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Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics are currently in the process of gearing up for their upcoming Eastern Conference Finals series vs the Indiana Pacers, which is set to begin on Tuesday evening from the TD Garden in Boston. While his numbers are still down from an efficiency standpoint, Tatum was able to put together some high scoring offensive performances against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Celtics' win last round, setting the stage for what should be a thrilling matchup between the NBA's top two offenses of this regular season.
The Pacers got to this point by beating what was left of the heavily injured Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks in the first two rounds, and are the clear betting underdogs in this series against the 64-win Celtics.
However, not everyone is so convinced that the Celtics' cakewalk to the NBA Finals will continue against this young Indiana squad.
Recently, NBA insider Brian Windhorst took to ESPN's First Take to warn the Celtics of what Indiana is capable of if they don't take them seriously.
“The Pacers at home, they are a much more confident team there,” said Windhorst, via First Take on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “One of the reasons why we saw (Tyrese) Haliburton go up and down in this series with the Knicks was that those first couple of games at Madison Square Garden, he didn't want it. He kind of got frustrated by people who were calling him out… what I would just say to the Celtics is, if you mess around and lose at home like you have for years now, the assumption that you can just get it back on the road like they did in the previous two series, I would just warn them about that. In fact, that would almost be the biggest thing I would say between the Pacers and the other teams, the Heat dropped two at home to the Celtics, the Cavs dropped two at home to the Celtics… they should not assume that they are going to go into Indy, because they play differently there and it's a tough environment.”
Indeed, the Celtics immediately relinquished home court advantage in their first two series vs both the Miami Heat and the Cavaliers by losing Game 2 of each series at TD Garden, but were able to rebound by winning the next two on the road in each of those matchups.
Can the Celtics break through?
The Celtics have been knocking on the door of championship glory for a few years now, and they've never had a team more built to compete for a title than the one currently in their locker room.
A large part of the Celtics' title chances of course rest on the shoulders of Tatum, who flamed out in his only Finals appearance to date but is still one of the best five to seven players in the NBA and is capable of going off at a moment's notice.
Game 1 is set to get underway on Wednesday evening at 8:00 PM ET.
