The Western Conference playoff race is going to come down to the wire. The Houston Rockets and Golden State Warriors are safe at the top, but spots 3-10 remain in flux. The San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves are currently neck-and-neck for the No. 3 seed, but the standings are incredibly tight all the way down to the 10th-seeded Utah Jazz.
The Jazz are currently 2 games behind the Nuggets for the eighth and final playoff spot. The Clippers, who sit ninth, are a half-game out. All 5 Northwest Division teams are involved in the playoff chase, which is something that can’t be said about any of the NBA’s other 5 divisions.
The Blazers beat the Timberwolves in a huge game on Thursday night, which vaulted Portland into the No. 4 spot in the West over the Thunder. Entering Friday’s action, the Wolves still lead the Northwest, but they’re only a half-game up on Portland and a full game up on OKC. Denver’s 3 back, with Utah 5 out. It is truly wild.
Below are the odds to win the Northwest Division:
As of now, Minnesota is atop the division with a record of 38-27. The Jazz obviously make for the best value on the board to win it at +1000, and that notion isn’t as crazy as the odds make it look. Utah is only 5 games back of the Timberwolves with 21 games left on the schedule.
Frankly, the Jazz’ upcoming schedule is far from daunting. They face the Wolves in a huge game in their next contest, with Minnesota playing the second night of a back-to-back. The Wolves are short-handed without Jimmy Butler, which means we could see a slide coming.After the Minnesota game, the Jazz will face the Kings, Magic, Pacers, Grizzlies, Pelicans, Pistons, Suns, Kings again, Hawks and Mavs. The schedule makers couldn’t have possibly been more friendly to Utah. The schedule does get more difficult afterward, but Utah should be able to make the most of this upcoming run of cupcakes.
Utah recently rattled off 10 consecutive wins, but they’ve stumbled since the break, losing 2 of 3. The Jazz found a rhythm prior to the break, and they’re finally fully healthy for just about the first time all season long. They did lose Rodney Hood via trade, but he was a bit redundant on the roster thanks to the emergence of rookie Donovan Mitchell.
If they’re able to rebound from their little mini-slump, Utah is in excellent position to make a charge up the standings. The collective winning percentage of the teams remaining on the Jazz’ schedule is just .477, which is the easiest schedule among Western Conference teams fighting for a playoff spot. The Warriors have an easier schedule, but we know they aren’t playing for their playoff lives.
Portland and Oklahoma City, meanwhile, have the fifth- and sixth-hardest schedules the rest of the way. Minnesota is 11th, while Denver’s 17th. If Utah’s division rivals start to crumble, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Jazz could be division champs by season’s end.
The Wolves find themselves in a very different boat. While the Jazz are now getting healthy, Minnesota just lost Jimmy Butler to a torn meniscus. His season isn’t over, but he’s expected to be sidelined for the next several weeks after undergoing surgery.
The Wolves have presumably banked enough wins to where falling out of the playoffs altogether isn’t likely, but it’s going to be incredibly tough for them to hold on to their current division lead. The Wolves are 2-0 to this point without their All-Star swingman, but those wins came over the tanking Bulls and Kings. Big whoop.
The Wolves dropped Thursday’s game in Portland, but they still lead the division. I mentioned that Minnesota has a fairly tough schedule the rest of the way, and they’re about to embark on quite the brutal stretch beginning Friday night with another massively important game in Utah.
After facing the Jazz on the second night of a back-to-back, the Timberwolves will face Boston, Golden State, Washington, San Antonio, Houston, LA Clippers, New York and Philadelphia before the schedule eases up a bit. They’ll also close out the season with an important 5-game stretch that includes showdowns with the Jazz and Nuggets (twice).
Karl-Anthony Towns has stepped up his play with Butler out, but it seems to be only a matter of time until we see this team start to show signs of missing their best player.
Nobody really knows what to make of the Nuggets at this point. On the plus side, they did just get Paul Millsap back from injury. Millsap missed a few months after undergoing wrist surgery, but finally returned to the court earlier this week. Unfortunately, Denver blew a 19-point lead at home that night and lost to the Clippers.
The Nuggets have been fairly up and down all season long, thanks in no small part to Mike Malone’s seemingly never-ending rotation changes. That said, he finally seems to have figured out what the rest of us already knew: Nikola Jokic is a superstar and needs to be the focal point of everything.
Once Malone figured out that he should start the Joker at center, his play has taken off. The 23-year-old Serb was a man possessed in the month of February, as he averaged 21.8 points, 11.3 rebounds, 9.0 assists and over a steal per game. This dude is putting up video game numbers, and it’s about time the head coach figured out that he should probably be playing heavy minutes at his preferred position.
The key for the Nuggets will be winning winnable games. Already this season, we’ve seen Denver curiously lose to teams like Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, New York and the LA Lakers. Those are unacceptable defeats for a team that thinks of itself as a playoff club.
The Nuggets can avoid a trap with a win in Memphis on Friday night against an extremely short-handed Grizzlies squad. Fortunately, their schedule isn’t nearly as daunting as Minnesota’s. In March alone, Denver will face Memphis (twice), the Lakers (twice), Sacramento, Chicago, Detroit and Dallas. There are a few tough games to get through, but their schedule looks largely favorable.
The profit potential gap makes the difference here.
The Blazers are a team that generally goes overlooked, but they’re making a move. Thursday’s win over the Wolves was the Blazers’ fifth consecutive victory overall, and fourth straight coming out of the All-Star break.
Damian Lillard has been unbelievable. Lillard scored 35 points against Minnesota, and he’s now averaging 33.8 points, 6.4 assists and 5.0 rebounds in about 37 minutes per game during the winning streak. He’s got some help with CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic as his primary deputies, but there are question marks with the rest of the roster.
There’s just not much depth here. Al-Farouq Aminu is inconsistent at best, while the team’s best reserve at this point is probably Shabazz Napier. Napier has played well this season, but he’s a guy that didn’t even look like an NBA caliber player through his first few years in the league.
The other guys Portland is playing in the rotation are Ed Davis, Moe Harkless, Pat Connaughton and Zach Collins. There’s talent here, but it’s not exactly a murderer’s row.
Still, Lillard is the type of player that has shown he’s capable of essentially winning games on his own. He’s got the knack for stepping up in crunch time, as he did on Thursday night when he made 9 of his last 13 shots from the floor.
The Thunder are currently third in the division, but they’re the betting favorite to win it. OKC got off to a miserable start this season, but it was understandable considering they had to adapt their style to include high-usage guys like Paul George and Carmelo Anthony.
While Anthony has become little more than a peripheral figure in the offense, the team has taken off since Russell Westbrook decided to stop playing nice. Westbrook is nearly averaging a triple-double again this season, while George is quietly putting up better than 22 points per game on blistering 42% shooting from 3-point range.
While there’s no doubting the Thunder’s potential, they’ve had some strange tendencies this season. They were blowing the Mavericks out of the water in a game earlier this week before letting their foot off the gas in the second half. That allowed the Mavs to come all the way back and force overtime. OKC still went on to win it, but letting a tanking team like Dallas stick around isn’t a good look for a team that calls itself a contender.
The team’s defense has suffered since Andre Roberson was lost for the season, but talent typically wins out in the NBA. With Butler on the shelf, you can easily make the case that the Thunder have the most talented active roster in the division.
OKC’s schedule could prove problematic, however. They do get cakewalk matchups with teams like the Suns (twice), Hawks and Kings, but they’ll also face the Blazers twice, the Spurs twice, the Celtics, the Raptors, the Clippers and the Nuggets before March ends. In April, they get New Orleans, Houston and Golden State.
This is the Thunder’s chance. Paul George is a free agent at season’s end. If OKC doesn’t make a deep playoff run, they may well lose him for nothing once the summer rolls around. Either they’ll get it together in the last month-and-a-half, or it’s back to the drawing board.
I’ll rank my favorite bets as follows:
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