Let’s take a look at the fight for the last few NBA playoff spots
For the first time since Michael Jordan’s last season as a Chicago Bull, the Eastern Conference playoff picture isn’t a complete embarrassment. The West ain’t bad, either.
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True to their namesake, the Indiana Pacers haven’t enjoyed/suffered through too many ebbs and flows this season, consistently remaining a few games about .500 while worryingly failing to close a series of close games out. They’ve stuck mostly in their own time zone of late, and the results are about what you’d expect – close losses to the Conference-leading Cavaliers and Raptors, takedowns in Washington, Milwaukee and at home against Boston with a tough blowout defeat in Atlanta mitigated by its role in handing San Antonio just its 11th loss of the season last week.
The Pacers are a half game up on Detroit for the seventh seed in the East, and Indiana has good reason to think positively about a playoff appearance. The team has several gimmie wins sprinkled out over its remaining nine games, including runs against the Knicks twice and Brooklyn twice. Home pairings against Chicago and Houston will present the Pacers with two reeling opponents, and next week’s game versus the Magic will hand Indiana yet another flummoxed opponent.
This is the reward for a rather rough schedule to date, because while this offensively-challenged group has trouble in fourth quarters, defense aptitude (and Indiana is ranked third overall) usually wins out.
Detroit’s on the opposite side of that trail.
The Pistons are decidedly mediocre in just about all fronts, a welcome jump for a fan base that hasn’t sniffed the playoffs since 2009. Still, the upcoming schedule is rather brutal. Detroit will take on eight current playoff teams over its next ten games, with the only holdouts being the Chicago Bulls (fighting, we think, for their own playoff spot) and a road game in Orlando that comes on the second night of a back to back.
The Pistons currently own the tie-breaker over those Bulls, but a loss to Chicago could change that. They’ve also already conceded the tie-breaker to Indiana.
Save for the season-long injury to Jodie Meeks the Pistons are at full strength, and the win-now move for Tobias Harris (nearly 16 points and six rebounds per game in 33 minutes as a Piston) has paid off, but finishing the season with nine out of ten opponents that either share your record or exceed it is never a fun way to end a playoff chase.
Chicago, frankly, never thought it would have to be in a playoff chase. The team was constructed to help down LeBron’s Cavaliers, with Pau Gasol’s season-opening block on LeBron James helping seal the sort of smug indifference that has marked its 2015-16 run. The Bulls are currently a game and a half back of Detroit after an inexcusable pair of losses to New York on Wednesday and Thursday, and though the team has 11 games to work through in order to make up ground, that might not be such a good thing for this gimpy outfit.
If you’re just showing up, Derrick Rose is about 80 percent of what he was pre-injuries (if you think that’s a diss, remember that this guy was an MVP and the best player on two teams that finished with the most regular season victories two years in a row). Pau Gasol missed Thursday’s game against New York with a sore right knee, and he’s looked quite stiff since the same knee forced him to miss action earlier this month. Jimmy Butler has clearly been cut down by his own knee sprain (one that the medically-indifferent franchise is allowing him to play through), and the squad has seven more road contests. The team does get to take on the Pistons and Pacers, though, before everything is through.
Washington, similarly, never thought it was supposed to be in this position. Not only was the team hoping to join Chicago and Toronto as the East’s greatest also-ran, the squad thought it had turned a corner by running a smaller lineup and encouraging more three-pointers to start the season. For a spell, things did work, but injuries and lackluster play got in the way of a successful turn. Washington is two and a half games in back of Detroit, out of the current bracket, and a game under .500.
The squad, finally healthy, has rallied of late: Washington peeled off a five-game winning streak (prior to a blowout loss to the Hawks) after a road trek left them at 30-35. Another road trip out to Pacific Time awaits, and though contests against the Lakers and Suns (or its upcoming home game against Minnesota) would seem like easy A’s, you never can tell with this team. Sadly, the Wizards’ final game of the year, against a Hawks team it recently split a home-and-home with, was probably scheduled in August with the understanding that it might act as the East’s No. 2 seed tie-breaker.
Out West, nobody expected the Portland Trail Blazers to be this good. We were assured that they would be competitive, no tanking here, and that the Terry Stotts-led outfit would be aesthetically pleasing, but for this group to be working at 37-35 and with the West’s No. 6 seed with 10 games to go (after, say it with me one more time, losing four starters over the offseason) is rather remarkable.
The team’s playoff status isn’t assured, the team is working its way through a 4-8 swoon with losses to Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Golden State and the Clippers acting as a figurative line in the Western sand. Portland has lost its tie-breaker with Dallas already but it’s in good shape in comparison to Houston and Utah, and future pairings against Philadelphia, Sacramento (twice), Minnesota and Denver will provide sound opportunities for padding wins.
Utah has done a remarkable job overcoming injuries this season, and clawing its way into the lower tier playoff battle most assumed they’d take part in. Following a loss to the Warriors on March 9 the Jazz had dug themselves a 29-35 hole but since then the team has peeled off a sound series of defensive-minded conquests. The addition of Shelvin Mack at point guard has given the team an unpredictable lead force, taking some of the burden off of a plantar fascia-suffering Gordon Hayward.
The group was handed its hat by the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday, but the future looks bright. Yes, the Warriors do await next week, but the Jazz get to play the Timberwolves and Lakers twice before school lets out, alongside games against the Suns and Nuggets. Later pairings with the Spurs and Clippers could find the Jazz pairing up against teams that are settled in their postseason ranking, and sitting starters.
Dallas’ biggest win over the year came in overtime against Portland on Sunday: Dirk Nowitzki dropped 40, the team stopped a 1-7 swoon, and at the time Chandler Parsons was only out with a bum hamstring. Parsons has since been ruled out for the season with right knee surgery, and the team had to give that win right back to the Blazers while in Portland on Wednesday. Substituting Parsons with more minutes for guards like Raymond Felton, J.J. Barea and forward Charlie Villanueva is, obviously, not ideal.
The team is in Golden State on Friday night, also not ideal, and just a half game up of the Utah Jazz for the final seed in the West. Though Dallas has games against the Knicks and Timberwolves to ease through as its year winds up, it will also have to take on types from Houston, Memphis, Utah, the Clippers and Detroit – all teams trying to firm up their postseason placement. Even San Antonio on a (presumed) rest game on the last night of the regular season might prove challenging.
We’re just assuming, at this point, that Houston puts together some kind of a run. That they get their semester in gear, that they start to turn in assignments, that they start playing defense and stop turning the damned ball over. The team has frittered away the majority of its regular season, acting as the least-interesting soap opera in all of pro sports. The Rockets currently stand tied with the Jazz for the last spot in the West, but things are about to get nasty.
“Nastier,” if we’re honest. Losers of three straight, the Rox have to play the Toronto Raptors at home on Friday. They’ll then travel to work against the Pacers and Cavaliers prior to home dates against the Bulls and Mavericks. A cupcake schedule – games against the Suns, Lakers, Timberwolves and Kings – awaits following that run, but by then it might be too late.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
