So if San Antonio wins the division, they'll be 3rd, and we'd be taking on the Rockets without home court advantage. And looking at the schedule, it looks like San Antonio has a better chance to win their division, unfortunately. But if we can win the rest of our games, we still have a good chance at #4 with home court advantage.
It seems like that if we won't take over either HOU or SA record-wise and we tie with them, then we need HOU to be the division winner. The division between SA and HOU could very likely come down to one of the last tiebreaker criteria, winning% against eastern playoff teams, or something. Wow, just too many different scenarios...
If we win out we're guaranteed 4th seed. If SA and Hou both win out as well, Hou will have divisional title tie breaker as they have more wins vs conference playoff opponent. That would give us a tie with SA for 4/5 where we'd get the nod from head to head record. If only one of SA/Hou wins out then we are still 4th seed as divisional winner is tiebreaker before head to head record. So if we have a tie with SA, but they win their division, they get the nod. If both SA/Hou lose a game then we would have 3rd seed!
Well, we won't have the 3rd seed, but we'll get home court advantage against anyone but the Nuggets or Lakers. If we can just beat the Lakers, I think our chances of winning the rest of our games is very good. But still, I'm pulling for the Rockets to win and SA to lose, because I would not want a first round matchup with Houston without home court.
I just want the Blazers to take care of business and win their next three (vs. LAL, @ LAC, & vs. OKC), and for the Nuggets to get beat at home by the Sacramento Kings on Monday night. I know the Nuggets losing at home to the Kings isn't extremely likely to happen, but here's to hopin' like hell that it does! A one game showdown, winner takes the division (as well as, in all likelyhood, the #2 seed), in the last game of the season would be soooooooooooo bad-ass! I hereby summon all participating parties (BLAZERS, Lakers, Clippers, Thunder, Kings, & Nuggets) to make that shit happen!
We win 1 game and the lowest we can get is 5th place... that is simply amazing and I can't believe I just said that... I would have never imagined saying that before the year... this year (at least the end) is like a dream right now, I swear.
It's awesome. The closer we get to Wednesday, the less teams become relevant unless they have a chance to beat teams that still are. Phoenix, Utah... we no longer care about them. In fact, we want them to win out. Dallas and New Orleans will be next.
Utah's "era" as a power with Deron and Boozer seems to ending. Just as Dallas' short-lived era seems to have closed. They're likely to lose Boozer or Milsap in the off-season, so their outlook doesn't look great unless they start to make some really smart moves. Deron is a nice building block, though, so it's not all bad.
I'm rooting for New Orleans against Dallas tommorow. If they win, it will give them a 1 game lead + tie breaker. That will help their chances of landing the 6th seed. And since Portland has a very good chance of landing the 3rd seed, that's very good for us, so that we'll be playing New Orleans in the 1st round rather than Dallas. It also gets us out of the Lakers bracket. Denver could easily end up losing the series to Dallas, giving us a 2nd round matchup of Dallas with HCA. If things shake out right, we could be looking at a trip to the Western Conference Finals!
So as of right now (Monday morning) it goes like this: For 1st Seed Lakers (64-17) UTA... Have 1st locked up For 2nd through 5th Seed Nuggets (53-27) SAC, @POR... Have tie-breakers over Blazers and Spurs, but not over Rockets. Rockets (52-28) NOH, @DAL... Have tie-breakers over Blazers, Nuggets, and Spurs. Blazers (52-28) OKC, DEN... Have tie-breaker over Spurs, but not over Nuggets or Rockets. Spurs (52-28) @GSW, NOH... Have no tie-breakers. For 6th through 8th Seed Hornets (49-31) @HOU, SAS... Have tie-breaker over Mavericks, but not over Jazz. Mavericks (48-32) MIN, HOU... Have no tie-breakers. Jazz (47-33) LAC, @LAL... Have tie-breakers over Mavericks and Hornets. All 81st games are on Monday. All 82nd games are on Wednesday except UTA@LAL, which is on Tuesday. (edit): let me divide it this way. (edit2): merging Draco's information (records, remaining games, and dates). (edit3): updated for Monday.
If the bold is true then why does nba.com have the Spurs ahead of the Rockets when they are tied? If how they have it listed is true and Spurs, Rockets, and the Blazers remain tied we won't get HCS, correct?
