The Clippers clinched a tiebreaker over the Jazz. Here’s why that’s so important

The LA Clippers and Utah Jazz are highly likely to meet in the first round of the 2017 NBA playoffs. Neither can catch the Houston Rockets for the No. 3 seed. While the Oklahoma City Thunder are definitely in striking distance of the Nos. 4 or 5 seeds (tied with LA in the loss column and one behind Utah), they have seven of their remaining 11 games on the road with three back-to-backs in there, including a Sunday faceoff with the Rockets and an upcoming game against the San Antonio Spurs.

So barring the Thunder climbing into the mix, the Jazz and Clippers will be the Nos. 4 and 5 seeds and will face off in the first round. LA beat Utah on Saturday, clinching the head-to-head tiebreaker in the process. That means that if the teams finish the season tied in the standings, the Clippers will become the official No. 4 seed and claim home-court advantage.

Here’s why that’s a big deal.

Home-road parity is continually increasing in the NBA for mostly unknown reasons (including potentially Tinder). But the Clippers and Jazz are fairly traditional: They are roughly .500 teams on the road and much better at home.

The difference in performance is more pronounced for the Clippers. LA has an elite-level defense at home, allowing 102 points per 100 possessions. On the road, LA has one of the worst defenses in the league at 110 points per 100. Utah has a smaller degradation — defensive rating of 100 at home and 104 on the road — but it’s how its defense performs whether the Clippers are a top-drawer squad or an also-ran, especially since the Jazz are not an offensive juggernaut.

Something that doesn’t get enough attention is how long the first two games of the playoffs take for some teams. Consider the West 4-5 matchup last season: LA vs. the Portland Trail Blazers. The Clippers had home court. The first two games of the series were Sunday and Wednesday. That means Portland likely flew into LA on Saturday and didn’t return to Portland until early Thursday. The Blazers lived out of a hotel for the first five days of the series. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s worse than living out of your home, as the Clippers did.

Scheduling all these games to start over two days and get to a Game 3 within six days is difficult. That means that teams without home court are on the road for almost a week — albeit in one city — to start a series. And when that city is Los Angeles ... I’m just saying.

The Jazz have a game on the Clippers but have five games left at home and four on the road. Four of those games come against what we’ll call good teams: the Warriors, Wizards, and a pair against the Spurs. There’s an asterisk here: The Warriors game and one of the Spurs games are in the final days of the season when those teams could be resting. So we’ll call it two for sure tough games and a couple of maybes.

The Clippers have six left at home and just two on the road. Three of the games are against good teams: the Spurs, Wizards, and Rockets. The rest are against actively awful opponents (which doesn’t mean the Clippers will win them all).

The easy prediction is that the Clippers will finish 6-2 and the Jazz will finish 6-3. That would leave them tied at 50-32 at season’s end and give LA the No. 4 seed and home-court advantage.

Tiebreakers matter!