Good post. Okay, so if either the Blazers or Hornets win, we have home court advantage. Given these scenarios, which one gives us the best path in the playoffs?
it's nice that both the rockets and spurs games will be over by the time we tip wed, so we'll know what's going on.
Does anyone know who has the Dallas/New Orleans tiebreaker? Also, care to take a guess about how Denver will play tomorrow? They have nothing to play for, right? Or do they? (aside from pride et al, I am talking seeding)
New Orleans. They won the season series vs. Dallas 3-1. I think they will play it like a normal game. They can guarantee themselves the #2 seed with a win.
Sorry, but this one is incorrect We would own the tiebreaker over the Spurs, giving us the 3rd seed. Divisional winners are only guaranteed a top FOUR seed, not 3 2-Den 3-PDX 4-SA 5-HOU
If we beat Denver and SA wins, there's a three-way tie at 2nd place. The first tiebreaker is division winners, so Denver and SA beat out Portland. Denver owns the tiebreaker over SA. 2. Denver 3. San Antonio 4. Portland 5. Houston
actually they have a huge thing to play for... IF houston wins. rockets hold the tiebreaker against them and could still bump them to #3, so if houston wins first (early game that should be over before our tip) the nuggets will be playing for homecourt advantage in the second round. if houston loses it's moot and they have nothing to play for but pride/momentum.
But Denver still has HCA even if they are bumped to 3rd - and they might even prefer it depending on whether they prefer to play NOH or DAL (NOH has the tie-breaker over DAL and will play the 3rd seed if they win the 6th seed over DAL). So I'm not sure DEN has such a huge thing to play for tomorrow.
not in the second round potentially. if the rockets bump them to 3 and both teams win their first round series they'd have to play the rockets in round 2 with the rockets having home court, which is something denver definitely does not want to have happen. so if the rockets win tomorrow denver will absolutely be interested in trying to win against us.
So if Utah beats LA tonight, and tomorrow the Blazers beat Denver, NO beats SA and GS beats Phx . . . then the Blazers are the 4th seed and have HCA, correct?
So of 8 possible scenarios, we play the Spurs 5/8, Houston 2/8, and the Hornets 1/8. 6/8 would give us home court advantage. Since both the Houston and San Antonio game will be at 5 tomorrow, we'll have a great idea of where we are before we even tipoff. If Houston wins, we automatically will play the Spurs - In 3/4 remaining scenarios we'd have homecourt. If San Antonio wins, we also need Houston to win so that we'd play the Spurs and not the Rockets. If Dallas & San Antonio both win, we automatically play Houston. I personally don't want that, so if Dallas wins, we need New Orleans to also win. I'd say the best-case scenario is having DAL, NOH, and POR win tomorrow, so we'd play NOH as a 3 seed and avoid LA if we made it to 2nd round. However, the 2 worst scenarios also involve DAL winning, so I'm going to root the most for HOU to win, and then just root for POR to win, if that makes any sense whatsoever...
I'd like to have the highest possible seed, but, call me crazy, I'm not so scared of the Lakers in the second round. They really did their best to win in Portland last week, kept the Blazers from playing their best game, and still lost. They'd have home court, but with the uneasy notion that if the Blazers could steal a game... At any rate, Portland would sure not be pushovers. Personally I'm more nervous facing Dallas, a lesser team that seems to have jinxed the Blazers this year, or Houston, with whom Portland does not match up well; the only win was on a Brandon Roy miracle shot. But first, win the first round!
another attempt at laying it all out http://www.nba.com/2009/news/features/04/14/scenarios0413/index.html
