We’ve officially entered the fun part of the regular season in each respective conference playoff race, where chaos is sure to ensue over the next month and change. With fewer than 20 games remaining for most teams, there are still few certainties when you view the overall situation; but we’ve got a segmented way to look at things as we continue forward with a few smaller races within the big picture.
2014 NBA standings: Pacers regain slim lead over Heat in the Eastern Conference
San Antonio is holding serve with the NBA’s best record, while an injury to LaMarcus Aldridge is putting a scare in the suddenly sliding Trail Blazers. We run down the NBA standings.
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The race for East No. 1
No team out East is going to catch the Pacers or the Heat for the top two spots in the conference over their next 18 and 20 games, respectively, but it sure felt like there were better days than those the two Eastern Conference finalists have experienced recently.
Miami was defeated on its own court by the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night, sending them to their fourth loss in five games and dropping them one game back of Indiana in the loss column. The champs’ current skid has come on the heels of an eight-game winning streak, illustrating the ebbs and flows of the grinding NBA season.
Luckily for the Heat, the Pacers haven’t been much better. They recently stopped their four-game slide with a win over Boston on Tuesday, but they’ve still got a bigger problem. Indy is only 14-10 over its last 24 games after starting the season 33-7, which has to be a cause for concern.
The middle of the conference
On the flip side, how about them Nets? Brooklyn currently boasts the Eastern Conference’s best record since the start of the new year at 23-9, and they’ve still got 19 games remaining. Jason Kidd’s crew currently sits alone in fifth place out East, only three games back of the third-place Toronto Raptors in the loss column. Not bad for a team that’s dealt with a locker room full of injuries this season.
But it’s still jumbled in the middle. The Washington Wizards sit half a game back in that sixth spot, and the Bulls are grinding their way down the stretch as the current fourth seed. It’s probably best to compartmentalize the East at this point into three different sections: top, middle and bottom. Nobody’s going to be messing with the Heat or the Pacers at the top, but the Raptors, Bulls, Nets and Wizards may find themselves in a battle down the stretch, with Toronto — 1.5 games up on Chicago and 3.5 up on Washington — getting a little head start.
And just a head’s up: the Knicks remain five games out in the loss column of a playoff spot, but they’ve won five straight — against some really bad teams, mind you — and are still hanging, as are the Pistons, in case the Hawks continue to plummet. And by the way, Atlanta has dropped 14 of its last 16 games and remains the eighth seed with still that five-game cushion to spare. Amazing.
Top of the league
The Spurs still sit atop the NBA standings after an easy win at home over the suddenly reeling Trail Blazers, and San Antonio is in absolute destruction mode at the moment. During the team's current eight-game winning streak that has coincided directly with the return of Kawhi Leonard from a broken hand, the Spurs are outscoring teams by 12.1 points per 100 possessions while boasting a true-shooting rate of nearly 60 percent as a group, per the NBA.com's stats database. And what's more: Out of the 10 games remaining on their March schedule, only two are against teams that have a winning record. This run might continue for a while.
Meanwhile, the Clippers have won nine straight games and are heading into a cream-puffy stretch of a schedule themselves before finishing March at Dallas, at Houston and at Minnesota. Before that, they’ve got six straight games against teams with losing records and are only four games behind the Spurs in the loss column. If it weren’t for the equally as easy schedule San Antonio is about to go through, third place Los Angeles may have a chance to threaten the top of the standings, especially with some of the defensive issues through which Oklahoma City has recently struggled.
Uh oh, Portland
The Blazers have now lost four straight in the midst of a murderers' row of a road trip. And to add injury to insult, they've now lost LaMarcus Aldridge to a back contusion after a scary fall early in the third quarter in San Antonio on Wednesday. X-Rays were negative for the big man, but any time missed for him will surely put some strain on the current fifth seed, who is now just four games ahead of Dallas in the loss column with a schedule that's not offering much respite for the struggling team.
Suns setting in the West?
At the bottom of the standings, the Grizzlies are starting to make some noise and the Warriors are hanging tight in that sixth spot, but it's starting to look like we may be in danger of the NBA's Cinderella story sinking out of the playoff picture. The Suns have now lost three straight and seven of their last 10 games to fall into the ninth spot, one game back in the loss column of the unpredictable Mavericks. But there is a modicum of hope. Phoenix is set to face just four teams with winning records over the next 10 games, and they've just welcomed back Eric Bledsoe after an 18-game absence. This conference is wild and ever-changing, so keep a close eye on the bottom of those standings over the next month.
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