The Road to the 8th Seed

Written by Chad | 20 March 2012

I wanted to write a quick follow up piece to the one that I wrote a few weeks ago since things have changed dramatically since then. Luckily, no one ever actually saw that one, so let’s just forget about that for now shall we?

Once again let us set aside the question of what is best for the Utah Jazz. It’s an ongoing debate and despite what people on both sides of the issue say, there is no easy answer. I want the Jazz to miss the playoffs because I think we are going to desperately need the draft pick to facilitate a trade that we will have to make, that of trading away Al Jefferson, even though such a move will break my little heart. I want the Jazz to make the playoffs because, more than anything, I want Al Jefferson to go to the playoffs. Despite his flaws, Al is such a good person, and so easy to root for. Regardless, let’s not go there today…

The Jazz currently sit at a 45.3% of making the playoffs according to the brilliant mind of John Hollinger (side note: it has jumped like 20 points from the last two wins). Hollinger has the Rockets at the 8^th seed currently in his projections with a 34-33 record, although he only lists their playoff odds at 46.6%, so the margin right now is razor thin. One has to be real careful interpreting a lot from these base percentages, however, simply because all the teams in the 8^th seed hunt changed so much at the deadline, with the Jazzes main change being they started playing their best players more. The important takeaway is the 34-32 record. Let us go ahead and assume 34 wins is the magic number for now; it’s as good a starting point as any.

Quick side note, since none of you actually saw my previous piece, with regards to the two biggest changes since I wrote that. The first is other teams in the hunt are going south, and the magic number went from 36 wins a few weeks ago to 34 today. The other—and this one is huge obviously—is the Utah Jazz won two games I had pegged as absolute losses (Miami at home and @LAL) and haven’t dropped any games I had pegged as absolute wins yet.

So let’s take a look at the 21 remaining games on the schedule:

For the purpose of the simplification I pegged 3 games as “Safe Red” and 3 games as “Safe Blue” (pardon the political related snark). Yes I have Atlanta in there because for some reason, the Atlanta Hawks have our number. I put the hornets as safe blue because I think the Jazz go back there and get their vengeance. So if we make these assumptions, and add them to our current record that puts us at 26-25 leaving us needing 8 more wins from the remaining 15. Let’s take a look at what is left after that:

So the Jazz would need to go 8-7 out of these remaining 15. If I was a betting man (and I am), I would bet even money on that happening. This is really happening, and only 3 weeks or so after I wrote a piece no one read about the fact that it was next to impossible…

One final thought, if we want to get into the world of fantasy. A few extra wins here or there, or a few extra losses by Denver and Dallas (neither of which is actually that out of the realm of possibility), and Jazz could end up in the 6^th seed, which would currently put us playing the Lakers…