![]() Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden won one playoff series together before all forcing their way out, but the trades that sent them elsewhere helped stock Brooklyn with a perfectly respectable team. The Brooklyn Nets’ superteam era has to go down as one of the biggest busts in NBA history. However, stars get you over the hump in the playoffs, and Trae Young will have to put on another show for Atlanta to make a playoff run. If he can consistently provide enough off the bench to spell Clint Capela, then the frontcourt becomes that much better. Against Miami in the Play-In game, Okongwu had 20 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks, becoming a force on the defensive end. Perhaps the most important piece is big man Onyeka Okongwu. Young once again finished in the top five in assists, and while the Dejounte Murray pairing didn’t lead to a ton of regular season wins, the Hawks are a more difficult team to prepare for as their win over Miami to open the play-in tournament showed. Is this to say they’re going to make a deep run? No, but what this team has now is depth and players who can take the ball handling load off of Trae Young. This Hawks team just feels different from the previous years, even the one that made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021. Ricky O’DonnellĪnthony Edwards: "Once I found out Rudy was playin, I kinda knew we already had the game."- Dane Moore Ap14. This probably isn’t the Heat’s year, but they will certainly be annoying on the way out. The Heat are going to need to find a way to finally score some points when they face the Bucks, which is going to be extremely difficult against a top-five defense. ![]() ![]() The Heat will never be an easy out, not with Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Erik Spoelstra leading the way. Miami looked like a shell of itself in getting pounded by the Hawks in the first play-in game, but they rallied late in their next one to beat the Bulls and set up another playoff series with the Milwaukee Bucks. 1 in the NBA in three-point percentage in ‘21-22, the Heat were No. The biggest culprit might have been a strange dip in three-point shooting: after finishing No. The Heat came within a Jimmy Butler three-pointer of making the NBA Finals last season, but for a variety of reasons a similar roster played mediocre basketball throughout this year. Our team of writers each ranked teams 1-16, and the final order is the averages of those rankings 16. ![]() Here’s how we’d rank the 16 teams in the playoffs by their chances to win the 2023 championship. 1 seed, but almost every team in the West bracket can talk themselves into their path to the NBA Finals. Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets are the No. The Western Conference feels far less likely to go chalk. The Eastern Conference has three heavyweight teams at the top with the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, and Philadelphia 76ers all built to win a championship. Instead, the parity we saw throughout the regular season is giving way to a playoff bracket that leaves more teams than ever before believing they have a real shot to win it all. It doesn’t really feel like there’s a team to beat this year. The NBA has historically been a league that runs on superpowers, from Bill Russell’s Celtics to Magic Johnson’s Lakers to Michael Jordan’s Bulls to Tim Duncan’s Spurs to Steph Curry’s Warriors. ![]() The bracket for the 2023 NBA Playoffs is finalized, and one of the most wide-open postseasons in league history is here. ![]()
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