Welcome to the first game of the playoffs: Phoenix at Utah.
The Suns and Jazz play Tuesday, and the winner will almost certainly be the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Utah has a slight chance with a loss, actually, but would need Phoenix to lose at home to San Antonio's backups on Wednesday while the Jazz beat Portland on Thursday. If the Jazz win, they clinch.
Alas, Phoenix has a much bigger problem on Tuesday in Utah. The Suns will likely be without Grant Hill and Channing Frye, while Utah has the opposite situation: Their injuries have actually helped them. The Jazz spent half the season sabotaging themselves by giving heavy minutes to veteran deadwood like Raja Bell and Josh Howard before injuries to both cleared the way for Gordon Hayward, Alec Burks and C.J. Miles to play the wings.
Phoenix's one shot is zone defense. According to Synergy, Utah ranks 29th in points per play against zones, and the Suns have been a fairly common user of zone defenses this season. The Suns have also beaten the Jazz twice this season already, so a win wouldn't be unprecedented. Nonetheless, the odds are against them.
As for the Spurs, they can "play God" on Wednesday if the Suns win Tuesday, as they could probably beat Phoenix by playing their starters. I suspect San Antonio would prefer Phoenix to Utah; the Spurs don't deal as well with brutish frontcourts and hardly ever play zone. So look for heavy doses of James Anderson and Cory Joseph in Phoenix on Wednesday.
Here's how the rest of the year-end races are shaping up:
Boston will be the No. 4 seed in the East but may not have home-court advantage
Due to the incredible confusion on this topic, I'm reiterating for the masses: If Atlanta has a better record than Boston, the Hawks have home-court advantage in the first round, even if Boston is seed No. 4 and Atlanta is No. 5. The Celtics would get the higher seed by virtue of winning the Atlantic Division, while the Hawks will finish behind Miami in the Southeast. This is how the NBA has always done things; regardless of seed, the team with the better record always gets home court.
Right now, the Hawks lead the Celtics by a game but have a tough finish (home games against the Clippers and Mavs); Boston plays Miami on Tuesday before finishing against Milwaukee on Thursday. The odds favor Atlanta a bit, but the Clippers are the most likely of the four opponents above to play their starters and go for a win.
This is actually not the only scenario in which a lower seed can have home-court advantage, although the others are highly unlikely. For instance, if a conference's best four records were from the same division, the No. 6 team would have home-court against the No. 3 in the first round, and against the No. 4 in a conference finals.
And if the conference's best five records were all from the same division, you could have a No. 7 with home court against No. 3 in the second round and against No. 4 in the conference finals. Finally, if you had a truly awful division winner that somehow advanced to the second round, you could have a No. 8 with home-court advantage against a No. 4 in the second round and a No. 6 or No. 7 with home-court advantage against the No. 4 in the conference finals.
Home court for the Finals
San Antonio and Chicago both have 16 losses, but the Bulls own the tiebreak and seem much more inclined to sprint through the tape than San Antonio. Chicago's game in Indiana on Wednesday night becomes much easier now that the Pacers are locked into the No. 3 seed and will rest their key players, and the Bulls close with a home game against Cleveland.
San Antonio needs just one win or one Miami loss to assure it of home-court advantage in a Finals against the Heat; the season finale against the Golden State Oil Tankers should assure the Spurs of that.
As for a Heat-Thunder Finals, Oklahoma City has the tiebreaker, but the two are tied at 18 losses. Bad news for Nuggets fans, as the Thunder may try to play their stars (sans James Harden) on Wednesday to claim that advantage, provided they beat Sacramento on Tuesday and Miami also beats Boston. Miami seems much more inclined to rest key players, however, and the Celtics won't be a walkover. The Heat's season-ender in Washington on Thursday won't be a gimme either; the Wiz have won six of eight.
I should also point out that Chicago hasn't clinched the East's No. 1 seed yet. The Bulls need one more win or a Miami loss to do so. If the Bulls drop their final two games and the Heat win both, the Heat will be the East's No. 1 seed by virtue of a better conference record.
Finally, in the really reaching department, Indiana has clinched home-court advantage in a Finals against either L.A. team.
Knicks the key to the East
New York can finish sixth, seventh or eighth, although seventh seems far more likely than the others. Philly is tied with New York at 34-30 but loses the tiebreaker and has already announced it will rest Elton Brand, Andre Iguodala and most likely Lou Williams in the final two games; pencil the Sixers in for eighth.
And New York can move up to sixth with two wins and two losses by Orlando, which sounds realistic until you realize the Magic are home against the pitiful Bobcats on Tuesday. If Orlando falters, the Knicks also get a shot at the Bobcats on Thursday, but Wednesday's home game against the Clippers will be a tough slog. Orlando loses the tiebreaker to Atlanta, incidentally, and can finish no better than the No. 6 seed.
