The Magic will take on the Celtics in the first round after advancing in the NBA Play-In Tournament.
The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t know who they’ll be playing in the first round of the NBA playoffs, but at the very least, it won’t be the Orlando Magic. The Magic secured the seventh seed on Tuesday night as they comfortably defeated the Atlanta Hawks 120-95 in the Play-In Tournament.
That win puts the Magic in the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference and gives them a first-round matchup against the Boston Celtics. This means the Cavs won’t have to play the Magic in the first round again after taking seven games to defeat them last season.
Orlando won two of their three meetings with Boston this season, but the Celtics rested their entire starting lineup in their most recent meeting last week. We’ll see if any of Orlando’s regular-season success carries over to the playoffs.
The Cavs won’t know who they’ll play in the first round yet, but it will be either the Hawks, Miami Heat, or the Chicago Bulls.
The Heat and Bulls play on Wednesday night. The winner of that game will travel to Atlanta to take on the Hawks on Friday. The winner of Friday’s game will face the Cavs in the first round starting on Sunday.
Cleveland should take care of whoever they face in the first round pretty easily, although they did drop games against the Heat and Hawks during the regular season. Atlanta won two of their three meetings, while Miami grabbed one of their three matchups with Cleveland.
The four Eastern Conference Play-In teams don’t really have the potential to push the Cavs. But if you were going to pick one that could, it would’ve likely been the Magic due to their physical style and what happened last year in the playoffs. From that standpoint, the Cavs are likely happy with the result of Tuesday’s action.