One NBA team is currently 16 wins away from raising the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
After a grueling 82-game regular season where we had a bunch of weird debates over letting dudes rest, whether we should take the All-Star Game seriously, and whether a dad who is not good at basketball could beat Michael Jordan in his prime – it’s been such a weird year – all the nonsense is gone. All the silliness of the regular season has been stripped away.
It is time for the NBA Playoffs. Good God almighty, let’s settle in and watch some playoff hoops.
But before we get to that, we decided to make some predictions. We picked all 15 postseason series. Will we have Cavs-Dubs III, or will one of the favorites in the two conferences fall? Will James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, or Russell Westbrook get the opportunity to spoil the fun out West? Can the Boston Celtics back up their 1-seed in the East that still seems like a bit of a surprise?
We tried to find out. As a reminder, these are 100 percent accurate and we guarantee they will happen. (Ed. note – we do not guarantee that any of this will happen and it is exceedingly likely that these will not be 100 percent accurate.)
Eastern Conference, Round 1
Boston 4, Chicago 1
Cleveland 4, Indiana 1
Both Jimmy Butler and Paul George are good enough to get one win, probably on their home courts, off of the top-2 teams in the East. But Boston’s depth and the brilliance of Isaiah Thomas should be enough, and despite Cleveland’s late-season struggles, they should be able to figure the Pacers out, even if they have to sweat out a game or two.
Toronto 4, Milwaukee 2
Kind of along the same lines, Giannis Antetokounmpo is good enough to steal one or two from a Toronto squad that has been on fire over its last 10 games. The biggest thing in this series is whether Kyle Lowry will be at 100 percent – he’s played in four games since Feb. 24, and he’s played pretty well. He seems like he’s more or less found his pre-injury form, but we’ll find out for sure if that’s the case early on.
Washington 4, Atlanta 1
It just feels like the Wizards are going to move on fairly comfortably – let’s a 4-2 series win that doesn’t actually feel that close. To be sure, I asked a member of the Hawks beat if they have any reason to believe the Hawks will beat the Wizards. They said no. Good enough for me.
Eastern Conference Semifinals
Boston 4, Washington 2
Washington’s guards, especially John Wall, are going to give Boston a lot of trouble. Thomas is spectacular, but no matter where Brad Stevens puts him, that dude – whether it be Wall or Bradley Beal – is going to go off.
The Celtics’ best strategy may be to let that guy get his and put the clamps to the best of their abilities on every else. If Boston can keep the Wizards shooters – Markieff Morris, Otto Porter and Bojan Bogdanovic – from going off, it’s fair to be skeptical of Washington’s bench to pick up the slack. For how great Wall and Beal are, it may not be enough.
Cleveland 4, Toronto 3
One through five, Toronto can win this series, especially if Lowry looks like he did before he suffered a wrist injury. In fact, I feel pretty confident in saying that if Cleveland is going to lose before the Finals, it will be to the Raptors.
The Cavs and Raptors have played four times this year. Cleveland went 3-1, and in their only loss, LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Love didn’t play, while James Jones played for 36 minutes. Toronto is really good – its three losses to Cleveland have come by a combined 11 points – so they are going to win a few games in this series.
But in a potential Game 7, it’s hard to trust the Raptors (or, really, anyone) to walk into the Q and beat the defending champions. The Cavs move on, and we’re going to talk about this as potentially the best series of the postseason.
Eastern Conference Finals
Cleveland 4, Boston 2
I just can’t pick against LeBron in the East. I want to so badly – it feels like something is going to keep us from Cavs-Warriors III, but the part of my brain that is responsible for thinking things through logically will not let me pick against LeBron James until I have a reason to pick against LeBron James.
Boston has been really, really good this year, but the Cavs’ 23-point beatdown of it from earlier this month still looms large. If Cleveland gets this far, it’s probably reasonable to think that it will have more or less figured things out on the defensive end. As for scoring on the Celtics, we know that there shouldn’t be much of a problem from the Cavs’ side of things – Cleveland is averaging a hair over 116 points per game against Boston this year.
There will definitely be one or two games where the Celtics punch the Cavs in the mouth and Cleveland just doesn’t respond, but over a seven-game series, the Cavs are just a better team. Cleveland is heading to the Finals again. Ho hum.
