The NBA Eastern Conference playoffs begin Wednesday night with the play-in tournament.
The top six teams in the conference have already qualified for the playoffs, while seeds seven through ten enter the play-in tournament for the opportunity to qualify for the final two playoff spots in each conference.
Here are three key Eastern Conference talking points heading into the NBA playoffs:
1. Are the second-place New York Knicks contenders or playoff contenders in the East?
The Knicks moved into second place in the Eastern Conference standings on the final day of the season on Sunday.
For a franchise that hasn’t won an NBA championship in 51 years or an Eastern Conference crown since 1999, this was exciting news and heralded an exciting new era for one of the league’s most storied teams.
Led by one tiny All-Star by NBA standards with the heart of a lion, Jalen Brunson has New Yorkers believing that this could be the year the team finally starts winning the playoffs again.
Brunson, standing at 1.88 meters (six feet two inches), refused to let his team falter this season, despite injuries to key players constantly threatening to derail their campaign. The point guard averaged a career-high 28.7 points per game and delivered time and time again in critical moments to win team games that sometimes they didn’t have to win.
And therein lies the dilemma for Brunson and the Knickerbockers: If they overperformed in the regular season, will they be able to do so again in the playoffs, where teams have more time to prepare defensive strategies at during a seven-game series?
In the absence of key forward Julius Randle – out for the playoffs due to season-ending shoulder surgery – Brunson’s regular season scoring average – 28.7 points per game – is almost as much as that of his next two teammates combined in Donte DiVincenzo – 15.5 points per game – and Immanuel. Anunoby – 14.1 points per game.
In the Eastern Conference playoffs, this poses a major problem for the Knicks when facing super teams with multiple All-Stars like Boston, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia.
The Knicks’ final regular season game Sunday was a perfect snapshot of their season, their team, their performance, knocking out a relentless one-point overtime victory against the Chicago Bulls with Brunson courageously leading the way with 40 points in a match without ever saying. -matrix performance.
For New York to win the East, it would be easy to say “As Brunson does it, the Knicks surely will” – but even the little floor general’s career-best playoff finish might not be enough to bring New York York to the promised land.
2. The Eastern Conference crown is Boston’s to lose.
Making a statistical case for Boston winning the East might be the simplest task in an NBA story:
- First team from either conference to clinch a playoff berth
- Finished with the NBA’s best regular season win-loss record at 64-18, eight games better than anyone.
- Finished first in the Eastern Conference standings with 14 games
- Best win-loss point differential in the NBA at 11.4
- Scored 1.22 points per possession, which is the best in NBA history
While the stats don’t tell the whole story, it’s also important to point out that the Celtics easily have the most complete starting five in the East, with All-Stars Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown flanked by some of the best players in the league in Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis and Derrick White.
Despite their great historic season, the Celtics are not infallible. This team of stars has sometimes gone off the rails, which raises doubts about its intensity and/or its tactics – but not its talent.
The Celtics lost both games this season to the hapless Atlanta Hawks, and in perhaps the greatest humiliation of an NBA game, they lost a stunning on-court game to a depleted Lakers team playing without their All-Stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
They also lost twice to defending NBA champions Denver, which exposed the Celtics’ habit of alternating between superb team play and relying too often – especially in the critical moments – on the sublime individual talents of their mercurial wingers Tatum. And brown.
Boston may indeed be the best team in the league, but no NBA title has ever been won in the regular season; they will need to repeat this dominance in the Eastern Conference playoffs to win their first NBA championship since 2008.
3. Does Joel Embiid’s late-season return from injury put the Philadelphia 76ers back in the Eastern Conference playoff race?
The reigning Most Valuable Player (MVP)’s knee injury on January 30, 2024, killed his team’s chances of finishing in the top two of the Eastern Conference playoff standings.
Embiid’s return to the NBA just days before the end of the regular season put a huge damper on the work of a conference that features only one great team, the Celtics, and several perfectly decent teams – Bucks , Magic, Knicks, Cavs.
Before his injury, Embiid was scoring at a faster rate than any player in the NBA regular season.
With a prorated scoring rate of 38 points per 36 minutes, Embiid enjoyed the highest scoring average per minute in league history, even surpassing the legendary Michael Jordan’s season-best scoring per minute in 1987/88.
If unprecedented scoring stats aren’t enough to calculate the 30-year-old’s value to the 76ers, then this might be the case: In the 39 games Embiid played in the regular season, Philadelphia had the best record in the NBA with 31 victories and eight defeats. Without him, they were 16 and 27 years old.
Tyrese Maxey’s unexpected rise as a first-time NBA All-Star is yet another reason for Philadelphia’s optimism heading into the playoffs. The super-athletic guard averaged a career-high 25.9 points per game to finish 11th in the NBA scoring race.
The seventh-seeded 76ers will first need to win their play-in game winner Wednesday night to advance to the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Their opponent is none other than last year’s Eastern Conference champion, the Miami Heat.
Philadelphia is favored against Miami, but the Heat could rely on the most worrying Embiid statistic of all: the mammoth 2.14 meter (7 foot), 127 kilo (280 pound) center has suffered an injury in every playoff series of the season. his career.
