I ran some more numbers on how we can make up the gap with Houston by April 13th.
Here's our remaining schedule:
1) If all we manage to do is beat teams with a worse record than ours as of today (.417) we would go 9-12 and our record on April 13th would be 34-47. Yes our remaining schedule is that easy. That would mean Houston has to go 4-16 over that stretch to arrive at the same record. Pretty unlikely.
2) Let's add in teams that are slightly better than us but still under .500 who would be playing in Sacramento. That would be Orlando (.443), Utah (.459), and Washington (.492). Still pretty plausible even without drastic improvement. Orlando and Utah we've beaten already on the road but we lost to Washington on the road. Those three wins would push our record up to 12-9 in the last 21 games and we'd be at 37-44 overall meaning Houston would have to go 7-13. They are 4 and 6 over their last 10 games so this is at least entering the realm of possibility. We can't expect more help from Houston than that and probably we have to do a little bit more.
3) Now let's add wins against Portland (.524) and Dallas (.532) at home. We played Dallas once at home already and won. We played Portland at home once already and lost by 4 -- Rondo had 8 TOs, Rudy went 2 for 12, DeMarcus shot 7 threes (I was at that one so I remember it vividly
) Anyway... if we win those two games that bumps us up to 14-7 with an overall record of 39-42. Realistically this is probably what we need to do to give ourselves a chance. Houston would have to finish out just under .500 at 9-11 to tie us going into the final game. Since they essentially own the tiebreaker though, they could go 8-12 and we'd still need to win the last game.
I feel slightly more optimistic after running through our remaining schedule and Houston's, I count only 4 or 5 easy wins for them there.
Here's our remaining schedule:
1) If all we manage to do is beat teams with a worse record than ours as of today (.417) we would go 9-12 and our record on April 13th would be 34-47. Yes our remaining schedule is that easy. That would mean Houston has to go 4-16 over that stretch to arrive at the same record. Pretty unlikely.
2) Let's add in teams that are slightly better than us but still under .500 who would be playing in Sacramento. That would be Orlando (.443), Utah (.459), and Washington (.492). Still pretty plausible even without drastic improvement. Orlando and Utah we've beaten already on the road but we lost to Washington on the road. Those three wins would push our record up to 12-9 in the last 21 games and we'd be at 37-44 overall meaning Houston would have to go 7-13. They are 4 and 6 over their last 10 games so this is at least entering the realm of possibility. We can't expect more help from Houston than that and probably we have to do a little bit more.
3) Now let's add wins against Portland (.524) and Dallas (.532) at home. We played Dallas once at home already and won. We played Portland at home once already and lost by 4 -- Rondo had 8 TOs, Rudy went 2 for 12, DeMarcus shot 7 threes (I was at that one so I remember it vividly
) Anyway... if we win those two games that bumps us up to 14-7 with an overall record of 39-42. Realistically this is probably what we need to do to give ourselves a chance. Houston would have to finish out just under .500 at 9-11 to tie us going into the final game. Since they essentially own the tiebreaker though, they could go 8-12 and we'd still need to win the last game.I feel slightly more optimistic after running through our remaining schedule and Houston's, I count only 4 or 5 easy wins for them there.
