The NBA is lying to you. They say the division leaders are guaranteed a top-4 seed. Really, they are guaranteed a top-5 seed. Having 4th seed without home-court advantage is not 4th seed; it's 5th seed.
Well let's say that the Jazz are the number 8 seed according to record, they would still be a 4th seed (5th in reality), so they do not have to play the top team. So winning division does help in some extreme cases.
LOL ... but you are exactly right. With current format, I can't think of a scenario to counter your claim, since it makes absolutely no difference in that either one of them will play the same teams/seeds in subsequent rounds if it advances. However, if NBA were to expand to 16-team elimination playoff format, the 4th seed would have a slight advantage to play a lower seed in the 1st round pairing. For example: 4 vs 13 and 5 vs 12. So maybe NBA is having future in mind, what do we know?
Games remaining in regular season: 14 Magic number to clinch playoff spot: 4 Magic number to clinch 5th seed: 9 Jazz magic number to keep homecourt: 14 Rockets magic number to take homecourt from Utah: 17
How can a Magic number be HIGHER than the number of games you have left? I mean, I understand that a win by the Rockets over the Jazz is a + 1 for Rocks and -1 for Jazz. But, it is killing me seeing this....the Rockets ADJUSTED number of wins needed for getting HOMECOURT is 14. DD
magic number = our wins + their losses needed to SECURE homecourt. We can't have homecourt without the Jazz losing at least 4, so the number is over 14.
i dont know anything really about all that magic number stuff all i know is that we are now a game behind the jazz with ample # of games remaining and starting to play probably the best ball of the season. the jazz do play the clippers tomorrow night here in la and i am hoping for an upset as the clippers have a lot to play for and have played better at home despite the injuries at the pg position they have had.
The Jazz magic number to clinch homecourt will remain at 14 because we won and they were idle. The other 4 are right though.
Almost right. Games remaining in regular season: 13 Magic number to clinch playoff spot: 2 Magic number to clinch 5th seed: 7 Jazz magic number to keep homecourt: 14 Rockets magic number to take homecourt from Utah: 16 The homecourt is now in the Rockets hands. If we win the remaining 13 games (including two against Utah), the Rockets will get homecourt regardless of what the Jazz do.
How can that be? How can it be that we have 13 games left to play, but need to win 16 to take homecourt? It's kind of hard to win 16 out of 13 games.
2 of those games are against the Jazz, so if the Rockets win those they count double (Rockets win + Jazz loss). On the flip side if the Jazz win those game it will be very hard for the Rockets to take homefield.
my god, does anyone pay attention? the magic number is any combination of Rockets wins and opponents losses that will guarantee a playoff seed.... the magic number can go down by two if the Rockets win and the other teams lose..... in other words, we are counting on Utah to lose some games, two of them being against us....
If we have 13 games left and Utah has 13 games left, we win all of ours and they lose all of theirs, that's a swing of 26, not 13.
JetBlast can correct me if I'm wrong... the Spurs magic number is 11 to clinch 3rd... the Rockets magic number to catch 3rd is 19.... (this means the spurs would have to go 9-6 in their remaining games and Houston would have to go 13-0 to have a better record) 13 wins plus 6 spurs losses=magic number 19 if the spurs went 8-7, Rockets can go 12-1 spurs go 7-8, rockets can go 11-2 spurs go 6-9, rockets can go 10-3 etc etc etc
if the spurs(47-20) won 9 and lost 6 they would be 56-26 if the Rockets (44-25 won 13 and lost none they would be 57-25) therefore the Spurs magic number is actually 10
