NBA's five biggest questions for final month of regular season: Pelicans on the prowl; Miami heating up again?
CBSN
The NBA postseason is one month away
What do we really know as we turn the corner into the last month of the 2023-24 NBA season? Well, barring a catastrophe, the 51-14 Boston Celtics will have the league's best regular-season record. And after that... well... TBD! Oklahoma City Thunder 33-14 119.5 112.2 7.3 3rd Denver Nuggets 32-14 118 113.6 4.4 7th Minnesota Timberwolves 31-17 115.2 109.2 6 5th Los Angeles Clippers 33-13 120.9 116.3 4.5 6th New Orleans Pelicans 29-16 119.1 111.5 7.6 2nd
As of this writing, the top three teams in the Western Conference are separated by half of a game. Only three losses separate teams 6-10. The difference between hosting Game 1 of a first-round series and needing the play-in round in the Eastern Conference right now is two losses. The standings aren't quite as condensed as they were on opening night, but we haven't exactly achieved much in the five months that followed. Most teams are locked in a cluster right now. Where they fall within that cluster is going to come down to how the final month of the regular season plays out.
So let's try to sort through this mess and make some sense of the standings with one month of basketball left before the playoffs. Here are the five biggest questions facing the league as playoff basketball approaches.
