On the morning of Thursday, December 17, two losing teams occupy the final two playoff spots in the Western Conference.
As disappointing as they’ve been so far this season, the Houston Rockets — conference finalists last May — figure to hang on and nab the No. 7 or 8 seed in the West by the time the season is done. This is no sure thing, mind you, but there’s too much skill and length on that roster to completely tumble out of the playoffs in a Western Conference which is a lot worse than it was a season ago.
Currently holding the eighth spot are the Denver Nuggets, overachievers but also likely candidates to fall in the standings. We have roughly 55 games left, after all, and Emmanuel Mudiay will need to make more mistakes before he ripens into the kind of professional he can (and probably will) become. On-the-job training will likely limit the ability of the Nuggets to maintain their place as the season goes along. Climbing any higher in the standings is an unrealistic prospect at this time.
Lurking in 12th place in the West — but only one game out of eighth — the Sacramento Kings have not impressed anyone this season, but they were supposed to be dysfunctional this season. To that extent, they don’t represent a disappointment.
Percentage points ahead of Sacramento lie the Portland Trail Blazers, another team expected to falter this season to the point that it would miss the playoffs. The Blazers have let a lot of close games slip away, but without LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum, that should have been expected.
You are wondering where this is going or why this is all being said. You’re right… so let’s get to the heart of the matter.
*
All the teams mentioned above, with the exception of Houston, did not enter this season with particularly lofty expectations. Denver, Sacramento and Portland figured to need this season to grow into rhythms with new coaches (Nuggets, Kings) or radically different rosters (Blazers). If those three franchises miss the playoffs, this season will not be seen as a setback for that reason. As long as those teams grow and set the table for a more productive run in 2016-2017, they’ll be on schedule.
The true drama at the bottom end of the West playoff chase is a two-team competition between the Phoenix Suns and the Utah Jazz. These are, quite simply, two teams which would view the season as a failure if they do not make the playoffs. Phoenix and Utah are trying to make sure they regret the season less than the other. April doesn’t have to be the cruelest month in the Valley of the Sun or in Salt Lake City; getting the No. 8 seed (maybe the 7 seed; it doesn’t matter too much) will make April a lot more tolerable.
The Suns got blitzed by a fresh and rested Golden State juggernaut on Wednesday in Oakland; no shame there. The Jazz, however, laid an egg in the fourth quarter on Wednesday. They lost the quarter, 31-15, to the lowly New Orleans Pelicans, dropping a 104-94 decision at home. That’s an unacceptable loss on its face, but it’s even more alarming in light of the fact that the Jazz got humiliated on Monday by San Antonio, absorbing a 37-point defeat which should have left the starters (yanked well before the final minutes) comparatively fresh for the Pelicans.
Utah is now 10-14 — still in good position to get the 8 seed (remember, the West ain’t what it was the past few seasons), but at risk of missing out. If you had said that Houston and Phoenix would be multiple games under .500 through a minimum of 26 games this season, Utah fans would have expected to be sixth at worst, and in relatively comfortable playoff position — not comfortable in a “mansion on the hill” sense, but at least in a “spacious two-bedroom suburban house” sense.
Utah did a great job of withstanding a road-heavy start to the season, going 7-7 despite playing 10 of its first 14 away from the Great Salt Lake. The inability to make use of seven home games in the last 10 (3-7 overall record, 3-4 at home, and an 0-3 regression on the road) certainly feels like a missed opportunity for the Jazzmen. Yes, this is a team which misses Dante Exum, but this is still a West which is much worse than just about anyone expected through the 30-percent mark of the season (rapidly approching the one-third point of the campaign).
For Phoenix, getting bombed by the Warriors is hardly a problem. It’s a matter of finishing close games against other less formidable teams — the Jazz share that problem.
*
In the West, you’ll see an inversion of the point differential stats at the bottom end of the playoff chase. The three final playoff teams — Memphis at 6, Houston at 7, Denver at 8 — have an average point differential of minus-4.1 (rounded to the nearest tenth). Memphis, at minus-4.7, actually has a worse differential than the seventh and eighth teams. Denver checks in at minus-4.5.
For teams 9 through 12, the numbers paint a cruel picture. Sacramento is minus-2.7 in the 12th spot, and Portland — tied with Phoenix for 10th place — sits at minus-0.5. Again, though, as said above, the Kings and Blazers were not supposed to be at the forefront of the playoff chase.
Phoenix — having made the move to get Tyson Chandler — and Utah (having registered an improvement of at least 10 games from the previous season, one of a few teams to do so in 2014-2015) expected to be playoff teams this season. With differentials of minus-1.1 (Suns) and minus-0.8 (Jazz), these teams should be better off than the Grizz, Rockets and Nuggets. Somehow, they’re not. They’ve managed to lose gobs of close games, all while the Memphis-Houston-Denver trio eats blowout losses but finds to a way to scratch out a few nail-biters here and there.
It’s true that in the middle of December, sample sizes remain small.
The concern for Phoenix and Utah: What if nothing changes in the next month?
Living with regret carries a profound and unspeakable pain. Either the Phoenix Suns or the Utah Jazz are likely to live with pain in the offseason.
More significant battles will be fought in the NBA this season: Spurs-Warriors, Spurs-Thunder, probably Clippers-Thunder for the right to avoid Golden State in round two. Cavs-Bulls probably makes the cut as well.
However, while significance is its own theater of urgency, the battle between the Suns and Jazz for a playoff spot in the West will be as fierce and as cutthroat as anything else you’ll see in the league over the next several months.
Let the competition unfold.
