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Jae C. Hong/Associated Press

Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout added another line to his Baseball Hall of Fame resume when he became the fastest player in Major League Baseball history to hit 300 home runs and steal 200 bases on Saturday during the first game of a home doubleheader against the Houston Astros.

Per Elias Sports Bureau (h/t ESPN's Aiden Gonzalez), Trout pulled off the 300-homer, 200-stolen base feat in his 1,235th game. Legendary outfielder Willie Mays previously held the record by hitting those marks in 1,295 contests.

Trout stole his 200th base on Aug. 31, 2019 against the Boston Red Sox. He has 201 for his career.

TORONTO – As the old cliché goes: It’s a make-or-miss league.

And during Saturday’s Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics, the Raptors made a lot of three-pointers and the Celtics missed the vast majority of their looks, as Toronto evened the series to now make it a best-of-three with a 100-93 victory.

Specifically, Toronto hit 17 threes shooting a very respectable 38.6 per cent during Game 4, while the Celtics were a disastrous 7-for-35.

Though it may be a bit simplistic to say – particularly because of the level of defence the Raptors played all game long on Saturday – but the difference in Game 4 really did appear to come down to three-point shot-making.

“You need to make some threes and you need to stop them from making a bunch, and that’s really been the story of the games, probably a lot of the games that are going on in the playoffs right now,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse after the game. “I don’t know if it is as simple as that or not, but it kind of feels like it right now.”

At least in regards to the series he’s currently involved in, Nurse makes a good point.

In the three previous games, the Raptors as a team shot just 28.3 per cent from deep while Boston was making 35.3 per cent of its outside attempts. This was a significant disparity in accuracy because of how reliant the Raptors are on the three-point shot as a core part of their offence, ranking sixth in the league during the regular season with 37 three-point attempts per game and coming into Game 4 averaging 40 deep looks per game during their series with the Celtics.

The accuracy the Raptors showed from distance on Saturday proved to be the perfect complement to the suffocating defence they played against the Celtics all evening long, and likely energized them on that end as well.

“Well, I think it’s always a boost for everybody when the ball goes in,” Nurse said. “I think it helps your defence, too. It energizes you… and when they’re not going in, you can see. You can see energy drop and body language change and things like that. So it’s big. I mean, everybody likes to watch their own shot go through the net.”

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The Denver Nuggets have drawn level in their series with the Los Angeles Clippers. Thanks to one of the most impressive quarters we have seen out of any team in the Orlando Bubble, the Nuggets picked up a surprising 110-101 win to make their opening round series tied at one game each.

It was a gutsy performance from Denver, which looked like it was on the road to getting swept after Game 1. They dug deep, picked up a win, and as a result, we have ourselves a series. Here are three takeaways we had after the final buzzer sounded.

The Clippers won three quarters…

…except for the first, where they got ran out of the gym. Denver looked absolutely magnificent during the game’s opening 12 minutes, boasting a 44-25 lead when the horn blared to mark the end of the frame. Jamal Murray’s 11 points stood out, but Nikola Jokic was particularly good, scoring 15 points, ripping down six rebounds, and blocking a pair of shots. He looked like a man possessed, and it did not matter whether he was being checked by Ivica Zubac or Montrezl Harrell.

As a team, Denver shot 17-for-24 during the quarter and hit seven of their 11 attempts from deep. They hit eight threes over the next three quarters. Saying that the Nuggets looked bad during Game 1 is an understatement, and they must have agreed, because teams don’t come out with this big of a chip on their shoulders unless they are trying to prove a point. Murray mentioned after the game that the team was tired in Game 1, which absolutely seemed to be the case, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday.

If Denver’s going to keep winning in this series, they’ll need these sorts of stretches where they just catch fire and everything is clicking — Jokic and Murray are both hitting shots and setting things up for those around them. They don’t need to do it over an entire quarter like this, but Mike Malone and co. would surely like it if they did. On the night, Jokic had 26 points, 18 rebounds, four assists, and three blocks while shooting 10-f0r-17 from the field and 4-for-5 from three. Murray, meanwhile, had 28 with six assists.

The Nuggets have heart

At one point in the fourth quarter, it seemed like Los Angeles had figured everything out and were just getting to the point where it could take the lead and pick up its second win in the series. With about eight and a half minutes left to go in the frame, Paul George hit a three to cut Denver’s lead to five. It did not feel fluky in any way, it seemed like the Clippers had just gotten to the point where everything clicked.

And then, the Nuggets responded. The team immediately went on a 10-0 run after that stretch, giving themselves some necessary breathing room and demoralizing the Clippers just enough that they were never quite able to get that close again. Las Angeles is a team that is really, really intense, with a star in Leonard who carries himself with a sense of inevitability that he has backed up throughout his career. When you are able to take the wind out of their sails a little bit, that says a lot about your group. Denver did that, and as a result, they won.

Two guys deserve a shout out for what they did in the game. Gary Harris, a good player who has just not been himself for the duration of the season because of injuries or general poor form, hit three threes in the quarter, played tough defense, and showed flashes of being the guy who Denver inked to a substantial deal a few years ago. And while Jerami Grant only had five points on 1-for-9 shooting, he was a menace on defense, giving the Nuggets some serious bite in the paint.