Release the Hounds: Conference races heating up in NBA
The NBA Eastern and Western Conference races have really heated up.
Only two games separate top East seeded Chicago from Boston and 2.5 games from Miami after its loss to Cleveland on Tuesday.
Boston and Chicago have nine games remaining on the schedule, including a game against each other on April 7 and the Celtics play Miami on the road three days later.
Right now, you’d be fooling yourself if you said for sure you knew which of the three teams will win the top seed at regular season’s end. Chicago now has the bull’s-eye (no pun intended) on them at the top (as seen on Monday against Philadelphia), Boston’s still the defending Eastern Conference champs so every team facing them will play the Celtics like it’s Game 7 of a playoff series and though the media frenzy has faded a bit with Miami, the Heat are still a top-tier team that every team wants to beat.
Not to mention, the Heat have two playoff contenders (Milwaukee and Charlotte) and Boston and Atlanta left on their schedule.
The top seed is still anybody’s to clinch or let slip away — Boston’s already proven that to be true this month.
I doubt you’ll need any more convincing of this fact, but take a look at the suddenly close Western Conference race.
San Antonio’s fallen on some hard times with injuries to Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. The Spurs are just 3.5 games ahead of the surging Los Angeles Lakers (15-1 since the All-Star Break) and just 4.5 games ahead of a Dallas team that still wants to at least clinch a two-seed.
The Celtics and Spurs and Lakers and Mavericks both play on Thursday with potentially significant playoff seeding implications on the line (smart move by TNT to get both of those games).
I can’t remember a season where the regular season has meant so much this late into the year.
Nothing is certain as far as seeding goes, which could go a long way with how the postseason plays out.
Why seeding matters
It’s likely we’ll see either Boston, Chicago or Miami play either LA, San Antonio or Dallas in the NBA Finals unless the Oklahoma City Thunder surprise everyone.
Homecourt advantage may not always be an indicator of which team will make it to the Finals, but for the last 12 years, it’s proven to show whichever team has that advantage in the Finals will hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.
A total of 10 of the 12 Finals series have been won by the team who started with homecourt advantage. Only the Detroit Pistons and the Miami Heat have won starting Game 1 of the series on the road.
The Lakers haven’t won a playoff series starting on the road since 2004 – they beat both San Antonio and the Minnesota Timberwolves that year.
The Celtics had the best record in the league in 2008 and who knows if Boston would have beat both Atlanta and Cleveland that year without the benefit of playing Game 7 at the Garden.
As I see it, few teams this year have the ability to win a series starting on the road in this year’s playoffs along, let alone the Finals.
These last games of the regular season could not only determine which teams gets the better seed, but which team has the best chance of winning an NBA title.
