2007-08 Game 30 Minnesota Timberwolves @ Los Angeles Clippers
Posted by SBG on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 7:30 pm
On New Years Eve, the Wolves sit at 4-25. I can't say that I'm surprised -- I thought at the beginning of the month that the Wolves would end the month 4-26. Now, here we are with one game left. And it's against a struggling LA Clippers team. The Clips have lost six straight, but I'll say this -- it was a tough six game stretch. They got the Lakers, Toronto, Phoenix twice, Dallas, and San Antonio. That's a pretty rough stretch. Their schedule gets easier tonight.
The Wolves are 2-13 in December with eight double digit losses. Their two wins were extremely surprising -- they got Phoenix by seven and came from twenty down to hang 131 on Indiana. The Wolves were 2-2 in Minneapolis and 0-11 on the road. A tough schedule to be sure -- 12 road games for the month -- and Coach Randy Wittman has said that the schedule eases in January and February. I'm not so sure. Here's the list of games in January:
Portland
Denver
Dallas
Miami
@ Houston
@ San Antonio
Golden State
@ Phoenix
@ Denver
@ Golden State
Phoenix
@ Boston
New Jersey
@ Chicago
Chicago
That looks like about 3 wins. If the Wolves lose tonight and go 3-12 in January, we're looking at 7-42, well off the pace of the 1991-92 club that finished with 15 wins.
Back to tonight. The Clips are favored by 6 and the O/U is 190. I don't know what to do here. I think we'll see the Wolves stumble again, but keep it close. I'll take the Wolves and the points, LA wins 92-87.
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I think if your team has 3 win at the New Years mark, you shouldn't say anything about your schedule being easier here foward
yea. This morning's SacBee NBA page had a half-baked crap short item on the Wolves. And I quote:
ok, take away that 0-8 and the Wolves' record looks positively encouraging: 4-17!!!
Er, watts, that's 4 wins, not three. Yer shortin' 'em 25% of their total.
Midway through the second quarter and the Wolves are in the game.
Another collapse. Happy New Year, Kevin McHale.
When we did our 1/4 pole I predicted the Wolves to be at 8-9 wins by the halfway point. To be honest, I didn't look at the schedule and was just pulling numbers out of my ass when I said that. I looked at the schedule almost immediately after the post was up and regretted saying it.
In order for the Wolves to make 8 wins by game 41, they'd have to go 4-7 over their next 11 games. Not exactly lofty, but it seems almost impossible for this team. Then again, the 72-73 Philly team even had a stretch where they went 5-2, so it could happen.
In what can only be a testament to my own severe mental illness, I have a spreadsheet using your formula to predict Wolves wins based on records. It's broken out home and away and I have a series of manipulations that I can do by cutting the standings from ESPN.COM to update it. The spreadsheet is predicting 2.50 wins for January. At the start of December it was predicting somewhere between two and three wins. They ended up at two. As of today, it's predicting 14.52 wins for the season.
This season is even worse than I imagined. Yes, it is good for the club to get a top draft pick next year. But, winning 14 or 15 games isn't, you know, good for the fan base. They could win 20 to 25, still get that top pick, and fans would at least have some enjoyment this year.
Maybe the return of Randy Foye will boost that win total up, should he ever come back from his fake injury.
The comments about the schedule remind me of when the Twins were awful in the late 90s. When you're that bad, no game ever seems like an easy game.