[ESPN Insider] Breaking Down The Playoff Races

senter · Feb 28, 2012

Hey guys, can someone with insider post this article about the west playoff race?

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...-120228&_slug_=nba-breaking-west-playoff-race

and if you don't mind, can you also post this one about the east?

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...-120227&_slug_=nba-breaking-east-playoff-race

Thanks, I'm dying of boredom at work and need something to occupy me for 10 minutes :grin:

arjun · Feb 28, 2012

Agreed !!! Please post article I'll rep

MourningWood · Feb 28, 2012

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/page/PERDiem-120228/nba-breaking-west-playoff-race

If the East is Miami and Chicago and a bunch of question marks, the West is more like Oklahoma City and a bunch of exclamation points. Even low-seeded teams in this conference represent serious threats come the postseason, as we saw a year ago when No. 8 Memphis nearly made the conference finals while the top two seeds combined to win zero second-round games. The West looks very interesting again this season, especially with the compressed schedule increasing the importance of every game. At the moment, it looks like four teams -- Oklahoma City, San Antonio, the Clippers and Dallas -- are relatively certain to make the postseason, with each sporting chances of at least 92 percent according to today's Playoff Odds.
Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. At the moment, four key questions loom: Which quality teams in the West will miss the playoffs? Can any of the lightly regarded interlopers at the fringe of the race sneak in? Who can get home-court advantage for the first round? And can anybody beat Oklahoma City?
The third question -- first-round home court -- is simply too difficult to tackle here. Obviously the Thunder, Spurs, Clippers and Mavs have the edge given today's standings, but one could pretty easily envision any of the five teams behind them making a run to grab a top-4 seed.
But let's take a look at the other three:

Is it OKC's conference to lose?

It's a little premature to crown Oklahoma City as the Western Conference champion considering directly behind the Thunder in the standings are the three teams that have won the last 13 Western Conference championships. Not since Utah in 1998 has somebody other than the Lakers, Spurs or Mavs represented the West in the NBA Finals.
The Spurs, in particular, would seem to be formidable -- they've won the last 12 games that they've bothered to contest and stand second in the West despite barely getting a speck of contribution from Manu Ginobili.
And remember, the top seed is still not assured for the Thunder. San Antonio is three games behind at 24-10 but has a much easier schedule the rest of the way, having finished its annual rodeo road trip. The Playoff Odds see it as a two-horse race, giving the field only a 6.6 percent chance of snagging the top spot, but San Antonio remains very much alive at 24.7 percent.
In particular, if the Spurs win in Oklahoma City on March 16, they'll gain a game and own the tiebreaker; if they lose that game, on the other hand, that probably ends the race.
As for the Thunder, keep in mind that they've faced virtually no setbacks on the health front. Losing Eric Maynor was a blow, yes, but he won't be playing in May either. Compare them with other teams that have missed players to injury who will be back come playoff time and their advantage doesn't seem quite as imposing.
The one advantage that will be there, however, is their crowd. OKC is arguably the league's best game environment and the Thunder will have home-court advantage for at least the first two rounds of the playoffs. That may be particularly important if the Thunder play Memphis again -- the Griz match up great against them (Portland lines up pretty well too) and could be a very tough out.

Who misses?

Again, I consider the Mavs, Clippers, Spurs and Thunder relatively safe, so we're essentially looking at five teams (at least) battling for four spots.
Of the top nine teams in the West, Denver is the odd team out right now, but the Nuggets may be much stronger in the second half of the season if they can get their best players on the court. Denver was 14-5 before injuries bushwhacked it but gets the benefit of a cake schedule in March that includes several doormats and one stretch of nine straight home games. I suspect the Nuggets will finish strong and could even push for a top-four seed if everything goes right; suffice it to say I consider their current 40.6 percent Playoff Odds an underestimate.
Their opponent on Wednesday, Portland, is only a half-game ahead, and unlike Denver the Blazers have had virtually no injury issues. What they have had are luck issues, with their point differential indicating that they're a much better team than they've shown thus far, and that's why they're likely to play well enough in the second half of the season to survive.
If they don't, however, they'll rue all the ones they let get away -- Portland had the easiest schedule of any Western contender in the first half of the season and failed to take advantage. From here it gets much, much tougher, including a seven-game road swing that ends with games in Chicago and Oklahoma City. The Blazers, however, have been sniffing around pretty actively for trades and may upgrade the roster for the stretch run.
As I noted last week, I don't think the Lakers are out of the woods yet either, simply because an injury to one of their big three would have such a big impact on their performance. Along those lines the All-Star Game wasn't a great omen, as Andrew Bynum is having trouble with his knee again and Kobe Bryant just broke his nose.
If they're healthy they'll be fine, obviously, but they're one twisted ankle away from a 3-8 stretch. Also, the Lakers have a very difficult schedule the rest of the way, seemingly playing Oklahoma City or San Antonio on national TV every day in April. They have only five games left against the East, and one of those is against Miami.
Memphis isn't in the clear either at 19-15, although one likes the Grizzlies' chances better given that Zach Randolph is likely to return in March and should be a major upgrade on the Marreese Speights-Dante Cunningham tandem that's been plugging the hole. Additionally, the Griz have faced the league's most difficult schedule thus far; it's still challenging in the second half, but it lightens up a bit. On the other hand, Memphis is the most injury-vulnerable squad this side of L.A., because the bench just isn't very good.
The reason we're mentioning these teams, of course, is that Houston unexpectedly stands at 20-14. The Rockets probably need to go only 17-15 the rest of the way to make the playoffs, and they still have 16 games left against sub-.500 teams. Additionally, they've been aggressively pursuing trades for a long time -- witness the near-miss on Pau Gasol before the season -- and are likely to be better after March 15 than before it.
All five of these clubs are playoff-caliber. One of them isn't going to make it. If I had to bet I'd say the Blazers are the ones who miss, but you can make a case for any one of these five. Or rather, at least one ...

Can an interloper get in the mix?

In 10th through 13th place, Minnesota, Golden State, Utah and Phoenix all sit on the fringes of the playoff race hoping for a pathway in. The Playoff Odds give the combined probability of one breaking through at 57.1, indicating that there's a decent chance that one of them might do it.
Of the group, Minnesota has by far the best odds, nearly matching Denver's at 33.2 percent. While the Playoff Odds don't know Denver was working with a skeleton crew for the past three weeks, it's still impressive that the Wolves are only a game out of a playoff spot given how horribly awful they were the past two seasons.
As with Portland, however, Minnesota may rue the money it left on the table in the first half. The Wolves are 5-9 in games decided by five points or less and are just 10-10 at home. That's troubling because they play 19 of their final 32 games on the road, and 18 of them are against .500 or better opposition. They've been gaining steam as the season has gone on, with Nikola Pekovic's recent emergence solidifying a shaky center spot, but they need to beat out two of the five teams ahead of them; for them to pass even one would be a mild surprise.
The other three fall firmly in the "crazier things have happened" category; Golden State fans who remember 2007 will note one such example. The trade deadline would seem to be key for those teams, as well as heavy dollops of health and luck. Subjectively, I find it hard to imagine any of those three playing well enough to get in; but from an odds perspective, the numbers say we shouldn't bury them yet.
Click to expand...

MourningWood · Feb 28, 2012

Here's the 2nd one on the East...

http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/page/PERDiem-120227/nba-breaking-east-playoff-race

It's time to look ahead to the second half of the season, and for once we mean that literally.
In past seasons the All-Star break has actually been at around the two-thirds mark of the season, leaving just a final push to the finish line between the dead Monday after the All-Star Game and the playoffs.
This time around, we have a lot more to digest before play resumes Tuesday night, simply because we've learned so much less about the teams at this point. Most have completed 33 or 34 games thus far, which is about 20 games fewer than we're accustomed to.
As a result, much more is left unresolved as everyone heads out of Orlando after a serviceable if unspectacular All-Star weekend. (Final grade on Orlando as an All-Star host: B-minus. Not a disaster like Atlanta or Vegas, certainly, but not a home run like New Orleans or L.A., either. While Orlando offers a great arena and reliable weather and handled the logistics well enough, everything is just way too spread out, and that sucked a lot of the energy out of the weekend.)
We'll start today in the East, where it sure looks like a two-horse race and a bunch of teams choking on the dust of the Heat and Bulls. Miami and Chicago are the only two East teams with a 100 percent probability of making the postseason according to today's Playoff Odds; with 27 wins already and a likely cut line around 30, both are closing in on the point at which they could lose the rest of their games and still make it.
One of those two is the East champion in 86.8 percent of our scenarios, and if anything our program is probably a bit conservative with favorites in the playoffs. It would be a huge upset if they aren't the conference's top two seeds, and it's the expectation of virtually everybody that they'll be meeting again in the conference finals.
But today let's take a different angle and check out the potential interlopers. If it's not Miami or Chicago in the East, it means it's one of the other 13 teams. We can safely eliminate five of them from further discussion (Toronto, New Jersey, Detroit, Washington and Charlotte), leaving eight teams that warrant our time today.
Sorry to go all Rumsfeld on you, but the rest of the field consists of "known knowns" like Philadelphia and Indiana, and then several interesting wild cards.
Leading the way is our host from this past weekend, Orlando. The Magic currently sit in third in the conference but are facing a big decision point in the next three weeks; as you may have heard, Dwight Howard can opt out of his contract and become a free agent after the season, and he appears to have eyes for Brooklyn or Dallas.
Nonetheless, I'm hearing there's a good chance that Orlando keeps him through the trade deadline and calls his bluff on leaving money on the table with a free-agent departure. (The oft-mooted $30 million figure isn't exactly accurate since Howard will almost certainly get paid somehow five years from now, whether it's by the Magic or somebody else, but a move would still cost him several million dollars, especially if he went to a state with income tax).
In fact, it's possible that Orlando goes the opposite direction and doubles down on its bet -- trading, say, low-level prospects like Justin Harper and/or Daniel Orton for a point guard who can successfully advance the ball past half court. It's a high-risk, high-reward strategy, but one that has to freak out Chicago and Miami at least a little bit -- neither has a big man who can handle Howard physically, and if you go back and look at Howard's history he has never lost a playoff series in that situation.

