anyone see this? the blazers have passed the celtics for 4th. the playoff odds also have the blazers with a 20% chance to make the finals and a 10% chance of winning the title. oh and in the last 20 games(really the last 25% of the season), the blazers have the best average scoring margin in the league.
We have a lower margin of victory and worse record and worse strength of schedule than the Celtics, but we're ranked higher than they are. He weighs recent performance pretty significantly for all of those things and in spite of the Celtics being 8-2 the last ten games we HAVE been blowing teams out and that indicates that we've been playing better, IMO. Ed O.
Well, from 5th to 4th. It helps that Boston got pole-axed in its last game. They lose by 30, Portland wins by 30.
Yeah, he seems to weight the last 25 games heavily. Portland has a point differential over 7 in that time. Wow. Celtics are under 2. Portland is about as close to Cleveland in his rankings as Denver is close to Portland. Hollinger's system loves Portland, in short.
Yeah, I meant in terms of score. That one game raised our rating my .287 points, which is pretty big in Hollinger's world.
One of the things that bummed me last season was Nate didn't want his team to give up, so they kept fouling with seconds to go. Most team would lose by 3, we lost by 7 or 8 - it really hurt our Hollinger rankings. On the flip side, this year keeps the starters in when we're up by 30 because he doesn't want a let down. So, our Hollinger rankings were probably a little lower than they should have been last year, and they're a little higher than they should be this year. Regardless, I'll take it - especially over the classless Celtics.
One thing out of the playoff odds simulations that is heartening is that, if we make the finals (18.3% chance), we win it all 48.6% of the time (8.9% total).