Team Record Games Back
1. Boston 48-26 0 (Ah, it's so good to finally write that!)
2. Cleveland 47-26 .5
3. Washington 46-28 2
4. Toronto 45-29 3
5. Atlanta 38-36 10
6. Milwaukee 38-36 10
7. Indiana 37-37 11
8. Miami 36-38 12
9. Chicago 35-39 13
10. Detroit 34-41 14.5
11. Charlotte 33-41 15
Bold = games still yet to be played tonight/yet to be determined
Milwaukee at Boston
Atlanta at Philadelphia
Charlotte at Toronto
Miami at New York Knicks
Indiana at Memphis
Washington at LAC
Huge night for the Eastern playoff seeding again, and there's lots of potential for movement tonight:
Boston can go a full game up on Cleveland in the first seed.
A Toronto win and Washington loss would move Toronto to the third seed and Washington to the fourth seed.
A Miami win and Indiana loss would move Miami to the seventh seed and Indiana to the eighth seed, which would be excellent for us.
An Atlanta win and Milwaukee loss would give Atlanta a full game lead on Milwaukee for the fifth seed.
Indiana is in a very, very precarious position right now. If they lose tonight, which is likely playing in the grindhouse on the second night of a back to back, they'll be in 8th just 1.5 games up on Chicago. The rest of their schedule after tonight looks like this: @ Toronto, @ Cleveland, vs. Toronto, vs. Milwaukee, @ Orlando, @ Philadelphia, and vs. Atlanta, which is a crazy difficult schedule the rest of the way. Here's the Bulls schedule the rest of the way: vs. Cleveland, vs. Atlanta, @ New Orleans, @ NYK, @ Philadelphia, @ Brooklyn, vs. Orlando, and vs. Brooklyn. Here's the Heat's schedule the rest of the way: @ NYK, vs. NYK, vs. DEN, @ CHA, @ TOR, @ Washington, vs. Cleveland, vs. Washington.
What's worse is that Chicago currently holds the tiebreaker over Indiana due to a better division record of 8-7 vs. Indiana's 7-7, and in the case that they both tie in the division record, Chicago holds a 2 game lead on the conference record over Indiana with a much, much easier schedule down the stretch. So essentially, Indiana is pretty much going to have to win their game in Cleveland and vs. Milwaukee and hope that Chicago loses to Cleveland tomorrow night if they want the tiebreaker over Chicago. Otherwise, both Miami and Chicago will own the tiebreakers over Indiana, which is not good at all for Indiana since they'll all be competing for those last two spots pretty closely.
Bold Prediction: Indiana misses out on the playoffs due to losing a tiebreaker to one of Miami or Chicago, setting up a George trade somewhere this offseason.
Perfect Night - Boston win/Milwaukee loss, Atlanta win, Toronto win/Charlotte loss, Miami win, Indiana loss, and a Washington loss.