Tag: 2021 NBA playoffs

Celtics playoff scenarios: Breaking down Boston’s 2021 postseason picture

Everything you need to know about Boston’s postseason projections.

Whether you’re adept at understanding how the NBA’s new play-in game affects the Boston Celtics’ postseason picture or totally clueless how this new wrinkle shakes up the usual way the playoffs go down, we think we can help make understanding exactly what the Celtics are looking at in this new end-of-season series designed to help make Boston’s seeding make sense.

With each win or loss potentially critical for where the Celtics will finish their season — and with it, who they will face and in what format come the postseason — we’ve put together this guide to help you make sense of Boston’s postseason situation on a game-to-game basis.

Let’s dive into what exactly the play-in tournament does first.

Celtics playoff scenarios: Breaking down Boston’s 2021 postseason picture

Everything you need to know about Boston’s postseason projections.

Whether you’re adept at understanding how the NBA’s new play-in game affects the Boston Celtics’ postseason picture or totally clueless how this new wrinkle shakes up the usual way the playoffs go down, we think we can help make understanding exactly what the Celtics are looking at in this new end-of-season series designed to help make Boston’s seeding make sense.

With each win or loss potentially critical for where the Celtics will finish their season — and with it, who they will face and in what format come the postseason — we’ve put together this guide to help you make sense of Boston’s postseason situation on a game-to-game basis.

Let’s dive into what exactly the play-in tournament does first.

Predicting the Celtics’ final record, playoff seeding with 11 games left

With the end of the regular season in sight, this is where we see Boston ending up when the postseason arrives.

Don’t look now but the 2020-21 season is nearly over for the 32 – 29, sixth-place Boston Celtics, with just 11 games left to play on their schedule before the start of the 2021 NBA Playoffs midway through next month..

With that short of a list of games to work with, a general idea about the overall health and makeup of the team’s roster and some trends evident in their opponents along such lines as well, we have a pretty solid shot at being able to guess what sort of a record the Celtics are going to have come the evening of May 16.

Let’s take a look at what’s left of the schedule, and try predicting Boston’s final record based off of what we know about the Celtics and their opponents.

The Warriors have to figure out how to be good without Stephen Curry

When Curry sits, they have problems

The Warriors very clearly have intentions of being a title contender this season. With Klay Thompson’s torn Achilles, though, that feels pretty farfetched at this point.

Now, the question shifts to whether they can actually make the playoffs. Although Stephen Curry is a phenomenal player who has carried teams before, it’s unclear whether he can do it again heading into this season.

And after the Warriors’ 114-113 loss to the Kings on Tuesday night, those questions are only burning hotter.

Yes, it’s only preseason. And yes, the Kings look like they could be a pretty good team. But at the same time, the Warriors showed that they had some issues that are pretty hard to overlook at this point.

They just have no offense outside of Stephen Curry.

The Warriors struggled in non-Steph minutes

Again, it’s the preseason. So nothing is definite just yet. But if the game against the Kings was any indication, the Warriors offense are going to struggle to score when Curry sits.

There’s a pattern here. He played 10 minutes in the first quarter and the Warriors outscored he Kings 27-25. He sat to start the second and they were outscored 37-20 — Curry only played in just under 6 minutes of that quarter. He played the full 12 minutes of the third quarter and the Warriors outscored Sacramento 34-26.

Those were the last of his 28 minutes on the night. He was a whopping +12.1 for in last night’s game, according to data from NBA’s stats database. No other Warrior with, at least, 20 minutes played had a higher net rating than Kelly Oubre’s +3.9.

When Steph was in? The Warriors looked incredible. When he was out, they looked like they might win the lottery again. And that’s not a great sign for the Warriors.

That’s a huge problem

No, it’s not irregular for a team to struggle when a star player sits. But it’s how much the team actually struggles when that player sits that matters. The Warriors struggled mightily.

Just look at how rapidly things fell apart after the first 15 minutes.

That cannot happen for a playoff team. They have to be able to maintain some sort of lead. Without Klay Thompson’s shooting touch, they’re probably going to have to do that defensively. Whether they actually have the talent to do that remains to be seen.

There’s still plenty more to see from them

By no means should anyone be writing the Warriors off just yet. They’re not quite a finished product. The Warriors haven’t played Draymond Green, James Wiseman or Eric Paschall just yet.

Those are three of their six or seven best players at this point. The way they look could determine a ton about how this season goes for the Warriors. It’s too early to make snap judgments on them now.

Hopefully, they find an answer for their non-Steph minutes problem. If they do, they’re a sure bet for the playoffs. If not, things can be rough.

A quick guide to understanding the NBA Playoff seeding rules

A quick guide on how NBA playoff seeding works and the changes that could be coming in the future.

Since the 73-9 Golden State Warriors lost the NBA Finals to the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 2016, the number of people who say the regular season is irrelevant has multiplied in size.

They’d have you believe that there’s nothing much to play for. The league’s best teams are already determined at the beginning of the year and it’s pretty much a forgone conclusion that they’ll meet each other in the postseason.

That isn’t true — the regular season does matter. It determines playoff seeding. And seeding matters because home-court advantage is a real thing.

Here’s a bit of a refresher course on how seeding is supposed to works in the postseason.

How playoff seeding works

The top eight seeds from both the Eastern and Western Conferences are ranked 1 through 8 by record. The top four teams in each conference get home-court advantage through the first round of the playoffs.

In each round, the higher seeded team gets home-court advantage in the postseason. The No. 1 seed gets home-court throughout the postseason. If the two No. 1 seeds from both conferences were to meet in the Finals, the team with the best regular-season record would retain home-court.

How home-court advantage works in the playoffs

Each series in the NBA postseason is played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format. The team with the highest seed always gets four home games in a seven-game series and also plays the first two games of the series at home.

It hasn’t always been this way. The NBA Finals used to be played in a 2-3-2 format. That meant higher seed played their first two games at home, the next three on the road and the final two back at home in a best-of-seven series.

How a tie in the standings is settled

If two teams have the same record at the end of the year, their standing is determined by a number of tie breakers.

First, they look at head-to-head results. The team that won the season series ends up with the higher seed. If that doesn’t resolve the tie, things get a bit wonky. Bear with me a bit.

If the head-to-head record is the same, if one is a division champ that team is the higher seed. If neither team is a division champion, whichever ranks higher in their division becomes the higher seed. If the two teams aren’t in a division together, their win-loss percentage against other teams in the conference will break the tie.

The future of the playoffs

All of this might get a bit tricky down the line with some league changes that could potentially be on the way. The league is discussing changing the playoff format to reseeding the four conference finalists and could include a play-in game.

That would mean we could potentially see two teams from the same conference matching up in the NBA Finals. This isn’t a totally foreign concept — the WNBA’s Finals features the league’s two best teams regardless of conference already.

That won’t all be decided for a while, though. Until then, these are the rules the league is going by.

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