1 reason for concern for the East's top 4 playoff teams

Unlike the perpetually chaotic, in-flux state of this year’s Western Conference, the East has had a clearly established hierarchy all season. It’s felt inevitable for months that the Bucks, Celtics, 76ers, and Cavaliers would make up the conference’s top four. And with all due respect to the surging Knicks and the giant-slaying capabilities of Playoff Jimmy, that quartet remains highly likely to be squaring off in the East semis.

Of course, whether they’re duking it out against each other, the lower rungs of the East, or the West champs in the Finals, all these teams have clear soft spots that could prove to be their downfall. Let’s explore the biggest reason to be concerned about each of them heading into the playoffs.

Milwaukee Bucks

Waning team speed and general creakiness

It’s tough to poke too many holes in the Bucks. They have arguably the best player in basketball, an ironclad defensive formula, championship pedigree, and a wealth of playoff experience up and down the roster. They also sewed up the NBA’s No. 1 seed, meaning they have home-court advantage throughout the postseason and will only have to wrangle with one of Boston or Philly – their two stiffest challengers – in order to reach the Finals.

If there’s one thing to worry about with Milwaukee, it’s the advanced ages of several of the team’s crucial contributors, and the roster’s general lack of speed and athleticism. That sounds like an insane thing to say about a team that employs Giannis Antetokounmpo, but while the two-time MVP remains perhaps the best pure athlete in the league, his supporting cast has gotten a bit long in the tooth.

The Bucks are the oldest team in the NBA, and seven of their 11 regular rotation players are on the wrong side of 30. Age hasn’t yet caught up to star guard Jrue Holiday (he turns 33 in June) or stalwart center Brook Lopez (who just turned 35), but things are a lot dicier on the wing, where the team is relying to varying extents on the diminished Pat Connaughton (30), Jae Crowder (32), Joe Ingles (35), and Wesley Matthews (36). Then there’s Khris Middleton. The 31-year-old’s midseason return from knee surgery helped revitalize the team’s offense, but his lift and lateral agility have taken a hit, and he’s struggled badly to contain dribble penetration at the defensive end.

Connaughton is one of the team’s better leapers, but he’s less explosive moving side-to-side and he’s struggled on both ends this season. Ingles’ shooting and playmaking have been welcome additions to the offense, but he’s lead-footed and exploitable on defense. Matthews remains a stout wing defender, but he’s too offensively limited to be on the floor in high leverage. Crowder’s arrival at the trade deadline upped the team’s strength and toughness but didn’t exactly make them quicker.

This is typically the time of year when we sound alarm bells about the Bucks’ shoddy half-court offense, but it’s been a non-issue for them during the two-plus months they’ve had their top pick-and-roll ball-handler healthy; they rank second in the league in points per 100 half-court possessions (105.8) since Middleton returned from a setback on Jan. 23, per Cleaning the Glass. Surprisingly, it’s in transition that some of Milwaukee’s shortcomings have shown up.

While they still get out on the break a fair amount, the Bucks rank 29th in scoring efficiency on transition possessions, and 27th in transition points added per 100 possessions. They also struggle to keep opposing teams out of the open floor, surrendering transition possessions at the league’s fourth-highest rate, including the second-highest frequency off live rebounds.

Milwaukee likes to play huge, and to a certain extent these issues are part of the tradeoff a team accepts when it upsizes. Lopez moves well in short areas, but less so in open space. For all the great things Bobby Portis does, you wouldn’t call him fleet of foot.

On the whole, though, the Bucks experience far more benefits than drawbacks while playing multi-big lineups. They’re counting on their imposing size and physicality offsetting their lack of speed, and that’s a well-founded belief. A general rule of thumb when it comes to playoff basketball historically is that size and physicality usually prevail. We’ll see if that still holds in today’s turbocharged offensive environment.

Boston Celtics

Lacking a reliable interior presence

Reliable is the operative word here, because this issue will be mitigated or altogether solved if Boston gets a fully operational Robert Williams for the playoffs. But that’s an impossible thing to bank on in a season in which he’s played only 34 games and 799 minutes after recovering from multiple knee surgeries. Without him functioning at peak capacity, the league’s most complete team has a major crack in its foundation.

The Celtics lead the NBA in net rating, and are the only team to rank in the top five on both sides of the ball (second in offense, third in defense), so they’re obviously doing a lot of things right. But their offensive success still feels a bit tenuous because of how contingent it is on jump shooting. They simply don’t do very much damage around the basket, ranking 25th in rim frequency, 25th in offensive rebound rate, and 26th in free-throw attempt rate. Williams’ presence does help there – especially on the offensive glass – but as a low-usage dive man, he doesn’t move the needle a ton.

His sporadic presence has a bigger impact on the defensive end. The Celtics’ defense is still quite strong without Williams, but it lacks a legitimate back-line anchor. While Al Horford remains an age-defying marvel, he doesn’t get off the ground the way he used to, and Boston’s zone-hybrid scheme – which features one-through-four switching around a five who helps at the rim while roving off a non-threatening shooter – has significantly less bite when it’s the soon-to-be 37-year-old doing the roving and rim-protecting.

This is only the second season of Horford’s 16-year career in which his team has performed worse defensively with him on the court, and that’s entirely attributable to the fact Boston’s opponents shoot six percentage points better at the rim when he’s out there than they do when he’s on the bench, according to Cleaning the Glass.

The backup options behind Horford don’t inspire much confidence, either; if Williams is unavailable, they’ll be forced to turn to one of Luke Kornet or Blake Griffin when Horford sits, or (more likely) play super small with the 6-foot-6 Grant Williams at the five. There’s a reason the Celtics were reportedly in the mix for Jakob Poeltl and other centers leading up to the trade deadline. They clearly feel that Williams’ health, and by extension their team’s compromised interior prowess, is a major concern.

