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The Miami Heat have taken a 2-1 series lead over the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals of the 2005 NBA playoffs. InsideHoops.com scanned newspapers that cover the Heat and Pistons and presents quotes about Game 3's results and the series in general below:

Detroit News: Their defense disappeared. Their poise plummeted. And the clank, clank, clank of missed free throws rang in the Pistons' ears all night, and rings especially ominous today. Do you hear it? Miami hears it, and is starting to feel it. The Heat and their flash-and-crash tandem of Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal aren't going away, folks. And the Pistons sure aren't doing much to push them aside. Miami silenced The Palace noise and created some of its own, stunning the champs 113-104 Sunday to grab a 2-1 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. Game 4 is Tuesday, and that suddenly is the most crucial game of Detroit's postseason.

Detroit News: Detroit's normally pugnacious defense has to find a way to turn off Wade, and turn up the heat. Miami's young star scored 36 points, after tallying 40 in Game 2, and the frustration was etched on plenty of Pistons faces. Just to confirm the unraveling, Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace picked up silly technical fouls. The Pistons figured Wade couldn't keep it up, but also ringing today is this troubling notion: What if he can? "They made plays at the end and we lost our poise a little bit," coach Larry Brown said. "We just let things get to us that shouldn't have any effect on us at all." All night, there were strange sights and sounds, including a near-constant whistle, as officials reined in both teams. Miami played through it. Detroit didn't.

Detroit Free Press: Dwyane Wade won this game, and Shaquille O'Neal won it, and their supporting cast won it. The Miami Heat won it. The Pistons seem to realize that ... now. "With about five minutes left in the game," Pistons coach Larry Brown said, "we just let things get in the way of playing basketball." By "things," I assume Brown means "whistles." The Pistons let an 86-81 lead turn into a 113-104 Game 3 loss. And while the Heat deserve plenty of credit for that, the Pistons deserve plenty of blame, because for a few minutes, they thought they were facing the officials instead of the Heat.

Detroit Free Press: Now, to be blunt, some lousy calls went against the Pistons Sunday night. Like when Chauncey Billups drove to the rim, landed with a bloody nose ... and no foul was called. And when Rasual Butler nailed a three-pointer, and Rip Hamilton was whistled for fouling him, even though contact was both minimal and after the shot. The official violation: inflicting windburn. But bad calls happen. What matters is how you react to it. And the Heat showed far more poise, made more plays, and clearly deserved to win the game.

Detroit News: For 2 1/2 quarters, the Pistons could not stop the Miami Heat. Then, when they finally found a way to do that, they couldn't stop the officials from blowing their whistles or stop themselves from losing their composure. The Heat made 22 free throws in the fourth quarter, 38 of 54 for the game, and held off a spent and frustrated Pistons team, 113-104, Sunday night to take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals.

Detroit News: Billups' frustration was hard-earned. Early in the fourth quarter, he drove to the basket and was swatted by O'Neal. He was knocked to the court by two others on his way up to the basket and suffered a bloody nose and mouth. No foul was called on the play. "It's tough not to say anything," Billups said. "It wasn't the Heat. They played well. But it wasn't them that got under our skin." A couple of plays later, O'Neal lowered his shoulder and bowled Rasheed Wallace over. The officials called the foul on Wallace. That's the way it went in the final quarter.

Miami Herald: That was it. That was all the Heat had left. The gritty challengers had fought and bloodied the champs in their own Palace and held onto a lead for most of the game, but the titleholders withstood all the punches and took a lead in the fourth quarter. The crowd was insane, the Pistons were pumped and the Heat was drained, deflated and defeated. At least for a few seconds. Then it was the Heat that showed the determination of a champion.

Miami Herald: After falling behind by five points with 7:57 left in the game and Dwyane Wade out of the game with his fifth foul, the Heat still had enough energy for one final swing -- a run that gave the Heat a 113-104 win and a 2-1 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. Wade followed up his 40-point performance in Game 2 with a 36-point game Sunday. ''We were dying a little bit,'' Heat coach Stan Van Gundy said of the fourth-quarter troubles. ``I thought near the end of the third quarter, early in the fourth quarter we lost our composure, got frustrated when things were going bad, and [the Pistons] were able to build a lead. ``And from then on, I thought our guys showed great composure and toughness and finished the game very, very well.''

Miami Herald: Welcome back, Shaquille O'Neal. Miami's man-mountain is the world's largest child, which is why he so loves his comic-book heroes. He has a Superman emblem tattooed on his bicep. He has replaced the steering wheel on one of his many cars with that ''S,'' too. He has Superman emblems splattered all over his homes, everywhere from the bottom of the pool to the bathrooms (to his wife's dismay). O'Neal himself does not fit in any phone booth built on this particular planet, but he certainly appeared to emerge from one Sunday. He was super. Super angry, too. Knocked the smile right off a champion's face.

Miami Herald: O'Neal's kryptonite has always been free-throw shooting, so much so that teams actually employ the strategy of fouling him late on purpose and the Heat get flooded with suggestions from fans that range from hypnosis to voodoo to shooting granny-style underhanded. But as Sunday tightened, Miami kept tossing the ball to O'Neal in the low post and then watched skinnier seven-foot Detroit men go flailing out of his way like geese avoiding a thundering rhino. O'Neal would then wipe the sweat of his forehead with one of those giant hands and sink seven of eight free throws, including six in a row that gave Miami the gap it would never again relinquish.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Consider that in its Game 1 loss, the Heat attempted 10 foul shots the entire 48 minutes. Sunday night, it was 38 of 54 from the line, setting franchise postseason records for both attempts and conversions. The topper was that O'Neal made 7 of 8 attempts in the final period. Or consider that in a series where the first team to 90 was thought to be the rule for victory, the Heat finished one point from the franchise postseason scoring record, shooting 52.3 percent from the field. Brown was diplomatic about the Heat getting 11 more foul shots than his team. "We fouled," he said.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: For a while, it appeared the Heat would be the team reeling. "We let an opportunity slip away," said guard Richard Hamilton, who led Detroit with 33 points. Up 10 midway through the third quarter, the Heat saw that lead turn into a deficit early in the fourth. At that stage, Pistons point guard Lindsey Hunter was harassing Wade into foul trouble, Wallace was offering more energy than anyone on the Heat, and O'Neal was shooting more shots fading from the rim than powering forward.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: "Eddie turned the night," Van Gundy said after the 113-104 Heat win that gave Miami a 2-1 series lead. This was out of a timeout, off a play set up by Van Gundy, and when Jones knocked down a 3-point shot suddenly it was like the Heat could breathe again. It gave them energy, gave them hope, gave them a foothold back into the game. "It gave us life," Van Gundy said. "We were dying a little bit."

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: For Udonis Haslem, a 17-foot baseline jumper with 10:27 to play in the third quarter of Sunday's 113-104 Game 3 victory over the Pistons was a long time coming. Limited by a dislocated left middle finger suffered on the eve of the Eastern Conference finals, the basket represented Haslem's first points since late in last Monday's Game 1. Haslem shot 0 of 4 in the Heat's Game 2 victory and then was 0 for 2 in the first half Sunday before converting his third shot. Haslem had not scored since hitting a baseline jumper with 5:11 to play in Game 1, a basket that tied that game 80-80.