We have already covered this topic in detail in our latest around-the-NBA column, and it bears repeating here: Everybody who is an NBA fan — and that includes you, too, Celtics Nation — should be hoping the Milwaukee Bucks can catch the Celtics and finish in a tie, at the very least, for seventh place in the Eastern Conference.
A tie for seventh would send it to a tiebreaker, and the Bucks own it by virtue of having won the season series 3-1.
That would mean Boston would drop to the No. 8 seed and a first-round matchup with the team they have done battle with in each of the last two postseasons. Plus, we get whatever the next installment is of Pay Riley vs. Danny Ainge, or some permutation thereof. We also get Ray Allen vs. his former team, Kevin Garnett (if he returns healthy) vs. Erik Spoelstra’s Flavor of the Day at center, baked beans vs. Cuban sandwiches … you name it.
If Boston manages to hang onto the No. 7 spot — and the Celtics’ remaining schedule is much easier than Milwaukee’s — we get an Eastern Conference playoff lineup that very well could be Miami-Milwaukee; Indiana-Boston; New York-Atlanta and Brooklyn-Chicago. The entire Eastern seaboard would be taking 7 p.m. naps in order to save some energy for the late games.
We’ve still got two weeks to pray to the basketball gods and to cheer on the team that brought in Vanilla Ice to perform at halftime on Saturday night. And during the first of those two weeks, the New York Knicks are going to show whether their NBA-high 8-game winning streak is the product of a favorable stretch of schedule or a show of sincere strength from a club that roared out of the gate in November and December and has been a .500 bunch ever since.
If New York wins in Miami on Tuesday night, the Knicks take the season series 3-1. And the Knicks could still finish second in the East and end up with Boston in the first round, which wouldn’t be a horrible consolation prize.
But still, it would be nothing like Heat-Celtics. So keep your fingers crossed.
More on that in the video below with CineSport’s Noah Coslov: