The NBA has announced dates, times, and broadcast information for all four conference semifinals series.<\/p>\n
West: No. 1 Seed Oklahoma City Thunder vs. No. 4 Seed Los Angeles Lakers<\/p>\n
West: No. 2 Seed San Antonio Spurs vs. No. 6 Seed Minnesota Timberwolves<\/p>\n
East: No. 3 Seed New York Knicks vs. No. 2 Seed Boston Celtics or No. 7 Seed Philadelphia 76ers<\/p>\n
No. 1 Detroit Pistons or No. 8 Orlando Magic vs. No. 4 Cleveland Cavaliers or No. 5 Toronto Raptors<\/p>\n
The No. 3 seed New York Knicks are the only team to advance to the conference semifinals out of the Eastern Conference so far, as the other three first round series are headed to Game 7. <\/p>\n
We do know the Knicks will either play the No. 2 seed Boston Celtics or the No. 7 seed Philadelphia 76ers, who play on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET. If the Celtics win, they’ll have home-court advantage. If the Knicks win, they’ll have home-court for those matchups against Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Of course, there’s much left to be decided on the other half of the Eastern Conference bracket, namely the two participants. <\/p>\n
Either the No. 1 seed Detroit Pistons, No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers or the No. 5 seed Toronto Raptors will have homecourt.<\/p>\n
The Western Conference semifinals are all set. The chalk held outside of one series, as the No. 6 seed Minnesota Timberwolves upset the No. 3 seed Denver Nuggets in six games. <\/p>\n
The No. 1 seed Oklahoma City Thunder was the only squad to sweep its first-round opponent, dispatching the No. 8 seed Phoenix Suns in four games. The No. 2 seed San Antonio Spurs also had a relatively comfortable first round, beating the No. 7 seed Portland Trail Blazers in five.<\/p>\n
LeBron James, at the age of 41 and in his 23rd NBA season, is headed back to the conference semis after leading the No. 4 seed Los Angeles Lakers to a six-game series win over the No. 5 seed Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n
The first round of the playoffs has not lacked for drama, with three series going to a Game 7. The NBA hasn’t featured that many first-round series going the distance since 2014, when four matchups extended to a seventh game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA has announced dates, times, and broadcast information for all four conference semifinals series. West: No. 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-645557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}