Forecast: East playoffs, first round

We asked our ESPN Forecast panel who would prevail in Round 1 of the Eastern Conference playoffs, and the voters appear to value the teams with more playoff experience.

The panel sees higher seeds Indiana, Miami and Chicago moving on to the next round. But it also sees an upset brewing in the 3-6 matchup, predicting the veteran Nets to upset their division rivals from Toronto in six games.

How it works: The ESPN Forecast panel predicted each team's likelihood of winning each of the seven potential games, and each team's likelihood of winning the series. The overall prediction is based on a combination of the mean, median and mode of the predictions for each series.

Check out the ESPN Forecast results below (and click here for our West forecast):

(1) Pacers vs. (8) Hawks
	ESPN FORECAST Pacers in 5
PACERS Win in 4: 15.1% | Win in 5: 27.5% | Win in 6: 20.4% | Win in 7: 19.6% HAWKS Win in 4: 1.6% | Win in 5: 3.3% | Win in 6: 7.3% | Win in 7: 5.1%

(2) Heat vs. (7) Bobcats
	ESPN FORECAST Heat in 5
HEAT Win in 4: 29.2% | Win in 5: 36.0% | Win in 6: 17.8% | Win in 7: 11.8% BOBCATS Win in 4: 0.3% | Win in 5: 0.8% | Win in 6: 2.4% | Win in 7: 1.6%

(3) Raptors vs. (6) Nets
	ESPN FORECAST Nets in 6
RAPTORS Win in 4: 5.6% | Win in 5: 13.4% | Win in 6: 13.9% | Win in 7: 17.1% NETS Win in 4: 6.6% | Win in 5: 11.5% | Win in 6: 17.5% | Win in 7: 14.4%

(4) Bulls vs. (5) Wizards
	ESPN FORECAST Bulls in 7
BULLS Win in 4: 9.1% | Win in 5: 19.9% | Win in 6: 16.9% | Win in 7: 21.6% WIZARDS Win in 4: 3.5% | Win in 5: 6.8% | Win in 6: 13.3% | Win in 7: 8.9%

ESPN Forecast: Western Conference predictions »