Boston Celtics: 3 keys to game one victory over the Miami Heat

The Boston Celtics will be squaring off against the Miami Heat tonight in game one of the Eastern Conference Finals.

After a grueling seven-game series against the defending champions, the Boston Celtics find themselves gearing up for yet another formidable and dangerous foe in the Miami Heat. The winner of this series will be crowned as kings of the east and, in turn, will be representing the conference in this year’s NBA Finals.

While the shamrocks managed to win the regular-season series between these two teams (2-1), this conference finals matchup is a whole new test for both parties.

For Miami, it is a motivated young Cs team they’ll be going up against that stared into the eyes of elimination just a few short days ago and managed to live to tell the tale.

For Boston, it’s a scorching hot and scrappy Heat squad that is now 8-1 in this year’s postseason and who just recently trounced this season’s best regular-season team in a gentleman-sweep fashion (five games).

Both fanbases have an unflattering taste for the other in their mouths, as they’ve seen their fair share of postseason battles over the years, specifically in the early parts of the 2010s — i.e. the end of Boston’s big-3 and the beginning of Miami’s.

While we here at the Houdini are quite confident in Boston’s chances of coming away from this series victorious and, in turn, reach their first Finals in a decade, wins will certainly not be easy to come by.

If the Celtics wish to start things off on the right foot and win tonight’s game one, they’ll want to hone in on these three keys: