Heat throttle Celtics to build dominant 3-0 series lead
MIAMI — Erik Spoelstra had his team fully expecting that Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals would be extremely difficult, that the Miami Heat were going to have to take the best shot from a desperate bunch of Boston Celtics.
He was wrong.
It was a Heat romp — and a team that had to pull off a frantic rally just to make the playoffs is now one win from the NBA Finals.
Gabe Vincent scored a career-high 29 points, Duncan Robinson had 22 and the eighth-seeded Heat rolled past the Celtics 128-102 on Sunday night. Miami leads the series 3-0, with a chance to finish off a stunning sweep on Tuesday night at home in Game 4.
“That was a solid, mature, professional approach,” said Spoelstra, now on the brink of a sixth trip to the NBA Finals as Miami’s coach. “There’s a lot of pentup 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. Every team in NBA history that has won the first three games of a best-of-seven has prevailed; the Heat are 8-0 in that situation.
“The rim was as big as the ocean for everybody,” Adebayo said, after Miami shot 57% from the field.
Jayson Tatum scored 14 points and Jaylen Brown added 12 for the secondseeded Celtics, who won three times on Miami’s floor on the way to winning last season’s Eastern Conference finals.
“I just didn’t have them ready to play,” said Boston coach Joe Mazzulla, who has been the subject of criticism in this series.
“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.”
Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard each added 12 points for Boston.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Brown said. “It’s an obvious letdown. I feel like we let our fan base, organization down. We let ourselves down. And it was collective. We can point fingers, but in reality, it was just embarrassing.”