Monday, Dec. 21
The Usual Suspects atop the NBA Power Rankings
Yet as we inch toward Christmas Day, we actually have two teams that are currently in the 13s with one-third of the regular season gone: No. 1 Golden State (plus-13.4) and No. 2 San Antonio (plus-13.2).
So you can easily understand why there might be even greater anticipation around the league surrounding the Jan. 25 showdown between the Warriors and Spurs in Oakland, California, than what's being generated by Friday's NBA Finals Rematch Bowl pitting the Warriors against LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers. Sad but true: We have to wait another full month before we can get the only two teams in the league ranked in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency in the same building.
We'll expound further on how we conceived this week's order, as always, via Stein Line Live. Profuse thanks and hearty holiday wishes to the Committee of One's dear friends within the NBA wing of ESPN Stats & Info, as well as the Elias Sports Bureau, for the priceless data assistance they consistently provide to help us in our calculations. You can comment on the latest 1-to-30 ladder below.
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 8 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
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Last Week: 1 | ESPN's trusty Basketball Power Index pegs the Dubs as 77.7 percent likely to beat Cleveland on Christmas ... but only 30.3 percent likely to win 72 games. That's despite the fact Golden State, as our Warriors Watch tracker confirms, are two games ahead of Chicago's 1995-96 pace. A win over Utah Wednesday clinches the best record at Christmas we've ever seen. | |
| 2 | 
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Last Week: 2 | Given how much "no one's talking about the Spurs chatter" we've heard in the last week, I'm not sure Pop & Co. can claim that they're still under the radar. But what do you expect when they boast a tidy 15-0 home record? It ranks as the best home start we've seen from a team out West since the 1988-89 Lakers opened up at 17-0. | |
| 3 | 
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Last Week: 3 | Since the arrival of Timofey Mozgov last January, Cleveland is 34-4 in games when Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love have flanked LeBron James in the starting lineup. And now that's how the Cavs will set up when Bron, in his seventh Christmas Day game on the road, leads the visitors' bid to finally drag Golden State a touch closer to the rest of the pack. | |
| 4 | 
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Last Week: 4 | Stat that might surprise you: LeBron James upped his career record in head-to-head showdowns with Kevin Durant (NBA Finals included) to 16-4 when the Cavs narrowly held off OKC last week. On the plus side: Russell Westbrook (30.2) and KD (29.4) are Nos. 2 and 3 in PER this season, trailing only Steph Curry (33.1) and ahead of LeBron (27.5). | |
| 5 | 
| 4 Last Week: 9 | Not sure you'll see a more dramatic turnaround all season than what the Pacers served up a week ago on Monday night mere hours after the rankings hit cyberspace. From 26-5 down, Indiana uncorked a 47-15 response heading into halftime that left visiting Toronto reeling and set the tone for an encouraging 3-1 week. | |
| 6 | 
| 4 Last Week: 10 | It's one of the stranger stats of the season so far: Miami is 8-9 against the rest of the East ... and 8-1 against West teams. And while Hassan Whiteside, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are all sporting a PER in the 20s, Goran Dragic remains at 13.2, while also suddenly smarting from a lost tooth and an ejection as he continues to try to mesh with D-Wade. | |
| 7 | 
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Last Week: 7 | All it took to get us to stop obsessing about Jeremy Lin's hair was a 35-point eruption against Toronto that looked like vintage Linsanity from the winter of 2012. That win, however briefly, nudged the Hornets five games over .500, at least 25 games into the season, for just the second time since Charlotte regained its status as an NBA city in 2004-05. | |
| 8 | 
