Quality Wins and Bad Losses

 I'll be the first to admit this is completely subjective but based mostly on their current record, I split up the teams as such;

Quality Opponents

Cavs

Magic

Hawks

Celtics

Lakers

Nuggets

Mavs

Jazz

Spurs

Trailblazers

Suns

Medium Opponents

Raptors

Bobcats

Bulls

Heat

Hornets

Thunder

Grizzlies

Rockets

Clippers

Poor Opponents

Knicks

Wizards

76ers

Pacers

Pistons

Nets

Kings

Warriors

Timberwolves

Then I established the following criteria for a quality win;

Any win over a Quality Opponent.

Any win over a Medium Opponent on the road.

For a Poor Loss;

Any loss to a Poor Opponent.

Any loss to a Medium Opponent at home.

From this I found we have 2 Quality wins:

Nuggets

@ Grizzlies

And

5 Poor Losses

@76ers

@Wizards

@Pistons

Kings

Wizards

Incidentally, if you follow the formula and assume losses to the quality opponents and wins against the poor opponents, and splitting the medium opponents, the bucks would project to a 42-40 record.  Calculate in the 2 quality wins and the 5 poor losses and we’re looking at 39-43. 

So what does the future look like?

Well February looks promising.    Of our 14 games this month we have only 2 against Quality Opponents and 5 against Medium Opponents.  And of those 5 Mediums only 2 are on the road.    So is 10-4 realistic for February?  Probably not considering we only have 5 home games this month, but with the slew of low quality opponents there’s a great opportunity to make up some games.

March also looks good.  While there are 6 Quality opponents there are only 3 Medium opponents and all three will be played in Milwaukee, combine that with 10 home games for the month and that’s plenty of chances to steal some wins.

That being said, I think the most important thing for the Bucks to do is win the games they're supposed to win.    Maybe we can steal a quality win from someone but I believe avoiding those bad losses and taking care of business against those lower quality opponents will be the key to getting us back in the hunt.