Playoff Picture: 2019

With three weeks to go in the regular season, it's time to turn our focus onto the playoff picture after the comedown from the trade deadline. Let's take a peek! Note: After determining the six division winners, five teams from each conference make the postseason, and then the entire field is reseeded #1-16, with ensuing brackets locked in and no reseeding each round. The current bracket would look like this:

NYK has the top slot locked up -- an eleven wins category lead will do that -- but there’s definitely room for movement at #2-7 seeds. Only three category wins separate CHI, DET, UTA, IND, GSW, and MIN, with their wins ranging from 108 to 105 after WK18.

We took a quick look at their upcoming schedules for the rest of the regular season — WK19 through WK21 — and have marked “green” for non-playoff opponents games, “yellow” for matchups versus current playoff teams, and “red” for games versus a current top six team.

As you can see, DET has the hardest schedule going forward, as they’ll have to face off against three of their playoff bound Central division mates. A huge matchup in WK21 against CHI could determine the fate of the division crown and grant one of DET or CHI the second seed. CHI has one layup versus MIL but faces a similarly tough end of the year schedule afterwards, while IND has two semi-easy matchups, giving them a chance to vault both CHI and DET.

However, with the Central powerhouses beating each other up, that opens the door for UTA and GSW to shoot up toward a possible two seed themselves, with neither of them facing a particularly tough schedule moving forward. And as for #7, MIN has two cakewalks in ATL and OKC but a WK21 matchup against NYK would likely set them back a step, giving MIN a less realistic shot to move up in the standings. Still, these are most likely going to be the top seven seeds in some order, as MIN currently has a +9 W edge on the team below them.

So for seeds #8-11, we have a four-way battle between LAL, MEM, BKN, and WAS for that lsat home court advantage spot. (In the playoffs, ties go to the home court team aka higher seed.) LAL has a huge matchup versus GSW this week, but then a cakewalk the rest of the way. MEM has a big game against the reconstituted HOU team, but then should waltz over SAS and NOP. Similarly, BKN has two easy games and then a tough game versus NYK. The favorite to climb up to that last home court advantage spot might be WAS, who has the easiest schedule of the four.

For playoff seeds #12-14, POR, HOU, CLE are similar in W/L record but HOU is reloaded after their trade deadline moves and could move up the standings quickly. The question is how high can they go? They are -7 games out of the #11 seed, which may be a tough catch with just three weeks of games to go. But anything is possible with LeBron and Westbrook onboard right?

At the bottom of the playoff picture, we have CHA and NOP currently in -- 80 and 75 W, respectively -- but PHI, DEN and even ORL have an outside shot of making their case for the postseason. PHI is currently the ninth seed in the East, and would be out of the playoffs, despite sporting a better record than NOP. But lots could change in the coming weeks, as everyone will be staring hard at the playoff picture as we hurtle into the final stretch of the regular season.

Next time out we'll look at the teams battling it out at the bottom of the standings for next year's draft positioning. A final gift, strength of schedule for the current and possible postseason teams moving forward: