With March Madness wrapped, it's officially NBA playoff SZN.
The NBA regular season ends Sunday, and still 15 of the 16 seeds are up for grabs. The play-in tournament begins next Tuesday, and the playoffs proper start next Saturday.
We are almost there, and with all eyes on the professionals now and so much still up in the air, there's plenty to watch for over the final week of the regular season that will shape the future of the league and futures markets for bettors.
Here are the five things I've got a close eye on as the NBA season wraps this week…
1. Is Joel Embiid truly back, and how far can he take the 76ers?
I'll be honest — I didn't expect Joel Embiid to play again this season, not meaningful minutes. I figured he was done, and that the Sixers were too.
Philadelphia started 29-13. Then Embiid got hurt against Indiana in late January, missed a couple games, played hurt in another loss and hadn't returned while the Sixers cratered during a 9-22 stretch and looked effectively like a first-round bye for some lucky East opponent.
Now Embiid is back, and through three games, he sorta kinda mostly looks like himself. He's playing pretty solid minutes, defending well enough and scoring an efficient 27.7 PPG. The turnovers are up, FG% down, rebounding down — all things that make sense for a guy shaking off rust and playing himself into shape — but maybe the most important Embiid stat is that his free-throw rate has been just as high in his return, even as the rest of the league has fallen off mightily there during his extended absence.
If Embiid is back and able to play at even 80% of what he was earlier this season, when he truly genuinely deserved MVP votes for the first time in his career, that changes everything in the East.
The Sixers are 13-27 without Embiid this season, a 27-win pace. They're 29-8 with him, a 64-win pace. With Embiid, the Sixers are the Celtics. Without him, they're the Raptors. Seems important!
Philadelphia added two intriguing pieces while Embiid was out in Kyle Lowry and Buddy Hield. This team fits and has a high ceiling, and the rest of the East outside of Boston is kind of in shambles.
Philly may struggle to get past the 7-seed but, even there, there's little reason to believe this isn't clearly the second best team in the East if Embiid is mostly healthy and playing.
The 76ers are +3000 to win the title at bet365.
Embiid's return is, by far, the most important thing to pay attention to over the final week of the season. It changes the entire playoff picture.
2. How healthy is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and how real are the Thunder?
Just about everyone agrees Boston and Denver are the top teams in each conference, and maybe we're just heading toward a Celtics-Nuggets Finals. But that's not usually how the playoffs work, and it's not a particularly bettable outcome with those teams' prices nuked.
That's why everyone's searching for a second team in either conference that could make a deep run, maybe even make the Finals if things bounce right.
The Thunder have been that team for me. Only two teams in the NBA rank in the top eight in both Offensive and Defensive Rating — the Thunder and the Celtics. Oklahoma City defends. It scores. It's deep. It's young and hungry. And it hasn't backed down from any challenge all season.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has been at the center of everything — though he's getting a little too much credit, considering how great Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren have been, the remarkable job Mark Daigneault has done with this team and how well the depth and defense have played.
Still, SGA is this team's ceiling right now, and that's why I'm suddenly very worried about the Thunder.
Gilgeous-Alexander has missed six of the last seven games with a quad injury. He's already at 71 games played, most since his rookie season. The Thunder hope he has at least 15 more to go, but he's carrying a huge load, and the numbers say it's taken a huge toll on him.
In SGA's last eight games on the court, he's dropped from 31.1 to 23.8 PPG. He's not getting to the line nearly as easily, with free-throw attempts down from 8.9 to 6.5 per game, and his scoring efficiency has slumped from 65 to 55% True Shooting. The team results have reflected that, with OKC dropping from 131 in Offensive Rating with SGA on the court the first 63 games to just 112 his last eight.
For the first 63 games, Gilgeous-Alexander was at 10.0 Box Plus-Minus (BPM), a number deserving of MVP hype. In eight games since, he's plummeted to just 1.4 BPM.
That's a disastrous dropoff, and its also why I don't think SGA is a serious MVP candidate. Gilgeous-Alexander hasn't been good since the 63-game mark and probably won't make a real impact this week either. That's nearly a quarter of the season with a negligible impact. Sorry, but that's no MVP.
