I disagree, it would be more of a statement by us. Him quitting on a team that got to the playoffs without him and three other of his starters? That has to hit home a little... Kinda puts your worth into question.
We need to take a deep breath here. Portland has *the* hardest remaining schedule in the entire league with an average winning percentage of 0.512. If we take it one game at a time we could do very well. But we are young and could very easily see another slide where we lose an entire road trip like earlier in the season. I don't want us to get our hopes up then see Armageddon haha
Yeah I really want to play the Spurs. Of course I can drive to the games; but also because I think if anything Dame will play better with that pressure and LaMarcus will play worse. We still likely get handily beat but if LaMarcus has more 7 point performances like the games I saw in person here it'll be a nice F U. Basically we have everything to gain nothing to lose and the Spurs, LaMarcus are the opposite. The Spurs have also lost a number of series over the years as a dominant favorites; the 1vs8 seed against Memphis comes to mind.
Look at it this way, if we make it through and we're still in the playoff picture, we'll know we're not fools gold.
Well yeah you might be right but we could win a bunch and get a seed even higher than 8th. That unknown is exciting. I know we won't win a title. I know we'll be a 90%+ underdog against any playoff opponent. But having that excitement and unknown is a lot of fun so I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. I might even get a bit ahead of myself more than normal because as you state its very plausible it'll all fall apart. Enjoy the race while we're in it.
With Gasol out indefinitely, that opens up the 5th seed. We're the same distance away from 5th as we are from 10th. I know the schedule tightens up, but if we can limit losing streaks and steal games here and there that were unexpected (Monday in Memphis), then we might be alright.
I think it will end up being: 5. UTA 6. HOU 7. DAL And we battle it out with MEM for #8. They're 5 games ahead of us in the loss column-- hard to make up even with 30 games left.
Very true. It's a win win really for us. If we win enough of these games to make the playoffs then we know we don't necessarily need that lotto pick to beat good teams. If we lose enough and keep our lotto pick then it should only help us next year.
I was switching between threads and I was reading on another thread the scenario of IF we beat utah and the rockets lose... I apologize man! Same team here! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
I think you're off here. First, Memphis still has talent and a good lead. I think they'll stay at 5th. I don't see Utah going on a bigger run than us and we have the 2-1 series on them right now. If we can beat them on the 21st, we have the tiebreaker. I agree Dallas will slide but Houston isn't going up to 6th. If we win tonight, which we should, Houston will be 9th at the break and I don't see them getting back into the top 8. Plus, they might tear it apart at the trade deadline.
Oh I fully agree with you! This season in my eyes has already been a major statement regardless of how we end up! What I meant was that if we did meet up with them, odds are they take care of business against us. To be honest though, since it was so easy for him to walk away, I highly doubt he gives two craps about where we end up. Let's be real, the spurs are the one team (MAYBE the Thunder) that has a chance at Golden State. The spurs aren't thinking about us, they are thinking about getting another ring! Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
Just wanted to point out that NBA.com says that we don't have the toughest schedule remaining--we're second, just behind OKC. But it's not like Memphis, Dallas, Utah, or Houston have easy schedules--all of them show remaining SOS between .515 and .527.
I find it interesting that almost everyone in the Western Conference has a SOS > 0.500 and almost everyone in the Eastern Conference has a SOS <0.500. Wasn't there talk that the Eastern Conference had finally caught up?
Yeah, I noticed that too. I think the really crappy teams at the bottom of the East standings are dragging their SOS down...or artificially elevating their overall records. Although on the flip side, note that in their past 15 games, the Blazers have only lost to eastern conference teams, so make of that what you will.
Thanks for the clarification. I had heard a few announcers for other teams talking about it, and they were all under the impression that ours was the most difficult.
