NBA 8th-Seed Power Rankings
For all the digital ink spilled over the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs and Cleveland Cavaliers at the top of the NBA, and the gallons more spent pontificating on the teams tanking on the other end, the real intrigue for the stretch run of 2016-17 rests with those squarely in the middle.
The races for the No. 8 seeds are as competitive in both conferences as they've been in years. The Eastern Conference's final playoff spot has long been a haven for sub-.500 squads hoping to get a whiff of basketball in late April, if not into May. This season, the bottom of the West has obliged with its own bloodbath of flawed teams.
The odds are, the last club standing in each melee will be rewarded with a summary stomping at the foot of the league's elite. But upsets can happen in the NBA playoffs. A decade has come and gone since the We Believe Warriors stunned Dirk Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks and the league at large with an 8-vs.-1 upset of the defending Western Conference champions.
Could this year's Bay Area juggernaut suffer a similar fate? Are LeBron James and the Cavs due for a comeuppance in the East?
To get a sense for these supposed races into the fire, we took a look at the five teams competing for the No. 8 spot in each conference. They're ranked according to which ones have the best shots of giving the league's prevailing overlords headaches and winding up the ultimate Association underdogs.
East No. 5: Charlotte Hornets
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The Charlotte Hornets have an uphill climb ahead if they're to secure the franchise's first back-to-back playoff appearances since pro basketball returned to the Queen City in 2004. They have the third-toughest remaining schedule in the East, behind only the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks, with six games against winning teams and another three opposite squads ahead of them in the eighth-seed race.
Things could be worse for the Hornets. Nicolas Batum, the team's top wing, recently returned from a two-game absence due to debilitating migraine headaches. At the time, Batum was concerned that he'd been sidelined by another concussion, four years after enduring one with the Portland Trail Blazers.
"I didn't want to go [to get a brain scan]," he said, per the Charlotte Observer's David Scott. "I didn't want bad news."
Charlotte will need Batum's two-way talents to close the four-game gap between the team and the East's No. 8 seed. If the Hornets can claim their season series with Milwaukee (two games remaining) and gain an edge on Miami in conference record after evening their 2016-17 tally with the Heat on April 5, they may yet have Michael Jordan crying tears of joy this spring.
That is, before His Airness weeps when his Hornets go head-to-head with a Cavs club that Charlotte has beaten just once in 10 tries since LeBron James went back home.
East No. 4: Chicago Bulls
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In some respects, the Chicago Bulls are poised to honor former general manager Jerry Krause, who passed on Tuesday at the age of 77, with a return to the postseason. They have the softest remaining schedule in the NBA, with just two games against plus-.500 opponents and one apiece facing the Milwaukee Bucks and Detroit Pistons.
The Pistons' visit could be particularly important to the Bulls' playoff push. A win over Detroit would not only pull Chicago closer to the East's No. 8 seed, but also even the Windy City's season series with the Motor City and allow the Bulls' superior record against Eastern Conference teams to tip the scales.
Trouble is, head coach Fred Hoiberg is scrambling for reinforcements. With Dwyane Wade done for the year on account of an elbow injury, the Bulls have had to turn to the very youngsters the Chicago native criticized earlier this season.
And that's to say nothing of the trouble Chicago would encounter in a first-round matchup with Cleveland. The Bulls' 3-0 record against the defending champs looks great on paper, but LeBron James and Kyrie Irving each missed a matchup, Kevin Love sat twice due to injury and Wade and Taj Gibson (now in Oklahoma City) figured prominently into all three.
East No. 3: Detroit Pistons
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The Detroit Pistons have at least two clear advantages in the race for No. 8 in the East: They have the second-softest remaining schedule by opponent winning percentage and they snuck into the playoffs last season.
"Last year, we were playing with house money; this is a different situation and important in our growth, as a team and organization, on how we handle this,” head coach Stan Van Gundy said, per the Detroit Free Press' Vince Ellis. "I said, 'I'm not going to stand here and tell you there's no pressure and it doesn't matter and don't worry about it.' That's not the way it goes, and it's not what the league is about—we have to win.”
Beating the teams competing with them for one of the East's final playoff spots will be of the utmost importance. The Pistons have one game apiece left against the Bulls, Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat.
Losses to Chicago and Miami could be particularly damaging. Detroit is currently up 2-1 in those season series. A defeat in either case would throw the tie break to conference record, where the Pistons are a hair behind.
The bigger concern for the Motor City, though, may be staying afloat at all. The Pistons have just four home games left on the docket, and if their road record this season is any indication (11 wins away, tied for the third-fewest in the East, ahead of only the Brooklyn Nets and and Philadelphia 76ers), they'll have to fight for their lives just to bring playoff basketball back to Auburn Hills one last time.
