05-18-2021, 04:42 AM
(05-16-2021, 03:09 PM)Scott41theMavs Wrote: That's my take as well. I look at it in terms of win totals. Iirc, last year's win totals were equivalent to 43 wins in an 82-game season. This year's will be 49 or 50 (depending on whether we win tonight or not). Not bad given how things looked earlier this season. I view this as a provisional roster a la the Jamison-Walker year (I don't expect anyone other than Luka and hopefully DFS as being here two seasons from now - maybe Bobi as Luka's big lil' buddy), so to deliver the 5th or 6th seed is pretty awesome.
BTW, given Luka's status as a generational talent, presuming his health, anything less than 55 wins next year, and 60 wins the year after (and all of the subsequent years he's here) would be front office malpractice.
If you start counting February 6th (GS Win which began a 4 game winning streak post COVID), we won 67% of our games. That is a 55 win pace in an 82 game schedule. That would have been 3rd in the west this season and tied with Brooklyn for second in the east. And it isn't like we didn't have any strangeness during the time since 2/6. If you give everyone the benefit of the doubt and started everyone's season on 2/6 the overall standings and winning percent would have been:
.765 Phoenix
.708 Brooklyn
.694 Utah
.686 Denver
.673 Dallas
.673 Philly
During those final 49 games the D-Rating was 14th in the league at 112.3. The O-Rating was 4th at 117. The Net Rating was 6th, which lines up with the winning%. Unfortunately, LAC had the 4th best Net Rating during this time. I realize it doesn't feel like we've been this good (3 losses to Sacramento will do that to a team). But, this playoff matchup pits two teams that have been among the best over the last 2/3's of the season. The point being, I think if you look at the most normal part of the season, we already are that 55 win team and had a pretty clear path to more wins than we got.