After beating the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers last week, the Philadelphia 76ers are knocking on the postseason door. Wedging that door closed with a stale and cracking bun are the Bulls, who hold just a single-game lead over Philly.

It leaves a simple equation now: If Chicago keeps on losing, the 76ers will make the play-in. If the current form and turmoil of the teams in seeds 7-9 continue, Philly may even get higher than the 10th seed. It’s nice writing optimistic sentences.

This week’s games to watch column will focus largely on the matchups that will impact Philadelphia’s seeding. We want the Bulls, Hawks and Heat to be beaten. I’d call this a hate-watch guide but the matchups below have genuinely interesting aspects and playstyles to them.

That Bulls single-game lead will be jeopardized against a soaring Denver Nuggets team.

Led by their MVP center Nikola Jokić playing the best basketball anyone has all decade, the 2023 NBA champions are 8-2 in their last 10, and 10-4 since the turn of the new year. Jokić is averaging 27.3 points, 13.8 rebounds and 11.5 assists in 2025. He’s racking up triple-doubles before the fourth quarter, hitting full-court threes, and dissecting opposing defenses like a PHD scientist would in an elementary school biology lesson.

Jokić alone makes the Nuggets a must-watch but Russell Westbrook’s resurgence is notable too. The 2017 NBA MVP finally plays basketball conducive to winning after being thrown out unceremoniously by several franchises.

Also on the Nuggets’ programming: Jamal Murray! Over his last 10 games, Jokić’s pick-and-roll dance partner is averaging 21.3 points while shooting 52.2% from the field and 41.8% from three. It’s his most efficient stretch of the season and is a massive bounceback for a player that looked miraculously bad to start the season.

Taking them down will be a tall task for a Bulls team that has lost seven of their last eight. Zach LaVine is having a resurgent and ridiculously efficient scoring season, and Nikola Vucevic can get hot too. But Jokić and the Nuggets just look so damn good right now.

Slotted in the ninth seed are the Atlanta Hawks. While they are closer to rising to the sixth seed (one game back of the Detroit Pistons) than they are falling to the 11th seed (four-and-a-half games ahead of the Sixers), they’ve lost a bit of breathing room after four consecutive defeats. And it’s not about to get any easier for them.

Not against this ascending Houston Rockets team. Ime Udoka has turned his relatively young squad into stalwarts of his hard-nosed, defensively-focused hooping philosophy. They’ve gone 8-2 in their last 10, including back-to-back wins over the East-leading Cleveland Cavaliers, owner of the NBA’s No. 1 offense.

Sophomore Amen Thompson is an athletic freak of nature so effective at defense that a 7-foot octopus that somehow learned basketball and had Kyrie Irving’s handles would think twice before an isolation possession against him.

Though the Hawks have their own young stopper in Dyson Daniels, alongside star Trae Young and rising phenom Jalen Johnson (both of whom are missing the team’s Monday night game against the Timberwolves due to injury), they’ve struggled to start 2025, where they’ve gone 4-8 and have the league’s sixth-worst net rating. That’s largely thanks to their offense crumbling from the 12th-best in December to the fourth-worst in January.

Young, Johnson, or the team might get hot from three and break out of this funk, but it’s unlikely to happen against this Houston team. The Rockets have the fourth-best defense in the league. They allow the second-fewest three-point attempts and generally make life hell for any ball-handler. In January, they are averaging 11.3 steals per game, the most in the league.

On top of that, this will be the second game of a back-to-back for the Hawks. And the start of a brutal five-game stretch. They’ll play Minnesota and Houston on Monday and Tuesday before playing Cleveland on Thursday, Indiana on Saturday, and Detroit on Monday. All those teams are above .500 and are playoff, if not title, hopefuls.

Not to be too optimistic, but by this time next week, the ninth seed could be just a game away from the Sixers.

Ah, Miami. In the latest chapter of one of the modern NBA’s weirdest player trade request sagas, Jimmy Butler just got suspended for a third time after walking out of practice. Per Shams Charania, he left after the team informed him he’d come off the bench for Haywood Highsmith. Fun times in South Beach.

