High Playoff Seed?

i say 7th spot at best. utah and san antonio are obviously better than us. phoenix is a guarantee. we're towards the lower end of the next tier that includes houston, new orleans, dallas, denver, and the lakers.

...with us playing as we are now that we can't finish the year better than Houston, New Orleans, LA, and possibly Denver.Injuries allowing, of course.

It's also worth noting that the Jazz have their scuffles now and then. Their dominance over us makes them seem almost invulnerable, but it isn't like they're a 60 win club. Really, the only teams in the West that I think we'd really have no shot of taking are the Jazz and the Spurs. We know we can hang with the Suns, we know we can beat the Mavs, and the other teams that were supposed to be excellent have struck me as having a great deal more parity thusfar.

the thing is, maybe san antone and utah would be tough for us in a series, but I'm not so sure that utah will win a whole lot more games than us in the regular season.  there strengths which kill us (read bruiser) aren't necessarily as deadly against other teams.
I think the 4 is conceivable, though unlikely.  We will always be prone to losing to the weaker teams, 'cause of our reliance on the outside shot. but its tough to imagine us getting more wins than S.A. dallas, phoenix and maybe Utah.
Best (plausible) case: Utah, Phoenix, S.A. win divisions, with Utah finishing with a better record then Dallas.  W's with the 5, setting up that re-match that Dallas would HATE to see.
Given the seeding rules, it's gonna be tough for us to get the fourth seed, as Phoenix will probably end with a gaudy win total.

Houston doesn't match up well, and Yao is just so useless when he's guarding a center who has any perimeter game at all. McGrady is good but he's not that Kobe/Iverson type who can just will his team to victory, I think we know that now. Denver doesn't like to play defense. I haven't seen NOR play enough, and the Lakers are always a threat with Kobe. I'll reserve judgement on the Lakers until after Sunday's game, but based on past performance I think it'll go:
Spurs, Suns, Jazz, Dallas, LAL, GS or Denver, Houston/NOR.  

The ineffectiveness of doubling Duncan will do them in against SA and Kirilenko/Deron Williams create matchup problems, but I think the Jazz are beatable.  SA is still the class of the NBA, and what they're doing without Duncan is amazing.

I think we will finish with a better record than HOU and LAL and will compete with DEN and NOR for the 5/6/7 spots. My dream is that we sweep the season series with the Lakers, and because of that LA misses the playoffs...the key to compiling a good record (and, not coincedentally, to advancing in the playoffs), is winning games on the road, and so far so good on that count. Another key is to crush the bad teams--when every win is important, you gotta bank the easy ones...recent blowouts of SEA and MIL show we are focused to do just that...