A three-game slide to close the first half only narrowed the Western Conference standings, with the San Antonio Spurs clinging to the No. 3 spot. The Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder were the main trailers in the standings, but before the All-Star break, teams near the bottom of the playoff race started to emerge and found themselves just one or two games behind the Spurs.
Suddenly, there’s a marginal gap between the No. 3 Spurs and the No. 10 Utah Jazz, with just 4.5 games separating them. The Jazz went on a torrid 11-game winning streak to close the first half and made the West a compelling race — everyone aside from the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets — for most of its seeding.