The Race for Homecourt Thread

[ACF]

The Spurs showed why you were right when you left them out of the equation.

[Donoghus]

Can't wait for tonight.

Trash talking up for grabs in my office tomorrow.  Wanna be on the right side of this one.

[Assassin70]

Cmon C's win out the rest of the year!

[fairweatherfan]

The Spurs showed why you were right when you left them out of the equation.

The Mavs are showing it too with how they've played of late.  I still don't see any way they get out of the West, though I'd love to be wrong.

[dtrader]

Sundays game against Miami is huge for us.  Not only could it be what locks us into 2nd place, but with the Lakers loss yesterday we're now tied with them as well.

If we beat Miami sunday and the lakers lose to OKC (very possible with how both teams are playing), we could gain homecourt advantage over both Miami and LA this weekend.

To end the season as up and down as we have, and somehow escape with homecourt advantage over miami and the lakers would be incredible. Hope we grab the opportunity.

[greensquirrel]

Sundays game against Miami is huge for us.  Not only could it be what locks us into 2nd place, but with the Lakers loss yesterday we're now tied with them as well.

If we beat Miami sunday and the lakers lose to OKC (very possible with how both teams are playing), we could gain homecourt advantage over both Miami and LA this weekend.

To end the season as up and down as we have, and somehow escape with homecourt advantage over miami and the lakers would be incredible. Hope we grab the opportunity.

I hope the Lakers have a statement game against OKC, like we did against the Bulls.

[Drucci]

The crazy thing is, even with our recent slump, we still have a shot at #2 in the East and maybe more importantly at HCA over L.A!

Basically, we need Miami to lose tonight against Atlanta (a back to back) and L.A to lose on Tuesday against SA while winning our two games. Not easy but not impossible either. Remains to be seen whether Doc plays for HCA or rests the starters tonight and Wednesday.

[anthony83]

We had a great opportunity, we have missed.
Now I see hard, Spurs reserve their starters against Lakers.
It's amazing how we lost this opportunity, last year we lost the finals for this.

[dtrader]

If the lakers had won last night, I wouldn't have been so frustrated, but knowing that a win yesterday would've likely given us homecourt over Miami AND the lakers...that hurts 

[fairweatherfan]

Was out of town for the weekend...apparently I didn't miss much worth watching.  

So, let's update with the streamlined version, focused only on who we can catch:


Monday, April 11th

Team                 W - L   GB (Losses Back)
Miami Heat       56-24     --
Boston Celtics  55-25     1 (1)


Tiebreakers:  Boston clinched over Miami.


Team                 W - L   GB (Losses Back)
LA Lakers         55-25    --
Dallas Mavs      55-25     --
Boston Celtics  55-25     --

Tiebreakers: Dallas clinched over Boston.  LA clinched over Boston with second tiebreak.


Miami is of course the biggest short-term concern, but we also have an eye toward the Lakers and Mavs, who each have the tiebreaker on us.  The Lakers have been kind enough to drop 5 straight down the stretch, but with just 2 games left for each team, we'll need to move ahead of them (and/or the Mavs) for homecourt in a potential Finals showdown.  

Of course, being in the Finals but lacking homecourt sounds like a pretty good problem to have these days.

Today's games: Celtics at the Wizards for the second time - hopefully we can get another blowout win like last time.  

Miami is at the Hawks, who are a solid team but aren't playing for anything at this point.  And Dallas travels to Houston in another match that's meaningless to the team we want to win.  Fingers crossed anyway...


Potential first round opponents:

Team                            W - L   GB (Losses Back)
6.New York Knicks      42-38    --
7.Philadelphia 76ers   41-39     1 (1)


It's either NY or Philly for us no matter how things shake out.  NY has been very hot lately, winning 7 straight, but Philly may match up better with us.  Either way if we can't get past either of these teams there's no point worrying about homecourt in the first place.

[Assassin70]

 

[fairweatherfan]

Seconded. 

Another worst-case day for us as our second string lost to the Wizards, the Mavericks beat the Rockets, and the Heat beat the Hawks.  We're locked into #3 in the East and can only catch the Lakers if they lose out against a Spurs team that isn't playing for anything and a Kings team that's probably counting the minutes til summer vacation.  Long story short, of the 6 teams that have been in the Homecourt Thread, we stand a very strong chance of finishing 6th.

So, I think I will be reluctantly shutting this thread down.  I was hoping for some excitement down the stretch but this has been decidedly the wrong kind.  But, the real season starts this weekend, and we've shown ourselves to be awfully resilient there no matter where we start from. 

Good luck in the playoffs, Cs!