The Maine Red Claws have spent much of the past month on the road, playing only four of their final 14 regular-season games at the Portland Expo.

They lost their point guard (and potential league MVP) entering the final week of the season.

Their first-round playoff opponent is the defending NBA Development League champion.

And the Red Claws can’t wait to get started.

Maine, the top seed in the Eastern Conference, opens a best-of-three series Tuesday against the Fort Wayne Mad Ants in Indiana. The series moves to Portland for Game 2 at 4 p.m. Saturday. If necessary, a decisive third game is scheduled to be played at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Expo.

“It is tiring,” said forward Omari Johnson of the end-of-season grind. “But on these last few road trips, we’ve played well and had a good record. We know that even though we’re tired, we can pull out wins. So it shouldn’t matter that much in the playoffs.”

Indeed, the Red Claws closed out a 35-15 campaign – tied with Santa Cruz for best in the league – by winning 6 of 7 and 9 of 11.

Not long after Tim Frazier engineered yet another improbable comeback victory in Maine’s home finale on March 29, he was signed by the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers as a third point guard for their playoff run.

That meant the Claws had three games to adjust to life without their most dynamic player. They finished the season losing by two points in Canton, winning by four in Texas and winning by two in Iowa.

“It’s obviously been a little bit different,” said Red Claws Coach Scott Morrison. “All season when the game was close near the end, we wanted to get the ball in (Frazier’s) hands so he could use his speed to get in the paint and either take a shot or get the ball into the hands of his teammates. He’s also a very good foul shooter.”

Davion Berry has taken over as Maine’s point guard with Jason Calliste coming off the bench. Boston Celtics rookie James Young has been assigned to the Red Claws for the past three weeks and leads the team in scoring with a 21.5-point average. Romero Osby (17.2), Johnson (15.6) and Chris Babb (15.4) round out a well-balanced attack.

“It was good to get three close games on the road and get some guys experience in those roles,” Morrison said of the final stretch without Frazier. “I thought they did pretty well in late-game stuff.”

On Monday, the Celtics announced they had signed Babb to a multiyear contract but assigned him to the Red Claws. Babb and Young are expected to remain with Maine throughout the D-League playoffs.

In the regular season, Maine and Fort Wayne met four times. They split games in Portland and the Red Claws twice won by a point in Indiana, most recently by 87-86 in mid-February.

Of the 10 players who started that game, only two are expected to be on the floor for Tuesday’s game. Maine will be missing Frazier, Christian Watford (traded to Reno in early March) and Andre Stringer (now a reserve off the bench). That leaves Babb and Osby.

For the Mad Ants, Ramon Harris and Gary Talton are now reserves. Andre Emmett (MVP of the D-League All-Star Game who left Fort Wayne to play in the Philippines), Will Sheehey (asked for release) and Will Frisby are no longer on the roster.

Their replacements are Jordan Crawford, Trey McKinney-Jones and Matt Bouldin. The latter two were part of Fort Wayne’s 6-0 championship run last spring. Crawford is a former Celtic who also played in the NBA for Golden State, Washington and Atlanta. He spent much of this winter in China before joining Fort Wayne in mid-March.

“We saw some of them last year,” said Morrison, a volunteer assistant on the 2013-14 Red Claws staff.

“We’ve definitely been watching a lot of tape. We have our game plan ready. We’ll try to make their shots tough and hope they miss them.”

Harris was also a member of last year’s championship club.

Mad Ants captain Chris Porter, also a member of that championship winning team, will not factor in the playoffs. The league terminated Porter’s contract Monday for violating its anti-drug program.

This is only the Red Claws’ second trip to the playoffs in the franchise’s six-year history. In 2013, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers defeated Maine two games to none in a first-round series.

Players on the Red Claws earned bonuses because the team finished with the best record in the East, and will earn more bonus money for advancing in each playoff round. The league does not disclose specific dollar amounts.