Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics will face the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals starting Tuesday night in Boston. Charles Krupa/Associated Press

BOSTON — So much about the journey the Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers have taken to the Eastern Conference finals has been about what – or who – they haven’t had to face to get here.

Top-seeded Boston mostly coasted to a 4-1 first-round series win over a Miami Heat team that played without Jimmy Butler, who tormented and broke the heart of the Celtics in Game 7 of last season’s conference finals. They then posted another 4-1 series victory in the second round over an injury-ravished Cleveland Cavaliers team that didn’t have All-Star Donovan Mitchell for the final two games.

The route for sixth-seeded Indiana also had notable hurdles removed.

The Pacers needed six games to earn a first-round win over a Milwaukee team missing Giannis Antetokounmpo. They then outlasted a New York Knicks team that led the series 3-2 before tripping over a rash of injuries, including star Jalen Brunson breaking his hand in the Pacers’ lopsided Game 7 victory.

Neither team is focused on the narratives surrounding the paths they took to reach this point. They’re here. Beginning with Game 1 on Tuesday night in Boston, it’s now NBA Finals or bust for both.

For the Celtics, that means blocking out reminders of the championship expectations that have hovered over them throughout the season.

“You’ve just got to focus on what matters most,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “That’s your team. That’s each possession in front of you. That’s whatever your job is. … Just be able to focus the mind on what matters because it’s easy to get distracted or eluded from what the overall goal and what the target is when you start to entertain kind of everything that’s going around you.”

Indiana guard Tyrese Haliburton said the expectations they had internally were always high.

“We had preseason camp in Nashville – just players, no coaches. That’s what we communicated from the jump. That we expected to be here. This ain’t a surprise to us,” he said. “It’s not a fluke. We expect this from our group. Once we added (Pascal Siakam) we knew we could really take off.”

Pacers Coach Rick Carlisle is fully embracing the idea his team is the “uninvited guest” among the NBA’s final four teams.

“We had some good fortune to get to this moment,” he said, “but our guys did the work to put us in a position to be here.”

OFFENSIVE SHOWDOWN

The Pacers reached their first conference finals since 2014 with an offense that put up historic numbers by pushing the pace.

Indiana topped the NBA with 123.3 points per game during the regular season, the sixth-highest in league history. It scored 140 points a record 11 times.

The Pacers’ regular-season offensive rating of 120.5 was second only to the Celtics (122.5). That flipped during the playoffs, with Indiana’s ranking improving to No. 1 at 121.7, followed by Boston at 118.9.

Haliburton and Siakam drove the Pacers’ offense against the Knicks. Haliburton averaged 21.3 points, shot 53.8% from the field and 43.9% from 3 in the series. Siakam averaged 20 points, was 52.8% from the field and 40% from 3.

While Celtics All-Star Jayson Tatum has shown bouts of inconsistency this postseason, he’s still averaging 24.3 points and 10.4 rebounds. He’s also getting plenty of support from fellow All-Star Brown (23.1 points, 6.9 rebounds per game) and Derrick White, who’s seen both his scoring (18.2 points) and 3-point percentage (43.5%) jump this postseason.

“It’s going to be a challenge,” White said. “They get up and down, and we like to as well. It’s going to be fun.”

INJURY UPDATE

Celtics center Kristaps Porzingis will be out for Game 1 on Tuesday while continuing to recover from a strained right calf.

The 7-footer sustained his injury in Game 5 of the first-round series with Miami. He then sat out the second-round matchup with Cleveland.

He has yet to participate in a full practice, but Coach Joe Mazzulla said he’s making progress.

“He’s out there studying, learning, film, doing everything he can to come back as fast as he can,” Mazzulla said

HISTORY LESSON

This will be the seventh playoff meeting between the Celtics and Pacers.

All six of the previous matchups (2019, 2005, 2004, 2003, 1992 and 1991) were in the first round, with Boston winning four.

The most recent matchup was in 2019, a 4-0 sweep by the Celtics.