King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NBA regular season ends with a bang: Those guys really know how to jockey for playoff seeding. Plus: So long, Isiah Thomas.
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April 17, 2008 | I've always said that it would be impossible to convince me that an NBA regular season could be interesting, and now I know it, because we've just had the wild and wooliest NBA regular season in history, and it just looked like jockeying for playoff seeds to me.
But these playoffs: OK, yeah. Game on.
All eight playoff teams in the Western Conference won at least 50 games and none of them won as many as 58. Seven games separate the 1-seed Los Angeles Lakers and the No. 8 Denver Nuggets, but better than that, only two games separate the Lakers, with 57 wins, and the 6-seed, the Phoenix Suns, with 55.
And better still: While all eight Western teams have better records, against stiffer competition, than the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, the 45-win Cleveland Cavaliers, the two best teams in the league by record are in the East. The Boston Celtics, a team this column confidently asserted last fall would not sustain its strong start, finished at 66-16. The Detroit Pistons won 59.
And they didn't just do it by beating up on the weaker East. Both the Celts and the Pistons had better winning percentages against Western Conference foes than they did within their own conference. Boston went 25-5 against the West, Detroit 22-8.
The playoffs start Saturday. The East matchups are the Atlanta Hawks at Boston, the Philadelphia 76ers at Detroit, the Toronto Raptors at the Orlando Magic in the 3-vs.-6 series and the Washington Wizards at the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 4-vs.-5.
The Western Conference teams sorted themselves out on the last night of the regular schedule Wednesday. The San Antonio Spurs got the No. 3 seed by blowing out the Utah Jazz, who will open on the road as the 4-seed at the No. 5 Houston Rockets, who pounded the Los Angeles Clippers.
The Suns finished their season by beating the Portland Trail Blazers in a game that ended up being meaningless. The Suns were going to end up No. 6 either way.
The Dallas Mavericks could have given themselves a chance to avenge their 8-over-1 upset loss to the Golden State Warriors last year, in a way, by losing their last game. That would have made them the 8-seed and offered them the opportunity to upset the No. 1 Lakers. But they looked pretty happy about beating the New Orleans Hornets and clinching the 7-seed and an opening-round date with the very same team. The Hornets are No. 2.
Next page: Isiah Thomas headed for the exit in New York