Miami Heat wins, 128-102 for 3-0 lead & Boston Celtics seem to have quit | Miami Herald

How much misery should one city be made to endure at the hands of Miami?

We apologize, Boston, except not really. I mean, who imagined first your Bruins and now your Celtics would turn out to be this overrated or diving into holes when it was time to step up? Fans up in Massachusetts surely did not. Nor, most probably, did bettors who plunged money to back the best regular-season team in NHL history and the basketball team sure this was its championship season.

South Florida is not only dealing the misery, it is doing it with impressive variety.

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The Bruins had Boston fans flying high, up 3-1 on the Florida Panthers in the first round of the playoffs. Then the Bruins lost not one, not two, but three consecutive elimination games to eliminate themselves as the No. 8-seed Cats sailed on.

The Celtics haven’t even been able to furnish even the pretense, with two straight home losses to the Heat and now Sunday night’s 128-102 embarrassment in Miami making it a 3-0 rout in the NBA Eastern Conference finals.

Gabe Vincent — heretofore Playoff Gabe — led all with a career-high 29 points on 11-for-14 shooting. The Heat got 79 points from its undrafted quartet of Vincent, Max Strus, Caleb Martin and Duncan Robinson. Jimmy Butler scored 16 and the less celebrated did the rest.

“We’re playing good basketball at the right time,” Vincent said. “My teammates gave me that confidence.”

Said coach Erik Spoelstra: “We were able to put the game on our terms. [With Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo out injured] we need Gabe’s assertiveness. It can’t just be Jimmy and Bam. You need a lot of guys contributing.”

The Heat being one win from reaching the NBA Finals means Heat president Pat Riley is one win from familiar territory. This would makr his 19th appearance in an NBA Finals as a player, coach or executive. That means he would have participated in nearly one-fourth (24.7 percent) of all NBA Finals in league history.

Even Spoelstra could not deny Miami’s series lead seems, well...

“There’s a lot that’s pent-up. Some of the emotions are coming out,” he said, meaning this close to the NBA Finals. “We need to direct that and finish this thing off.”

Thanks to the Heat and the suburban Panthers to the north, Boston’s iconic sports bar, Cheers, has changed its name to Tears.

Also, clam chowder is ours now, too. Miami makes it better. Owns it.

Sorry, I don’t mean to presume the series is over and the Celtics are done just because it’s 3-0 (he wrote even though he presumes exactly that).

Facts:

A 3-0 hole is an historic death knell in NBA annals for the trailing team. Teams have been up 3-0 on 110 occasions in a seven-game series since 1984 when the current playoff format began — and have advanced 110 times.

Every time. Zero exceptions.

The Heat’s slice of that is 17-0 record on advancing when up 3-0, including 13-0 under Spoelstra.

So the Celtics only have to do now what has never been done in league history, that’s all.

And that would be a Boston team that seems already prepared to lay down and be swept. What an abomination of effort by the Celtics.

“The lack of mental toughness is embarrassing,” said TNT’s Charles Barkley of Boston at halftime. “They got the toughness of a flea.”

(“I am insulted to be compared to them,,” said Flea, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist.)

Can the Celtics forfeit the remaining game and avoid Tuesdays’ brooming? Would NBA rules allow it?

Good luck finding a positive spin for this one, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla. Resume updated for the pending job search? In Boston, he is a Dead Man Coaching.

The NBA’s West finals also is a rout, with Denver up 3-0 on LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, but that’s no shock. Nuggets are the much higher seed.

Miami like its hockey counterparts is a No. 8, which is as low as playoff qualifiers get.

Heat fans were merrily chanting “We want Denver!” late in Sunday’s rout.

This is the 16th time one market has had two teams reach the conference finals in the 40 years since 1984 when the current postseason format began for both sports.

But South Florida is the first whose two teams both are No. 8 seeds.

One, the Heat, is now one victory from reaching the NBA Finals and having the chance to be the first No. 8 ever to win it all.

The other, the Panthers, takes a 2-0 East finals lead against Carolina into Monday night’s Game 3 at home in Sunrise. That puts Florida two wins from a chance to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup Final and become only the second NHL No. 8 seed to do so, after the L.A. Kings in 2012.

While the Heat dominated all over the court, Boston stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown disappeared, combining for 12 of 35 shooting overall including 1 for 14 on 3’s.

Spoelstra chafes when the media makes too much of his “undrafted” players who starred Sunday. Thinks of it is disrespectful.

He has a point. The players apparently were good all along; it was the teams doing the drafting that missed on that. Or is Miami’s player development that good?

At any rate, making too much of Miami’s undrafted players is akin to doing the same about their team’s and the Panthers’ being No. 8 seeds.

What they were sure ain’t how they’re playing now.

This story was originally published May 21, 2023 10:55 PM.