2025 NBA Playoffs Preview - Eastern Conference
X's & O's preview for the 2025 NBA Eastern Conference Playoffs.
X’s & O’s Teams To Watch
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavs under first year coach Kenny Atkinson had the most efficient offense in the NBA in what has been one of the most impressive head coaching takeovers since Steve Kerr and the Warriors and Budenholzer and the Bucks. I broke down a key action for the Cavs offense with their “Push” action off ball movement.
Boston Celtics
The Celtics do the best (or 2nd best if you are an OKC fan) of getting the right players in the wrong spots. They hunt the opponents weakest defenders at every chance they get, taking normal offensive actions and tweaking them to attack weak defenders.
For example - here they run their normal empty ballscreen offense that creates drop coverage with the big spaced on the opposite wing, just watch Capela in this clip.
Now they take that same offensive action but instead put Jrue Holiday opposite since the Lakers put Luka on him. Jrue becomes a rolling big behind the help and creates easy scoring chances.
Then if they know you are going to switch they run basic Horns action and have Tatum as the first screener, getting the weaker player switched onto Tatum and then going into a ballscreen. The true IQ of Tatum is shown in this clip as he knows the Cavs are going to switch the next ballscreen with Niang on Porzingis so he doesn’t even attack off the ballscreen and instead waits for Allen to look to kick Garland out and fires a quick pass for the corner 3.
NY Knicks
The Brunson/KAT pick-and-roll is one of the hardest actions to guard in the NBA and will give teams plenty of headaches in the postseason. It all starts with the threat of the KAT pick and pop 3.
Obviously the threat of him stretching out the floor opens up opportunities for KAT to attack closeouts in 5-out spacing as well.
Teams will typically try to “Veer Back” switch on this action, but then this leaves KAT with a smaller wing that was Brunson’s primary defender and he can use his size to his advantage.
Teams that play aggressive to get the ball out of Brunson’s hands means the Knicks will get the ball out early and KAT will find space either on the short roll or rolling into space playing 4 on 3.
If teams switch, good luck keeping up with Brunson in ISO, he will usually have the advantage even against teams that put wings on KAT.
Teams worry about the pop so often that Brunson has downhill driving lanes with the other teams rim protector pulled out into space:
Series Notes & Thoughts
Cavs vs Miami Heat
Cavs vs Miami Heat zone defense feels like the main way the Heat have a chance to make this series competitive.
The Cavs have faced Zone defense only 2% of the time but did rank 7th in PPP against it. Miami has played the most zone in the NBA (again) playing it 15% of the time - only allowing 0.97 PPP. Miami always is one of the best gameplan teams under Spoelstra and their zone defense gives teams problems often in the postseason.
A thought looking forward - is the Cavs rebounding a weakness? They rank 24th in defensive rebounding %, giving up 29.2% OREB per game, possibly one of the few areas the Cavs have struggled in, but the Heat are almost dead last in OREB%, so it is something I am noting for future playoff series.
Celtics vs Magic
The Celtics “Smart-Switching” strategy always pays dividends but it goes to another level when teams have clear weak spots and this is the biggest area of concern for the Magic.
The Orlando Magic have 26th best offense in the NBA. Right behind the Raptors and above New Orleans. Orlando is the worst 3 point shooting team in the NBA at 32% going against a Boston team that takes the most 3s (50% of shots) and shoots 37%.
There really isn’t too much more to say about this series. Can the Magic get Paolo going vs some of the smaller Celtics and can they hit enough 3’s to stay in some of these games…but reality is the Celtics are way more consistent on offense than the Magic.
Knicks vs Pistons
The Knicks vs Pistons is a series that is intriguing because of Cade Cunningham, but I don’t think Detroit has enough talent this year to compete with the Knicks. We looked at the Brunson/KAT ballscreen and I am not sure the Pistons have any answers good enough but on the other side of the ball they have at least 2-3 bodies they can rotate on Cade.
It may not work because Cade seems awfully comfortable against the Knicks defense, but at least the Knicks seem like they have solutions for to try against Cade but the Pistons I am not sure how they guard the Knicks.
Both teams rebound the ball in the top 10 of both offense and defensive rebounding so no real advantage either way and they both shoot almost the same frequency and accuracy from 3 point land.
Detroit likes to get out in transition more than New York does, so that seems like a key stat to look for in this series to see if the Pistons can generate easier scoring chances and possibly wear on the heavy minutes in Thibs rotation.
Pacers vs Bucks
Giannis vs anyone on the Pacers is a mismatch…Feels like the Pacers are all of a sudden good on defense, can they do that against Giannis? Will Dame return and what will that look like? The biggest concern for the Pacers is Giannis spends 6 games doing this to them:
Biggest question for me is can Giannis solve the early game 1 and 2 to steal one until Dame gets back, and can the Bucks hit enough shots for it to really unlock what he can do against this Pacers team. The problem for the Bucks - Can the lineups with the best shooters for the Bucks also defend?
This series is a weird Strengths match scenario because the Bucks do not offensive rebound (worst in the NBA) and the Pacers have struggled at times against teams that can rebound their own misses. The Pacers never turn the ball over (3rd in the NBA) but the Bucks seem to not care about creating turnovers (27th in the NBA in turnover %).
To me the main battle seems to be pace. Last year the Pacers were an insanely fast paced team and although that has slowed down somewhat (20% of poss in transition this year compared to 26% last year) it still has an opportunity to win in transition and early offense for the Pacers since the Bucks clearly have no interest in a fast paced game.
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