MIAMI (AP) — Derrick White scored a career-high 38 points, Jayson Tatum added 20 points and 10 rebounds, and the Boston Celtics beat the Miami Heat 102-88 on Monday night to take a 3-1 lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
Jaylen Brown scored 17 points and Jrue Holiday had 11 for the top-seeded Celtics, who lost Kristaps Porzingis in the first half to what the team said was a right calf injury. Boston won at Miami for the sixth straight time and improved to 14-3 in their last 17 games on the Heat’s home floor.
Bam Adebayo finished with 25 points, 17 rebounds and five assists for Miami, which had a sellout crowd — including Lionel Messi — but played again without injured starters Jimmy Butler (knee) and Terry Rozier (neck). The Heat managed only 84 points in Game 3 and struggled again on offense in Game 4. Tyler Herro scored 19 points and Caleb Martin had 18 for the eighth-seeded Heat.
The Celtics can advance to the second round on Wednesday when they host Game 5. The Boston-Miami winner will meet the Cleveland-Orlando winner in the East semifinals; that Cavaliers-Magic series won’t end until at least Friday.
THUNDER 97, PELICANS 89
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Jalen Williams highlighted a 24-point performance with a back-breaking 3 with three minutes left, and Oklahoma City beat New Orleans Pelicans to complete a four-game sweep of their first-round playoff series.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 24 points and 10 rebounds for Oklahoma City, which trailed by five in the fourth quarter before suddenly seizing control with a combination of stifling defense and opportunistic shooting.
New Orleans led 80-75 and had a chance to take what would have been the biggest lead for either team when Jose Alvarado blocked Gilgeous-Alexander and sent CJ McCollum the other way on a two-on-one break.
McCollum could not convert at the rim, however. Soon after, Chet Holmgren’s putback and Josh Giddey’s 3 tied it at 80 and ignited a decisive 18-2 run, capped by Williams’ second-chance 3, that put the Thunder up 93-82 with 3:08 left.
New Orleans, which played the entire series without star power forward Zion Williamson, never recovered.
Giddey and Holmgren each scored 14 points. Holmgren also had nine rebounds.
McCollum scored 20 for New Orleans, which continued to be plagued by poor 3-point shooting. The Pelicans hit just eight of 34 shots from deep (23.5%).
NUGGETS 108, LAKERS 106
DENVER (AP) — Jamal Murray scored 32 points despite a strained calf and sank the game-winner with 3.6 seconds left as the defending NBA champion Denver bounced LeBron James from the playoffs again with a win over Los Angeles.
James’ two free throws tied it at 106 with 26 seconds left and the Nuggets, just as they did in Game 2, eschewed the timeout and Murray took the ball on a high screen and roll to his left, shaking Austin Reaves and he crossed through the lane and swished the 14-footer.
It was Murray’s buzzer beater that won Game 2.
“This one was a little better,” Murra said as confetti swirled around him and his celebrating teammates.
Nikola Jokic, who committed an uncharacteristic seven turnovers, narrowly missed his 19th career playoff triple-double with 25 points, 20 rebounds and nine assists and Michael Porter Jr. scored 26.
James had 30 points and 11 assists and Davis had 17 points and 15 rebound but appeared bothered down the stretch after banging his left shoulder into MPJ in the second half.
The Nuggets advanced to face the Minnesota Timberwolves in the second round starting next weekend. That series starts in Denver, where the Nuggets are a Western Conference-best 36-8, including 3-0 in the playoffs.
Boston Celtics guard Derrick White (9) dribbles as Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo (13) defends during the second half of Game 4 of an NBA basketball first-round playoff series, Monday, April 29, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, were voting against joining the United Auto Workers union Friday, in a test of the UAW's ambitious plan to unionize auto plants in the historically nonunion South.
Unofficial totals posted on a union website Friday afternoon showed that 1,096 workers, or 55% of the total votes counted, were against the union. The UAW reported 899 votes in favor.
It was not yet clear how many of the 5,200 eligible workers had cast a vote in the five-day election run by the National Labor Relations Board.
The voting at the two Mercedes factories — one an assembly plant, the other a battery-making facility — comes a month after the UAW scored a breakthrough victory at Volkswagen's assembly factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In that election, VW workers voted overwhelmingly to join the UAW, drawn by the prospect of substantially higher wages and other benefits.
