Let's check in on the playoff races
Good morning. The West playoff race is tighter than John Stockton's shorts. The East has a fun race, too. And the West play-in battle is super depressing and will result in fans in three NBA cities having nubs for teeth by mid-April. Let's basketball.
In the West, the Thunder have clinched the No. 1 seed by acclamation. The next seven teams could all theoretically finish as high as No. 2 or as low as No. 8. It's quite unlikely that the Rockets will finish lower than No. 4 or the Warriors, Wolves or Clippers will finish higher than No. 5. But for now, it's all possible.
Here's a snapshot table of where we're at. "Hard games" are games against top-8 teams in the West or top-6 teams in the East. Remember: the top five teams here advance straight to the playoffs. The last two teams face off to become the No. 7 seed. The loser of that game faces the winner of the Grotesque Lower West Play-In Game for a chance to be the No. 8 seed and face OKC in Round 1.
The best Southwest (Houston or Memphis) and Pacific (Lakers, Warriors, Clippers) teams above will end their division and thus win any 2-2 tiebreaker over a non-division winner. This is mostly like to matter for Nuggets-Lakers.
Should we sum up the Grotesque Lower West Play-in Game race? Okay, fine.
Dallas needs to stay one win ahead of the other two teams on account of it losing its tiebreakers when Anthony Davis was out. Sacramento leads Phoenix 2-1 in their season series, so if the Kings are one game behind the Suns going into April 13, a win gets them (the Kings) over. Two of these teams will make the play-in, which will be incredibly cold comfort, but comfort over the team that misses out all the same.
Let's turn to the East. Cleveland is basically assured the No. 1 seed. Boston is basically assured the No. 2 seed. New York is basically assured the No. 3 seed. Let's turn to the 4-5-6 race.
Indiana is in great position to claim No. 4, which means a series against one of these teams instead of a top-3 team. Milwaukee is in hell right now without Damian Lillard, but the schedule is kind: the Bucks face the Wolves next week and have two games against Detroit to close the season. Those should determine who gets the Pacers and who gets the Knicks.
I'm not breaking down the East play-in race because we know which four teams will participate (the Hawks, Magic, Heat and Bulls). None of the four are likely to break into the top six (unless Milwaukee goes completely off the rails against non-playoff teams here) and it's basically impossible for any of the four to slip down to No. 11. It's also impossible to know which versions of these teams will show up in the actual play-in games. That tournament will be a true toss-up situation!
There we go. I'll update the important races every day or so. I'll also be posting them on BlueSky (follow me here) if you want to engage on the social web.
Scores
Heat 120, Wizards 94 | Box Score
Clippers 96, Magic 87 | Box Score | Orlando's starting backcourt (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cory Joseph yes 33-year-old Cory Joseph has 11 starts for the Magic this season) went 5/5 from deep. The rest of the Magic went 2/21. Orlando is shooting 31.2% from deep this season. That's the lowest mark for a team in the past 11 seasons. Let's put it this way: Draymond Green is a career 32% three-point shooter. Ja Morant is a career 31.3% three-point shooter.
Kings 109, Pacers 111 | Box Score | Huh, turns out that despite having high-usage wings DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine and a point-center in Domantas Sabonis, the Kings could still use a nominal point guard to organize the offense late in games so they aren't stuck watching (mostly) DeRozan attack every single possession. Also, Domantas Sabonis seems worn out – I'm not sure he's ever looked worse on defense when he gets hunted and pulled to the perimeter. And yet: he had 25-16 and is certainly the team's best player.
I'm not a Rick Carlisle partisan by any stretch, but watching what Indiana was doing late vs. what Doug Christie was doing ... sheesh.
The DeRozan experience is so odd, really unlike anything I've ever experienced as a Kings fan. It feels like the last scene of ROGUE ONE. A beautiful doom.
Jazz 106, Hornets 110 | Box Score | The Jazz have lost 60 games for the first time in franchise history. (They lost 59 in their debut NBA season in New Orleans.) Congratulations?
Celtics 117, Grizzlies 103 | Box Score | Boston is ridiculously good. Perhaps as good as last season. Nothing in the past month has indicated that the Celtics are worse than last year, when they tromped through the playoffs. Truly, it seems like the only thing that can stop them are improvements from their foes.
Memphis hung in for a long time, and Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr. looked good. Tough time for Tuomas Iisalo to take over a team.
Bulls 117, Thunder 145 | Box Score | Speaking of teams that are ridiculously good. Ten straight wins. They'll need to finish the regular season on a 17-game winning streak to hit 70 wins. I am not ruling it out.
Nets 113, Mavericks 109 | Box Score | Brutal loss for Dallas. But hey, they are just meeting the energy that Phoenix and Sacramento are bringing. Spencer Dinwiddie biffed a rotation on defense and missed the go-ahead three. Klay Thompson missed a go-ahead three. The Nets do not care one iota about lottery positioning.
Rockets 98, Lakers 104 | Box Score | If you have any fears about Houston's offense in crunch time in a playoff environment, the last few minutes of this game won't do much to quell those. Ime Udoka kept Jalen Green on the bench and the other Rockets simply couldn't generate good looks against a Lakers defense that should be shreddable but sometimes just ... isn't.
The teams combined to shoot 4/15 from the floor in the final five minutes. Houston's defense is nasty, even when you have weapons like Luka Doncic and LeBron James. Houston's offense can be nasty in a different way, too. They are No. 11 overall on the season, but their clutch offense is No. 19 in 157 minutes.
Schedule
All times Eastern. Important games get asterisks.
Blazers at Hawks, 7:30
Sixers at Knicks, 7:30
Suns at Bucks, 7:30, TNT**
Magic at Spurs, 8
Raptors at Bulls, 8
Warriors at Grizzlies, 8***
Timberwolves at Nuggets, 10, TNT***
Alright, that's Tuesday! Be excellent to each other.