Maybe this is just the sacrifice OKC and SGA had to make — give up the 1-seed, fall out of the MVP race, in return for a few weeks of rest for Gilgeous-Alexander and a real shot at a postseason run.
The Thunder likely get the Suns or Pelicans in the first round, then Denver or Minnesota after that. If SGA is healthy and playing like the guy he was the first 63 games, the Thunder can beat anyone in the West.
Oklahoma City is +800 to win the West at DraftKings. The rest of the supporting cast is ready now. But they need to be supporting a superstar, and we haven't seen that superstar for weeks.
3. Just how bad can this get for the Milwaukee Bucks?
The Bucks are another obvious candidate to make a run — that is, if they ever win another game.
Milwaukee is coming off a disastrous week on a four-game losing streak to the Wizards, Grizzlies, Raptors and Knicks. If you're counting at home, that's three of the seven worst teams in the league, plus another one missing two of its three best guys.
The Bucks are now 15-17 under Doc Rivers.
Put it this way:
Milwaukee's season would make a lot more sense if you watched in reverse order. The Bucks struggle to a 15-17 start, fire Doc and then round into form with a 32-14 record — their record without Rivers this season.
All we've got, though, is reality.
Khris Middleton left hurt, again. The defense stinks. Damian Lillard has been nowhere near good enough. He played at an MVP-ballot level last year, but this season he's playing closer to what he was the previous year, when he struggled through a groin injury all season and wasn't even at an All-Star level.
The Bucks don't exactly ease into the finish line — it's Celtics, Magic, at Thunder, at Magic this week. Lose out and Milwaukee could finish tied for as low as the 8-seed.
But the Bucks own tiebreakers over the 76ers, Heat, Knicks and Cavs, so they can't fall into the play-in and should safely avoid the 4-vs-5 matchup and a second-round appointment with the Celtics too. Maybe they fall to the 3-seed, but honestly, that could be a gift if the 76ers or Heat end up the 7-seed.
Giannis Antetokounmpo has been awesome as always this season. Until Embiid proves he's back at an MVP level, Antetokounmpo is by far the best player in the East, and he'll be the best player on the court in any series before the Finals.
The last time we saw Damian Lillard in the playoffs, he averaged 34 points and 10 assists on 46/45/94 shooting with an outrageous 12.2 BPM. That was back in 2021, but Dame has had huge playoff moments, and this is what Milwaukee got him for.
If the Bucks can still dial back the clock to Dame Time, he can ostensibly give the Bucks two players better than anyone else in the East occasionally.
If that Dame is still in there, the Bucks are a sleeping giant. If it's not, Milwaukee might well sleep right into the offseason.
4. How will the West playoff picture and matchups shake out?
Is that a copout umbrella question? Sure, but how else do you talk about a Western Conference whose playoff picture and seedings change just about every night at this point?
The 4-vs-5 matchup looks mostly locked in. It's Clippers and Mavs one more time, with LA unlikely to move up and Dallas owning tiebreakers and a buffer that should likely stop it from dropping down.
The Timberwolves and Nuggets are tied for the 1-seed. They play Wednesday night in Denver, with both teams on the second night of a back-to-back, the Nuggets' in Utah. The Thunder are a game back and look unlikely to push to the top with SGA's injury. Karl-Anthony Towns could return this week.
The Wolves need this more. A win Wednesday night in Denver probably clinches the 1-seed. Minnesota's only done that one other season in history, back in 2004, also the only year the franchise won a single playoff series. They won two series that year before falling to the Lakers — who might be their reward for getting the 1-seed.
Los Angeles stole the Lakers from Minnesota, you recall, and the Lakers have owned this Wolves franchise historically, winning 23 in a row against them a decade ago. LeBron James and Anthony Davis? Congrats on your 1-seed.
Of course, the Lakers might not even make the playoff bracket.
The Suns, Pelicans, Kings and Lakers are battling for the 6-through-9 seeds, and every spot matters. The 6-seed skips the play-in. The 7-seed gets two home games to make the playoff bracket. The 8-seed gets the chance to lose a play-in game if needed — something the 9-seed cannot afford.
It's nigh impossible to game the matchups at this point with the top of the West still up for grabs, but the matchups will be everything.
