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Scorching Celtics are Ready for Cleveland Test

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BOSTON – The Boston Celtics finished off the Detroit Pistons, 102-95, Wednesday night to grab their seventh win over their last eight games.

The C’s are in the midst of their hottest stretch of the season, but now its time for them to test some deeper waters. They will travel to Cleveland Thursday afternoon for a Friday night marquee matchup against the best the Eastern Conference has to offer.

It will be Boston’s first trip to Quicken Loans Arena since April, when the Cavaliers beat it twice during the first round of the playoffs, setting the tone for their eventual sweep.

Things haven’t changed much since for the defending Eastern Conference Champions, as Cleveland unsurprisingly sits atop the conference standings at this moment.

Friday’s matchup will be the perfect measuring stick for a Celtics team that has won 10 of its last 13 games, and their players are looking forward to see how they stack up against LeBron James and Co.

“They’re No. 1 in the East right now, they’re playing very well, so I’m interested to see how we go out and play against them,” C’s center Tyler Zeller said following Wednesday’s win. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, [but] we’re playing well, and hopefully we can keep doing it.”

Last season’s playoff losses are still fresh in the minds of many Celtics, so they’re eager to get back to Cleveland and reverse the storyline.

Others, like Isaiah Thomas, simply see it as just another matchup.

“It’s the biggest game just because it’s the next game,” said Thomas, whose Celtics are currently tied for third place in the East. “No matter if we play Cleveland or somebody else, the next game is always the most important.

“We gotta go in there and handle business. We know it’s gonna be probably a hostile environment. They’re a great team, but we’re not going to back down from anybody.”

The Cavs proved their greatness to the Celtics in the middle of December when they came to TD Garden and handed Boston an 89-77 loss. It marked the C’s lowest offensive output of the season, and they were only able to muster 31 points during the entire second half.

Since that game, however, Boston’s offense has been on an upswing. It closed out January on a 12-game string of scoring at least 100 points, which was it’s longest such stretch in 20 seasons.

Evan Turner agrees that the Celtics have improved greatly since their Dec. 15 matchup against the Cavs, but he also knows Boston hasn’t faced any comparable opposition since, so he’s not going to take his squad's recent winning ways for granted.

“They’re going to come out ready and we’re going to have to come out ready as well,” said Turner. “Just because we’ve won seven out of our last eight doesn’t mean it’s going to be guaranteed that we play well; we have to come out with the right focus, right intensity and be ready to compete.”

Boston will see two significant differences when it faces the Cavaliers Friday night.

One is that three-time All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving is back in the rotation after missing the first month and a half of the season while recovering from a fractured knee that he suffered during the playoffs.

Also, there will be a new (though somewhat familiar) face roaming Cleveland’s sideline.

Former Celtics assistant coach Tyronn Lue was promoted to the Cavs’ head coaching spot after they surprisingly fired David Blatt on Jan. 22. The Cavaliers have gone 5-2 during Lue’s tenure thus far. He is attempting to run a faster paced offense in Cleveland, so this may be a more up-tempo Cavs squad than the version that played in Boston earlier this season.

Regardless of the changes, Celtics coach Brad Stevens says he expects the level of difficulty to be at an extreme high Friday night.

“I haven’t seen them a lot since our game, but they handled us here [in Boston],” said Stevens. “Obviously they have a few of the better players in the NBA, so it’s going to be a heck of a challenge.”

However, like Thomas said, it’s certainly not a challenge the C’s will back down from, as they look to continue their hottest stretch of the season in Cleveland.