It turns out, tonight's Lakers-Clippers game is a very large piece of the Warriors' final playoff puzzle.
: Thanks to a few well-timed wins and a little help from their Western Conference rivals, if they win Friday against the Kings and Sunday against the Blazers, they will finish 44-38 and avoid the Western Conference's dreaded play-in tournament.
It gets far more complicated from there, though, starting with Wednesday night's monumental Lakers-Clippers game., the Dubs shot up to the fifth seed in the West with a 42-38 record, the best position the team has had in a while. Unfortunately, the team’s hold on that spot will last until the final buzzer sounds at the arena formerly known as Staples Center.
Once one of the two teams wins, they’ll leapfrog the Dubs in the standings even with the same record as Golden State. The Lakers' situation is easy to understand: They finished 3-1 against the Dubs this season so they've clinched the tiebreaker. The Clippers, meanwhile, split their season series with the Warriors. What separates these two times is the divisional record tiebreaker, since neither won the Pacific this year.
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