Potential Warriors Playoff Seeding Outcomes In The Season's Final Frame

The Warriors are right on the bubble. Although last night’s victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder helped a great deal, the job isn’t quite finished when it comes to keeping their playoff position. They have only two games remaining in their regular season schedule, and a myriad of ways they enter the playoff - or play-in - picture.

The good news is the lowest the team can finish is 8th. With the middle of the Western Conference packed due to such similar records, however, there’s a chance they’re in the play-in tournament where they historically haven’t been successful (although the sample size is just about as small as it gets).

Although they can get as high as the 5th overall seed, they’re right in the middle of the pack at 5th after last night’s win, although the winner between the Clippers and Lakers will push them back down to 6th. Here’s how their season can end with one of the four playoff/play-in positions available to them:


The 5th Seed
This scenario is relatively unlikely at this point, but is still possible. The Warriors will have the same record as the winner of the LA game tonight, but both LA teams own their season tiebreaker. The other side of this is that because the Clippers and Lakers play each other today, one of them is guaranteed to lose: If the Lakers only lose today or another of their remaining games, the Warriors have to win their final 2 and the Clippers have to lose at least once more for them to secure this spot. The path is there, but it’s a difficult one, and doesn’t factor in the Pelicans lurking in the background. The season series between them and the Warriors is tied, but it NOLA has the better conference record and thus, the tiebreaker, if they manage to win out. This is starting to look more likely, but not quite as likely as the 6th seed.

The 6th Seed
This is currently the most ideal situation for the Warriors. Assuming they remain in the 6th seed, they’ll have a week of rest before the playoffs and open up against Mike Brown and the Sacramento Kings. This would mean minimal travel and a team that the Dubs match up well against in terms of personnel. This path is significantly easier because it makes the Clippers’ remaining record irrelevant: Golden State would have a little more breathing room, but it’d require both the Lakers and Pelicans to lose twice each if they go anything less than perfect. There is also the scenario where the Lakers beat the Clippers tonight and take the 5th seed. This seems pretty plausible given the remaining schedules both of those teams have; the Warriors nearly control their own destiny in this spot unless both the Lakers and Pelicans win out themselves.

The 7th Seed
Here’s where things start to get a little dicey. One of the Lakers and Clippers is guaranteed a loss but both own the season series tiebreaker against the Warriors. If the Lakers go perfect, they’ll overtake a playoff spot and push Golden State to in danger of the play-in where they’d have a first round matchup with one of New Orleans (if they falter down the stretch) or Minnesota (if they can string together a couple solid wins). The Wolves-Pels game on April 9th could be the determining factor as a “win-and-in” game. The play-in is still very much a possibility: The Warriors would need to somehow carve out a better conference record than the Pelicans, which would give them a better total record anyways, to avoid this scenario.

The 8th Seed
It… Could be worse? If the Warriors fall to the play-in, it’s probable that they’ll play the New Orleans Pelicans barring a late surge from Minnesota. For most purposes, the 7th and the 8th seed are the same thing: They’ll still have a chance to get into the playoffs as the 7th seed (which would make a first-round series against the Memphis Grizzlies), lose one and win the next for the 8th seed (which means they’d play the Denver Nuggets), or lose both and fall out completely as they did in the 2020-2021 season. The 8th seed doesn’t seem particularly likely given the Lakers are surging, but it’s essentially the same impending doom as the 7th does.

So Where Do They Finish?
As aforementioned, the best-case and marginally most-likely scenario is the 6th seed. The Clippers have been struggling lately so they could still fall to the play-in with a pair of bad games. The Lakers and Clippers game could be a heavily-determinant factor in how the seeding shakes out: One more in the win or loss column could mean the 5th seed or the play-in for any of those three teams. The Warriors faced the Thunder in what could’ve been the game that locks OKC out of their play-in hopes, and travel to Sacramento (a potential playoff preview) and Portland (who have shut down most of their roster) for their final two games now.

Yesterday’s contest was a must-win, but there’s still work to be done. If both the Lakers and Clippers win the majority of their games while the Warriors go 1 and 1 in the last 2, they’ll overtake the 5th and 6th spots which would move Golden State to the play-in. While Andrew Wiggins has now returned and will be ramping up as the regular season draws to a close, significantly increasing their ability to play matchups, it will be one hell of an uphill battle to return to the NBA Finals.

(Photo credit: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)