Friday night in the 2023 NBA Playoffs ended a 9-game winning streak for favorites when the Atlanta Hawks finally got a win over the Boston Celtics. Cleveland’s offense had an embarrassing effort in New York, and the Denver Nuggets finished well in Minnesota to take a 3-0 lead.
Hawks Use Full Team Effort to Win First Game of Season Against Boston
By Icon Sport
The Hawks will not go winless and get swept by the Boston Celtics this season. Atlanta went home and scored 130 points on one of the league’s top defenses with seven players finishing in double figures. The Celtics allowed 130 points in regulation for just the third time this season.
Trae Young had help, but he also had 32 points, 6 rebounds, and 9 assists. Dejounte Murray poured in another 25 points, and the Atlanta bench stepped up by shooting 8-of-10 from 3-point territory.
The 3-point shooting was the story early for Boston, and the Celtics did finish 21-of-48 from three, which usually leads to a win. But the Hawks were 15-of-34 from three in an efficient shooting game, and they dominated rebounding with a 48-29 edge.
The Celtics got 29 points from Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart made five threes, but Jaylen Brown was held to just 15 points.
It was a tight 124-121 game with a minute to go, but Tatum missed on a game-tying three, and Young finished on the other end with a trademark floater. Brown then missed his three, and Young put the Celtics away at the line in the 130-122 win.
Knicks Edge Cleveland 99-79 in 1990s Throwback
New NBA fans may not recognize a 99-79 game for what it is, but old-school fans of the Knicks had to feel like they were back in the 1990s with the Patrick Ewing era at Madison Square Garden.
This game was ugly, but the Knicks were more than solid with 47% from the field with 21 assists and 14 turnovers. It was Cleveland that set offensive basketball back a few decades by shooting 38.8% from the field, 21.2% from three (7-of-33), and they turned it over 20 times.
Donovan Mitchell had a game-high 22 points for Cleveland, but it was not your typical Mitchell performance by any means. Darius Garland went from a great Game 2 to a brutal 4-of-21 shooting night with 10 points, 3 assists, and 3 turnovers.
While both teams scored a miserable 17 points in the first quarter to tie, New York picked things up while Cleveland never did. The Knicks led by 13 points at halftime, by 17 to start the fourth quarter, and won by 20.
While this series was expected to be a real toss-up, this has been the hardest first-round series to get a read on with some ugly performances by the losing team in the last few contests. But the Knicks lead it 2-1 as the No. 5 seed.
Nuggets Finish to Clinch Insurmountable 3-0 Lead in Minnesota
After losing 120-111 at home to Denver, the Minnesota Timberwolves may as well start thinking about next season as no team has ever come back from 3-0 down in a best-of-7.
Anthony Edwards stepped up with another 36 points. Even Karl-Anthony Towns had his best shooting game of the playoffs with 27 points on 17 shots. But Rudy Gobert fouled out, Nikola Jokic had a 20-point triple-double for Denver, and Michael Porter Jr. was the high man for Denver with 25 points one game after Jamal Murray had over 40 points.
Every Denver starter scored at least 14 points, so when Jokic gets help like that, the Nuggets are nearly impossible to beat. The Nuggets shot 57.1% from the field and overcame Minnesota having an extra 22 free throw attempts.
The worst sequence for Minnesota came with just over two minutes left when Edwards had the ball stolen by Murray, who then assisted on a Jokic basket to give the Nuggets a 113-104 lead. The final dagger came when Porter Jr. blocked a layup by Kyle Anderson, then buried a three to take a 118-106 lead.
The Nuggets can complete the sweep in Game 4.
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