Sports

Breaking down the logjam for the two seed in the East


Giannis Antetokounmpo

Giannis Antetokounmpo
Photo: beautiful pictures

With three games remaining for Boston, Philly and Milwaukee, and the three teams all squared 49-30 for two-seeded two- to four-seeded, the fourth East Endless Race means a lot in terms of who will play Phoenix in the Finals, who wins the MVP, and who is likely to face Toronto in round one and Miami in round two.

If you’ve seen the Heat or the Raptors this season, you know any series featuring them will last you both physically and mentally. You know that kid who likes to fight in school not because he has anger problems but because he loves pain? The child sees his own blood, tastes it and smiles? Yeah, that’s Miami and Toronto.

I attended the game against the Heat-Bulls on Saturday, and any hangover from the Jimmy Butler-Eric Spolestra game seemed to have subsided because they maneuvered the Bulls so quickly as if they were neutrals. move to the bottom. After losing four games in a row, the Heat won five in a row, securing the #1 seed in the process with a 144-115 win over Charlotte on Tuesday.

The Raptors ended Atlanta’s five-game winning streak on Tuesday night and did it in their usual gritty, heavyweight style, with rookie Scottie Barnes ending the game late in the game as a par. Nick Nurse and Masai Ujiri created a winning culture in T-Dot similar to that in Miami; they just don’t tell you about it all the time like an annoying friend who just joined CrossFit.

The Celtics, 76ers and Bucks combined 9-12 against the Heat and Raptors, with Boston being the only team to have won a series of seasons (2-1 against Miami) against both. There are a ton of moving parts, laces, and things involved, so I’ll cover each team individually so as not to create confusion.

Boston Celtics

Losing defensive anchor Robert Williams really hurts this team’s already questionable depth, something I wrote about early this season. Coach Ime Udoka has big players in reserve like Grant Williams and Daniel Theis to fill the void left by Time Lord, and they’ll need those two to continue their Chicago long-distance games. Milwaukee and Memphis remain. This is easily the toughest group of the three teams in this race, and a loss to the Bucks could send them down to fourth place.

The good news is that they have control over their destiny. They drew Philly and led the season series 2-1 against the Bucks with one game left – Thursday’s national televised game on TNT. If Boston leads the group, they face a tough draw against Brooklyn or Atlanta, and that’s tough because playing Kevin Durant or Trae Young in the playoff series is never ideal. That said, Boston has budding superstar Jayson Tatum, and the Nets and Hawks are also missing key players.

If they stumble and fall to fourth, they’ll be up against a team that also plays only the best players, is well trained and has the versatile type of defender to annoy Tatum and Jaylen Brown. There’s a good chance the series is six or seven games long, and Miami certainly welcomes any and all the bruises and injuries that have accumulated from what will be a grueling, physical first round.

Milwaukee Bucks

I know Giannis Antetokuonmpo doesn’t care who confronts him that’s why it happened. I’m still a little short on going against a team they haven’t beaten all season (Toronto), and then Miami, who knocked them out in the bubble a few years ago. Their remaining schedule is against the aforementioned Celtics, then in Detroit and in Cleveland. They have more than 76ers tiebreak, so they need to win if Philly also wins to take the second seed. If the Sixers lose to Toronto on Thursday (or at home to Indiana or Detroit), the Bucks only have to go 2-1 to avoid a fourth-place finish.

Victory over Boston on Thursday would go a long way in securing a double-seeded spot and a rematch with teams far worse than the versions Milwaukee beat a year ago – either the Cavs or the Hornets. . If Antetokounmpo becomes the nucleus and ends the season with three straight wins, his argument for MVP would be as good as any argument for Joel Embiid or Nikola Jokić. He will be at the top of the leaderboard even if Philly has the same record, and his crucial win over Embiid in victory last weekend will run on a loop, possibly wobbling voters. Looking for an advantage between the two giants.

Honestly, whoever finished third would be pleased with how badly Chicago played in the second half of the year. It’s just… trying to jump into position is complicated because of all the laces. The Bucks will end the season with a win over Boston, and I don’t know how far we’ll have to go in the tiebreak if they finish with the same record. However, I don’t think that will happen, because Milwaukee will have to lose to a much worse opponent in the last two games to equalize the record.

Philadelphia 76ers

Philly needs a lot of help to get two seeds. They don’t own a winner against Boston or Milwaukee, so they need to win and have a winner in Thursday’s Celtics-Bucks game to drop a game for the Bulls, Grizzlies, Pacers or Pistons. The problem with hoping Memphis beat Boston is that this is the last game of the season and the Grizzlies are eliminated with two seeds out of West, so they can sit first without Ja Morant.

That also assumes the 76ers can beat the Raptors on Thursday. They are losing 1-2 to their divisional brethren from north of the border, and if you were hoping for that record to be ahead of James Harden, it’s not. They split their games in half before trading, and lost 93-88 in mid-March. In that loss, Embiid and Harden combined for 38 points with a score of 11-32 since coming on.

The Sixers’ depths sent a swan into the toilet after they traded most of it for Brooklyn, and it’s essentially a blow against Toronto, a team with five players averaging 35 minutes or more one match. It’s a bit more complicated than a Miami team, who can apparently pull a fish out of Biscayne Bay and make it look like a twirling player. (Pretty sure that’s how they got Max Strus.)

The biggest positive for the fourth-place Philly is that Boston and Milwaukee are both unable to run a goal, so if the 76ers miss all three games remaining on their schedule, the worst they could end up with is Monday. father. That would put them in 52-30, at least two games better than where the Nuggets could have finished, and equal or better than Antetokounmpo’s position. finish. I know Jokic has the right stats for him, but, like former MVP Giannis, his backstory is stale.



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