PORTLAND — The Maine Celtics woke up last Thursday morning out of the NBA G League playoffs, with seemingly no way back in.

The Celtics were in 11th place in the Eastern Conference, three spots out with three games remaining. They needed wins, and they needed some luck.

They got both.

For the fourth straight year, Maine is heading to the playoffs, where it will start play either Tuesday or Wednesday. The Celtics (18-18) are currently the eighth seed but can rise to seventh if Long Island loses its regular-season finale Friday.

The Celtics will travel to play either the Osceola Magic (25-9), Greensboro Swarm (23-11), Cleveland Charge (22-13), Raptors 905 (22-13) or Motor City Cruise (21-13), depending on the results of the final weekend.

“It’s a big relief knowing we’ve clinched our spot,” said guard Keon Johnson, who helped the Celtics secure their berth with 21 points in a 130-105 win Tuesday over Cleveland in the regular-season finale. “(We’re) at the bottom of the (playoff) standings, so we’re going to have to fight night in and night out to see this thing all the way through.”

After how things looked a week ago, “relief” is the right word. Maine dropped back-to-back games to the Birmingham Squadron and fell to 11th place at 15-18. But Windy City, Noblesville and Delaware, the three teams immediately ahead of the Celtics, have gone 3-9 since, and Maine finished with three straight wins.

“Those two games did hurt,” starting forward Hason Ward said. “(We thought) ‘We’ve definitely won this’ and we definitely got a punch in the face for it. But we still knew that we had a possible chance of making it, so the last three games, we’ve tried to make the best of it.”

Now, the combination of good play and good fortune gives extra life to a team that’s peaking at the right time. Maine has won five of its last seven games, with two of the wins coming against the Charge, which is near the top of the standings. One of the two defeats was by a single point, and the other came after Maine held an 11-point halftime lead.

“Those two games in Birmingham were our eye-opener,” Johnson said. “But it really helped us realize that these games that we’re playing are going to be like playoff games. … We took the approach of these (games) might be the last of us playing together.”

The Celtics knew that kind of play was in them. During the Tip-Off Tournament to start the season, Maine won a franchise-record nine games in a row, and the feeling throughout the regular season was always that the Celtics could be a challenger in the playoffs.

They just had to get there.

“A team can get hot or a team can go cold. For us, how we beat variance is our crashing, creating extra opportunities, taking care of the basketball,” coach Phil Pressey said. “Winning the possession battle, making free throws. It’s very basic, but I feel like that’s what is the slight edge that you can gain, especially in a playoff game.”

John Tonje (18.1 points per game), Kendall Brown (15.7) and Jalen Bridges (14.8) have been Maine’s top offensive players of late, but Pressey said the emergence of players like Hayden Gray, Aaron Scott, Kameron Warrens and Ward has helped the Celtics raise their game.

“Guys mesh well, they play well together,” Pressey said. “And then, just that chemistry. I feel like guys enjoy being around each other.”

A deep run will require traveling a tougher road than the past two seasons, when Maine was the G League runner-up in 2024 and the Eastern Conference runner-up in 2025. The Celtics opened at the Portland Expo each of the past two years; victories this time will require knocking off high seeds in their own buildings.

They’ll be underdogs, but they don’t mind.

“A lot of teams are going to come in thinking they can just beat us easily,” Ward said. “We’re going to play hard, because we’re obviously the underdogs. We’re going to make something happen and try to go all the way.”