| 3 Last Week: 5 | Rough week for the Raps. On top of that unpleasant fall-from-ahead trip to Indy detailed in the Pacers' space, Toronto also had to stomach the DeMar DeRozan game winner that wasn't in what became an agonizing OT loss to one of the league's best home teams, as well as Kyle Lowry's 14 missed 3-pointers in the same game. | |
| 9 | 
| 3 Last Week: 12 | Can't sum things up much neater than our pal Kevin Arnovitz did. The Hawks are superior to the opposition in eFG percentage, assists per game, getting to the line and limiting turnovers. But the Hawks' issues on the boards, as mentioned here last week, are largely why they're on a 48-win pace in the wake of last season's 60-22 mark. | |
| 10 | 
| 4 Last Week: 6 | The response to a near-upset of Golden State was initially encouraging, thanks to a quality win at Charlotte, but the Celts have since slumped to an 0-3 week against quality opposition for their first three-game skid since the season's opening week. Boston is 13-2 when it keeps the opposition under 100 points and just 1-11 when it can't. | |
| 11 | 
| 3 Last Week: 8 | The Bulls are 14-1 when they hold the opposition under triple digits ... and 1-9 otherwise. They're also under the microscope as much as any team in the league one-third of the way into the schedule after Jimmy Butler responded to a very predictable loss in New York -- on the heels of that four-OT loss to Detroit -- by calling out his new coach. | |
| 12 | 
| 1 Last Week: 13 | Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of Stan Van Gundy's decision to outright release Josh Smith with two years and $26 million left on his contract. Those Pistons were at their 5-23 nadir at the time and are 43-39 since, peeking over .500 thanks in part to their East-leading three wins in OT after that marathon they won in Chicago. | |
| 13 | 
| 2 Last Week: 11 | If the Clips want to make a fivesome of ESPN.com panelists eat their words, it would certainly help if they finally find a productive small forward. You presumably knew it was bad, but Doc Rivers' starters at SF are averaging 5.0 PPG (last in the league), 3.0 RPG (tied for last), 1.1 APG (25th) and just 21.5 minutes per game (29th). | |
| 14 | 
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Last Week: 14 | Although Dirk Nowitzki has slipped some from his early 50/40/90 pace, Dallas wouldn't dare quibble with what it's getting from its ageless King of the One-Legged Stepback. The Mavs also awoke Monday as one of just seven teams with a winning record on the road, alongside Golden State, San Antonio, Toronto, Atlanta, Boston and Minnesota. | |
| 15 | 
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Last Week: 15 | The West amazingly has only two teams at the minute with winning records against .500-or-better opposition, but the Rockets have quietly inched as close to break even as anyone else in the conference at 6-8. We might need the rest of the season, though, to figure out how these guys went 0-5 against Denver and Brooklyn. | |
| 16 | 
| 1 Last Week: 17 | The Sixers (with eight) and Lakers (six) are the only teams in the league with more losses by 20-plus points than the Grizzlies (five). Some good news, though: Since taking some early jabs about his conditioning compared to the ultra-sleek Marc Gasol seen last season, Big Spain has three 15-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist games this month. | |
| 17 | 
| 1 Last Week: 18 | The Magic are guaranteed to have a winning record at Christmas, which was predicted by pretty much no one we can remember. The last month-plus, though, hasn't been nearly as enjoyable for Evan Fournier as the first few weeks of upstart Orlando's season. After averaging 19.2 PPG in his first 13 games, Fournier is at 9.6 PPG in the 14 since. | |
| 18 | 
| 4 Last Week: 22 | Another week of off-target shooting from Kristaps Porzingis didn't get in the Knicks' way. They took what they got from the rook -- most notably seven blocked shots against Minnesota -- and stretched their win streak to four anyway thanks in part to the spark they're getting from Arron Afflalo, who's shooting 55 percent in December. | |
| 19 | 
| 3 Last Week: 16 | Nothing illuminates the underwhelming state of today's West quite like the Jazz, who are still clinging to the No. 8 spot despite sinking to three games below .500 at 3-8 without Rudy Gobert. The consensus among the staff, however, remains that -- in spite of what we just wrote here -- that all this "East is back" talk has been exaggerated. | |
