BOSTON — Perhaps Luka Doncic had gotten bored of hitting game-winning 3-pointers against the Celtics.
Maybe he decided to let a fellow point guard play hero instead.
Regardless, Doncic’s dish to Spencer Dinwiddie for the game-winning 3-pointer with nine seconds remaining helped finish the Mavericks’ 95-92 victory over the Celtics, one of their most gritty this season.
But the final buzzer didn’t come before some more drama.
On the Celtics’ possession after Dinwiddie’s three, Doncic was called for a 3-point shooting foul against Celtics guard Marcus Smart, a Flower Mound Marcus graduate. Several players immediately started to twirl their fingers, looking at coach Jason Kidd to challenge the call.
Referees overturned the call after review, and though Boston won the ensuing jump ball and took two more 3-point looks in the final four seconds, the Mavericks’ defense buckled down.
The win marked Dallas’ 14th double-digit comeback of the season, doubling their total (7) from all of last year combined.
The latest appeared most unlikely in the first half. The Mavericks fell behind 12 points seconds before halftime, just before Dinwiddie’s 3-pointer at the second-quarter buzzer cut the Mavericks’ deficit to 47-38 at the break.
Doncic’s patient wizardry and major help from Dorian Finney-Smith helped Dallas reverse momentum in the third quarter.
The Mavericks finished with 38 points in the period, tying their highest-scoring third period of the season and matching their entire first-half scoring total.
Finney-Smith hit a pair of corner threes as part of a 13-point period, and Doncic added 11 points to erase concerns about the hamstring tightness that prompted him to walk to the locker room at the end of the first quarter.
Doncic finished with 26 points, eight rebounds and eight assists — none more crucial than his final skip out to Dinwiddie while facing near-constant face guarding on the Mavericks’ last offensive possession.
Finney-Smith added 19 points on 7 of 11 from the floor while guarding All-Star Jayson Tatum, who’d entered the afternoon averaging almost 40 points a game in March.
Dinwiddie (18 points) and Jalen Brunson (14) also finished in double-figures to help end the Celtics’ five-game winning streak in front of a sold-out TD Garden crowd, rowdy and packed in for Kevin Garnett’s jersey retirement.
