Boston tightened its grip on Cleveland and Oklahoma City pulled even with Minnesota on Friday night, as the NBA’s conference semifinals settled into the kind of bruising half-court chess that defines deep playoff runs. In the Western Conference, Denver and the New York Knicks traded a pair of double-digit swings before the Nuggets escaped with a two-point win that pushed their series to 2-2.

The Celtics, the East’s top seed, ground out a 102-94 win at TD Garden to take a 3-1 lead over the fourth-seeded Cavaliers, holding Cleveland to 38 percent shooting and forcing 17 turnovers. Jayson Tatum finished with 29 points and 11 rebounds, while Jrue Holiday added 18 points and four steals in what coach Joe Mazzulla called “the kind of game we want to be measured by.”

“You don’t get past this round playing pretty basketball,” Mazzulla told reporters after the game. “You get past it by making the third-quarter possession ugly for the other team and then taking your shot.”

Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell, who scored 34 in Game 3, was held to 21 on 7-of-22 shooting and was visibly limping in the fourth quarter. The Cavaliers said after the game that Mitchell had aggravated a left calf strain and would be evaluated Saturday. Coach Kenny Atkinson said Mitchell’s status for Game 5 in Boston on Monday was “day to day, but he wants to play. He always wants to play.”

Out West, Oklahoma City evened its series against Minnesota 2-2 with a 117-108 win at Target Center, the Thunder’s first road victory of the round. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 38 points and assisted on eight baskets, including a stretch of 11 straight Thunder points in the third quarter that flipped a six-point deficit into a lead Oklahoma City would not relinquish. Chet Holmgren added 19 points and four blocks.

“He’s playing like a guy who knows the moment,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said of Gilgeous-Alexander. “We had switches we liked, we had coverages we liked, and he just made the right read every single time. That’s a problem for everyone, not just us.”

Anthony Edwards led the Timberwolves with 31 points but committed seven turnovers, several of them in the third quarter when the game turned. Edwards, who has been managing a sprained right thumb since the opening round, declined to use the injury as an explanation. “I had the ball, I made bad plays with it, that’s on me,” he said. “We’re going to Oklahoma City to win a game. That’s it.”

The Nuggets-Knicks series produced the night’s most theatrical finish. Trailing by 11 with 7:14 left at Madison Square Garden, Denver closed on a 24-11 run to win 118-116. Nikola Jokic posted a 32-point triple-double — his fourth of the postseason — and assisted on Jamal Murray’s go-ahead three with 21 seconds remaining. Jalen Brunson missed a step-back jumper at the buzzer that would have won the game.

“It was a make-or-miss league moment, and we missed,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “But the way we competed in this building, against that team, in that environment — I’m proud of these guys. We’re going home tied.”

For the Nuggets, the game underlined a pattern: Denver has now won three road games this postseason after dropping its opener in each round. Coach Michael Malone said his veterans seemed to embrace the underdog framing the Knicks’ run had created.

“Everybody wanted to talk about MSG, about the crowd, about what New York meant in this series,” Malone said. “Our guys took that personally. Nikola took it personally. That’s a guy who doesn’t care about narratives until he does, and then he’s terrifying.”

The fourth conference semifinal, between Milwaukee and Philadelphia, was off Friday with the series tied 2-2 heading into Game 5 in Milwaukee on Saturday night. The Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, who missed Game 3 with a lower-back contusion, practiced fully Thursday and is expected to play.

Television ratings for the second round are pacing roughly 9 percent above last year’s, according to figures cited Friday by an ESPN spokesperson, with the Knicks-Nuggets series in particular drawing the largest non-Finals NBA audience in five years for ABC. The strength of the postseason has been a bright spot for the league as it negotiates final regional terms on its new media-rights deal, with executives privately describing the early playoff numbers as a “useful argument” in those conversations.

Game 5 of the Celtics-Cavaliers series tips Monday at 7 p.m. Eastern in Boston, with the Celtics one win from the conference finals. Game 5 of Thunder-Timberwolves is set for Tuesday in Oklahoma City, and Nuggets-Knicks resumes Wednesday in Denver. League officials said the conference finals schedule would be released once the four semifinal series concluded.