With Seeds 1-3 Clinched in the West, Interesting Dynamic Arises for Utah Jazz

With the top three seeds in the West now officially clinched, the decisions of those teams to either rest players or compete could have an enormous impact on the Utah Jazz’s playoff positioning.

When the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers met back on March 23rd, the Mavs did the Jazz a real solid by forcing a late-game Clippers collapse to steal an unexpected 97-95 win. That LA loss allowed Utah to keep a hold of the fourth seed in the West and given that Utah still currently holds that spot, albeit by the narrowest of margins, that upset could end up being extremely costly for the Clips.

Unfortunately, the Mavericks weren’t able to repeat their heroics in the contest last night as this time around the Clippers prevailed quite easily with a 112-101 victory. With that win, LA pulled within a half-game of the Utah Jazz for that coveted fourth place spot and the home court advantage that comes with it.

LA now has just three games left in the regular season while the Jazz have four. If the Clippers are able to win out, they will force Utah to have to do the same in order to stay in their same spot in the standings. Given that the Clippers trail by just a half game with one less to play and that they own the tiebreaker, the Jazz have to win at least one more game than LA to stay put.

Looking at the two teams’ schedules, one might think that the Jazz could very well do just that. The Clippers’ remaining three match-ups are against the Spurs, Rockets and Kings. Meanwhile, Utah will take on the Timberwolves, Blazers, Warriors and Spurs.

Given that both teams will be facing the top three teams in the West between the two of them, that’s a challenging conclusion to the season for both. If we were to predict the results of the two teams’ final stretch with the inaccurate assumption that both would beat the teams with worse records and lose to those above them in the standings, then LA would finish 1-2 while the Jazz would finish 2-2, giving them that one game lead that they’d need to claim the fourth seed.

However, due to the results of games across the league last night, it’s going to be very interesting to see how those top three teams – the Warriors, Spurs and Rockets – manage the rest of their season.

With Houston’s win over Denver last night, they officially clinched the third seed. Meanwhile, San Antonio’s loss to the Lakers combined with Golden State’s win over the Suns allowed the Warriors to officially clinch the top seed while the Spurs backed their way officially into second.

The point is, with all three of these teams locked into their respective spots in the standings, they really don’t have much to play for and it will be interesting to see how motivated they come out and whether or not they opt to play at full strength or rest guys for the playoffs.

Of course Jazz fans will likely hope that both Houston and San Antonio will still come out full strength against LA and that Utah will get lucky and play a resting Warriors and Spurs squad in their final games, but at this point there’s really no indication of what those teams are going to do for those contests.

It seems unlikely that the Rockets will rest anyone given that despite having a sprained wrist, James Harden recently spoke out against resting and emphasized that he is “strong enough” to play. His teammate Patrick Beverly echoed that sentiment. This could prove very helpful for the Jazz given that the Clippers take on Houston on Monday and have suffered blowout losses to Harden and Co. in both prior meetings this season.

Of course, the team that both squads play, the San Antonio Spurs, is notorious for resting starters, so perhaps both the Jazz and Clippers will benefit from playing a less daunting version of that normally tough Spurs squad. It certainly looks like that could be the case so far as below is San Antonio’s injury/rest report for tomorrow’s game against the Mavericks:

Obviously, we’ll see how things pan out and what reports are released in the coming week, but even with that report for tomorrow, if I had to wager a guess, I’d say it’s more likely that the Spurs play at full strength on Saturday against the Clips than in their last game of the season at Utah.

The Spurs are coming off a shocking loss last night to the Los Angeles Lakers and it wouldn’t surprise me if they decide to give their starters at least one more game to play as a cohesive unit and try to garner some confidence heading into the postseason before shutting them down to rest for the remainder of the season. And what better opportunity to do that then in Saturday’s bout against LA which just so happens to be an ABC prime time game.

However, by the time that final game in Salt Lake on April 12th rolls around, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Coach Pop bench his main guys.

If a full-strength Spurs squad toppled the Clippers, then rested the starters for the remainder of the season, it would give the Jazz an enormous boost in their pursuit of the fourth seed. However, given that San Antonio is already firmly slotted in second, it wouldn’t be that surprising to see them keep their guys shut down for the rest of the year, despite the nationally televised contest on Saturday.

Golden State is a tough one to predict as well. They’ve also been known for resting guys, especially this season after being criticized by some for pushing too hard to set the regular season record last year and hampering their championship hopes. So with the top seed fully locked down, it wouldn’t be surprising to see some guys ride the pine in Monday’s contest against the Jazz.

However, given that it was recently reported that Kevin Durant will likely make his return to the court this Saturday, it would stand to reason that the Warriors may want to close out the season with all of their main guys in action so that they can work KD back into the rotation and be clicking and cohesive come playoff time.

To be quite honest, I have a feeling that’s more or less going to be the case. And given that Utah is just 1-13 against Golden State in their last 14 contests, playing a full-strength Warriors team doesn’t bode well for the Jazz.

While it would be great to see Utah simply win out and earn the fourth seed regardless of what LA does, it’s highly probable that the Jazz will need the Clips to lose at least one game. That’s not an unimaginable task, but it largely depends on what players and what kind of motivation the likes of the Spurs and Rockets come out with.

The point here is that while the end-of-season madness was already tough enough to predict as it was, the fact that the top three teams in the West have all clinched their respective spots and each of them just so happen to be playing the Jazz or Clippers (or both of them in the case of the Spurs), will make for an even more interesting dynamic to close out the year.

Rather than worry about the decisions of other teams, the Jazz need to simply take care of business and log as many wins as possible in this final stretch. While it would be nice to receive a helping hand from some other teams, there’s no guaranteeing that such will be the case.

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Yet after looking at the remaining schedules of both Utah and LA, it’s clear that the decisions of the top three teams to either come out and compete or play it safe and rest guys could very well dramatically alter the landscape of the Western Conference playoff picture.

And if we’re lucky, those decisions will indeed end up working out in Utah’s favor.