The first of what could be several rubber matches in a series that has been projected to go seven games was set for Boston on Friday night.
The Celtics were looking to avoid losing consecutive games in the playoffs for the first time in the post-season – they were 6-0 after losses heading into Game 3 at TD Garden in Boston.
The Warriors were looking to extend their streak of winning at least one road game in 26 playoff series, an NBA record. They’ll get another chance on Friday night after falling 116-100 to the Celtics and will try to avoid going down 3-1 in the series.
The Celtics are actually built around a pair of young, all-star wings, but the emergence of Jayson Tatum as a first-team all-NBA player and a likely bet for Finals MVP if the Celtics go on to win the title has somewhat over-shadowed Jaylen Brown.
But Brown – a third overall pick in 2016, a year before Tatum was taken third – was determined to have an impact in Game 3.
He started the first quarter with a three, and also hit one to cap off the quarter. In between both? He got rolling. Brown passed crisply, put the ball on the floor and went through Draymond Green like a battering ram, finishing the frame with 17 points, five rebounds and three assists on 6-of-9 shooting – the main reason Boston jumped out to an impressive 33-22 first-quarter lead.
He had some good moments in the first two games but would get stalled at times – he came into Game 3 shooting just 37.5 per cent from the floor.
The question would be if he and the Celtics could sustain his strong start. He didn’t end up with 68 points, naturally, but Brown did find plenty of ways to contribute on his way to a Celtics-high 27 points, nine rebounds and five assists.
With Brown getting it going, the Warriors defence was spread too thin. Tatum finished with 26 points and nine assists while Marcus Smart added 24 points and five assists, making them the first trio of teammates to go for at least 20 points and five assists in the Finals since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and Michael Cooper did it for the Los Angeles Lakers in 1984, per ESPN.
Celtics Manage the Ball
From the Celtics’ point of view, turnovers have been the story of their Finals run. When they cough the ball up 15 times or less, they are 12-2 in the playoffs. When it’s 16 or more, Boston is 1-5.
In-Game 2 it was 19 Celtics turnovers and a blowout win for the Warriors. Brown and Tatum have been some of the worst offenders for the Celtics, but the trick is having them continue to be aggressive, just tidier along the way.
“Understanding where your outlets are at, guys getting into spacing quicker,” was Celtics head coach Ime Udoka’s prescription. “A lot of times we’re cutting or slashing or getting flares and kind of clogging the lane. We want to get spaced out well, but guys got to be decisive. Our scorers are scorers. They’ve improved as playmakers. Whether you go into the basket to score or make a pass, you have to kind of read the room, read what they’re doing a little bit differently than other teams … [and] from there just read it but be aggressive.”
There was a moment when the Warriors were able to get Boston on the run with six minutes left in the third quarter as they used a 10-0 run that featured one live-ball turnover by Boston, one of eight in the first half for 14 Warriors points, but Brown and Tatum only had two combined. In the second half, the Celtics made just four turnovers, giving them 12 for the game, improving their record to 13-2 when they make 15 turnovers or less.
The Warriors win the third quarter – again.
As the New Orleans Pelicans’ CJ McCollum tweeted the other day: “The Warriors are the best 3rd quarter team I’ve ever seen.”
That was in Game 1 when the Warriors looked like they were going to blow out Boston with a dominant showing after halftime, but had the tables turned when the Celtics went nuclear in the fourth. In Game 2 the Warriors did it again and were able to carry the momentum into the fourth for their own blowout win.
Big third quarters have been their trademark. In their previous five Finals runs the Warriors ranked first among playoff teams in third-quarter net rating and came into Game 3 plus-9.5 per 100 possessions immediately after halftime. No one really knows why, it just is.
The difference in Game 3 was that the Warriors needed to push to stay in the game after trailing by 12 at the half. Once again it was Curry doing the heavy lifting. When he was fouled by Al Horford on a deep three and made the shot and the free throw, the four-point play cut the Celtics’ lead to five. Then, since Horford’s foul was deemed a flagrant, the Warriors kept the ball and Otto Porter’s ensuing triple made it a seven-point possession to cut Boston’s lead to two.
Another triple by Curry – once again off of simple pick-and-roll action designed to attack Horford on the perimeter – gave the Warriors the lead, erasing what had been an 18-point Celtics advantage. Curry finished the quarter with 15 points in the period and Thompson 10, but most importantly the Warriors held Boston to 33 per cent shooting in the period, a big improvement from the first half when Boston strafed them for 57 per cent shooting.