The UAW had little success before then recruiting at nonunion auto plants in the South, where workers have been much less drawn to organized labor than in the traditional union strongholds of Michigan and other industrial Midwest states.
A victory at the Mercedes plants would represent a huge plum for the union, which has long struggled to overcome the enticements that Southern states have bestowed on foreign automakers, including tax breaks, lower labor costs and a nonunion workforce.
Some Southern governors have warned that voting for union membership could, over time, cost workers their jobs because of the higher costs that the auto companies would have to bear.
Yet the UAW is operating from a stronger position than in the past. Besides its victory in Chattanooga, it achieved generous new contracts last fall after striking against Detroit Big 3 automakers: General Motors, Stellantis and Ford. Workers there gained 33% pay raises in contracts that will expire in 2028.
Top-scale production workers at GM, who now earn about $36 an hour, will make nearly $43 an hour by the end of their contract, plus annual profit-sharing checks. Mercedes has increased top production worker pay to $34 an hour, a move that some workers say was intended to fend off the UAW.
Shortly after workers ratified the Detroit contract, UAW President Shawn Fain announced a drive to organize about 150,000 workers at more than a dozen nonunion plants, mostly run by foreign-based automakers with plants in Southern states. In addition, Tesla's U.S. factories, which are nonunion, are in the UAW's sights.
The union may have a tougher time in Alabama than it did in Tennessee, where the UAW had narrowly lost two previous votes and was familiar with workers at the factory. The UAW has accused Mercedes of using management and anti-union consultants to try to intimidate workers.
In a statement Thursday, Mercedes denied interfering with or retaliating against workers who are pursuing union representation. The company has said it looks forward to all workers having a chance to cast a secret ballot “as well as having access to the information necessary to make an informed choice” on unionization.
If the union wins, it will be a huge momentum booster for the UAW as it seeks to organize more factories, said Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University's business school who has long studied the union.
“The other companies should be on notice," Masters said, “that the UAW will soon be knocking at their door more loudly than they have even in the recent past.”
If the Mercedes workers reject the union, Masters expects the UAW leadership to explore legal options. This could include arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that Mercedes' actions made it impossible for union representation to receive a fair election.
Though a loss would be a setback for the UAW, Masters suggested it would not deal a fatal blow to its membership drive. The union would have to analyze why it couldn't garner more than 50% of the vote, given its statement that a “supermajority” of workers signed cards authorizing an election, Masters said. The UAW wouldn't say what percentage or how many workers signed up.
It took the union three plantwide votes at Volkswagen before it won.
A UAW loss, Masters said, could lead workers at other nonunion plants to wonder why Mercedes employees voted against the union. But he said he doesn't think an election loss would slow down the union.
“I would expect them to intensify their efforts, to try to be more thoughtful and see what went wrong,” he said.
If the UAW eventually manages to organize nonunion plants at Hyundai, Kia, Nissan, Toyota and Honda with contracts similar to those it won in Detroit, more automakers would have to bear the same labor costs. That potentially could lead the automakers to raise vehicle prices.
Some workers at Mercedes say the company treated them poorly until the UAW's organizing drive began, then offered pay raises, eliminated a lower tier of pay for new hires and even replaced the plant CEO.
Other Mercedes workers have said they prefer to see how the company treats them without the bureaucracy of a union.
At the UAW field office about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the assembly plant, several workers, who had the day off, gathered Friday afternoon to wait for the decision.
“We are absolutely going to win this thing today,” worker Rick Webster said. “Corporations have been trying to bust up the unions in this country since the 1800s and this has not been to benefit workers."
Krisher reported from Detroit.
FILE - The Mercedes emblem is displayed outside the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International, Inc. plant, Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The United Auto Workers union faces the latest test of its ambitious plan to unionize auto plants in the historically nonunion South when a vote ends Friday, May 17, at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler, File)
FILE - United Auto Workers union supporters attend a rally, Saturday, May 4, 2024, in Birmingham, Ala. The United Auto Workers union faces the latest test of its ambitious plan to unionize auto plants in the historically nonunion South when a vote ends Friday, May 17, at two Mercedes-Benz factories near Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Kim Chandler, File)
