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It took right up until the final day of the regular season, but the Eastern Conference’s inaugural play-in tournament field is set.
The No. 7 Boston Celtics will host the No. 8 Washington Wizards for the East’s seventh playoff seed.
Meanwhile, the No. 9 Indiana Pacers will host the No. 10 Charlotte Hornets. The winner of that matchup will travel to take on the loser of Celtics-Wizards for the eighth and final playoff berth.
Here’s the broadcast schedule for the three-game gauntlet:
The contenders in the East made significant deadline acquisitions to bolster their chances at securing the conference crown, and The King took notice.
“Those top teams in the East, yeah, they’re going for it,” LeBron James said, according to The Athletic’s Joe Vardon. “Toronto is going for it, Milwaukee’s going for it, Philly. Boston (Celtics) believes they can do it, too. They know they ain’t gotta go through Cleveland anymore.
“Everybody in the East thinks they can get to the Finals because they ain’t gotta go through me.”
James dominated the East before his move to the Los Angeles Lakers, reaching the NBA Finals in eight consecutive seasons with the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers.
To help tip the scale in their favor, the Toronto Raptors landed Marc Gasol, the Milwaukee Bucks picked up sharpshooter Nikola Mirotic, and the Philadelphia 76ersadded Tobias Harris.
“Shit, I was excited seeing all the moves they made in the East today,” James said. “Those matchups in the second round, in the Eastern Conference finals, that shit is gonna be crazy. It’s gonna be fun to watch.”
The Lakers (28-27) recently experienced a rough patch while dropping 13 of 20 before Thursday’s buzzer-beating 129-128 victory over the Celtics.
James, 34, is averaging 27 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in 37 appearances.
The Toronto Raptors have clinched the top seed in the Eastern Conference with a 92-73 win over the Indiana Pacers. They are officially guaranteed home-court advantage throughout the East playoffs.
With their 57th win of the season, the Raptors have also sealed the highest win total in their 23-year history, surpassing their 56 wins from the 2015-16 season.
All three of the Raptors’ 50-plus win seasons have occurred in the past three years and this year they’ve shown significant strides on both ends of the floor. For the first time in franchise history, Toronto is among the top five in both offense and defense, and finished with the third-best net rating in the league.
| SEASON | OFF RTG (RANK) | DEF RTG (RANK) | NET RTG (RANK) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 111.3 (3rd) | 103.6 (5th) | 7.7 (3rd) |
| 2016-17 | 109.8 (6th) | 104.9 (8th) | 4.9 (4th) |
| 2015-16 | 107.0 (5th) | 102.7 (11th) | 4.3 (6th) |
Toronto (57-22) will finish with at least one of the three best records in the NBA, currently sitting behind the Houston Rockets (64-15) and sharing the second-best record with the Golden State Warriors with three games remaining.
All-Star guards DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry helped pace the Raptors throughout the year, averaging a team-leading 23.3 and 16.3 points, respectively. DeRozan has forced his way into the MVP conversation, showing major improvement as a passer, averaging a career-high 5.2 assists per game.
One of the biggest success stories for the Raptors this season has been their deep bench. The line of C.J. Miles, Jakob Poeltl, Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, and Delon Wright have the second-best net rating of any five-man combination in the NBA (minimum 300 minutes played together).
“I feel like we’re the best team in the East, I really do,” Beal said, according to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst. “That’s how we feel coming into the season.”
The Wizards finished the 2016-17 campaign with a respectable 49-33 record, its best win-loss record since 1979 when the former Bullets won 54 games.
They were bounced from the playoffs in a competitive seven-game second-round series against the Celtics, falling short of an opportunity to battle LeBron James and the Cavaliers in the conference finals. Since Beal entered the league in 2012, Washington has yet to match up with a James-led roster in the postseason. He even stated that his side would’ve been better opposition for Cleveland than Boston.
“We love the matchup against them and why not?” Beal added. “I said it and J.R. Smith didn’t like it too much, some of their other guys didn’t like it too much. But I felt that way.