The Suns are 4-1 against the Nuggets and Wolves but 0-3 against the Thunder. Are Kevin Durant and Devin Booker enough offense to hang with the defending champs?
The Lakers are 0-3 against the Nuggets but 3-1 against the Thunder. They just made the Conference Finals.
The Pelicans have Zion Williamson, a nightmare matchup for any opponent. The Kings? They're probably the opponent you want from this group, if you get a choice, but they're likely play-in fodder at this point.
And then there's the Warriors sitting at 10, likely needing to win two road games just to get in.
Half the West games this week have playoff implications. Now we just need to see it all play out.
5. Is this all just an amuse-bouche before Victor Wembanyama takes over next season?
You know when you when you get hyped to go see a movie, but you also know there's an even bigger, more hype movie coming not long after? It's finally Avengers: Infinity War day, but you know Avengers: Endgame is just one year away?
That's sorta how I'm feeling with Victor Wembanyama.
Technically speaking, Wemby has no place in this article. We're talking about the postseason, and he won't be there. But I think this will be the last season ever a healthy Wembanyama won't make the playoffs.
The final week of the season means watching playoff seeds and postseason matchups, but it also means one last chance — four more games — to watch rookie Wembanyama before he's gone for six months.
On Sunday night, Wemby had at least five blocks, assists and 3s in the same game for the second time this season. Only Robert Horry had done that, once, in any game in NBA history.
Fifteen guys in NBA history have a 5x5; Wemby is already one of them. Twenty-four guys have at least three steals, blocks and 3s in the same game; Wembanyama is already on that list too.
Only four players in recorded NBA history have a quadruple-double. Wembanyama was two assists and a block away from joining that list in the last week too. It's when, not if, he joins that list at this point. He'll eventually have more himself than the rest of history combined.
We bet before the season on Wembanyama to record at least five blocks in any game this season; he's done so 23 times already. We bet him at +1000 to lead the league in blocks too; he's leading the league at 3.6 BPG, almost 50% higher than the next closest competitor. Wembanyama could've stopped blocking shots Feb. 25, never blocked another this season, and he'd still lead the league in blocks per game. His 245 blocks this season are as many as Rudy Gobert the last two seasons combined.
We are far past rookie novelty at this point. Victor Wembanyama is real, and he is spectacular.
Wembanyama is going to win Rookie of the Year, but he's so much more than that already. He's getting better and better each month. The defense is already DPOY caliber. The playmaking is constantly trending up. His shooting is improving as the year goes on.
If you just look at the counting numbers, you see a slight, gradual uptick. He's up from 18.9 PPG before Christmas to 23 PPG since. The assists are up from 3.0 to 4.4, blocks from 3.1 to 3.9.
The advanced metrics show just how far Wembanyama has come, though.
Before Christmas, Wemby had a 97 Offensive Rating — that's bad, and typical for a rookie — with a respectable 109 Defensive Rating. Since Christmas, he's jumped to 108 ORTG, led mostly by his own touches, and an elite 104 DRTG. He's up from 52% to 59% True Shooting post Christmas, too.
In 25 games before Christmas, Victor Wembanyama was at 0.0 BPM. Honestly, pretty solid for a rookie!
In 44 games since Christmas, Wembanyama is up to 8.2 BPM.
That's not just Rookie of the Year, not just really good. That's genuine MVP contender level play. If the season started on Christmas, Wembanyama would be a deserving First-Team All-NBA player.
Before this season, exactly one rookie in NBA history had put together a 44-game stretch with at least a 7.5 BPM. Not LeBron. Not Shaq or Tim Duncan. Not Magic or Bird or Hakeem or Admiral.
Just 22-year-old Michael Jordan — and now, 20-year-old Victor Wembanyama.
Wemby is that good, the one absolutely must-see guy in the league, already as a rookie — and that's before the Spurs add another top-five pick in the draft and maybe trade for someone like Trae Young or Darius Garland this offseason to get him some help.
So go ahead, get excited about this year's playoffs and all their cute little matchups.
I'll be soaking up these four last games of Wembanyama while I can and already dreaming about next year's Endgame once Victor gets to play in the postseason too.
The total eclipse has just begun. 🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑 pic.twitter.com/ihGr5mFzai
— Nike Basketball (@nikebasketball) April 8, 2024
