Miami Heat thrashed the Boston Celtics 128-102 in Game 3 on Sunday night leaving Miami ahead 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals and just one win from the franchise’s seventh Finals appearance since 2006.
The Heat had a great start, winning the first quarter 30-22 and then heading into halftime with a solid 61-48 lead.
NBA teams that take a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 series are 149-0 all-time. Game 4 is Tuesday night in Miami (8:30 p.m., TNT).
Gabe Vincent scored a career-high 29 points, Duncan Robinson added 22 and the eighth-seeded Heat rolled past the Celtics 128-102 on Sunday night.
Spoelstra, who is now close to his sixth NBA Finals as Miami’s coach said; “That was a solid, mature, professional approach. There’s a lot of pent-up stuff here and we’re getting closer, but we still have to finish this off.”
Caleb Martin scored 18, Jimmy Butler finished with 16, Bam Adebayo had 13, and Max Strus added 10 for Miami.
Jayson Tatum scored 14 and Jaylen Brown added 12 for the second-seeded Celtics, who won three times on Miami’s floor on the way to winning last season’s East finals — but simply never got an opportunity in this one and basically emptied the bench for the fourth quarter.
“I just didn’t have them ready to play,” said Boston coach Joe Mazzulla, who has been the subject of tons of criticism in this series — and will surely face more going into Tuesday. “Whatever it was, whether it was the starting lineup or an adjustment, I have to get them in a better place, ready to play. That’s on me.”
The NBA Finals start June 1, and the way things are going, that might mean the league is about to go a few days without games. The Western Conference finals could end Monday; Denver leads that series against the Los Angeles Lakers 3-0. And now, the East finals could end on Tuesday.
There has never been a season where both conference finals ended in sweeps; it happened in 1957 in the division finals immediately preceding the title series, when Boston defeated Syracuse 3-0 and St. Louis won Minneapolis 3-0.
Of all the 3-0 series leads in NBA history, this one might be the most unexpected — a No. 8 seed in the Heat, a team that struggled just to get into the playoffs, a team that was less than 3 minutes away from being eliminated in the play-in tournament, getting past top-seeded Milwaukee in five games, then fifth-seeded New York in six, and now on the brink of denying the Celtics a second consecutive East crown.
