The Play-In Tournament and playoffs are nearly upon us. Every team in the NBA — with the exception of the Hornets, Pelicans, Kings and Jazz — has four games remaining. Here are the five pressing storylines we’re monitoring in the final week of the regular season.
MVP race
To the extent that this is still an open question, we’re down to two possibilities to win this season’s award: reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama. The two stars have taken decidedly different approaches when asked about securing the honor and the competition between them.
After SGA dropped 47 points in last week’s overtime win against the Pistons, he said he thought there was some “good chatter” about the race and that the conversation surrounding it was “good for the league.” But when pressed on whether he ought to win it for a second straight year, he declined to weigh in, offering only that he would let his game do the talking.
Wemby opted for something closer to the Timothee Chalamet lobbying approach.
Wembanyma took some heat for admitting he’d thought about why he should be this year’s winner (which felt unfair because aren’t candid, well-considered answers always preferable over the usual pablum and cliches?). He distilled his case to three points: Defense is 50% of the game, the Spurs won four out of five against OKC this season, and offensive impact is not simply limited to scoring. Your mileage may vary on his argument, but that’s the abridged version.
Wemby is pretty clearly the best defensive player in the NBA by whichever metric you prefer, including and especially defensive estimated plus-minus. He’s also put up some silly offensive numbers recently. Meanwhile, SGA remains the best player on the best team and an absolute killer when it matters most.
Despite the fact that they will likely finish first and second (provided Wemby clears the 65-game threshold; more on that shortly), this might not be as much of a race as some members of the media, certain fans, and Wemby would like to believe. FanDuel has SGA’s odds to repeat at -2500 while Wembanyama is +1000. Even if he puts up video game numbers in all four games this week, that’s a pretty sizable gap for Wemby to close. (For what it’s worth, Basketball Reference’s MVP tracker, which is less about who will win than who their model says should win, has Wemby behind Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic.) Wembanyama is going to win a bunch of MVPs if he stays healthy, but it doesn’t feel like this season will be his first.
65-game threshold
While we’re on the topic of awards and honors, the NBA’s rule requiring players to play 65 or more games in order to be eligible is facing considerable (and justifiable) criticism. Anthony Edwards was disqualified last week. Cade Cunningham was rendered ineligible over the weekend. Wembanyama needs to play in at least three of the Spurs’ last four games to be eligible. Jokić and Kawhi Leonard have to play out the rest of the regular season in order to make the cut.
Dončić doesn’t have that option. The Lakers star suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain against OKC and was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season. That type of injury has a ballpark recovery time of four to six weeks, meaning that he’s also in danger of missing the playoffs. But for the purposes of award eligibility, he’s in a tough spot. Doncic is stuck on 64 games. His agent said he would file an extraordinary circumstances grievance since Dončić missed two games so he could be present for the birth of his child.
Unsurprisingly, the rule hasn’t been particularly popular. Cunningham’s agent made the case that his client has “delivered an All-NBA season” and shouldn’t be penalized for falling a few games short of an arbitrary threshold because he suffered a collapsed lung late in the season. The NBPA had pretty much the same argument. It’s hard to argue. It’s even harder to argue that Cunningham, Edwards and Dončić — and potentially Jokić, Leonard and Wembanyama — aren’t among the top 15 players in the NBA.
Commissioner Adam Silver previously implied that the rule would really only impact Cunningham this season — but that was before Edwards and Dončić ended up on the wrong side of the 65-game line and without considering that it might also ensnare other stars.
“We also have to remember,” Silver said, “that to the extent that one player is not eligible, some other player will then be All-NBA and slot into that spot. So I’m not ready to stand here saying ‘I don’t think it’s working.’ I think it’s working.”
He might want to think a bit harder on that.
West seeding
The Spurs had their 11-game win streak snapped in an overtime loss at Denver over the weekend. It was only San Antonio’s third defeat since Feb. 1, but it all but guaranteed that OKC will once again finish with the top seed in the Western Conference while the Spurs are the 2-seed. What happens behind them with the 3-6 seeds is less certain.
The Lakers went from one of the hottest teams in the NBA to heartbreak last week. Not only did they get embarrassed in a blowout loss at OKC, but they also lost two of their best players when Dončić suffered a grade 2 hamstring strain and Austin Reaves ended up with an oblique injury. Both players will miss the rest of the regular season and the approximate recovery time for both injuries is four to six weeks.
