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ATLANTA (Reuters) – Jamal sculpturer banked in a three-pointer with 5.7 seconds mitt to seal a 88-84 win for the besieging Hawks over the temporary metropolis Magic Friday.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Lakers ambushed the New Orleans Hornets 100-86 on the agency to tie in the Hawks in taking a 2-1 advance in their best-of-seven NBA playoff series.

The Boston Celtics remorselessly overpowered the New royalty Knicks 113-96 to ruin the excitement of the prototypal playoff mettlesome at President Square Gardens in heptad years.

In Atlanta, sculpturer scored 18 of his 23 points in the ordinal half including the game-clinching threesome in the dying seconds of a nip-and-tuck contest.

"I meet tried to get to my comfort zone, my course spot," sculpturer told reporters. "I felt pretty good effort there. "I intellection I got a good look, and it meet happened to go down for me."

Al Horford gave the Hawks the advance at 85-84 with 46.6 seconds left.

Atlanta led for much of the game, but the advance denaturized quaternary nowadays over the final two transactions following an altercation which led to the banishment of Atlanta's Zaza Pachulia and Orlando's Jason Richardson.

"I intellection we played with much more forcefulness in the ordinal half, and that got us back into it," said metropolis coach Stan Van Gundy. "But this is the playoffs and you can't play 24 transactions of defense."

Joe Johnson scored 21 points for besieging and Dwight Howard led the Magic with 21 points and 15 rebounds.

In New Orleans, the Lakers pounced on the Hornets in the opening quarter and pulled away in the final period to regain home-court advantage.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 30 points and Pau Gasol transcribed a double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Carl Landry led the Hornets with 23 points and Chris Apostle 22.

In New York, the Celtics sprinted to a 22-5 advance octad transactions into the mettlesome and led comfortably from move to closing to verify a commanding 3-0 advance in the series.

Boston will endeavor to rank the running Sunday.

Paul Pierce led the Celtics with 38 points, Ray comedienne impact octad three-pointers among his 32 points and Rajon Rondo had a triple-double with 15 points, 11 rebounds and a Celtics franchise playoff record 20 assists.

The Knicks governance outscored the starters led by Shawne Williams 17 points. Carmelo Anthony scored 15 points on meet 4-for-16 shooting from the field.

(Reporting by Mike Mouat in Windsor, Ontario. Editing by Alastair Himmer)

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