WHO should the Cleveland Cavaliers want as their first-round opponent in the NBA Playoffs?

WHO should the Cleveland Cavaliers want as their first-round opponent in the NBA Playoffs?

With the first day of the NBA Play-In Tournament over, the Cleveland Cavaliers are getting prepared for their first-round playoff matchup. With the Miami Heat, Chicago Bulls, and Atlanta Hawks all in play, who presents the best (or worst) path to a deep playoff run?

Cecil drops his insight as a pro athlete, while Earl keeps it raw with that Cleveland fire, and together they paint the picture of what’s coming for the wine and gold.

Oklahoma City and Cleveland are the top seeds in the NBA playoffs, which comes with some perks. They’ll have home-court advantage for at least three rounds and, presumably, an easier path than others to advancing.

It also comes with a challenge: They’ll have just one full day to really prepare for Game 1.

Some teams will have a full week to prepare for their first playoff foe. Some teams get four or five days. But given the way the play-in tournament is structured, the Thunder and Cavaliers won’t know their foes until late Friday night — then will open Round 1 matchups against those opponents on Sunday, with only one practice day to lock in on a game plan.

“It’s tough. It’s interesting,” Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers said. “There were years where I had that issue and it’s definitely more challenging.”

The exact same scenario didn’t hold the Thunder back a year ago. New Orleans won the Western Conference’s elimination play-in game for the No. 8 seed on a Friday, started a series at top-seeded Oklahoma City on Sunday, the Thunder squeaked out a win in Game 1 and went on to sweep the matchup with a couple of blowouts in there.

The Cavaliers won’t present any information on opposing personnel to their players until after the opponent is locked in. Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson did get one piece of information very late Tuesday night, that his team’s Game 1 will be at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

It could have been as early as 1 p.m., depending on what the league and its broadcast partners wanted. To Atkinson, those few extra hours can make a difference.

“We’ll have more time to maybe dive into personnel a little more,” Atkinson said.

The Cavs have had an assistant coach assigned to each specific team all season, so work is being done on all three of their possible Round 1 opponents. Atkinson won’t start thinking about possible matchups until later this week.

“I think there is an organization to it, a real organization,” Atkinson said. “And it’s multi-faceted. … We have things we’ve been working on, things we think will translate to playoffs.”

There are four matchups — Indiana-Milwaukee and New York-Detroit in the East, the Los Angeles Lakers-Minnesota and Denver-the Los Angeles Clippers in the West — that have been set since the end of the regular season. Those teams get a full week to get ready for Round 1, knowing their opponents. All of those series open on Saturday.

The No. 2 seeds in each conference learned their opponents on Tuesday night, when Orlando earned the right to play Boston and Golden State won its way into a playoff meeting with Houston.

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