Anarchy will ensue on the last day of the NBA season

The Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves are, as we speak, sporting 46-35 records with one game to go in the season. They play each other in that last game, and the winner lays claim to the final playoff spot out West. It’s crazy. It has a rock, paper, scissors vibe to it – it seems obvious that a wolf would beat a piece of gold, just like it seems obvious that a rock should beat paper but what, really, can a wolf do to an inanimate object? What does gold have to fear from wolves and men? Let it pass.

If you’d told me 10 years ago the Nuggets and Wolves would soon be playing each other in what is almost a winner-take-all playoff match I would have said, “Hey, cool, Kevin Love finally broke through, but I don’t think he’s a match for Carmelo Anthony.” In reality, Kevin Love never broke through, either there or anywhere else, and no one knows where he went. Not to mention the Wolves haven’t made the playoffs since 2004.

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In this topsy-turvy season, with little separating any non-Rocket non-Warrior team in the West, the Wolves have been as high as the third seed not too long ago. In fact, despite being on the playoff bubble with Denver, they are a mere two wins behind third as I write this. It’s a crazy season, in which everyone decided to win approximately 48 games. We will not see its like again.

So there’s a lot at stake when these teams take the court against each other, with tied records, in the last game of the season. First and most obviously, whoever wins is in. Will the Wolves see their tremendously long playoff drought come to an end? Will the often sneaky-good Nuggets announce a new era of Denver basketball?

And you want to know another thing? Whoever loses is out. Since OKC, the No. 7 seed, has 47 wins, either Denver or Minnesota can only end the season with that many if they beat the other one. Whatever else is true, Wednesday night, there will not be a tie for No. 8 place. No, sir.

But do you want to know a third thing? Whichever team ends up with 47 wins has the potential to enter into a five way tie with four other playoff teams. That’s not exactly likely but right now four teams have 47 wins, and only Utah has more than one to go. If Utah loses twice, and New Orleans, San Antonio, and OKC all lose once, bingo, five-way tie.

Of course, however, there are no ties in basketball, which means we would then enter into a truly bewildering series of tiebreakers. The Wolves, for example, are in eighth place and the Nuggets ninth, because of the Wolves’ edge in their season series. Obviously, since it is impossible for these two teams to end up tied, this is irrelevant.

But the fact that either could, after tomorrow, have the same record as between one and four other teams, sets up a bewildering series of tiebreakers. For a good discussion of what that could mean for the Wolves, I’d check this out, while for a more general synopsis I’d check this. The short version is both teams have tiebreaks over the Thunder and the Pelicans, while the Spurs have it over the Wolves, and both teams split series with the Jazz.

And now let me blow your minds just even that much more: the third tiebreak, after winning percentage and head-to-head record is who wins the division. You might remember divisions as things that used to matter before they were more or less done away with in 2007, but here they matter again. And the thing is somehow Utah, OKC, Minny, and Denver, two at 47 wins and two at 46, are all in the same division. 

And Portland, leading the division with 48 wins, will of course end the season with as many wins as anyone else in it can muster, but may tie with either Utah or OKC, who might therefore have division-winning tiebreaks after all. Neither Minny nor Denver, currently at 46, will be able to match — so neither of them can have the division winner tiebreaker. But there could be a three-way tie in this division, with none of them as division winner, which would bring us to such things as division won-lost percentage, followed by conference won-loss percentage. Weirdly, since both Minny and Denver are 9-6 against division opponents, and Portland is second best at 8-7, whoever wins on Wedsnesday will have the best winning record against the division.

Since Golden State and Houston are in the two other Western Conference divisions, no one either the Wolves or Nuggets could conceivably tie with could have the division winner tiebreaker over the Wolves and Nuggets, and only the Spurs could have the same division record (9-6). That would take us to conference record where the Wolves have a better one than the Spurs and Denver might potentially tie depending on what happens in the Spurs’ last game.

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In other words, it seems basically to be the case that either team in Wednesday’s tilt could end up the fifth seed (because of who has head-to-head tiebreaks over whom) or out of the playoffs, or anywhere in between. This math might be totally wrong, because it is pretty hard, and I didn’t really look at who else was playing whom but at least you see how CRAZY it can get.