I broke most of the remaining schedule for the top 10 teams teams in the Western Conference by opponents in the top 10, middle 10 and last 10 teams in the NBA. Home games are in red under breakdown.
It looks like your picture is missing the last 4 games of the season for Houston. The others seem to be missing games too, the wins+losses+remaining doesn't add up to 82. I think you may be missing the last 4 games for every team now that I'm looking at the rest of them.
According to this: http://www.tankathon.com/remaining_schedule_strength Denver, Dallas, Utah and OKC have tougher remaining schedules than the Rox. Denver's is by far the worst. Us and the Clips and Lakers are roughly the same. New Orleans, Portland and the Spurs have the easiest schedules in the WCF. Golden State looks like a lock for most ping pong balls.
I'm going to update the chart every couple days and post it on here. Hopefully, we slowly work our way into that #2 seed. Tonight will be a start. We need to beat Memphis as a warm-up for Boston on Saturday. Go Rockets!
Judging by the spreadsheet, league's agenda executed well…zion, the next golden egg cultivated so far so good (ez games ahead), and gonna show up in playoff w/o any doubt. Congrats. (okc is a black horse potentially)
If we're gonna pass Denver, we probably need to go no worse than 19-5 the rest of the way. Doable, but tough given we still have games at the Celtics, Lakers, Bucks, Sixers, Pacers, Mavs, and Blazers. Not to mention 3 more B2Bs which means at least 3 more games without Russ. Remember, we have to finish ahead of the Nuggets to get the 2nd seed. We split the season series, but they have a much better conference record. And with Utah collapsing the way they are, Denver is very likely to win their division, so that tiebreaker possibility is off the table.
Man I feel like we’ve played an extreme amount of B2Bs already and we have 3 more? Maybe it just feels that way
The edge we have is that Denver still faces 9 of the top 10 teams in the NBA, and we only face 6. It's a slight edge. The only back to backs we have left are CHA/ORL (March 7/8), DAL/SA (April 7/8), and SA/PHO (April 12/13). I would prefer sitting Russ during the CHA game and playing him vs ORL, but it we should win regardless. I don't think we need to worry about SA and PHO. I'm honestly disappointed he went the entire season not playing back to backs, but at least we've managed making it work.
Just think. It used to be far worse including 4 games in 5 nights. As far as the remaining ones, we've got at Charlotte/home Orlando, at Dallas/home San Antonio, and at San Antonio/home Phoenix. I would assume D'Antoni plays Russ in the road games and then sits him for the home ones. The Rockets even without Russ can beat the Magic, Spurs, and Suns at Toyota Center. And the latter 2 will be in the final 7 days of the season when San Antonio and Phoenix will hopefully be looking at lottery positioning more than winning games.
Got to keep rolling. I would like to see us at the second seed (first would be fine too!) It is all about the playoffs now, and we have a chance. I didn't feel that way a few weeks ago.
The concern is that Lakers are going to rest stars and give 2 wins to Clippers. March 8 April 9 then Clippers 2 seed. Lakers have easy 2nd round playoffs. Lakers are going to do whatever it takes to put clippers rockets together,
It's always risky needing other teams to beat the teams you're chasing for playoff seedings in the final week of the season. The Rockets learned this firsthand last year when they lost at OKC and then got no help from Minnesota. The Clippers in the final 9 days of the season have games at Utah, at the Lakers, and at Portland. Which on the surface looks tough, but it's possible none of those teams have anything to play for at that point. Utah could be locked into the 5th-7th seed, LA could be locked into 1st in the West with no shot at catching Milwaukee, and Portland could be out of the playoff picture or locked into 8th. We'll see how it plays out.
Ye that April 9th delayed game might hurt us. Lakers will not have any reason to play their top guys. It might be the one that makes the difference
We just need the 3 seed. We can beat the Nuggets regardless of who has the home court advantage. We just don't want to see both LA teams in the playoffs. We want them playing each other in the semis.