Game #62 Preview – Gonna Lose

Indiana Pacers @ Denver Nuggets
Friday, March 5th
9:00 pm EST
Pepsi Center
Denver, Colorado

I probably should explain a couple things.

First, the logo.  The team that you now know as the Denver Nuggets came into this world as the Denver Rockets of the ABA.  (Well, actually, they began life in Kansas City, then moved to Denver when they couldn’t get an arena, where they were originally called the Denver Larks.) Along with the Pacers, they were one of the premier franchises of that star-crossed (and still much-beloved) league, becoming one of the four teams absorbed into the NBA.  Their owner, Bill Ringsby,  (re)named the franchise to Rockets, and changed the color scheme to Orange and Black so as to match the logo and color scheme of his trucking lines – Ringsby System.

When the leagues merged in 1976, Denver was forced to change their name.  The NBA already had a Rockets, and they used the paper thin reasoning that Houston was “here first,” and that the city actually had a connection to the space program to demand that change.  Piffle.  I, personally, would have told the NBA, “We like our name, thank you very much, and that sounds like a ‘Y.P.,’ not an ‘M.P.’  But, alas, I wasn’t, so now we’re stuck with the Denver Nuggets and the Houston They’re-the-Ones-That-Should-Have-Been-Made-To-Change-Their-Names.

So, why do I mention this?  Because it’s quite possibly the only even vaguely interesting thing about this game.  Which brings me to the second thing that probably merits at least some explanation:  the Title.

Well, it’s pretty straight-forward.  The Pacers are gonna lose.  In fact, all the signs basically say, “The Pacers gonna lose baaaaaaad.”   Denver is pretty much everything that the Pacers are not:  big, strong, fast, athletic, balanced, and talented.   Indy’s best hope is that Denver is in a carnivore coma after devouring a much more respectable Oklahoma City team the other night in the Pepsi Center.  The Nugs led the up-and-coming Thunder by as many as 41 points.  If they put that kind of performance on this staggering and toothless Indiana team, the Pacers might actually just blink out of existence.

Look, I want the Pacers to win.  I want to be positive, and I really do feel kind of bad about being so dismissive of my team.  However, no matter how I look at it, I can only come to one conclusion.

Gonna Lose.

Tracking the Spitball

At the end of January, I did a piece that I entitled “Spitballing – Where the Pacers Will Finish.”  In it, I projected that the Pacers would win 11 of their final 35 games to finish 27-55.   The Pacers have played 14 games since that point, and you’ll be happy to know that they are exactly where I projected them to be at this point.  (Actually, you probably don’t care, but I’m going to pretend you’re thrilled, cuz…that’s pretty much all I got these days.)

The yellow line shows the actual progress of their winning percentage, while the blue is my projection.  As you can see, I’ve missed a couple wins, but they were offset by losses.  At this point, I might consider the 27 wins (requiring a 7-14 record) to be a tad optimistic.

Behind Enemy Lines

Wanna know more about the Denver Rock..errrr…Nuggets?  Go check out our THN friends at Roundball Mining Company.

Pacers@ Nuggets: By the Numbers

[TABLE=63]

No matter how much it currently feels like this is true, this can’t actually happen – I think.