The Los Angeles Lakers pulled off one of the most unlikely comebacks you'll ever see on Friday to take a 3-0 lead over the Houston Rockets, who are falling apart (literally in this game) before our eyes. No team has ever come back from 3-0 deficit to win an NBA playoff series.
Elsewhere, the Celtics and Spurs both took back home-court advantage in their series. San Antonio is up 2-1 on the Blazers after a 120-108 win, and the Celtics outlasted the 76ers 108-100 to go up 2-1 as well.
Let's take a look at the big winners and losers from Friday night's action.
The Boston Celtics are the casino. They know they're going to lose some hands along the way (as they did in Game 2 when they made just 26% of their 50 3-point attempts), but in the end, they trust that the 3-point math will work out in their favor.
Most of the time, they're right. That was indeed the case again in Game 3 as they made 20 3-pointers (at a 43% clip) to Philadelphia's 12 (at 34%). That's a 24-point disparity in what wound up being an eight-point win that gave them a 2-1 series edge. You do the math.
This is why I wasn't concerned with Philadelphia's Game 2 victory. In that game, the Sixers, a bottom-10 3-point shooting team during the regular season, made 19 3s to Boston's 13. That's just not going to happen multiple times, let alone four times to win a series. That's the drunk guy turning over a blackjack once in a while. If he stays at the table long enough, he's going broke.
Barely two minutes into the second half on Friday, the Celtics had already made more 3s (14) than they made in all of Game 2. It has always begged the question: If the math always works out, then why doesn't everyone launch a million 3s? Because they don't have Boston's personnel.
There's a fine line between a good and bad 3-point attempt these days, and a lot of teams can't get near 50 attempts in a game without taking too many bad ones for the math to work. They don't have enough players who can create the good 3s in the first place, or enough players who can make them. In Boston, everyone can create, and everyone can shoot. On Friday, 10 Celtics made at least one 3-pointer. Philly had four players connect from distance.
Still, the 76ers had a real shot to win this game. They were down two with a little over a minute remaining and had Boston in a straightjacket with the shot clock winding down, only for Payton Pritchard to hit them with an escape-dribble triple to stretch the lead to five.
PRITCHARD GIVES THE CELTICS A 5 POINT LEAD! pic.twitter.com/fkIsAHg5rv
About 40 seconds later, the Sixers had it back down to three only for Jayson Tatum to deliver this dagger.
JAYSON TATUM DAGGER THREE FOR THE WIN 😤🗡️HE'S BACK 🔥 pic.twitter.com/3pMcFOUgWz
This is what the Celtics do. They just have too many guys who can shoot. And over time, the three or four guys on the other side just can't keep up. -- Brad Botkin
One of the ways the Celtics generate so many 3-pointers is by grabbing a ton of offensive rebounds, which often lead to either immediate kick-out 3s as shooters are lost in the shuffle, or at least another possession for a team like Boston to get up yet another shot. It killed the Sixers on Friday.
That Tatum 3 above? That never would've happened had the Sixers been able to rebound the initial miss by Nikola Vučević. Instead, Derrick White flew in for the offensive board, and a few seconds later, a three-point Celtics lead turned into six.
Look at Derrick White with the BIGGEST rebound tonight pic.twitter.com/ZZgmZzm1SZ
Earlier in the fourth quarter, Vučević missed from the other corner. But again, the Sixers were unable to corral the board, and again it led to a Celtics second-chance bucket.
Celtics track down the offensive rebound, leading to the Jaylen Brown pullup jumper. JB has 25. pic.twitter.com/70Pu9kgJDI
Jaylen Brown's lone 3-pointer of the game? Off an offensive rebound ...
Derrick White's lone 3-pointer of the game? Off an offensive rebound ...