Let’s take a look at the Heels playing for the Larry O’Brien trophy this year.
While the introduction of the Play-In Tournament changes the calculus a bit, the NBA Playoffs as we traditionally know them are set to start later today. Over the next two-ish months, the 16 teams remaining will be whittled down to one over the course of four best-of-seven rounds, concluding with the NBA Finals.
Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of North Carolina Tar Heels make deep runs in the NBA Playoffs. For one, a certain Michael Jordan exists, but even beyond him, there have been plenty of notable Heels have played notable roles on great NBA teams.
The discussion of why that isn’t quite the case at the moment is another whole topic for another whole day. While UNC doesn’t really have any alumni that will be in the MVP conversation this year, they do still have some players set to feature this postseason. Let’s run them down and see how their teams might fare.
The Tar Heel in the most prominent role for a playoff team currently is Cole Anthony. Just the other night in the first Eastern Conference Play-In Tournament game, Anthony played a big role in getting his Orlando Magic team the #7 seed to begin with. He led Orlando, coming off the bench with 26 points, including four three-pointers as they beat the Atlanta Hawks.
With Anthony does mostly come off the bench for Orlando, his 18.4 minutes per game still have him as a key part of their rotation. They’re also probably going to need him to produce some level of what he did against the Hawks if they want any chance of going even further.
In the first round, the Magic will be matched up against the #2 seed and reigning NBA champions, the Boston Celtics. Besides winning last year’s title, Boston won 61 games in the regular season this year. They go fairly deep on the bench too, meaning that Anthony will have to make his minutes count. It’s tough to see Orlando pulling off the upset, but stranger things have certainly happened. That series is set to open tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 PM ET.
With Coby White and his Bulls’ team falling to advance out of the Play-In Tournament, there’s actually only one other Tar Heel in the playoffs, and to be honest, they don’t have a massive role on their team.
Having only signed a couple of 10-day contracts before getting a deal through the rest of this season, Tony Bradley is currently with the Indiana Pacers, having started the season in the G-League. His per-36 numbers of 19.4 points and 13.4 rebounds are pretty solid, but he’s only gotten an average of 8.1 minutes in the 14 games he’s placed for the Pacers. Considering that teams tend to shrink their rotations in the playoffs anyway, it’s unlikely that Bradley will be a key piece of their rotation, but I guess we’ll see.
Indiana goes in as the higher seed, #4, than their first round opponent, the Bucks, but Milwaukee has Giannis Antetokounmpo, who could always just put a team on his back on his own. Indiana is the betting favorite in the series, but it very easily could go either way. That series will start today at 1:00 PM ET, playing the first game of the first round.
Best of luck to the Tar Heels competing in this year’s playoffs.
