The Miami Heat are within one win of the NBA Finals after a comfortable 128-102 victory over the Boston Celtics in the last three games of the Eastern Conference.

The winners will face either the Denver Nuggets or the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Nuggets are 3-0 up in the Western Conference finals with four games on Monday (01:30 BST Tuesday).

Vincent had six three-pointers while Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin added 22 and 18 respectively off the bench after veteran Kevin Love was ejected early in the game with an ankle injury.

Star forward Jimmy Butler had a quiet night with 16 points as the Heat, who are looking to become just the second team with the eighth seed to reach the finals, are in charge of both ends of the floor.

They finished a fast, physical first quarter with a 9-2 run to take a 30-22 lead and push their lead to 22 points in the second quarter.

Although Boston managed to close the gap, they struggled with three-pointers – Jayson Tatum made just one of seven attempts and Jaylen Brown missed all seven of his – and when they converted, they trailed 61-46 at halftime. their biggest half-time deficit this season.

There was no way back for the Celtics after that and as Miami led 93-63 going into the fourth, the shaken Celtics went more than three minutes in the third quarter without scoring.

“I don’t know if the word is surprising,” Vincent said of the one-sided results. “We played well tonight. We defended, we made shots. We forced them to make changes.

“The next game, the mindset is to come out and compete at a high level, defend, try to make the right reads all the time offensively and just play good football.

“It’s games one through four. We’re not satisfied with three.”

Boston’s Brown said: “I don’t know where to start. I feel like we let our fans down, our team, we let ourselves down, and we were together. We can point fingers, but really, it was embarrassing. .”

No team in NBA history has ever blown a 3-0 deficit to win a series.