Playoff picture

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

Amazingingly enough, if the season ended today we'd be in the playoffs as
the 7th seed matched up against Cleveland, which is more evidence of the
weakness of the East. In the West there are 11 teams with better records
than us. But our playoff position is extremely precarious. There are four
dangerous teams below us. Milwaukee has their Big Three which gives them a
chance to beat any team, although even last year they barely made the
playoffs. Orlando will be much improved if Grant Hill regains his health.
Miami's been a mess but I think it's premature to count Pat Riley out,
though I'd love to see him miss the playoffs for the first time. New Jersey
could be improved when Van Horn gets back and if Kenyon Martin develops as
he should.

We have seven of the next nine games at home. At the end of that stretch we
will have played 17 games at home and only 8 on the road. Looking over the
schedule, I can see why Pitino said that he would quit if things didn't
turn around by January. In February, we play 9 of 12 games on the road,
including a brutal 7 games in 11 nights Western road trip, including
Utah-Houston and Dallas-Spurs back-to-backs. I think he knows that if the
team doesn't look good in January, that's going to be a season ending trip.

So we need to get hopefully several games above .500 during this stretch.
We have a game Sunday against the Clippers to kick things off. We lost too
many of this type of game last year -- at the Clippers last year, at
Chicago, at home to Vancouver, at Golden State. We can't afford to lose to
20-win teams. 

The Clippers at 5-12 are actually on a pace for 24 wins after they added a
ton of young talent during the draft. They're led by super sophomore Lamar
Odom, averaging a balanced 16.9 ppg (46% fg), 8.6 rpg, 4.9 apg, 2.0 bpg.
Their next leading scorer is their point guard Jeff McInnis, at 12.4 ppg
and 4.9 apg, whose played in Greece and the CBA and now finds himself
outperforming some high lottery picks while playing for the minimum. He was
recently punched in the face by Charles Oakley in a shootaround and then
had the misfortune of missing a free throw that could have put the Raptors
away. After that, nobody's scoring double figures. But they're holding
their opponents to an impressive 42.4% shooting while outrebounding
opponents 46.4 to 39.8, so maybe young teams can play defense. They've
taken Utah and Pheonix to overtime so they could be quite dangerous.

One glaring weakness, besides their lack of offensive punch, is that they
turn the ball over 17.5 times per game, vs 12.9 forced. I'd expect us to
employ the press to try to rattle these young players, especially since
they don't have any experienced point guard.

Alex