Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports – “Back in the trainer’s room, they had popped the elbow back into place and Rondo wanted back into the ballgame. He walked back onto the Garden floor mere minutes later in the third with his left arm dangling by his side, and this was Larry Bird with a concussion, and Isiah Thomas with an ankle and Michael Jordan with the flu. This was his forever playoff moment in Game 3, a 6-foot-nothing guard running the Celtics’ offense with one arm, and one unmistakable mantra: Whatever it takes to beat Miami, to save this Celtics season. Old school in the Olde Towne. ‘All of us sort of looked at each other like, ‘What is he doing out here?’’ Garnett said. ‘‘Is he being smart right now?’’ Beyond the pain, beyond the immobility, Rondo’s resolve was a forever Celtics moment in a long lineage of them. Whatever happens with the Celtics, who now trail 2-1 in this best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinals, they’ll always remember Rondo playing most of the fourth quarter with a largely limp left arm flopping within a white sleeve.”

Brian Windhorst, ESPN – “From the top down, the Miami Heat were guilty of a critical mistake in their approach to Game 3 of their series with the Boston Celtics. With a nice lead and too many days to let it dull them, they forgot how hard their task actually is. Taking a lead on the reigning East champions and beating the East champions are two very different accomplishments. The space between slapped the Heat across the face Saturday night, yanking them back into reality. Beating Boston is going to be hard, outrageously hard. You could make some sort of movie reference to personify this depending on your rooting interest, be it the villain in a horror flick refusing to die or the hero in a boxing film rising off the canvas. But you don’t need to: Rajon Rondo did it better than Hollywood could have in the Celtics’ 97-81 Game 3 victory. This will be known as the ‘Rondo Elbow Game’ in Celtics lore.”

Chris Forsberg, ESPN Boston – “Said Wade, after stressing he’s not a dirty player and that the injury was not intentional, ‘That’s a tough injury to come back from that fast; it shows a lot as a leader of that team. … We want them to be whole, so hopefully Monday he is there and he is ready to go.’ Careful what you wish for. The Celtics need Rondo on the floor to win this series. And if a dislocated elbow can’t keep him off, what will? ‘I’m sure you guys can see that he’s going to play next game already,’ said Jermaine O’Neal. ‘If there’s any doubt out there [from] anybody, you should just look at this game because if he came back for this game, then you know he’s going to play the next game. He’s one of the tougher point guards in this league and he wants to win. And that’s the first thing I asked him when he came back, I asked him, ‘Are you sure that you want to be back out here?’ And he said, ‘Look, we don’t have any games to give,’ and that’s Rondo.’”

Bob Ryan, Boston Globe – “It was a Kevin Garnett people have cried out for countless times, but it’s really against his nature to shoot, rather than pass. Is it possible that, at nearly 35, he will summon that more offensively aggressive Kevin Garnett more often? Or was this simply a product of him having that Kareem reaction so dreaded by Spoelstra and thus we will see his old over-passing self tomorrow night? Perhaps Doc needs to show him this tape, politely pointing out to him that when you have Kevin Garnett talent, a little offensive greed is actually a good thing.”

John Krolik, ESPN – “LeBron has a new supporting cast capable of doing things his teammates in Cleveland could only dream of doing. He’s slowly but surely added to his bag of tricks since his arrival in Miami. He has the tools, both on his team and in his own game, to prevent being overwhelmed the way he was on Saturday. There are no excuses for LeBron’s Game 3 performance, and he knows that. The playoffs will be easier for him in Miami than they were in Cleveland because of the way Wade and Bosh can pick up the slack for him, but the onus is still on LeBron to lead (or co-lead) his team to victory. His new teammates and new skills will only help him if he’s willing to use them. If he falls back into old habits and defaults to trying to overpower a defense too good to be overpowered, he could end up tasting some very familiar playoff disappointment.”

Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe – “Rondo disappeared and we feared the worst. But then, with a minute left in the third, he was back on the bench. Then he was back in the game, left arm dangling. Then he flashed on a broken play and dunked off a fast break to give the Celtics an 81-63 lead with 8:32 left in the game. ‘Shorty’s a real tough dude,’ said Garnett. ‘I seen his face and I knew he was really beat up . . . when he came back to the huddle, all of us looked at each other and said, ‘What’s he doing here?’ He showed a lot of heart, a lot of grit. And we followed that lead.’”

John Schuhmann, NBA.com – “Rajon Rondo is one stubborn son of a gun, or a ‘tough mother-[expletive],’ as Dwyane Wade described him late Saturday night. When his left elbow bent the wrong way under the weight of his and Wade’s bodies with 7:02 left in the third quarter, the assumption by pretty much everyone who watched the gruesome replay was that he was done. Done for the game. Done for the series. Done for the postseason. See you in October. But apparently, Rondo assumed differently.”

Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN – “Kevin Garnett looked gassed during the two games in Miami. He offered his teammates his typically reliable screens. But when the action was on the other side of the floor, Garnett spent much his time at 19 feet, hanging out on the perimeter waiting for the rock to find him for a face-up jumper. In the two games, he scored 22 points on 11-for-29 shooting, without a trip to the stripe. Garnett is a player fueled by emotion as much as precision. While the latter was disrupted by an active defensive performance by the Heat’s big men and helpers, the lack of gusto seemed uncharacteristic from a player driven by intensity. On Saturday night in Boston, Garnett returned with a vengeance. He led all scorers with 28 points, draining 13 of 20 shot attempts from the field and doing it in a variety of ways. Asked to assess the power forward who tormented his frontline in Game 3, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra found an apt comparison. ‘Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,’ Spoelstra said. ‘That’s what it reminds me of, he’s too proud of a player, talk about an MVP, one of the best players in this league, as soon as he stepped on the court as a rookie fourteen years ago. For the revisionist out there, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when everyone threw dirt on him in the Final against Boston, he came out the next night and had 37 and 15. And while all this fuel was going on the last three days, I was cringing because you know this is a proud group, and you knew they would have a response which is fine.’”

ESPN Stats & Info, TrueHoop – “The Heat shot just 5-for-23 from beyond the arc while the Celtics went 9-for-18 from three-point range. The Celtics are shooting 50.9 percent from the three-point line in the series. One reason why has been the play of point guard Rajon Rondo, as Boston has hit 15 of 19 three-point attempts when shooting off a pass from Rondo in the series, including 5-for-6 in Game 3. Without a pass from Rondo, they are shooting just 35.3 percent from three-point range.”