Western Conference, Round 1
Golden State 4, Portland 0
San Antonio 4, Memphis 0
Memphis and Portland are both solid teams dealing with an injured starter – Tony Allen for the Grizzlies, Jusuf Nurkic for the Blazers. You need to be at 100 percent to beat the Warriors or Spurs, and at the same time, you have to hope they’re not at 100 percent. That probably won’t happen. Hopefully we get one of those games where Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum go punch-for-punch with the Warriors, or Vince Carter turns back the clock one night and goes for 40 in a win.
Houston 4, Oklahoma City 2
Hello, may I interest you in a Harden vs. Westbrook series? Yes? Perfect.
This series is going to basically being the two of them trying to out-crazy box score each other. It’s going to rule. It’s also possible that the Thunder’s size and physicality could give Houston a lot of problems (Matt Moore of CBS Sports noted that as one of the four reasons why he’s skeptical about the Rockets’ chances in this series).
But so many of the anti-Houston arguments stem from the fact that the team may go cold for long stretches. This is a legitimate fear, but it’s just not something that I can imagine happens four times. The Rockets are going to move on, but watching Westbrook try to will the Thunder to the second round is going to be thrilling.
Utah 4, Los Angeles Clippers 2
Sure, Los Angeles won this season series and they have home court, but let’s pick the “upset” here. Utah’s defense – led by Rudy Gobert, who may end up winning Defensive Player of the Year – will frustrate everyone other than Chris Paul (mostly because Chris Paul is unflappable) on the Clippers. This series may be the first round’s closest thing to a coin flip, but if Utah can dictate the pace of every game, it will win.
Western Conference Semifinals
Golden State 4, Utah 1
While Utah’s defense is great, Golden State is Golden State. They’re going to score, and it’s hard trust that the Jazz’s offense will be able to keep up against the stingy Warriors’ defense. Utah will turn one game in Salt Lake City into a slog, and they’ll get one win off of the Dubs, but it won’t be anything more than that.
Houston 4, San Antonio 3
If we get this, it will go down as the best series of the postseason. It’s going to be fantastic – seven games of Harden and Leonard throwing haymakers at one another, with Leonard doing everything he can to stop Beard from going off and winning games in crunch time.
Ultimately, this series may come down to whether the aging stars of the Spurs – Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, and Pau Gasol with a little bit of David Lee sprinkled in – can do enough to support Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge. By now, we all know not to ever count out anyone on a Gregg Popovich coached team (recall this season started with Jonathan Simmons dropping 20 in a 29-point win over the Warriors).
This still feels like a series where the Rockets are able to blitz the Spurs’ older core. Everything may come down to tempo, because whoever is able to dictate this (Houston is third in the league in pace, San Antonio is 27th) will win. If the Rockets don’t go cold on their home court, which very well could happen, they will move on. In this scenario, they will not go cold, and they will try to keep us from Cavs-Dubs III.
Western Conference Finals
Golden State 4, Houston 2
Houston is going to have to hope that Harden is able to carry them (odds: very likely), they can go shot-for-shot with the Warriors (odds: not great, but they exist), and their defense can get big stops when they have to against Golden State’s attack (odds: …uh).
Still, Harden is out of his mind, and you know that Mike D’Antoni is going to have one or two tricks up his sleeve. But that’s the thing – those tricks likely won’t be enough to beat Golden State four times in seven games. You need to just be better than them. Houston is great, but it’s not better than Golden State. This series will have one or two games that are the hottest of fire, but in the end, the Warriors will win the West again. Ho hum.
NBA Finals
Golden State 4, Cleveland 1
A take: It is far more likely that Cleveland gets swept than it is that this series returns to Ohio after Games 3 and 4. If Golden State’s offense is really clicking and the Cavs’ defensive woes are not 1,000 percent remedied by the time we get to the Finals, I find it hard to imagine that the brilliance of LeBron will be enough to keep this from going more than five games.
Another take: Unless you want fresh blood in the Finals next year (which no one would blame you), Golden State winning convincingly is the best possible outcome. After the Warriors won in 2015, Cleveland went through some major changes to make sure they could win the following year. The reverse happened in 2016 – after the Cavs went, the Warriors went out and added the second-best player in the world to a nucleus that had won 73 games the year before.
If this happens again, it’s possible the Cavs are going to try and do something drastic. Not trade LeBron drastic (assuming he re-signs, of course) (odds are he’s re-signing … right?), but Cleveland may be in for some kind of massive overhaul to get the pendulum in the NBA’s arms race to swing back in their direction.
But for now, the Durant signing works out, and he cements his legacy as one of the two best players of his generation. Curry reminds us all why he was a two-time defending MVP. Golden State gets another ring.
