By Sunday night, every NBA team will have played 82 regular-season games, and the nba playoff picture is already taking shape in both conferences. Detroit has clinched the East's No. 1 seed, while Charlotte's late surge and the scramble behind it have left the middle of the bracket crowded and volatile.
The Hornets have gone 32-15 since Jan. 1, shot a league-best 39 percent from beyond the arc in that span and finished first in plus-minus over the same stretch. In New York, the Knicks host Toronto on Friday and Charlotte on Sunday, with the club leading the league in clutch-time 3-point shooting at around 41 percent; Jalen Brunson has hit 44.4 percent of his clutch-time attempts and OG Anunoby 50 percent. Those games matter because the East's fifth through ninth seeds were separated by two games as of Thursday, and Toronto remained part of the jam.
That race has been complicated by form and injuries. Atlanta was 19-5 after the All-Star break as of the article, but Cleveland beat the Hawks on Wednesday, a game in which Cade Cunningham returned and finished with 13 points and 10 assists in 26 minutes. Donovan Mitchell sat Friday with a right ankle injury, and Jarrett Allen was out with a right knee injury, leaving the Cavaliers to manage health as much as positioning while the final week unwinds.
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In the West, Oklahoma City has already clinched home court through the playoffs and secured the conference's No. 1 seed for the third straight campaign. The Thunder have gone 19-1 since losing to Detroit on Feb. 25, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is trying to close out his MVP case in front of Nikola Jokić as Denver slides between the third, fourth and fifth seed. The playoff field is set to reward the teams that finish cleanest, and punish the ones that spend the last week guessing where they will land.
