The most important thing is that they don't win the play in. They probably won't drop below 10. In the play in, 7 seed hosts 8 seed one game. The winner goes to playoffs. The 9th seed plays the 10th seed. The loser is in the lottery. Then, the loser of 7 v 8 plays the winner of 9 vs 10. The winner goes to the playoffs, the loser to the lottery. If the Pels end in 9 or 10, they will have to win 2 games to get to the playoffs. If they lose the first game or second game, they're in the lottery.
Strength of Schedule remaining Games: New Orleans at #9. Yay! Portland at #28. Sacramento at #7, but San Antonio at #18 go San Antonio! bump portland and new orleans out of the playoffs. https://www.tankathon.com/remaining_schedule_strength
The pick they gave us is not based on Pelican’s record. It’s based on the Lakers’ record. It’s the Lakers pick.
Love Johnny Davis but I think Keegan Murray will end up top 3 out of this draft. Smith and Murray would be my unbelievable picks. Oscar Tsiebwe (I'm sure I butchered that) with the second rounder.
Looking at the schedule, the blazers have to really try at tanking, hence the trades. Though I like to call this talent acquisition mode.
The top 4 teams are determined by lottery balls and then it's by record after that. Meaning the only way we end up with NOP pick at #5 is if they're one of the top 5 worst teams in the league. This seems highly highly unlikely. We'll be lucky if the NOP pick is in the top 10.
Yes, the Pels beat the Rockets. New Orleans has 28 games left, and 7 of them are against teams with worse records than they haven now, such as Houston. They did beat Denver in Denver last Friday and have a 4-game win streak @Detroit @Denver @Houston and against Houston at home. They play Miami on Thursday at home.
New Orleans has the 9th worst record in the NBA. They're in 10th place in the Western Conference. The Blazers have the 8th worst record in the league, and in 11th place in their conference.
We want to lose. If we don’t get their pick this year it will convey the following year. Between an end-of-lottery pick in 22 or whatever conveys in 23 I think 23 would be the more valuable choice. Especially if Dame stays, then we would likely use whatever we get in a trade this summer.
In the race to the bottom, it looks like it could be easy to pass San Antonio for the 7th worst record in the league. The Blazers lost by 31 points to the Spurs in the Moda Center, and have three games remaining with them, 2 of them in San Antonio. We could also help ourselves by losing twice to OKC and twice to Houston. We're only 3 games ahead of OKC, a team we just lost to at home. It would be great to bump San Antonio and OKC above us and get to the 6th worst record. That is somewhat in our control if we lose to them. Not sure if we could catch Houston.
"Not sure if we can catch Houston" has such a different meaning nowadays than say a few years or a decade back. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
The real question is if we keep Dame, for some dumb reason, who can two top 10 picks get us in trade? this team with Dame and Ant is virtually the same as CJ and Dame. They HAVE to see this too, right?
