NBA: Predicting How The Eastern Conference Playoff Picture Will Settle

With the NBA season heading into its stretch run, we analyze and try to predict how the Eastern Conference playoff picture will shake out

For much of the NBA season, the Eastern Conference playoff picture has been one big roll of the dice. Apart from the Cleveland Cavaliers and Toronto Raptors heading the conference as the first and second best teams, respectively, the East is one big mess.

Specifically, the distance between the No. 3 and No. 9 seed – they’re separated by 4.5 games. In February. That’s almost unprecedented.

And that can be attributed to a number of things. For one, it could mean that there are a bunch of mediocre teams in the Eastern Conference and that every team not named the Raptors or Cavs are pretty much equally bad.

Or, and how I’d like to view it because I’m a more positive man, the Eastern Conference is that competitive this season. And why not look at it like that? It’s such a better outlook than just saying the East is bad – again.

Whether that is still debatable, what isn’t is that eight teams, regardless of how good they are, will make the playoffs out of the East. Let’s try to predict how the East playoff picture will look after the dust is settled.

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