West’s Final Four picture no longer sure bet

The Nuggets have the weapons to create problems for Kevin Durant and the Thunder. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

A lot of us have been looking forward to the Western Conference semifinals for about two months now: The newly potent Spurs would face the precocious Thunder in one series, while the Lakers and Mavericks — two veteran teams so comfortable in their own identities — would battle in another seven-gamer laced with window-closing urgency. One game every night, all enticing enough to cancel two weeks’ worth of plans.

That’s still the most likely scenario, but over the last month, the bottom of the West has solidified. The teams most likely to snag those last four spots have all improved to varying degrees, offering the possibility of a more competitive first round and even an upset. Here are the projected bottom four playoff teams, ranked in order of upset capability.

(All records and statistics are through March 18.)

1) Denver Nuggets (41-28)

The Nuggets get the nod here, even if I’m a bit less impressed — just a bit, Denver fans! — than most with their 9-3 record since the Carmelo Anthony trade. The Nuggets are best positioned for an upset in part because of their current standing. With a one-game lead over Portland in the loss column and a slight edge in division record (the next tiebreaker in this case because the teams split their head-to-head series), the Nuggets have the best chance of snagging the fifth seed and a first-round date with the Thunder, the weakest of the West’s top four.

And when comparing the respective profiles of the Thunder and Nuggets, Denver is the superior team on paper. The Nuggets have a better overall scoring margin — +4.1 points per game, to +3.4 for the Thunder — they’ve maintained the league’s best offense even without Anthony, and they have played near Boston’s level of defense since Carmelo left, according to Hoopdata. Plus, they’ve done this with both Danilo Gallinari and Arron Afflalo missing time. Toss in one of the league’s best home-court advantages, and you have a team any computer ranking system would put above the Thunder; John Hollinger’s system at ESPN.com has Denver fourth in the league, two spots ahead of Oklahoma City.

Denver received proven NBA talent in the Anthony trade. While a couple of those pieces — Wilson Chandler and Raymond Felton — might not be part of the long-term picture, they are Nuggets now, and getting that kind of talent has allowed the 2011 version of this team to thrive in Carmelo’s absence. When healthy, the Nuggets can put shooters everywhere, play small and traditional lineups and put active defenders at almost every position. They are also passing the ball like crazy. If Nene is rolling — often a big “if” against nasty front lines like the Thunder’s new one with Kendrick Perkins — Denver will cause problems, especially because it will have the personnel to make Kevin Durant work on both ends.

Of course, the Thunder would have home-court advantage in this series, and the Nuggets have rarely been a good road team. Oklahoma City will also have had a month more to work in Perkins and restructure its defense by the time the first round starts. And the Nuggets’ recent run has included one win against a team with half a roster (the Celtics, immediately post-trade); two against teams with key parts of their rotation ailing or absent (Phoenix and Atlanta); and a few against lottery teams. We’ll learn more about Denver — which lost at the buzzer in Orlando on Friday – over the next two-plus weeks when it plays the Heat, Spurs, Lakers and Thunder.

Still: If you called this (theoretical) series a toss-up, I wouldn’t argue too hard against you.

2) Portland Trail Blazers (39-29)

This is still an inconsistent bunch, and I wouldn’t take them in a series against the Lakers or Mavs, the two teams they are most likely to face in the first round. But you shouldn’t be surprised if Dallas finds itself in a dicey Game 7 against these guys at the end of April. With Gerald Wallace on board, the Blazers can shift between big and small without going so small as to completely compromise themselves on defense. Wallace is capable of guarding power forwards that lack destructive power games, and forwards of the quick/rangy variety have a track record of at least bothering Dirk Nowitzki (though the Dallas star didn’t look bothered by Wallace at all when these two teams faced off last week).

If Portland and Dallas do match up, the Blazers can throw a variety of looks at Nowitzki. Wallace, LaMarcus Aldridge and Marcus Camby can all take turns, and Portland will both go zone and send double teams from a bunch of places.

