Big NBA moments and returns

Denver has won 10 straight at the exact moment the standings usually stop moving, and Nikola Jokić has pushed the Nuggets to 52-28 with two games left. Oklahoma City is still ahead at 64-16, but Denver’s streak has turned a crowded West into a real late-season chase behind the top seed. (nba.com) (espn.com) Oklahoma City already locked up the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed with its seventh straight win, and the Thunder also secured the league’s best overall record. That gives them home-court advantage through the playoffs, which means every West team now knows the road to the National Basketball Association Finals runs through Oklahoma City. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2) The standings show how narrow the margin still is underneath them: San Antonio is 61-19, Denver is 52-28, and the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets are both 50-29. With the regular season ending on April 12 and the play-in tournament starting on April 14, one hot week is now deciding who gets rest and who gets extra elimination games. (espn.com) (nba.com) Denver’s streak matters because this is not a random April burst from a middle seed. National Basketball Association coverage on April 9 called it the first 10-game winning streak of the Jokić era, which is a strange sentence for a team that has already built its identity around him for years. (nba.com) Jokić has spent this run doing the usual Jokić thing, which is making a giant offense look easy without playing like a volume scorer every possession. Denver’s season numbers on the standings page show 121.9 points per game, the best mark among the top West teams listed there, and the Nuggets have paired that offense with a 10-0 record in their last 10 games. (espn.com) Then there is Detroit, which has become the surprise East power while a lot of people were watching the West. The Pistons are 58-22, first in the Eastern Conference, and they got Cade Cunningham back on April 8 in a 137-111 win over Milwaukee. (espn.com) (nba.com) Cunningham’s return was not just symbolic bench applause and a few warmup minutes. He played 26 minutes, posted 13 points and 10 assists, and did it after missing 11 games because of a collapsed left lung suffered on March 17 against Washington. (nba.com) (espn.com) That Milwaukee game also said something about the Bucks, because they are no longer part of the East bracket at all. The standings list Milwaukee at 31-49 and eliminated, so Detroit’s 26-point win came against a team that spent this season sliding out of the picture while the Pistons climbed all the way to the top. (espn.com 1) (espn.com 2) So the late-season picture is unusually clean in one way and chaotic in another. Oklahoma City owns the top road, Denver is the hottest team chasing from below, and Detroit just got its best player back with home-court advantage in the East already secured. (nba.com 1) (nba.com 2)