Jaylen Brown and Derrick White each scored 25 points and the Boston Celtics advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals, beating the short-handed Miami Heat 118-84 in Game 5 on Wednesday night.
Boston will face the winner of the Cleveland-Orlando series. The Cavaliers lead 3-2, with Game 6 in Orlando on Friday night.
Brown also had six assists, and White hit five 3-pointers. Sam Hauser added 17 points and Jayson Tatum had 16 points and 12 rebounds, The top-seeded Celtics never trailed and led by 37 points. They also got a measure of revenge a year after the Heat routed them in Game 7 of the conference finals in Boston.
Bam Adebayo scored 23 points and Tyler Herro had 15 for Miami, which made its first exit from the playoffs prior to the conference finals since 2021. The Heat struggled throughout, going 3 of 29 from 3-point range.
MAVERICKS 123, CLIPPERS 93
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Luka Doncic scored 20 of his 35 points in the second half and added 10 assists and seven rebounds, propelling Dallas to a victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 5 and a 3-2 lead in their first-round series.
Maxi Kleber hit five 3-pointers and Kyrie Irving added 14 points for the Mavericks, who clamped down on the Clippers defensively and won decisively in Los Angeles for the second time in the series. Dallas moved to the brink of its first playoff series victory since 2022 and only its third since winning the NBA title in 2011.
Doncic is playing on a sprained right knee that limited him at times in the series, but the Slovenian superstar clearly got more comfortable and more dangerous as Game 5 went on. He had 14 points in the third quarter while the Mavs stretched their lead to 25 and eventually took an 89-69 advantage into the fourth, where the Clippers never threatened to do an imitation of Dallas’ rally back from a 31-point deficit in Game 4.
Game 6 is Friday night in Dallas. If necessary, Game 7 will be back in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Credit: AP
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