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The 2024-25 NBA regular season is into its final week, with Sunday being the final day and still plenty to be determined, especially in the Western Conference.
So let's get to it. Here are five races to watch this week.
1. West seeds 4-8
Entering play on Tuesday, five Western teams are deadlocked with 32 losses: the No. 4 Nuggets, No. 5 Clippers, No. 6 Warriors, No. 7 Timberwolves and No. 8 Grizzlies. The race is the West took another twist without a game being played on Tuesday as the Nuggets made the shocking decision to fire coach Michael Malone with three games remaining in the regular season. Wild.
We'll see if it helps or hurts Denver, but the fact remains that two of these teams are going to end in the play-in. Here are the remaining schedules for each.
- Denver: at Sacramento, vs. Memphis, at Houston
- Clippers: vs. San Antonio, vs. Houston, at Sacramento, at Golden State
- Golden State: at Phoenix, vs. San Antonio, at Portland, vs. Clippers
- Minnesota: at Milwaukee, at Memphis, vs. Brooklyn, vs. Utah
- Memphis: at Charlotte, vs. Minnesota, at Denver, vs. Dallas
As you can se, there are a handful of head-to-head matchups that will likely go a long way in determining how these races shake out. Memphis gets two shots to directly improve its standing against Denver and Minnesota. The Warriors and Clippers playing on the final day of the season could well determine a seed, if not who has to go through the play-in.
You also wonder, with these races being so tight, if there will be any matchup manipulation happening on the final day. Probably not, as going into the play-in is playing with fire, but let's say the winner of Clippers-Warriors on the final Sunday gets the No. 6 seed, and a first-round matchup with the Lakers, and the loser gets the No. 7 seed, which, if you win your play-in game, would likely pit you against Houston in the first round.
There's a good argument to be made that Houston, as its record would indicate, is actually a better team than the Lakers, but you know people are going to play the "they're not ready" card to talk themselves into them as the more beatable first-round opponent, but if you lose on purpose to go to No. 7 and then lose the first play-in game, now you're looking at facing OKC in the first round. It's likely that all these teams play to win the rest of the way, but all parts of this race are worth watching.
2. Power Tankings
The Utah Jazz have clinched a bottom-three record, which carries with it the maximum 14% chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick. Same for the Washington Wizards, who cannot finish above the bottom three by way of the Pelicans owning the tiebreaker over them. The race is on for the third-worst record, as odds of winning the No. 1 pick drop from 14% to 12.5% at No. 4, and 10% at No. 5, and so on.
Entering play on Tuesday, the Charlotte Hornets have the inside track on "winning" the third spot. They have 59 losses to New Orleans' 57. They each have four games left, but New Orleans will almost certainly win, or, again, lose, the tiebreaker so it's really a three-game deficit with four to play for the Pelicans, who probably need to lose all four of their remaining games and have the Hornets to win out against Memphis, Toronto and Boston twice.
Again, not likely.
So really, the race to watch is for No. 4, which, again, carries a 12.5% chance of obtaining the No. 1 pick vs. 10% at No. 5. Entering Tuesday, New Orleans is No. 4 with 57 losses and Philadelphia is No. 5 with 56 losses. New Orleans would fall to No. 5 in the case of a tie by way of a 2-0 record vs. Philly this season, so this one is totally up for grabs. Here are the remaining schedules for each team:
New Orleans: at Brooklyn, at Milwaukee, vs. Miami, vs. OKC
Philadelphia: at Washington, vs. Atlanta, vs. Chicago
So it's simple: Philly needs New Orleans to win at least one of its final four games, and Philly needs to lose all three. Isn't tanking great?
3. Bucks vs. Pistons
Indiana has all but secured the East's No. 4 seed. The Pacers lead the Bucks by three games with four to play. Milwaukee does own the tiebreaker, so it could happen, but the Bucks' bigger concern is holding off Detroit for the No. 5 seed.
Milwaukee has a two-game lead and leads the season series 2-0, but here's the key: These two teams play each other twice to close the season. First it's at Detroit on Friday, then at Milwaukee on Sunday.
Detroit needs to beat the Knicks on Thursday or have Milwaukee lose to Minnesota on Tuesday. If one of or both those things happen, Detroit will enter the first matchup with Milwaukee no more than two games back. If it were to then sweep the double dip with Milwaukee, the Pistons would also claim the tiebreaker by way of conference record, and with it, the No. 5 seed.
What's the difference between the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds? No. 5 is likely going to play Indiana and be on the same side of the bracket as Cleveland, while No. 6 gets the Knicks and a potential second-round matchup vs. Boston.
4. West's last play-in spot
The Mavericks' season went down the tube the second Luka Doncic was traded. Anthony Davis immediately got hurt, joining every other Dallas big man in street clothes, and then Kyrie Irving tore his ACL. This is a lost season for Dallas and yet somehow the Suns still can't catch the Mavericks for final play-in spot.
It's not over. Dallas holds a two-game lead in the loss column. Phoenix probably needs to sweep its last four games and hope Dallas loses two of its final three. If that happens, they would both finish at 41-43 and Phoenix would win the tiebreaker via a 3-1 head-to-head advantage. Here is each team's closing schedule:
As you can see, that's a pretty difficult four-game sweep for the Suns. This isn't likely to happen for Phoenix, but it's still a race to watch.
5. Draymond wraps up DPOY tour
Draymond Green has been on the campaign trail for nearly a month and it's paying off. In mid-March, Green was a +800 underdog when he said this:
"I look around the league and don't see many players impacting the game on the defensive end the way I do. I don't see many players completely throwing off an entire team's offense the way I do. One thousand percent [I have a case to win DPOY].
"Especially with [Victor Wembanyama] going down; [It] seemed like he had it won. And now it is right there. So one million percent I have a case, and I will continue to build that case for these next 13 games."
Three weeks after this statement )and he has continues to drop DPOY bread crumbs since), Green is the betting favorite to win at -400 at Caesars and -320 at DraftKings. It's true, he's been incredible over this Warriors run, but this is a full-season award and he has not been this dominant all year, nor have the Warriors been anywhere near this good, even defensively specific.
Evan Mobley is next in line at +300 at Caesars. Then there's a steep falloff to Lu Dort. Jaren Jackson Jr. was in a statistical dead heat depending on which numbers and metrics you fancy, with Mobley, when Wembanyama went down, but he's not even really an option anymore as Memphis has fallen off, fairly or not.
Noticeably absent from the realistic race is Most Improved Player favorite Dyson Daniels, who needs six steals over his final four games, well below his 3.0 per game average, to move into the top 10 all time for total steals in a single season. Ivica Zubac should also be a better shot than +5000 at DraftKings. But he's not. Green went on the offensive, and barring something strange he's probably going to win.
