Play‑In and Warriors locked
At the other end of the board, Golden State is locked into the No.10 seed and the NBA’s Play‑In Tournament (seeds 7–10) begins Tuesday, so many teams still have seeding to fight for in the final two regular‑season games. ( )
Golden State’s regular season is not ending with a chase for sixth or even eighth. By April 8, the Warriors were mathematically stuck in 10th place in the Western Conference, which means their season now runs through the National Basketball Association’s Play-In Tournament and starts with a road elimination game. (warriorswire.usatoday.com) The standings on April 10 show how tight the middle of the West still is around them. Phoenix is 44-36 in seventh, Los Angeles is 41-39 in eighth, Portland is 40-40 in ninth, and Golden State is 37-43 in tenth with two regular-season games left before the bracket locks on April 12. (espn.com, nba.com) The Play-In Tournament is a four-team mini-bracket for seeds seven through ten in each conference. The seventh-place team plays the eighth-place team for the No. 7 playoff seed, while the ninth-place team plays the tenth-place team in a loser-goes-home game. (nba.com) That setup gives the Warriors no margin for error. As the No. 10 team, they have to beat the No. 9 team on the road, then beat the loser of the No. 7 versus No. 8 game on the road again just to grab the No. 8 playoff seed. (warriorswire.usatoday.com, nba.com) The official 2026 schedule already shows where the pressure points are. The Western Conference seven-versus-eight game is set for Tuesday, April 14, and the Western Conference nine-versus-ten game is set for Wednesday, April 15, with the final play-in game for the No. 8 seed coming later in the April 14-17 window. (nba.com, nba.com) Golden State still does not know its first opponent because eighth and ninth are unsettled. As of April 10, the Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers are the teams directly in front of them, and one result between those two could swing whether the Warriors open in Los Angeles or Portland. (sports.yahoo.com, mercurynews.com) Phoenix has already removed itself from that part of the scramble by locking up seventh. That means the last two regular-season days in the West are mostly about who gets the easier first play-in path at eighth, who gets home court at ninth, and who is forced into Golden State’s sudden-death lane at tenth. (sports.yahoo.com, nba.com) If the bracket holds as it stands on April 10, the Warriors would face Portland in the 9-versus-10 game, and the winner would then meet the loser of Phoenix versus the Los Angeles Clippers for the conference’s last playoff spot. That is the narrowest route in the field: two road games, no second chance, and the Oklahoma City Thunder waiting as the No. 1 seed if Golden State survives. (sports.yahoo.com, nba.com)
