The NBA regular season is officially in the rear-view mirror, and now comes the real fun: two months of playoff basketball, with 16 teams chasing a championship.
On the heels of four straight trips to the Finals, the defending champion Warriors entered the season as the odds-on favorite to repeat — but this is about as vulnerable as we’ve seen them during their reign of dominance in the NBA. And the West is loaded as always, with each of the eight playoff teams coming off a season with at least 48 wins.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Conference is as wide open as it's been in years, now that LeBron James has taken his talents to Los Angeles (where the Lakers missed the playoffs altogether). Can Giannis cap off an MVP-caliber season by leading the Bucks to the Finals? Can the Celtics rebound from an inconsistent regular season? Will Kawhi Leonard bring the Raptors an Eastern Conference crown for the first time in franchise history?
A. Sherrod Blakely and Chris Forsberg look at every postseason series and forecast which team will win — and why — all the way through the NBA Finals. (Spoiler alert: their Finals predictions are completely different, and they only agree on one team as a conference finalist.)
Click here for their round-by-round predictions.>>>>>
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