The Indiana Pacers and Cleveland Cavaliers both held serve at home Friday night, cutting their second-round deficits to 2-1 and resetting a pair of NBA series that had threatened to turn into sweeps after the higher seeds raced to 2-0 leads earlier in the week. The Denver Nuggets, meanwhile, took a commanding 3-0 stranglehold on the Los Angeles Clippers with a wire-to-wire 121-99 win at Crypto.com Arena, leaving Nikola Jokic’s club one game away from a third conference final appearance in four seasons.

Tyrese Haliburton, playing through a wrist sprain that had visibly hampered him in Boston, posted 32 points and 11 assists in a 117-104 Pacers win over the Celtics at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, his highest scoring output of the postseason. Pascal Siakam added 24 points and 10 rebounds, and Indiana’s bench outscored Boston’s reserves 38-14, a margin Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle had identified as decisive after the team’s road losses to open the series.

“Home floors matter in this league, and ours matters more than most,” Carlisle told reporters. “We had to give ourselves a chance to make this a series. Tyrese was Tyrese tonight. The trainers have been working on that wrist around the clock, and you saw what he can be when it does not bother him.”

Jayson Tatum scored 31 for the Celtics but shot 9 of 25, and Boston was again undone by perimeter cold spells, going 11 of 38 from three-point range after making 19 in Game 2. Head coach Joe Mazzulla, asked about the team’s shot selection, said the looks had been “the ones we want” and that the Celtics would not “chase shots” in Game 4 on Sunday.

In Cleveland, the Cavaliers leaned on a 38-point, 12-rebound performance from Donovan Mitchell to beat the Milwaukee Bucks 113-108 at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, evening that series at one game apiece becoming a 2-1 Cleveland deficit reversed. Jarrett Allen added 18 points and 14 rebounds, and rookie wing Bronny James, pressed into a defensive role on Giannis Antetokounmpo for stretches of the fourth quarter, drew a charge with 1:42 remaining that the Cavaliers’ bench called the play of the game.

Antetokounmpo finished with 34 points and 13 rebounds but again struggled at the line, going 6 of 13 from the stripe, and Damian Lillard, in his third game back from an Achilles strain, was limited to 22 minutes and 11 points. Bucks head coach Doc Rivers said after the game that Lillard’s minutes restriction would be eased “as the body permits” and that Milwaukee would not adjust its rotation for Sunday’s Game 4.

Out west, the Nuggets’ grip on their series with the Clippers tightened sharply. Jokic finished with 28 points, 16 rebounds and 13 assists for his third triple-double of the playoffs, and Aaron Gordon added 22 points and held Kawhi Leonard to 5-of-17 shooting. The Clippers, who entered the postseason as the No. 4 seed in the West after a 50-win regular season, have lost the three games by an average of 16 points.

“At some point you have to look at the tape and admit they are just better right now,” Clippers veteran guard James Harden said after the loss. “Joker is the best player in the world. We have not given ourselves a fair chance, and that is on us.”

The fourth series sits in its own corner of the bracket. The Oklahoma City Thunder, fresh off an overtime steal in Minneapolis, will host the top-seeded Timberwolves in Game 3 on Saturday night at Paycom Center. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who scored 38 in the Game 2 win, has been listed as probable with a left hip contusion sustained late in the second quarter of that game. Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault told reporters Friday that Gilgeous-Alexander had been “moving fine” in shootaround and that no changes to the starting lineup were planned.

Game 4 of Pacers-Celtics tips Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC, with Bucks-Cavaliers following at 6 p.m. The Clippers will try to avoid a sweep in Denver on Sunday night, and Thunder-Timberwolves shifts to its Game 4 on Monday. Should the current trajectory hold, the conference finals could open as early as Friday, May 8, league officials said, with the NBA Finals tentatively set to begin June 4.

Major League Baseball, entering the second weekend of May, opened a marquee weekend in the Bronx with the Yankees hosting the Baltimore Orioles in a three-game series at Yankee Stadium that began Friday night. Baltimore, tied for the best record in the American League at 20-8 entering play, jumped on Yankees right-hander Gerrit Cole for five runs in the first three innings of an 8-3 win, and the Yankees fell to 9-19, their worst 28-game start since 1990. General manager Brian Cashman, speaking before the game on the YES Network pregame show, said the front office was “evaluating internal and external options every day” and that no roster moves were “imminent or off the table.”

The Detroit Tigers, idle Friday with a scheduled off day, remained atop the AL Central at 19-8 and will open a three-game set in Kansas City on Saturday afternoon. The Cincinnati Reds, riding a five-game winning streak behind a starting rotation that has posted a combined 2.91 ERA in April, hosted the Chicago Cubs on Friday night and won 4-1, with right-hander Hunter Greene striking out 11 over seven innings.

Saturday’s MLB slate features 14 games, including a nationally televised Dodgers-Padres matchup at Petco Park, where Los Angeles right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto is scheduled to make his first start since coming off the injured list with right shoulder fatigue. The Kentucky Derby goes Saturday evening at Churchill Downs, and the National Hockey League’s conference semifinals continue, with the Florida Panthers leading the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-1 in their series.

League officials said second-round broadcast windows would remain flexible through Sunday night to accommodate any series-length adjustments, with the schedule for the conference finals to be released within 48 hours of the last second-round game.