Finally, a seed has been clinched in the NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n
The road to the Eastern Conference title will run through Detroit, which locked up the No. 1 seed on Saturday with a win over Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The Pistons are 12-3 in their last 15 games, even while Cade Cunningham has been out for much of that stretch while recovering from a collapsed lung. And while the East is locked up, technically there is still something to play for \u2014 home-court advantage in the NBA Finals. Detroit will be no worse than the No. 3 overall seed but still has a shot of catching San Antonio for the second-best record.<\/p>\n
Also in play for the Pistons: the third-best record in team history. At 57-21, they could still get to 61 wins. Only the 2005-06 Pistons (64-18) and the 1988-89 Pistons (63-19) won more games than that.<\/p>\n
Who’s in and who’s out?<\/p>\n
Here’s what we know so far regarding the NBA playoff field for this season.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Eastern Conference playoff teams: Detroit has locked up the No. 1 seed and will open the postseason on April 19. Boston, New York, Cleveland are in. At this point, Atlanta and Toronto would get the other two guaranteed spots, but those are not clinched.<\/p>\n
\u2014 East play-in teams: Nobody is locked into the play-in yet, but entering Saturday, the four teams headed there are Philadelphia, Charlotte, Orlando and Miami.<\/p>\n
\u2014 East eliminated teams: Milwaukee, Chicago, Indiana, Brooklyn and Washington.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Western Conference playoff teams: Oklahoma City, San Antonio, the Los Angeles Lakers, Denver and Houston are in. Minnesota is likely to grab the sixth and final guaranteed spot.<\/p>\n
\u2014 West play-in teams: Phoenix is probably going to the play-in tournament. Portland, the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State definitely are.<\/p>\n
\u2014 West eliminated teams: Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Utah and Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Saturday recap<\/p>\n
\u2014 Heat 152, Wizards 136: Good news for Wizards, Bam Adebayo didn’t score 83. Bad news for Wizards, everything else.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Nuggets 136, Spurs 134, OT: Nikola Jokic scores 40, Victor Wembanyama scores 34 in this potential West semifinal matchup.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Pistons 116, 76ers 93: Detroit clinches No. 1 seed in East, Philadelphia falls back to play-in range for now.<\/p>\n
Sunday’s schedule<\/p>\n
\u2014 Toronto at Boston: Celtics rolling toward No. 2 seed.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Washington at Brooklyn: Someone will win, possibly to their chagrin.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Phoenix at Chicago: Suns likely will be No. 7 in West play-in.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Memphis at Milwaukee: Doc Rivers can be announced as a Hall of Famer for first time.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Indiana at Cleveland: Cavaliers looking to tune up before playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Charlotte at Minnesota: The Hornets are playing without fear right now.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Orlando at New Orleans: Magic have to keep building some momentum.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Utah at Oklahoma City: Thunder just won\u2019t let the Spurs make up too much ground.<\/p>\n
\u2014 LA Lakers at Dallas: Neither team will have Luka Doncic, who remains beloved by Mavs fans.<\/p>\n
\u2014 LA Clippers at Sacramento: Clippers looking to get a home play-in game (or two, if needed).<\/p>\n
\u2014 Houston at Golden State: Warriors have five games to prep for the play-in, and this will be Stephen Curry\u2019s return.<\/p>\n
Monday’s schedule<\/p>\n
\u2014 New York at Atlanta: Hawks are 18-2 in their last 20 games, likely No. 5 seed in East. Knicks could make a statement here.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Detroit at Orlando: Magic have three players who finished at Michigan, Pistons have two. This during the NCAA title game is just wrong.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Cleveland at Memphis: Cavs could still catch Knicks, with some help. A slipup here wouldn’t be ideal.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Philadelphia at San Antonio: Spurs won\u2019t play another road game until Game 3 of West quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Portland at Denver: Trail Blazers in extremely close race with Clippers for No. 8 seed in play-in tournament.<\/p>\n
National TV schedule<\/p>\n
Sunday on NBA TV: Toronto-Boston.<\/p>\n
Sunday on NBC and Peacock: LA Lakers-Dallas, Houston-Golden State.<\/p>\n
Monday on Peacock and NBCSN: New York-Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Betting odds<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City (+130) is favored to win the NBA title, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, followed by San Antonio (+450), Boston (+550), Denver (+1200), Cleveland (+1200) and New York (+1900). Detroit, the No. 1 seed in the East, is +2500. And after Luka Doncic’s injury sent the Los Angeles Lakers’ odds soaring, from +2500 beforehand to +12500, Austin Reaves’ injury made them even bigger long shots. They’re at +50000 now.<\/p>\n
Key dates<\/p>\n
\u2014 Friday: All 30 teams play their 81st games of the season.<\/p>\n
\u2014 April 12: All 30 teams play their regular-season finales.<\/p>\n
\u2014 April 14, 15 and 17: NBA play-in tournament dates.<\/p>\n
\u2014 April 18 and 19: NBA playoff series openers.<\/p>\n
\u2014 May 2, 3 or 4: Conference semifinals begin.<\/p>\n
\u2014 May 10: NBA draft lottery.<\/p>\n
\u2014 May 10-17: NBA draft combine.<\/p>\n
\u2014 May 17 or 19: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.<\/p>\n
\u2014 May 18 or 20: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.<\/p>\n
\u2014 June 3: Game 1, NBA Finals on ABC. (Other finals dates: June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16 and June 19).<\/p>\n
Numbers watch<\/p>\n
San Antonio is now 37-2 this season when scoring 121 points or more. Both losses are to Denver \u2014 and in each of the first three meetings between those clubs this season, both teams have reached at least 131 points.<\/p>\n
Stat of the day<\/p>\n
The Heat had zero instances of scoring 150 points in their first 3,264 games. They’ve scored 150 or more three times in their last 86 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finally, a seed has been clinched in the NBA playoffs. The road to the Eastern Conference title will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,6,11,67,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-700218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-playoffs","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}