Heat put Celtics on brink of elimination with 26-point rout in Game 3

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 that a desperate bunch of Boston Celtics could muster.

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.

"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 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. Every team in NBA history that has won the first three games of a best-of-seven has ultimately 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 per cent.

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 had a chance 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."

Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard each added 12 for Boston.

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 Tuesday.

"It's the first to four games," Vincent said. "We're not satisfied with three."

'It was just embarrassing'

There's 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 beat Syracuse 3-0 and St. Louis beat 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.

And the Heat let Boston know how much they were enjoying this one.

Mindful that Boston's Al Horford directed a timeout signal toward the Miami bench during Game 1 when the Celtics were on a second-quarter spurt to build a comfortable lead, Butler did the same to Horford as the Heat were running away in the third quarter of Game 3.

Besides, the Heat rallied to win Game 1 anyway. There was no rally required in Game 3 by the Heat. There was barely one attempted by the Celtics, for that matter.

Boston got within 61-49 when Marcus Smart had a three-point play on the opening possession of the second half. The rest was all Miami, which immediately answered with a 28-7 run to open a 33-point lead at 89-56, which had the building rolling. The lead was so big, and there was so much time left, that the sellout crowd of 20,088 actually was subdued a bit by the time it was over.

They might have been yelled-out. Or maybe they were saving it for hockey on Monday night, when the Florida Panthers — another No. 8 seed on a magical playoff run in South Florida — will try to take a 3-0 lead in their East finals series against the Carolina Hurricanes.

"We'll decompress tomorrow," Spoelstra said, "but we'll really get our minds right to finish this thing off."