The Sixers have been one of the best teams in the NBA this season and currently sit in 1st place in the East with a record of 44-21. The championship-hopefuls are carefully watching the standings (while figuring out their playoff rotation) and hope to get the No. 1 seed to avoid a second round matchup with the Brooklyn Nets or Milwaukee Bucks. The race for the top seed looks to be boiling down to Philly or Brooklyn, with only a half game separating the East’s top two teams.
Normally at this point in the year we would have a pretty good idea of who the Sixers could face in the first round, looking at the teams that have the potential to be the seventh or eighth seed. However this year is different due to the new rules implemented last offseason regarding the NBA’s play-in tournament.
How the NBA play-in tournament works
Normally the team with the best regular season record plays the team with the 8th best record in their conference in the first round of the playoffs. This year, however, the tournament will be used to determine who the seventh and eighth seeds will be. The teams sitting at seventh through 10th in the standings will participate in the tournament, which will break down as follows:
The seventh best record will play the team with the 8th best record in a single game. The winner of that game will be the new seven-seed, and will play the two-seed in the first round of the playoffs.
Meanwhile, the teams sitting at nine and 10 will play each other in a single game as well. The winner of this game will play the loser of the 7-8 game, and the winner of that game will become the new eighth seed and play the top seed in the first round of the playoffs.
What does this mean for the Sixers?
For Philadelphia, this means that they won’t know who they’re up against at the start of the playoffs. Any team that has the potential to finish between seven and 10 in the standings could be a first round matchup for the Sixers, and that’s a pretty wide range with a lot of uncertainty.
While the Sixers need to be ready to face (and beat) anyone, it’s no secret that some first round matchups have a little more curb appeal than others. The standings have changed significantly since we ranked possible matchups last month, but today we’ll be sticking to teams that are within two games of being in the play-in tournament. The teams are listed in order from best matchup to worst.