Celtics win the possession game
Fans of the Toronto Raptors might remember how this goes: sometimes it’s not how you shoot, it’s how many. Boston dominated the Warriors on the offensive glass (15-6) leading to a 22-11 edge in second-chance points. They were also careful with the ball in terms of turnovers while doing a good job harassing the Warriors into mistakes as they made 16 turnovers to 12 by Boston.
As a result, Boston was able to take 11 more shots than the Warriors, which more than made up for the fact that the Warriors had an edge in three-point shooting, 15-13. The offensive glass seemed to tell a story. With two of Horford, Robert Williams, and Grant Williams always on the floor, the Celtics seemed bigger and stronger and quicker than the Warriors, to say nothing of the size and athleticism edge that Brown, Tatum, and Smart provided at their respective positions on the wing.
The Celtics pressed their advantage most obviously in the fourth quarter as they had an 8-1 edge in turnovers and a 4-0 edge in offensive rebounds as the Celtics won the final quarter 23-11.
The return of Klay
The one firm conclusion that could be drawn from Games 1 and 2 is that the Warriors were going to need someone to step up in support of Curry. Through the first two games it most certainly wasn’t Thompson, who had played that role in the Warriors’ previous five Finals appearances. Thompson couldn’t find his way around the Celtics’ forest of long-armed defenders as he was just 10-of-33 from the floor and 4-of-15 from deep in Games 1 and 2.
But Thompson – a career 41 per cent three-point shooter in the post-season – had a plan: watch himself on video.
“That’s the beauty of playing in today’s age. You can go on YouTube and look up all your great moments,” he said in advance of Game 3. “… I remember being in college, when you go through a shooting slump, the video guys will pull up a great game of when everything seemed in unison, your body was working so well, that ball was just flowing off your fingertips.
“Gosh, probably just YouTube ‘Game 6 Klay’ because there were some very high-pressurized situations I was in. I ended up shooting the ball well. When you can do it when your back is against the wall, you can do it at any given moment. It’s just about keeping that mental strong.”
Thompson showed that he’d put his downtime to good use. He missed his first three looks but eventually got a triple to go down late in the first quarter and then scored 10 points in the first seven minutes of the second quarter to keep the Warriors in touch as the Celtics tried to pull away.
“For me it’s about keeping that same mindset of shooters shoot,” he said. “I’d rather go down swinging than being gun shy.”
He finished with 25 points and was 5-of-13 from deep.
CALGARY – The Calgary Flames have re-signed defenceman Ilya Solovyov and centre Cole Schwindt, the NHL club announced Wednesday.
Solovyov signed a two-year deal which is a two-way contract in year one and a one-way deal in year two and carries an average annual value of US$775,000 at the NHL level.
Schwindt signed a one-year, two-way contract with an average annual value of $800,000 at the NHL level.
The 24-year-old Solovyov, from Mogilev, Belarus, made his NHL debut last season and had three assists in 10 games for the Flames. He also had five goals and 10 assists in 51 games with the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers and added one goal in six Calder Cup playoff games.
Schwindt, from Kitchener, Ont., made his Flames debut last season and appeared in four games with the club.
The 23-year-old also had 14 goals and 22 assists in 66 regular-season games with the Wranglers and added a team-leading four goals, including one game-winning goal, in the playoffs.
Schwindt was selected by Florida in the third round, 81st overall, at the 2019 NHL draft. He came to Calgary in July 2022 along with forward Jonathan Huberdeau and defenceman MacKenzie Weegar in the trade that sent star forward Matthew Tkachuk to the Panthers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
KING CITY, Ont. – Oman scored 10 runs in the final over to edge Nepal by one wicket with just one ball remaining in ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 play Wednesday.
Kaleemullah, the No. 11 batsman who goes by one name, hit a four with the penultimate ball as Oman finished at 223 for nine. Nepal had scored 220 for nine in its 50 overs.
Kaleemullah and No. 9 batsman Shakeel Ahmed each scored five in the final over off Sompal Kami. They finished with six and 17 runs, respectively.
Opener Latinder Singh led Oman with 41 runs.
Nepal’s Gulsan Jha was named man of the match after scoring 53 runs and recording a career-best five-wicket haul. The 18-year-old slammed five sixes and three-fours in his 35-ball knock, scoring 23 runs in the 46th over alone when he hit six, six, four, two, four and one off Aqib Ilyas.
Captain Rohit Paudel led Nepal with 60 runs.
The 19th-ranked Canadians, who opened the triangular series Monday with a 103-run win over No. 17 Nepal, face No. 16 Oman on Friday, Nepal on Sunday and Oman again on Sept. 26. All the games are at the Maple Leaf Cricket Ground.
The eight World League 2 teams each play 36 one-day internationals spread across nine triangular series through December 2026. The top four sides will go through to a World Cup qualifier that will decide the last four berths in the expanded 14-team Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Canada (5-4) stands second in the World League 2 table. The 14th-ranked Dutch top the table at 6-2.
Oman (2-2 with one no-result) stands sixth, ahead of Nepal (1-5).
Canada won all four matches in its opening tri-series in February-March, sweeping No. 11 Scotland and the 20th-ranked host Emirates. But the Canadians lost four in a row to the 18th-ranked U.S. and host Netherlands in August.
Canada which debuted in the T20 World Cup this summer in the U.S. and West Indies, is looking to get back to the showcase 50-over Cricket World Cup for the first time since 2011 after failing to qualify for the last three editions. The Canadian men also played in the 1979, 2003 and 2007 tournaments, exiting after the group stage in all four tournament appearances.
The Canadian men regained their one-day international status for the first time in almost a decade by finishing in the top four of the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier Playoff in April 2023 in Bermuda.
—
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024
PENTICTON, B.C. – Rick Tocchet has already warned his Vancouver Canucks players — the looming NHL season won’t be easy.
The team made strides last year, the head coach said Wednesday ahead of training camp. The bar has been raised for this year’s campaign.
“To get to the next plateau, there are higher expectations and it’s going to be hard. We know that,” Tocchet said in Penticton, B.C., where the team will open its camp on Thursday.
“So that’s the next level. It starts day one (on Thursday). My thing is don’t waste a rep out there.”
The Canucks finished atop the Pacific Division with a 50-23-9 record last season, then ousted the Nashville Predators from the playoffs in a gritty, six-game first-round series. Vancouver then fell to the Edmonton Oilers in a seven-game second-round set.
Last fall, Jim Rutherford, the Canucks president of hockey operations, said everything would have to go right for the team to make a playoff push. That doesn’t change this season, he said, despite last year’s success.
“The challenges will be greater, certainly. But I believe the team that we started with last year, we have just as good a team to start the season this year and probably better,” he said.
“As long as the team builds off what they did last year, stick to what the coaches tell them, stick to the system, stick together in good times and bad times, this team has a chance to do pretty well.”
Some key players will be missing as Vancouver’s training camp begins, however.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced Wednesday that star goalie Thatcher Demko will not be on the ice when the team begins it’s pre-season preparation.
Allvin did not disclose the reason for Demko’s absence, but said the 28-year-old American has been making progress.
“He’s been in working extremely hard and he seems to be in a great mindset,” the GM said.
Demko missed several weeks of the regular season and much of Vancouver’s playoff run last spring with a knee injury.
The six-foot-four, 192-pound goalie has a career 213-116-81 regular-season record with a .912 save percentage, a 2.79 goals-against average and eight shutouts across seven seasons with the Canucks.
Allvin also announced that veteran centre Teddy Blueger and defensive prospect Cole McWard will also miss the start of training camp after each had “minor lower-body surgery.”
Vancouver previously announced winger Dakota Joshua won’t be present for the start of camp as he recovers from surgery for testicular cancer.
Tocchet said he’ll have no problem filling the holes, and plans to switch his lines up a lot in Penticton.
“Nothing’s set in stone,” he said. “I think it’s important that you have different puzzles at different times.”
The coach added that he expects standout centre Elias Pettersson to begin on a line with Canucks newcomer Jake DeBrusk.
Vancouver inked DeBrusk, a former Boston Bruins forward, to a seven-year, US$38.5 million deal when the NHL’s free agent market opened on July 1.
The glare on Pettersson is expected to be bright once again as he enters the first year of a new eight-year, $92.8 million contract. The 25-year-old Swede struggled at times last season and put 89 points (34 goals, 55 assists) in 82 games.
Rutherford said he was impressed with how Pettersson looked when he returned to Vancouver ahead of camp.
“He seems to be a guy that’s more relaxed and more comfortable. And for obvious reasons,” said the president of hockey ops. “This is a guy that I believe has worked really hard this summer. He’s done everything he can to play as a top-line player. … The expectation for him is to be one of the top players on our team.”
A number of Canucks hit milestones last season, including Quinn Hughes, who led all NHL defencemen in scoring with 92 points and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue liner.
Several players could once again have career-best years for Vancouver, Tocchet said, but they’ll need to be consistent and not allow frustration to creep in when things go wrong.
“You’ve just got to drive yourself every day when you have a great year,” the coach said. “You’ve got to keep creating that environment where they can achieve those goals, whatever they are. And the main goal is winning. That’s really what it comes down to.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
