MIAMI — 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.
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.
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