That's the way I see it...... Portland 7.0 (games behind #1) Houston 8.5 Oklahoma City 9.0 Utah 9.0 New Orleans 10.0 Memphis 10.5 LA Clippers 11.5 ... will be battling for playoff spots 6, 7, and 8.
Isn't this unreal? The Lakers will probably win 60 games. You could make a case for 11 other teams in the West that COULD win 50 (obviously they can't all do it) There's only 2 teams in the West that don't have a + .500 record at home (Golden State & Minnesota) There just aren't many easy games in this conference. The East will have 4 teams win 50, and probably 3 or 4 teams make the playoffs with a sub .500 record. I can't remember a year like this ever with so much parity in one conference.
Yikes. It never comes down to having to beat the top tier teams, this is laughable. I will say that all of the home games against .500 teams are 'must' wins though.
clippers are a weird group.... i think little better then 500. camby, kaman, davis usually get hurt. then again could be lots of western teams a little better then 500.
The Clippers get in, IMO. Davis seems motivated which when he's actually good enough to beat you, Griffin will just bolster their front court giving them two legitimate low post threats in he and Kaman and they'll be plenty deep with Camby and Jordan backing them up. Gordon is a helluva scorer ... Frankly I think they pick up the 7 seed, with Memphis grabbing the 8th, my prediction is that we'll end up with the 9th.
2 games out of the season will not determine if you are a playoff team. I don't even know where you come up with that logic.
Yeah, there isn't a must-win game in January. Now, if we lose these two, and keep losing, it gets bad. But no one's counting on these two as "gotta-have W's". The losses to the Clips and Grizz are more damaging to me than if we lose to the top two teams in the league.
My worry is that, if the team loses 3 in a row, we'll simply give up. The situation is so dire from a personnel standpoint that winning was what was keeping us going. Losing could be contagious at this stage. It's just an irrational fear; i still love the team and hope they do well. But I'm really worried.
I understand the fear, and it's not irrational. Honestly, if this post was before last game and said something like "we really have to win tonight...you don't want to go into games v. LAL and CLE looking at a potential 4-game losing streak and 6 of 7" then I'd be a lot more on board. I still don't think there are must-wins in January, but I'd agree more with the premise. But since we've already lost, you pencil in these two upcoming games as L's (I really hope we can get one to get off the schneid) and then make a game in MAR or APR against a team you hadn't expected to beat a "must-win".
At the same time, every team wins games it shouldn't win, and loses games it shouldn't lose. There are no must wins during this portion of the season. In fact, I would argue the game against the Cavs is less important because it is not a conference or division opponent.
The refs screwing us out of the division lead by handing our game to Memphis and giving Denver the win over Golden State has really diminished my ability to be excited about the current standings. It's really opened my eyes to the futility of being excited about the standings when so much of what we do is dependent on winning close games. We could win a couple games and be up to #3 again, or we could lose a couple and be out of the playoff picture. We'll see what the NBA will allow us to do. We've got a pretty rough home stand coming up. Maybe some calls that should go our way go against us so that the media will ignore us and start looking at Oklahoma City as the young upcoming team to pay attention to. Then for the rest of the month we spend 6 of our 8 games on the road. It'll be easy for the refs to hose us in those games. Call goes to the home team, easy out.
if we are the #8 seed with a game to go, the last game is a must win, well unless the other teams lose.
