Three things to Know: With one week to go, breaking playoff pictures in East, chaotic West

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What Adam Silver and the league office wanted with the play-in tournament was for teams, fans, and the media to focus on who was getting into the postseason and not on who was tanking for Victor Wembanyama (or any particular year’s No.1 pick). What he wanted was this — there is chaos and a great race for the 5-8 seeds and Dallas struggling to even make the play-in despite having one of the game’s best players and a second superstar.

Let’s break it down:

• After this weekend, the top four spots are locked in. That’s not mathematically official yet, but it might as well be.

Denver was still without the injured Nikola Jokić Sunday but still beat the Golden State Warriors (who lost again on the road), the Nuggets have a three-game lead over the second-place Grizzlies with four to play. The Grizzlies, who fell to a Bulls team playing well, has a couple of game cushion over a Kings team that is stumbling toward the finish line after clinching — they lost to the tanking Spurs on Sunday. The Suns are now 4-0 when Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Devin Booker play and might be the team to beat out West right now, but they enter the playoffs in fourth.

• Seeds 5-8 are chaos, with all four teams having 38 losses. The two spots to avoid the play-in — and the better two seeds of the play-in — are wide open.

The hottest team in this group might be the Lakers, who are finally healthy, have Anthony Davis playing like it’s the bubble again, and have won three straight including beating the nine-seed