Offensively, Portland is about to crack the league’s top 10 in points per possession, and this team is extremely dangerous when it is making three-pointers. The Blazers are 32-13 when they hit at least six threes and 7-16 otherwise, and while every team does better when it connects from deep, that’s an unusually large split. This makes Portland both dangerous and vulnerable, depending on whether guys are wearing their Three Goggles.

Then there is Aldridge, who can drop 30 on anyone and could hurt Dallas simply by getting Tyson Chandler in foul trouble. The Mavs’ defense suffers with Chandler on the bench, and no real solution to that problem has emerged. (The Lakers, with so many quality bigs, are a different story.)

The Blazers’ defense is up and down as always, but Wallace should help — especially with Portland’s shaky defensive rebounding.

3) Memphis Grizzlies (37-32)

The Grizzlies, with a relatively easy finishing schedule outside of a Boston-Chicago-San Antonio trio of games later this month, have the inside track to the No. 8 seed and a first-round matchup with San Antonio. Memphis will have trouble rising any higher, but that wouldn’t bother me if I were a Grizzlies fan.

This team’s primary strength remains its two free-agent-to-be low-post monsters, Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, and the Lakers are the lone team in the Western Conference that can neutralize a duo like that. And while the Spurs have held Gasol and Randolph to well below 50 percent shooting combined in three games this season, the Grizzlies have a +12 margin on the boards in those games and rebounded about a third of their own misses — a huge number. Randolph is a handful for anyone, and the Spurs have had problems against stretch power forwards, a role Darrell Arthur plays well off the bench for Memphis.

The Spurs lead the season series 2-1, but one of their wins went to overtime in San Antonio, and Rudy Gay has missed all three of those games. (Tony Parker missed all of one and most of another, so the absences almost even out.) With O.J. Mayo back from suspension and Shane Battier in town, the Grizzlies have the sort of wing rotation to deal with San Antonio’s small lineups. The Mike Conley/Parker matchup would keep me up at night, with Conley’s tendency to gamble and get himself out of position on defense. But the Grizzlies aren’t outgunned too badly elsewhere, as long as Mayo and Tony Allen can keep Manu Ginobili from exploding in more than one or two games.

Matchup stuff aside, the Grizzlies are going to make life difficult for anyone they face. They are 23-13 since falling to 14-19 on Jan. 1, and they have emerged as a legit top-10 defense. One huge caveat: The Grizzlies have relied more on forcing turnovers than is probably healthy, and the Spurs, Lakers and Mavs are among the league’s best at taking care of ball. And no team is as brutally efficient as San Antonio at punishing teams that gamble and position themselves poorly. The threes could rain, all night.

Still: The Grizzlies will make you work, and that’s more than you can say for a lot of No. 8 seeds.

4) New Orleans Hornets (40-30)

The Hornets are ahead of Memphis in the standings, but they just haven’t been as good as these other three since starting the season 11-1. They’re going to make you earn it as long as Chris Paul is healthy and they’re playing the top-five-level defense they’ve played all season, but I just can’t see this team scoring enough to beat the Spurs, Lakers or Mavs four times in seven games. And the health of Paul’s surgically repaired left knee was an open question until the last five games, when he averaged 24.4 points (on 55 percent shooting) and 12 assists. Three of those games came against some of the league’s worst defensive teams — Phoenix, Sacramento and Cleveland — but it was encouraging to know the real Paul is still available this season. Because the Hornets aren’t beating any of the West’s giants more than once without that Paul; I was ready to write them off as first-round roadkill before this recent stretch.

Even with Paul doing Paul things, they’re probably just feisty roadkill. There are just too many guys here the opposition doesn’t have to worry about outside the Paul-David West pick-and-pop. West has always hurt the Spurs — those pesky stretch 4s — but he’s rarely had quite the same impact against Dallas or the Lakers. Emeka Okafor is inconsistent as a scoring threat, the shooting-guard rotation is a mess without Marcus Thornton and Trevor Ariza has been a disaster with the ball. Carl Landry has helped the bench, but his impact is a bit limited because the Hornets can’t realistically play their three best frontcourt players — Landry, West and Okafor — at the same time.

The Hornets will be competitive in games because they defend and secure defensive rebounds about as well as anyone in the league. But there just isn’t enough here to make an interesting series, barring a CP3 miracle.