Wednesday night edition of the pod our young player reviews for the Eastern Conference are over we will get into the West next week most likely.

But we gotta catch up on some latent news and also the playoff race which is started to solidify a little bit so we'll start there.

We're gonna go to news and then since a lot of that news actually has to do with teams that are taking we can then transition into the all important tank race as well.

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All right where do you want to start here with the playoff race Daniel?

Let's start with the east because I think the east is at least at the top a little bit but I guess they're both pretty well settled at the top but so with the east what we have a really good sense of right now is who the eight playoff teams are going to be so raptors Celtics Cavs sixers Pacers Wizard's Heat what we do not know is other than the top two the raptors being the one in the Celtics being the two despite Boston's big win today in Utah is what order all of these other teams are going to be and as a point of reference for the playoff.

Playoff picture because these are good teams at least theoretically and they are I focus more on the loss column because the assumption is if one team has played fewer games that they will make up the win whereas in the tank race I go the opposite way it's wins and then you can make up the losses so that leads to a couple of interesting kind of nuances here because actually I let you talk a little bit I was going to go off for about 10 minutes.

Well I guess what I'm most focused on right now is that juicy three C and certainly we don't mean to be too dismissive of the Celtics but if Kyrie Irving is not back and maybe their favorite in round one depending on who the matchup is hard to say that they'd be favorite in round two so against the six or see more the Cavaliers so that race you imagine is going to be a pretty tough one from here on out and the sixers as we've talked about the sixers and the sixers are going to be the best.

But only really have two real games left one against the Caz which is going to be huge that came at home that's at home right yes that game is in Philadelphia the sixers haven't for a couple for like a week now they haven't had to play a road game against the potential playoff teams all their tough games are at home yeah and then they played the box on what the last day of the season and yeah and Milwaukee could be locked in at that point as well so that game it looks it's tough on paper right now but it might not be anymore yeah and while Joe and B did suffer a facial contusion and at the leave today's game he did not have a concussion

and X-rays were negative for a facial fracture so the hope is that he won't necessarily miss time and and also they're playing Atlanta in their next game so they may not need him anyway the sixers projected right now to finish one game ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers at 50 and 32 amazing to think of the sixers team of 50 wins the Cavs are 45 and 30 after a relatively easy win and other ridiculous LeBron performance in Charlotte tonight with 41 points and the Cavaliers currently have a half game lead at 45 and 30

sixers are 44 and 30 but the sixers have the easier schedule going forward and it been playing better although worth noting that the Cavaliers with Kevin Love and without Isaiah Thomas actually have a pretty damn good record this year and Love is in the concussion protocol now but hopefully we'll return relatively soon up to you also got a tooth loosened with the collision last night what's the

Caves remaining schedule look like what are their hard games so they play at the sixers I think that's right around the last week of the season then they host the Pelicans and I haven't heard anything yet with Anthony Davis that would be bad for them if like that's one of the games that he is not 100% and then they host the raptors and the wizards as well so I think the reason why it's a little and right now the sixers and Cavs are tied in the lost calm part of the reason why 538 model on my own project my own like kind of intuition is favors the sixers is just that the Cavs have more

of these maybe not coin flip games but let's call it like a 35% chance of losing and if you just pile up a couple of those you might get you might get caught in one of them and Cleveland especially with their inconsistency defensively they can just get caught in a game and that's just

harder for the sixers because they don't play that many actually trying to yeah LeBron you know usually would be resting this time of year you'll remember that he

rusted last year in a game against Miami but you actually played against Miami a game of course that they lost

yesterday oh it never really plays well in Miami but fortunately I don't think they play the heat

anymore on the road this year and the next interesting question here is the Pacers they're actually

projected now with two wins on either side of them they picked up a win which the projection systems

did not expect them to against Golden State last night but none of the warriors for all stars played of

course so the Pacers projected at 47 wins but actually projected to go three and four the rest of the way

uh to get to that 47 their schedule is quite difficult but they have a two and a half game lead on the wizards so it really

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