The Lakers face an interesting choice tonight. They play the Jazz in what is both teams last game of the year. If the Lakers win, they seal Utah’s fate…as the 8 seed. Which means that Utah would then open the playoffs against the Lakers. However, if the Jazz win tonight, they open up the possibility that they could secure either the 6 or 7 seed, pushing either the Hornets or Mavericks into the undesirable 8 slot. (I played out all the possible permutations, and if the Jazz win, they have a 75% chance of moving up from the 8 seed; basically, they need a win coupled with either a Hornets or Mavs loss, as they hold the tiebreaker against both.)
So do the Lakers, who have nothing left to play for after the Cavs secured the overall #1 seed, go for the win, knowing that a win brings along with it a date against the Jazz, a very physical, tough-to-beat-at-home team? Or do they “rest their stars” and let the Jazz win, knowing that it greatly increases the odds of them meeting the Mavs (50%) or Hornets (25%) in the first round, two more favorable match-ups?
For an interesting discussion of this question from Lakers fans, head over to www.silverscreenandroll.com.
After the Lakers-Jazz game tonight, I’ll write a more comprehensive post about all the possible outcomes and implications of the three main games tomorrow night.
The Lakers won last night, so I guess they cared less about whether they would face the Jazz, Mavs or Hornets in the first round than they did about winning.
Or did they?
I think that the players don’t give as much thought to seeds and possible playoff pairings as the fans do. I’m certain they don’t worry about this stuff as much as we do.
Case in point, here is what Shane Battier, one of the smarter players in the league, had to say about “a two-sided sheet of paper with all the various playoff scenarios” that the Rockets gave players yesterday:
“I’m going to go home and have a paper-airplane fight with my wife. That’s what I’m going to do with that piece of paper. It means nothing,” forward Shane Battier said. “We’ve got to go to Dallas, we’ve got to play well and we’ve got to win.”