Bradley Beal says Cavaliers didn’t want to see Wizards in playoffs

The Cavaliers had a mysterious drop off in their play late in the season that led to the number two seed in the East, and Bradley Beal has an interesting theory.

The Washington Wizards gave the top-seeded Boston Celtics a run for their money in the Eastern Conference semifinals, with the opportunity to play the Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference finals on the line. However, Bradley Beal thinks it should’ve played out differently.

The Celtics took control of the top seed very late in the regular season from the Cavaliers, after the defending champions had a dramatic drop off from their early season success. Beal seemed to have an interesting thought about why this happened, and shared it with the world on Thursday.

In an interview with CSN Mid-Atlantic a few days after the Wizards lost Game 7 to the Celtics, Beal said that the Cavaliers were avoiding the Wizards in the playoffs, and that’s why they dropped down to the lower seed.

“Cleveland didn’t want to see us,” Beal said in the interview. “I always said that. I felt like that’s the reason they didn’t play us in the second round. They didn’t want to see us in the second round. If they were going to go down, they were going to go down in the conference finals. They didn’t want to go down in the second round.”

The Wizards took two of the three games they played against the Cavaliers in the regular season, so Beal’s theory does have some backing to it.

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The Cavaliers ended up landing the second seed, which led to a matchup with the Toronto Raptors in the conference semifinals after bullying the Indiana Pacers in the first round. The Cavaliers easily swept the Raptors, and advanced with some rest to the conference finals.

However, to risk not having home-court advantage in the conference finals is a big one to take given the circumstances, and it seems way too elaborate to actually happen.