Western Conference: Six teams battling for one playoff spot

The Western Conference playoff field is nearly set. Seven of the eight seeds out West are all but wrapped up as we head into the All-Star break. The Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies, and Oklahoma City Thunder all have a 99 percent chance or better of making the playoffs, according to playoff odds reports at FiveThirtyEight, ESPN, and Basketball-Reference.

That means there’s only one seed available for the six teams occupying spots 8-13 in the West, all of whom are separated by a total of 3.5 games heading into the break. Sure, whoever gets that spot is just going to be the Warriors’ sacrificial lamb; but that doesn’t mean we can’t handicap their chances of getting there.

Denver Nuggets (8th)

Record: 25-31 Remaining SOS: 0.496

O-Rtg: 108.8 D-Rtg: 110.9 Net-Rtg: -2.9

538: 53% ESPN BPI: 59.5% BBALL-REF: 53.8%

Denver is the only team that any of the three projection models gives a greater than 50 percent chance of getting into the playoffs, and actually tops that figure on all three. The Nuggets are actually a game over .500 since permanently inserting Nikola Jokic into the starting lineup back in mid-December, and they just acquired Mason Plumlee — a useful, Jokic-lite type player — for Jusuf Nurkic, who was barely playing at all and who had been increasingly ineffective when he saw the floor.

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The Nuggets still can’t defend even a lick, but their offense should reach new heights with Plumlee on board. They’d been struggling badly without Jokic in the game over the last few weeks, but now should be able to replicate the same style of play by using Plumlee as an offensive fulcrum. Once the Nuggets get healthy, they will also have nice depth on the wings and at the point. They still have plenty of pieces to aggregate for another trade, too. There’s more upside to be found here.

Sacramento Kings (9th)

Record: 24-33 (1.5) Remaining SOS: 0.503

O-Rtg: 104.8 D-Rtg: 108.6 Net-Rtg: -3.8

538: 16% ESPN BPI: 7.4% BBALL-REF: 16.5%

The Kings currently sit in the No. 9 spot, but all three projection systems give the 10th-place Blazers a better shot of making the playoffs. Some of that is likely owed to Sacramento’s having the worst net rating of the six teams in contention for this spot, being that point differential is generally a better indicator of true team quality than actual win-loss record. The Kings don’t play an especially tough slate down the stretch of the season, but they’re also not an especially good team. They’re also lucky in that they have three more home games than road games left on the schedule, but it’s not like they’re any good at home anyway. With Rudy Gay out for the year, it’ll likely take the best run of Boogie Cousins’ career to get the Kings the home playoff games they so clearly crave.

Portland Trail Blazers (10th)

Record: 23-33 (2.0) Remaining SOS: 0.476

O-Rtg: 106.5 D-Rtg: 109.0 Net-Rtg: -2.5

538: 21% ESPN BPI: 26.9% BBALL-REF: 17.1%

The most disappointing team in the NBA has odds that are kind of all over the place, even while being relatively low everywhere. The range of 9.8 percent between where Basketball-Reference and BPI peg their playoff chances is the largest of any of these six teams.

The Blazers do face the easiest schedule over the second half of the season out of this group but barring a sudden, team-wide uptick in defensive ability, it doesn’t seem likely that they come from behind and nab a spot.

New Orleans Pelicans (11th)

Record: 23-34 (2.5) Remaining SOS: 0.515

O-Rtg: 102.3 D-Rtg: 104.7 Net-Rtg: -2.4

538: 6% ESPN BPI: 0.8% BBALL-REF: 7.5%

That all three projection systems see New Orleans’ chance of making the playoffs being so much lower than Portland’s despite the fact that (a) the Pellies are only a half-game back of the Blazers; and (b) the Pelicans actually have a slightly better Net-Rating than the Blazers is somewhat strange. When you considered that both teams have similar home-road records, close game records, and blowout records, it makes even less sense. New Orleans does play a schedule that is slightly more difficult (the equivalent of playing a 42-win team every night rather than a 39-win team) but that doesn’t seem like enough to give them one-third of the chance Portland has to get in. Perhaps it’s owed to preseason expectations, which were higher for Portland than New Orleans and might still, to some extent, be baked into the numbers.

Dallas Mavericks (12th)

Record: 23-34 (3.0) Remaining SOS: 0.491

O-Rtg: 104.2 D-Rtg: 106.1 Net-Rtg: -1.9

538: 4% ESPN BPI: 5.0% BBALL-REF: 3.5%

Rick Carlisle’s “underrated sh*t team” backslid with four losses in their final six heading into the All-Star break, following a stretch where the won nine of 12. Yogi Ferrell is a fun story, Harrison Barnes has taken to an expanded role far better than nearly anyone expected, Wes Matthews is back to being Iron Man, and Dirk is still Dirking — thank God — but the Mavs probably have very little shot at this thing.

Minnesota Timberwolves (13th)

Record: 22-35 (3.5) Remaining SOS: 0.541

O-Rtg: 107.5 D-Rtg: 108.3 Net-Rtg: -0.8

538: 1% ESPN BPI: 0.6% BBALL-REF: 2.4%

This is a young team depending almost entirely on young players; it was obvious that there would be growing but nobody really saw the Wolves being this bad. No team has under-performed its point differential more so far this season than Minnesota, which has five fewer wins than its scoring margin would suggest despite only having played 57 games. That is an insane split. It’s not out of the ordinary for Minnesota, though. Two of the five teams since 2008 that have under-performed their point differential by seven wins or more over the full season were Wolves teams (2011 and 2014). They also under-performed by three wins in 2015 and two wins last season. They’ve had trouble winning close games for years and this season has been no different, even with a new head coach.

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That under-performance has led them to falling 3.5 games back of the Nuggets heading into the break, and with the toughest remaining schedule of any of these six teams, it seems extremely unlikely that they’ll be able to rip off a hot enough streak to make it into the dance.