Further down in the standings, the one East team everybody should be watching is the Knicks. As I wrote last week, replacing the Knicks' sub-replacement-level output at the point with star-caliber play from Jeremy Lin propels them into a much higher category of playoff opponent, and that's before accounting for the likes of J.R. Smith and Baron Davis.
The Playoff Odds still aren't sold, envisioning a 32-34 landing for New York, but I suspect that a fully healthy Knicks squad is capable of much more. At 17-18 they still have work to do, but a reasonable goal is to push into the top six in the East and avoid the Chicago-Miami tandem in the first round.

After those two, the most interesting team may be Atlanta. The Hawks are in a rut at the moment and may only be the sixth or seventh seed in the East by the time the playoffs roll around, but by then they'll have Al Horford back in the lineup. Atlanta split with both Miami and Chicago before Horford went out this season, with the win over Chicago a rout and an impressive road win in Miami.
The Hawks, like Orlando, are looking to upgrade via trade but don't have a ton to offer; their standing offer to the rest of the league to trade Marvin Williams for darn near anything has gained little traction. Any drama at the trade deadline would likely come in the form of a Josh Smith deal, although there appears to be little enthusiasm for such a move unless it returned a bona fide star.
Standing pat, even at full strength the Hawks are highly unlikely to upend Miami or Chicago, but they could give either a competitive series as they did with the Bulls a year ago.

Further down, we have defensive-minded veteran teams in Boston and Milwaukee that are trying to figure out whether they're kicking or sticking. The Bucks are out of the money right now but hope Andrew Bogut's return in March can fuel a run to the playoffs; certainly the Celtics' struggles are also fueling that enthusiasm, because it's kept the 13-20 Bucks just 2½ games out of the playoffs.
Either team could be something of a threat if they get their older players healthy, especially if the trade deadline brings in some new blood -- and both teams are expected to be active on that front. But it won't matter much if they limp into a No. 8 seed and a first-round beatdown against Miami or Chicago.
In contrast to Milwaukee and Boston, one team that would be ecstatic to draw Miami in the first round is Cleveland. Expected to be at least a year or two away from making a postseason run, the Cavs have hung around on the fringes of the playoff race despite losing Anderson Varejao. The Playoff Odds and my own intuition both remain skeptical of their chances of sneaking in, but they remain in the race.
Which takes us back to our "known knowns" Philadelphia and Indiana. It's very possible they will meet in the No. 4-vs.-No. 5 series in the first round, a high-quality series that nonetheless would draw 643 fans and be relegated entirely to NBA TV. (Unless there's an NBATV2 by then.)
These are probably the two best teams in the East after Miami and Chicago, but their lack of star power has consigned them to the fringes of the NBA discussion so far. One other thing hurts them: a perceived lack of giant-killing ability. Philly played Miami twice and lost by 21 and 20; Indy suffered a similar fate, falling by 35 and 15.
Yet there's a danger in overlooking these teams too, because they're in a strong position to improve their hands by the March 15 trade deadline. That's particularly true for the Pacers, who are well under the salary cap and have a glaring need for a distributor who could immediately push their offense several rungs up the ladder. Even with a sticky offense, Indiana is 21-12 despite playing 19 road games.
As for the Sixers, they were briefly atop the Power Rankings after a series of one-sided wins early in the season, and have been particularly good when center Spencer Hawes is in the lineup. In their case it's fourth-quarter half-court offense that is the Achilles' heel; they have few shooters and their go-to scorer, Lou Williams, is too low-percentage to be a repeatably reliable weapon in that situation -- he's basically an East Coast Monta Ellis in that respect.
Nonetheless, they too offer the prospect of dramatic improvement with the right deal, and it's why we shouldn't take our eye off them just yet -- not with several young, desirable players whom they could put in a deal and a couple of large contracts for ballast.
In the big picture, this conference is a lot less intriguing than the West, because the possibilities for something other than Bulls-Heat just aren't as strong. But they do exist; we still have half a season left to play, and between the trade deadline and players returning from injury, most of the East's pretenders can offer at least the possibility of being dramatically better in May than they are today.
Click to expand...

senter · Feb 28, 2012

thanks! repped

Codman · Feb 28, 2012

Thanks for posting. I did not know that we had 16 games left against sub-.500 teams.

That can't hurt.

But, please, please, please trade Jordan Hill and the other 09ers for another decent big man.

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[ESPN Insider] Breaking Down The Playoff Races

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