The Portland Trail Blazers are in unfamiliar territory in April, 2026. After years of diving in the standings, hoping for luck in the NBA Draft Lottery, Portland is fighting for playoffs positioning, or at least the chance for same via the postseason Play-In Tournament.
Right now the Blazers hold a 40-39 record. That’s good for 9th place in the Western Conference.
- Portland is three games ahead of the Golden State Warriors with three remaining. They own the season series against Golden State 3-1, though, so they can no longer fall into 10th place. A tiebreaker between the two teams would leave the Blazers ahead.
- Similarly, the Blazers are three games behind the Phoenix Suns for the 7th-place spot, but Phoenix holds the season series 2-1 over Portland, meaning the Blazers cannot overtake the Suns.
That leaves the Blazers and the Los Angeles Clippers dueling for the 8th and 9th positions in the conference. Here’s the breakdown:
- The Clippers, at 41-38, are currently one game ahead of Portland.
- Three games remain for each, one head-to-head against each other.
- The Clippers currently own the season series 2-1. If they beat Portland on Friday, they’ll have the tiebreaker.
- If Portland beats L.A. on Friday, Portland will have the edge in a tie because of a better record against the Western Conference. (We’re down to the fourth tiebreaking criterion here.)
Common
sense says the Blazers will want to finish ahead of L.A. in the standings. The most obvious reason is the Play-In Tournament rules. There’s a huge difference between 8th- and 9th-place finishes. The Play-In works like this:
- Game 1: The 7th- and 8th-place teams play each other. The winner of that game automatically gets the 7th seed in the Western Conference bracket of the actual playoffs. The loser goes to Game 3 in this list.
- Game 2: The 9th- and 10th-place teams also play each other. The loser is out of the postseason. The winner goes to Game 3 in this list.
- Game 3: The loser of Game 1 plays the winner of Game 2. The loser of this game is out of the postseason. The winner becomes the 8th seed in the Western Conference bracket of the actual playoffs.
You can see already that the 8th-place team has a huge advantage over the 9th in the Play-In. The team in 8th gets two chances to win one game. They can either beat the 7th-place team and earn the 7th seed or beat the winner of the 9th-10th-place game and earn the 8th seed. Meanwhile the team in 9th has to win two games with no losses in order to receive the same honor: beating the 10th-place team, then the loser of the 7th-8th game.
But winning in the tournament itself is only half the story. We shouldn’t forget the purpose of winning is to make the true postseason bracket, which is the real testing ground. It’s no good to say, “Yay! We made the playoffs!” and then get crushed there. That’s kind of like saying, “I made it to the grocery store!” with an empty wallet. What was the point? Any team celebrating the Play-In on its own terms falls under the category of, “Tell me you’re not very good without telling me you’re not very good.”
If were thinking beyond the Play-In, considering Portland’s chances in the actual playoffs, we have to acknowledge that the 7th- and 8th-seeded teams in the Western Conference will face very different opponents.
Sitting atop the conference are the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. They’re a proven team led by the current NBA MVP. Their defense is near-impeccable. Their only semi-weak spot defensively comes at the three-point arc, a place Portland stinks anyway. They force turnovers, a huge Blazers weakness. And they can score enough to put your lights out. Any matchup between the Blazers and Thunder is nearly certain to end in misery for Portland. The only real question is whether we put “Gentlemen’s” in front of “Sweep”.
The San Antonio Spurs are the second-place team in the conference. They feature phenom Victor Wembanyama, who looks very much like the Undertaker being brought out by Ted DiBiase at Survivor Series, ready to dominate the league for the next couple decades. Despite their impressive 60+ wins this season, San Antonio is less-proven, less good at defending, and less sharp against Portland’s weak spots.
As the luckiest lottery team in the history of forever, given chances and help that no other team has received, Wemby and the Spurs will probably steamroll the Blazers as well. But their youth and general make-up indicate that at least there’s a ghost of a shadow of a chance. If something happens to Wembanyama, the Spurs are not at all the same team. Realistically, the 4th-10th players in Oklahoma City’s rotation could probably give the Blazers a good series, if not win. The two opponents are not equal.
The team earning the 7th-place bracket seeding after the Play-In will probably draw the Spurs. The team earning the 8th place in the bracket will probably draw the Thunder.
If the Blazers don’t finish ahead of the Clippers in the standings, they have no chance to get the 7th seed in the playoffs bracket. Even if they win the two Play-In games necessary to advance from the 9th-place spot, they’ll only earn the 8th bracket seed in the actual playoffs and a matchup with Oklahoma City. If they don’t want that, they have to enter the Play-In Tournament in the 8th spot, not the 9th.
Above and beyond the laurels for making the postseason, assuming Portland is serious about performing there, it’s critical for them to pass the Clippers. Otherwise this is much ado about nothing.
If the Blazers win all three remaining games, they will do that. The best L.A. could do is go 2-1 to tie them, and Portland would earn the tiebreaker by virtue of having beaten the Clippers head-to-head on Friday.
If Portland starts losing, they leave their future up to chance. The Clips have a final slate of Thunder, Blazers, Golden State Warriors. They could lose all three. They could also win any or all of those. It’d be better for Portland to take the matter out of the hands of the opponent and wrench away the superior position themselves.
There’s one more wrinkle here. San Antonio owns the tiebreaker against the Thunder. Those teams are also three games apart with three remaining. There’s a (very outside) chance that the Spurs could overtake Oklahoma City for first place in the conference. The Blazers could kill two birds with one stone, locking San Antonio into second and promoting their own chances to play for the 7th seed in the playoffs, by beating the Spurs tonight.
Either way, unless something hinky happens, the task before the Blazers is clear: win, win, win. That begins right now and continues through their final game on Sunday. Winning out is the clearest, best way for the Blazers to proceed.
It’s nice when the season narrows down to a definable set of options. It’s even nicer when those point directly to the thing the team should have been focused on all along anyway.
No excuses, very few asterisks. If the Blazers are at all serious, they will come out trying to win the game in San Antonio tonight, look to crush the Clippers on Friday, and then avoid stumbling in the season finale against Sacramento on Sunday. That’s the task at hand. Let’s see if they’re up to it.
