Every passing day seems to shake up the Western Conference’s cluttered middle class. On Monday, the five teams seeded between No. 4 and No. 8 were all tied in the loss column. As such, every game for those teams has drastic implications in the standings.
Two of those teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Memphis Grizzlies, faced off on Thursday, and thanks to a 44-point outburst from Anthony Edwards, Minnesota proved victorious, 141-125. That win was enormous for Minnesota, of course, but it has major ramifications all across the standings.
The biggest beneficiary of Minnesota’s win wasn’t actually the Timberwolves. No, it was the Golden State Warriors. On Wednesday, the Warriors lost a stunner to the San Antonio Spurs on a Harrison Barnes buzzer-beater. That shot knocked the Warriors into the Play-In Tournament, but Minnesota’s win nudged them back up to No. 6. Now the Warriors control their own destiny. If they beat the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday and the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday, they are guaranteed a top-six seed.
The exact seed they would hold is still to be determined, and there are still two critical games left on the schedule that affect this entire group of teams. On Friday, the Grizzlies will need to pick themselves up off of the mat after this Minnesota loss and face off with the Denver Nuggets. That matchup has thematic connections as well as practical ones. Both the Grizzlies and Nuggets surprisingly fired their head coaches late in the season. Now, both of them are fighting to avoid the Play-In Tournament.
On Sunday, we have that Warriors-Clippers game. One could easily argue that those are the two most dangerous teams in the Western Conference aside from the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder right now. The Warriors are 22-7 since the trade deadline, giving them the West’s second-best record in that span. The Clippers aren’t far behind at 20-9, and their +8.9 net rating since then is in shouting distance of Golden State’s +9.5 mark. These are two teams that, under normal circumstances, could meet in the Western Conference finals. Depending on how the next few days go, they could also meet in the first round. Or miss the playoffs entirely through the Play-In Tournament.
There are far too many tiebreakers and possible outcomes to treat anything as especially likely at this point. The Timberwolves are the only team in this group that has finished its head-to-head slate against one another. They close the season with gimmes against the Nets and Jazz. But everyone else is still fighting for their playoff lives, so with two full slates of 15 games remaining on the schedule (on Friday and Sunday), almost anything is still possible.
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