Heat and Celtics Prepare to Meet Again in Postseason at BetLM

Heat and Celtics Prepare to Meet Again in Postseason

MIAMI (NBA/Newsfeed) – It’s a rematch: Miami and Boston will meet in the play­offs again, this time with a spot in the NBA finals at stake.

Boston’s 85–75 win in Game 7 over Philadel­phia on Sat­ur­day night earned the Celtics a trip to Miami, where the reign­ing East cham­pion Heat will host Game 1 of this year’s con­fer­ence title series Mon­day night.

Boston took the regular-season series from Miami 3–1, though the last of those meet­ings was in the final game of the sea­son and came on a night where LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all sat out for Miami, while Kevin Gar­nett, Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen got the evening off for Boston.

The line­ups will look more nor­mal Mon­day, though Bosh will remain side­lined because of a strained lower abdom­i­nal muscle.

“Let’s do it,” Gar­nett said Sat­ur­day night, just before leav­ing the floor after Boston’s win.

It’ll be a quick turn­around for Boston, with Game 1 in Miami start­ing about 46 hours after Game 7 against the 76ers ended. The Heat fin­ished off their East semi­fi­nal series against Indi­ana on Thurs­day night, took Fri­day off and held a light prac­tice Sat­ur­day – focus­ing on them­selves and not start­ing to work in details either the Celtics or the 76ers.

“We’ll be well-prepared,” Heat for­ward LeBron James said Sat­ur­day, before Boston and Philadel­phia set­tled their series. “Our coach­ing staff will put us in posi­tion to win ballgames.”

The Heat ousted the Celtics in last year’s East semi­fi­nals, doing so in five games. Boston topped Miami in five games in the open­ing round of the 2010 play­offs, the last series the Heat played before obtain­ing James and Bosh to play along­side Wade.

James also faced Boston in the 2010 play­offs, the end of that series mark­ing his final time in a Cleve­land uni­form before decid­ing to join the Heat. He was plan­ning to watch the Boston-Philadelphia game at home Sat­ur­day night, then get into his usual game-preparation mode Sunday.

“There’s enough time for us to get ready,” Wade said.

Hav­ing only one day to get ready would make it seem like both sides would be sign­ing up for a cram ses­sion, but it’s not like there’s going to be any real secrets on either side. James, for exam­ple, has already played the Celtics 48 times in his career, the last 44 of those com­ing since Doc Rivers took over as Boston’s coach.

“I mean, I’ve played Boston enough with Doc Rivers at the helm and those guys, they don’t change,” James said. “They shouldn’t change. They’ve been suc­cess­ful. They won’t change.”

The Heat erased a 2–1 deficit in their series with the Pac­ers, even­tu­ally win­ning in six games with James and Wade com­bin­ing for 197 points in Miami’s final three victories.

Miami clearly hopes some of that momen­tum car­ries over to Mon­day night.

“The most impor­tant thing is us play­ing to our iden­tity,” Heat coach Erik Spoel­stra said. “We improved the last three games. We were able to play our type of game, to defend and rebound. We did a much bet­ter job of that the last three games, and then played at a pace that was more appro­pri­ate for us. We were able to score more points that way, but more impor­tant get the type of actions that we like.”

BetLM's sports betting news features unique sports betting articles as well as current sports news compiled from leading wire services. This arti­cle was dis­trib­uted by Syn­di­cated Sports news wire and aggre­ga­tion ser­vice, For more NBA news see: Heat and Celtics pre­pare to meet again in post­sea­son.

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