As it stands, we are 9-4 with 3 games left in November against some teams that are playing very well. I believe there is a good chance we can finish this month with an 11-5 record. 12-4 would be great, but I'm not quite that confident in this team yet. Plus I would be extremely happy if we can win 2 of every 3 games we play. Now, we play 15 games in December against the NBA's cream of the crop. Only 3 games will be against teams that did not make the playoffs last season(LAC, CLE & DEN). We have home and home games against the Spurs as well as games against the Lakers, Wolves, Pistons, Pacers, Hornets, Sonics, Sixers and Suns. We also play the Jazz again(who we play tonight) and the Blazers team that hung tough and pulled out a win the other night. Looking at that schedule I would accept 9-6, but think we can do better. At 9-6 we'd have an 18-13 record at worst, but as I said earlier, I'm looking for 2 out of 3. I'm pulling for 10-5 next month at worst which would put us at 20-11 or 21-10. Not bad for a team with lots of questions at the beginning of the season.
If Yao plays like last December where he was picked as player of the month then we'll be good to go .
I think that if we lose the next 3, and win half the games in December, that would be good enough to keep us WELL in the hunt for 5th seed. So 9-7 at the end of this month, and 15 games in December. Let's say we go 8-7, that would put us at 17-14 with tons of difficult games out of the way, plus the rotation will be set, plus everyone will be acclimated to JVG's system, and we'll have figured out ways to make Yao more effective, and improve at finishing games. So we'll be 3 games above .500 after going through all those struggles. I'm hoping that, from that point onwards, we snowball and accumulate 33 wins out of the last 61 games, which is a 33-28 record after December. That would give us 50 wins, and definitely 6th seed, possibly 5th. In my heart, I definitely believe that we can do better than that, I really think 33-28 is quite dissapointing the rest of the way. However, I'm thinking about a possible injury, and also thinking Yao may wear down. We also need to see Mooch improve to keep Steve fresh. Looking at it right now, 50 wins is both impressive and easily attainable. How many wins did last year's 5th seed have?
I'm not concerned yet. We have a nice set of releif games against Eastern Conference teams. Unfortunately one of those is against the Hornets. Baron Davis always seems to go off on Steve and with the year he is having, it might get ugly. I'm keeping the faith that we can still come out of November with an 11-5 record.
looking through the rest of our schedule. i would say 48W's is around where we will be. december may be bad, but so is january and february. just not as bad. its a really good thing that we got off to a good start.
