Utah for forever has seemed locked into the 4 seed with only home court at issue. But I looked at seedings and tiebreak, and realized if they win out they have the tiebreaker over every western top team except LA. It is not that far fetched that Utah, Phx, Hou & SA all end up with 27 loses. I think in this case Utah gets the 3, Phx the 4, SA the 5, and Hou the 6--that is how common records would break out in the 4 and 3 tiebreakers followed by SA winning the 2 team breaker with Houston because of division. Just a potential bizzare end of the season, who knows maybe LAL loses to Sac only for NO to blow the home court the last game at Dallas.
Yeah, Utah wins out and they'll be a 3-seed, which is great. However, winning out won't be easy, as I think the Rockets are hungry after getting completely drilled last night and the Spurs have had Utah's number in San Antonio since 1999. Of course, the Jazz are great at home (far better than they were when these two last met in the ESA) and San Antonio will be licking their wounds, most likely sitting players for the playoffs, in that final game. Hopefully it happens, though!
The Spurs and Utah game will be really interesting to watch. The loser of that game plays us in the 1st, and the winner plays the Suns. The 2nd round match up is also not as important as getting past the first round for both of them.
I knew the Jazz wouldn't tank this game to play the Rockets in the first round. They want home-court and the possibility of playing the Hornets in the 2nd round.
Assuming Hou and Phx win their expected home games versus lesser teams... I think if the Spurs win, it is Spurs 3, Utah 4, Hou 5, Phx 6--with SA & Hou having home court. I think if the Jazz win, it is Jazz 3, Phx 4, SA 5, Hou 6--Jazz and Phx have homecourt. This would really set up the Jazz well with SA, Phx and LA all weeding each other out (only face 1 of them). So I think the match-ups are set, the homecourt and brackets (in LA vs NOs) are not. I am pretty sure both teams want the homecourt and avoid a probable round 2 match-up with the Lakers--pretty high stakes. Also, SA-Utah play one hour after Houston-LAC and 30 minutes before Phx-Portland--so Houston and Phx will play most or all the games not knowing if winning that game gets them 1st round home court or not.
Actually Feigen seems to think the Rockets could play the Suns. http://blogs.chron.com/nba/2008/04/pick_your_poison_rockets_to_pl.html If the Hornets win tonight and the Rockets, Jazz and Suns win Wednesday, there would be a four-way tie with the Jazz, Rockets, Spurs and Suns. In that case, the Jazz emerge from the group as a division winner and move up to the third seed. The Spurs fall to sixth with the worst record in games among the remaining group. The Rockets have the conference record tie-breaker against the Suns, and become the fourth seed, opening the playoffs at home against the Suns. Basically what I don't know is whether the 3/4 team tiebreaking procedures are applied throughout to seed them, or just used to get to the two team tiebreaker, where then the divisional record between the Rockets-Spurs matters. Because the Spurs have the worst common record about the 4 teams, but have a divisional record over the Rockets if it were only those two teams.
