CLEVELAND — With just three games remaining in the season for the Cleveland Cavaliers, it appears as if they’re destined for the NBA Play-In Tournament. There’s still a slim chance the Cavs find their way into the six seed at the end of the regular season, but that appears more and more unlikely as the minutes pass.
For this to happen, the Cavs would need to win their three remaining games – at Orlando, at Brooklyn and at home against Milwaukee – and have the Toronto Raptors lose at least three of their four remaining games – at home against Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston and wrapping up on the road against New York.
As things stand at the time at the time of this writing, the Cavaliers are sitting in seventh place with a 1.5-game lead over Atlanta. Finishing in seventh would be a big deal for Cleveland, and would mean that all their play-in games would take place at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
How does the play-in work? Well, if you’re new to this, that’s OK, everyone is, as this is just the second year this format has been in place.
In the NBA Play-In Tournament, the teams that finish in seventh and eighth have two chances to punch their ticket to the playoffs, while things are a bit more difficult for teams that finish ninth and 10th, as they need to win two straight games to earn a trip to the playoffs.
The teams that finish seventh and eighth will square off in the first play-in game. The game will be played at the home of the seventh-place team, and the winner of that contest goes to the playoffs as the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game would then head home, where it would have one more chance to clinch a playoff berth. That same night, the two teams that finish ninth and 10th in the standings would square off at the home of the ninth-place team. The winner of that game moves on to play the team that lost the game between seventh and eighth, while the loser would be eliminated and off on vacation for the summer.
Make sense? Good.
At this point, there are a number of scenarios that could still play out for the Cavaliers in the Play-In Tournament, but a win on Tuesday night would go a long way toward clinching a spot in the higher-seeded game and giving themselves two chances to win one game. As things stand, the Cavaliers have a 2.5-game lead over both Charlotte and Brooklyn with three games left to play. The Cavs currently hold the tiebreaker over the Hornets based on record in conference games – although that could change, and do not have the tiebreaker against the Nets. According to basketball-reference.com, the Cavs have just a 5.8 percent chance of finishing in ninth or 10th in the Eastern Conference. The far-and-away most likely scenario for the Cavs is the seventh spot, as they’re given a 71.3 percent chance to finish the regular season in that position.
RELATED: Cleveland Cavaliers cry foul after Joel Embiid scores 44 in Philadelphia 76ers' 112-108 win
If the Cavs do finish in seventh, it’s likeliest that they would square off against the Atlanta Hawks. Atlanta is currently given a 37.9 percent chance of finishing in eighth – the Hawks do have a 16.5 percent chance to pass the Cavs and finish seventh. The margin for the other three teams that will be locked into the play-in for the eighth through 10th spots is somewhat significant. The Nets have the second-best chance of finishing eighth at 22.3 percent, while the Hornets’ likelihood of an eighth-place finish is 21.5 percent.
The most likely outcome is that the Cavs take on the Hawks at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse while the Hornets play host to the Brooklyn Nets in the lower-seeded game.