C’s fight, but fall to Mavs
Dallas 3’s too much
DALLAS — The Harlem Globetrotters played here in the American Airlines Center earlier in the day, and it looked like a few had remained, slipped into these hideous Mavericks alternate uniforms and were hitting some trick shots last night. The Celtics were far from resembling the Washington Generals, as they have on nagging occasion in recent weeks, but on a back-to-back against the off-sinceWednesday Texans, they succumbed, 113-104. The Mavericks buried them early and late under a hail of 3-pointers, and the Celts ran out of replies to fall to 1-1 on the road trip that ends tomorrow night in New Orleans. One of the best signs for the C’s is that they showed more fight for most of the night. They didn’t fade away when the Mavericks hit them in the mouth with a 2514 lead a little more than seven minutes in, the last of those points coming when Dallas rookie Luka Doncic up-faked Kyrie Irving and hit a trey to barely beat the 24-second shot clock. The Celts still haven’t found their desired stride overall, but they were a couple of steps closer against a team that is now 8-2 at home with six straight wins here. Still the Bostonians are what their record states — a .500 team at 10-10. Al Horford was back from a game off to rest his sore left knee, and Brad Stevens decided to keep Marcus Morris in the starting lineup anyway to go with Irving, Jayson (game-high 21 points) Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But from the looks of things early, Stevens would have been better off scouring the NFL waiver wire and hiring some out of work free safeties. Cleary the Celts needed someone to roam the perimeter and put a scare into the Mavericks’ long game. The visitors were actually fortunate to get out of the first quarter with just a 32-26 deficit, considering the Mavs drained their first seven 3-pointers, with Harrison Barnes and Doncic each hitting three. Not until Devin Harris came in and clanged a pair did any Maverick draw iron. Maybe the run on treys was a local-area thing, for while the home team was finding the range, so did hometown kid Marcus Smart nail a couple in the last 2½ minutes of the frameto keep the C’s close. The Celtics wound up hitting half their eight treys and shooting 55 percent overall, but the Mavs hit 57.1 percent from the floor and had eight second-chance points. After the Celts quickly fell behind by 11 in the second period, Irving returned and had nine points in six minutes down the stretch. Both teams shot 50 percent from the floor in the quarter, but the C’s were doing a better job getting to the rim and, therefore, to the free throw line. Hoops by Irving and Morris in the last minute got them within 59-56 at the half. Things got interesting on a couple of fronts 3:14 into the third period when DeAndre Jordan dunked hard and was ultimately called for a nonunsportsmanlike conduct technical for hanging on the rim. The fact he’d already picked up a tech in the first half for arguing a non-call gave the Mavs a few tense moments as the play was reviewed on video, with the possibility he could be ejected hanging in the balance — so to speak. Adding to the intrigue was the fact that, as the Mavs ran back on defense immediately after the score, Doncic collided with Brown and went down hard. There were some frayed feelings as players met near center court, and when that situation, too, was reviewed, Brown was ruled to have leaned into Doncic a bit too eagerly, and his technical was ruled unsportsmanlike. A few minutes later, the Celts went on a 6-0 run, with Irving feeding Tatum with a slick pass for a dunk to complete it and give them their first lead of the night at 7473. But the Mavs responded to take an 87-82 edge into the final quarter. There Dallas pulled away as the Celtics were unable to keep up their shooting pace.