So it comes to this.
After clinching a playoff spot on April 1, the Portland Trail Blazers have gone winless in their last four games and find themselves in danger of losing homecourt advantage in the the first round of the 2018 Western Conference playoffs, which seemed like an inevitability less than two weeks ago. And were it not for a few timely losses by the Spurs and Thunder, the Trail Blazers situation would be much worse going into Wednesday night's regular season finale versus the Jazz at the Moda Center.
But even though they've done nothing to help themselves over the last 10 days, the Trail Blazers still have a great chance of getting homecourt in the first round and a good chance of winning the Northwest Division title. They could lose the finale and still start the postseason at home this weekend, though they'll need to beat the Jazz in order to win the division. It's possible that both the Blazers and Jazz will have secured homecourt advantage prior to tipoff Wednesday depending on the outcome of three games -- Nuggets vs. Timberwolves, Spurs vs. Pelicans and Grizzlies vs. Thunder -- taking place earlier in the evening, but the division title and the higher seed would still be up for grabs (though one could argue that finishing as the fourth seed could be better than finishing as the three seed depending on matchups).
So in the final playoff race update of the year, let's look at Portland's possible playoff scenarios as determined by the results of four games on the final day of the NBA regular season.
1) First off, the easy part. If the Trail Blazers break their four-game losing streak and the Jazz's six-game winning streak by beating Utah in the finale, they will win the Northwest Division title and earn the three seed, where their opponent will be either the Spurs, Nuggets, Pelicans or Timberwolves. If the Blazers lose, they can finish no better than fourth.
2) From there, as you can see from the spreadsheet, it gets more complicated. The first and ninth scenarios (Denver, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Utah win; Minnesota, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Utah win) are the most difficult to figure out, as it results in a three-way tie resulting in the Trail Blazers getting the four seed and a matchup with the Spurs, though in that scenario, the Spurs would have homecourt advantage due to head-to-head record. This is because the Blazers would win the three-way "seeding" tiebreaker over the Spurs and Thunder, all of which would have 48-34 records, but not the homecourt advantage tiebreaker, which the Spurs would own due to winning the season series 2-1. There's been quite a bit of confusion about this scenario, as people are understandably under the impression that the higher seed always gets homecourt, but that's not the case. Please stop arguing with me about it.
3) There are four scenarios in which the Trail Blazers finish fourth and get homecourt advantage...• Denver, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Utah win• Denver, New Orleans, Memphis and Utah win• Minnesota, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Utah win• Minnesota, New Orleans, Memphis and Utah win
So basically if the Pelicans beat the Spurs, a game that should be completed before tipoff of Jazz vs. Trail Blazers, the Trail Blazers are assured of homecourt advantage regardless of the outcome of their game. 4) There are two instances in which the Trail Blazers finish fifth, and in both instances, they'd end up playing the Spurs in the four-five matchup, with San Antonio owning homecourt...• Denver, San Antonio, Memphis and Utah win • Minnesota, San Antonio, Memphis and Utah win
And that's it. Again, if things break just right, the Trail Blazers could go into the finale knowing they'll have homecourt advantage regardless of the outcome of their game, which would then afford them the opportunity to rest players if they're unconcerned about winning the division or if they feel like they'd match up better with the fifth seed than they would the sixth seed.