ESPN.com
Monday, Nov. 25
The NBA, on this gloomy Monday, is in need of a feel-good story.
So we're going to do as much as we can.
The swift announcement Monday morning that Derrick Rose is indeed out for the season after another major knee injury, even if you were expecting Rose's surgery to produce such a dire diagnosis, hit the league hard. And seeing the Memphis Grizzlies lose Marc Gasol indefinitely to a knee injury of his own certainly didn't help, even though Gasol's will not require surgery.
The resulting hunt for something (anything) resembling a pick-me-up could take us only to Portland, where the Blazers have extended their improbable winning streak to a whopping 10 games, with three of the victories in a 4-0 week coming on the road.
The defending champs from Miami did nothing terribly wrong in the past seven days besides flirting Saturday night with a home loss to Orlando ... but your NBA Power Rankings committee (of one), in the circumstances, couldn't resist. The Blazers have been bumped up four spots to No. 3 in this week's most significant move in the top 10 -- one spot ahead of No. 4 Miami. This is partly a reward for giving us at least one upbeat headline to stack up against all the bad injury news, and also a result of the rampantly bad basketball coming from two-thirds of the Eastern Conference.
Meanwhile, the Grizzlies and Bulls have tumbled to No. 14 and No. 18, respectively, as a result of their huge personnel losses.
The latest rankings, as always, were compiled by the committee with the ever-helpful dishing that comes from ESPN Stats & Information and the Elias Sports Bureau. You can click here to rank the teams yourself until we return next Monday with a fresh 1-to-30 pulse take of the league.
| 2013-14 Power Rankings: Week 4 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |
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Last Week: 1 | Should I be harder on the Spurs than I've been when Tim Duncan continues to look so mortal and only three of their wins have come against teams with winning records? Or do you focus on the fact they sport the league's only double-digit nightly average point margin? See how hard this job is? | ||
| 2 |
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Last Week: 2 | You don't have to wait for the first Trimester Report of the new season to learn the identity of our Defensive Player of the First Trimester. Co-anchoring the league's No. 1 team D with Paul George, Indy's Roy Hibbert has already blocked at least five shots in seven of 13 games this season. | ||
| 3 | 4 Last Week: 7 | Sorry, folks. I've lost my appetite to focus on all the sub-.500 victims in Portland's 10-game winning streak, as we did extensively on the set of "NBA Coast to Coast" last Monday, because this little scheduling detail is important, too: Six of the Blazers' 10 straight wins were on the road. | ||
| 4 | 1 Last Week: 3 | While it sounds unimpressive that mighty Miami had to claw all the way back from a 16-point halftime deficit to Orlando (at home), consider the alternative. The champs have already absorbed stunning losses at Philly and at home to Boston by a mere five points combined, so this is ... progress? | ||
| 5 | 3 Last Week: 8 | Factoid: OKC awoke Monday as one of just five teams still unbeaten at home along with Indy, San Antonio, Dallas and Chicago. Comment: I think I like the decision to sit Westbrook against Utah as much as anything I've seen from the Thunder given how much they're asking KD and Russ to do nightly. | ||
| 6 | 2 Last Week: 4 | Though the D is still nowhere near what Doc Rivers hopes to see come playoff time, his Clippers coped with the rare five-game week pretty well considering how it started (a loss in a narrow heartbreaker at home to Memphis) and how it ended (waxing Chicago by 39). | ||
| 7 | 1 Last Week: 6 | The good stuff: Golden State is 8-2 when it has its full complement of players, and it looks like Klay Thompson has taken The Step. The worrisome stuff: Iguodala's hamstring injury could have been worse, true, but he's hardly the only banged-up Warrior as the Dubs prepare to play seven of eight away. | ||
| 8 | 2 Last Week: 10 | Wise move by the Rockets to grant James Harden some rest to deal with foot pain that's been bugging him since mid-October. Trickier to tackle when Harden gets back: Making sure Chandler Parsons, such a dangerous passer, sees enough of the ball as the Rockets' third option behind The Beard and Dwight. | ||
| 9 | 4 Last Week: 5 | Happy now, Wolves haters? Heard lots of Twitter noise -- much of it emanating from the Bay Area -- in protest of our crush on the Wolves that had them at No. 5 last week. Since then: Only a rout of bumbling Brooklyn prevented Minnesota from an 0-4 week heading into Monday's daunting visit to Indy. | ||
| 10 | 1 Last Week: 11 | Gotta go all the way back to 1999-2000 for the last time Dirk Nowitzki didn't lead the Mavs in scoring. Yet I assure you he's happier than anyone that Monta Ellis has been everything Dallas could have hoped for -- so far. For a long, long time, Dirk has wanted a sidekick who can get his own shot. | ||
| 11 | 2 Last Week: 13 | A bruised shin has robbed Phoenix of the electric Eric Bledsoe. So how do the Suns respond? By scratching out road wins in Charlotte and Orlando, naturally, when know-it-alls like us figured four losses in the previous five games -- by a mere 13 points combined -- would throw the kids for a loop. Nope. | ||
| 12 | 6 Last Week: 18 | Step 1 to being more Denver-like: The Nuggets are a tough out at home again after the highly uncharacteristic 0-2 start there. Another encouraging development: Kenneth Faried has responded to the trade speculation with six double-doubles in seven games ... after just one in the first five games. | ||
