Monday, November 9
Warriors as good as Jordan's Bulls?
Who knew that a Detroit Pistons at Golden State Warriors date in early November would be as must-see as Monday Night Football?
That's suddenly where we are in today's NBA, where Golden State and their fellow NBA Finals participants from Cleveland have vaulted to the top of ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings ... but where the upstart Detroit Pistons are an equally fun story as the scorching hot reigning champs.
Riding the devastating combo of Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson, Detroit is leading an early season Eastern Conference boom that also finds Atlanta and Toronto unexpectedly in our top six. Will it last? Are these just the sort of aberrations that the pre-Thanksgiving rankings tend to spit out? Let's see.
The Pistons will be visiting Oracle Arena on the second night of a back-to-back, so maybe we should be tempering expectations instead of hyping the game up, but the numbers coming from Drummond and Jackson these days means that you have to tune in Monday night when No. 1 plays host to No. 5.
We'll dig even deeper into the typical array of opening month ups and downs in our ladder, as always, via Stein Line Live, with the usual opportunity to comment on this week's 1-to-30 order also below. (Hat tip to ESPN Stats & Information and the Elias Sports Bureau for their ever-helpful dishing of data to assist the Committee of One in our computations.)
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 2 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
|
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Last Week: 1 | The focus and force Golden State is playing with is truly refreshing. We're conditioned to expect title-chasing teams to pace themselves for the long grind ahead. Instead folks are starting to throw around 70-win questions about the Dubs and openly wonder if Steph Curry, on pace for 445 3s this season, can make 500. | |
| 2 | 
| 1 Last Week: 3 | The Cavs' schedule is so favorable in these nascent days of the 82-game grind that we're inevitably drawn to LeBron's highlights and milestones as much as Kevin Love's increasing comfort level. Fresh off becoming the youngest 25,000-point man ever, King James will pass Jerry West for 19th in all-time scoring with 109 more points. | |
| 3 | 
| 6 Last Week: 9 | Perhaps it's not just Golden State using doubt from the outside to fuel itself. The Hawks have been dismissed by skeptics with far greater vigor than the Dubs but have quietly won seven in a row since their Opening Night home defeat to Detroit, resulting in the best launch seen in Atlanta since the 1997-98 squad started out 8-0. | |
| 4 | 
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Last Week: 4 | Only one team in the league has an average age above 29. That, of course, would be the Spurs, who sport an average age of 30.8 ... but also a 24-year-old named Kawhi Leonard who is poised to hike his scoring average noticeably for the fifth successive season (7.9 PPG, 11.9 PPG, 12.8 PPG, 16.5 PPG -- to 21.8 PPG as we speak). | |
| 5 | 
| 6 Last Week: 11 | What a timely tribute to the late, great Moses Malone. The Pistons' All-Star center -- yes, we're going to go ahead and put Andre Drummond on the East squad two Mondays into the season -- just became the first player to manufacture 90-plus points and 90-plus rebounds in his team's first five games since Moses did so in 1983-84. | |
| 6 | 
| 2 Last Week: 8 | Didn't take long for Toronto to make us nervous about our selection of Boston as a surprise preseason choice to win the Atlantic. The Raps' fourth-quarter play at both ends had been more dominant than anyone's through five games -- including Golden State's -- until the weekend trip to Florida dragged 'em back to Earth. | |
| 7 | 
| 2 Last Week: 5 | As aggrieved as the CP3-less Clips were by the errant goaltend call, it's a loss James Harden and Dwight Howard pinned on them as much as anything. They're the first duo since Dominique Wilkins and Kevin Willis in March 1993 in which one of the guys scored at least 45 points while the other totaled at least 20 points and 20 boards. | |
| 8 | 
| 6 Last Week: 2 | Struggling to pick between the Thunder and Bulls in terms of which team can claim to be the first we jinxed this season. Though OKC's schedule certainly wasn't very friendly in the past week, its frailties on D (and, yes, some bogged-down O) suggest that we might have bumped them into the upper crust the rankings too quickly. | |
| 9 | 
| 2 Last Week: 7 | You know us. We'd rather use to allotted space to just talk about how the Heat had five lefties on the floor together last Tuesday night. The problem: Hassan Whiteside won't let us. The pace he's quickly set has Whiteside threatening to be the first player who averages 15-plus points, 11-plus boards and 3-plus blocks since ... Shaq in 1999-2000. | |
| 10 | 
| 5 Last Week: 15 | In Houston's first three games, James Harden scored slightly more than 20 percent of the Rockets' points. In the next four, all wins, Harden scored 33.9 percent of the Rockets' points. You figure better balance is preferable in the long term, but Houston's launch was so rough that multiple wins were needed by any means necessary. | |
| 11 | 
