Jaylen Brown didn’t need to tune in Friday night.

To see the Heat again pushed to the end of the play-in plank. To watch Miami work around Jimmy Butler’s absence. To learn whether it would be the Heat or ninth-seeded Bulls coming to visit Sunday.

Brown already knew.

“I knew it was going to be Miami,” the three-time All-Star said Saturday. “I knew it from a few weeks back. Just coming from last year to this year, it just makes sense.”

Brown, of course, was right.

The Celtics will welcome the Heat for a Game 1 tip-off at 1 p.m. Sunday inside TD Garden, where Miami mauled them during a season-ending Game 7 upset in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. Since then, the Heat have since lost all three-regular season meetings with Boston, Jimmy Butler to an MCL sprain and veteran guard Terry Rozier to a neck injury. Consequently the Celtics are slated as 13.5-point favorites heading into Sunday’s first-round opener.

Still, the ghosts of last year will hang over this series until Boston proves it can banish them for good. Brown insisted the Celtics will keep their focus on what’s in front of them to eventually clear that air.

“You don’t forget, but you do your best to live in the moment,” Brown said. “You learn from your experiences and can’t bring those thoughts into it. We’ve got a new team.”

The biggest part of that new team is Kristaps Porzingis, who may strip Heat coach Erik Spoelstra of some of his usual tricks in this series. Porzingis’ ability to threaten defenses at all three levels — the 3-point line, mid-range and posting up inside — should allow the Celtics to maximally stretch and puncture Miami’s zone. Though the seven-footer cautioned this series will be played in the mud as much as it will be in space.

“We have to expect (Miami) to be ultra aggressive, ultra handsy and trying to do all the little dirty things they can to — not dirty things, but things to mess up the game and get some advantages,” Porzingis said after Saturday’s practice. “And we have to be ready for that. It’s going to be a war.”

Down in South Florida, Heat center Bam Adebayo echoed those same thoughts.

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“It’s going to be a dogfight; it’s going to be a battle,” Adebayo told reporters. “It’s going to be in the mud. It’s not going to be pretty basketball, and that’s usually how it’s been when we see that team. It’s usually how it is. It’s highly competitive and everybody always plays their best basketball in that series.”

Brown believes Miami’s return will force the Celtics to revisit two battlegrounds they lost in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals: physicality and turnovers. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla indirectly agreed, repeatedly saying Boston must win on the margins. He specifically highlighted turnovers and rebounding, which would allow a Butler-less Heat squad more possessions and a possible path to extending the series.

And that may be the key, considering Miami’s offense suffered significantly without Butler during the regular season but their defense maintained a top-5 efficiency. According to Mazzulla, the Celtics feel well-prepared for what the Heat will bring, though he wouldn’t predict exactly how the teams’ fourth meeting in the last five postseasons will unfold.

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“They’re ready. But that doesn’t mean that things are gonna go our way. And so we’ve been ready all week and all year. … We talked about how the series takes on a life of its own,” Mazzulla said. “There’s no expectations here of how it’s supposed to go. We’re just gonna be ready to take what it takes.“

“The intensity’s much higher,” Porzingis added. “Each game has adjustments, and it’s like a chess game, no? To play against an experienced team like Miami and coach Spoelstra, who always has some tricks, will be very, very interesting. And we look forward to that challenge.”

Game on.

Series on.

One more time.