The point is we had won 4 of our last 5 games before the Christmas Day game. Lose that one game and suddenly we've been sucking? No, we've been actually playing better lately. The win over Dallas was especially impressive.
It's not just once. It happens all the time. Must I give out every single example? How about the 16-23 Indiana Pacers team that rallied all the way to the 1994 ECF and nearly won that?
No OT win over the Dallas Mavericks at Home when they came in losers of 5 straight and are a below .500 team is impressive. Only had to go back 24 years for that example. Nice pick.
2016 Blazers were 24-35--finished the season 17-6 2017 Jazz were 19-28--finished the season 29-6 Not saying those situations are at all analogous to ours, or that we should be as optimistic as Eric, but his point that significant mid-season turnarounds are not all that uncommon is in fact valid.
Much better examples....although the Jazz resurgence last year certainly comes with a caveat. The Jazz were decimated by injuries and then Gobert came back. Portland has no one of that significance showing up to make a difference. The Blazers rallied to....mediocrity and then promptly were swept in the Playoffs. It's not that you can't go on a run, but outside of major injuries, if the team was that bad at some point and recovered, rarely does it lead to something in the Playoffs. Portland got hot! It was great fun and exciting to watch. And then....puff.
No, they are not uncommon. I wonder, however, how many of these cases involve either injury or major line-up changes early in the season?
Did you really just quote my post from December 12th in regards to pace? C'mon Kingspeed, you're better than that. It was 3 months ago.
The answer for me is 54+ wins, and if we optimally use the talent, keep up intensity, get 36+ points per game from the bench, and maximize assist/turnovers, we can achieve it!
Our record is 39-25. I will not be happy unless we win 58 games. (For the 99% of you imbeciles who are mathematically challenged, whoosh! Move on to the next post, nothing to see here.) Damn, it's lonely at the top.