I sorta went through this break-down in the 'tank' thread, but here it is anyway:
First off, most folks know that I am firmly in the "I don't think we should tank" crowd. I've gone on at length about the reasons why, and I've also asserted that the talent on this roster doesn't look, to me, like a 'tank' roster. I'm also normally very averse to making predictions since every season tends to have several major, unforeseeable events happen.
That said, things look grim.
I'm going to assume that Rondo misses all of November, but optimistically, he comes back pretty strong in December. I'm also assuming that we otherwise stay fairly healthy and no major trades changing everything up (which is not a good assumption with Danny).
Given those assumptions:
October: Home opener against the Raptors. Adrenalin and home court count big in the NBA. Yay! We start out: 1-0
November: 10 of our next 15 (and 11 of our the 18) games are on the road. The teams we play isn't the worst, but the road is tough no matter who you are playing. In the NBA, it is especially brutal on young teams. Go look at the road records of the 'young' playoff teams last year (i.e., Warriors, etc). I predict that, with no Rondo, we should consider it a 'success' when we win just 6 games in November. 7-12
December: Rondo's back. Much more friendly - 9 games in the garden and only 3 on the road. More practice dates available. I predict we win 7 of the 12, doubling our win total and bringing our record at the turn of the new year to: 14-17
January: Ugh. And then the air comes out. The first two weeks are going to be pure hell. The whole month is bad, but it starts with @Bulls, then home the next day against NO, but then a brutal, awful road trip against: OKC, Nuggets, Clippers, Warriors & Blazers! We then com home ... to face the Rockets! Again, ugh. We could go 1-7 in that. The last two weeks include games against the Heat, Thunder, Nets & Knicks. I'm as optimistic as they come - and at least we get the Lakers at home that month, but seriously, it is very hard for me to see us doing better than 4 wins that month, bringing us to: 18-30
Okay. that looks pretty bad. At that point, we may have one of the 5 worst records in the league. That may be the pivot point where Danny decides he has to 'manage' us into the lottery somehow (trade/sit players, whatever). But if he doesn't, and he 'plays through', it gets better.
February: This month has several winnable games including the 76ers, Magic, Kings, Bucks - and assuming that a lot of the youngsters have matured their games and we are actually healthy, I can actually see us winning this month, 6-5, bringing us to a more hopeful: 24-35.
March: Nine home games and only six on the road. Only about 4-5 games against weaker opponents, though. Probably fair to expect about a 6-9 record for the month. So: 30-44
April: Finally, Spring is in the air! Believe it or not, while one or two of these teams might surprise, all eight games are, from this far off, potentially winnable games (assuming we haven't punted the season). I don't expect we'll win them all, of course. But the team could finish with a flourish to end up around 36-46
Obviously, you should put huge error bars around all such predictions. We don't know exactly when Rondo will come back nor how healthy the team will otherwise be or how well the players will eventually jell together (or not) or what other transactions Danny might pull off. There will always be one or two 'surprise' teams as well as one or two 'disappointment' teams that will be a lot stronger or weaker than we are projecting right now. I could easily see us winning less than 30 or winning more than 40.
But given my assumptions above, a win total in the mid-to-high 30s seems like a reasonable projection at this point.
FWIW, the Bucks snuck in with the 8th seed last year with 38 wins. The previous season, the 76ers, Mavericks, Nuggets & Jazz snuck in with only 35, 36, 38 & 36, respectively.
This win total puts us in line for a draft pick somewhere around the 13th or so.