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7 storylines that will define the NBA's stretch run

Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports / Action Images

In an NBA campaign, the week-long All-Star break serves as a natural inflection point. Coming two-thirds of the way through, it's an intermission before the regular season's final act.

So, as the league gears up for what should be a wildly entertaining stretch run, here are seven storylines that should define the remainder of the 2017-18 campaign.

Cleveland, no longer cavalier

Things couldn't have gotten off to a more encouraging start for the remade Cleveland Cavaliers. After trading half their team and bringing in four new players on deadline day, the Cavs promptly dismantled the Boston Celtics and beat the Oklahoma City Thunder on the road to roll into the break on a four-game winning streak.

The new guys fit in as well as could've been expected, bolstering Cleveland's sieve-like defense while shooting a combined 51 percent from the field and 47 percent from three. Perhaps even more importantly, the holdovers were entirely rejuvenated. After sulking and dragging his feet through a disastrous January, LeBron James looked like LeBron James again - active, engaged, and joyful. J.R. Smith suddenly rediscovered his jump shot, his burst, and his swagger. Even the reanimated corpse of Tristan Thompson looked vaguely lifelike.

How much of that was the product of a post-shakeup honeymoon, and how much was predictive of the rest of Cleveland's season? Is the East once again the Cavs' to lose? Their defensive personnel is obviously better, but whether they can actually be good - or even average - on that end is another question. Will they sustain the positive vibes and newfound energy when Jordan Clarkson and Rodney Hood aren't hitting more than half their 3-point attempts? With all the momentum they gathered in the preceding week, the Cavs may have been one of the few teams that wasn't happy to see the All-Star break arrive. How they look coming out of it will be one of the league's most fascinating subplots the rest of the way.

The wild, wild Western Conference playoff melee

Just 4.5 games separate the No. 3 seed from No. 10 in the West, while the third-place San Antonio Spurs and ninth-place Los Angeles Clippers are just two games apart in the loss column. Seeds five through nine are all tied with 26 losses, and the 10th-place Utah Jazz, now healthy and ravenous, are breathing down everyone's necks at 30-28, winners of 11 straight games.

Of all those teams, the slumping Spurs have the most difficult remaining schedule, while the red-hot Jazz have the easiest. The eighth-place New Orleans Pelicans are hanging on by a thread without DeMarcus Cousins, but they also have the best player of this bunch in Anthony Davis. The Denver Nuggets have been scuffling on defense, but their offense is rolling and they should be getting Paul Millsap back soon. The Portland Trail Blazers have arguably the hottest player in the conference in Damian Lillard. After shipping Blake Griffin out of town, the Los Angeles Clippers opted not to sell off their remaining parts at the trade deadline, and have kept grinding out wins behind Lou Williams and DeAndre Jordan. The Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves have more talent than the teams chasing them, but arguably less cohesiveness.

All of which is to say, it's impossible to predict where any of these teams will end up, let alone which two will end up on the outside of the playoffs looking in. Here's one thing we can say for certain: Watching it all shake out is going to be insanely fun.

The slightly-less-wild Eastern seeding skirmish

The East doesn't feature quite the logjam the West does, and the Detroit Pistons are the only team currently outside the playoff picture that can conceivably crash the party. But with just 3.5 games separating the fourth-place Washington Wizards from the eighth-place Miami Heat, there's plenty of room for jockeying and matchup-hunting. And given the clear divide that seems to exist between the top three and the rest of the conference, the fight for the fourth and fifth seeds should be fierce.

The Philadelphia 76ers are an elite team when Joel Embiid is on the floor, and if his health continues permitting him to ramp up his workload, they can easily rocket into the top four. The Indiana Pacers are 33-19 with Victor Oladipo in the lineup and 0-6 without him, which is somehow encouraging and discouraging at the same time. Does Oladipo have enough help to keep the Pacers in the 4-5 bracket? Can the Wizards keep rolling without John Wall? And if so, can they keep it up when he returns? Can the Milwaukee Bucks maintain their newly dominant defense in the Joe Prunty era? And can Jabari Parker work back up to starter's minutes - and impact - by playoff time? Will effort and chemistry be enough to help the starless Heat hold off the Griffin-led Pistons?

For playoff-race drama, the West is still best, but the intensity's increased in the East.

The Spurs: Who, what, where, when, how, and Kawhi

With a 35-24 record and a nightmarish closing schedule, the Spurs are probably going to fall short of 50 wins for the first time in 19 years. At this point, they might need to be more worried about just holding onto a playoff spot.

