While NBA teams are still battling for playoff positioning with the 2025-26 regular season winding down, the top of the Western Conference standings gained some clarity on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n
The Oklahoma City Thunder clinched the No. 1 spot in the West as well as the best record in the NBA with a 128-110 win over the Los Angeles Clippers, locking the San Antonio Spurs into the No. 2 position.<\/p>\n
With several teams still looking to secure their postseason spots, here’s a look at the updated playoff picture and standings.<\/p>\n
Western Conference Standings<\/p>\n
Eastern Conference Standings<\/p>\n
While the Thunder and Spurs are set at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively, there isn’t that much stability throughout the rest of the Western Conference playoff picture.<\/p>\n
The Denver Nuggets currently hold the No. 3 spot with a 51-28 record, but the team is just 1.5 games ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets. <\/p>\n
Denver also has a difficult remaining schedule, as it still has to face Oklahoma City and San Antonio before the regular season comes to a close.<\/p>\n
The Lakers own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Nuggets, but it may be tough for them to end the season on a high note with Luka Don\u010di\u0107<\/a> and Austin Reaves<\/a> sidelined due to injuries. <\/p>\n Although the four West play-in squads are set, the Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers are battling for the No. 8 spot in the conference.<\/p>\n Following Wednesday’s action, Los Angeles holds a one-game advantage over the Trail Blazers. The Clippers also lead the season series 2-1, but both teams still have to face each other one more time on Friday.<\/p>\n In the Eastern Conference, the New York Knicks are looking to fend off the Cleveland Cavaliers for the No. 3 seed. Cleveland sits just 0.5 games behind New York after taking down the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, but the Knicks hold the tiebreaker over the Cavs. <\/p>\n The bottom half of the East playoff picture is still congested, as only two games separate the No. 5 spot from the No. 9 position.<\/p>\n Heading into Thursday’s slate, the Orlando Magic, Philadelphia 76ers and Charlotte Hornets occupy the three highest play-in spots. Each team is still eligible to clinch a playoff berth and avoid the play-in tournament entirely, though.<\/p>\n With the play-in tournament beginning on April 14, here’s a prediction for the full set of first-round matchups once playoff seeding is finalized. <\/p>\n First-Round Predicted Matchups<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While NBA teams are still battling for playoff positioning with the 2025-26 regular season winding down, the top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-706420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116373328767688429","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706420","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=706420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}