Jaylen Brown scored 27 points, Jayson Tatum added 26 and the Boston Celtics outscored another Golden State Warriors third-quarter attack in a 116-100 victory Wednesday night that gave them a 2-1 lead over the NBA Finals.
Marcus Smart added 24 points and helped lead a defensive effort that kept the Warriors at 11 points in the fourth quarter.
Stephen Curry led Golden State with 31 points and six triples. He scored 15 points in a 33-25 third quarter for the Warriors, but was injured at the end of the quarter after Al Horford shot him in the leg with a loose ball. It was similar to a play during the regular season in which Smart threw himself at Curry’s legs while chasing a loose ball.
Klay Thompson came out of a final fall and finished with 25 points and five triples. But the Warriors ’shot couldn’t save them one night, the more athletic Celtics outscored them to a 47-31 rebounding advantage.
The fourth game is in Boston on Friday.
The 39 times the teams have split the first two games of the final, the winner of Game 3 won the series 82% of the time.
Powered by the energy of a crowd of TD Garden mocking Draymond Green during his miserable night in the first game of the NBA Finals in Boston since 2010, the Celtics quickly started and led up to 18 points in the first half.
After a loss in the second game in which Boston turned the ball over 19 times, the Celtics’ ball movement was much sharper in midfield, resulting in open perimeter shots, favorable 1-on-1 clashes. and traffic lanes.
He sometimes left the Warriors fighting, which contributed to three foul calls to Curry in the first 24 minutes.
But in addition to playing Boston, his first-half advantage was erased in the third quarter by a seven-point possession from the Warriors that included a four-run by Curry when he tied a flagrant foul on Horford and a triple by Otto Porter Jr. . to put Golden State ahead 83-82.
Boston bounced back to take a 93-89 lead in the fourth. The Celtics regained the lead to 102-91 in the quarter and beat Golden State 23-11 in the quarter.
The Celtics led 56-39 before an 8-0 run in just 37 seconds by the Warriors cut the score to 56-49 with a Curry tray with 3:32 to end in the half. The race included a couple of missed free throws from Boston, along with a tray and a hair loss.
Boston fired in at the end of the half to take a 68-56 lead at halftime.