Nine nights left in the season and, just as we expected heading into the year, we're wondering whether anybody can knock off the Eastern Conference's alpha dog.
The surprise? It's not the
Miami Heat or
Boston Celtics but the
Chicago Bulls whom everyone will be shooting for. In fact, with Miami and Boston, the question du jour is less about championship rings and more about which of the two will make it out of the second round.
More on that in a second, but first, let's quickly review the landscape.
Realistically, there isn't much to talk about regarding the Bulls. With a three-game margin on the field and only six games left to play, Chicago is virtually assured of being the top seed -- today's
Playoff Odds give the Bulls a 96.3 percent of securing the pole position in the East.
While theoretically Boston could usurp that spot by (A) beating the Bulls on Thursday, (B) winning its other five remaining games and (C) having the Bulls lose road visits to Orlando and New York next week, there is nothing in the recent performance of either Boston or
top-rated Chicago that suggests any of these three events is particularly likely, let alone all three of them simultaneously.
In fact the only real drama involving the Bulls will be in the race for the top overall seed and potential home-court advantage for the Finals. Chicago has the upper hand on the
Los Angeles Lakers at the moment, holding both a one-game lead and the tiebreaker.
With San Antonio, things get more interesting. The Bulls trail the Spurs by a game in the loss column, and at the moment the tiebreaker is a dead heat. But if San Antonio loses in Atlanta tonight, the Bulls would pull even and own the tiebreaker. In any other scenario, a tie between the two teams for top overall seed would be settled by random drawing. That's what today's
Playoff Odds project -- a dead heat at 61 wins for the two teams. (More random drawing excitement: If it comes down to it, my spies tell me it would likely be held on one of the two off days before the playoffs.)
Otherwise, all the intrigue in the East's final 10 days lies in the 2-3-6-7 bracket. Down below, Philly and New York are still scrapping for sixth position, with tomorrow's meeting between the two sides looming large. If the Sixers win, it's basically over; they'll have a two-game lead in the loss column and the tiebreaker, making it virtually impossible for the Bockers to catch them in the five other games (four for Philly).
Should New York win, however, there will be genuine intrigue. The teams could be tied in the loss column (pending also what happens tonight), and the tiebreaker between the two would be unsettled. The head-to-head series would finish tied at two apiece, and on the next tiebreaker -- division record -- they're only a half-game apart with multiple division games left for both. The next tiebreaker, conference record, is a similar jumble.
At least things are more clear-cut between Boston and Miami. Home-court advantage in that series will go to Boston if the two finished tied, or to the Heat if, as seems increasingly likely, Miami finishes a game ahead. Miami has a half-game lead in the standings and, with one exception, a cream-puff schedule ahead. It further benefits the Heat that a potentially difficult game at Atlanta on the second-to-last day of the season will likely be against the Hawks' reserves.
That one exception I noted above, alas, is the fourth and final meeting between the Heat and Celtics this coming Sunday. Boston won the first three, racing out to double-digit leads in each before a late Miami surge made the final score more respectable.
Two of those games were in the opening days of the season, however, and of late the Heat have looked the far more legitimate contenders. Miami has quietly regained the league's top scoring margin, by a whisker over Chicago; is as healthy as it's been all year; and has been bolstered a bit by midyear pickups
Mike Bibby and
Erick Dampier. (Side note: The only wounded Heat player left, forward
Udonis Haslem, told me Sunday he can play half-court ball right now but it's going to be a while before his torn foot ligament can handle the full-court running of an NBA game. Realistically, he might not return unless the Heat get to the conference finals.)
Celtics fans are familiar with this by now, but Boston is only 13-9 since the All-Star break and has seemed in a funk since trading
Kendrick Perkins to Oklahoma City. Weirdly, I'm not sure the funk has much to do with Perkins -- virtually the entire problem has been on offense, where Perk made a limited impact. Nonetheless, the Celtics have been held under 90 points in 10 of their past 16 games, and that won't get it done. Boston's defense remains as airtight as ever, ranking second in
Defensive Efficiency and threatening to overtake the Bulls for the top spot, but the C's are just 17th at the offensive end. They're barely ahead of Detroit in
Offensive Efficiency, if you can stomach that thought.
We were duped by Boston's second-half struggles a year ago, so we'll grab a few salt packets with this information, but the league's long-term history bears repeating: Coasting into the postseason hoping to "flip the switch" is a poor formula for playoff success.
Still, both Miami and Boston have a card left in their pockets that the Bulls do not: For both, the redistribution of playoff minutes from scrubs to starters should make them more potent foes than in the regular season. In Miami's case, this is abundantly obvious, as the Heat's top-heavy roster has been one of the season's most heavily discussed phenomena.
Boston? Arguably, the Celtics could benefit nearly as much. Consider
this chart from basketballvalue.com. What you're seeing is Boston's plus-minus with various units on the court. At the top, notice that their most common units feature their four All-Stars with any warm-bodied big man; you'll see that regardless of whether it's
Glen Davis,
Nenad Krstic,
Jeff Green, Jermaine O'Neal, Shaquille O'Neal or Ed O'Neill, the Celtics dramatically outscore the opposition with that group. Meanwhile, some commonly used Boston regular-season units that were trampled -- like "Robinson-Wafer-Daniels-Davis-Erden", for instance -- won't be seeing daylight this postseason.
All of which offers reasons for optimism for fans of each. Yet the big-picture takeaway from the Eastern Conference regular season is that both clubs may have too many fundamental flaws to beat the likes of the Bulls and Lakers in the postseason. The Heat are hamstrung by a bad supporting cast and the Celtics by a chronic inability to score, and neither is getting much help from the second unit.
It's a testament to their other strengths that each will win nearly 60 games anyway, but these clubs didn't come into training camp talking about regular-season goals. Unfortunately, the weaknesses they've shown make it difficult to confidently project postseason glory for either.
