Playoff Race: Eastern Conference

As we get towards the end of the NBA season, it's time to take a look at the playoff picture and some of the potential storylines. Let's start with the East, because I'm too lazy to do both conferences right now.

A possibly great 4/5 matchup - As things sit right now, Miami would be the 4 seed (because they will win their division) and Cleveland will be the 5 seed. Meaning Lebron vs. Wade. We all saw what these guys did in the playoffs last year... playing against each other in a 7-game series would be really great to see. I'd rather see it in the conference finals, but I'll settle for it here.

The race for the 8 seed - Then again, does this really matter? Right now Orlando is the 8 seed at 36-42, but Indiana is 2 games back and Philly is 3 games back. Regardless of who finishes 8th, these teams are not good. In other words, I'm not all that optimistic that any of them can hang with Detroit.

The Wizards could be the worst playoff team ever - I mean, they're a solid club at full strength... but (no disrespect to Prada over at Bullets Forever), without Arenas and Butler they're really bad. Their bench was already thin, and now Donnell Taylor is their 6th man. I have a feeling it will be a short and ugly playoff appearance for the Wizards this year.

Competitive 2nd round matchups - If the seeds hold, we could get some really good matchups, and I think any of 5 teams are very capable of winning the conference. The first round doesn't look like it will be very exciting (except Heat/Cavs), but possible matchups involving Detroit vs Miami/Cleveland and Chicago vs. Toronto would be very competitive.

Anyway, as you can tell, I'm not really excited about the playoffs in the East this year other than seeing LeBron in the playoffs... the West, on the other hand, should be awesome. We'll do a recap of what things look like tomorrow.