I won't claim to speak for hoops fans worldwide, but certainly in the United States we're a pretty simple folk: we like obvious outcomes and big numbers. Hockey and soccer, with their draws and points for winning but maybe sometimes also for not winning, that's too weird. We reject the metric system, despite worshipping the base 10 ground it walks on when it comes to sports.
Baseball, for instance. Yes it has an obscene number of games, but what's the standard for a great season? 100 wins. Why? It helps that it happens just often enough--and if you look at those who make the cut each year (if any), it's hard to have a team unworthy of the achievement. Making 100 is also still a media and contract-term notable for things like RBI and Runs, although exceeding them is much more routine in the modern era. In America's new favorite sport, football, it's 100 yards rushing or receiving in a game that makes you a success that day.
Ultimately I think it's computational laziness, but it's also a cultural affect at this point. Thank Taco Bell in part, at least when it comes to the Portland Trailblazers, where a triple digit effort wins the assembled a free mexiproduct item on their next Blazeriffic visit to a nearby prefab Bell.
Free tortillas can act as either a champagne-filled slipper after victories or a tear-inducing salve for losses, borne with dignity and maybe a little heartburn after. But you have to figure if they kept giving them out in a season full of 100-point futility, Senor Bell might opt not to fill his stores with moody, moochy fans. So that's my (tongue in cheek) evidence that 100 is also a meaningful bar in basketball games--because Taco Bell is counting on it being a fourthmeal party after home wins.
Now that we've established 100 as a benchmark offensive effort (as long as we're not talking about the Westphal Era when 120 was so-so output), it's time to test out its revelatory powers. If you're a Blazers fan you've heard team broadcasters talk about their strong record when they can top 100. Because of their slow pace and a mental sense that they did usually win when cracking the century, I never resisted.
And until the streak was recently broken, they also made a big fuss of the Blazers' ability to win whenever holding opponents below 90. I thought that was impressive, but I wasn't sure--isn't under 90 kind of sucky for any team, and tough to overcome?
So I snagged some free results for the 2009-10 season through last Friday from the excellent Basketball-Reference.com, massaged them a bit and tested out the notion that 100 points is usually good enough for a win, and less than 90 is usually going to leave you bumming. I was particularly interested in the Blazers so you'll get that bias, but I'll also share a Google Doc you all can copy and play with.
A man with some interest in sports and numbers, and an Excel sheet, can be a dangerous thing. (Luckily I'm a trained professional.*) A popular parlor game among the Blazer faithful of late has been to look ahead at the rest of the season, and predict a level of wins that might be expected or realistically hoped for, as well as what the chances are that Portland makes the playoffs for the first time in what seems like forever.
Most striking to me so far has been Gavin at 95.5 on the most recent Blazer podcast, going the other way from Casey and BEdge Dave on whether the Blazers would make the final 8 in the West. I think barring injury and some complete meltdown, the chances are very strong--like, 75%--to see Portland at least somewhere among the eight.
But just guessing really isn't much fun, or at least my guesses aren't worth anything if they're just guesses. So I set about predicting wins the rest of the way based on some kind of rational analaysis. The short answer is that I look for the Blazers to win 29-30 more games of their final 47, to finish with at least 50...but not much more unless they really exceed expectations, either by total efficiency against the bottom dwellers or parity with the big boys.
I used the Hollinger Power Rankings, a fairly stable and reasonably well-fed sample of data this far into the season. I noted the order and rating of each team, and also their record against Portland so far, as well as how many games the Blazers had remaining against them. Based on those two factors, I assigned an expected win percentage in four broad tiers among the 29 other teams, and then applied that to the Blazers' remaining games. The results displaced in my shoddy but endearing graphical way, below. {Step back into the 20th century below the fold!}
Well, yes--I know Bernie's not the Multnomah County Sheriff anymore, but if I said "Call Bob Skipper" in the title, how many people would have connected the name and the job? So don't call Bernie; it's not his job anymore. Don't call Skipper, either. I was just trying to make a point.
Trying to make it--but I still haven't gotten to it yet, have I, and I'm already into the second paragraph. The point's not to be found even in the first sentence of the second paragraph, or apparently now the second! Of course it's pretty obvious though, right? The Blazers had no business winning this game. Granted it was left out there for them much of the time by the Pistons and thus they were amply offered "the business," but they had to work for it and get some breaks. To their credit (and luckily), they got both. Plus they got a renewed taste of heroics with an old 4th quarter hero, and another rookie's coming out party.
The keys going in had to be:
control the guards, plus the giant Geremann, Heremann, from executing outside
get to the line against a willing Detroit front, but YGMYFT!
maximize the rebounding advantage, especially offensively
get one of Blake or Rudy hot, for God's sake
It was striking how poorly the Blazers did on these for much of the first half, and then some. At first it was just that the Pistons could not miss, going 7 for their first 8. But then the Blazer zone started breaking down, as Oden in particular wandered out and left the underneath open time and again. Rudy, while being plenty active throughout the game (and who did find his shot tonight, fulfilling goal #4), was no help whatsoever for much of the first half defensively, either refusing to help the bigs or simply not comprehending where he needed to be in time.
{more, including some good post-game commentary video, below}
*Brandon Roy became a new father on Monday night. His fiancee, Tiana Bardwell, gave birth to the couple's second child, Mariah Leilani Roy at 5:22 p.m. in Seattle. Roy said she weighed in at 6 pounds and was 19 inches.
*Blazers general manager envisions Roy returning from his hamstring injury as soon as Saturday's home game against Golden State. However, he said a final decision won't be made until Roy, Pritchard, athletic trainer Jay Jensen and the team doctors meet on Wednesday.
You decide which is the part to celebrate more--a functioning vas deferens and uterus on the part of Brandon and his honey, or the thought of him being back on the court as soon as Saturday. I'll call it a draw. :) But I sure hope he's using his injury to do some pre-catchup on sleep and family time. If you see him go all narcoleptic on a drive in the 4th quarter this weekend, you'll know why. (Wheels: "Roy drives to the rim, leaps--and falls to the heap in a giant snore! Boom-nap-a-laka!")
Congrats Brandon and Tiana! And for the dolt in the comments who insists on hazing Roy for being a single dad (in a nonetheless committed, long term relationship) -- give me a break. Wake up and smell the 21st Century, dude.
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