NBA playoffs predictions and play-in tournament schedule live updates: Bracket, odds, draft lottery and stats

NEW YORK — Coby White watches sides of DeMar DeRozan fans don't get to see.

The breakout player of the season for the Bulls sees steadiness in his veteran teammate above all.

"He never complains," White said. "He just loves the game. He loves to hoop."

DeRozan finished this season as the NBA's minutes leader after playing 44 minutes in the Bulls' 120-119 overtime loss at New York on the final day of the regular season. DeRozan logged 2,988 total minutes, the third most of his career and his most since the 2013-14 season.

DeRozan, 34, becomes the first player since LeBron James (33) in 2018 to lead the league in minutes in his 30s. Before that, Elvin Hayes (31) in 1976-77 was the last player to lead the NBA in minutes in his 30s. DeRozan's 2,988 minutes also are the most since Bradley Beal finished with 3,028 in 2018-19.

"And he doesn’t miss practice. He doesn't miss shootaround," White said of DeRozan. "He's early to everything. Those are the things I notice. He's always on time. He's always one of the first ones there. You know how some guys can be. And for him, it's just his professionalism day in and day out never changes."

Read the rest of my story here.

The conclusion of the 2023-24 NBA season also means the order for the 2024 NBA Draft lottery is now set. Well, at least the first nine slots are, since we still have four teams left to eliminate in the Play-In Tournament and two of them (Atlanta and Chicago) have a worse record than the already eliminated Rockets.

A reminder: in an attempt to disincentivize tanking, the league flattened the weights in 2019 to give the three worst teams an equal opportunity to earn the No. 1 pick. Any ties will be broken by a coin flip. The league will draw for the first four selections and then proceed in reverse winning percentage order, so the worst team is at least guaranteed the fifth pick.

So here's the lottery order, along with each team's chance to win the top pick.

1. Detroit Pistons (14-68): 14 percent
2. Washington Wizards (15-67): 14 percent
3. Portland Trail Blazers (21-61) or Charlotte Hornets (21-61): 14 percent
4. Portland Trail Blazers (21-61) or Charlotte Hornets (21-61): 12.5 percent
5. San Antonio Spurs (22-60): 10.5 percent
6. Toronto Raptors (25-57): 9 percent — pick goes to Spurs if outside the top six
7. Memphis Grizzlies (27-55): 7.5 percent
8. Utah Jazz (31-51): 6 percent — pick goes to Thunder if outside the top 10
9. Brooklyn Nets (32-50): 4.5 percent — pick goes to Rockets
10. The loser of Wednesday's Bulls-Hawks 9-10 Play-In Game: 3 percent
11. Bulls/Hawks winner (if they lose the final Play-In Game) OR Rockets (41-41): 2 percent
12. Rockets (if Bulls/Hawks make playoffs) OR second-worst Play-In loser: 1.5 percent
13. Second-best Play-In loser: 1 percent
14. Best Play-In loser: 0.5 percent

The 2024 NBA Draft Lottery will be held on May 12.

As it turned out Sunday, the Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers fans both took home a win. With 4:44 remaining in the fourth quarter of Houston’s eventual 116-105 victory over the Clippers, center Boban Marjanović missed his first free throw. Marjanović — a career 76.4 percent free-throw shooter — then purposefully missed the second to win fans in attendance free chicken.

The Clippers organization runs a promo in which attending fans get free chicken if the opposition misses two free throws in a row. So the Clippers faithful, who had seen its backups fight admirably all game, finally had something to cheer about, prompting the rising crescendo.

Rewarding home fans when two consecutive fourth-quarter free throws are missed has grown in popularity in recent years. In some blowouts when the end-of-bench players finally take the floor, some players miss the first free throw, getting the crowd riled up, only to make the second and mock them.

But if there was anyone in the NBA who would purposely miss to ensure that fans would go home with a reward, it would be Marjanović, arguably the nicest professional basketball player on the planet.

Are you ready for some NBA postseason? We got a little taster on the season's final weekend, with a few teams playing high-stakes games that resembled playoff environments. That was particularly true in the jumbled Western Conference standings, where the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings were locked in a series of huge games that determined spots six through 10 in the West hierarchy.

And now, we exhale. There are no games Monday, but we get two big Play-In games on Tuesday and Wednesday before the final Play-In for each conference on Friday; that sets the bracket for the main event to start this weekend with four games on both Saturday and Sunday. The first round runs two weeks, with potential seventh games on the weekend of April 27 and 28, and the bracket shrinks from there until Game 1 of the NBA Finals on June 6.

I will have a more filled-out playoff preview later in the week, where we can get into predictions for the later rounds and more detail based on the Play-In results. For now, however, let’s take the 10,000-foot view on what the play-ins and first round look like.

Here is the least you need to know.

Read on for my preview of each matchup.

There are nights in the NBA when the boos pouring down from the home crowd feel directed at the players on the court, but the catcalls emanating from the Cleveland Cavaliers faithful Sunday afternoon seemed to be directed elsewhere.

Cavs fans recognize an organizational failure when they see one, which is what they were reacting to in the final moments of a 120-110 loss to the lottery-bound Charlotte Hornets, on a day when all the Cavs had to do was win to avoid the Boston Celtics’ side of the bracket in the NBA playoffs.

The Hornets dressed nine players. Their leading scorer was Nick Smith Jr., who at least played 50 games for Charlotte — more than most people in a Hornets uniform on Sunday could say. Steve Clifford was probably coaching the last game of his strong NBA career, but before the game, he didn’t want to reflect because of the task at hand of trying to manage a 48-minute game with mostly end-of-benchers and G League-type players.

It has been a tremendous season of revival for the Minnesota Timberwolves. They will host Game 1 of a playoff series for the first time since 2004, saw Rudy Gobert reassert himself as a dominant defensive force and Anthony Edwards explode as a bona fide superstar. They entered Sunday with a chance to grab the No. 1 seed with a win over the Phoenix Suns and a loss by either Denver or Oklahoma City. Both the Thunder and Nuggets had easy wins against opponents with no interest in competing.

A win over Phoenix would have clinched the No. 2 seed, but still may have resulted in a matchup against the Suns. It appears as if this was their destiny to see their best season since Kevin Garnett's heyday draw the worst possible matchup for them.

Karl-Anthony Towns has spent nine years with the Timberwolves and he smiled in the locker room after the game when he said it was "the Minnesota way."

"There's no better team to be playing in the first round than a team that we struggled with all year," said Towns, who had 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting with five turnovers in his second game back from a torn meniscus. "If there was ever a time for this team to earn its shot at a parade here or to get to the second round, it's only right that it would be against the team that we found most difficult for ourselves this year."

Read the rest of my story here.

In Cleveland, where the Cavs were in second in the East at the All-Star break, only to go 12-17 after, Donovan Mitchell, Caris LeVert and Darius Garland were all held out against the Charlotte Hornets, who only dressed nine players and one rotation player. But early in the first quarter, the Cavs' lone ballhandler in uniform, Craig Porter Jr., sprained his ankle and could not return. The Cavs led by 13 early in the fourth, when coach J.B. Bickerstaff pulled most of his remaining rotation players, and Cleveland closed with a lineup in which its only offense seemed to be Tristan Thompson — yes, Tristan Thompson — trying to put the ball on the floor to make something happen.

Not even against a lineup of end-of-benchers and G Leaguers, like the one the Hornets had on the floor at the end, would such a silly idea work. The Cavs lost 120-110 in Hornets coach Steve Clifford's last game and were roundly booed by home fans in the closing moments.

"It was difficult (to watch), but we had our plan in place with what we were gonna do with our guys," Bickerstaff said afterward. "(Our starters) were gonna play those three quarters, and then Craig not being out there made it a little difficult to organize and score in the fourth quarter, but we wanted to stick to our plan, and no matter what was going to happen we were going to give our guys an opportunity to play."

With a win, the Cavs would have leaped over the Bucks for third and would have avoided the Celtics until a potential conference finals match.

Read more here.

More than a decade ago, when the dregs of the NBA raced to the bottom for a chance at consensus No. 1 pick Anthony Davis, one team chose not to participate in the tankathon.

The New Orleans Hornets, a group desperate for a future star, didn’t strategically lose to close the season. Instead, they caught fire, winning eight of their final 13 games and hurting their lottery odds. Throughout the stretch, head coach Monty Williams repeated the same mantra: "Don’t mess with the game or it will mess with you."

A month after completing the 2011-12 season with the NBA’s fourth-worst record, the Hornets won the lottery, landing them Davis. The basketball gods have a funny way of paying back those who do right by them.

Twelve years later, the New York Knicks are hoping to receive similar treatment.

They concluded their season Sunday with a 120-119 overtime win against the Chicago Bulls, the Knicks’ fifth consecutive victory. It ensures them their first 50-win season since 2012-13 and the second-best record in the Eastern Conference, a spot they snatched both because they sought it and because no one else did.

Being the No. 2-seeded team means New York will face the victor of Wednesday night's Play-In Tournament game between the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, two teams that aren't your usual seventh- or eighth-place finishers.

The Sixers just got reigning MVP Joel Embiid back from injury and haven't lost since. They are 31-8 when Embiid is in the lineup. The Heat are notorious for outplaying their regular-season record in the playoffs, never in a more obvious way than they did last spring when they jolted to the NBA Finals as a No. 8 seed, a run that included a second-round trampling of the Knicks.

Of course, as the rest of the league swerved away from two giants, New York didn’t care to avoid anyone.

"The object is to win," head coach Tom Thibodeau said. "Put everything you have into winning. That's the bottom line."

Read the rest of my story here.

1 Thunder vs. 8. Play-In Winner

2 Nuggets vs. 7. Lakers/Pelicans

3 Wolves vs. 6 Suns

4 Clippers vs. 5 Mavericks

7 Pelicans vs. 8 Lakers

9 Kings vs. 10 Warriors

1 Celtics vs. 8. Play-In Winner

2 Knicks vs. 7. 76ers/Heat

3 Bucks vs. 6 Pacers

4 Cavaliers vs. 5 Magic

7 76ers vs. 8 Heat

9 Bulls vs. 10 Hawks

The Oklahoma City Thunder are two years removed from a 24-win season. They've played this season with a starting lineup that's 25 years old or younger, one of them a rookie, joined by another rookie who played 82 games off the bench.

And now they're the Western Conference's No. 1 seed.

The Thunder secured the conference's top spot on Sunday, a gigantic 49-point blowout win against the Dallas Mavericks. (Dallas, with nothing to play for, rested the top eight players in its rotation.) Still, Oklahoma City needed to win to make it certain.

"I just thought we had a serious, business-like approach today," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said.

Now, Oklahoma City heads into a first-round series against the team that comes in eighth after the Play-In Tournament is complete. Sure, the Thunder are young and most of its players will be competing in the postseason for the first time. But the team's success this year stands out far more than any measurement of their age.

"I don't care how old (or young) we are," Daigneault said. "Our advantage is how our guys compete in the way they do and how committed they are to doing that."

Oklahoma City's matchup could end up being any of the Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings or Golden State Warriors. By week's end, the Thunder will know.

"When we wake up Tuesday morning, we're 0-0. It's a new season, everything that we did in the regular season doesn't matter except opponent and seeding," Daigneault said. "We'll go into it with great respect for our opponents, but great respect for ourselves."

Anthony Davis said "there’s no doubt I'm gonna play (on Tuesday)." He left today's game vs. New Orleans early while holding his back.

Darvin Ham said Davis suffered a "spasm" and he's "extremely optimistic" about Davis being available for Tuesday's Play-In game.

The Sacramento Kings dismantled the shorthanded Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday, winning 121-82 to secure the ninth seed in the Western Conference. It was the Kings' most lopsided victory of the season. With the Los Angeles Lakers' win over the New Orleans Pelicans, Sacramento will officially host the Golden State Warriors in the 9-10 Play-In matchup.

Feels like it was only right for the Kings and Warriors to face off one final time this season for all the marbles and the right to advance to the second round of the Play-In. Less than 365 days ago, Stephen Curry bounced Sacramento out of the first round with a classic 50-point performance in Game 7 on the same court the two teams will meet on Tuesday.

De'Aaron Fox cruised to a game-high 24 points, three steals, three assists and two rebounds on 10-of-14 shooting in just 26 minutes. Domantas Sabonis nearly posted his 27th triple-double of the season, finishing with 18 points, 11 boards and nine dimes on 7-of-10 shooting in 27 minutes. It was such a commanding win, each Kings player in uniform saw at least four minutes.

Sacramento and Golden State split the regular-season series at two games apiece, but the Kings are without a starter in Kevin Huerter and another focal point offensively in Malik Monk. It will be paramount for Sacramento to be on its game Tuesday against a much healthier Warriors team that won 10 of their last 12 to close out the regular season.

With the Lakers' win over the New Orleans Pelicans to close out the regular season, Los Angeles will enter the Play-In tournament as the No. 8 seed and stay in New Orleans to face the No. 7 Pelicans on Tuesday.

The primary concern for the Lakers despite the result is the health of Anthony Davis, who exited the game at the 5:22 mark with an apparent injury. As Davis held his lower back, he gingerly walked to the scorer's table before crouching down and having the team’s training staff stretch out his right leg. Davis has dealt with hip and groin issues this season. The Lakers are 2-4 without Davis this season.

That said, if Davis can play on Tuesday, Los Angeles should feel confident given the regular-season results against the Pelicans. They won the season series 3-1, with all three wins being blowouts. If the Lakers win that game, they set up a rematch with the No. 2 Denver Nuggets, who have won seven straight games against Los Angeles. If they lose to the Pelicans, they'd return to Los Angeles, where they’d host the winner of the No. 9-10 game between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors.