As the NBA season is coming to an end, we have made some predictions and favorites for the NBA playoffs and finals. The team that is leading the Eastern Conference is the Miami Heat with an outstanding lead of (54-28); at the very bottom of their bracket is, sadly, the Toronto Raptors and the Cleveland Cavaliers with the same record of (40-37). 

Then in the Western Conference has the Phoenix Suns with a record of (61-21). At the bottom of the bracket is the New Orleans Pelicans with a record of (37-45). Both teams that are on the bottom are still struggling to make it to even be in the playoffs, so they try to continue to make big plays and make every game count. However, it’s slowly becoming a last-second move to win games, which is not working. The Pelicans try to persevere through the losses and try to look at better ways to keep going through the season.

But now that the MVP race is coming up, Nikola Jokic (The Denver Nuggets) and Joel Embiid (the 76ers) are top contenders with two weeks left in the season. 

Surprisingly, the Lakers’ LeBron James is nowhere to be seen for this year’s MVP race, even though I think it’s because the LA Lakers are not doing so good this year with the tenth seat in the Western Division. They might let go of Lebron if things get worse than they are now, but that also brings up the question: why isn’t Lebron doing so good this year with the Lakers? I think that’s because of the recent and ongoing injuries the team has been having to go through this year.

 This leads to the Lakers having trouble recovering and finding the motivation to win some of their games. That’s because they think they won’t be able to make it to the playoffs already, although they kind of lost hope in their abilities to win most of the time. It seems too late to make any big changes at the moment as of the rest of the team that looks like they’ll make it to the playoffs are having some difficulties with matchups.

For the most part, the teams all look good out there, but at the end of the day, the low-level teams are doing better than some of the best teams in the league and the bigger teams are having a hard time keeping it up.