MIAMI (AFP) – The Miami Heat knocked the stuffing out of the Boston Celtics on Sunday, powering to a 128-102 victory to take a 3-0 stranglehold on the NBA Eastern Conference finals.
The Heat, who host game four on Tuesday, are one win away from reaching the NBA Finals against either the Denver Nuggets or Los Angeles Lakers.
The Celtics, meanwhile, are battling the weight of history ˗ no NBA team has rallied from 0-3 down to win a best-of-seven playoff series.
Heat talisman Jimmy Butler could afford a relatively quiet 16-point night as point guard Gabe Vincent led the way, connecting on 11 of 14 shots from the field, including six of nine from three-point range, on the way to a game-high 29 points.
Duncan Robinson added 22 points off the bench for Miami, who are vying to become just the second eighth-seeded team — after the 1999 New York Knicks — to reach the NBA Finals.
Unlike in their first two wins of the series in Boston, there would be no need for the Heat to claw back a double-digit deficit.
In front of a pumped-up crowd at Kaseya Center in Miami, the Heat dominated, Boston unable to build on an early three-point lead in the face of a total team effort from the hosts on both ends of the floor.
“I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the word,” Vincent said of the lopsided result. “We played well tonight. We defended. We made shots. We forced them into turnovers.”
“The next game, the mentality is to come out and compete at a high level, defend, try to make the right read every time offensively and just play good basketball.
“It’s the first to four games. We are not satisfied with three.”
Boston star Jayson Tatum scored 14 points and Jaylen Brown added 12, but Tatum made just one of his seven three-point attempts and Brown missed all seven of his as the Celtics connected on just 11 of their 42 three-point attempts.
Miami made 19 three-pointers on 39 attempts, connecting on 46 of their 81 shots overall.