Philadelphia 76ers

Too many one-way players

The minutes Philly plays with Joel Embiid on the bench are still a tire fire, even when Doc Rivers staggers his and James Harden’s minutes. But that’s the oldest story in basketball, so let’s examine an issue that could undercut this team even when the likely MVP is on the floor.

In Embiid, the Sixers have one of the two or three best two-way players in the league. Beyond him, though, is there a single player on this roster you’d consider above average on both sides of the ball? Maaaybe Tobias Harris? Or De’Anthony Melton on the nights his 3-ball is going? It’s an enormous credit to Embiid that Philly ranks third in offensive efficiency and eighth on defense despite those roster limitations, but when the competition and preparation ramp up in the postseason, he alone won’t be able to patch those holes.

Consider the corresponding cases of P.J. Tucker and Maxey. Tucker is wallpaper on offense – a corner-only shooter with a barely fathomable 6.5% usage rate, whose presence on the court cripples Philly’s spacing. But given how light they are on defensive wing depth, can the Sixers get away with benching their best defensive wing (who might also be their best backup center option) for extended stretches against playoff offenses? Is Jalen McDaniels enough of an insurance policy?

You could ask the same question in reverse about Maxey. Can the Sixers afford to play him big minutes and let him get relentlessly attacked on defense? Can they afford to curb his minutes and minimize his electric tempo, rim pressure, off-the-catch attacking, and secondary scoring punch?

The latter decision might be easier to make if Harden still brought that punch consistently, but the 33-year-old has slowed down considerably as a scorer. Much has been made this season of him finally starting to shoot some threes off the catch, but even when he does pull the trigger on those shots, his release is often overly deliberate. He still needs to be quicker and more decisive when a defense is loading up on Embiid and the ball gets spit out to him. He too often lets those windows close, which is especially irksome because he doesn’t have the explosiveness to get to the rim or finish there the way he used to. That’s compounded when Tucker is on the floor and a help defender can freely abandon him to help at the rim:

Harden’s passing of course remains an essential ingredient for Philadelphia’s offense, but given the defensive concerns about his backcourt mate and the way his own defensive deficiencies contribute to the team’s lack of two-way balance, the bar for his scoring is probably higher than it appears. On top of his penchant for lazy closeouts and conceding blow-bys in the half court, Harden’s been the biggest culprit in what’s been one of the worst transition defenses in the league all season.

The extent to which Embiid and Co. will depend on Melton, who found himself out of the Grizzlies’ rotation for much of last spring’s playoff run, is a bit scary.

Cleveland Cavaliers

No great options on the wing

The Cavs would be justified in feeling slighted for being treated as the non-threatening little brother in this group of contenders, considering they own the NBA’s top-ranked defense and second-best net rating. Their top four of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen could go toe-to-toe with any quartet in the league outside of maybe Milwaukee and Phoenix. The question for the Cavs is about what they have – or more to the point, what they don’t have – around those four guys.

A whole regular season elapsed without them finding a particularly palatable answer at the three-spot. They have a bunch of different options they’ve plugged in at various times, and they’ve gotten some good stretches of play from all of Isaac Okoro, Cedi Osman, Dean Wade, and Lamar Stevens. Okoro is easily the best defender in the group, and Osman the best offensive player, while Wade and Stevens land somewhere in between. Cleveland doesn’t get satisfactory two-way balance from any of them.

You could throw Caris LeVert into that mix, but he’s vulnerable defensively at the three on top of being wildly streaky offensively, so it feels like he’s best suited to being a bench guard. (Though the Cavs did post a 105.3 defensive rating and plus-11.3 net rating in 538 minutes with all of him, Garland, and Mitchell on the floor this season.)

Their wing dilemma manifests mostly as a lack of shooting, which, coupled with the Cavs’ two-big frontcourt, means the Cavs often play three non-spacers at the same time. Okoro has hit a respectable 36% of his threes this season, but that’s on a very low volume of wide-open attempts, as opposing defenses continue to show his jumper zero respect. Wade was shooting the lights out early in the season but he’s since fallen off a cliff. Stevens shoots 31% from deep. Mobley, who stands in the corner a lot, is at 22%.

You can look at the Cavs’ overall numbers and come away thinking they’re an above-average 3-point shooting team because they rank 11th in 3-point percentage and 17th in 3-point attempt rate. But Garland and Mitchell together account for nearly half their long-range attempts, with Garland shooting 41% and Mitchell 39% from beyond the arc. So those overall numbers aren’t truly indicative of the team’s ability to space the floor.

Cleveland likes to station both Mitchell and Garland above the break and use them in ball-screen action together, which makes perfect sense. It also means both corners are often occupied by non-threats. (To wit: they rank sixth in the league in above-the-break 3-point percentage, and 25th from the corners.) That allows defenses to tag aggressively and clog the lane. Here’s what it looks like when Okoro and Mobley are the ones spotting up, for example:

Cleveland has ways to mitigate that issue, like having those corner guys cut baseline, or set pin-in screens, or vacate the corner altogether. Allen’s improvement as a short-roll passer, along with Mobley’s existing skill in that department, allow for high-low action that doesn’t require four-out spacing.

Mitchell and Garland are also so good as pull-up shooters, creators, and finishers in traffic that spacing sometimes just doesn’t matter. But the lack of it sure puts a lot of pressure on them, and might help explain why the Cavs are 21-26 against teams that are .500 or better in spite of their seventh-ranked offense and robust point differential.