I think if they get HCA in the 1st round this team will definitely go All-In this summer with the Trade Exceptions, Tax-MLE, and re-signing guys.
The Warriors or Rockets would have to go into an epic meltdown for the Blazers to get the #2 seed. The real battle is with the Spurs and OKC for #3.
A day after euphoria, some random bad news: The Blazers are 16-21 vs. .500 and above. Pels: 18-18 Tpups: 22-18 Thunder: 19-17 are all significantly better. FWIW, Blazers 3rd in West against under .500 teams. Still well into white-knuckle time.
Not saying this stat is not worth noting, because it is, but unless teams are playing the exact same way as they did earlier in the season then it is not that relevant to "now". How teams are playing now is much more important.
Who cares? We beat all three of those teams! When Wolves fail to make playoffs, they can hold on to that record.
The random good news is: The Blazers have picked up their game in the last month; and Dame is playing like he's on a mission. I'll let someone else do the stats I'm trying to make dinner
Lemme tell you a story of before you were born. Knicks were up 5 games over Boston for the division lead with 5 games left. Boston won the division. It was crazy. Boston won 5 straight, Knicks lost 5 straight and Boston had the tiebreaker. Now 13 games may be tougher...
Here's the good news: only FOUR of our remaining 19 games are against teams with a better record than us. Pretty easy schedule, eh?