The NBA this season has been a bit of a grind. The teams we knew were going to be good turned out to be good and the ones we knew weren’t turned out to live up to their expectations as well. Aside from the Orlando Magic’s early season run, and the Detroit Pistons historic losing streak, this NBA season has been for the most part, fairly mundane. The Boston Celtics are running away with the Eastern Conference. However, arguably the most interesting thing happening in the league right now is the development of the Western Conference playoff picture. As it stands right now, there is no leading candidate and it is anything goes from here on out until the conclusion of the regular season.
As previously mentioned, the Boston Celtics have the Eastern Conference in a chokehold right now, currently on a 9 game win streak at the writing of this article and in sole possession of the top spot, with an 8 game lead on the second place Cleveland Cavaliers. Now how does this hold relevance in the Western Conference? Because the difference between the 1 seed and the 8 seed is also 8 games. 8 games separate the 1st seed Timberwolves and the 8 seeded Kings.
There are roughly 25 games left in the NBA regular season, so there is still plenty of time left in the season for teams to make a run and significantly change their position, but aside from home-court advantage, I do not necessarily see any profound differences in these teams 1-8. Any team can go into any arena and win on a given night, which not only makes the playoff seeding insignificant, but it makes for a really interesting playoffs as well.
However, it is not only the playoff picture that is intriguing. With the new implementation of the Play-In Tournament, we now have another section of the league to be paying attention to.
Currently in the West, the 9th and 10th seeds are the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers. Those are two very experienced playoff teams who could go into any atmosphere and win the two games necessary in order to qualify for the playoffs. This adds a whole new wrinkle to the picture.
Now let's say hypothetically that the Timberwolves win the 1st spot, and the Thunder win the second. Let’s also say that the Warriors and Lakers both win their respective series’. Now arguably the two most experienced playoff teams are going against the two least experienced playoff teams in a best-of-7 series. Who’s to say that we don’t see the two top seeds in the west go out in the first round.
Timberwolves Breakout Star Anthony Edwards (Photo by Jordan Johnson/NBAE via Getty Images)
This is all just hypothetical nonsense, and it’s difficult at this stage to make any predictions about how the season shakes out, because it is so tight at the top. I could speculate as much as I’d like but the truth of the matter is that regardless of how the seeding ends up shaking out, we are primed for a historic end to a non-historic season thus far.
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