An NBA regular season marked by shocking trades and stunning dismissals of coaches whose teams were in the playoff hunt came down to the final day for six Western teams to learn, and earn, their fates.
One of those teams that fired its coach over the last two weeks claimed the No. 4 seed, and one of the teams to pull off a blockbuster trade fell into the Play-In Tournament.
The Denver Nuggets beat the Houston Rockets 126-111 on Sunday to capture the No. 4 seed. Denver fired coach Michael Malone last week but won its last three to secure its place in the Western bracket, hosting the LA Clippers in a first-round series.
“We showed up, and we controlled the game,” three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić said to the Nuggets broadcast after producing 18 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. “If we play like this, I think we can go a long way in the playoffs.”
The Clippers took the No. 5 seed by beating the Golden State Warriors 124-119, which sent the Warriors to the Play-In. Golden State acquired Jimmy Butler at the trade deadline to avoid this fate, but losing two of the last three games banished the Warriors to the Play-In for the second consecutive year. They will host the Memphis Grizzlies, who also fired their coach about two weeks ago, in the 7-8 Play-In game, with the winner advancing to play No. 2 Houston in the playoffs.
The Minnesota Timberwolves claimed the No. 6 seed by beating the Utah Jazz 116-105. They will face the No. 3 seed Los Angeles Lakers.
The No. 1 overall seed in the NBA, the Oklahoma City Thunder, who beat the New Orleans Pelicans by 15 and set an NBA record for point differential (plus-1,005 points) this season, await whoever emerges from the Play-In to take the No. 8 seed: the Warriors, Grizzlies, Sacramento Kings or Dallas Mavericks (the latter two play each other Wednesday in the 9-10 game).
The Clippers, who hung in for much of the season without Kawhi Leonard, received 33 points from him and 39 from James Harden in the harsh conditions of having to win a game like this on the road. Stephen Curry, playing with a sprained right thumb, scored 36 points. Butler added 30 points but appeared to be hobbled in a collision with Leonard inside of one minute to go in overtime.
“We kept our composure,” Harden said on the ESPN broadcast. “We went into a hostile environment, and we won the game. That was the main thing.”
The Eastern postseason bracket was set heading into Sunday’s action.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, predicted by most oddsmakers to win 48 games and finish somewhere in the middle of the pack, sewed up the No. 1 seed in the East last week yet participated in the second-best and hotly contested game of the day: a 126-118 loss to the Indiana Pacers in double overtime. Only one Cavs regular, Jarrett Allen, played any minutes; he was seeking to play in all 82 games for the first time in eight seasons and was on the court for 41 seconds before committing a foul and exiting for good.
Cleveland may have blown a 27-point lead to the Pacers, who are the East’s No. 4 seed and will host the No. 5 Milwaukee Bucks in a first-round series this weekend, but the Cavs still won the second-most games (64) in franchise history.
“We endured this 82-game grind, and it’s not easy,” said Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson, who is the fifth coach in NBA history to win at least 64 games in his first season.
The Cavs won’t know who they’re hosting in Game 1 of a first-round series until Friday night when the last of two teams to advance out of the East’s Play-In bracket is determined.
The winner of the No. 7 Orlando Magic vs. No. 8 Atlanta Hawks game Tuesday will play the second-seeded and defending champion Boston Celtics in a first-round series. The loser of Orlando-Atlanta (who also played Sunday in a game won by the Hawks) will play the winner of Wednesday’s No. 9 Chicago Bulls vs. No. 10 Miami Heat matchup Friday for a chance to face Cleveland in the first round.
Before the Celtics’ game Sunday against the Charlotte Hornets, Boston coach Joe Mazzulla confirmed that star guard Jaylen Brown received an injection for his ailing right knee. Brown missed the final three games of the regular season.
“Just part of the rehab process for him to get back and be his absolute best,” Mazzulla said. “Just continue to take care of himself and put himself in great position to be ready for next weekend.”
The No. 3 seed New York Knicks will play the No. 6 seed Detroit Pistons in a first-round series. The Knicks allowed Mikal Bridges to start and play six seconds in a meaningless game against the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday so Bridges could extend his consecutive games streak to 556. The Pistons reached the playoffs for the first time since 2019 and, more impressively, won 30 more games than they did last season (14).
At the other end of the standings, lottery positioning and the odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick were impacted Sunday in surprising ways.
The Washington Wizards, Jazz and Hornets will each have the highest odds of winning the May 12 lottery at 14 percent, but the Wizards pulled a no-no Sunday, winning their final game after entering the day tied for the worst record in the NBA. The Wizards secured their 17th win, one more than Utah, by scoring 5 points in the final six seconds to beat Miami 119-118 on a wild bank shot at the buzzer by Bub Carrington.
As a result, the Jazz have the league’s worst record and can do no worse than No. 5 in the lottery. The Wizards can be no worse than No. 6 on draft night.
Additionally, Atlanta’s win over Orlando may have complicated the Hawks’ ability to keep a top-12 protected pick owed by the Kings from the Kevin Huerter trade. Now, Atlanta might need to make the playoffs to get a lottery pick. If the Hawks and Kings lose in the Play-In and miss the playoffs and Dallas makes the playoffs, the Kings-Hawks drawing would determine whether the Kings keep the pick at 12 or the Hawks get it at 13. If the Hawks had lost, they would have been home free.
Sunday’s results didn’t impact this, but the Philadelphia “Top-Sixers” — arguably the league’s most disappointing team after adding Paul George to a roster with Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey last summer — have a 64 percent chance of keeping their top-six protected pick as a result of finishing with the league’s fifth-worst record. The pick will go to Oklahoma City if the Sixers fall to seventh in the lottery.
It was a season that began with history, with the NBA’s eldest star and all-time leading scorer, LeBron James, taking the court on opening night with his son Bronny, becoming the first father-son duo to appear in a real game.
The Lakers, well, we would hear from them again. They pulled off arguably the most stunning trade in league history a few days before the February deadline, acquiring megastar Luka Dončić from the Mavericks for Anthony Davis and only one first-round pick. The Lakers have their next face of the franchise for when James, 40, retires; the Mavs’ fan base is still irate over trading away a generational talent like Dončić just as he was reaching his prime.
There was at least one more blockbuster trade involving a league star when the Warriors, reeling for much of the season, acquired Butler from the Heat at the deadline, which instantly fortified the Warriors’ defense and gave Curry help on offense.
The Cavs appeared to make the biggest deadline move among teams who were already considered championship contenders, acquiring De’Andre Hunter from Atlanta for Caris LeVert and Georges Niang to add a big, switchable wing who can shoot. They won their first 15 games with Hunter on the court and 16 overall during that stretch for their third winning streak of at least 12 games in the same season.
If the shock of the Dončić trade was just beginning to wear off come springtime, the Grizzlies brought it all back by firing coach Taylor Jenkins with about two weeks left in the season and his team in fifth place. Jenkins was the franchise’s winningest coach, and Memphis was in second place in the West as of mid-March.
Then, last week, the Nuggets asked Memphis to hold their beer and fired Malone, Denver’s winningest coach, who guided the franchise to its first NBA championship two years ago.
Fans can only hope the Play-In and, more importantly, the playoffs are as exciting and surprising as what came before them.
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