Eastern Conference Finals Preview: Cavaliers vs. Hawks - 3 things you need to know

For the fifth consecutive season and the seventh time overall, LeBron James is in the Eastern Conference Finals, continuing his role as the keeper of the east gate of the NBA Finals.

Some may have grown tired of the focus always falling on James but he remains the top story. After four finals appearances and two championships with the Miami Heat, James returned to his hometown team Cleveland Cavaliers, and anything short of a championship - one that escaped James in his last stint in Ohio and one that has escaped the Cavs for their entire existence - could be seen as a disappointment.

It's not going to be easy, not with the 60-22 Atlanta Hawks waiting, Kevin Love out for the season and Kyrie Irving banged up.

The Hawks have underwhelmed in the playoffs, continuing a second-half vale after one of the most impressive first-halves in recent memory. They needed six games to beat the uninspiring Brooklyn Nets and six more to beat a Washington Wizards team playing with a one-handed John Wall.

Cleveland, meanwhile, swept the Boston Celtics with ease and beat the Chicago Bulls in a hard-fought six-game series despite Irving playing with limbs dangling from his torso.

Here are three things you need to know about the series:

The health of Irving, and the Hawks' depth

Irving refused to miss time against the Bulls, save for his second-half absence with a lead in Game 6, and there may be no player whom the five-day layoff served better than the Cavs point guard.

Credit him for gutting it out and averaging 34.8 minutes in the series, but the Cavs need Irving to be at 100 percent moving forward. He averaged 17.5 points and 2.7 assists against Chicago while shooting 42.5 percent from the floor, and Jeff Teague represents a more difficult defender for Irving to spar against.

For his part, Irving has declared himself ready to go for Game 1 on Wednesday. Matthew Dellavedova needs to be ready for an extended run regardless, and the injuries to Love and Irving highlight a potential advantage for Atlanta in the series.

Depth generally matters less in the playoffs than the long slough of the regular season, but that thinking only extends outside of a team's top eight or nine rotation players. Even with Irving, the Cavs only comfortably run seven players deep, while the Hawks seem comfortable with as many as 10, depending on the matchup and who shows up to play that night.

Atlanta won't want to go too deep into their bench when Irving and James are on the floor, but the ability to lean on their reserves may prove significant if the series extends to six or seven games.

Guarding LeBron

Sure, James didn't win the MVP award this year, needed time off to rest a troublesome knee and generally declined like a human 30-year-old might rather than like his presumed cyborg brethren would.

But the league's best player has found an extra gear in the playoffs, averaging 26.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, 7.9 assists, 1.9 steals, and 1.6 blocks through 10 games. He's only shooting 42.4 percent and his jumper has abandoned him for stretches, but he's back to being the two-way terror everyone expects this time of year, especially when the situation has called for it most.

DeMarre Carroll is a solid wing stopper, though he's not quite Jimmy Butler, and Kent Bazemore is a game and active defender off the bench, if a little small for the James assignment. Paul Millsap and Kyle Korver could also see spot duty, each with their own strengths and disadvantages. Having Thabo Sefolosha would have helped a great deal, but, well, the NYPD.

There's no correct answer for how to guard James, and Atlanta relies heavily on team defense rather than any one individual shutting down an opponent. Atlanta's only allowing 98.2 points per-100 possessions, the second-best mark in the playoffs, so if anyone other than the Golden State Warriors juggernaut can slow James down - by no means a likelihood - it's probably the Hawks.

Does the regular-season series matter?

Cleveland caught Atlanta napping on Nov. 15 with a 127-94 thrashing, right before the Hawks caught fire. The Hawks would respond in-kind on Dec. 17 with a 127-98 victory, then follow up with two more (109-101 and 106-97).

That's a 3-1 regular-season win for the Hawks with a plus-13 differential. The Hawks also won seven more regular season games than Cleveland and had a higher margin of victory by nearly a full point.

The 82-game results don't necessarily reflect the current iteration of each team (ask the Toronto Raptors), and the Hawks declined on both ends late in the year while the Cavs surged. Love's injury confuses Cleveland's side of this some, but it's clear the Hawks weren't quite functioning at full capacity by the time April rolled around.

In part because Atlanta has cooled, 11-of-20 experts between ESPN and CBS have picked the Cavs to win. The Cavs are also -225 favorites in the series, an implied win probability of 69 percent. That 11-of-20 is closer to reality than 69 percent, but the point remains that a 3-1 mark and better full-season marks don't necessarily make the home team the favorite here.

Projected Starting Lineups