Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Saint Francis; Francisco de Zurbaran; 1658-64

It’s fitting that the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers were both ejected from the NBA playoffs on the same night, by teams they came into the season well ahead of in any sort of rankings or analysis. These were considered to be the East’s top two challengers to the Boston Celtics, depending on how you rated the magical Miami Heat. The Sixers had the whole James Harden thing hanging over them but came roaring out of the gate with Tyrese Maxey looking like a top-2 guard in the East and Joel Embiid having raised the bar on his own MVP-caliber performance. The Bucks’ biggest questions were their new coach, Adrian Griffin, and the Jrue Holiday-Damian Lillard swap’s impact on the team defense. Those questions were answered in reverse order when the roster mutinied within weeks of the start of the season to revert to the Budenholzer-style defensive scheme under which they’d won a title, and later when Griffin was replaced with a very good record by Doc Rivers.

Problems solved for both teams?

Well, if they were, new and bigger problems arose. Embiid missed two months with a knee injury, sending the Sixers down into play-in territory. They went undefeated (8-0) after Embiid’s late, hobbled return, but still got stuck in the play-in on a three-way tiebreaker. This is cold comfort, though: had the Bucks beaten the Magic on the final day of the regular season, the Sixers would have escaped the play-in and been the sixth seed, facing off against the … No. 3 Knicks, who would have been bumped from No. 2 by the Bucks. This was inescapable. That bus ride up I-95 was inescapable. (I don’t know if they take a bus or a train or a plane. It’s a metaphor!) Jalen Brunson was inescapable...