They are afraid: Brooklyn will shuffle the cards in the position struggles in the last line

The regular season is coming to an end, and the placement battles and playoff tickets are particularly close: why did the relief for Kyrie Irving put the Eastern teams on alert, how will the Western Conference final affect MVP identity and what will make the Lakers and LeBron season a real failure?

The full picture

Assaf Ravitz

29/03/2022

Tuesday, March 29, 2022, 2:00 p.m.

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Washington trains ahead of game against Chicago (Washington Wizards Official Twitter)

In another week and a half, the regular season in the NBA ends, in two weeks the play-in tournament will begin and in two and a half weeks, the playoffs will start.

Usually at this point we already know quite a bit about the emerging playoff picture, this year almost nothing is clear yet.

The East has long known who the top ten will be, but they are divided into three very close placement battles that create dozens of possible combinations of first-round series.

In the West Phoenix and Memphis can be declared the first two, Dallas may be able to steal Golden State third place but that's less important.

The struggles in the West are on two thresholds: automatic entry into the playoffs and entry into the playoffs.

Today the various struggles towards the last line have been put in order.

More on Walla!

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The remaining games for teams in the fight

To the full article

Yannis and Milwaukee have two top games left, but how will they get there (Photo: Reuters)

Places 1-4 in the East

The struggling teams: Miami (28:48), Philadelphia (28:46), Milwaukee (28:46), Boston (29:47)

I have a hard time remembering such a close battle between four teams for a conference presidency two weeks before the end of the season.

Twice in the last two days a single loss has dropped a team from first to fourth place.

It recently seemed like Miami was anchored in first place, but a series of losses put it deep into the cauldron.

Not long ago Boston was far from those areas, but she's been in the best shape in the league for a few months and can certainly leverage that for first place (not that it will comfort her after the injury of Robert Williams).

Philadelphia is still learning its new version and will likely give the two stars prone to its injuries rest ahead of the playoffs, also at the expense of position.

Milwaukee lets the stars rest quite a bit throughout the season and continues to be unstable.

There are three head-to-head meetings left between the four: Philadelphia will host Milwaukee tonight (in a game that will also decide the tie-breaker between them), Boston will host Miami tomorrow and Milwaukee will host Boston right towards the end of the season.

The most comfortable schedule is for Philadelphia, who have two games left against Indiana and two against Detroit, two teams that have already given up the season.

The weighting of the data only makes it even more difficult to bet on this race, any ranking between the four seems entirely possible and makes about the same sense.

It will depend very much on the motivation of the teams to fight for the home advantage.

Precisely in this context, this fight has a twist that complicates it even further: the one who finishes in one of the first two places will probably get Brooklyn, the toughest opponent in the first round by a significant margin, probably now that Kyrie Irving has been given permission to play home games.

With all the clutter of the Hunts this year, and even when it's unclear when Ben Simmons will return to play, it's still a very dangerous team that includes one of the top two duo in the league, it recently defeated Miami away and recently did the same for Philadelphia.

It can be said that the current roster is better than the one that came two inches away from ousting Milwaukee last year, even without Simmons.

Would the big four actually prefer to avoid the high places and a possible encounter with the Hunts, also at the expense of a home advantage in the future?

No one will admit it, but it may well be a consideration.

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The man who might decide how much the Big Four will make an effort, or not.

Kyrie (Photo: Reuters)

Places 5-7 in the East

The struggling teams: Chicago (32:43), Toronto (32:43), Cleveland (33:42)

All three of these sympathetic teams deserve a place in the playoffs, only two will get an automatic ticket and the third, who finishes seventh, will have to earn it in the playoffs.

Throughout the season Chicago and Cleveland looked like completely safe teams in the top six, for both of them it would be a huge disappointment to finish in seventh place.

Especially Chicago, which thought big in the summer and developed very high expectations at the start of the season, until not so long ago it was an integral part of the top bunch, although it lost almost all the games against the big ones.

Both the Bulls and the Cubs will be able to justify the fall of the second half of the season with a plague of injuries, both of which still lack at least one key player.

In fact, Toronto also suffered and still suffers from full-blown injuries, but for her some of the absences were premature and caused her to lose early and fill in gaps later on.

The problem with the Raptors is that they lost the two tie-breakers to the two rivals, their advantage is that they have more games against the sluts and they will only have to overtake one of the two to slip into the top six.

Chicago's fresh win over Cleveland secured her a tiebreaker against the Cubs, which brought her closer to a safe haven, but was followed by a loss to the Knicks who mentioned Billy Donovan's team is in a very bad period and is definitely in danger of finishing out of the top six.

As with any struggle involving the East, here too the issue of Brooklyn affects the teams and is affected by their results.

On the face of it, the team that finishes seventh can be relaxed, it needs to win one of two home games against an opponent with a significantly inferior balance to qualify for the playoffs.

But one of those two will probably be Brooklyn, which will be a clear favorite.

A loss to the Nets will leave the seventh at a distance of one loss from relegation from the playoffs, one bad day (or a particularly good shooting day of the opponent) and the whole great season will be gone.

The Nets' side is that while Kyrie can play home games, he still can't play in Canada, so if Toronto finishes very seventh it could be Brooklyn having to play a decisive game, maybe even the decisive playoff game, without Kyrie.

They do not deserve to stay out.

Drusen and Lavin (Photo: GettyImages)

Places 8-10 in the East

The struggling teams: Brooklyn (36:39), Charlotte (37:39), Atlanta (37:38)

So after seeing Brooklyn's influence on all the Eastern struggles, we finally got to her fight.

