NBA East Playoffs Preview

 Ok I know I said that I'd do day 2 of the play-in preview but I have to be honest, neither of the Bulls vs Heat or Mavericks vs Kings excites me even a little bit so I am just going to brush past them. What a night in sports last night! The Jays power bats finally came alive and I got to see them have a big inning for once! Santander with a clutch 3 run home run is something we need to see more of. Also shout out to Jackie Robinson day, that man was a hero and I hate that the way the world is now makes the league just brush past that fact. The first black man to play in the MLB, paving the way for so many athletes in the US and facing conditions that would break me in 2 seconds, Lohensports recognizes you Jackie! I caught a bit of the Magic smoking the Hawks too and it got me thinking that the Celtics are probably winning that series against the Magic, but it isn't going to be fun. I can picture a classic 5-6 game series where the favorite comes away limping a bit which could set the tone for the rest of the Celtics playoff run. I really hope the Celtics lose, sue me. I didn't catch any of Warriors vs Grizzlies, it was past my bedtime, but now we get Rockets vs Warriors which should be really fun. Anyway, lets take a bit of a closer look at the East playoff series' that are set in stone now: 

1 vs 8 - Cavs vs TBD

I am not even going to drag this one out. I don't care if it's the Bulls, Heat or Hawks facing the Cavs round one, if they don't win in 5 games at least, it's a huge failure for the 64 win Cavs. The Cavs have had an awesome regular season only to be met with fans waiting for the playoffs to truly believe it. The 8 seed no matter who it is should be as easy of a warm up series as you can get in a playoff setting. I expect the Cavs to set the tone and take care of business, if they don't the talking heads will be having a field day. 

Prediction: Cavs in 4

2 vs 7 - Celtics vs Magic

I touched on it above for a second, but I think the Magic match up pretty decently with the Celtics. From the guard position, it's no contest. The Magic rely heavily on second year Anthony Black, ancient Corey Joseph and Cole Anthony for the majority of their guard minutes and at this stage of each of their careers they just don't have the talent that the Celtics do in Jrue Holiday and Derrick White. Where I see them matching up pretty well though is at the wing with Franz and Paolo. In the Hawks game both of these guys were awesome. I saw multiple plays of Franz using his size effectively against a great, but smaller defender in Dyson Daniels. I think Franz will face a lot of similar defenses if he gets matched up on Jrue or Derrick White and it was interesting to see how he's able to counter this. Paolo was getting whatever he wanted and honestly looked a lot like LeBron lite against the Hawks. Now going up against Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum is pretty different from going against Mouhamed Gueye and rookie Zacharie Risacher as your primary matchups. But this is why I think it might be a bit more annoying than the Celtics might want. With Franz and Paolo both able to use their size to score at will when you put a smaller defender on them, this likely makes Tatum and Brown work on defense for the entire series to contain them. I have no doubts that they are up for the task, it just might drain those guys a bit to have to play that hard on both sides of the ball early in the playoffs. Ultimately, the Celtics shoot a million 3s and they do it well, I think that the Magic scrappiness and the talent of Franz and Paolo has a chance to steal a game and maybe even 2, but the Celtics just have too much fire power and infinitely better guard play. I have Celtics winning this one in 5.

Prediction: Celtics in 5

3 vs 6 - Knicks vs Pistons

We're supposed to universally love the team that went from terrible to the playoffs with a scrappy group of guys who play hard defense, but I physically cannot like the thing that everyone likes so I am a Pistons hater. This should be a fun series! The Knicks have been considered dark horse contenders all year long with their 3 awesome wing defenders in Josh Hart, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges sandwiched between 2 dynamic offensive players in Jalen Brunson and Karl Anthony Towns. The Pistons came out of nowhere lead by a great season from budding superstar Cade Cunningham. When you dig into the matchups, the Pistons might have one of the best guys to throw at Brunson in the league with Ausaur Thompson. Thompson is fast, physical and long, the ideal guard defender for any team and I guarantee he'll make Brunson's life difficult for the series. On the other side though the Knicks have so many options they can throw at Cade, none of them will likely stop him, but Cade isn't going to get anything easy with OG, Bridges or Hart hounding him. The Pistons might run into trouble when it comes to defending KAT. They could put a guy like Tobias Harris on him to try and negate the 3s, but that leaves them open to both KAT killing them down low, and Jalen Duren getting lost trying to chase around a super active Josh Hart. They could go traditional and put Jalen Duren on KAT but Duren isn't the most engaged defender at times and that could leave them prone to KAT exploiting miscues. They could put Ausar Thompson on him but then either Cade or Beasley needs to check Brunson and I think that's BBQ chicken regardless. Still though, the Knicks haven't looked great against playoff caliber opponents all regular season and they are battling the fact that coach Thibs plays his starters insane minutes for the entire season. You can easily see a case like last year where guys break down after taking an insane work load all year leaving the door open for a Pistons upset. I think the Knicks experience will get them by in this series, but it won't be as easy as they might like. 

Prediction: Knicks in 6

4 vs 5 - Pacers vs Bucks 

This is fun, we've got a little rivalry continuing to grow in the Bucks and Pacers. The game ball fight last year was hilarious, I'm all for more animosity to brew between a couple of teams, what fan doesn't love a rivalry? The Bucks got handed a huge blow when it came out that Damian Lillard has blood clots and will likely miss the rest of the season. They haven't ruled him out for the playoffs yet, but I would be surprised if we see him play in this series. With that in mind, the Bucks have been starting 22 year old Ryan Rollins at the point alongside Giannis, Kuzma, Lopez and Taurean Prince. To put it lightly, their guard play without Dame is abysmal and they're going to have to rely on Giannis to do everything. The good news for Bucks fans is that Giannis is incredible. In 16 games without Dame this season Giannis is averaging 31.1/11.1/7.9 on 65.7% true shooting. Giannis is as relentless and unstoppable as any player in the league and the Pacers will have their hands full. On the other side though, the Pacers clearly have the next best 2 players in the series with Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam. Siakam is going to have his hands full in this series with the Bucks having a great front court to matchup with what he can do in the post. Still, as a Raptors fan we've seen what Pascal can do against Brook Lopez and Giannis, I expect he'll still have some good games in the series. Haliburton has been awesome, especially since the all star break, he might be the purest point guard in the league today and the Bucks have nobody to realistically throw at him without torpedoing their offense in the process. While the Pacers don't have a ton of size outside of Siakam and Myles Turner to throw at Giannis, I think Giannis is going to get his anyway regardless of your defenders. I don't think the Bucks have enough besides Giannis to overcome the Pacers talent, but it still is hard to bet against the best player in a series. This is a close one for me but I am leaning Pacers. 

Prediction: Pacers in 7

That's that! This was way more fun. I was grasping at straws writing a play-in preview I can't lie. The real playoffs are going to be awesome though and these series are nothing compared to some of the ones we're about to see in the West, but we'll save that excitement for tomorrow.