TP, as always, for a good post. Added bonus: The site is loading so slowly that, by the time this post is up, I'll be eligible to give you another TP.
Interesting note: CLE's last two games are against Miami and Toronto, two teams on the bubble for their current seeds. True, much of that is likely to be sorted out by the last couple of games but, if it's still close, CLE won't be able to rest starters those last couple of games.
Mike
Cleveland will rest their starters and sacrifice seeding if necessary. The question is what do the Celtics do if they could grab the top seed?
Who owns the tie-breaker between Clev and us?
Currently Cleveland does due to beating us head to head 2 out of 3 times.
However, we have 1 more game against them in Boston, and ultimately whoever wins that game will more than likely have the tiebreaker. If Cleveland wins that game, then they get the tiebreaker outright. If Boston wins that game, then it's more likely that we'll have the tiebreaker in the event of a tie in regular season records.
This is because it goes to conference records after head to head matchups. Right now, they have a slight lead in the conference record at 30-11 compared to our 29-13. However, 11 of their final 13 games are against the East, and with Boston being 3 losses back of Cleveland, in the event of a tie it probably means that Cleveland lost against several Eastern Conference teams while Boston did well against them.
So if we want the number one seed and/or the tiebreaker, we'll almost certainly have to beat Cleveland in the final game, along with take care of business against virtually all of the remaining Eastern teams we face (IND, MIA, MIL, ORL, NYK, CLE, ATL, CHA, and BRK). It's definitely doable, but we'll have to play good ball the rest of the way and hope that Cleveland loses several more games the rest of the season.