Heat vs. Celtics score: Miami blows out Boston to take 3-0 series lead

The Miami Heat are one win away from advancing to the NBA Finals. After opening up a 2-0 series lead against the Boston Celtics on the road, the Heat completely demolished the Celtics Sunday night in Game 3, pulling away with a 128-102 win. From the opening tip, the Heat just looked like the more prepared team in every aspect of the game. By the end of the third quarter, Miami had opened up a 30-point lead, and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla waved the white flag, sending in reserves to start the fourth quarter effectively ending the game with 12 minutes left. 

It was a team effort for the Heat, with Gabe Vincent leading the way with 29 points, followed by 22 points from Duncan Robinson and 18 points from Caleb Martin. For the Celtics, there weren't many bright spots, as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for just 26 points. After a complete steamrolling of Boston in Game 3, the Heat can now go for a sweep Tuesday night against the No. 2 team in the Eastern Conference and take another trip to the NBA Finals.

 The Celtics were a 4.5-point favorite entering Sunday night's Game 3, and my goodness was that a major oversight. From the opening tip the Celtics looked half interested in a must-win game, complete with poor defense, too many turnovers and a disappearing act from the two star players on the team. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined to go just 12 of 35 from the field, including an 0-7 3-point night from Brown. And it didn't get much better going down the rest of the roster. The two Jays were the only Celtics players to score in double figures -- aside from Grant Williams in garbage time -- which was just the tip of the iceberg in a disappointing night for Boston.  

As a team, the Celtics shot just 36.6% from the field and 20.6% from 3-point range, and it didn't help that the team committed 14 turnovers, which the Heat converted into 18 points. Even when Boston did get a couple stops on the defensive end, they couldn't convert on the other end, either because players were missing quality looks, or guys were forcing up poor shots. It was a truly shocking performance from the Celtics, and they looked shellshocked once the Heat opened up a 20-point lead in the first half. I mean, when the Heat run an after timeout play for Cody Zeller, and it works, you know you've sunken to a deep place that there is no coming back from. 

Despite the many efforts from Al Horford to try and keep his teammates locked in during timeouts, the Celtics just faltered in every aspect of this game. As a result, Boston now faces elimination -- and a sweep -- in Game 4, something I don't think anyone expected to happen at the start of this series.

If you've watched any bit of this Heat team during the playoffs -- or during any point in the last several years -- one of the common narratives you'll hear about the team is their ability to take undrafted guys and turn them into quality role players in this league. This season, they just so happen to have several of those type of guys on the team who came up huge in Game 3. Led by Vincent's 29 points, the top three scorers on Miami's team were all undrafted guys with Robinson (22 points ) and Martin (18 points) carrying a bulk of the offensive load for the Heat.

Credit Miami's ball movement, which left the Celtics running in circles trying to closeout on shooters all night long. It also helps when you have an offensive weapon like Jimmy Butler who draws so much defensive attention that you're bound to have one guy open on the perimeter. The Heat weren't even doing anything too complicated on offense for most of the game. It was just simple dribble penetration from Butler, watch the Boston defense collapse on him and kick it out to the open guy on the perimeter. Even when the Celtics did manage to run guys off the 3-point line, it resulted in plays like this from Robinson:

Yep, that's Duncan Robinson, who averaged just 16 minutes during the regular season, driving right past Grant Williams -- with ease by the way -- for a tough finish at the rim. And Robinson wasn't done for the night. He then ran a pick-and-roll play with Bam Adebayo, which was incredibly successful during Miami's 2020 Finals run, to pull off this exciting finish from Miami's big man:

If the role players continue to play like this, Miami is going to be incredibly difficult to beat if they close out this series and advance to the NBA Finals.

With the victory Sunday night, the Heat are one win away from becoming just the second eighth seed to advance to the NBA Finals. The last team to do that was the 1999 New York Knicks during a lockout season. But as we've seen over the course of this postseason, this Miami team is no ordinary eight seed. From the top down the Heat have looked like the better team in every series they've played so far, even against the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round. What's even more impressive about all this is the Heat are doing all of this damage without Tyler Herro, who got injured in the first round. The Heat were also narrowly close to missing the postseason altogether after losing their first play-in game to the Atlanta Hawks, and then almost losing to the Chicago Bulls in their second play-in game.

But none of that has mattered as the Heat have proven to catch fire at the perfect time. This is a team that finished 25th in offensive rating, and yet here they are ranking third in the same category during the playoffs. Miami's postseason run has been an excellent example of why regular season success doesn't dictate playoff results. They've completely shirked every prediction that went against them and are now on the brink of going to their second NBA Finals in four years.