The final week of the NBA season is here, but the playoff picture is still coming together. <\/p>\n
Sunday had a handful of notable matchups that shook things around in the playoff race. Here’s a look at the updated playoff picture and standings with the end of the regular season just ahead. <\/p>\n
Eastern Conference Standings<\/p>\n
Western Conference Standings<\/p>\n
The Detroit Pistons will have a drama-free final week since they’ve already secured the top seed in the East. The Celtics, Knicks and Cavs don’t have too much to worry about aside from seeding. <\/p>\n
The current 5-10 seeds in the East have a highly consequential week ahead, however, as two of those teams will secure playoff spots while the others will have to duke it out in the play-in tournament. The Hawks have the upper hand in that race right now, but can’t relax just yet. <\/p>\n
OKC needs to win two of its final four games this season to secure the No. 1 seed, which should be doable, but the Spurs will certainly try to dethrone the Thunder in the final week. <\/p>\n
The Lakers, Nuggets and Rockets don’t have to stress too much knowing they’ve all secured a top-six seed, but improving their seeding is vital considering the West is loaded from top to bottom. <\/p>\n
The Timberwolves and Suns are the teams to watch this week as they both race to secure the No. 6 seed. Minnesota is three games ahead of Phoenix, putting it in a good position, but it still has a bit of work to do. <\/p>\n
The bottom half of the West can relax a bit more since the Clippers, Blazers and Warriors are already play-in bound with no chance at a top-six seed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final week of the NBA season is here, but the playoff picture is still coming together. Sunday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-588688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}