This is an excerpt from The Buzzer, CBC Sports’ daily email newsletter. Get up to speed on what’s happening in sports by subscribing here.
The NBA exhibition, er, regular season is finally over. Now maybe we can set aside the endless debates about tanking, draft reform, injuries and load management that have dominated the discourse over the last several months and focus on some actual basketball. (Please?)
With that in mind, here are a few things for Canadian fans to follow in the post-season, which tips off tonight with the first two play-in games.
4 Canadians in the play-ins
First, a quick refresher on how the play-ins work.
The top six finishers in both the Eastern and Western Conferences earned a direct ticket to the 16-team playoff bracket. The teams that finished seventh through 10th will now battle for the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds in their respective conference. The seventh- and eighth-place teams play each other for the No. 7 seed, and the loser of that game faces the winner of the ninth vs. 10th matchup for the No. 8 seed.
The games take place tonight, Wednesday and Friday. In a perfect world, both 7 vs. 8 games would be tonight, then the 9 vs. 10 games on Wednesday and the final play-ins for the 8 seeds on Friday. That would make the most sense.
But God knows the NBA is not perfect, so instead we’re getting No. 9 Miami vs. No. 10 Charlotte and No. 7 Portland vs. No. 8 Phoenix tonight, followed by No. 7 Orlando vs. No. 8 Philadelphia and No. 9 Golden State vs. the No. 10 Los Angeles Clippers tomorrow night.
Two impact Canadian players will square off in the Phoenix vs. Portland game tonight at 10 p.m. ET. Gritty forward Dillon Brooks is the second-leading scorer for the Suns, averaging 20.2 points, while 22-year-old guard Shaedon Sharpe ranks second on the Trail Blazers with 20.8 points per game and leads the team in steals.
The other Canadians involved in the play-ins are the Miami Heat’s Andrew Wiggins (15.4 PPG) and the Clippers’ Bennedict Mathurin (17.4 for L.A. since arriving in a February trade with Indiana).
Raptors vs. Cleveland
After finishing a surprising fifth in the East to clinch their first playoff berth in four years, the Toronto Raptors (46-36) will travel to Cleveland for Game 1 of their best-of-seven series against the Cavaliers (52-30) on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET.
This is the first post-season matchup between the Raps and the Cavs since 2018, when LeBron James and company eliminated Toronto for the third straight year and swept them for the second time in a row. This inspired a couple of bold moves by then Raptors president Masai Ujiri. He fired Dwane Casey two days after Casey was named the NBA coach of the year (eventually replacing him with assistant Nick Nurse) and later traded popular leading scorer DeMar DeRozan to San Antonio for a disgruntled Kawhi Leonard. The rest, as you know, is history.
A lot changed for Cleveland too. After getting overpowered in the NBA Finals by Steph Curry and Kevin Durant’s Warriors for the second straight year, LeBron skipped town (again) to join the Los Angeles Lakers, sending the Cavaliers into the wilderness for several years. They finally re-emerged as a contender last year, going 64-18 to earn the top seed in the East. But Cleveland bowed out in the second round of the playoffs to Indiana.
The Cavs are led by high-scoring guard Donovan Mitchell, who topped the team in scoring (27.9 per game) and assists (5.7) this season, and they also feature a great young rim protector in centre Evan Mobley, the reigning NBA defensive player of the year. Cleveland got off to a sluggish start and went 0-3 against the Raptors, but the Cavs are 40-23 since their last meeting on Nov. 24. In early November, Cleveland acquired 36-year-old former MVP James Harden in a trade that sent much younger guard Darius Garland to the Clippers.
The Raptors also started slow, winning just one of their first five games before going on a stunning 13-1 run. They’re basically a .500 team since then, and they’ve struggled against strong competition. But Toronto drew a relatively favourable playoff opponent in Cleveland, which is the only top-10 overall team the Raptors had a winning record against this season.
Toronto’s return to the playoffs was fuelled in part by Brandon Ingram, the slender 28-year-old wing who is leading the team in scoring with 21.3 points per game. Acquired in a February 2025 trade with New Orleans, the oft-injured Ingram sat out the rest of that season with an ankle injury but has been surprisingly healthy since making his Raptors debut. He played in 77 of the team’s 82 games after averaging 55 in his first nine NBA seasons.
Toronto’s second-leading scorer is Canadian RJ Barrett, averaging 19.3 points. Versatile forward Scottie Barnes is having a strong season too, averaging 18.1 points while leading the team in rebounds, steals and blocks. He could get some votes for defensive player of the year, though the award is almost certainly going to Spurs sensation Victor Wembanyama.
SGA, OKC back to back?
Repeat champions used to be commonplace in the NBA. But no one has gone back-to-back since the Curry-Durant Warriors in 2018, who were also the last team to reach consecutive Finals. That’s apparently the way the owners want it, because the salary cap rules in the latest collective bargaining agreement make it harder than ever for teams to keep their stars together once they get past their rookie contracts.
However, the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder are good enough, and young enough, to reverse the trend. Led by Canadian superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who’s the front-runner to win his second straight MVP award, OKC once again finished with the best overall record and secured home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.
SGA’s MVP case isn’t quite as ironclad as last year, when he became just the fourth player in history (after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal) to win the scoring title and both the regular-season and Finals MVP awards in the same season. This year, Gilgeous-Alexander finished second in scoring (behind the Lakers’ Luka Doncic) as his average dipped from 32.7 points to 31.1 and he played eight fewer games. MVP voters also have wandering eyes, and right now everyone is enamored with the 22-year-old Wembanyama, a 7-foot-4 athletic marvel who sparked the Spurs to the league’s second-best record.
Having said that, Wemby played fewer games and far fewer minutes than SGA, who shot even more efficiently (a sparkling 55.3 per cent from the floor) than he did in his MVP season. The Canadian deserves to win it again.
Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder’s road to another championship begins on Sunday afternoon against the No. 8 seed in the West. In the second round, they’d face either Durant’s Houston Rockets or the LeBron-Luka Lakers, though Doncic is currently questionable for that series due to a hamstring injury. The Western final could see OKC face Wembanyama’s Spurs or three-time MVP Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets. Jokic averaged 27.7 points and became the first player ever to lead the league in both rebounding and assists.
Other Canadians to watch
Pesky guard Lu Dort was instrumental to the Thunder’s championship run last year, supplying tenacious perimeter defence along with the occasional three-pointer. But his starting role has diminished a bit this season, and this could be his last dance with the Thunder as the team can opt out of his $18 million US salary this summer and might choose to do so for cap purposes.
Jamal Murray is quietly having a great year with the Nuggets, averaging a career-high 25.4 points — second to SGA among Canadians. Jokic’s sidekick also enjoyed his healthiest season since his breakthrough performance in the 2020 Disney World bubble, playing 75 games. Denver, seeded third in the West, opens its series against Anthony Edwards and the No. 6 Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday afternoon.
SGA’s cousin Nickeil Alexander-Walker had a breakthrough season with Atlanta, averaging 20.8 points — tied with Sharpe for third among Canadians — in his first real shot as a full-time starter. The sixth-seeded Hawks play the No. 3 New York Knicks in the first round, beginning Saturday night at Madison Square Garden.
