{"id":708921,"date":"2026-04-12T11:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708921\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T11:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T11:27:14","slug":"the-final-day-of-the-nba-regular-season-awaits-with-plenty-left-to-be-decided-chicago-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708921\/","title":{"rendered":"The final day of the NBA regular season awaits, with plenty left to be decided \u2013 Chicago Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday is the final day of the NBA regular season, and here\u2019s a full listing of all the playoff and postseason matchups that have been decided.<\/p>\n

None.<\/p>\n

Ten teams are locked into specific seeds in the Eastern and Western conferences, 10 others know their seasons will end Sunday and 10 more still have some level of uncertainty going into the final day of the six-month grind that precedes the NBA postseason.<\/p>\n

By the end of Sunday, four first-round series \u2014 those starting next weekend \u2014 will be known, as will the first four play-in tournament matchups that will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just excited to be in this situation,\u201d said Atlanta coach Quin Snyder, whose Hawks are playoff-bound \u2014 but don\u2019t know if they\u2019ll be the No. 5 or No. 6 seed in the East, so they obviously don\u2019t know their first-round matchup either.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever we play is going to be really good,\u201d Snyder said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to even try to figure that out. It\u2019s possible that certain teams want to play us. \u2026 We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen. It\u2019s hard to predict all these games that are going on. Wherever it falls is how it falls.\u201d<\/p>\n

No team needs to win Sunday to extend its season. There are 10 teams eliminated from postseason contention that all know Game 82 is the end of the road. But for the other 20 teams, there will be an 83rd game, either in the play-in this week or in the playoffs that start next weekend.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean those 20 teams all have nothing to play for Sunday. There are seeds to grab, and in some cases, a team essentially could manipulate how their side of the bracket sorts itself out. If San Antonio beats Denver, for example, the Spurs would assure themselves of not having to face Oklahoma City or the Nuggets until the Western Conference finals.<\/p>\n

A Nuggets loss would mean LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers \u2014 provided they beat the Utah Jazz on Sunday \u2014 would finish as the West\u2019s No. 3 seed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure everybody wants to play us,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick said. \u201cLet\u2019s get that out there \u2014 everybody wants to play us. There are probably teams that are in a position where they can start looking forward to potential second-round matchups as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breakdown<\/p>\n

Seeds clinched: Detroit (East 1), Oklahoma City (West 1), Boston (East 2), San Antonio (West 2), New York (East 3), Cleveland (East 4), Houston (West 5), Minnesota (West 6), Phoenix (West 7 for play-in), Golden State (West 10 for play-in).
\nPlayoff-bound, seed still TBA: Denver (3 or 4 in West), Los Angeles Lakers (3 or 4 in West), Atlanta (5 or 6 in East).
\nPlayoff or play-in bound: Toronto, Orlando, Philadelphia.
\nPlay-in bound, seed still TBA: Los Angeles Clippers, Portland, Charlotte, Miami.
\nSeason ends Sunday: Milwaukee, Chicago<\/a>, New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, Sacramento, Utah, Brooklyn, Indiana, Washington.<\/p>\n

Stat races
\n\"LosLakers guard Luka Doncic (77) drives to the basket against Bulls guard Josh Giddey (3) and forward Matas Buzelis on March 12, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Ethan Swope\/AP)<\/p>\n

All the major statistical titles have been decided, barring the most mathematically improbable events of all-time happening Sunday.<\/p>\n

Scoring: Luka Doncic of the Lakers (33.5 per game) will win, unless something happens like Oklahoma City\u2019s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 194 points. Gilgeous-Alexander isn\u2019t playing.
\nRebounding: Nikola Jokic of the Nuggets (12.9 per game) will win, unless something happens like New York\u2019s Karl-Anthony Towns grabbing at least 95 rebounds.
\nAssists: Jokic (10.9 per game) will win, unless something happens like Detroit\u2019s Cade Cunningham getting at least 77 assists.
\nBlocked shots: Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs (3.1 per game) will win, unless something happens like Oklahoma City\u2019s Chet Holmgren blocking at least 85 shots.<\/p>\n

(So, yes, it\u2019s safe to assume those races have been decided.)<\/p>\n

Doncic won\u2019t play Sunday for the Lakers, meaning he\u2019ll fall short of the 65-game rule for award eligibility, and Jokic needs to play Sunday to hit that number. That means it\u2019s actually possible the NBA scoring, rebound and assist champions will all be ineligible to appear on the ballots that will decide the All-NBA teams, MVP and other major awards.<\/p>\n

For the record, Jokic is officially 50-50 to play. The Nuggets listed him as questionable on the injury report that was released Saturday while announcing that many of their other top players \u2014 such as Jamal Murray \u2014 are being held out for various reasons.<\/p>\n

Lots of players out<\/p>\n

There were no fewer than 168 players officially ruled out<\/a> of Friday\u2019s games, and it\u2019ll likely be a similar number ruled out of Sunday\u2019s games.<\/p>\n

Among the highlights (or lowlights, depending on perspective):<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City, with nothing to play for, is sitting its starters for a second straight game.
\nNew York is sitting Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and more, and probably won\u2019t play Mikal Bridges for too long after he extends his every-game-of-his-career playing streak.
\nGiannis Antetokounmpo has been ruled out by Milwaukee for its finale, and an eventful offseason awaits for the Bucks.
\nBoston, with No. 2 in the East secured, is resting most of its regular rotation. Same goes for Cleveland, which has No. 4 secured.
\nKevin Durant, Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson are among the players who Houston will rest Sunday. The Rockets are locked into No. 5 in the West. Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert and Julius Randle are out for No. 6 Minnesota, and Devin Booker is among those ruled out by West No. 7 Phoenix.<\/p>\n

Draft odds<\/p>\n

The teams with the three worst records are set: Washington will be worst, with Indiana and Brooklyn second- and third-worst in some order. That means those three teams will have the best odds \u2014 14% each \u2014 of winning the No. 1 pick in next month\u2019s draft lottery.<\/p>\n

And Washington can\u2019t finish lower than fifth in the lottery.<\/p>\n

Utah and Sacramento would both see draft-lottery benefits from losses Sunday \u2014 especially the Jazz, who could assure themselves of keeping a pick that would be guaranteed to be in the top eight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday is the final day of the NBA regular season, and here\u2019s a full listing of all the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,6,11,10059,88593],"class_list":["post-708921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-playoffs","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-nba-playoffs","tag-nba-postseason","tag-nba-regular-season-finale"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116391500526189875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708921","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=708921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}