Watch Boston Celtics @ Philadelphia 76ers live on Sky Sports Arena on Wednesday night at 11pm
Wednesday 20 March 2019 15:43, UK
Join the conversation as we present a handful of the biggest current NBA talking points and invite you to have your say.
With 11 games left on their schedule, the Boston Celtics are running out of time to assert their status as a top-four team in the East, something that would guarantee them homecourt advantage in the opening round of the playoffs.
With Milwaukee and Toronto clear in the top two spots, the Celtics remain locked in a three-way battle with Philadelphia and Indiana for third and fourth place.
Boston are talented enough and deep enough to have sealed one of those berths by now but, for a variety of on-court and off-court reasons, it just hasn't happened this season.
Kyrie Irving's public criticism of his team-mates and questions about his future plans, Gordon Hayward's slow and ongoing recovery from last season's horrific ankle injury and changing roles for young players Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have all impeded the Celtics' progress to some degree.
The Celtics can take a big step forward when they visit the 76ers, live on Sky Sports Arena on Wednesday night. But they face a rival in the midst of a five-game winning streak whose star player Joel Embiid is playing at an MVP-level, having unleashed a 40-point, 15-rebound effort in the Sixers' road win over Milwaukee on Sunday night.
Conventional NBA wisdom puts Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer at the front of the line in the race for Coach of the Year. Not only does he own the best record in the NBA, he has also masterminded improvement that has vaulted the Bucks from a 44-win team under Joe Prunty and Jason Kidd in 2017/18 to a team on course for 60+ wins that could very well appear in June's NBA Finals series.
But is 'best record, best coach' the best way to decide this award? There is no shortage of worthy contenders.
Mike Malone's work in Denver, where he has improved the Nuggets from a that won 46 games last season but missed the playoffs to a No 2-seeded team that possesses, Nikola Jokic aside, has less star power than all of their immediate rivals.
Over in the East, Nick Nurse, in his first season as an NBA head coach, has guided the Toronto Raptors to the security of a two-seed despite injuries to key players including Kyle Lowry and Kawhi Leonard. He has also presided over the rapid development of Pascal Siakam, a contender for the NBA's Most Improved Player award.
On the west coast, Doc Rivers has made a mockery of his reputation for only succeeding coaching big-name players and veterans. The Los Angeles Clippers have found a way to compete fiercely without a franchise star. They even sent away their best player, Tobias Harris, at the trade deadline and still surged back into the playoff places. In a congested West playoff picture, the only question is which seed they ultimately end up with.
The Clippers do things differently. They regularly start rookies Shai-Gilgeous Alexander and Landry Shamet. Their biggest scoring punch comes off the bench with the silky touch of Lou Williams and sledgehammer power of Montrezl Harrell. As Rivers noted recently: "We don't have a lot of guys who fit the traditional criteria of a star but we have a lot of guys who play like stars."
Where will the Miami Heat be left standing when the music of Dwyane Wade's 'Last Dance' stops? The Heat (34-36) currently occupy the eighth and final playoff spot in the East and, with 12 games remaining, are looking over their shoulder at the chasing pack rather than putting pressure on the Brooklyn Nets and Detroit Pistons ahead of them.
The young Orlando Magic squad (33-38) are just one-and-a-half games behind Miami and a potentially-decisive all-Florida showdown looms on March 26.
Wade, a three-time NBA champion, announced this would be his last season last September. He is an automatic lock for the Hall of Fame. Flashes of Wade's greatness have been seen this season, most notably the improbable buzzer-beater he hit to defeat the Golden State Warriors. The celebration on Miami's court that night would have been a fitting finale itself.
Instead, the Heat find themselves in a race for a low playoff seed most likely to result in a heavy first-round defeat at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks, providing they can stymie the Magic's playoff ambitions.
Half a game separates four teams from fifth to eighth place in the Western Conference. Sadly for the Oklahoma City Thunder, they are one of them.
OKC have won just five of their last 14 games to slip from a team comfortably in third place eyeing the Nuggets in second spot, to an out-of-form side now sixth and mired in a battle for the minor seedings. That could change quickly if they can rediscover their winning touch.
Paul George was a legitimate MVP contender going into the All-Star break. Since then, the efficiency that powered his scoring has left him and rumours persist that he is far from 100 per cent and possibly dealing with a rotator cuff injury.
To make matters worse, the Thunder find themselves out of form at a time when the teams immediately around them (San Antonio Spurs, Utah Jazz, Los Angeles Clippers) are building winning streaks.
None of those four teams will relish finishing eighth, which will likely mean an appointment with the Golden State Warriors in the opening round of the playoffs.
