Next Tuesday we play the Warriors and Minny plays OKC.
If we win, we advance.
If we lose, and:
- If Minny loses, Warriors advance on the head to head tiebreaker.
- If Minny wins, we have a three-way 3-1 tie where each team has a head to head loss against another 3-1 team, meaning point differential is our tiebreaker. Currently we have a big lead on this tiebreaker. We need to hope for a small loss for us and a small win for Minny. Kings are +29, Warriors +5, Wolves -3.
- We don’t have any path to the wildcard, so don’t worry about it.
So basically if we win, it’s simple. If we lose, we need the Wolves to win and we need both games to be close-ish, like single digit differences would be in the clear.
Apologies in advance if I fucked any of that up.
Just to follow up on this with a bit more detail, the Suns finished their group games at 3-1 with a +34 point differential. We are currently 3-0 with a +29 point differential. If we lose Tuesday, our point differential will go down. So the highest it could be with a loss is +28 (if we lose by 1).
So if we win, we go 4-0 and win the group. If we lose, we drop to 3-1 and will have a lower point differential than the Suns, thus eliminating us from the wild card. We could still lose the game and win the group however, if Minnesota beats OKC and we end up with the highest point differential.