| 2 Last Week: 13 | Playing that stubbornly slow pace and typically sticky D, combined with a fairly favorable early schedule, has the Jazz looking like the tough out most expected. They don't have Gordon Hayward going yet, though, so consider that a priority as Utah undertakes a pretty challenging four-game swing through the East this week. | |
| 12 | 
| 6 Last Week: 6 | Thursday's home win over Oklahoma City is one of the standouts for an Eastern Conference that's off to a surprising 14-12 start in head-to-head matchups against the West. Otherwise? A dire week for rookie coach Fred Hoiberg, seeing his team surrender 130 points in Charlotte and then go scoreless at home in OT against Minnesota. | |
| 13 | 
| 1 Last Week: 12 | Props to my NBA.com counterpart John Schuhmann for pointing out that the Wiz, in an odd bit of scheduling, play only four games in the next 15 days. The first of those four, mind you, just might be the most anticipated home game of the regular season: Tuesday's opportunity to host future target and lifelong DC sports fan Kevin Durant. | |
| 14 | 
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Last Week: 14 | Suggestions that the Celts might be next in line to mimic Atlanta's (relatively) starless blueprint for success appear to be a touch premature. Boston's starters are averaging just 52.4 PPG to rank 29th overall, though they did make the Wiz look rather Jekyll-and-Hyde-ish by routing them two days after the Wiz stunned the Spurs. | |
| 15 | 
| 6 Last Week: 21 | Good bounce-back week after those three agonizing Week 1 losses by a total of nine points. The Magic dragged the Rockets to OT in Houston, had the honor of halting Toronto's 5-0 start and enjoyed a much-needed Elfrid Payton sighting Saturday night in Philly. Of prime importance, of course, is getting Nik Vucevic's knee right. | |
| 16 | 
| 4 Last Week: 20 | The cushiest of weeks schedule-wise enabled the Bucks to rack up four consecutive Ws and, more importantly, enjoy a modicum of defensive success. The reality, of course, is that the O is way ahead of the D, mostly thanks to the suddenly stat-stuffing Giannis Antetokounmpo and Greg Monroe's robust PER of 25.6 out of the gate. | |
| 17 | 
| 7 Last Week: 10 | You have a feel for what's going on in Memphis if you read Friday's Son of Weekend Dime. The biggest hint that there's behind-the-scenes drama here: A team that has Tony Allen, Marc Gasol, Mike Conley and Courtney Lee in the starting five can't sink to the league's bottom five on D and not raise numerous eyebrows. | |
| 18 | 
| 2 Last Week: 16 | Buckle up for Vengeance Wednesday, with DeAndre Jordan making his first appearance in Dallas since July's unforgettable drama รข¬¦ with LaMarcus Aldridge's first game in Portland as a Spur to follow. The Big D scene figures to contend for the NBA's saltiest grudge-match game since LeBron's first visit to Cleveland in Heat colors on Dec. 2, 2010. | |
| 19 | 
| 6 Last Week: 25 | One thing the Pacers can still count on in these uncertain times: Beating Miami at home. Indy has now won eight in a row against the visiting Heat in the regular season after Friday night's proceedings. I honestly didn't like the unis from Hoosiers as much as I anticipated -- but who cares? Paul George is starting to look like Paul George again. | |
| 20 | 
| 7 Last Week: 27 | There's an argument to be made that C.J. McCollum was drafted too high and is a little bit too young to be such a MIP favorite, since a top-10 pick is supposed to blossom like this. But we saw so little of him in those first two seasons that you can't ignore such a leap. Last season, remember, McCollum had three 20-point games total. | |
| 21 | 
| 5 Last Week: 26 | The committee, for what it's worth, is just fine with Jeremy Lin's ultra-spiked hair. Don't think the Hornets are paying too much attention to the haters in any case after responding to those two narrow losses to Atlanta by hanging 130 points on Chicago and beating a Dirk Nowitzki-led Mavs team in Dallas for the first time in 15 tries. | |
| 22 | 
| 5 Last Week: 17 | As Yogi Berra might have said: It gets late real early in the Western Conference. Fears that the Pelicans' many injuries are already stuffing them into a potentially fatal hole seem to be justified given recent history, which tells us that the last team to start 0-6 and still make the West playoffs was the Phoenix Suns way back in 1996-97. | |
| 23 | 
| 5 Last Week: 18 | The wins have been on the unremarkable side so far; home and road triumphs over the Blazers and a rout of the DeMarcus Cousins-less Kings. The last couple games, though, have been extra edgy, with Detroit's Marcus Morris getting into it with Suns fans and Eric Bledsoe and Kevin Durant trading lots of trash talk. | |
| 24 | 
| 5 Last Week: 19 | The Knicks, even at a game under .500, must be feeling triumphant to see that Kristaps Porzingis is already starting to win some skeptics over. He's got a higher PER than Carmelo Anthony through six games (20.1 to 19.8) and looks like New York's most effective rookie they've drafted since a center named Patrick Ewing in 1985. | |
| 25 | 
| 2 Last Week: 23 | You'd be hearing more about Andrew Wiggins' early shooting woes if Karl-Anthony Towns wasn't making rookie history on a weekly basis and making know-it-alls like me regret not tabbing him as the preseason ROY. In case you haven't heard yet: Towns is the first NBA teen ever with three double-doubles in his first five games. | |
