Thank you as always for the update.
I'm thrilled to see Dallas fall faster and farther than I ever would have imagined a few weeks ago. Would love to end up with the 12th or 13th draft pick from them. I'm still nervous, though, since their schedule is about to get very easy. We need everything to break right with Houston (eight games remaining) and Utah (nine games remaining). Houston's next three are Cleveland, Chicago, OKC. Dallas's are Denver, the Knicks and Detroit (followed by Minnesota and home against Houston). True, their last three are against LAC, Utah and San Antonio, but LAC and SAS have their spots pretty much locked up. No reason to risk injuries. If Houston can stay ahead of Dallas for the next four games (including @Dallas; series season 2-1 in favor of Houston as of now), I'll feel much better, since they end with Phoenix, LAL, Minnesota and Sacramento. None of those teams has a reason to win and, in fact, the first three have good reasons to lose.
Utah still has Golden State, San Antonio and the Clippers, but every one of the rest of their games looks winnable, including two against the lakers, Minny, Phoenix and the Dallas/Denver combo. They are 1-1 versus Dallas this season, so that game @Utah will be huge.
Fkn Nets winning their last 2 games really screwed us. They could now reasonably finish 5th. I don't think they'll jump ahead of the Suns but they could still tie them. This sux ass. I was all hopeful about 4 days ago that Brooklyn would finish 3rd. Now they may finish 5th. Good thing the Pelicans schedule is littered with all the bottom feeders.
Brooklyn is still 2.5 games behind (in front of?) Minnesota. I feel pretty safe that Brooklyn ends up with the 4th worst record. It'd be great if Phoenix started winning a bunch and overtook the Nets but I don't really see that. Nor do I see Brooklyn playing .500 ball all of a sudden and Minny going 0-10 to close it out.
Agreed - no way Brooklyn catches Minny for 5th when Minny has 3 more wins with 10 games to go for Brooklyn. Brooklyn would have to go 3-7 in their last 10 and Minny would have to go 0-9 the rest of the way just for them to tie. no way that's happening.
It looks bad for BKN, but I'm not ready to declare victory yet. Over their last ten games, they have games against Orlando, NYK, New Orleans, 2XWashington and the last game of the season is against Toronto, who will be resting players. The rest of the schedule is Miami, Cleveland, Charlotte and Indiana. There are a bunch of winnable games in there. I can see them going 5-5 or 4-6.
Minnesota, on the other hand, has the Clippers, Utah, Dallas, Golden State, Portland and Houston. Even the average teams in that group are going to be fighting for playoff spots. Their remaining games are Phx, Sac and NO. The last three are winnable. But there's only a 2.5 game spread between them and BKN. Minnesota has no reason to win. If they go 2-7 or 1-8, we are in coin flip territory.
Having said that, here's where I'm probably wrong:
1) In the entire history of CelticsBlog, I'm not sure one of my long-term predictions has ever been correct.
2) While BKN may have an easy schedule in terms of who they play, the calendar and geography are not good to them. They are about to start four road games in five nights, even if one of those "road" games is the Knicks. And seriously, if you're the coach of BKN and you have zero chance of getting into the playoffs, which of these two paths do you follow: A) Rest your injury-prone, can't-lose veterans so you can get a good look at your only young players for the next three years in low-pressure games, or the opposite?
I think we're looking at BKN as the 4th worst team this year. Had you promised me that at the beginning of the season, I would have happily accepted.
Mike
