The two best parts to our schedule Great for chemistry building, getting off to a hot start, and beating up on lesser opponents. 2nd) we have the fewest back to backs in the league with 12. That's a huge boost when you're the oldest team in the league. Greatly reduces the chances of load management, which is great for league revenue since we're on national TV more than anyone else this season. I'd much rather have an easy start and a tough finish than the other way around. We should either be firing on all cylinders or resting for the playoffs (depending on seeding) by then and that'll get us ready for round 1.
Totally agree. For a borderline playoff team it would be worse, but for a contender like us is just perfect. That start gonna be key to hype the locker room
wow, it's depressing to read our hopeful thoughts about starting off well. the link above projects us as finishing 9th and playing the clippers in the play-in round.
All these easy / difficult schedules are overrated. If you play well it doesn't matter and if you suck azz, it doesn't matter either. We came into the season with one goal only! After 42 games our longest winning streak is 4 and our longest losing streak is 5. Enough said. We flamed out. Simple as that.
And that's not going to happen, so as you said... we flamed out. If there was a flame in the first place.
Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight model has us finishing the season at 37-45 with a 23% chance of making the playoffs. You're not going to like who they're predicting to come out of the West https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-nba-predictions/
they've got the C Bags over the warriors, so that's...great. they also have the nets too low, as if durant's playing, they're the east favorites, even missing one of harden or kyrie. and they have the lakers finishing 10th, which wouldn't be shocking at all at this point. finally, the suns are 40-9. also not shocking they'd predict them to win the west. i don't think they will, though.