After winning 2021 Finals MVP and pushing Boston to seven games in the playoffs in 2022 without forward Khris Middleton, Antetokounmpo carried the Bucks to the league's best record by averaging 31.1 points on 55.3% shooting with 11.8 rebounds and 5.7 assists - the first player to put up those numbers since Wilt Chamberlain. This postseason is an opportunity for Giannis Antetokounmpo to further cement his legacy as one of the greatest players of his generation.

Giannis is ready after a dominating, yet disappointing, 2022 playoff run. Brook Lopez and Jrue Holiday each recorded their best seasons in a Bucks uniform, the team added Jae Crowder at the trade deadline without trading away any major rotation players, and Joe Ingles is shooting 40.9% from 3 in his return from a torn ACL. The Bucks won the championship in 2021, but players have called this year's team the deepest yet. The Lakers remade their roster at the deadline and finished with the NBA's second-best record after the All-Star break. 4 in the West, but it became a popular Finals pick after acquiring superstar Kevin Durant at the trade deadline. Meanwhile, no squads transformed their postseason outlooks better than the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers.

Boston cruised to the second-best record in the NBA behind All-Star wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown the Philadelphia 76ers, who boast the MVP favorite in Joel Embiid, weren't far behind in the Eastern Conference. Golden State, thanks to some bizarre home-road splits, snuck into the No. The defending champion Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics, the teams that battled in last season's NBA Finals, took drastically different roads back to the postseason. (Having MVP-caliber big men doesn't hurt, either.) 1-seeded Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets sure hope home-court advantage throughout the postseason helps. The NBA postseason is here, with 16 teams still fighting for the 2022-23 title.Īnd after a campaign of blockbuster trades, record scoring numbers, the end of a historic playoff drought and a wild race to the finish to decide play-in tournament seeding, who is going to win this thing?

Paul george stats in playoffs