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Houston’s 2025 NBA playoff run will begin in a week, but there are still five teams the Rockets could face in the first round of the West’s No. 2 versus No. 7 series.
The NBA’s 2024-25 regular season is only 48 hours from its conclusion, and the Houston Rockets are locked into their playoff seed at No. 2 in the Western Conference standings.
Yet, there is still considerable uncertainty as to who the Rockets (52-28) will ultimately play in their best-of-seven, first-round series against the West’s No. 7 seed.
Entering the season’s final weekend, five teams are still candidates to finish at No. 7: the Denver Nuggets (48-32), Los Angeles Clippers (48-32), Golden State Warriors (47-33), Memphis Grizzlies (47-33), and Minnesota Timberwolves (47-33).
In a tight range from No. 4 through No. 8 in the West, all of those teams are either tied or separated by a single game with two left to play. The Rockets will host the Nuggets in Sunday’s regular-season finale, so Houston can potentially play a role in determining its eventual opponent, depending on how aggressively the Rockets decide to pursue a win.
After Sunday, the list of five potential opponents will be trimmed to two, with the No. 7 and No. 8 finishers playing each other in a West play-in tournament game on Tuesday.
The winner of that game will ultimately be the No. 7 seed and face the Rockets in a first-round series starting on either Saturday, April 19, or Sunday, April 20, at Toyota Center in Houston.
By record, this is how Houston has fared against those five teams this season:
- 1-1 versus Denver (one game still left)
- 3-1 versus Clippers
- 2-3 versus Warriors
- 3-1 versus Grizzlies
- 2-2 versus Timberwolves
The remaining schedules for those five teams are available below.
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