also as it relates to scoreboard watching, in addition to us having 3 games left against Denver, the nuggets also play the thunder 3 more times, so those are some guaranteed losses for the two teams seen as our most viable competition out west
between the top 5 teams (thunder, spurs, nuggets, rockets, lakers), the thunder and nuggets have the most difficult schedules remaining, followed by the lakers, then us, and then after a wide gap, houston. this is true whether you look at a typical strength of schedule chart like on tankathon, or even the modeled versions like the craftednba one that
@scott prefers
therefore despite their injuries, houston on paper is the team to watch as far as holding down the #2 seed. we get them at home on march 8. if we win that game, we clinch the season series and the tiebreaker, so at this moment, that is the single most important game left on our schedule. of course, if denver beats us all 3 times, different conversations may take place, but they have looked awfully mortal lately