Anyway, the Heat are the eighth-seed, five games ahead of the Sixers. They’re probably safe from being caught by Philadelphia, but with this much turmoil, you can’t tell. The strength of their currently discontinued ‘culture’ will be tested against a Cavs team that has now lost three straight after losing just six in the last three months.

In those games, the Cavs have the worst defensive rating in the league. It’s a teeny-weeny sample size (Toronto has the best defense in that same stretch), and they didn’t have Evan Mobley for two of those games, but it’s the first worrying stretch of a fantastic season.

One Cavalier weakness has become apparent amidst it: perimeter defense. In each of the three losses, one of the opposing guards has dropped at least 25 points on good efficiency (Fred VanVleet, Tyrese Maxey, and Jalen Green). So, a Tyler Herro explosion may be on the cards as the Heat guard is playing the best ball of his career.

Until the Rockets did so last week, the Hawks were the only team this season to beat the Cavs twice. Now, Cleveland has a chance for revenge. Both teams want to stop their aforementioned skids and try prove or disprove the legitimacy of their last two matchups.

Dyson Daniels guarding Donovan Mitchell and/or Darius Garland will be awesome to watch, as will Jalen Johnson against Evan Mobley.

Praise be that both teams are fully healthy for this one.

Comfortable and intentionally well out of the postseason picture, the Toronto Raptors have won five of their last six games. That includes a 13-point win over the Boston Celtics. As the Sixers found out early this season, this Raptors team is feisty and unselfish. Every possession is a scrap and they swing that ball from one corner to the other and back again.

Over the last six games, they have the NBA’s second-best defensive rating (106.2), 72.4% of their field goals have come off assists (the highest mark in the league), and they are one of four teams shooting over 50% from the field. They have produced some gorgeous possessions (like in the video below) that any team should want to emulate.

They’ve also benefitted from some outlier shooting. Over the team’s last six games, RJ Barrett is shooting 52% from three, Kelly Olynyk is at 66.7% from deep, and Jamal Shead, Chris Boucher, and Davion Mitchell are all shooting significantly better than their career numbers. But, as they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

Head coach Darko Rajaković has drilled ball and player movement into his young squad and this recent stretch perhaps foreshadows what the best version of this team could look like a few years from now.

Their matchup against the fast-paced, ball-moving, three-point flinging Chicago Bulls could actually be a sneaky fun watch. Even if it doesn’t turn out that way, it’s an important game for the Sixers: If Toronto wins, it could be the game that officially puts Philly in the play-in.

San Antonio Spurs
Victor Wembanyama has never beaten Bam Adebayo. In their three matchups, the French 2023 No. 1 overall pick averages just 19 points on 43.4% shooting. Compare that to Wemby’s career averages of 22.5 points on 46.9% shooting and wam-Bam thank you ma’am: Adebayo has a case as the best Wemby defender in the league.

But he might get the full force of a furious Wembanyama as his San Antonio Spurs have dropped seven of their last 10 games, including a blowout in front of his countrypeople in Paris at the hands of the Indiana Pacers. All signs point to him taking every loss personally and letting it fuel him for forthcoming greatness. That starts with a postseason berth, and the Spurs are two games back from the Western Conference top 10. I think post-All-Star break we’ll see a vicious side to Wemby, with the games leading up to him fueling it.

Feb. 2: Chicago Bulls @ Detroit Pistons
The Detroit Pistons are the best story in the NBA. Who doesn’t love a comeback? An underdog of underdogs. Cade Cunningham and co. have stuck it to the league, already winning nine more games than they did all of last season, and are currently in a playoff spot. Not play-in, playoff spot. If things fall right, they could host a first-round series! They’re only three games back at the moment.

Before that happens, they need to help the Sixers out by giving the Bulls another loss. The last time they played, Chicago’s playstyle had the intended effect as they made half of their 46 three-point attempts and won the game.

Now though, Detroit’s defense has picked up. Their 9-4 record in January has been a product of their defense — the third-best in the league since the fireworks on the 31st. They’ve allowed the sixth-fewest paint points per game in this stretch and have been top 10 in steals and blocks.

If Cade Cunningham could cut down on his turnovers (his 4.7 per game leads the league), he’d be a surefire All-Star (he still should be) and this team might win a few more games.