The Last Night of the NBA Regular Season Is a Play-in for the Playoffs - Wall Street Journal

April 10, 2018 3:19 p.m. ET

All the way back in August, when the NBA schedule was released, it didn't seem like a big deal that the Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets would be playing each other on the last night of the regular season in April.

But so much has happened for both teams since then that Minnesota vs. Denver on Wednesday night isn't even a regular-season game anymore. It's effectively Round Zero of the NBA playoffs.

There is only one spot remaining in the postseason, and that last spot in the Western Conference is still up for grabs between teams that happen to be playing each other with their seasons on the line: the Nuggets and Timberwolves.

There was no way the NBA could have planned this when its computer algorithm sorted through billions of permutations to create a schedule of 1,230 games over six months. But what the league has now is the play-in tournament it's flirted with for years. The winner goes to the playoffs. The loser goes on summer vacation.

All of which makes the last night in the Western Conference this season roughly as chaotic as the rest of the season has been. The only teams locked into their playoff slots are the Houston Rockets at No. 1 and the Golden State Warriors at No. 2, and they won't have any idea who they're playing until the last games are over early Thursday morning because No. 3 through No. 9 has been a nightly game of musical chairs for the last month.

The juiciest game of the night is Denver at Minnesota at 8 p.m. ET. The Timberwolves haven't made the playoffs since 2004, but it would be a huge disappointment if they extend that streak after pairing Jimmy Butler with Karl-Anthony Towns this year. And the Nuggets may be the last team they want to play. Denver had to win six consecutive games and beat the Timberwolves without Butler over the weekend to put itself on the brink of the playoffs.

But it isn't the only game with playoff implications. There are five teams in the West that could end the season with 48 wins: the Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz, New Orleans Pelicans, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder. As it turns out, four of them still have to play each other.

The Spurs and the Pelicans, who also play at 8 p.m. ET, can both wind up anywhere from No. 4 to No. 8 depending on what happens Tuesday and the rest of Wednesday. The Blazers and the Jazz, who close out the regular season at 10:30 p.m. ET, could be playing for the No. 3 seed.

The matchups in the West still won't be clear when that game tips. But at last, with only hours left in the regular season, the NBA will know which 16 teams made the playoffs.

Write to Ben Cohen at ben.cohen@wsj.com