The Sacramento Kings surprisingly beat the New Orleans Hornets late Saturday night, a game that New Orleans had everything to play for to hold on to the Western conference lead. So now the Rockets can’t feel so bad for losing against the Kings 6 games ago, a huge loss for Houston’s quest to lead the conference. And get this…Sacramento can continue to be the spoiler when they play San Antonio on Monday and the Lakers on Tuesday. I had said several posts ago (last paragraph) that Sacramento was the team to watch heading into the stretch, and it looks like that’s turning out to be the case.

So now the Hornets are tied with the Lakers at 55-25, and the Spurs are 1/2 game behind both of those teams with a 54-25 record and play the Lakers tomorrow on national TV. The Rockets are also 1/2 game behind both teams, but are in the fifth spot.

I would refer you to this page on NBA.com to give you the latest playoff picture, but at the time of this post they are slow in updating the latest standings (as is Yahoo), so it doesn’t reflect tonight’s games. I don’t understand why both these sites aren’t on top of updating these standings real-time. It can’t be that hard. I typically have to wait until the middle of the night for them to get updated. Sheesh.

But what I’m still trying to figure out is what needs to happen for the Rockets to finish in the spots I want them to finish. Ideally I’d like for them to finish in the 1st or 2nd spot so they can face the #7 or #8 seed in the playoffs, which will be Dallas, Golden State, or Denver.

In order for the Rockets to finish 1st or 2nd in the conference, they’re probably going to need to win all their games and hope that San Antonio, the Lakers and New Orleans lose. But it’s not that simple because San Antonio and the Lakers play against each other on Sunday, as I mentioned earlier.

So who should win that game if you’re a Rocket fan?

Well, it gets even more complicated because chances are in order for the Rockets to finish 1st or 2nd, the complicated NBA tiebreaker will have to come into play for 2 and maybe 3 teams because there’s no way the Rockets can set themselves apart from the pack. Have you seen the NBA tiebreaker rules? They’re different from when there are 2 teams tied, and more than 2 teams tied.

If 2 teams are tied, then they look at head-to-head record. Easy enough. The Rockets were 2-1 against the Lakers this season, 2-2 against the Spurs, and 2-2 against the Hornets. The Rockets would lose the next tiebreaker against the Spurs and Hornets, which is division record. So that means we would want the Lakers to win Sunday afternoon against the Spurs, right?

Well, if that were to happen, then the Rockets would want to at least tie the Lakers for the top spot, and for the Rockets to finish 1 game ahead of the Spurs and Hornets. But that isn’t very likely.

What could happen is that there could be a 3-way tie where the tie-breaker rules are slightly different. That’s where head-to-head isn’t factored in, and instead it comes down to division record. The Rockets are looking pretty good in that department. But then they would have to hope the Lakers lose their remaining 2 games because they have the best conference record, and the Rockets would have to win all their games. Still with me?

So really, you have to root for the Lakers if you think there’s going to be a 2-way tie for first, and against the Lakers if you think there’s going to be a 3-way tie, assuming the Rockets win the rest of their games. But who can predict all of that?

So on Sunday afternoon when the Lakers and Spurs play each other, I guess I can’t root for anyone because it’s just too complilcated to figure out what’s going to happen after that game, which is weird for me. I usually have to root for someone when watching a game, or it’s not interesting to me. Who are you going to root for?

Maybe it’s just easier to hope the Rockets finish 4th or 5th and play the Utah Jazz, because I definitely don’t want them in the 3rd spot where they may have to play the Phoenix Suns. But in order for that to happen, the Rockets may need to lose a game or two so they don’t get in a tiebreaker situation that puts them in the 3rd spot. Can you imagine that: hoping the Rockets lose just enough games to finish just ahead of Utah and Phoenix to get homecourt advantage against the Jazz?

What a crazy season!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.