That seems insane, given they sit third in the West and are, y'know, the freaking Spurs. But we've already discussed how tenuous seeding is in the bunched-up West, and this team is a far cry from the Spurs teams of years past. The 2017-18 version is badly banged up, can't score, relies almost exclusively on role players, and lost 13 of its last 23 games going into the break. Gregg Popovich and his staff still manage to coax starting-caliber performances out of most of those role players, but without Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs arguably have less pure talent than any team in the race. How long can they continue to rely on a defense anchored by two earthbound bigs, or an offense that revolves around post-ups, or a bench led by a quadragenarian?

And herein lies the huge, pulsating question mark at the heart of this vexing San Antonio season. Leonard has played in just nine games. He's now sidelined for the second time due to a mysterious quad injury, and hasn't played in nearly six weeks. And since he was shelved in mid-January, we've hardly heard a peep about his progress or his long-term prognosis, and no inkling of when or if he's expected to play again this season. The Spurs will probably manage to hold onto a playoff spot regardless, because they still have a decent cushion in the win column and still have an uncanny ability to wring the most out of their players. But they're stretched awfully thin, and they'll be hard-pressed to keep winning at the same rate unless or until Leonard returns.

Rockets, Raptors try to flip the script

Most people still expect the Cavs and Golden State Warriors to meet in the NBA Finals for a fourth straight year, but beware of the interlopers. The Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors are in the midst of truly special seasons, and lead their respective conferences at the break.

Neither the Warriors nor Cavs have had much trouble with the Rockets or Raptors in the playoffs in recent years, but these are markedly different versions of the two - the Rockets because they added Chris Paul, and the Raptors because they've experienced remarkable internal growth and reinvented themselves stylistically. The Rockets are riding a 10-game winning streak, and the Raptors a seven-gamer. The Rockets have the second-most efficient offense in recorded history (behind only this season's Warriors), while the Raptors are the only NBA team that currently ranks top four on both sides of the ball. These two also have the best point differentials in the league, as they've each outscored their opponents by nearly nine points a game.

Holding onto those No. 1 seeds is going to be critical for both. With the Cavs looking increasingly likely to finish in the top three, the Raptors would do well to avoid them as long as possible and give themselves home-court advantage in the event of a potential conference finals matchup. For the Rockets, having home court in the West final might be their only hope of toppling the dynastic Warriors. The Raptors' position is far more secure - they don't have the Warriors chasing them, while the second-place Celtics are two games back and scuffling, and the Cavaliers team many feel is the best in the conference sits 6.5 back. The Rockets, meanwhile, have a brutal schedule coming out of the break, with the Warriors lurking just a half-game back. It will all build toward a March 9 meeting between the two upstart juggernauts at Air Canada Centre. A possible Finals preview? Dare to dream.

The Warriors, with their fingers on the button

Other than brief, inspired stretches, the Warriors haven't really looked like the Warriors this season. They're still just a half-game away from having the NBA's best record - because they're still the most talented team ever assembled - but there's been something noticeably missing; the defensive ferocity, the Bay Area-sized chip on their shoulder, the night-in, night-out fire ... these are no longer the team's hallmarks. These Warriors have looked almost bored by their own excellence - tuning out their coach, coasting into the break with a defense that's been no better than average for almost two months, and allowing the hungrier Rockets to surpass them in the standings.

Is any of this likely to matter? Of course not. Most of the issues can probably be chalked up to the Warriors pacing themselves, with their eyes fixed firmly on a third title in four years. "Flipping the switch" has long been NBA shorthand for deciding to try hard, but what the Warriors have at their disposal is more akin to a big red button. They have the firepower to send the rest of the league up in a mushroom cloud of dust, so is the Rockets' ascent the kick in the pants they need? After getting a longed-for hiatus, will they come roaring out of the gate and make sure they take back the 1-seed? Or will they wait until the playoffs to unleash hell?

Then there's this: What if their button doesn't do as much damage as it used to? What if the Warriors have actually lost something? What if three straight seasons of 100-plus games have taken their toll, mentally and physically? Alas, the dispiriting thing about the Warriors is that they can probably get by even without reaching their top gear.

It's not a tankathon, it's a tankasprint

Over the season's final third, the race to the bottom promises to be almost as engaging as the race to the top. With a clearly defined lower class that includes eight teams separated by two games in the win column, and with draft-lottery reform set to even out the allocation of ping-pong balls after this year, the final 23-to-25 games should be a fun exhibition of one-downmanship.

How many different ways can these teams find to lose games? How many all-10-day lineups will we see? Who will be this year's Eric Bledsoe - i.e. the player who gets shut down for the season's final month basically because he's too good? It will help that teams like the Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers - who don't own their own draft picks this year - have no incentive to tank. But, from long-moribund teams like the Sacramento Kings and Orlando Magic, to once-competent franchises now facing long rebuilds like the Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks, and Atlanta Hawks, nearly a third of the NBA has its fate tied up in the coming lottery.

When even historically tank-averse Mavs owner Mark Cuban has given up the illusion of intended competence, you know the losing game is afoot.

(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)

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