The Western Conference playoff race has settled into compartments. At the top is Golden State, San Antonio and Houston, almost surely in that order. The Spurs, two games behind the Warriors, don’t figure to catch Golden State. But San Antonio, 3.5 games ahead of the Rockets, don’t figure to drop below Houston.
At the bottom is more than half the West – Denver, Portland, New Orleans, Sacramento, Minnesota, Dallas, the Lakers and Phoenix. The eighth-place Nuggets are closer to the last-place Lakers (five games ahead) than they are to the seventh-place Grizzlies (six games back).
Which leaves the middle of the Clippers, Jazz, Thunder and Grizzlies vying for seeds four through seven.