Kevin Garnett hammers a game-high 27 points and hauls down 13 rebound as the Boston Celtics take a 2-1 lead in the best of seven Eastern Conference Semifinal series
On Wednesday night at the Wells Fargo Center, the visiting Boston Celtics ran riot over their hosts, the Philadelphia 76ers with a score line of 107-91 to win Game 3, snatching back the home court advantage and taking a 2-1 lead in this Eastern Conference second round, semi final series.
Boston charge was led by the veteran forward, Kevin Garnett who racked up 27 points on a 12 of 17 shooting night to go along with 13 boards as well. Rajon Rondo also continued his excellent run by recording 23 points and posting up another double-digit assist night with 14 dimes in the ball game.
Paul Pierce followed them up with double-double figures of his own by contributing 24 points and grabbing 12 boards on the night. Mickael Pietrus and Brandon Bass also made sizable contributions in the contest by adding 13 and 10 points respectively.
Thaddeus Young came off the bench to lead the Sixers in scoring with 22 points. Andre Iguodala added 10 points while Jrue Holiday put together 15 points. Jodie Meeks and Louis Williams both also came off the bench to contribute 13 point each but despite having 5 players scoring in double figures, Philadelphia`s effort came up way short on the night.
Coming into the game, the Sixers looked to continue their winning ways at home in the post season by prolonging their streak to 5 games and they certainly showed intent of doing that by getting a 10-4 lead early.
Even though Boston scored the next 8 points in the ball game to take a two point lead but the Sixers responded with a 9-2 run to snatch back the lead and maintained their advantage for the rest of the proceedings of the first quarter, carrying a 33-28 lead into the second quarter.
In the second frame, it took around 2 and a half minutes for the C`s to make their way back into the contest and at the 8:47 mark Pietrus made a three to tie the game at 37. Nearly 30 seconds later Ray Allen made his only field goal of the night to take back the lead for the Celtics, who extended the advantage to 8 points in the next few minutes, courtesy of an 8-2 run.
Boston, were able to further increase their advantage and took it to double figure mark and at the half way stage were leading by 60-49.
The third quarter saw the Celtics continued in their exquisite ways, making shot after shot in the frame and continuously dominating the proceedings. They connected on nine two pointers and a trey from Pierce in the third quarter alone to go along with 8 made free throws.
While doing their work on offence, the C`s also did their work on defence, they held the Sixers to only 5 field goals in that frame and also limited their visits to the free throw line allowing them to only get 6 points from the charity stripe. This allowed the Celtics to take a commanding 23 point lead with the score line being 89-66 at the end of three quarters.
The offensive dominance continued in the fourth quarter and it only took around 6 minutes for the Philadelphia crowd to start leaving the arena disappointed with their team’s performance, Sixers were down 101-76 at that point in the matchup.
Even though the Sixers closed out the game with a 13-2 run but the Celtic lead turned out to be insurmountable and they took this one by 16 points.
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