Speaking of Sports

By John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

Although the college NCAA mens and womens basketball tourneys have taken center stage over the last few weeks, the NBA playoffs are set to begin soon and almost all the teams are in a battle to move up a place or two in the standings before the end of the regular-season, Sunday, after an 82-game regular-season.

Speaking of the NCAA Tourneys, this was the first year for me where I actually enjoyed the women’s tourney more than the men’s.  I was pulling for Iowa to win the overall title, but even though the Hawkeyes didn’t win the championship game, Sunday, it was still a win-win for the popularity of women’s basketball.

•   The NBA playoff teams are coming down to the wire and there are so many possibilities for first-round matchups and teams that might miss the playoffs.  In the East, seven teams are within four games of each other heading into the final week-plus of the regular-season.

Boston (62-16) will get the top seed in the East, but Milwaukee (47-31), Orlando (46-32),  New York (46-32), Cleveland (46-33), Indiana (45-34), Philadelphia (44-35) and Miami (43-35) are within four games of each other with about 3-5 games left for each team in the battle for seeds 2-8.

Without a doubt, the Celtics are the top team in the East and it will take a monumental effort to knock off Boston this season.  Philadelphia, which recently got recent MVP Joel Embiid back from an injury, is trying to move up in the seedings over the last few games, but there’s a possibility Boston and Philadelphia could match up in the quarters.  Wow!

Things are even more interesting in the West, where at least five or six teams could make a run to the Finals.  Two favorite teams of a lot of people — Golden State and the Los Angeles Lakers — are battling for the last playoff spot and most likely, one of those teams will not make the playoffs.  Wow!

The Timberwolves (54-24), Denver (54-24) and Oklahoma City (53-25) are battling for the top three seeds in the West, while the LA Clippers (50-28) and Dallas (48-30) are pretty well locked in at Nos. 4 and 5.

From there, things get a little tricky as Phoenix (46-32), New Orleans (46-32), Sacramento (45-33), LA Lakers (45-34) and Golden State (43-35) are battling for seeds 6-10 and two of those teams will not make the 8-team playoffs.

The Wolves close out the regular-season against Washington, Denver, Atlanta and Phoenix, while Denver still has to play Utah, Minnesota, San Antonio and Memphis, and Oklahoma City has Sacramento, San Antonio, Milwaukee and Dallas still left on the schedule.  Right now, if the seedings were determined today, Golden State and LA would be playing in the first-round of the play-in tourney with the loser missing the playoffs.

Wow, that’s right, Stef Curry and/or LaBron James will not be making the playoffs this season.

The winner of that game would still have to win again to make the playoffs and waiting in the wings could be Denver, the reigning NBA champions, or the Wolves, who are playing as good as any team in the NBA right now despite playing without Karl-Anthony Townes, who has been out with an injury for the last month.  Yes, there will be some disappointed teams not making the NBA playoffs, but on the other hand, there will be some very exciting play-in and first-round playoff games.