“It’s not disrespect with them, I’m not saying we’d have won the series, but I feel like our competition level and matchups would’ve been better. I’d have loved to see it, but at the end of the day you tip your hat to them. They’ve been in the Finals for the last three years.”
What the 2017-18 Wizards have going for them is that all their core pieces are still in place, while both Cleveland and Boston underwent major roster changeover this summer as a result of the blockbuster Kyrie Irving-Isaiah Thomas trade. Beal remains in the backcourt alongside All-Star John Wall, Marcin Gortat is still the man in the middle, and Otto Porter returns on an exorbitant four-year, $106-million deal.
Their lack of depth was also addressed with the additions of Jodie Meeks and Mike Scott, who will see an uptick in minutes with Markieff Morris sidelined after surgery to repair a sports hernia.
Beal is at least cognizant to his claims being just words, as he and the Wizards will have to back it all up when it truly matters.
“I feel like we’re the team to beat,” he said. “But we’ve got to prove it.”
Paul Pierce bleeds green through and through, but he’s not letting the hype of this offseason get to him.
The Truth still sees his beloved Boston Celtics chasing the Cleveland Cavaliers for tops in the East after the two leading East powers swapped Kyrie Irving for Isaiah Thomas this week.
“The Cavs are definitely better,” Pierce explained on ESPN’s “The Jump.” “You have King James, you’ve been to the Finals for three straight years, and then you got better this offseason.
“You added Derrick Rose. You added Isaiah Thomas that does many of the things Kyrie does. Then you talk about their bench. They have Jae Crowder, they got a 3-and-D guy, and those guys don’t come a dime a dozen.
“They’ve gotten better, they’ve gotten deeper, and they’re still the team to beat in the East.”
Boston and Cleveland both significantly retooled this summer, but the Celtics added more talent to close the gap between the two sides.
The Celtics signed Gordon Hayward in free agency, nabbed Jayson Tatum with the No. 3 pick, and dealt for Irving and Marcus Morris. The Cavaliers responded by signing cheap veterans and by flipping a disgruntled Irving into two future assets in addition to Crowder and Thomas.
However, the bottom line still comes down to James, who the Celtics have absolutely no answer for. Whichever team he plays for in the Eastern conference will automatically be considered the team to beat given his history.
Pierce did acknowledge, however, that the Celtics are next in line for East supremacy with their collection of stars in their prime and blue-chip prospects.
“If you look at Boston with the way they’re positioned, for the next five or six years with the young players surrounded by the veterans, this could be a team that could be in the Finals three or four times,” Pierce said.
The Detroit Pistons ended their six-year playoff drought in 2015-16. Rather than setting goals to move up from the eighth seed this upcoming campaign, they’re focused on simply making a return to the postseason.
“I’ve said that to our guys, quite honestly, that we’ll have to be a little bit better just to make the playoffs again,” head coach Stan Van Gundy told Keith Langlois of Pistons.com. ” … We were the number eight team. We don’t have a lot of room. So just to get back to where we were will take work.”
The race was tight in the East last season, with just seven wins separating the eight teams seeded No. 3-10. Van Gundy expects the competition to get even stiffer conference-wide and Ws to become even harder to come by, as the squads at the bottom in 2015-16 improved over the offseason.
“Philly is not going to win 10 games this year,” he said. “They’re going to win more games – significantly more games. So that’s taking wins from everybody. If you look at what Brooklyn has done lately in their moves, they’re going to be able to win more games. A lot of those teams that were out of the playoffs – Milwaukee will be better, Orlando will be better, New York will be better. It’ll be harder to put up big victory numbers.”
The Pistons had a 14-4 record against those clubs, helping them finish with 44 victories. Van Gundy’s banking on the internal growth of his young group to propel them forward.
“I’m optimistic about the year, but I’m also realistic about the fact that we’re going to have to be better. We can’t be where we were last year,” he added.
Smirfitts Speech 