The low post is brought to you by Good Year helping you discover the road ahead. Good year more driven.

Baseball is back in Sorrier favorite teams and players catch the best of the bigs all season on ESPN

Plus with over 170 live MLB games featuring every star in every team in the league sign up now at ESPN Plus.com

slash baseball and with the NFL draft just two weeks away don't forget to check out first draft with Melkhyper Jr. Todd McShay and Field Yates wherever you get your podcasts.

And now the low welcome to the low post podcast on a Monday afternoon where we are coming remarkably down the stretch of a rapid fire NBA season.

And so I want to talk today about my favorite subplot remaining in this season, which is seeds three to seven.

And really maybe three to 10 if you want to get frisky in the Western conference AKA who does not want to play the Lakers

and how badly do not want to play them and where are they going to fall in the standings.

The Lakers coming off of fantastic win over the Brooklyn that's without basically you know most of the Lakers good players are now

solidly in fifth two games in the lost column ahead of the Blazers who have a negative point differential despite being nine games over 500 which you should get some kind of trophy for that.

And three games over the Mavericks who have been surging until just terrible losses in the last week at home to San Antonio and at Houston who is terrible obviously.

And and so the Lakers by most projection systems have them finishing at least most commonly in the fifth spot now how most commonly depends on which projection system you're using basketball reference has the Lakers landing fifth 54% of their time in the simulations other places are much less.

Sort of definitive than that and that sets you up for potentially a really stirring and massively important race between the Clippers and the nuggets for the third seed and the right to avoid the Lakers in the first round I mean Clippers Lakers Nuggets Lakers you get some serious spurs Clippers 2015 first round series vibes from that look up that series if you don't remember that's one of the greatest playoff series ever arguably the greatest first round playoffs.

And then but if you get the third seed what if the Lakers fall to six and all of a sudden you're stuck facing the Lakers in the first round and that brings us to the race between I think will be Portland and Dallas for six the loser goes into the play in tournament as the number one seed in the play in tournament at seven.

But if you're seventh and you actually get the seventh seed you might be okay with that maybe if you draw Phoenix I don't know I will say there's sort of a skepticism around the league that Phoenix is as good as their record and and and I really truly elite playoff opponent will see if that bears out and then looming behind all this points I on who is just putting up 16 of 22 lines.

Like it's easy to do the Pelicans are only one game behind the Warriors for the 10th seed looming as a play in wild card and the Warriors just lost James Wiseman maybe for the season over the weekend so we have a race for six a race for 11th and the where are the Lakers falling Derby I love all of this we can have some shenanigans we can have some urgency at the end of the season basically the opposite of shenanigans trying to get into that number three spot.

I love everything about this the West is a blood bath the East is like hey maybe the Hawks will finish fourth maybe the Hornets can hold on to fourth the West is having real stuff going on and to help us sort it all out because my brain already hurts one of my favorite guests the people's favorite guests from sports illustrated it still takes getting used to Mr Chris Herring how are you.

I'm alright man another another one of those days in America but what well I was going to say what can you do there's a lot we could do but who knows whether we'll ever do it but that aside I'm doing okay how are you my friend.

Yeah yeah I'm okay I don't know I don't know how to transition out of that except to say who knows I've done but you had to go back then we can discuss you.

You and I both we we've covered law and we covered.

Other stuff in this country which someday we'll fix it I don't know we'll be here when they do it but it's a lot and I know I didn't give you any any help there in terms of transitioning but I know it's where part of my focus is but hopefully you're doing okay hopefully folks are doing okay so listen.

Well and we might get this timber wolves game where we're recording this at 315 Eastern time right now where it's uncertain whether the timber wolves will play tonight in the aftermath of yet another police shooting of an unarmed black person and it just goes on and on and on.

...