NBA Playoffs 2012 Bracket: Contenders with Toughest Road to Championship

The NBA playoff picture is nearly complete, giving us ample opportunity to highlight the toughest roads to the championship for the best teams in the game. 

Here is our ranking of the toughest schedules for contenders if the postseason bracket were to remain as it looks today.

These matchups are current to Wednesday afternoon, via official page at ESPN. You can check back there for a full and updated bracket. 

1. LA Lakers: 

That was easy. The hardest road to a title has to be for the boys from LaLa Land, a fantasy world where a viciously thrown elbow can be shrugged off as inadvertent. 

The Lakers, as of this writing, would face the Denver Nuggets in Round 1—a great matchup for them, if they had Metta World Peace. 

The defensive guru has been suspended for seven games, meaning he's out for the first six games of the postseason and making Denver that much more treacherous of a proposition. 

After that, they get the luxury of likely seeing the Thunder and then the Spurs. It doesn't look good for Hollywood. 

2. LA Clippers: 

We see the Clippers as having an outside chance at contending, but they have one of the toughest roads to the championship. 

They would as of now face the Grizzlies, a team that has the size in the front court to negate nearly all of the Clippers' advantages in the paint. 

After that, they would face off with the hottest team of the stretch run in the San Antonio Spurs. If the Clippers are going to shock us, they will have earned it. 

3. Miami Heat: 

I still like the Heat's chances, but a matchup with the NY Knicks wouldn't be nearly the cakewalk we've all envisioned.

The Knicks may have come up winless against the Heat this season, but they were rarely healthy. They are also a much improved team under Mike Woodson. 

This has all the signs of a six or seven-game slug fest. It only gets harder as the all-around solid play of the Pacers would be next—followed by the Bulls, a team the Heat are far from figuring out. 

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