The Celtics will do something tonight that they haven’t done in decades.
Thirty-one years and one arena since the last occasion, they will be part of a playoff game in Milwaukee. It seems, at once, odd and oddly familiar, for back in the 1980s, trips to the self-proclaimed “Great Place on a Great Lake” seemed a springtime ritual.
Four times in a five-year stretch, the Celts and Bucks renewed postseason acquaintances. There was the C’s getting swept in 1983 to signal the end of the Bill Fitch reign, a 4-1 win by the Shamrocks in 1984, a sweep by them in ’86 and then in ’87 perhaps the most memorable of the decade’s meetings — for a number of reasons.