pierce said. “But it’s very demoralizing, I think, for the other team when you go down 3-0.”

There’s an understatement.

No team in NBA history has rallied from a 0-3 deficit in a series, and the hole the Heat are in looks even deeper than that. Miami is 0-6 against Boston this season and 1-14 since April 2007.

But as far as looking ahead to the second round, Rivers is understandably leery.

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “We’ve just got to keep playing. I told our guys, I don’t want to hear about that. I told them right after the game, we’ve got to focus on basketball. All the other stuff, you focus on the process and the results will happen. Whatever happens out there, it happens. We’ve got to get our job done.”

Pierce got it done Friday.

Game tied at 98, less than 20 seconds left, the Heat had exactly what it wanted—the ball in Dwyane Wade’s hands. The 2006 NBA finals MVP tried a straightaway 3-pointer and missed with 14 seconds left, which is where the game and perhaps the season slipped away from Miami.

Wade crumpled to the court in a heap, his left calf cramping for the second time in the final quarter. He had to be carried back to the Miami bench by Heat reserve center Jamaal Magloire and trainer Jay Sabol, and the Heat huddled together to figure out what to do.

There was no such conversation 60 feet away in the Boston huddle.

Pierce demanded the ball. Rivers agreed. Pierce dribbled the clock down, took the shot over Heat forward Dorell Wright, and the Celtics stormed Miami’s floor in celebration.

“Great player made a great shot,” Wade said. “I couldn’t really see it too much. But I did see the ball go in the basket.”

Pierce finished with 32 points and Ray Allen added 25 for the Celtics, who got 17 from Rajon Rondo and 16 from Kevin Garnett.

Wade finished with 34 points, eight assists and five rebounds for the Heat, who rallied from a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter to take the lead. Michael Beasley scored 16 points, Wright scored 15 and Udonis Haslem and Mario Chalmers each scored 10 for the Heat.

“We’ve just got to go out there Sunday and give them another fight,” Wright said. “That was definitely a backbreaker, right there.”

That long-awaited offseason of 2010, when the Heat are expected to revamp their roster, is closer than Miami ever expected.

“It hasn’t really set in yet,” Wade said. “Down 3-0 hurts. This team’s good. They’ve got a lot of veteran guys who step up to the billing.”

Especially on the road, which is where Boston has excelled all season.

The Celtics were the only playoff team this year to win more games on the road than at home, and they’ve had a flair for drama in Miami. Back on Jan. 6, Rondo caught a lob from Pierce and laid in a buzzer-beater to force overtime, and the Celtics went on to a 112-106 win.

That one hurt Miami plenty. This one was considerably worse.

“We certainly fought the fight in terms of bringing the appropriate level of intensity to the game,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “That was there. Couldn’t ask for much more in terms of effort plays and just bringing the fight.”

Pierce said after the game that the value of rest, especially for a veteran team like Boston, cannot be understated.

Still, Rivers’ words resonated with some Celtics after the game. They know Sunday probably won’t be a cakewalk.

“The job is never really done until we close it out,” Allen said. “You can’t worry about their mental state. … As a team we need to worry about what we’re doing here in the locker room.”

That being said, Boston’s confidence probably hasn’t been higher all season, and a team two years removed from a championship is starting to get that playoff feeling again.

“It’s coming at the right time,” center Kendrick Perkins said.



vs(From the Associated Press) - Blood dripped from Manu Ginobili’s nose. He had caught an elbow from Dirk Nowitzki, then disappeared into the locker room while leaving a trail of red blotches behind him on the tunnel floor.

He didn’t know yet his nose was broken. That diagnosis would have to wait.

Ginobili still had work to do, so he patched up his gushing nose with a bandage and came back late in the third, then scored 11 of his 15 points in the fourth to lead the San Antonio Spurs to a 94-90 victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Friday night.

The Spurs took a 2-1 lead by surviving the first shot at home from the NBA’s best road team. The Mavs will try again Sunday night in Game 4—or risk facing a steep deficit.

