Nuggets, Lakers, Spurs seeding
The NBA regular season finished with the Denver Nuggets locked into the No. 3 seed and the Los Angeles Lakers landing at No. 4 in the Western Conference. (sports.yahoo.com). Local reporting also confirmed the San Antonio Spurs are locked into the No. 2 seed heading into the postseason matchups. (kens5.com)
Denver finished the regular season as the Western Conference’s No. 3 seed, the Los Angeles Lakers landed at No. 4, and San Antonio is already set at No. 2. (nba.com) The National Basketball Association’s playoff bracket now shows Denver at 53-28, the Lakers at 52-29 and the Spurs at 62-19 in the West, behind only the 64-17 Oklahoma City Thunder. (nba.com) That alignment sets Denver against the No. 6 Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round and puts the Lakers into a No. 4 versus No. 5 series against the 51-30 Houston Rockets. (nba.com) San Antonio’s seed was settled before the final day, which meant the Spurs could watch the Denver-Los Angeles race without needing help to protect home court in the first round. (kens5.com) The No. 3 and No. 4 spots mattered because they split two different parts of the bracket: Denver’s path begins with Minnesota, while the Lakers open against Houston. (nba.com) The bracket also places San Antonio on the No. 2 line against a play-in winner, with the SoFi National Basketball Association Play-In Tournament scheduled for April 14 through April 17 and the playoffs starting April 18. (nba.com) Entering Sunday, the league listed only two unresolved seeds in the West’s top six: Denver could clinch No. 3 with a win or a Lakers loss, while Los Angeles needed a win and a Denver loss to move up. (nba.com) Local reporting in San Antonio said the Spurs’ final regular-season game still carried bracket implications because a Denver drop to No. 4 would move the Nuggets to the Thunder’s side of the draw instead of the Spurs’ side. (kens5.com) With the regular season over, the Western Conference’s top four are set in order: Thunder, Spurs, Nuggets and Lakers. (basketball-reference.com)