| 20 | 
| 1 Last Week: 21 | In its Nov. 4 home win over the Spurs, Washington became one of just five teams this season to crack triple digits against San Antonio. But the Wiz paid the price last week in a 19-point drubbing in the Alamo City and, despite a nice bounce-back win at home over Charlotte, remain the only sub-.500 team in their division. | |
| 21 | 
| 1 Last Week: 20 | The Bucks remain the only team on Planet Hoop to have beaten Golden State. In two games with the Dubs, furthermore, they've trailed for only 11 of 96 minutes. So you can't help asking, even amid the tough news that Jason Kidd needs hip surgery and is out indefinitely, where have those Bucks have been for the bulk of the other 27 games? | |
| 22 | 
| 3 Last Week: 19 | The Suns are 5-12 since their 7-5 start. And they're 0-10 when they fail to crack the 100-point barrier. Eric Bledsoe and Brandon Knight are one of just three tag teams in the league in which both players are averaging at least 20 PPG and 5 APG ... but here's the flip side: Phoenix's frontcourt is last in the league at 24.8 PPG. | |
| 23 | 
| 2 Last Week: 25 | This is our 10th opportunity of the season to comment on the Kings. Rather amazingly, Omri Casspi has been mentioned only once in the previous nine comments. But you'll have to indulge us this week after we clicked on the 3-point percentage leaders and found OC tied for fifth among qualified shooters ... with a certain Steph Curry. | |
| 24 | 
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Last Week: 24 | Last Wednesday in Utah marked the first time in 26 tries that the Pels won a game when trailing after three quarters. It appears that wasn't the turning point to their season, either, given Alvin Gentry's reaction to what happened in Phoenix, but a 2-2 week -- all on the road -- might well rank as the best week of the season so far for The Brow & Co. | |
| 25 | 
| 2 Last Week: 27 | A win in Sacramento on the day after Thanksgiving nudged the young Wolves to a surprising 8-8. Minnesota then dropped eight of nine before finally bouncing back this past weekend with another W over the Kings and Sunday's Karl-Anthony Towns-led triumph at Brooklyn. KAT's PER is 22.6; K. Porzingis is next in line among ROY contenders at 18.2. | |
| 26 | 
| 2 Last Week: 28 | Isaiah Thomas' move to the starting lineup in Boston has opened things up in the NBA Sixth Man Award hunt for upstarts like Will Barton. Ryan Anderson has the slight edge in the race, but Anderson and his Pels were on the receiving end of Barton's career-high 32 points on the same night Danilo Gallinari suffered a sprained ankle. | |
| 27 | 
| 4 Last Week: 23 | A long road trip with two more stops to go is going to feel a lot longer if the plantar fasciitis plaguing Damian Lillard in his left heel, as he revealed Sunday night, gets any worse. Another problem: Portland generally has to get to 105 points to put itself in position to win. The Blazers are 10-3 when they get there ... 1-15 when they don't. | |
| 28 | 
| 2 Last Week: 26 | With the Nets lumped into the league's bottom three along with the Lakers and Sixers -- and no games left this season against the Rockets after stunning them twice -- there's not much else to track right now beyond Joe Johnson's .360 shooting. He has been below 40 percent only once previously (.397 in 2002-03) in a 15-year career. | |
| 29 | 
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Last Week: 29 | With little hope of fanfare on an NFL Sunday, we quietly lit candles anyway at Stein Line HQ to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant's 62 points-in-three quarters show against Dallas on Dec. 20, 2005. Kobe also just had a five-game stretch in which his PER was a robust 24.0, after a mere 9.2 reading through his first 17 games. | |
| 30 | 
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Last Week: 30 | For those of you still brave enough to be keeping track, Philly has made two splashy hires this month in Jerry Colangelo and Mike D'Antoni to go with its solitary win in 29 games. No team has ever waited longer for win No. 2, with the Sixers' home loss Sunday to Cleveland bumping six previous 2-27 squads out of the record books. | |
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