Nuggets the key to the West
As with New York, the Nuggets can land sixth, seventh or eighth. Denver will be No. 8 if it drops its final two games (at Oklahoma City and at Minnesota) while Utah wins its final two. However, I imagine Utah will opt for rest if it beats Phoenix and might lose the finale to Portland, although the Blazers' current disinterest may trump any tanking by an opponent.
Of more interest is the race for No. 6, which is too close to call at the moment between Dallas and Denver. Denver's magic number for the No. 6 seed is two; the Nuggets can clinch it by winning their final two games, or with one win and a Dallas loss in Atlanta in the Mavs' season finale. Dallas, however, may prefer the No. 7 position to the No. 6 and send out the Dominique Jones-Yi Jianlian tandem to play the Hawks. This is especially true if Atlanta is still fighting for home-court advantage and plays its starters.
Denver could out-tank the Mavs if it wished by dropping its final two games and clinching the No. 7 position. It's not totally clear to me whether the Nuggets would prefer facing the Lakers or the Thunder, but I suspect that the answer is L.A. and Denver will try for No. 6.
Clippers hosting Grizzlies: Probable but not certain
The Lakers will be the No. 3 seed and Pacific Division champ with a win in Sacramento on Thursday or a Clippers loss either of the next two nights. The only way the Clippers can move up to No. 3 is with two wins and a Lakers loss. The Lakers can finish no worse than No. 4, as they win a tiebreaker with Memphis.
The race for the No. 4 spot is a bit more interesting. The Clippers need one more win or one more Grizzlies loss to assure themselves of home-court advantage in a series against Memphis. Here's the thing: The Clips finish with two tough road games (at Atlanta, at New York), while the Griz close on Thursday against a floundering Orlando team that will likely be locked into its playoff seeding by then. Thus, home-court advantage for the Clips is probable but by no means certain.
(Side note: For those of you who still have Memphis as a playoff dark horse, these past 10 days have been mighty discouraging. Here's their brilliant finish: Split a home-and-home with New Orleans and pull out four nail-biter wins over the April basketball Mount Rushmore of Minnesota, Charlotte, Portland and Cleveland.)
The draft pick race
Several teams that are out of the money nonetheless have draft picks at stake in these final games. Most notable among them is Golden State, which owes Utah a first-round pick unless it lands in the top seven. The Warriors are currently No. 8 from the bottom in the win column, but will end up in a tie for No. 7 because somebody has to win the Toronto-New Jersey game on Thursday. If the lottery goes to form, that means the status of the Warriors' pick will come down to a random draw at the league office, which I believe would be held on Friday.
However, the Warriors can't screw up and beat the Hornets on Tuesday night or they'll take themselves out of the running entirely (unless they move up in the lottery). A couple of other unlikely scenarios could help Golden State: The Kings or Cavs could win their final two games and tie the Warriors in the loss column, improving their random-draw odds of landing in the top seven.
While we're at it, here's a memo to the league: Stop including conditional protections on draft choices like this. What the Warriors have done this past month is an abomination and needs to be stopped. The only protection that should be allowed are outside the top 14 or inside the top three. We've seen too many teams make a mockery of the game in the final month of the season because they were trying to keep their draft pick (most notably in the infamous Mark Madsen 3-pointer game a few years back), and it's one of the big reasons that so many of the games in March and April stink.
Golden State's is the most prominent, but it's not the only pick that is affected by the playoff race. The Knicks have made the playoffs and the Rockets have missed, so Houston will have two first-round picks (their own and New York's), and the Nets won't get the Rockets' top-14 protected first-rounder until next year at the earliest.
It's unlikely, but Houston could get a third first-round pick if Dallas wins its finale against Atlanta, Boston drops its final two games, and Denver and Orlando lose at least once. A random draw could put Dallas' pick 21st, and it's top-20 protected.
Minnesota will be rooting hard for Utah on Tuesday, as the Wolves get the Jazz's first-round pick if Utah makes the playoffs; otherwise it's top-12 protected next year.
The Blazers are likely to get New Jersey's first-round pick, as the Nets have won just enough to make it unlikely that it will land in the top three on lottery day. Portland will be pulling for the Nets to beat Toronto on Thursday and increase the odds further.
And finally, when the Sixers clinched the East No. 8 seed Monday night, it also cost the Celtics a second-round pick. Milwaukee owed a top-44 protected second-round pick to Boston from the Keyon Dooling trade in December, but owes the Celtics nothing more if the Bucks miss the playoffs.