Monday, March 24
Week:
Team:
Spurs Back On Top Power Rankings
It took months of hard work, but the Spurs are finally back at No. 1 on Marc Stein's list.
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Having stretched its current winning streak to 13 games -- and needing just a win in Monday night's gimme against Philly to record the longest unbeaten run in the regular season since Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan joined forces in 1997-98 -- San Antonio has moved into the top spot here for the first time since Week 4 and the third time overall this season.
Further explanation behind this week's order can be found on Stein Line Live. You're also invited to rank the teams here yourself.
| 2013-14 Power Rankings: Week 21 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 1 Last Week: 2 | One more win and the Spurs will have their longest winning streak in the Duncan-and-Pop Era. San Antonio is also the West's first team to clinch a playoff spot and ranks first in two more telling categories, sporting a 12-4 record in the second game of back-to-backs and a road record of 27-8. | ||
| 2 | 1 Last Week: 1 | J.J. Redick is back at practice, raising hope that the Clips will see him again this season and softening the blow after the ol' Power Rankings Jinx struck again. No word yet when Redick might return for real, but you'd swap the No. 1 slot for your best shooter every day. And twice on Mondays. | ||
| 3 | 3 Last Week: 6 | Kevin Durant just became the first player since Larry Bird in 1987-88 to amass at least 35 points, 10 boards and five assists in three successive games. And I promise you that it's all truly secondary to the news that Russell Westbrook really seems to be OK after that collision with Kyle Lowry. | ||
| 4 |
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Last Week: 4 | The sense I get is that the Rockets are being extra cautious with Dwight Howard's ankle injury as opposed to being super concerned about it. And thanks to last week's favorable schedule -- which you can review by clicking here -- Houston happily managed to go 3-0 without him anyway. | ||
| 5 | 2 Last Week: 3 | Welcome to the first sub-.500 month (6-7) in the four-season history of the Heatles. The Pacers keep giving Miami openings to swipe the No. 1 seed, but the Heat keep refusing them. Maybe both teams need the jolt sure to come from their two showdowns within the next 19 days. | ||
| 6 | 1 Last Week: 5 | A week that (A) featured a home win over Chicago and (B) officially made this team Indy's first 50-win squad since the 2003-04 season nonetheless saw the Pacers hit season lows in collective confidence and morale. The fact that Andrew Bynum's knees lasted only two games doesn't help. | ||
| 7 | 1 Last Week: 8 | With the Grizz up to nine straight wins at home, an interesting conspiracy theory question is making the rounds: Won't the West's top seeds look to help Dallas and/or Phoenix down the stretch -- if they possibly can -- to make it as hard on Memphis as possible to finish seventh or eighth? | ||
| 8 | 1 Last Week: 9 | Only Indy, amazingly, has held more teams below 40 percent shooting than the Dubs' 24. What they need now, though, is a healed-up Andre Iguodala. Maybe this cushy stretch coming up, starting with a five-day layoff and serving up only three games total in 10 days, can get him right. | ||
| 9 | 2 Last Week: 7 | The Bulls have actually been slightly more pedestrian this month than advertised at a modest 7-5, but Joakim Noah's stat line since the All-Star break -- 14.0 PPG, 10.5 RPG and 6.8 APG -- tends to distract you. (Before the break, for the record, Noah was at 11.9 PPG, 11.5 RPG and 4.4 APG.) | ||
| 10 | 3 Last Week: 13 | The Desert Cinderellas, thanks to their amazing comeback in Minnesota, are on pace for 48 wins. Memphis and Dallas are on pace for 49. The message, then, as we touched on in the Mavs' comment: You better win 50 games if you want to be sure to make it to the playoffs in this West. | ||
| 11 | 4 Last Week: 15 | No one can tell you when Kevin Garnett and his bad back will be back in the lineup, and Andrei Kirilenko is ailing anew after tweaking an ankle. But the five-game Atlantic Division deficit faced by the small-balling Nets when 2014 began is down to a game and a half thanks to this 11-2 surge. | ||
| 12 | 1 Last Week: 11 | How many more 30-point games does DeMar DeRozan have to ring up -- he's up to 15 after entering his fifth season with 12 lifetime -- before folks start saying he's underpaid at $9.5 million annually? Or are we already there after DeRozan broke through to become an All-Star this season? | ||
| 13 | 3 Last Week: 10 | The favorable half of the Mavs' eight-game homestand, lowlighted by painful OT losses to Minnesota and Brooklyn, is already gone. OKC and the Clippers are the next two teams to visit with the reality starting to set in that it might take 50 wins just to snag a playoff spot in the West. | ||
| 14 | 2 Last Week: 12 | Losing five of eight, after winning eight of the previous nine games, has exposed the Nene-less Wiz to possible slippage down to the East's No. 7 seed. Rest assured both Washington and Charlotte lust for the No. 6 seed no matter how supposedly shaky Indy and Miami are looking lately. | ||
