Jarrett Allen scored 22 points, De’Andre Hunter added 21 and the Cleveland Cavaliers handed Miami its worst-ever playoff loss by topping the Heat 124-87 on Saturday for a 3-0 lead in their Eastern Conference first-round series.
Evan Mobley scored 19 and Max Strus added 18 for Cleveland, which got 13 points apiece from Ty Jerome and Donovan Mitchell.
Michael Laughlin / AP
Bam Adebayo scored 22 and Davion Mitchell added 16 for Miami. The worst Heat playoff loss, before Saturday, was a 36-point defeat in Game 3 of the 2013 NBA Finals at San Antonio.
That Heat team won an NBA title. This Heat team is on the brink of being swept.
It’s the 11th time that a Cavaliers team has taken a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven series — the other 10 were all in the LeBron James eras in Cleveland, and they all ended in 4-0 sweeps.
These Cavs will try to finish off a sweep of their own when Game 4 is played in Miami on Monday. It’s the 159th time in NBA history that a team has taken a 3-0 series lead; the first 157 went on to win the series, and Oklahoma City is the 158th and could oust Memphis later Saturday.
It was all Miami for the first 5 1/2 minutes, as would be expected from a team in a 2-0 series hole and back home trying to make it a series. But after that, it was all Cleveland, the Cavaliers taking full control of the game over the next 8 minutes with a 33-5 run.
Cleveland shot 13 for 17 during the spurt, scoring on its first eight possessions of the run. And it ended with five consecutive makes from 3-point range, all those coming in a span of just over 2 minutes.
Just like that, 15-6 Miami became 39-20 Cleveland.
It was 62-42 at halftime, and Cleveland missed its first eight shots of the second half. But Miami scored only four points during that span, wasting a chance. Cleveland led 88-64 going into the fourth and that was it.
There was one big cheer from Miami’s crowd the rest of the way. Colombian singer Shakira was shown courtside.