Should the Pistons survive, they'll likely get another crack at the Cavs, with whom they split their four games in 2016-17 after putting up a fight in last spring's first-round sweep.
East No. 2: Milwaukee Bucks
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Technically, the Milwaukee Bucks don't belong on this list. They crept into the East's No. 7 spot by winning 13 of their first 18 games following Jabari Parker's second ACL tear.
But the line between the conference's last two postseason seeds is razor thin and figures to stay that way for the duration. And while Milwaukee already has a leg up on Chicago and Detroit head-to-head, it's already lost its season series with Miami and would need to beat the Hornets twice more to earn a clear edge over Charlotte.
If the Bucks can keep the same quality ball that they have of late, they should be back in the playoffs without too much of a problem.
"The last month we've been in somewhat of playoff mode," Jason Terry, Milwaukee's elder statesman, said, per the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Charles F. Gardner. "And we cannot shift gears now."
They'll have to find a way to keep the pedal to the metal after their current six-game Western Conference swing comes to an end. Once the Bucks get home, they'll play eight straight and 10 of 11 against teams in the playoff picture.
Like pretty much any team in the East, Milwaukee would probably prefer a first-round matchup with the Boston Celtics to one with the Cavaliers. The Bucks have dropped three straight to Cleveland since blowing out the defending champs in late November.
Still, with a superstar like Giannis Antetokounmpo and old heads like Terry on hand, Milwaukee should have no worse than a puncher's chance to give any Eastern beast a tough test in Round 1.
East No. 1: Miami Heat
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If Chris Bosh were fit to perform in the NBA, the Miami Heat probably wouldn't be in this predicament.
"I'm still a basketball player at heart," he told the Associated Press, (h/t South Florida Sun Sentinel's Ira Winderman). "I can't help it."
Then again, Miami didn't look like it would be anywhere near a return to the playoffs after an 11-30 start this season. It's a testament to head coach Erik Spoelstra and the scrappy cast of characters he has at his disposal that the Heat are here at all.
The tiebreakers don't favor Miami at the moment—among other potential No. 8 seeds, only the Bucks have lost their season series to the Heat outright—but neither did the odds earlier in 2016-17. That same gritty, defensive-minded spirit that helped the Heat run off 13 straight wins between January and February will have to be their saving grace down the stretch against one of the East's tougher schedules, especially if Dion Waiters' badly sprained ankle prevents him from saving the day.
"It does hurt not having Dion with us. We still have enough to score points," Spoelstra said, per the Miami Herald's Barry Jackson. "I just want to stop focusing on that, whether we can outscore teams or not.”
They put up plenty of points (120 and 106, to be exact) during their consecutive wins over the Cavaliers in early March. But it was their defense, which held Cleveland to 92 and 98 points—albeit once without LeBron James and Kyrie Irving and both times absent Kevin Love—that was the difference and will be should the league be treated to a South Beach revenge series this spring.
West No. 5: Minnesota Timberwolves
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Tom Thibodeau didn't think he'd be competing for a playoff spot right away when he took over the Minnesota Timberwolves as head coach and president of basketball operations.
“I never fooled myself into thinking it was something other than what it was,” he said, per Bleacher Report's Michael Pina. “If you took a hard look at the numbers, and you dive into the games, and you see how they unfolded from a year ago, you knew you weren’t close to winning.”
Yet, here he is, within spitting distance of the West's No. 8 seed despite watching his Wolves go winless over the last four games.
The path forward won't be any easier for Minnesota, who will play eight of its final 12 games away from Target Center, and has won just 10 times in 33 tries on the road so far this season. Four of those will pit them against winning teams, including the Golden State Warriors, Utah Jazz and Houston Rockets.
The Wolves are already done with the Denver Nuggets, who've been the eighth seed for much of 2016-17, but still have some control over their own destiny, with three more games against the ninth-place Portland Trail Blazers on the docket.
If Minnesota can find a way to sweep Rip City—and it might, so long as Karl-Anthony Towns (28.4 points, 13.9 rebounds since the All-Star break) keeps rampaging—Thibs could be staring down the team's first postseason appearance since 2004.
Not that the Wolves would likely last long. They're 1-6 against the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs so far this season with one game the Dubs remaining—and the lone win among them came shortly after Kevin Durant succumbed to injury.
West No. 4: New Orleans Pelicans
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The New Orleans Pelicans' early struggles with DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis served as yet another reminder that building a team in the NBA is not the same as putting one together for your fantasy league. Talent, no matter how overwhelming, takes time to jell.
The Pelicans appear to have figured out how to play with two of the league's best bigs on the floor at once. With Davis defending farther out and Cousins clogging the paint, New Orleans has been able to use the former for quick scores in transition and the latter trail into the halfcourt attack if early opportunities don't materialize.
