The 2016-17 NBA season is finally over. For those of you who can't stand the monotony and the grind of the 82-game regular season (you know who you are), it's finally time to enjoy basketball again.That's right, it's time for the playoffs.Of course, the NBA's second season is a grind all in its own. While we're finally getting games that feel like they mean something, we'll be getting a lot of them. The playoffs kick off this Saturday. The Finals won't kick off until the beginning of June.This is because 16 of the league's 30 teams are in the postseason, with eight from each conference. Here, we're going to examine the teams, the tournament and the odds for opening weekendcourtesy of OddsShark.com. We'll also examine some of the latest storylines heading into the playoffs.The TeamsOpening WeekendFirst Round SchedulePlayoff FormatThe NBA playoffs consist of a four-round elimination tournament bracket, with the last roundthe NBA Finalspitting the remaining Eastern Conference team against the remaining Western Conference team. The eight teams in each conference are seeded from No. 1 to No. 8. In typical tournament format, the No. 1 seed plays the No. 8 seed in the opening round, the No. 2 seed plays the No. 7 seed and so on.In the second round of the tournament, the winner of the No. 1 vs. No. 8 matchup will face the winner of the 4-vs-5 matchup. The winner of 5-vs-6 faces the winner of 2-vs-7. These are the same pairings in each conference.There is no reseeding in the tournament. The third round is the conference finals.Each round of the tournament is a best-of-seven series. Home court for each series follows a 22111 format. This means the team with home-court advantage hosts the first two games, then is on the road for two, then home-away-home. Unlike in many other sports, home-court advantage in each round does not belong to the higher-seeded team, but instead to the team with the better regular season record.Latest BuzzCavaliers Lose Top Seed, Remain ConfidentThe defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers won't hold the Eastern Conference's No. 1 seed this year. The team was edged out by the Boston Celtics, who finished the season two games ahead of Cleveland with a 53-29 record.The Cavaliers also slumped to end the season, losing their final four games in a row. However, this hasn't done anything to drain confidence from LeBron James and Co."We have a good chance to win it all," James said, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN.com. "But it starts with baby steps first, and we understand that. It starts with our opponent in two days. We have to be very determined, but we also have to be very smart about our game plan and how we execute that game plan."James hasn't missed an NBA Finals in the past six years, so he has every reason to believe in his team.Cleveland Could be in Trouble, ThoughAt least, this is what some are thinking heading into the playoffs, because the Cavaliers weren't that impressive down the stretch in the regular season. The players looked tired, their defense was nonexistent, and the team lost nine of its final 15 games.A prediction model at fivethirtyeight.com gives Cleveland just a 2 percent chance of winning the finals this year."It's becoming harder and harder to ignore what Cleveland's play might mean for the Cavs' chances of repeating as champs," Chris Herring of fivethirtyeight.com wrote during Cleveland's slump last month. "This may be the weakest LeBron team we've seen this late in a season since his finals streak began in 2011."Of course, the betting odds don't really suggest this. The money line over at OddsShark.com has the Cavaliers at +333, second only to the Golden State Warriors.New Warriors, New ChallengeThe new-look Warriors had their ups and downs this past season. Adding Kevin Durant to the mix of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green seemed to mess with the team's chemistry just a bit in the early season, but the issues were eventually buffed out.While Golden State wasn't able to match its record win total from last year, the team still finished with the best record in the NBA, 67-15.Now, though, this super team has to test itself against playoff competition. Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com recently explained why the postseason could bring out the team's flaws:The main reason the Steph/KD duo hasn't wowed quite the way many had expected is probably that both prefer to be the ball handler in pick-and-rolls. That has been an issue in crunch time, but given this team's overwhelming quality, there hasn't been much crunch time to endure this season.The postseason will assuredly bring on crunch time. Margins tend to narrow as teams grab and hold the Warriors' off-ball attack in a playoff crucible that allows more contact.Of course, it's difficult at this point to see anyone in the postseason actually knocking off the Warriors in a seven game series. Not only did the team lead the league in scoring (115.9 points per game) but it ranked 11th in scoring defense with 104.3 points per game allowed.
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