The midpoint of the NBA's regular season has arrived, which is a good time to check the state of the Western Conference playoff race. Halfway through the season, the Oklahoma City Thunder have separated themselves from everyone else in the West, taking a 6½-game lead in the standings.
In typical West fashion, the next 11 teams are separated by just seven games total. Within that pack, however, a gap has opened among the handful of teams battling for home-court advantage with a clear path to the Western Conference finals while the rest are hoping to avoid the play-in tournament.
On Nov. 20, I placed all 15 West teams into five tiers based on how they stacked up one month into the regular season. I've now sorted the seven teams that were in my larger second tier into two different, smaller groups.
One team that stands out? The Golden State Warriors, who ranked alongside the Thunder in my top tier in November. At that point, the Warriors were 10-3 with a robust plus-10.5 point differential. Golden State has gone 11-17 since and slid multiple tiers.
The teams are listed in alphabetical order and don't match the standings -- which is why the Dallas Mavericks (with a worse record than the Los Angeles Lakers) are in a higher tier. Let's look at how that happened and other key trends that help predict the rest of the regular season and beyond in the wild West.
Jump to a tier:
The clear-cut favorite
Conference finals worthy?
Goal is the playoffs
Just aim for the play-in
So, when is the draft?
Tier 1: The clear-cut favorite
Current record: (35-7; 1st in the Western Conference)
Record since Nov. 20 check-in: 24-3
Tier change: 
