NBA Playoff Push: What’s at stake for final weekend of regular season action?

The madness of March basketball may be over, but the anarchy of April hoops in the NBA is just getting started.

What many have dubbed “chaos week” around the association — considering 19 of 20 post-season seeds had yet to be determined heading into Monday — has reached its final checkpoint.

All 30 NBA teams will be in action on both Friday and Sunday, meaning just about every squad will have two games worth of a say in who locks in the remaining 15 of 20 spots up for grabs ahead of the weekend.

It’s been a while since seeding races have felt this tight. About a decade, in fact.

The 2014-15 season saw a Western Conference in which the second through sixth seeds were separated by just one game — aside from the 51-31 Portland Trail Blazers, who oddly ended up fourth despite a worse record because of the old division rules. That year, the Spurs entered the final day of the regular season as the second seed and left all the way down in sixth place. That was then followed by a 2015-16 campaign that featured an Eastern Conference that had seeds three through six all finish with an identical 48-34 record.

If we go back even further, the 2009-10 season had the No. 2 through No. 8 seeds in the West separated by just five games — with the sixth, seventh and eighth seeds all losing out on home-court advantage in the first round despite winning 50 games each.

But what separates this year’s race toward the post-season is that none of those photo finishes dealt with the extra wrinkle of the Play-In tournament. In today’s NBA, if a team drops out of a top-six seed, well, it’s one or two bad performances away from missing the playoffs altogether. Making both the challenge and drama of getting to the big dance that much more intense.

With that being said, here’s a breakdown of what’s at stake heading into the final weekend of regular-season action and what each team has left to gain or lose.

Which teams survive the Wild West?

With the top of the Western Conference playoff picture already determined, as the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets have captured the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds — and the ninth and 10th spots being fought over only by the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks — all the intrigue is left in the middle.

Heading into Friday, only two games separate the Los Angeles Lakers, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves in determining seeds three through eight.

The Lakers are sitting pretty atop the logjam in third and can drop only as low as fifth. Whereas the Nuggets, Clippers, Warriors, Grizzlies and Timberwolves all have a chance to grab homecourt in the first round or fall all the way down into the Play-In.

Things get especially interesting between Golden State, Memphis and Minnesota as all three hold identical 47-33 records.

(For those wondering, here is the order of tie-breaking criteria used by the NBA to determine seeding.)

It’s also worth noting that despite the teams in the middle of the West being so close in wins and losses, how they got there has been vastly different.

The Nuggets, for instance, looked like a sure-fire top-four seed back in February, going 10-2 in the month and entering March with a 39-21 record. But the complexion of a squad just two years removed from a title has drastically shifted in the time since. Denver has gone a paltry 9-11 after that hot stretch and punctuated its struggles by firing Michael Malone, the winningest head coach in franchise history, mere days before the post-season. Now, the Nuggets will need franchise star and three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic to work his magic to avoid slipping any further in the standings.

Oddly enough, the Grizzlies are in a similar enough position. Memphis is 15-17 since Feb. 1 and has steadily slipped down the West standings along the way. A squad that claimed the No. 2 seed for chunks of the season is now at risk of bowing out of the playoff picture altogether if it doesn’t get its act together. Like the Nuggets, the Grizzlies also went for the “Let’s fire our head coach right before the playoffs in hopes of a boost” approach by letting go Taylor Jenkins on March 28.

On the other end of the spectrum lie the Clippers, Warriors and Timberwolves, who have surged into the mix thanks to late-season turnarounds. For L.A. and Golden State, it’s been pretty simple — the Warriors have gelled with trade deadline acquisition Jimmy Butler and the Clippers have lucked into Kawhi Leonard getting healthy at the exact right time. Both have top-five records since March. 1.

The Timberwolves, meanwhile, have simply caught fire just when they needed it. After sitting 32-29 after the first five months of the season, Minnesota has gone 15-4 since. Anthony Edwards looks like a superstar ready to demand your attention once again come playoff time and Julius Randle has found his groove along the way.

In a conference that’s historically been anything but easy to come out of, grabbing early homecourt advantage while getting a couple extra days rest by avoiding the Play-In could make all the difference between a long versus short post-season run.

Here are the key games to keep an eye on this weekend:

FRIDAY’S GAMES
(all times ET)
Denver at Memphis, 9 p.m.
Brooklyn at Minnesota, 9 p.m.
L.A. Clippers at Sacramento, 10 p.m.
Golden State at Portland, 10 p.m.
Houston at L.A. Lakers, 10:30 p.m.

SUNDAY’S GAMES
L.A. Lakers at Portland, 3:30 p.m.
Utah at Minnesota, 3:30 p.m.
Dallas at Memphis, 3:30 p.m.
L.A. Clippers at Golden State, 3:30 p.m.
Denver at Houston, 3:30 p.m.

Might we see another miracle run out East?

The top of the Eastern Conference playoff race, admittedly, is not as thrilling as what’s going on in the West.

None of the squads sitting in the top six are at risk of falling into the Play-In, it’s just a matter of what seed they end up in. And with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics already locked into Nos. 1 and 2, that leaves the New York Knicks, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks and Detroit Pistons jockeying in the middle.

The Knicks and Pacers are battling for the third and fourth seeds, while the Bucks and Pistons (what a turnaround!) are sorting themselves out for fifth and sixth. It’ll be especially interesting to keep an eye on the battle between Milwaukee and Detroit as the Central Division rivals will go head-to-head for both of their remaining two games, giving each ultimate say on which spot they end up in.

Aside from that, the East is pretty straightforward, as the Orlando Magic have the seventh seed in hand already, and the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls and Miami Heat round out spots eight through 10 for the Play-In.

And while most of the focus is on the juggernauts atop the Eastern Conference, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the teams battling at the bottom. This year’s quartet of Play-In teams might be the most in-form collection of squads we’ve seen heading into the mini-tournament since it was introduced in 2020-21.

The Magic, for instance, locked up the seventh seed thanks to a four-game win streak and going 8-2 through their last 10. The Bulls and Heat have been right behind, going an identical 7-3 through that stretch in order to bring themselves within two games of the Hawks for the eighth seed.

If Miami’s run to the Finals from the No. 8 spot in 2023 taught us anything, it’s to not count out the battle-tested squads once the playoffs get underway. The likes of Cleveland and Boston appear unbeatable, at least in the first round, but that sense of hubris might just be what the bottom four teams are hoping for.

Here are the key games to keep an eye on this weekend:

FRIDAY’S GAMES
(all times ET)
Orlando at Indiana, 7 p.m.
Milwaukee at Detroit, 7 p.m.
Atlanta at Philadelphia, 7 p.m.
Cleveland at New York, 7:30 p.m.
Washington at Chicago, 8 p.m.
Miami at New Orleans, 8 p.m.

SUNDAY’S GAMES
New York at Brooklyn, 1 p.m.
Orlanda at Atlanta, 1 p.m.
Detroit at Milwaukee, 1 p.m.
Indiana at Cleveland, 1 p.m.
Washington at Miami, 1 p.m.
Chicago at Philadelphia, 1 p.m.