Basically states that any true championship contender will achieve 40 wins before suffering 20 losses. Not saying that Phil's theory is an absolute, but it is a very good indicator. Here're the teams with less than 20 losses: OKC: 41-12 Indy: 39-11 SAS: 37-14 Miami: 35-14 Portland: 36-15 LAC: 36-18 Houston: 34-17 OKC is already there, and Indy and San Antonio are virtually locks with Miami looking very likely as well. Houston should* head into the break sitting at 36-17 with two more games against Minn and Was. Thoughts on thier chances of hitting 40 wins before losing 20? The Rocket's five games after the break are against: LAL, Golden State, Pho, Sac, and LAC. All on the road. Then home against Det and Mia. That West Coast roadtrip could be brutal.
Every team on that list is a contender except Portland. They are an atrocious defensive team, only rated what? 22nd or something in defensive rating.
Portland had an easy schedule and are terrible on defense i dont consider them a true contender. Everyone else on that list is though
PJ is obviously stating Houston is on the border of being a true contender maybe with better bench players and one or two years of experience 40-20 about the same time.
It's a good indicator for sure. Had we not loss a few of those chippys, we could've been right there around 40 wins.
And both Phil and Rudy share a second theory, if you want to win a championship, it doesn't suck to have a MVP on your team.
Rudy is right..., except we don't have champions on our team, yet I like the 40-20 theory. It makes sense. That's very hard to do unless you are a contender. Well, we have been wining 2 games out of every 3. If we play at this pace, 9 games later we will be exactly 40-20. But all signs show that most likely we'll do a little better than that.
Don't see what the big deal is there with that statistic. 80% of the championship teams since 1980 have won 2/3rd or more of their regular season games. So, it's kinda a no-brainer that teams contending for a championship should be .667 or better at the 60 game mark.
That's silly. I'd rather have a team that starts 0-20 and win 62 games straight going into the playoffs than a team that goes 40-20 and go 22-20 the rest of the way. (I know that's not realistic, using an extreme example to make a point).
how about finishing the season with 40+ wins in the last 60 games? i think that may be more inductive than teams that just start off hot.
so basically we need to go 6-3 for the next nine games. pretty much par for the course considering we're 34-17
He's stretching it to the extreme to make it easier to visualize the principle of his point. Nothing wrong with doing that.
No, they'd have to go at least 6-2. They have to reach 40 wins before 20 losses. So 3 losses would be 20 and that would mean they reach 20 losses before 40 wins.
I don't know if this is an exclusive Phil Jackson theory. I remember Morey stating that we need to be a team that wins 2 out of 3 which is basically the same math.
Not bad! Especially when you consider the rough start that we got off to with the Twin Towers experiment and trying to incorporate Dwight. I love this team.
Tbh, this 40-20 thing is a decent shorthand for a "contending" team. Morey's talked about winning 2 out of every 3 games being a goal also. In the Western Conference, a .667 win % (roughly 55 wins) is right about what you need to have home court advantage in the first round nowadays. Obviously there are exceptions to this and the circumstances of each team varies. But the fact that the Rockets are winning exactly 2 out of every 3 games so far even with some key players absent is a positive. Doesn't mean that the team can't use extra help or that Morey won't look for them. It's incredibly hard even for a good team with elite players to win a title so you always want to stack the odds in your favor before getting into the playoffs.
