Do the math!...Excuse the long post.
Miami is 7 games ahead of us. It is obvious that we cannot catch them at #7. So the only teams we can hope to catch are Bucks, Nets, Bulls (all ahead of us right now)
Milwaukee is at #8 has a record of 26-29. They also have a winning streak of 2. Lets for a second visit their record 3 games ago. (since that works in our favor and mathematically it works against them)
They would have a record of 24-28 three games ago having played 52 games and we would have a record of 21-31 with 52 games completed.
Let us assume that both teams remain fairly injury free till the end of the season since that also works only in our favor.
Assuming that Milwaukee proceeds roughly at the same pace....
If they have won 24 out of 52 games, then they will win (24/52) * 82 games by the end of the season = 37.8. Again, giving ourselves some slack.....let us assume that they win 37 games.....not 38.
We are currently at 21 wins out of 52 games. In order for us to beat Milwaukee for the 8th spot, we have to win 38 games (not 37), because they have already won the tiebreaker against us. They are 3-0 against us this season.
So out of the remaining 30 games, we have to win at least 17. That is a winning percentage of 56.6 when our current winning percentage is 40.4!!!!! Out of these 30 games, we have 15 home games and 15 road games left.
On the road, we are 7 of 26 = a winning percentage of 27% and at home we are 14 of 26 which is roughly 54%. Let us increase the winning percentage home AND on the road by 10% each (which would seem to be the best case scenario).
So out of the remaining 15 road games, we would win 37% of 15 = 5.55 games
And out of the remaining home games, we would win 64% of 15 = 9.6 games
That puts us at 15 wins......when what we need is 17.
Time to play Chandler, Gallo and Roberson (probably) major minutes and bring back Patrick Ewin Jr.
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/knicks/2009/02/bottom-line-knicks-are-soft.html