Brooklyn and New York are coming on strong. With the firepower those teams have, both should gobble up playoff slots. If the Bulls play like they did last night, less than maximum effort, sloppy with the Ball, one of the Big 2 on offensive (sadly Boozer and Dunleavy on this team) doesn't show up, the losses will come. Its a fragile situation.
It looks to me like the team is going to fight to win as many games as it can. It's 2 under .500 now, so clearly .500 is in reach, or 41 wins. What .500 gets you right now is 5th seed. If Brooklyn and the Knicks end up over .500, we're still looking at 7th seed and a tough match up in the 1st round. If we have trouble with the Wizards, imagine how we're going to deal with a playoff caliber team in playoff atmosphere.
After thinking about this a little more, I think there's a pretty good chance that Sacramento finishes with lower than the 12th pick and it's conveyed to the Bulls. The Kings have been playing .500 ball in the twenty-two or so games since the franchise acquired Rugy Gay. If they continue playing .500 ball, that's 37 wins. Over the last ten years the 13th worst record in the league has had 38, 33, 39, 40, 36, 38, 39, 38, 42, and 37 wins for an average of 38 wins. And Sacramento has been playing on an upwards trajectory winning four of its last five.
I don't think it quite works like that. My understanding is that the 14 teams that don't make the playoffs form the lotto. So the Kings would have to be one of the best two records of those teams. EDIT: seems this is right so... For us to get the pick, Sacramento (14-23) would have to pass all but one of New Orleans (15-23), Minnesota (18-20), Memphis (19-19) and Denver (20-18) in the West. The Knicks in the East are 9th seed and have a 15-23 record. And then the ping pong balls must not bounce Sacramento's way.
It'd be more useful to look at what the 9th and 10th Western Conf. teams' records have been, since they're a lock to be the 13th-seed and 14th-seed before the lotto balls drop. With about a combined 0.5% chance of hitting top 3. SAC needs to make up ground on at least two of the following: make up 4.5 games on MEM, 3.5 on MIN or 5.5 on DEN, while holding off NOP (I don't think LAL and UTH care about trying to get there).
You're right, with the minor change that it's two teams not one. Got ahead of myself. So can Sacramento catch Minnesota? I still think there's a decent chance, but it's definitely harder than if you were just looking, as I did, at the 12 worst records.
I thought the Kings had to finish 13th or worse? If so, they'd might be 13th pick and Denver 14th if they pass all but one of those teams as I wrote. I could be wrong.
Oh, you're right. Only 14 teams in the lottery, not 15. So that means Minnesota and Memphis or Denver. That's a tough hill to climb.
Yeah. I think they protected the pick so they'd have to be knocking at the door of making playoffs, if not making playoffs. Maybe if we loaned them Thibs for the rest of the season.
Just heard that Teague's been traded to the Nets for something called Tornike "Toko" Shengelia. The Tank has been dealt a serious blow.
Not a good couple of days for the TANK. Teague gets shipped, we keep beating crappy teams in overtime, and we're now 5 games up in the loss column to the 8 seed. 5 losses is a lot with a veteran team coached by Thibs in the eastern conference. We're even tied with Toronto for HCA. The tank's biggest hope is that we've been beating up on eastern conference dreck the last 15 games and things are going to start getting a lot tougher in February and March. I doubt he we have the firepower to hang with the San Antonio's and Portlands of the league. Jib and grit can only get you so far. But the seems as focused as ever and you get the feeling they'll be able to steal a couple. Noah's quietly been putting in the best work of his career.....he's shedding the role player label with his play this year. You also have to figure that Jimmy Buckets is going to have to take some time off here pretty soon. He just played his second 50 minute game in this week and he's already got a bum toe. In all honesty I'm concerned about his health. Doesn't this kind of sound like Derrick's 2011-2012 season a little bit? Might as well sit him down for a month and let him rest up. Not sure if Thibs can stand it though.
I gave up on the tank during the 5 game win streak. I'm resigned to the fact things have reverted to the expected squeezing of pennies at the expense of good basketball decisions.
Does the front office need to have a long conversation with Thibs and say "listen, we know you like to win the games, but we'd like you to stop maximizing the limited assets we've given you to win the games."? This team has a manic competitiveness and work ethic. What would that kind of conversation and change in team philosophy do to guys like Thibs, Noah, Gibson, Butler who work their asses off to win, and what would it do to the team the next two seasons when Rose is back and we're supposedly going to try and contend again. ---- This team isn't built to TANK. Many of the teams in the NBA are. They just don't have the talent, experience and solid coaching / culture to win like the Bulls win. Rooting for this group to TANK is going to be very frustrating, since they have the talent / work ethic to beat bad to average team, hang with good ones and the culture instilled by Thibs and his expert coaching / motivation just doesn't lend itself to that. If we replaced Thibs with Jacque Vaughn and traded Noah, then we'd we talking. Of course, we'd be lucky to get a player as good as Noah from the draft pick netted from THE TANK.
The team struggles to win the games it does against really weak teams. The Lakers at home in OT? Seriously? We're not just a team with enough talent to win games, we're a team with enough talent to beat teams that have stripped themselves of talent in order to tank. It isn't an issue of trading Noah, it is an issue of playing him 30 minutes instead of 40.
I get that, and if I were playing NBA2K14, I know I could make sure Noah only plays 30 minutes. A few things. The really gaudy minute numbers have been exacerbated by overtime the last week. Also, how are minute restrictions realistically implemented in the NBA? I just don't see it happening very much. The Spurs seem to keep their players right at 30 and the Heat seem to play Wade every other game basically, but the rest of the league seems to play their stud players heavy minutes. Noah is tied for 48th in minutes per game. Does that seem out of line? Noah is averaging 33.4 minutes a game. http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/minutes/sort/avgMinutes/qualified/false/count/41 Is there this kind of concern league wide regarding heavy (i.e. normal) minutes for good players or is it just in Chicago with Thibs since that's the current meme?
I'm not saying Noah is being played minutes out of line. I'm saying if the team wants to lessen its chances of winning games against teams like LA, they should play Murphy at C for 18 minutes.