| 13 | 2 Last Week: 15 | Anthony Davis is the only player close to Hibbert in terms of games (five) with at least five blocks. Also: New Orleans' late rally over Cleveland marked its first win after trailing by 12 or more in the final five minutes of the fourth since Feb. 28, 2001 ... when the team was still located in Charlotte. | ||
| 14 | 2 Last Week: 12 | Just when they started to look like the Grizzlies again -- sweeping all four California teams in the space of six days -- Marc Gasol goes down on a Friday so demoralizing that Griz fans are actually celebrating because it's only a knee sprain expected to sideline the big man for two-ish months. | ||
| 15 | 2 Last Week: 17 | The Lakers were not expecting to be perched at .500 at this point with a few quality wins already ... and without seeing Kobe Bryant for a single second of game action yet. Pau Gasol is quietly heating up, too, having racked up eight double-doubles. He didn't do that last season until Feb. 1. | ||
| 16 | 2 Last Week: 14 | Only three teams in the East have winning records. Only four have positive nightly point differentials. So it's tough to hammer the Hawks too hard -- even after a disappointing home loss to Boston -- when they're on both short lists. Amid all those East underachievers, at least they're achieving. | ||
| 17 | 2 Last Week: 19 | Excitement about a 4-3 road record is understandable when it was 9-65 over the previous two seasons. It's especially understandable when your only frontcourt scorer (Al Jefferson) has been in and out of the lineup because of an ankle issue and your top scorer (Kemba Walker) shoots 37 percent from the field. | ||
| 18 | 9 Last Week: 9 | In the 12-year history of the Power Rankings committee (of one), I can't remember too many occasions we could post a positive comment here during one of the Bulls' infamous Circus Trips. Yet nothing rivals the utter sadness that has engulfed the franchise after what happened to Chicago native D-Rose in Portland on the heels of such a promising first half. | ||
| 19 | 3 Last Week: 16 | You keep saying that there's no way Evan Turner and Spencer Hawes can sustain this production-of-a-lifetime they've been giving Philly. Tony Wroten and James Anderson have predictably returned to Earth, but Turner and Hawes? Still producing. And so is MCW now that he's back from that foot ailment. | ||
| 20 | 4 Last Week: 24 | You hear a lot these days, living in Dallas, about how weak the NFC East is. Question from a novice: Do football fans make the same cracks about the NFC North? And a follow-up question, if I may: Please tell me you've seen what's happening in the NBA's Atlantic Division and those first-place Raps. | ||
| 21 | 2 Last Week: 23 | The weekend eruption netted only one win, because that's the sort of start it's been for Washington, but John Wall uncorked consecutive games with at least 30 points for the first time in his career. No Wizard had pulled that off since Antawn Jamison back in the first month of the 2007-08 season. | ||
| 22 | 2 Last Week: 20 | The fixation on Victor Oladipo's turnover numbers will only increase now that he's starting. But if he's tough enough to hold up psyche-wise through the rough nights, what's the sense in holding off any longer when he's clearly Orlando's future? Makes sense to us that Jacque Vaughn made the move. | ||
| 23 | 3 Last Week: 26 | Booed on his rough return to Atlanta, benched more than once already by new coach Maurice Cheeks and getting blitzed defensively when he's been lined up in the frontcourt alongside big men Andre Drummond and Greg Monroe. So I'm gonna say, no, Josh Smith won't be too sorry to see the back of November. | ||
| 24 | 4 Last Week: 28 | There's a reason you keep hearing that Sacramento's new management team is as eager as any team out there to make moves. I understand it even better now after seeing the Kings in person, because it's painful to watch Mike Malone's squad try to score no matter who starts around Boogie Cousins. | ||
| 25 | 2 Last Week: 27 | The schedule lightens up a little for the rest of the month after the Celts had to deal with the league's three hottest teams (Portland, San Antonio and Indiana) in the space of a week. The unexpected W in Atlanta halted a six-game skid and left us all confused yet again about what to make of the Hawks. | ||
| 26 | 4 Last Week: 22 | Wednesday ain't the best time to be welcoming free agent-to-be LeBron back home. Andrew Bynum just had a 16-point game in a blowout L to the Spurs, with Anthony Bennett finally tacking on a decent quarter, but those glimmers can't divert attention from all the tension (and rumbles of Kyrie frustration). | ||
| 27 | 2 Last Week: 25 | As if the Knicks' start hasn't been rough enough: They just went winless at home in November during what was seen as a friendly stretch of their schedule. Maybe the only source of comfort as Melo & Co. head West (gulp) is the fact that their buddies in Brooklyn are spiraling at a similar pace. | ||
| 28 | 7 Last Week: 21 | Not trying to diminish how dire the start has been, because it ranks as the biggest downer in the league this side of the latest D-Rose knee tragedy, but I will continue to say that all the issues we've seen so far pale in comparison to the fact that D-Will is still ailing. Until they get him right ... | ||
| 29 |
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Last Week: 29 | I'm trying to muster some sympathy for the Bucks, given their array of early-season injuries, but losing by 24 at home to a Charlotte team that, scrappy or not, absolutely cannot score is going to make you sink like a stone. Milwaukee would surely be No. 30 today if the Jazz weren't forcing our hand. | ||
| 30 |
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Last Week: 30 | Some of Utah's famously devoted fans have probably already heard this one, but for those who haven't: Elias says the Jazz are just the third team in history to start 1-13 (or worse) after finishing the previous season with a winning record (joining the '74-75 Bucks and '03-04 Magic). | ||
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