The East Playoff Bubble

[Canadafan]

Yikes. God. Just want the 7th seed.

[ChuckVanBrown]

Realistically, it's going to take at least 41 wins to make the playoffs, so Detroit needs to go 7-5 the rest of the way. Out of those 7 wins, they need to beat CHI and MIA to win any tiebreakers. IND swept us, and MIL will win the tiebreaker even if we split the season series (better division record, all those IND losses hurt). Those CHI and MIA games are crucial.

I took a look at the remaining schedules for IND, MIA, CHI, DET and MIL, and barring a huge unforeseen win streak or collapse, I really think these 5 teams will all end up with similar records. None of these teams have a really easy or difficult schedule.

I'm guessing IND at 42 wins for 6th seed, DET and MIA at 41 wins, with us winning the tiebreaker for the 7th seed.

Obviously I don't want DET in the 8th spot, but I also would love to see a CLE-MIA first round series!

[Canadafan]

Waiters out helps us.
Those games vs Miami and Chicago are 2nd night of back to backs. Not good considering how horrible we are in those. Plus the Chicago game is in Chicago.
Then we play Milwaukee in Milwaukee on 2nd night of back to back. Jesus. Then we have 4 days off and play Toronto Houston Memphis and then Washington on 2nd night of back to back.
Even with my optimistic outlook I see 7 wins at most. More likely 6. Even less possibly 8. So 40-42 wins. Gonna be tight boys

[bstein14]

Pistons have the easiest remaining schedule when you look at opponents win % but they have the most remaining road games (8 of 12 are on the road with just 4 games left at the Palace) and they've got 3 B2Bs left which they've only won about 10% of the last few seasons so its really hard to judge their final record. I think they're looking like they should at best be 42-40 (8-4 to finish out the season) and they should hopefully at worst be 40-42 (6-6 to finish out the season).

The idea of tanking out the rest of the season is pretty moot because if they make the playoffs they pick 16th or 17th and if they miss the playoffs they draft 13th or 14th... It's not like previous years where a bunch of Western Conference teams have better records than the teams that miss the playoffs in the east.. this year the 13th and 14th picks are likely to belong to 9th and 10th in the east.