I did a quick lookup of all the schedules and counted the games against good, average, and bad teams. The first number corresponds to team that are probably going to finish above 50 wins, or really close to it (top 3 in east, top 8 in west). The second number are basically teams like Phoenix and Miami that aren't good but aren't crap either. The third number is everyone else. Dal ---- 4 2 3 Hou ---- 5 1 2 Por ---- 5 0 4 Den ---- 3 0 5 Uta --- 6 0 4 SAS --- 4 0 5 NOH ---- 5 2 3 The three teams with the hardest schedules look to be Utah, New Orleans and Houston, while San Antonio and Denver look to have the weakest schedules. Although, everyone plays "elite" teams at least 3 times, and no one plays them more than 6, with the majority playing 4-5 games against these teams. So the difference in strength of schedule isn't that big. One thing of note, it looks like everyone's final game is going to be against an elite team. New Orleans plays San Antonio, Utah plays LA, Denver plays Portland, and Houston plays Dallas. In this aspect, Houston might get off the hook with their schedule because Dallas might be locked in to 8th seed with nothing to play for.
I disagree with the part in bold. In a race this tight with so few games remaining, even 1 additional game against an upper echelon team makes a signficant difference. If the Rockets finish in the top 4, they will certainly have earned it. The same goes for the Jazz and Hornets.
When you are talking about 1 extra game against "contending" teams. If 2 games vs 1 (assuming the other game is against a crappy team), thats one thing because you are talking about one team having a a 50% chance of winning two games vs the other having a 50% chance on one game and a 80% chance on the other probably. But when its the difference between 4 games and 5 games, its very likely that the team playing 4 games could post the same record as the team playing 5 games against elite teams. In other words, I think the play of the teams will have more of an impact than the schedules. I don't think you can give Denver the 3rd seed over us just because they have an easier schedule. We've been playing better than them for 2 months now and I think thats the bigger factor.