"We've been playing with a lot of good pace. We've been getting the ball out quick and pushing it down the floor, getting some easy looks," Davis said, per the Associated Press' Brett Martel (h/t NBA.com). "When we don't have that, we try to play inside-out."
That division of labor helped the Pelicans follow up a 2-6 stretch after the All-Star break with five wins in six outings, including four by double digits.
New Orleans' remaining schedule is hardly forgiving, with seven road games remaining. But that slate is littered with dates against the Dallas Mavericks (once), Portland Trail Blazers (once) and Denver Nuggets (three times). If the Pelicans can push through those games in particular, they'll have a decent chance of sneaking into the playoffs as the West's No. 8 seed.
And if Kevin Durant isn't fit for the start of the postseason, the Boogie-Brow tandem could be all the more dangerous in a showdown with the Golden State Warriors.
West No. 3: Dallas Mavericks
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What the Miami Heat are to the East, the Dallas Mavericks have become in the West: a hodgepodge of gritty veterans and hungry youngsters fashioned during a climb out of an early hole by a Coach of the Year candidate.
In Dallas' case, 38-year-old Dirk Nowitzki remains the pillar. With head coach Rick Carlisle serving as maestro, the team's big-money free agents (Wesley Matthews, Harrison Barnes) and scrapheap additions (Seth Curry, Yogi Ferrell) have formed a solid solar system around the giant German's gravitational pull.
That group did remarkably well to win 14 of its first 24 games with Ferrell going from D-Leaguer to Big D's starter at the point. But the true test of this group's mettle is coming.
Even after Tuesday's loss to the Golden State Warriors, the Mavericks have one of the conference's toughest schedules and by far the trickiest among eighth-seed competitors. They'll finish up this brutal home stand against the Los Angeles Clippers, Toronto Raptors and Oklahoma City Thunder before hitting the road for five straight and seven of their final nine games.
It would be poetic, though—if not downright fun—if Dallas snagged the No. 8 spot to set up a first-round faceoff with the Warriors, 10 years after Golden State's We Believe squad took down the top-seeded Mavericks to end Nowitzki's MVP season.
West No. 2: Denver Nuggets
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The Denver Nuggets have had to put (some of) their youth movement on hold this season, for good reason. Since putting Nikola Jokic back in the starting lineup in mid-December, the Nuggets have gone 24-21—not exactly a world-beater's record, but in this year's Western Conference, you don't have to conquer Earth's surface to crack the top eight.
From that morass, Denver has found a place, albeit not a particularly comfortable one, in the postseason picture. Jokic, in particular, has been a revelation, tallying five triple-doubles and emerging as the fulcrum of the Nuggets' future in just his second season.
Asking a defensively-challenged 22-year-old to carry a team into the playoffs is a tall order, to say the least. Putting his squad on the road eight times in its last 12 outings only makes the job more daunting.
But Jokic is hardly alone. He'll spend the stretch run surrounded by an intriguing mix of hungry youngsters (Gary Harris, Juancho Hernangomez, Jamal Murray, Will Barton, Mason Plumlee) and battle-tested veterans (Jameer Nelson, Kenneth Faried) under the thumb of head coach Michael Malone. He'll have to figure out how to get this group to defend—they rank 29th in points allowed per 100 possessions—if its going to survive the upcoming onslaught, let alone prove pesky against the Warriors or Spurs in Round 1 thereafter.
West No. 1: Portland Trail Blazers
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The Portland Trail Blazers looked like they were dead in the water. Instead of building on a Cinderella season in 2015-16, Rip City took a big step backward, especially on the defensive end, with a payroll that ranked among the steepest in the Association. Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum were still scoring, but getting shots was a hassle for the team's backcourt.
Then, Jusuf Nurkic showed up on the Moda Center doorstep, and the Blazers looked spunky again. Portland went 9-6 through Nurkic's first 15 games, with two wins over the Oklahoma City Thunder and a landmark victory against the San Antonio Spurs.
As The Ringer's Danny Chau detailed, that uptick in winning percentage, and the attendant scoring explosions from Lillard and McCollum, have everything to do with how Nurkic sets the table for his little guys:
"Since the All-Star break, Nurkic is in the top five in the screen assists, which the league defines as a screen that directly leads to a made field goal by that teammate. Timing is imperative for a point guard with deep range. The extra beat or split second it takes for a defender to identify whether he should go under or whether he has to fight a mountain to get the ball handler is the difference between an open three and an off-balance, contested one."
Coincidentally, Nurkic, who came to Portland in a pre-deadline trade with Denver, could end up costing the Nuggets a playoff spot while vaulting the Blazers to their fourth straight playoff berth under head coach Terry Stotts. He's also the exact kind of big man Portland could've used in last year's second-round series against Golden State. The Blazers will be happy to have him if (or when) they come to blows with the Warriors again this spring.
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