Portland Trail Blazers
Record: 30-28, 6th Seed
Remaining Schedule: 24 games remaining; 14 vs teams over .500
The Portland Trail Blazers are easily one of the hottest teams in the NBA. Since Jan 10, the Trail Blazers are 16-3 and have the NBA’s 5th best offense and 6th best defense. They also rank 3rd in net rating. That’s a team playing at a very high level. The only teams that you could say have performed better during this stretch are the Warriors and Spurs – and each of those teams have three losses as well.
Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum have proven to be one of the best duos in the NBA. If nothing else, they’re proven to be one of the highest scoring ones – they have combined average of 46 points per game this season.
Portland probably has the best chance of the remaining teams on this list to catch the Memphis Grizzlies for the No. 5 seed, but with more than half of their remaining games against teams with winning records and most of those coming on the road, I have Portland finishing with 45 wins.
(Prediction): 45-37
Next: Dallas Mavericks