Before Kyrie's status change it was still possible to build a case for the Nets' preference to finish in tenth place and have to play only away games on the way to the playoffs (hoping to avoid Toronto), now Steve Nash's side just have to finish eighth to win just one of two games. Meet the Raptors it will not be a game of be or cease.

Brooklyn complicated itself with the loss to Charlotte, who also gave the Hornets the tiebreaker, and at the moment it looks like the battle for eighth place is mostly between the two.

The Nets will try to make use of a very light game board that they have left until the end of the season to keep it.

But both rivals also have a relatively easy game board with a few wins that should be in the pocket.

Of the two, Atlanta is the one that is disappointed that it even got into this situation.

The surprise of last season's playoff was supposed to be a very strong regular season team, with youngsters getting better and a deep roster that allows them to overcome a plague of injuries.

But all the youngsters made their way through the place, some of the veterans took a step back and Nate McMillan's team just failed to connect throughout the season.

Even so, a team that won two series last season is not a team worth meeting in a game of be or cease, Ben Simmons can tell the new friends from Brooklyn about it.

Charlotte, too, can turn out to be a no-brainer.

The unstable gang of James Borgo is a classic given day group, a fine attacking group that on a day when everything connects to it is very difficult to stop it.

She is responsible for some of the season's most impressive offensive displays and some impressive victories over big teams.

Borgo failed to stabilize the defense throughout the season and the management did not achieve a senior defensive center in the deadline, but the offensive talent can make up for that in a single game.

A meeting between Charlotte and Atlanta in 9th and 10th places will be a meeting between two of the best attacks and weakest defenses in the league, a meeting between Trey Young and Lamelo Bull when both are surrounded by talent, a moment of fun sponsored by the play-ins.

In any case, I will not fall from the chair if the team that finishes seventh in the East stays out of the playoffs at the end.

And yet, he and Hawks should not be underestimated.

Trey Young (Photo: Reuters)

Places 5-7 in the West

The struggling teams: Utah (30:45), Denver (31:45), Minnesota (33:43)

The Dallas victory over Utah decided that only the Jazz are still in real danger of dropping out of the top six.

Pretty amazing that Utah is in this debate, most of the season she was one of the big three, not only of the West but of the league, but Kevin Snyder's team has been in a crash for a long time.

Denver is also limping recently, Minnesota looks the best of the three but has lost three of the last four games and moved away a bit.

Minnesota's entry into the top six will be a sensation that until a few weeks ago could not have been imagined, a sensation both for her and for whichever of the two she finds herself outside.

Even if the Wolves do not manage to overtake one of them, the last few months have given a rare reason for optimism for the failing club most of the time.

Carl Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards look like a base for a quality team.

In eighth place, by the way, is waiting for the Clippers, who will probably get Paul George back by then, and this is also not a team that is pleasant to meet for a single game.

An interesting implication of this battle could be on the MVP title.

Nikola Jukic is a strong contender to win the title for the second time in a row, but it will be difficult to pick him if his team does not finish in the top six, which means there is a chance the MVP will not make the playoffs at all.

Utah players are no longer really struggling for personal titles, with them such a fall will mostly raise questions about whether it's time to unpack this package.

But in the case of Utah it does not just depend on this fight, the loss in the first round will have a similar effect.

This weekend Denver will host Minnesota for a game that could be the most important in this battle, Minnesota has an advantage in the tiebreaker between the two that will remain even if the Nuggets win.

Utah has an advantage in the tie-breakers against Denver and Minnesota, so only the continuation of its sharp fall will really endanger it.

The game schedule of the three is quite similar in terms of expected difficulty, Utah meets more big teams but at a point where they have nothing to compete for, so it will be interesting to see how much they invest in those games.

This battle may further determine the identity of the MVP.

Jukic (Photo: Reuters)

Places 9-11 in the West

The teams that are struggling: New Orleans (43:32), the Lakers (43:31), San Antonio (44:31)

just because of the play-in teams with such a bad balance at all are struggling for something.

There should not have been among the last five in the West a team capable of interfering with the Lakers and Pelicans feeling secure in 9-10 places and fighting for a home advantage in a battle between them, but the Spurs suddenly popped up last week and officially put themselves into a fight with the fresh win over New Orleans.

So Greg Popovich's young and likeable team, which has had a balanced net rating throughout the season that is more suited to a playoff team than a bottom team, can certainly creep into the top ten at the last minute.

Of course, the most dramatic possibility is that the Lakers will stay even out of the playoffs.

If the team that was considered a favorite in the West at the start of the season, the champion only two years ago, stays out of the top ten, the failing season as well will become a particularly resounding failure.

Now it is still possible to fantasize in the Lakers about Anthony Davis' return, a play-off success and a playoff appearance, the new danger from the Spurs devours the few cards that were supposed to be stable during this period.

It's important to make clear that this season will have a negligible to nil impact on LeBron James' legacy, he's the bonus stage in his career, but it's pretty amazing to see his team crumble in his hands when he's actually in a great personal season.

The coming week will decide whether the disappointing season will turn into a resounding failure.

LeBron (Photo: GettyImages, Andy Lyons)

New Orleans' win over the Lakers, which also guarantees them a two-way tie, brings the Pelicans very close to a safe haven.

Later this week there will be another game between the two and another New Orleans victory will leave only the Lakers and Spurs in the fight.

Even without this win, the Pelicans have a reasonable game schedule that includes two games against the indifferent Portland and that should be enough for them.

If you want to further complicate the situation of the Lakers, then its game schedule is the hardest, LeBron rotated his ankle in the last game and will probably miss at least one game and San Antonio has an advantage in the tie-breaker against her (because of the balance in the Western Conference).

Will be interesting.

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