CAUTION: Bumpy Road Ahead

First, let me apologise for the crudeness of the chart posted below. Funny enough, I spent all of yesterday in Austin listening to Edward Tufte's lecture on "Presenting Data and Information." I had the data set up perfectly in Excel, and then in Word, but could not figure out how to transfer it to this blog. If you click on the data, it will take you to a cleaner version of the same chart, still imperfect though.

Before the season began, I printed out the Spurs' schedule and went through predicting whether we would win or lose each game. In the post below, I listed my results thus far. Overall, I am 32-12 in my predictions, which means I have guessed correctly 72% of the games. However, when I filled out my predictions, I was expecting to have a healthy Tony Parker. If I do not count the games in which we were missing Tony, my record improves to 23-5, or 82%.

Regardless of how you look at it, my predictions are normally pretty accurate. Now for the scary news, I have the Spurs going 7-6 over their next 13 games, and that is very optimistic. 9 of these games are on the road, thanks to the Rodeo Road Trip, and 10 are against teams competing for a playoff spot, 8 of which have winning records. Looking at it now, I would say we beat the Warriors and lose to the Nuggets, and we drop a game either to Dallas or Portland in that back to back, reducing the record to 6-7 over the next 13 games. After this stretch, get ready to hear the, "They're too old" talk for a while. Age has nothing to do with this extremely difficult schedule. If the Spurs can get through this with a winning record, it's looking good for the playoffs. If not, there is no need to panic. This stretch is absurdly difficult.

45 Thu, Jan 29, 2009 Phoenix Suns L
46 Sat, Jan 31, 2009 New Orleans Hornets L
47 Mon, Feb 2, 2009 Golden State Warriors L
48 Tue, Feb 3, 2009 Denver Nuggets W
49 Sun, Feb 8, 2009 Boston Celtics L
50 Tue, Feb 10, 2009 New Jersey Nets W
51 Wed, Feb 11, 2009 Toronto Raptors W
52 Tue, Feb 17, 2009 New York Knick W
53 Thu, Feb 19, 2009 Detroit Pistons L
54 Sat, Feb 21, 2009 Washington Wizards W
55 Tue, Feb 24, 2009 Dallas Mavericks W
56 Wed, Feb 25, 2009 Portland Trail Blazers W
57 Fri, Feb 27, 2009 Cleveland Cavaliers L