The Portland Trail Blazers are trying to turn over a stubbornly-weighty leaf this season, forsaking random chance in the NBA Draft Lottery to forge their own destiny in the 2026 NBA Playoffs. So far results have been mixed. Portland owns a 32-36 record, good for 10th place in the Western Conference. The good news is, that position would earn them a spot in the annual Play-In Tournament and a chance to grab a 7th or 8th seed in the playoffs bracket. The even better news is, the distance between Portland and the 11th-place Memphis Grizzlies is a healthy 8 games with only 14 remaining on the schedule. Hint: the Blazers will get their chance.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not quite enough for one reader of the Blazer\u2019s Edge Mailbag, though. He\u2019s been waiting a full two weeks for an answer to this question, which we\u2019ll address today.<\/p>\n
Why don\u2019t you ever talk about strength of schedule? You have to know that we\u2019ve come through the hardest part of the schedule and now we have the easiest schedule remaining because of opponent winning percentage. This should put us on an upward line to the playoffs. You criticized the play when it\u2019s going bad and now get ready to praise them when it\u2019s going better because we finally got to the right part of the year! Can you talk more about this please?<\/p>\n
Let me preface this by saying I appreciate your question genuinely. There\u2019s no snark in my voice or tone when I say the following.<\/p>\n
In the interim since you submitted this question and today, the Blazers themselves have shown why I don\u2019t tend to emphasize Strength of Schedule, and especially why I haven\u2019t this year. In that two-week stretch, they\u2019ve gone 3-5, which pretty much parallels what they did for the rest of the season. Strength of Schedule hasn\u2019t helped them at all. The best you can say is that they\u2019ve lost to the winning teams, beaten the losing ones for the most part. I guess that kind of does justify the Strength of Schedule argument for them, but it seems hollow to me for a few reasons.<\/p>\n
I do think SoS can be helpful in some circumstances. It\u2019s good when parsing two similar teams, differentiating whether one of them got to the level of the other because of opponent strength or whether it\u2019s more organic. It can also be used as a caution against teams that are overachieving. Sometimes that 20-9 record happens because 10-12 of the the teams you played against are lousy.<\/p>\n
I find SoS a poor life ring to toss towards underachieving teams, though, even if their schedule was legitimately tough. My basic response is, \u201cSo what?\u201d You\u2019re supposed to win tough games too.<\/p>\n
The goal for each season is simple: make the NBA playoffs and win. You know who plays in the NBA playoffs? Good teams. And ONLY good teams. Having to lean on Strength of Schedule to justify your position in the playoffs\u2014or your struggle to even reach that point\u2014is, in itself, an admission that you\u2019re not beating good teams. If that\u2019s the case, why are we arguing about this in the first place? Even if the point holds, it\u2019s only going to result in defeat.<\/p>\n
Using Strength of Schedule to celebrate your chances of making the playoffs is like bragging that you know how to get on stage at Carnegie Hall for a concert when you don\u2019t even play cello that well. So??? What do you think is going to happen if you make it? Your mom\u2019s not going to be the whole audience, just like the Washington Wizards aren\u2019t going to occupy the other seven positions in that playoffs bracket alongside you. One of the musicians up there is going to be Yo-Yo Ma. The other is going to be, \u201cYo Yo Get Off the Stage!\u201d<\/p>\n
I read Strength of Schedule arguments from underachieving teams like I hear friends who are habitually unlucky in love saying, \u201cHEY! I GOT A DATE!!!\u201d I\u2019m glad for you. Really, I am! But what\u2019s the point of that date? Is it just to get there? Or is it to have a good time together, get to know someone, build a relationship, or whatever? If you were really good at, or even focused on, the latter things, the fact that you got a date in the first place wouldn\u2019t be such a big deal. That you\u2019re hyper-focused on just \u201cgetting a date\u201d might show that you need to do a little work on yourself and your goals before you actually go out on one. Otherwise this is not going to end well.<\/p>\n
That feels a little like Trail Blazers nation at the moment. I get it! There\u2019s been a long dry spell. But just getting to the playoffs isn\u2019t the main thing, not for its own sake, anyway. 16 teams are going to do that no matter what. 4 more will participate in the various Play-In games. That\u2019s 20 out of 30 teams in the postseason system. Chances are you\u2019re going to get to do that at some point. The real question is what happens when you get there. And Strength of Schedule shows nothing about that, at least not if you have to emphasize it as one of the main reasons you\u2019re going to make it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I don\u2019t tend to talk about SoS much. I acknowledge that it\u2019ll come into play, but it\u2019s not going to tell us what we really need to know. The Blazers themselves have already done that by putting themselves in a position where the Strength of Schedule discussion matters. If you have to ask, the answer is already no.<\/p>\n
Rather than anticipating Portland beating weaker teams for the remainder of the season, we should be looking forward to a time where more of the schedule overall results in \u201cW\u2019s\u201d. That\u2019s how you\u2019ll know they really made it. Until then, look out Nets and Jazz, I guess, because the Thunder and Spurs aren\u2019t exactly quaking.<\/p>\n
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we\u2019ll try to answer as many as possible!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers are trying to turn over a stubbornly-weighty leaf this season, forsaking random chance in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,37787,38295,6,11],"class_list":{"0":"post-661679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers-analysis","10":"tag-blazers-mailbags","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nba-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116240859106414378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}