From: HoopsWorld I'm thinking he's probably spot-on, if not very close. IMO, the jury's still out on Dallas, though. I'll also be very curious to see how Phoenix fares from this point on. Nonetheless:
I know it's early, but does anyone know our "magic number"? I would suspect that the Lakers are a few games from it.
I think our magic # is 13 wins of 13 losses by Golden State and Minnesota (they're the top two teams that are out of the playoff race). Basically if we reach 47 wins I think we're guaranteed a top 9 spot. Then it gets hairy, because the distance between the #4 seed (currently Portland) to the #9 seed (currently Phoenix) is 3 losses.
I think if we reach 42 we may be guaranteed a top 9 spot. But 4-9 is going to be insane. If Utah gets healthy they will make a push into the middle of the pack playoff team... That leaves PHX, Dallas and Houston, imo fighting for 2 spots (7-8 w/ loser being 9th) and PDX at around 5th or 6th w/ Utah battling with us. I see NOH at 4, because I think they are better than us when healthy (even without Chandler who hasn't really contributed all that much to their team this year, tbh). If I HAD to make a prediction right now, it would be... 1. LA 2. San Antonio (tough... could easily be 3rd because Denver is really good) 3. Denver (pretty interchangeable w/ SAS imo) 4. NOH 5. PDX 6. Utah 7. Houston 8. Dallas 9. PHX
Call me an idiot, but I'm still waiting for Denver to falter. I just don't see how they keep winning... that Billups guy must be really good. Imagining him in a Blazer uni...
Portland's magic number is 26, which I'm guessing is what you mean...13 Portland wins + 13 losses by the 9th best team would put them in. Or any other combination that makes 26. Here's a chart, updated yesterday: http://www.playoffstatus.com/nba/westernwinmagicnumbers.html
50 games seems to se the magic # (But not a given) So if we can beat the clips tomorrow we need to go at least 15-12 the rest of the way.
I think Portland will do better than that. That's only a .555 winning percentage and Portland has a .630 winning percentage on the year. Applying that winning percentage to the remaining 28 games yields 17.64 more wins. So that would be 52-53 wins. And if Portland is actually a better team now than they were at the beginning of the season (rookies have improved, Oden doesn't miss more time than tomorrow's game), then they could reach 55 wins. That would be tough but I think the team is capable of it, if Oden is back after Sunday's game and the team suffers no further injuries to important players.
