Schedule Favors Boston Celtics Down the Stretch
By Derek Mcvay
The Boston Celtics are in a tight race for playoff seeding, luckily they have a favorable schedule
With just eight games remaining in the regular season, the Boston Celtics currently find themselves in the midst of a four-team race for home-court advantage in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. While the team has yet officially clinch a playoff berth, it appears inevitable as they hold a six game advantage over the 9th-place Chicago Bulls. Given the current standings, it looks as if Boston is going to finish somewhere in the 3-6 range.
The Celtics currently sit tied with the Charlotte Hornets at fifth in the Eastern Conference, a half game behind the Miami Heat for fourth and a game and a half behind the Atlanta Hawks for third. Miami has the most games remaining of the bunch with nine, Charlotte has eight, and Atlanta has seven. When you examine the collective records of the remaining opponents for each of these four teams, the winning percentages don’t appear to favor Boston, but those numbers can be a bit misleading.
Boston’s eight remaining opponents sport a winning percentage of .523, a combined record of 309-283. However, those numbers are severely inflated by a matchup against the mighty Golden State Warriors, who are currently on the verge of a record setting season. The combined winning percentage of the Celtics other seven opponents is a mere .467.
The Hawks have the fewest remaining games of the four teams, but undoubtedly have the toughest road. Their final seven opponents have a combined winning percentage of .583. Included in those seven games are two games apiece with the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors, and a crucial matchup with the Celtics. The other two games come against sub-.500 teams are in the Phoenix Suns and Washington Wizards.
The Hornets remaining schedule is sneakily difficult. Though their opponents’ combined winning percentage is on the low end, .457, it’s aided by a game against the worst team in the NBA in the Philadelphia 76ers. After a home game against the 76ers, Charlotte plays five of its final seven on the road, with stops in Cleveland, Toronto and Boston. This is a Hornets team that is just 16-20 on the road this year. It’s not inconceivable to think they’ll go 4-4 over this final stretch.
Miami looks to have the easiest path to home-court in the first round of the playoffs. Five of their final nine games come against non-playoff teams. Though six of their final nine games come on the road, Miami has fared pretty well on the road this year with a 18-17 mark. The team’s toughest stretch comes in the final two games of the season where they’ll play in Detroit, and then Boston, on back-to-back nights.
One thing working in the Celtics favor is the head-to-head tiebreaker. Boston will hold the tiebreaker over both Charlotte and Miami by virtue of winning their head-to-head battles this year. The tiebreaker with Atlanta gets a little murky.
The best Boston can do is earn a season-series split with the Hawks, if they win in Atlanta next week. If that were to happen, and the two teams finished tied, the next tiebreaker is division winner. The Hawks currently lead their division. If Boston and Atlanta finished tied, and Atlanta doesn’t hold the lead in their division, the next tiebreaker becomes conference record, which the Celtics currently hold an advantage in. However, in that scenario, Boston would only be able to finish as high as fourth because Charlotte or Miami would have passed Atlanta for the division lead, and in turn would have passed the Celtics.
After the Celtics wrap up their current west coast trip this Sunday in Los Angeles, they will play four of their final five games at home where, up until a couple of weeks ago, they had won 14 consecutive games.
All in all, this makes for an exciting final three weeks for Boston. Finishing fourth in the East would be great as it guarantees home-court, however, finishing third allows you to avoid the Cavaliers until the conference finals.
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A win at Golden State this Friday seems unlikely. The Warriors haven’t lost a game at home since last year’s NBA Finals, and haven’t lost a regular season home game in over a year. I don’t envision that changing.
If the Celtics take care of business at home, they would need to win just two games on the road to finish 49-33, which should be enough to capture the three seed. At the very worst it should guarantee at least the fourth seed. A 6-2 finish for Boston would require Miami to win seven of their final nine games, and Charlotte to win seven of their final eight in order to pass the Celtics. Atlanta would only need to win four of their final seven, but a 3-4 mark in those seven games isn’t unrealistic given the opponents.
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At the very least Boston has to win five of their final eight games, including all three games against Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte. A 5-3 finish likely won’t be good enough for the three seed, but it may be enough to finish fourth. A 7-1 finish is the best-case scenario for Boston, and while it is certainly possible, 6-2 seems more realistic. Luckily for the Celtics, the schedule is on their side.