Question..

[mfanatic]

So if the Suns win their division, and we win ours, would we automatically get a higher seeding than the Lakers?

[ajballer4]

Nope, the NBA changed this rule a few years back. Division winners are a lock for the playoffs, but all seedings go by record

[mfanatic]

Gotchya, thanks man. I knew that sounded a bit too easy LOL

[YoMamaIsCallin]

Not exactly "all seedings go by record". It's still possible for a team with a better overall record to be seeded worse than another team, if that other team is a division champion. However it's less likely than it used to be.

As to your specific question, if the Suns and Spurs are division winners, and the Lakers finish 2nd to the Suns, there are two cases to consider.

1) the Lakers have the best record of all the 2nd place division finishers. In this case the Lakers would be seeded no worse than 4th, and could be seeded as high as 2nd if their record was better than the Spurs and the Northwest division winner.

2) Some other 2nd place division finisher has a better record than the Lakers. In this case the Lakers would be seeded 5th or lower.

Here's the specifics (I copy/pasted from Wikipedia): (Note I'm not covering the tiebreak rules here, they get quite complex)

Following the NBA regular season, eight teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs and are seeded one to eight.

The team that has the best record in each of the three divisions in each conference is declared division champion. The three champions, and the one other team in the conference with the best record are seeded one through four by their records. This guarantees that the division champions will be no lower than fourth seed, and also ensures that a conference's two best teams (by record) are ranked as the top two. Of the remaining eleven conference teams, the four with the best records are seeded fifth through eighth based on their records.