The Cleveland Cavaliers are one of the three most dangerous teams in the NBA (hell, they’re one of the ONLY three dangerous teams) and the entire league is being forced to sit back and watch us, along with the Celtics and Lakers, on a race to 70 wins.
Will any of the three get to 70? Nobody is sure, but all three have a chance.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a look ahead at the Cavs schedule, and focused in on how they had a lot of middle-of-the-pack competition coming up. And while it’s true that a lot of our wins have come against teams we SHOULD beat, it needs to be pointed out that these games have almost always been blowouts.
During the current 8-game win streak, each victory has ended up being a 12-point to 36-point destruction. And almost every one of those games has finished with the bench players on the floor….garbage time. You can factor in anything you want, but that extra time on the floor will pay off dividends with depth as the season wears on.
Tonight, the Cavs take on Chris Bosh and the Toronto Raptors. Toronto is 8-11, tied for the basement of the Atlantic Division. Bosh is a weapon, but as the Cavs showed with Danny Granger last week, it’s going to take more than one superstar to put our guys down if they are playing well. We follow up tonight with a home-and-home against Philadelphia (9-12), the other team in the basement of the Atlantic.
Things will get a lot more difficult for Cleveland after that (not that it won’t be tough against Bosh and the Sixers). We head out on a road trip that will keep us away from The Q for most of the rest of 2008.
- at Atlanta (12-7)
- at Minnesota (4-15)
- at Denver (14-7)
- at Oklahoma City (2-20)
- Houston (13-8)
- Washington (3-15)
- Miami (12-9)
- at Miami (12-9)
There’s some tough competition in there, and the Nuggets worry me mostly. They’ve been amazing since they traded for Chauncey Billups (seriously, Detroit, what were you thinking?). But I do like the fact that we seem to have a struggling team almost every other game in this year-ending stretch.
We’ve got 11 games left in 2008. I’d like to see us go at least 8-3 in that stretch, and I think that’s a low bar I’m setting. I know I wouldn’t be too upset at being 25-6 on New Year’s Eve.
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Meanwhile, the Pistons are in a free fall right now. Not too long ago, they were a mere half-game behind the Cavs. Those days are gone now. Detroit now finds themselves 5.5 games back and are showing no signs of being the team they once were.
Since the trade for Allen Iverson, Detroit is 7-8. I used to shrug it off when people would say that the Pistons were more of a team concept than any other franchise…they were right. They broke up that team and brought in “Mr. All-About-Me” and they have downright sucked since then.
That New York Knicks team that we just beat by 36 points? They beat Detroit by 12. And it wasn’t even that close.
They’ve lost 5 of their last 8 games, and their three wins came against New York, Milwaukee, and an injury-riddled San Antonio. Their losses have been double-digit defeats at the hands of New York, Minnesota, Portland, and Boston. You’d expect this from the Indiana Pacers, but we talkin’ bout Pistons.
Detroit’s got four easy games up next, Washington (3-15), Indiana (7-13), Charlotte (7-14), and Washington (3-15). If they want to salvage anything, they’d better win all four. The road’s gonna be tough after that, and being 11-8 with Iverson is the best they can be by next Thursday. 10-9 or worse is unacceptable and could be a huge canyon to cross with a tougher schedule upcoming and a growing deficit in the division.
Following the four should-wins, things get tough;
- Utah (13-9)
- at Atlanta (12-7)
- Chicago (9-11)
- Oklahoma City (2-20)
- at Milwaukee(9-13)
- Orlando (16-5)
- New Jersey (11-8)
These next 3 and a half weeks should tell us all we need to know about the division.
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The next few weeks, we have a LOT of catching up to do on The BBC. We’ll do our Texas preview soon (it’s gonna be a war…Texas is pissed and looking to prove a point). We’ve got to tell you about two other location to watch Buckeye games, and we’ll announce the best Buckeye Hotspot for a bowl game. Also, The BBC will be releasing the first new video in over a year. More on that later.
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