The NBA playoffs are here!

Good morning. WELCOME TO THE PLAYOFFDOME. Let’s basketball.

WHAT’S ON: First thing’s first, here’s the Saturday playoff schedule.

Pacers at Raptors, 12:30 p.m. ET, ESPN
Rockets at Warriors, 3:30 p.m., ABC
Celtics at Hawks, 7 p.m., ESPN
Mavericks at Thunder, 9:30 p.m., ESPN

YOOO: Mike Prada popped out 36 weird tricks playoff teams pull out. Check them out and then watch for them this weekend. Just some great, neat-o observations.

PREDICTIONS? ALRIGHT: Here’s my big predictions post for the whole shebang. Yep, I picked Cleveland. The TL;DR rationale is that the West is going to wear Golden State down and LeBron’s subweet campaign against Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving has worked. There are better theories out there, I know ...

STEPH IS AMAZING, IN CHARTS: This Rodger Sherman/Mark Hinog collab charting Steph Curry’s absurd 402-three season is great.

KOBE: Jake Appleman on life and basketball in the time of Kobe. Excellent read.

THE CIRCLE OF TRUST: Interesting piece from longtime Lakers writer Mike Bresnahan on how his relationship with Kobe has changed over 12 years.

NO BOSH. :-(

HISTORY: Ezekiel Kweku on watching the Warriors accomplish 73.

MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK: Ethan Sherwood Strauss on how the Warriors feel about the concept of luck.

WOE BOY: The salary cap next season will be $92 million. That’s a 31 percent increase over this season. Holy smokes.

DANG WOLVES: The team with the longest active playoff drought in the NBA will sit down with Tom Thibodeau and Jeff Van Gundy, the two top coaching free agents.

UH OH: Rockets franchise owner Leslie Alexander will be more involved on the basketball side this offseason. He’s universally considered one of the better governors to work for, however.

HE REALLY LOVES COACHING: George Karl is apparently sitting down for an interview for the suddenly open UNLV job.

WHERE THE NBA (AND STEPH) STAND ON THE HORRIFYING PRO-DISCRIMINATION LAW IN NORTH CAROLINA.

REPORT CARDS: I enjoyed these team-based report cards from False Hypothesis.

MAN: John Wall didn’t have his best season, but he’s not the reason Washington missed the playoffs. He’s taking the lost season extremely hard.

EVERYTHING’S COMING UP KANGZ: The tiebreakers for the NBA draft order were broken on Friday. The biggest upshot: the Kings won a three-way tiebreaker to land at No. 8 heading into the lottery, basically eliminating the odds Chicago gets their pick (which happens if it’s not top-10).

LINSIGHTFUL: Jeremy Lin is a really good teammate as he penned a Reddit post shouting out each of his teammates. There are some really funny observations in there, like how loud Al Jefferson talks and how Aaron Harrison reacted to jokes with a stone face.

SURE: Steven Adams Moustache Wax, anyone?

NICE: Isaiah Thomas’ love letter to Boston.

PLAYOFFS! Happy Saturday. See you next time.