Keep that cart away from me for a few more minutes, please… the club, too.
It doesn’t look great, Nuggets Nation. Should the Nuggets stay on their current path, they’ll improve their lot by four games from last season’s outcome, and may actually drop a spot from last year’s seed. Not the good news/bad news scenario most Nuggets fans were hoping for. How wild is the West this season?
Though the Nuggets are currently a ten seed, they are only six games out of being the three. The odds of them vaulting those seven slots in the last seven games? Impossibly slim.
And while Denver is only two full games out of that eighth seed, they also have one of the toughest remaining schedules left in the league, so even that large a leap looks like a tall order. Hilariously, because the pecking order is still so crowded this late in the season, even the third-seeded Trail Blazers have yet to clinch a playoff berth after losing to the Grizzlies in Memphis last night. Let’s hope that second-to-last game of the season the Blazers play against the Nuggets still means something to both teams when they play it.
Denver is still clinging by a thread as the Lakers and Knicks recently joined the “will not play in the postseason” list, which is growing by the day. As of this writing, 538.com lists Denver’s chances of landing north of nine at a paltry 11%, with the ninth-seeded Clippers chances at 41%.
While the Eastern Conference picture is starting to coalesce, there are still five teams sitting between the sixth and tenth slots who are not sure they are in. Given that over half (eight) of the Western Conference is still in contention with their tickets unpunched, this is one of the more exciting endings in recent memory, which is saying something given how many wild races have been had in the West in the last couple decades. That in mind, the 9th-seeded Clippers projected 45 wins this season puts them with or below a number of teams who had a lot of wins, but didn’t get in:
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Of the list of those on the outside looking in, I was surprised to see the Nuggets only appear this last season, and now have a little more empathy for Pacers and Rockets fans. I’d have also been pissed to be a Suns fan in 13-14, or a Warriors fan in 07-08. But the list also shows a number of teams who broke through that glass ceiling in subsequent seasons. There’s hope, but it’s just not as soon as Denver Nuggets fans want. Looking at that list, for each and every one, somewhere along the way, that squeaky cart picked each of those teams up and carted them away. But…
We’re not dead yet. I feel HAPPEEEEEEE…
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