Tonight's Game Marks Dramatic Turn in the Schedule

Henry posted about this when schedules first came out and every team(except maybe the L*kers) looked at their schedule and said something along the lines of “man, this schedule is murder”. Stretches are always hard for one reason or another (back to backs, away games, injuries, “morning” games, etc.), but at least we’re at the point where other teams are looking at their schedules and saying “crap, we have to go to Portland” should be tough playing them plus the time difference.

we were 28-13 at home and an almost identical 27-12 against teams with the same or worse record as us. Or, in the reverse, 13-28 on the road and 14-29 against superior teams. Overall, however, home teams typically win about 55% of all games, and road teams 45%, which you can confirm by simply tabulating the home and away records for any year on ESPN. But look at the game results almost any day of the week and you will see that the team with the better record wins a very large majority of the games, regardless of where the game is played. Upsets, based on the record, are just that — upsets, and not the norm, and eventually the law of averages will out and we’ll conform.

The fact is we had a tough stretch at the start of the year, but it was only a few games. The one coming up has the potential to be the killer. Personally, I’m optimistic; I think we’ll better .500 in this stretch, teach some teams some lessons, and come out of it okay. But that doesn’t change the fact that this will be the most challenging extended part of the season. We’ll really know where we are when it’s done — more so than we know now. Remember, we were far above .500 after our streak last season and then crumbled.

As I recall, we came out totally flat and stagnant for most of last year’s morning game in Toronto.

I HATE those morning games… they should not be allowed.

This is exactly the point I was trying to make.

The schedule will be hard, but I think, in relation to this blazer team, not as hard as the earlier stretch against lesser competition, but on the road.

The stat you brought out is really informative: at home vs playoff teams, we went 13-10—but against those same teams on the road, we were 3-19. Even if there were no improvement over last year, we had barely better than a 50% chance of winning a road game against a lottery team, but an 83% chance of winning against those same teams at home. Against playoff teams, we had a 57% chance of winning at home vs a playoff team, but only a 14% chance on the road! So, a stretch of, say, 10 games against lottery teams on the road would expect about 5 wins, but in a stretch of ten games at home against playoff teams, we would expect about 6 wins—so, last year, we would definitely be better off having a long stretch of hard games against tough teams at home, than a stretch of games on the road against bad or mediocre teams.

So, I think our home court advantage is so great that the early season stretch was actually more challenging than the upcoming one.

We did, however, get the benefit of a lot of lucky plays/shots and close wins, that could go the other way in this upcoming stretch, so we may end up fairing worse in the upcomign stretch… but I still think the hardest part is over… at least, after Boston and Toronto and the back to back with the clippers and utah on the road.

Just get it done tonight, don’t be intimidated, play physical, and take it to the Celtics!