40 at 40: How many of the remaining 40 games do the Utah Jazz win in 2013-2014

The Utah Jazz have 40 games left to play this season spaced out over only 86 more days (sads...). The Jazz will play some teams gearing up for the playoffs, and some teams with nothing let to play for. I am going to assume that the Jazz will beat every team they play against who are tanking. (Just to humor myself). And I'm going to assume the Jazz play .500 ball against the rest of the teams. Except, of course, the best teams, which I will assume a loss. So what could our final 40 games of the season look like?

This starts tonight with this group:

There are eight teams going for it, and none tanking. The hard games will be against the Warriors, Clippers, Mavs, and Heat. I say we lose all of the hard games, so four losses there. There are four games against teams going for it, and we're saying we go .500 on those, so we end up with 2 wins and 6 losses in the first 20 night block.

This next group has seven teams going for it, and one tanking. I'm putting the tank games in the bank, so that's one win there. There are two teams that will be hard for us, Nets and Blazers. So that's two losses. There are five remaining games, and if we go .500 we can't split games, so I say 3 wins and 2 losses. So that adds up to a 4-4 20 night set. Combine it with the previous 20 nights and we're now 6-10.

Now things get really bad for us on the road. Nine of these teams are going for it, and 2 are tanking. So that's 2 more wins. But we play hard games against the Pacers, Knicks (they will be playing better and we never win there), Mavs, Clippers, Spurs, Rockets, and Grizz. That's seven losses. If we go .500 against the others that's another win and another loss: 3-8. Add it up and we're at 9-18. Home stretch coming on.

These are the last 13 games of the year, and only one team is tanking, so put that in the bank. Of the remaining 12 games I think 7 will be hard. The remaining 5 games will have us going .500, but it's an odd number so we get payback from that previous section -- Jazz go 2-3 there. So in total that's 3 more wins, and 10 losses. Put it all together I have the Jazz going 12-28.

Just by fooling around that's what I have. There's no way we'll lose every hard game, no way we'll beat every team I think is tanking, and it'll be very hard to go .500 against the rest of the league. I think the Jazz are likely to win more than 12 of their next 40 games. So I'd say this quick and dry method is a little too quick and dry. After all, I really have no clue which teams will and will not be tanking 70 nights from now.

If you look at this we'd finish the season with 26 wins, and 56 losses. That would be the same record that we finished with the season before we got Deron Williams (a legit star player, and All-NBA / Olympian) in the draft. Let's use that as the baseline then. If we finish with 12 more wins and get an All-NBA player out of it I won't be mad.