Gabe Vincent scored a game-high 29 points on 11-14 field goal shooting as the Miami Heat shot .568 from the field, held the Boston Celtics to .398 field goal shooting, and won game three of the Eastern Conference Finals 128-102 to push the defending Eastern Conference champion Celtics to the brink of elimination. Duncan Robinson, who was out of the rotation earlier in the season, scored 22 points off the bench in 23 minutes, and Caleb Martin had 18 points off of the bench; no Celtic--starter or reserve--scored more than 14 points. The Heat won in dominating fashion even though Jimmy Butler had a down night as a scorer (16 points on 5-13 field goal shooting). Butler contributed eight rebounds and six assists. Many teams talk about not caring who does the scoring and who gets the credit, but the Heat embody that way of thinking and acting; through the first three quarters, six Miami players had scored between 10 and 18 points. It is worth noting that Vincent scored 11 of his points in the fourth quarter when the outcome was not in doubt, and Robinson scored 12 fourth quarter points.
Jayson Tatum (14 points on 6-18 field goal shooting) and Jaylen Brown (12 points on 6-17 field goal shooting) did not make their presence felt at either end of the court. The Celtics' offense was frenetic and undisciplined, with players chucking up low percentage shots from all angles, and the Celtics' defense was as ineffective as a bulletproof vest made out of tissue paper. The Celtics grabbed 21 offensive rebounds, but made little out of those second chance opportunities, scoring 19 points on 7-20 field goal shooting.
Brown described the Celtics' performance as "embarrassing" and he is right. Boston Coach Joe Mazzulla said that he is to blame for not making sure that the Celtics were ready to play. It is not clear if that is a motivational ploy or if that is his sincere belief, but a coach may want to be careful about taking too much public responsibility for losses; I believe that it was former NBA Coach Sam Mitchell who mentioned that if a coach does that too often then the team's owner will begin to wonder, "Why am I paying this guy so much to coach the team if he is the main person responsible for our failures?"
The Celtics' theme for the 2023 season is "Unfinished Business" but they are one loss away from needing to print t-shirts with the slogan "Unfinished Business, Part II." During the Celtics' five trips to the Eastern Conference Finals in the past seven years, they demonstrated the ability to bounce back after falling behind in playoff series, but this series versus the Heat looks and feels much different. The Celtics can talk all they want about games one and two being winnable games during which they had double digit leads, but a team that is trailing 3-0 after suffering a 26 point game three drubbing that felt like a 50 point loss cannot plausibly suggest that this series has been close.
The Heat have demonstrated that they are the superior team between the lines, regardless of how things may look on paper, and that is very surprising. After losing 4-2 to the L.A. Lakers in the 2020 "bubble" NBA Finals, the Heat were swept by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 2021 playoffs, and then lost to the Celtics in seven games in the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals before posting the seventh best record in the Eastern Conference in 2023. It is not clear what to make of the 2020 "bubble" playoff results; one could argue that doing well in the postseason during those unusual circumstances was more difficult than making a deep postseason run during a normal year, but one could also argue that a postseason without travel (after the teams arrived in the "bubble") and without the adversity presented by playing in front of opposing fans was a postseason that was less challenging than usual (or at least provided less of an advantage to the top seeded teams). Some commentators have noted that the four remaining teams in the 2023 playoffs are the same four teams that reached the Eastern and Western Conference Finals in 2020, but with three years separating those postseasons that seems more like a coincidence than a validation of the 2020 results. Two of the four teams have different head coaches now, and all four teams have experienced changes in their main rotations and in the roles performed by their top seven or eight players.
No NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit, so when the Heat officially eliminate the Celtics the narrative construction game will begin (or, to be precise, it will accelerate). This series will likely be portrayed more as an epic failure by the Celtics than as a great success by the Heat, but that assessment feels wrong, or at least incomplete. While it is fair to point out ways that the Celtics could have played better (particularly in game three), the focus should be on giving credit to the Heat for overcoming injuries to key rotation players (Tyler Herro, Victor Oladipo) and for developing a team-first culture that enables the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts.