3 things worth watching in the final week before the NBA playoffs

The last two weeks of the NBA regular season are a quagmire of uselessness. Teams are tanking harder than my bank account after a week in Atlantic City, and nothing we see from top teams hoping to preserve their stars can be trusted. Unless it’s the Celtics winning every game. That would matter.

But surely we can glean something from the mess? Bigger-picture questions, playoff storylines? Surely we can find three whole things to talk about while we wait for the Hawks and Bulls to fulfill their yearly duty of playing in the play-in?

Of course we can. So grab your favorite age-appropriate beverage and enjoy.

1. The Nuggets, Lakers, Warriors and Timberwolves play musical chairs

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images

By intentionally refusing to acknowledge the Memphis Grizzlies (who just fired their coach with nine games left and can’t score on a parked car), and the Los Angeles Clippers (who I should maybe acknowledge) we are about to witness some serious ridiculousness with two of the four first round series in the Western Conference. And it has the potential to be absolute cinema.

In some order, the Nuggets and Lakers will (likely) occupy the three and four seeds, while the Warriors and Timberwolves will probably be five and six — but it’s still up in the air with those four, Memphis, and the Clippers separated by all of two total games — turning this into the weirdest round of musical chairs you’ve ever seen. There are only two total permutations, but I have no idea who each team would rather play. The Timberwolves seem to own the Nuggets lately, but does Denver really want to mess around trying to guard Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler with their less-than-great perimeter defenders? Meanwhile, Golden State gets to pick between failing to guard Nikola Jokic for a week and a half or… failing to guard Luka Doncic for a week and a half. And I’d bet my car (the one that the Grizzlies couldn’t score on) that Minnesota isn’t itching to see Doncic again this soon.

Musical chairs isn’t fun because it’s a well-designed game, it’s fun because nobody knows what the hell is going on. The music stops… whenever it does, and we may not know how the tiebreakers or matchups until the bell rings on closing Sunday. Memphis and the Clippers are tied with the Timberwolves, and could ruin this whole party, but of the two options fun in front of us, here’s objectively the best one:

Lakers vs. Warriors (winner plays the Thunder), and Nuggets vs. Timberwolves (winner plays the… uh, Rockets. Yeah, the Rockets). Steph versus LeBron? Jokic vs. Ant? If we all need some random Western Conference storyline to root for in the next two weeks, it’s this.

2. The Knicks and Bucks see who can make their fans panic harder

Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

Disclaimer: I’m a Celtics fan. This section is informed, at least in part, by an unshakeable desire to see these teams fail. But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

The Eastern Conference is so calcified we may have to perform surgery to shake things up. Every seed is basically locked in, other than a Detroit-Milwaukee party going on at five and six. However, that doesn’t really matter unless you’re pulling for Malice at the Palace 2: Playoffs Edition to be greenlit by Warner Bros in a Pacers-Pistons scrap with Ron Art… I mean Ron Holland starting so many fights the league will run out of technical fouls.

But with all that aside, what I’m really focused on is the Knicks/Bucks panic thermometers, which are threatening to break and spill mercury everywhere.

Both teams are screwed in weirdly specific ways, and are just in the wrong conversation. They’re at the party and really want to be part of the cool circle, but they’re stuck conversing with Jeremy. They’re not contenders, but have contender-level payrolls with very (and in Milwaukee’s case, very-ultra-super-mega) limited flexibility this offseason. So what’s the problem, and how much should they panic and/or believe?

First, the Knicks. They feel like the late-2010s Houston Rockets — built in a lab bench to beat a very specific team but unable to do exactly that… or anything else. The Rockets had the Warriors, and the Knicks have the Celtics. They have some proof of concept against the Cavaliers, but that was a playoff series two years ago. Since then, all they’ve done is lose to the best teams in the league, and are presently 0-8 against Boston, Cleveland and Oklahoma City. How is that going to fly in the postseason?

The good news is that they’re theoretically built to beat the Celtics, which means it could work if we were living on a spreadsheet and the real world just didn’t exist. But unfortunately for them, it does. Their panic meter should be at a crisp 7.5 out of 10.

The Bucks though? Ratchet that up to a 9, because what on earth are we doing here? The Giannis Antetokounmpo trade request isn’t necessarily loading, but at this point he has to be on the webpage, ready to click the button. This team has zero flexibility, and hasn’t been a threat to beat anyone since 2022. They have one of the best players in the world, have cycled through coaches like they’re speed-dating, and don’t look poised to accomplish anything. Every team in the Eastern Conference would love to play them, and they have Giannis. That’s proof that something has gone horribly wrong.

3. The Houston-Oklahoma City Dialectic

The Rockets just beat the Thunder in a meaningless regular season game, and then the Thunder lost by a bajillion to the Lakers… so I’m shocked that nobody has shelved their brain for 20 minutes, picked the lowest-of-low-hanging fruit, gone on TV and said exactly this (yet):

“How different are the Rockets and Thunder really? I mean, both teams haven’t done ANYTHING in playoffs, have lots of young talent but haven’t proved anything yet! The Rockets are the TWO SEED and everyone is treating them like a walkover, while OKC is just going to WIN THE TITLE after making one second-round since losing Kevin Durant?! I don’t buy that. I just don’t. Also, I would like to fight LeBron James.”

The reason that no one has done that yet — except the last part, I guess — is because it’s idiotic, and comparing the Thunder and Rockets because they are “young” and “the top two seeds” is like saying Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and the play I wrote with my cousins when I was six are both serious works of drama. They share similarities on nothing but the most basic levels, but I get why it’s tempting.

Their chief difference is identity: both are made of cost-controlled young guys, but the Thunder know who is who and what is what. The Rockets seem to have a smorgasbord of options without much clarity as to who is doing what. Against the Lakers last this week, they did the tactical equivalent of tripping over themselves trying to figure out who should have the ball in a close game. Fred VanVleet? Alperen Sengun? Jalen Green? It’s generally not a good sign when you could convincingly tell me any of those guys was either taking the last shot or sitting on the bench.

The Thunder, however, are possibly the greatest team ever. They are, by most metrics, prohibitively great, and taking any other team to come out of the West feels downright disingenuous. Sure, they’ve lost two concerning-ish games, but they’re so great, so young and so set up for the future. I’m not worried.

Nobody is really questioning them… but are they going to win the title? Nobody ever knows until it happens, but the Thunder have shown us everything we need to see. What about Houston?

They’re a high seed, but they might be underdogs in every series they play in the postseason. Facing the Clippers… are you picking Houston? What about against the Timberwolves or Nuggets in round two? No shot. Perhaps they’ll show us something in the next week and a half that will change that, but the Rockets feel a year — and a big trade — away.