| 15 | 1 Last Week: 14 | Let's hope Greg Oden really does start at center for Miami on Monday night against his old friends from Portland. It would surely be good for Blazermaniacs to focus on something else besides this ongoing slide since the All-Star break toward Everyone Wants 'Em In The First Round status. | ||
| 16 |
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Last Week: 16 | Would a spot on the All-NBA third team make up for Al Jefferson's All-Star snub? Don't know that Big Al would see it the same way, since making the trip to All-Star Weekend is generally regarded as the more prestigious honor, but he keeps pump-faking into contention for an All-NBA spot. | ||
| 17 | 2 Last Week: 19 | Elias announced Thursday that only one team in the 30-year history of the current playoff format has erased a four-game deficit with 14 games to go to make the playoffs like the Knicks are trying to pull off. Sunday night's collapse at home to Cleveland raised the volume on the skepticism. | ||
| 18 |
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Last Week: 18 | You can see in last week's Clips comment that the committee (of one) had a feeling Denver might knock the new No. 1 off its perch. Not that you'll find anyone celebrating there after J.J. Hickson joined JaVale McGee, Danilo Gallinari and Nate Robinson on its list of season-ending injuries. | ||
| 19 | 2 Last Week: 17 | Squandering all of a 22-point lead in Dallas and still finding a way to eke out an OT win had us buying into the notion that the Wolves might still have time to change their playoff destiny. Which is another way of saying: Gullible us. Blowing a 22-point lead at home to Phoenix took care of that. | ||
| 20 |
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Last Week: 20 | Their ever-shrinking lead over the Knicks was nearly sliced to two games before the first down day of the Phil Jackson Era saw New York blow a 15-point lead at home to Cleveland. The Hawks, though, are coping with yet another man down thanks to sharpshooter Kyle Korver's back woes. | ||
| 21 | 1 Last Week: 22 | In a season where so little has gone right, here's some salvation for the Pels: Anthony Davis' eruption over his last eight games (32.3 PPG, 13.5 RPG, 2.5 BPG) is even better when you remember he hurt his shoulder in Dallas on Feb. 26. He quickly got over this injury, then launched this tear. | ||
| 22 | 1 Last Week: 21 | Playing spoiler (like they did Sunday night in New York) and rooting like mad for the Sixers to lose three more games (so Philly can inherit the longest losing streak in NBA history) is really all that's left for the Kyrie-less Cavs after five straight home losses wiped out that 8-6 February. | ||
| 23 |
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Last Week: 23 | When committee (of one) fave Vlade Divac is spotted at a Kings game sitting courtside -- especially after what he's been through -- we must devote this humble slice of cyberspace to the legendary No. 21. Normal service, in terms of Kings commentary, will resume here next Monday. | ||
| 24 | 1 Last Week: 25 | Sobering thought of the week from Lakerland: It'll be almost three full calendar years since Kobe Bryant last appeared in a playoff game by the time we see him again in the postseason ... and that's only if next season's Kobe-led Lakers have indeed made it back to the West's top eight. | ||
| 25 | 2 Last Week: 27 | Pretty much everyone significant who was allowed to leave the Jazz last summer -- Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap and, most notably, Jeff Hornacek -- is flourishing with their new teams. Instinct tells me this is not a development that has escaped the attention of the die-hards in SLC. | ||
| 26 | 2 Last Week: 24 | The Pistons have lost 13 consecutive road games for the first time since 1980-81, when this franchise was in the pre-Isiah Thomas doldrums. Worse yet: Detroit has to embrace this funk because finishing outside of the lottery's top eight means surrendering its first-round pick to Charlotte. | ||
| 27 | 1 Last Week: 26 | In case you're wondering about that St. Patrick's Day date with the Celtics that we missed out on -- or the limits of what holiday karma can really do for the C's -- be advised that Boston's loss that night in Dallas clinched the Celts' first 0-15 road record against the West in franchise history. | ||
| 28 |
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Last Week: 28 | The point that I inelegantly tried to make in last week's poorly constructed Utah comment was simply this: Neither Victor Oladipo's team, nor Troy Burke's, is playing well enough for us to start docking points from Michael Carter-Williams' Rookie of the Year case, or to blindly elevate them. | ||
| 29 |
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Last Week: 29 | Don't put all the blame on the Sixers. They justifiably get most of it, but the Bucks and Magic are a combined 2-21 in March, with Milwaukee's lone win coming at Orlando's expense ... and Orlando's notched against Philly. It's grim down here, folks. The Greek Freak can only mask so much. | ||
| 30 |
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Last Week: 30 | The folks at numberFire give the Sixers a 15.2 percent chance of winning Monday in San Antonio, a 16 percent chance Thursday in Houston and a 41.8 percent shot Saturday at home against Detroit. (I, like you, thought that number against the Spurs would be about 14 percent lower.) | ||
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