Player after player said afterward that the Game 3 egg they laid was on them. Then they faced essentially a “must win” situation in Game 3 - the whole NBA world knows that 3-0 is a historically impossible series deficit - and turned in one of the worst showings in the storied Boston franchise’s long playoff history.Įven trying to turn what normally would be a negative, playing on the road, into a positive - Boston came in 12-6 in away games over the past two springs - fell sadly short. They opened at home, heavily favored over the East’s No. But the end is near, as evidenced by all that the Celtics haven’t bothered or been able to do so far. Granted the winners won’t actually show the no-longer beating organ to the Celtics until Tuesday or whenever exactly Miami wraps this surprisingly lopsided series. That’s because Miami reached in, grabbed hold and pulled it right out of their chests in the third quarter last night. While the rest of us were wondering just where Boston’s collective heart was Sunday, its players and coaches weren’t puzzled at all. Meanwhile, here are five takeaways from the Heat’s Game 3 victory, a performance so thoroughly dominant over Boston that it might have counted as two. That might not be much, but it’s something for the Lakers and the Celtics to show up for in their Game 4s. But while the Cavaliers swept the Hawks, the Warriors needed an extra game to polish off the Rockets. Cleveland and Golden State raced to 3-0 marks against Atlanta and Houston, respectively. The closest the league ever has come to having two sweeps in the conference finals - covering all postseasons with the 16-team format - was in 2015. The Knicks rallied enough against the Rochester Royals in the 1951 Finals to do it, Denver in 1994 recovered to push Utah to the brink in their West semifinals series and, in 2003, Portland fell behind 3-0 but forced Dallas to the limit before succumbing. When the insiders and pundits start debating which of the beleaguered - the Los Angeles Lakers or the Celtics - is more likely not to get swept, you know their respective opponents are firmly in control, playing at impressive levels and not inclined to suffer letdowns that would qualify in any way as serious.įor the record, only three of the aforementioned 149 teams that trailed 3-0 managed to even tie their series, forcing a Game 7. So there still is hope for a little we-never-have-seen-that-before basketball history to be made in the next couple days. As a result of Miami’s 128-102 drubbing of the Boston Celtics at Kaseya Center Sunday in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Heat and the Denver Nuggets both are up 3-0, on the brink of bilateral broomings. Then again, no NBA postseason ever has featured two sweeps in the conference finals. One-hundred-forty-nine have found themselves in position to try, and all 149 have failed. MIAMI - No NBA team ever has climbed all the way out of a 3-0 hole to prevail in a best-of-seven playoff series. Illustration by Elias Stein.Gabe Vincent gets hot and the Heat never let up in a massive Game 3 win over Boston to take a 3-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals. Marc Finn and Andres Waters contributed research. Statistical models by Nate Silver, Jay Boice, Neil Paine, Ryan Best and Holly Fuong. For historical team ratings, see the Complete History Of The NBA.ĭesign and development by Ryan Best and Jay Boice. Quality is determined by the harmonic mean of the teams’ Elo ratings importance measures how much the result will alter playoff projections the overall number is the average of the quality and importance values.ĭownload data. Elo ratings - which power the pure Elo forecast - are a measure of team strength based on head-to-head results, margin of victory and quality of opponent. A team’s current rating reflects any injuries and rest days in effect at the moment of the team's next game. A team’s full-strength rating assumes all of its key players are in the lineup. These are combined with up-to-date depth charts - tracking injuries, trades, changes in playing time and other player transactions - to generate talent estimates for each team. Our player-based RAPTOR forecast doesn’t account for wins and losses it is based entirely on our NBA player projections, which estimate each player’s future performance based on the trajectory of similar NBA players. How this works: These forecasts are based on 50,000 simulations of the rest of the season.
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