Cavaliers vs Hawks-Winner take all.

    It's winner take-all from Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland as one team will face the Miami Heat and the other will have their season ended as the ninth-seeded Atlanta Hawks will visit the eighth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers.

The Hawks are playing the better basketball at the time and thumped the Charlotte Hornets in Atlanta 132-103 to advance to the final game.

The Cavaliers fell behind the Brooklyn Nets by twenty points at the end of the first quarter and despite playing competitively in the final three periods were unable to catch up to Brooklyn in a 115-108 defeat.

Cleveland had the better record in the regular season by one game (44-38 to 43-39) over Atlanta but it was the Hawks that won the season series between the teams, winning three of the four games with the two games in Cleveland being split between the two.

Cleveland is hoping to return Jarrett Allen for the contest and the team announced that Allen will be taking place in warmups in an attempt to see if the center will attempt to play.

This game is pretty simple to project.

The guard that plays better between Atlanta's Trae Young and Cleveland's Darius Garland will be more likely to win.

Young averaged thirty-one points in his four games against Cleveland this season and the Atlanta offense runs through the former Oklahoma star.

Garland has been the dominant focus of the Cleveland offense over the last month as the team limped into April with Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley out of the lineup.

Jarrett Allen's possible return would be a major help for Cleveland and I would think it would be as a defender that would see his largest impact.

Cleveland has had major problems protecting the basket in Allen's absence and the Cavaliers could use Allen in the paint to allow Evan Mobley to defend away from the basket and give a boost to a team that moved from a top ten team defensively to one in the bottom third since Allen's injury.

Atlanta only won sixteen road games this season and the homecourt could be huge for Cleveland.

Atlanta crushed Cleveland in their last meeting last month 131-107 and I can see either team winning this one.

The winner will not have long to celebrate as the victor will travel to Miami for game one of a seven-game series against the top-seeded Miami Heat.