Here we are, one game from the end of what most of us believed would be the hardest month the team has ever faced to start the season. There were tons of questions as to who was going to step up, would injuries kill us, are we too young, will we play OK when our players returned to health? As of right now there are 5 teams in the West with identical records. Utah, Phoenix, Portland, Denver, and Houston all have 11-6 records. Normally you might see small clumps of teams with similar records, particularly early into the season, but a full month in and we have 5 teams that all refuse to fall from the pack. Denver was on the outside of this list looking in two weeks ago but making a trade pushed them up the list. With a win tomorrow in Detroit we could end the month 12-6, Let that settle in just a little bit. That's a .647 winning percentage, puts us at about 53 wins on the season. When you adjust for our difficult schedule and how we should see it lighten up in late Dec, Jan for a while, I think it's reasonable to expect Portland to continue winning at this pace if not a higher pace. There are 14 games in December, I can totally see us taking 11 of those giving us an 11-3 record on the month. If that happened we would be sitting at 23-9 to close out the year. I cannot fathom not being pleased with that. With where our expectations were going into the season, I think that 23-9 would be extremely satisfying.
