Game 4 of the NBA Finals was played on Friday night, and the Dallas Mavericks firmly extended their season with a 122-84 victory over the Boston Celtics. Luka Doncic scored 25 of his 29 points in the first half, and Kyrie Irving contributed 21 points as well.

At the conclusion of the third quarter, the Mavs’ stars had had enough, and rightfully so. The Mavericks led by thirteen points after the first quarter, by twenty-six at halftime, and by forty-eight in the third when each team exhausted its bench.

The final margin of 38 points was the third-largest in NBA Finals history, trailing only the 1998 Chicago Bulls-Utah Jazz game (96-54) and the 2008 Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers game (131-92).

The 17-time champion Celtics’ previous worst Finals loss was 137-104 at the hands of the Lakers in 1984. That was before Friday. Weirder still. Far worse, on occasion. In the fourth quarter, Dallas’ lead reached 48 points, which was the worst deficit the Celtics had to contend with all season.

On Monday, Game 5 will be played in Boston, where the Celtics still hold a 3-1 series advantage.

This was Boston’s first setback in five weeks, and it ended a 10-game postseason winning streak that had been franchise record. The Celtics also lost the opportunity to become the first team in NBA history to sweep the conference finals and the finals in 4-0 fashion.The Celtics’ Jayson Tatum finished with 15 points, Sam Hauser with 14, and Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday with 10 apiece.

Dereck Lively II added 11 points and 12 boards to Dallas’s total, while Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 15 points, all in the fourth quarter. The early indication that the Mavs were in for a terrific night came from Lively. Midway through the first quarter, he made his first 3-pointer in the NBA, putting the Mavs up by a comfortable margin.

From that point on, they took off sprinting. Continuing to run thereafter.

The score was 61–35 at halftime, as Dallas also failed to capitalize on several opportunities in the first half. The Mavs were well in control going into halftime despite shooting just 5 for 15 from outside the arc and 10 for 16 from the charity stripe.

Boston had numerous low points, some of which were historic:

This was the lowest scoring half for the Celtics in either of Joe Mazzulla’s two seasons as coach, with 35 points.

– Boston’s second-worst halftime deficit this season was 26 points. Of the 99 games played so far this season, the Celtics have trailed by more than ten points just eight times, the last being January 11 when they were behind Milwaukee by 37 points at halftime.

– With a 35-point deficit at halftime, the Celtics had their second-worst first-half performance in NBA Finals history, and it was also the biggest halftime deficit in team history. They scored 31 points in Game 6 of the 2010 series against the Lakers on June 15, 2010, which the Lakers ultimately won in Game 7.

Coming into Friday night, teams with a lead of 23 points or more at halftime had a 76-0 record. This was true even if comebacks were easier than ever before this season.

Now make it 77-0. Interestingly enough, the jersey number of Doncic.

The Celtics must have been considering how much more exciting it could have been if they had even managed to cut into Dallas’ advantage to start the second half. The Mavs, on the other hand, wasted no time putting things away, going on a 15-7 run in the first 4 minutes and 32 seconds of the third to extend Dallas’ lead to 76–42.

It was too late for Boston to pull off a miraculous comeback and complete the sweep. With 3:18 remaining in the third and Dallas holding a lead of 88-52, Mazzulla simultaneously withdrew all of the starters.

The mоst difficult аscent in this series remаins fоr the Mаvs, but they hаve mаde prоgress.