All signs point toward a brutal path after restart

A big advantage Sixers would have is a neutral site in any playoff series

The NBA is finalizing the details to complete a season unlike any other, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The owners approved a plan for 22 of the league’s 30 teams, including the 76ers, to play eight regular-season games in Orlando prior to the playoffs. The NBA added six teams not among the 16 that would qualify for the postseason because those clubs are within six games of the eighth seed in their conference. The other eight teams are out of luck.

Since the Sixers are 8 1/2 games ahead of the seventh-place Nets in the Eastern Conference with eight to go, they cannot end up any lower than sixth.

If they remain in sixth place, the Sixers would have to defeat the No. 3 Celtics in the first round, with the second-seeded Raptors and the NBAleading Bucks likely to follow in the East.

If the Sixers, who are tied with the Pacers (but Indiana holds the head-to-head tiebreaker), can move up one spot, they’d probably draw Jimmy Butler and the Heat in the best-of-seven opening round. In the second scenario, they’d encounter Milwaukee in the conference semifinals.

While avoiding the Bucks as long as possible would figure to be best for Brett Brown and the Sixers, they’re going to have to win four of seven against good teams to advance no matter what. To get to the NBA Finals, they’d almost surely have to get past Milwaukee.

One advantage in this year’s playoff setup for the Sixers is all games will be played at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando. They wouldn’t have had homecourt advantage if it had been a regular postseason.

Assuming the 39-26 Sixers play the next eight games on their original regular-season schedule, not counting the eight teams whose regular seasons are over, Philly would face the Pacers, Wizards, Raptors, Suns, Trail Blazers, Rockets, Wizards again and Magic in Orlando.

Since not all teams will play the same number of games, the league will determine playoff seeding based on winning percentage. And the league is expected to conduct the postseason by determining Eastern and Western Conference champions, rather than seeding all teams from 1-16 regardless of conference, as it had considered.

The timetable is reportedly for teams to begin training camps June 30, with regular-season games beginning July 31 in Orlando, followed by the playoffs August 18 after potential play-in games for the eighth seed(s). The NBA Finals would conclude no later than Oct. 12, and the draft and free agency would occur 4 1/2 months after they normally do.

The 2020-21 training camps are projected to open in mid-November and then the regular season would start in early December. It remains to be seen how much next season will be shortened

from 82 games and/or extended beyond the customary mid-June end of the NBA Finals.

I hope play-in games are only a one-time thing. Do we really need teams 10 games under .500 getting a shot to secure the eighth seed when 16 of the 30 clubs already reach the postseason? Playing 63 to 67 games, as every team had done prior to the March 11 suspension of the season, should be a pretty good barometer of teams’ caliber.

It remains to be seen how the next four months will play out in the NBA or if any of these ideas will turn out to be anything more than adapting to an unprecedented situation.

For the Sixers, just like every other team, it’s pretty simple — just win, baby.