The Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament is Absolutely Wild
Barring a shocking collapse, the field for the Eastern Conference Play-In is mostly set, although several teams are jockeying to get to the sixth seed and avoid it. The 10th-ranked Miami Heat are 8.5 games up on the Milwaukee Bucks with 10 games left, so they're moments away from clinching a spot.
Just because they're in 10th, though, doesn't mean they're out of the running for a playoff spot. In fact, the opposite is true, because the bottom region of the Eastern Conference playoffs is absurdly tight with just a couple of weeks left to play.
The Eastern Conference is no laughingstock
For years, the Eastern Conference has been the joke of the NBA. Teams would make the playoffs in the East while teams with better records (against better competition, too) would miss out in the West. The introduction of the Play-In Tournament only meant that even worse teams would make it. Sometimes, those teams were not even .500.
This year, though, that's no longer the case. The East has risen from the ashes, so to speak. For once, the East actually looks significantly deeper than the West. Look at the bottom of the Play-In range for evidence on both sides.
As mentioned, the Miami Heat are 10th. They're tied in record with the Charlotte Hornets and Orlando Magic at 38-34. The 10 seed in the West is the Golden State Warriors, and they're 34-38. Three teams .500 or worse are in the Play-In, whereas the East has no one worse than four games over .500 in that same range.
The East was expected to look different this year thanks to Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton's injuries in the playoffs, but no one expected the bottom-feeders and mediocre teams to make such a big leap like they have.
Things can get wild
Things can get absolutely crazy down the stretch. In fact, they already have. The Charlotte Hornets are 23-7 in their last 30 games. They've only managed to get the nine seed. The Atlanta Hawks are 13-2 in their last 15 games, and they've managed to squeeze into the playoffs as the six seed, but they're one game from being back in the Play-In.
The Toronto Raptors are the unofficial cutoff here. They're 40-31, and that's good enough for the fifth spot in the standings. They're 2.5 games ahead of the Heat for the 10th spot. That's all that separates a top-five team and the bottom of the Play-In, which is just absurd.
As mentioned, there's a three-way tie at the bottom. The Magic, Hornets, and Heat are all 38-34, which puts each of them just one game from the seven seed (the best spot in the Play-In Tournament) and two games back of the actual Eastern Conference playoffs. It's been tight for a while, and no team has truly been able to separate.
Schedule
Several of these teams will play one another down the stretch. Here are the key games to watch out for:
- Hornets vs. 76ers, March 28
- Raptors vs. Magic, March 29
- Heat vs. 76ers, March 30
- Magic vs. Hawks, April 1
- Heat vs. Raptors, April 7
- Heat vs. Raptors, April 9
- Raptors vs. Hawks, April 12
That final game is the last day of the NBA regular season, and it's extremely likely that both the Hawks and Raptors will be playing for seeding, and it will probably impact the other teams, too. It's going to come down to the wire, and you could randomly assign an order to the Raptors, 76ers, Hawks, Heat, Magic, and Hornets, and it would be possible.
What is essentially impossible is any of these teams getting a top-four seed. The Cleveland Cavaliers own that spot now, and they're 4.5 games up on the Raptors. It's difficult to imagine them making up that ground, and it's even harder to imagine the Hornets, Heat, or Magic catching them, either.
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