With the Western Conference jammed like Colorado Boulevard at 5 p.m., there are questions not just about where Denver will end up, but how it can nab home-court advantage for the first time in coach George Karl’s five seasons with the Nuggets.
“We’re in a position right now, if we get enough wins, we can have a great opportunity to have home court, which is the celebration that we want to have,” Karl said.
Here’s how it works. The first four teams in each conference’s postseason are the three division winners and the team with the next-best regular-season record. The seedings of those four teams are determined solely by regular-season record, so it’s possible for the Nuggets to win their division but have the fourth seed.
The bottom four seeds are the teams with the next four best records in the conference.
OK, but here’s the catch: The only way a team gets home- court advantage is to have a better record than the team it is matched up against. So, if the Nuggets’ record isn’t one of the four best records in the Western Conference — but Denver still wins the division — then the Nuggets will be the fourth seed, but the fifth-seeded team will have home-court advantage.
And one more catch. If there’s a need for a tiebreaker, a division winner gets the tiebreaker from a team not leading a division.
Footnotes.
Reserve Chris Andersen, second in the NBA in blocked shots and a huge fan of the city of Denver, is due for a payday this summer. But the Nuggets are also looking to stay under the salary cap next summer. That should make for an interesting turn of events.
“Having the year he’s had, and not having him on the team next year, would be very disappointing to about 5,000 people, including the coaching staff and the team,” Karl said. . . . The Nuggets recalled rookie Sonny Weems from the D-League. In this go-around with the 14ers, he averaged 21.6 points per game in 10 appearances.
Benjamin Hochman, The Denver Post