“If Dirk or Jason Kidd get hurt, people like that who are ultimate competitors, they play unless they can’t do it,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “That’s what (Manu) did.”

Ginobili was diagnosed with a nasal fracture and did not speak to the media after the game. He was scheduled to undergo a CT scan on Saturday.

The Mavs have their own problems to diagnose. Nowitzki made good on his vow after the Game 2 loss to hit the looks he got last time, scoring 35 points.

He and J.J. Barea jump-started the Mavs back into the game with a 17-0 run in the third quarter that gave Dallas a lead for only the second time in the series since their Game 1 win when Nowitzki had 36 points.

Nowitzki had help in that game—notably from Caron Butler, who had 22 in the victory. But Butler never left the bench in the second half on Friday as coach Rick Carlisle instead went instead with Barea in the backcourt.

Butler went from being a major force in Game 1 to being nonexistent by Game 3. He made just one of three shots and finished with two points, which comes after he averaged 19.5 points in two games in Dallas.

Carlisle said the Mavs needed penetration. Barea did help the Mavs build a 68-59 lead in the third, but the lead didn’t last long.

“The only thing I can look at now is missed opportunities,” Mavs guard Jason Terry said. “You’ve got a nine-point lead in the latter stages of the game. A good team, a championship team, holds that lead and walks away with it.”

Mavs center Erick Dampier took aim at the officiating, a risky move after NBA commissioner David Stern cautioned coaches earlier Friday about criticizing foul calls.

“It seems like we’re under the magnifying glass when we play defense,” Dampier said. “When we’re on offense, there’s no magnifying glass. You’ve got to call it both ways. Dirk drives, he doesn’t get a foul. They drive, they get a ticky-tack foul. Just keep it consistent. Don’t be one way or the other.”

The Mavs will spend between now and Sunday trying to figure out how to even this series. A start might be figuring out what happened to Nowitzki’s supporting cast.

Terry scored 17 points and Barea had 14.

“Coach just goes with whoever is working that night and we went with a three-guard lineup,” Nowitzki said. “It was working for a while but we didn’t seem to have enough down the stretch.”

The run came when Ginobili was out. Blood dripped from his nose after taking the inadvertent elbow from Nowitzki, who had jumped to take a shot. Ginobili left for the locker room and returned 5 minutes later.

When he did come back, the Spurs said it was “up to his ability to tolerate the pain.”

He managed just fine.

“I had no doubt that he was going to return,” Spurs forward Tim Duncan said. “He has a strong nose on him.”

Aside from Game 4, Sunday is also when Duncan turns 34—but so far in this series, he’s looked practically ageless. He scored 25 points for the second straight game, and has the Spurs in position to possibly celebrate a commanding lead in this series if they can win on his birthday.

Tony Parker had 23 points off the bench while continuing to thrive in the sixth man role that Ginobili held for so many years. He hit a 20-footer to give the Spurs the lead for good with 2:34 left, then made another from the corner the next time down to push the lead to three.

That was as close as Dallas would get.

The Mavs must now lean on their NBA-best road record during the regular season to try and get a split before the series returns to Dallas for Game 5.

Coming off 27 points in the series opener and 25 points in Game 2, Duncan resumed a playoff career of giving the Mavericks fits. He made baseline turnarounds over Dampier, swished jumpers from the perimeter and capped a 12-0 run in the first with a wide-open dunk.

Duncan labored down the stretch of the regular season. But he’s now put together three consecutive 20-point games for the first time since January.

The Mavs came into the series lauded for their deep roster. But over the last two games, the Spurs have looked like the team with more weapons. This time it was George Hill helping San Antonio’s Big Three, scored 17 points.

vs(From the Associated Press) - Utah’s reserves were able to do what the starters couldn’t for the first 12 minutes—get inside and score on the Denver Nuggets.

Paul Millsap led a surge early in the second quarter that got Utah back into Game 3 after a disastrous start, then the Jazz took control of the game and their Western Conference playoff series with a 105-93 victory Friday night.

“That’s what we do, especially coming off the bench,” said Millsap, who finished with career highs of 22 points and 19 rebounds. “When other guys aren’t really feeling it at the time, we’ve got to come in and do a good job of trying to spark them and get them going.”

Millsap was able to find a few creases in Denver’s defense that widened into gaping holes as the Nuggets’ continued to unravel.

Game 4 is Sunday in Utah, where the Nuggets will need to win to avoid falling behind the short-handed Jazz 3-1.

Millsap’s 18 points in the second quarter gave the Jazz a chance to recover after Carlos Boozer and Deron Williams struggled early. Once Williams and Boozer got going, the Nuggets never recovered in their first road playoff game of the series.

Utah limited Denver’s Carmelo Anthony to 25 points and flustered him into five fouls. He also had just four free throw attempts after taking 19 while scoring a combined 74 points in the series’ first two games.

Anthony and Chauncey Billups, who also scored 25 points, were the only Denver players to score in double figures.

“What I’m most disappointed at is that we failed to compete tonight as a team,” Anthony said. “I think the Utah Jazz have done a good job making some adjustments defending me. When I get the ball I see two guys, three triple-teaming me. It’s not just one guy on me.”

Williams finished with 24 points and 10 assists and Boozer added 18 points despite missing his first five shots.

Wesley Matthews added 14 points and helped pester Anthony into foul trouble for the second straight game. C.J. Miles added 10 points for Utah.

“We knew they were going to trap me and try and get the ball out of my hands. It took a little while to figure things out and settle down but then we knew what to do,” Williams said.

Denver shut down Utah inside through the first quarter, forcing the Jazz into outside shots that usually missed and bounced right to one of the Nuggets, who led by as many as 11 points.

Millsap ended that trend with two quick layups and a dunk as the Jazz opened the second quarter on an 8-2 run. He made his first nine shots and finished 11 of 14 from the field for Utah.

“The rim gets big, especially when you get a few layups and get yourself going,” Millsap said.

The Jazz outscored Denver 31-21 in the second quarter, then topped that with 32 points in the third while holding the flustered Nuggets to 20. Denver’s woes slowly built throughout the quarter as the Jazz quickly pounced to stop any rallies, then the Nuggets really lost their composure at the end of the period.

I thought they came out and once again got layups and the whistles started to blow and they controlled the tempo. On the other end, we couldn’t get shots to go down,” Billups said. “It was like a snowball. It got frustrating in the third quarter.”

The Jazz were already surging before Matthews took a high elbow while defending Anthony with 1:05 left in the third, sending Denver’s frustrated superstar to the bench with his fifth foul.

Anthony, who had four offensive fouls and fouled out in Game 2, was stuck watching as the Jazz took an 84-68 lead into the fourth quarter and continued surging early in the final period.

Utah’s lead reached 23 points and even Anthony, who scored 42 in the series opener, couldn’t rescue Denver when he returned in the fourth.

Utah finished with 27 assists and just nine turnovers.

“We didn’t turn the ball over and we played as a team,” coach Jerry Sloan said.

Millsap had never made more than seven shots in a playoff game. He was 9 of 9 in the first half and his 18 points were one better than his previous postseason high of 17 scored against the Lakers two years ago. Millsap didn’t miss a shot until late in the third quarter and Boozer was right there for the offensive rebound and putback that gave Utah an 80-63 lead.

Millsap rescued the Jazz from a wretched start, leading a group of mostly reserves on an 8-2 run to at the start of the second period that tied it. Millsap made all eight of his shots in the period, opening with a few inside and then hitting outside jumpers when the Nuggets backed off to keep him from sneaking back under the basket.

Denver shot 53 percent in the period, but Utah made 70 percent while outscoring the Nuggets 31-21 in the period and taking a 52-48 halftime lead.