Ray Allen scored 20 of his 23 points in the first half when the Celtics opened a 27-point lead, and Eddie House added seven 3-pointers to help Boston beat the Dallas Mavericks 124-100 on Sunday and give the defending NBA champions their eighth straight victory.
House scored 23 -- making 7-of-11 from 3-point range -- Kevin Garnett scored 23, and Rajon Rondo had 13 points and 14 assists for Boston. After a 2-7 slump that was the worst of the new Big Three era, the Celtics have won eight in a row by an average of 16 points, and six straight in double digits.
Jason Terry scored 27 for the Mavericks, who have won just three of their last nine games. Dirk Nowitzki had 18, but the Dallas 7-footer shot 4-for-17 from the field and had the ignominy of having his shot blocked by the 6-foot-1 House in the second quarter.
The Celtics shot 65 percent in the first half, and their 74 first-half points were a season high for them and the most allowed in any half for the Mavericks. They led by 15 after one quarter by 12 with 9:10 left in the second before scoring 15 straight points -- and 21 of 26 -- to take a 64-33 lead.
Dallas cut the deficit back to 27 points and Nowitzki was going up for a layup when House stripped him of the ball under the basket and started a fast break that ended with Allen feeding Garnett for a crowd-pleasing alley-oop.
The Celtics hit 100 points with 50 seconds left in the third quarter. Garnett and Paul Pierce, who scored eight points, came out with 3:17 left in the third quarter, and all of the Boston starters sat out the fourth quarter.
The fourth quarter got chippy with one double-technical and another that was called on the Mavericks bench. Although TV cameras focused on owner Mark Cuban, he said he thought the technical was on Nowitzki.
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"I think it was on Dirk," Cuban told The Associated Press. "Dirk had a good line. Mine wasn't very good."
Dallas had beaten the Celtics in 13 out of 14 before Garnett and Allen joined Pierce in Boston, and now the Mavericks have lost three in a row to the Celtics.
