BOSTON – As he broke down a five-point home loss to Atlanta on Thursday, New Orleans forward Solomon Hill bluntly summed up the current reality in the Western Conference for a whole pack of teams, including the Pelicans, Kings, Trail Blazers, Nuggets, Lakers and others.
“Every game now is pivotal,” Hill said, expressing an urgency that’s generally not common in the first week of January. “And it’s not like it’s (a close race) all the way up to the fifth seed. At this point it’s just a fight for the eighth seed. The seventh seed is over .