The Boston Celtics will take on the Miami Heat Tuesday night in Game 1, kicking off the Eastern Conference finals.
The best-of-seven series starts Tuesday and continues through next Sunday. The games are at 8:30 p.m. as follows: Tuesday and Thursday at Miami, Saturday and May 23 at Boston, May 25 at Miami if necessary, May 27 at Boston if necessary, May 29 at Miami if necessary. The first home game for the C's is on Saturday.
Boston went 2-1 against Miami during the regular season. The Heat won the last regular season matchup 106-98 on March 30.
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As for Tuesday night, Rob Williams will be available on an as-needed basis with continued knee soreness. Marcus Smart is listed as questionable with a mid-foot sprain. Jayson Tatum will go against Jimmy Butler to headline the series. They’re both leading scorers with Butler having a slight edge.
The Celtics are also coming in off very little time to ret for Game 1 after winning their series against the Milwaukee Bucks Sunday. Coach Ime Udoka said it’ll be a tough match up.
"They do have a lot of wrinkles that they’ll throw," Udoka said. "It’s a really well-coached team that’s not going to beat themselves and is playing at a high level defensively, that can mix it up as well on that end, so we’ll have our work cut out for us.”
This is the fifth playoff meeting between the teams.
It’s a rematch of the 2020 East finals, held in the restart bubble at Walt Disney World, when Miami topped Boston 4-2 to earn a berth in the NBA Finals. That was the third East finals loss in a four-year span for members of the Celtics — and many of the players from some of or all those defeats, like Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart, are Boston’s core today.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
