"Blazers are clearly first… in the worst kind of way"

Are they all weekend back to backs? If so my guess is they are reluctant to give up the Saturday night home games as I am sure they are preferred by the fans.

 

There's no such thing as a tougher schedule

 

It is in my neighbors yard

 

Sure there is. Based on head-to-to head match-ups alone, GSW has a much easier schedule than we do. We have to play the defending champs four times and they get four easy W's against a likely lottery team.

And then there are other factors like travel and logistics. Yes, all teams play 82 games, 41 at home and 41 on the road, but the travel getting to those games adds fatigue that impacts quality of play. There are many reasons why most teams historically have a lower winning percentage on the road than at home, travel is one of them. More back-to-backs also means less time to rest and recover between games. Not all schedules are created equally.

Ultimately, as the most geographically isolated team in the league, by far, the Blazers are always going to have the worst schedule, by far, when it comes to travel. Having a Northwest Division made sense when there were actually 3 teams located in the Northwest. After Vancouver moved to Memphis and Seattle to OKC, there really is no such thing as a true Northwest division. The Blazers do not have a single other team in their division that's located in the same time zone and half of their division rivals are located two time zones away. The ATL, SE and SW divisions have all of their teams located in the same time zone. The PAC has one team in the Mountain time zone and all others in the Pacific. The CEN division has teams in both the CDT and EDT time zones. Unless the NBA gets a team back in Seattle, they really need to consider realignment. No team should have to travel two time zones for half their division games. Shit, the Lakers and Clippers don't even have to leave the building for their "road" games against each other.

BNM

 

In regards to travel distance and strength of schedule I agree. But when it comes to longer road trips and more backs to backs making it tougher I disagree, because that just means less road games and more days other times. It balances out.

 

Even if (and I don't agree) "it balances out", that still doesn't take into account the fact that not all schedules are the same. Everyone in the East has an easier schedule than everyone in the West because they only have to play WC teams twice. And then within each conference schedules aren't the same due to in- vs out-of-division play. The teams in the weakest division have easier schedules than the teams in the strongest divisions. The teams in the SW will have the hardest schedules in the league, and I suspect the teams in the Atlantic will have the easiest schedules (which is why nobody should pay attention to TOR - they're fools gold).

 

Did I ever say that? I don't recall. It's possible, but if so I was just talking shit because I have never followed NCAA?

 

Ahhh. I've hidden all signatures, so didn't get the reference.

 

Yeah, but I'm not talking about SOS, I'm talking about claiming a schedule as harder because of more back to backs and longer road trips.

 

"Lillard is fool's gold" is classic Blaze01

http://www.sportstwo.com/threads/2012-nba-draft.207820/page-152#post-2805271

Anyone who reads that whole post deserves a cookie or something.

 

i dont get why someone qould quit posting after that. as a fan of the team you should be ecstatic you were 100% wrong.

 

Thanks, now I'm gonna have to rewatch The Office again.