| 26 | 
| 2 Last Week: 24 | Injuries along the front line have left the Nuggets even smaller than normal lately. The closest thing we can muster to a consolation: Kenneth Faried, like Hassan Whiteside, is not far off joining Andre Drummond, Kevin Love, Dwight Howard and DeMarcus Cousins on the short list of 15-and-10 guys in the league at the moment. | |
| 27 | 
| 5 Last Week: 22 | Based on records from last season, only New Orleans and Memphis face a harder schedule in the first 10 games of the season than the Kings, who play Toronto in their 11th game and haven't had DeMarcus Cousins for the last four. So we're going to tone down our glee about Omri Casspi's 3-point shooting until things perk up a bit. | |
| 28 | 
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Last Week: 28 | A win Friday night in Brooklyn allowed the Lakers to dodge a second consecutive 0-5 start -- after they avoided 0-5 starts every season between 1958-59 and 2013-14. The real trouble for Kobe & Co. is that the schedule has been on the soft side so far. Six road games remain this month, with the first eight in December also away. | |
| 29 | 
| 1 Last Week: 30 | We normally don't offer a lot of fantasy advice in this cyberspace, but allow us to make you aware of Sixers rook T.J. McConnell -- and maybe distract you from Philly's latest looming disaster -- if you aren't already. He's the first player in history, somehow, to ring up at least 12 assists in two of the first four NBA games he's played. | |
| 30 | 
| 1 Last Week: 29 | You're always quick to tell us when our preseason forecasts appear to miss the mark -- Raptors and Blazers fans, in particular, come to mind at the minute -- but you gotta admit we were well ahead of the pack in projecting Brooklyn's plummet from the playoffs straight into our bottom five. Where do you see a win on the schedule? | |
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Mark Gorrow ·
Timberwolves
up 30 on the 3rd ranked Hawks at halftime. Good call on ranking a
Timberwolves team with a winning record behind a winless Pelicans team.
Tony Stevenson ·
And
they almost blew it. Still a great game and the Wolves pulled it off
strong at the end. Wiggins looked like a superstar in that game.
Frank North ·
lol I'm just glad he called out Wiggins and his "shooting woes" smile emoticon
 
Aaron Weber ·
Wow,
no love for the TWolves! Behind 8 under .500 teams including 1 winless
team. Not saying they are a top 10 team but at least middle of the pack
right now. Towns seems legit and Wiggins just put up 31 against the
Bulls.. I think he'll be ok Marc.
Eric Olson ·
I
agree. The Wolves are getting no love from ESPN. I thought this last
week too. After beating Chicago on the road I was expecting maybe ranked
like 18th or so. I wasn't expecting ESPN to be this far off. Just
because they call themselves experts means they know what they're
talking about, they obviously have their biases, even if they don't
realize it.
Aaron Weber ·
Eric
Olson Thats what I was thinking, 15-17 range. Not that it matters at
all but just not sure how you justify putting an 0-6 team 3 spots above a
3-2 team
Jack Goodman
Agreed
it seems low but early in the season but if Towns continues his rookie
tear they will be leapfrogging some of the preseason favs!
Mitchell Enderson
I was just about to comment, but then noticed you had already posted what I was going to say
Josh Voelker ·
What I've learned about being a Warriors fan , when your team has been bad for so long it takes awhile to gain respect.
Eric Olson ·
Josh,
I think you are right. I still can't believe people were writing the
Warriors even after they won the championship calling them lucky, etc.
That's got to be pretty annoying to hear.
Aaron Weber ·
Marc Stein; Flip and the man upstairs would like a word about these rankings when you get a chance.
Johnny Cee ·
They're gonna next week. They're blowing out Atlanta by 30
Matt Jones
It's
early and they're power rankings. Usually MN fans let homerism prompt
them to complain about where their team is ranked despite it being fair
when viewed objectively.
With that being said and as a fellow TWolves fan they should've cracked the top 20. No worries, I don't care...the realization that a team I thought might reach and hit 35 wins looks like a potential dark horse playoff team with the early struggles in the West. The wolves look good enough to compete! They're going to take some lumps from inexperience but they're learning quick with their veteran leadership and solid coaching with Sam Mitchell. Who gives a rats azz about power rankings, look at the standings my friend! 
Eddie Chisham ·
Kindly
explain the raionale of the Wolves being 25 with 10 teams with worse
records ahead of them. Don't use past seasons as an explanation. We
should certainly be ahead of the 0-6 Anthony Davises (oops, I mean
Pelicans).
James Quirk ·
Yikes!
The Timberwoles have a winning record but are ranked three spots lower
than the winless Pelicans?? Who does these lists?
Mike Hendersen ·
Works at Amazon Fulfillment Tracy
People who don't think the Timberwolves can beat the Pelicans.
Gabriel Mihdawi
The Pelicans can't beat anyone. The preseason Davis for MVP chatter is already dead.
Michael Carruth ·
Umm he is alone till some talent comes back Gabriel
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