Shows what I know

they seem to have a pretty easy few weeks here, games are spread out and mostly at home. With Melo out about 3 weeks, his return should be around the end of this month, that leaves 10 games without him for the Nuggets.
7 @ home, 3 on the road.
7 Against teams above 500, 3 against teams below .500.
2 road games against teams above .500
2 back to backs

Tough, but with most of them at home, I don’t expect them to come back to the pack, we will have to play well to catch them. The Blazers schedule does help though, they have 11 games left in the Month.
6 @ home, 5 away
9 under .500, 2 above .500
no games on the road against +.500 teams
1 back to back

barring significant injuries.

But Denver probably still wins. They are likely to get 55+.

Denver was 1-2 with AI, lost the next before Billups joined them. Since he has been with them, they are 24-9.

Maybe they’ll lose some of these tough home games with Melo out, and come back to us. But I suspect we’ll have to win more than 55 to beat them out. That’s still well within the realm of possibility, but I won’t be surprised to see them win 57-58. And I would be quite surprised to see us beat that total.

I think Denver wins, but we’ve got a shot at it. I think Utah is in trouble, but you can’t count them out.

Eight home games. I’ll put 5 of them in the definitely should win category. I’ll put Milwaukie and Utah in the probable category (Milwaukie is decent and has been rough on some Western teams recently, Utah is not a great road team and it’s a back to back for them). Cleveland is in the very tough category. I expect we go 7-1, perhaps 6-2 on home games.

Nine home games:
4 should win — Charlotte, Clips, OKC, GS (on a back to back).
3 middling to poor teams — Chicago, Philly, NJ (back to back).
2 tough ones — N.O., Dallas.

I see 7 teams we really should be able to beat, and 2 tough ones that we can certainly compete with even on the road. There’s a reasonable chance we get 1 of the 2 tough ones, both of them will be coming off of tough road games. We should get 6 of the other seven, if not all seven. It is reasonable to look for 7 wins out of those 9 road games, but young teams throw some bad games out there. I call it at 6 out of 9 wins on the road.

That means 12-5 between now and the all-star break, and that’s conservative. I think we could easily go 13-4, and it is well within our capability to go 14-3. 12 wins would give us 33 at the break.

All that assumes we stay reasonably healthy.

The Jazz also have 17 games left, to have 33 wins at the break they have to go 12-5. They have 9 home games. They have 4 should-win games, 2 tough but should be able to win (Detroit, Dallas), and 3 really tough (Spurs, Cavs, L@kers). If they come out of that with 7 home wins, I’ll be very, very impressed.

They have 8 road games.
4 should win — OKC, Memphis, Sac (back to back), GS.
4 probable losses — Dallas, Houston, Denver, Portland. All four of these are on the second night of a back to back — and the Jazz are not a good road team, and not good on back to backs.

I would not be surprised if they only win 3 of the 8 road games, but I’ll give them 4, guessing they drop one of those road games against weak teams and win one of the hard ones. They still will be doing phenomenally well to go 11-6 in their next 17 games. That would be a superb showing for them, and would get them to 32 wins. I’ll be surprised if they do it without Boozer — I expect they go more like 10-7, and if I were a Jazz fan I wouldn’t even be disappointed with that, it would keep them in the hunt through a very tough stretch. 10 wins would give them 31 at the break.

Denver has 16 left, 8 home, 8 away. They have 3-4 tough away games. Most of their home games are against really quality teams. I’m guessing they still win 6-7 of them lose in Orlando, New Orleans and/or Houston, and possibly Miami. Probably 11-5 or so, which would get them to 36 wins. I’m guessing with Melo they would get 12-13 but lose one or two more because he’s out.

I think you are overrating both the Nuggets and the Jazz slightly, and underrating the Blazers. We’ve been beating the teams we are supposed to beat very consistently, both home and away.

start to see Oden until he got 40 games under his belt. 10 more to go.

I think we’ve already seen glimpses. I think we’ll see more and more improvement from him as the season goes on.

or nearly so. I see it a lot on BE. Posters act like each year the league starts from zero. The Utah Jazz are a proven elite squad. Denver and Portland will fight it out for second and the loser may very well not make the playoffs. Depending upon Dallas/Houston.

KP is going to trade them all to NY for Jerome James, and we’ll lose a couple games trying to get some chemistry.

Ok. Let me know when that happens. I am saying 30-17 maybe. The blazers are not proven contenders and will be an early exit in the playoffs.

The one that looked like dirt the first nine games or the one that is 19-6 since?

Dallas, Utah, and Phoenix are the teams in the greatest danger right now. Houston has slipped back towards them. Portland could slip back.