Most teams in the NBA have between 11 and 14 games left on their regular season schedule. There have been four eliminated from postseason contention. Several more will join those ranks within the next few games. For those left, the final few weeks of the NBA season will be excruciating. So many clubs, especially out West, are struggling for momentum lately, which has made the race to the playoffs more intense than it had any right to be. But it isn’t just the bottom of the conference that is getting dicey down the stretch. San Antonio’s shutdown on Saturday of the Warriors, plus two more head to head matchups, now makes the race for the #1 seed in the West just as juicy. Needless to say, the races on either end of the Western Conference are going to come down to the wire.
The team whose recent run has thrown the biggest wrench in the Western Conference playoff picture is the Dallas Mavericks. Once firmly entrenched in the middle of the West bracket, Dallas has lost seven of their last ten games and cling to just a one game lead over Utah for the eighth seed. However, two of those three wins in that period have been big. They extinguished the Hornets’ hot streak and simultaneously ended their two week long slide. After losses to the leaders in each conference, Golden State and Cleveland, Dallas put on a offensive clinic against one of their closest rivals in the standings, Portland. Dirk Nowitzki became just the 4th man since 1962-63 to score 40 or more points in a game after his 37th birthday on Sunday night, putting to bed the nagging from the media as to whether he’s leaning towards hanging it up.
Dallas has some heavy congestion around them from spots 6-9 in the West standings. The aforementioned Blazers are now just a half game ahead of Dallas. Portland rode a tremendous wave of success earlier in 2016 behind some otherworldly play from their guards Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum. While those two have continued to score in droves, with supplemental offense in several games from sixth man Allen Crabbe, their defense has let them down exceedingly. Like Dallas, they are 3-7 in their last ten games, making that stroke of good fortune after the calendar flipped seem like it could be for naught. The two will play again on Wednesday in Portland in a game that could further shift the balance.
The team right smack in the middle of Portland and Dallas is the Houston Rockets. Once thought to be on their way out of the playoff picture as they struggled for consistency and chemistry, the Rockets have won six out of ten to nose their way right back into the thick of things. Although this has been one of the rosier patches for Clutch City, it may start to get real dark real quick for them. The NBA is investigating Dwight Howard for his alleged use of Stickum, a substance made famous by Jerry Rice, in Houston’s loss to the Hawks. While the penalty may not be too severe, it is just another distraction in a season of too many for one of the preseason favorites in the West. However, the severity of James Harden’s ankle injury suffered in that same game may be just as determinant in Houston’s fate. Losing the league’s second scorer for any extended period of time would spell curtains for the Rockets.
The team on the outside looking in at the moment is the Utah Jazz. The upstarts of this bunch in the Wild West, Utah is, as previously stated, just one game out of the final spot after beating the Bucks on Sunday night. The Jazz have been yo-yoing between in and out of the playoffs for the past few months as they are one of the more streakier clubs in the West. They do have one of the most fortuitous and easy schedules as the season winds down though. They play both the Timberwolves and Lakers twice and get Dallas at home. They will also get a crack at the Rockets this Wednesday in Houston, a game that may see the home team sans Harden.
If I had to venture a guess, it would be that Houston would be the odd team out. While they may boast the most star power, the Rockets are the most flawed of the teams chasing the final playoff spot and a potential Harden injury should be the final nail in the coffin of a season that deserves to be buried in the mind of their fans.
That brings us to the battle between the Spurs and Warriors for supremacy in the West. Golden State’s pursuit of history is still very much in play at 62-7, but doubts are beginning to snowball after an ugly 87-79 defeat to their pursuers Saturday evening. Neither team is on easy street as we move towards April. Outside of playing each other, both will play two more games against the Grizzlies, a team that has defied their own hardships and pulled away from the lower playoff pack.
It isn’t out of the realm of possibility for the Spurs to catch and even surpass the Warriors. A meltdown of Northern Iowa proportions may not be necessary, but Golden State is going to have to take at least one of their final two games to seal the top seed. If they get swept, the final day of the season could be one of the nuttiest in recent memory. Dallas versus San Antonio and Memphis versus Golden State would have massive implications. Let’s hope for the sake of entertainment it does come down to this. But even with history on the line and playoff fates to be sealed, would you be surprised if Gregg Popovich just gave us all the proverbial middle finger and sat his studs late on? The wrinkles will only continue to form as the weeks go on.