The Portland Trail Blazers are trying to turn over a stubbornly-weighty leaf this season, forsaking random chance in the NBA Draft Lottery to forge their own destiny in the 2026 NBA Playoffs. So far results have been mixed. Portland owns a 32-36 record, good for 10th place in the Western Conference. The good news is, that position would earn them a spot in the annual Play-In Tournament and a chance to grab a 7th or 8th seed in the playoffs bracket. The even better news is, the distance between Portland and the 11th-place
Memphis Grizzlies is a healthy 8 games with only 14 remaining on the schedule. Hint: the Blazers will get their chance.
That’s not quite enough for one reader of the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag, though. He’s been waiting a full two weeks for an answer to this question, which we’ll address today.
Dave,
Why don’t you ever talk about strength of schedule? You have to know that we’ve come through the hardest part of the schedule and now we have the easiest schedule remaining because of opponent winning percentage. This should put us on an upward line to the playoffs. You criticized the play when it’s going bad and now get ready to praise them when it’s going better because we finally got to the right part of the year! Can you talk more about this please?
Gerald
Let me preface this by saying I appreciate your question genuinely. There’s no snark in my voice or tone when I say the following.
In the interim since you submitted this question and today, the Blazers themselves have shown why I don’t tend to emphasize Strength of Schedule, and especially why I haven’t this year. In that two-week stretch, they’ve gone 3-5, which pretty much parallels what they did for the rest of the season. Strength of Schedule hasn’t helped them at all. The best you can say is that they’ve lost to the winning teams, beaten the losing ones for the most part. I guess that kind of does justify the Strength of Schedule argument for them, but it seems hollow to me for a few reasons.
I do think SoS can be helpful in some circumstances. It’s good when parsing two similar teams, differentiating whether one of them got to the level of the other because of opponent strength or whether it’s more organic. It can also be used as a caution against teams that are overachieving. Sometimes that 20-9 record happens because 10-12 of the the teams you played against are lousy.
I find SoS a poor life ring to toss towards underachieving teams, though, even if their schedule was legitimately tough. My basic response is, “So what?” You’re supposed to win tough games too.
The goal for each season is simple: make the NBA playoffs and win. You know who plays in the NBA playoffs? Good teams. And ONLY good teams. Having to lean on Strength of Schedule to justify your position in the playoffs—or your struggle to even reach that point—is, in itself, an admission that you’re not beating good teams. If that’s the case, why are we arguing about this in the first place? Even if the point holds, it’s only going to result in defeat.
Using Strength of Schedule to celebrate your chances of making the playoffs is like bragging that you know how to get on stage at Carnegie Hall for a concert when you don’t even play cello that well. So??? What do you think is going to happen if you make it? Your mom’s not going to be the whole audience, just like the Washington Wizards aren’t going to occupy the other seven positions in that playoffs bracket alongside you. One of the musicians up there is going to be Yo-Yo Ma. The other is going to be, “Yo Yo Get Off the Stage!”
I read Strength of Schedule arguments from underachieving teams like I hear friends who are habitually unlucky in love saying, “HEY! I GOT A DATE!!!” I’m glad for you. Really, I am! But what’s the point of that date? Is it just to get there? Or is it to have a good time together, get to know someone, build a relationship, or whatever? If you were really good at, or even focused on, the latter things, the fact that you got a date in the first place wouldn’t be such a big deal. That you’re hyper-focused on just “getting a date” might show that you need to do a little work on yourself and your goals before you actually go out on one. Otherwise this is not going to end well.
That feels a little like Trail Blazers nation at the moment. I get it! There’s been a long dry spell. But just getting to the playoffs isn’t the main thing, not for its own sake, anyway. 16 teams are going to do that no matter what. 4 more will participate in the various Play-In games. That’s 20 out of 30 teams in the postseason system. Chances are you’re going to get to do that at some point no matter what. The real question is what happens when you get there. And Strength of Schedule shows nothing about that, at least not if you have to emphasize it as one of the main reasons you’re going to make it.
That’s why I don’t tend to talk about SoS much. I acknowledge that it’ll come into play, but it’s not going to tell us what we really need to know. The Blazers themselves have already done that by putting themselves in a position where the Strength of Schedule discussion matters. If you have to ask, the answer is already no.
Rather than anticipating Portland beating weaker teams for the remainder of the season, we should be looking forward to a time where more of the schedule overall results in “W’s”. That’s how you’ll know they really made it.
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!
