First, a quick update: Last week I profiled a team from the potential lower seeds in the Eastern Conference (the Milwaukee Bucks) that I thought had a legitimate shot at upsetting one of the top seeds. Since that post went up the Bucks have dropped two close games on the road against Eastern playoff teams (Cleveland and Charlotte) and lost their starting center, Andrew Bogut, for the remainder of the season. Bogut suffered a pretty horrific injury (broken hand, sprained wrist AND dislocated elbow? OUCH) on Saturday night in a win against Phoenix, one of the hottest teams out West (the loss snapped a ten game winning streak). It goes without saying that what I wrote last week changes significantly without Bogut, since he anchors their D in the paint and is also having the best offensive season of his career. They no longer look like as much of a threat in the first round, but that issue will be addressed by me in full once the regular season concludes and the playoff matchups are set.
This week it seems only fair to turn our attention out West, where an insanely tight playoff race should make for some marvelous first round matchups. I decided that it doesn’t really make sense to profile a single team poised to spring a first round upset, because honestly the top 8 in the West are so strong that literally any team has a real shot at winning a playoff series this year, especially with the Lakers sputtering a bit down the stretch. Remember when I mentioned last week that seeds two through eight in the West were separated by only four games? Yeah, make that THREE.
Granted there are only five games left to play for most of these teams, but one can certainly expect some serious jumps in seeding over the last ten days of the regular season. Currently Dallas, Denver, Utah and Phoenix all have identical 50-27 records, which is insane this late in the season. With the Lakers sitting pretty 5 games up in the standings, this means that one of these four teams will actually miss out on home court advantage in the first round, not even considering the fact that Oklahoma City is only 1 1/2 games back and could score home-court themselves.
Ignoring the latter scenario for a moment, it appears that Denver is a likely candidate to slip down to fifth. Three of their last five games are at home, however none of them are gimmes. The weakest opponent left on the schedule is the Memphis “Eastern Conference Playoff Team” Grizzlies, and they also have to play the Lakers and the surging Spurs on top of two tough roadies in OKC and Phoenix. Phoenix has a similarly treacherous schedule down the stretch (home against San Antonio, Houston, and the aforementioned Nuggets, away at OKC and Utah), however the Suns are playing much better than Denver at the moment (not even taking into consideration the whole George Karl situation…get well soon Furious George), so look for them to host Denver in the first round.
Now that college basketball season is almost finished (Go Cardinal!), I will definitely be watching closely to see how this jumbled playoff picture sorts itself out. Whatever the outcome, it certainly should be entertaining to watch. Now if only I had cable…
-The BOMB
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