The Western Conference is split up into essentially three groups of teams: the locks, the bubble teams and the maybe next year’s. The Dallas Mavericks are undoubtedly in the bubble category, even though many people want to try and force them into the bottom category. This is going to be a good year for the Mavs.
Let’s break down the top group and the bottom group here so that we can see what teams the Mavs shouldn’t be too worried about this year. And more importantly, we can see the teams that absolutely do matter.
There are six teams in the West that seem to be absolute locks for the playoffs in my opinion.