The early returns without those two aren’t great. The Lakers lost in Dallas on Sunday. That puts them at 50-28, the same record as the Nuggets and just one game up on the Rockets for third in the West. JJ Redick previously said the Lakers are at their best when LeBron James is third in usage rate. So much for that. Now he’s the main man again because he has to be. To give you an idea of how much thinner the already emaciated Lakers roster is, they needed Luke Kennard to put up his first-ever triple double just to keep it close in Dallas. Figuring out how to squeeze extra production out of this bunch might give Redick an ulcer.
The Lakers finish up this week with another ill-timed meeting against the Thunder at home, followed by a road game at Golden State before ending their season at home against the Suns and Jazz. The Nuggets have home games against the Blazers, Grizzlies and Thunder, then wrap up on the road at San Antonio.
The Rockets have a comfortable three-game lead over the Wolves for the fifth seed. Houston faces Phoenix on the road, then has home games against the Sixers, Wolves and Grizzlies. Minnesota has one of the easiest remaining strengths of schedule. Apart from facing the Rockets in Houston, the Wolves have road games against the Pacers and Magic before finishing their season at home against the Pelicans.
In the Play-In, the Clippers are jockeying with the Blazers to determine the eight and nine seeds. Portland has the tougher path here. The Blazers have road games in Denver and San Antonio before playing the Clippers at home on Friday in a matchup that could determine who ends up with the higher seed.
East seeding
It should be an eventful final stretch in the Eastern Conference. The Knicks and Cavaliers will both end up with homecourt advantage in the first round, but the seeds are still in question. New York is one game up on Cleveland for the 3-seed. This could be a rough week for the Knicks. All four of their remaining games are against winning teams: at Atlanta, followed by home games against the Celtics, Raptors and Hornets. That’s notable because the Knicks have struggled against good teams this season. Against teams .500 or better, New York is just 20-22. Meanwhile, the Cavs wrap up at Memphis, a home-and-home against the Hawks, then a home game against the Wizards.
The 5-10 seeds in the East are even more uncertain. The Hawks are one of the hottest teams in the NBA, having won 18 of their last 20 games. They sit in fifth, two games ahead of the Sixers. Philadelphia and Toronto are both 43-35, but the Sixers have the tiebreaker and are currently the 6-seed. The Raptors loss to the Celtics on Sunday dropped them into the Play-In where they’re just a half-game up on the surging Hornets.
The two Florida teams are at the back end of the Play-In picture in the East. Despite winning their last two games and being only a half-game back of the Hornets, the Magic have tumbled down the standings over the last month. They’re one game up on the Heat for the 9-seed.
Stars vs. their own teams
You won’t believe this but the Bucks messed up. Again. Giannis Antetokounmpo has missed the last 11 games with a knee injury even though he recently insisted that he’s healthy enough to play and he’s mad that the Bucks have prevented him from doing so. The Bucks were eliminated from playoff contention a while ago and simultaneously botched a potential tank job that could have improved their lotto position. (They have whichever pick is lower between their own and New Orleans, which is owed to Atlanta). Not a great job by the Bucks, and Giannis isn’t happy about any of it.
“I’ve never seen a case of a player saying, my caliber of player, that’s like — I’m saying it publicly — I want to f–ing play. You know what I’m saying?” Antetokounmpo said last Friday. “I don’t think I’ve seen this. So, if there needs to be an investigation, great. There should be. I don’t know. There should be. Until we figure something out.”
Antetokounmpo called being asked not to play “a slap in the face” and added that he doesn’t “know where the relationship goes from there.” It’s going great for the Bucks. Should be interesting to see how the final week shakes out in Milwaukee — as well as what should be a spicy summer.
Giannis might have been the only player to call for an investigation into his own organization, but he’s not alone in being displeased with the higher-ups in his franchise. After being held out of last Wednesday’s game against the Wizards, Joel Embiid said he was “pissed off.”
“I wanted to play basketball,” Embiid said. “I wasn’t allowed to play basketball. So, this is more of a question for Daryl Morey.”
Embiid, who has played just 37 games this season, also took a passive aggressive shot at the organization on social media for good measure. Unlike Giannis, Embiid hasn’t been dangled in trade talks or watched his team openly suggest he might get moved this offseason. And unlike the Bucks, the Sixers will either be in the Play-In or the playoffs proper after this week. For the Sixers, this is just more of the everyday dysfunction that has come to define their default position over the last decade. Still, it’s not ideal when your oft-injured star is mad about not being cleared to play basketball and decides to publicly call out the general manager right before the postseason begins. But as Sixers drama goes, at least Embiid didn’t throw a party and put it in lights.
