Celtics Can Secure Home Playoff Game With Win Over Knicks

It’s all come down to one game. 

The Maine Celtics have reached the regular season finale against the Westchester Knicks with a prime opportunity to secure a top-three seed in the G League playoffs. After a win over Windy City on March 21, the Celtics moved into sole possession of third place in the Eastern Conference, giving themselves the upper hand when it comes to homecourt advantage in the postseason. 

If Maine takes care of business against the Knicks, they’ll be locked into a top-four spot in the East and will host either the five or six-seed in a First Round playoff game at the Expo. Maine and Capital City Go-Go are in the driver’s seat for the three-seed; if the Go-Go win their remaining two games, they’ll take third and Maine slides into fourth. Simply put, if the Celtics beat the Knicks to close out the season, there will be playoff basketball in Portland for the first time since 2017. 

With a loss, the Celtics are in danger of falling out of the playoff picture entirely – the East is tightly-packed, but it helps that the Celtics hold head-to-head record tiebreakers over many of the teams below them. Here’s the doomsday scenario; if the Celtics lose to Westchester and Capital City, Lakeland and Fort Wayne all go 2-0 to end the season, Maine will fall to seventh place and miss the playoffs due to the Go-Go having a better record and the Magic and Mad Ants holding the tiebreaker advantage. There are a myriad of win-loss combinations that can cause the Celtics to fall to fifth or sixth if they lose to Westchester, but those involve some help with losses from other teams. The win over the Bulls on March 21 was a crucial late-season victory, but the Celtics could still use one more clutch win to lock themselves into the top-four.