Monday, Dec. 28
Warriors streaking, Cavs skidding
Wins in all of the Warriors remaining games in 2015 would nudge them to a tidy 31-1 and smash the league record for the best winning percentage ever recorded entering New Year's Day, ahead of both the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers (36-3, .923) and the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers (35-3, .921).
The Warriors, for the record, think they can play much better than they have over the past 10 games or so, which isn't exactly an outlandish claim given that front-court star Harrison Barnes -- as well as head coach Steve Kerr -- are nearing returns to active duty.
ESPN's Basketball Power Index now rates the Warriors as 62.3 percent likely to win 70 games and 33.4 percent likely to match the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls' all-time best 72 wins. Bear in mind, though, that merely repeating last season's 67 wins would clinch the baseball equivalent of consecutive 130-win seasons for Golden State.
Which is to say that, yes, we're running out of things to say about these guys, unsettling as that sounds with 17 more Rankings Mondays in our future. Your faithful Committee of One cannot help but re-ask the question: Is this bound to be the first season in Power Rankings history in which one team goes wire-to-wire at No. 1 for an entire season?
More discussion about The Other Twenty-Nine Teams and where they fall on this week's ladder can be found, as always, via Stein Line Live. Allow us to send our hearty thanks and best 2016 wishes to our friends within the NBA wing of ESPN Stats & Information, as well as the Elias Sports Bureau, for the peerless data assistance they provide to help us with all of our calculations. You can comment on the latest 1-to-30 order below.
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 9 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
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Last Week: 1 | Rewind two months, and you'll recall some of us opining about how hard it would be for the Warriors to join the Michael Jordan Bulls (1995-96 and 1996-97 editions) as the only teams in league history to win 65-plus games in consecutive seasons. Now look: Steph Curry's Warriors only need a pedestrian 39-14 finish over their final 53 games to pull that off. | |
| 2 | 
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Last Week: 2 | We've got tidbits on Kawhi. We've got tidbits on Timmy. And we've got this random but still interesting stat: Tim Duncan has played 1,360 regular-season games and sports a record of 974-386 ... 588 games above .500 And that happens to be equal with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1,074-486) for the most games over .500 in NBA history. | |
| 3 | 
| 1 Last Week: 4 | The loss at home to Chicago was particularly galling, since it dropped the Thunder to 6-8 against the East and wasted a second straight 25+ points, 5+ rebounds, 5+ assists, 5+ steals Christmas performance from Russell Westbrook. The consolation: OKC is 10-2 in its last 12 games and has outscored opponents by 12.7 PPG in that span. | |
| 4 | 
| 1 Last Week: 3 | An East-leading record of 19-9, one-third of the way through the season, does not add up to a crisis. Anyone who remembers the Cavs' 19-20 start last season knows that. Yet you have to keep an eye on their road form, when Cleveland's offense has drifted to nearly 10 points per 100 possessions worse away from the friendly confines of The Q. | |
| 5 | 
| 3 Last Week: 8 | DeMarre Carroll (knee) is back. Jonas Valanciunas (hand) is poised to return Monday night. And Kyle Lowry bounced back with two (let's call 'em) steady games last week after his 18-for-60 shooting slump over a three-game stretch heading into our previous batch of rankings. The Raptors, in other words, are getting pretty close to whole again. | |
| 6 | 
| 3 Last Week: 9 | The current fuss over the Falcons is understandable after what they just did to Steph Curry's Carolina Panthers. Just don't forget about the #EvenTheHawks, who have quietly won six games in a row -- good for the longest active winning streak in the league -- while also climbing back up to No. 5 in Offensive Efficiency. | |
| 7 | 
| 3 Last Week: 10 | What a week for the Celtics. Boston swept four games, relocated its "swagger," according to swingman Jae Crowder, regained Marcus Smart, moved up to a second-place tie in Defensive Efficiency behind only mighty San Antonio ... and check out this tweet from our pal Chris Forsberg. Boston, according to CF's research, is favored in 28 of its next 32 games! | |
| 8 | 
| 2 Last Week: 6 | In this piece by colleague Michael Wallace, Chris Bosh insists that the Heat "have our identity down." Outsiders see a team that has actually been statistically better defensively with blocked-shots machine Hassan Whiteside off the floor and question whether Goran Dragic and Dwyane Wade will ever mesh. Miami, so far, is an 18-11 riddle. | |
| 9 | 
| 4 Last Week: 5 | Frank Vogel is probably not going to win Coach of the First Trimester honors when our selections are released later this week because the field is too dang deep. But we can't say enough about Vogel's role in changing Indy's identity on the fly, especially with marquee offseason acquisition Monta Ellis not exactly making a splash so far. | |
| 10 | 
| 3 Last Week: 7 | Nicolas Batum is up to six double-doubles after recording five in his entire final season in Portland. Al Jefferson is back from injury (and suspension) after the Hornets went 5-6 without him. And Steve Clifford is looking a lot like the East's answer to Rick Carlisle, still getting much more than expected out of his team after landing a contract extension. | |
| 11 | 
| 3 Last Week: 14 | Quite a week on the Dallas sports scene amid some seriously scary weather. Dirk Nowitzki and little J.J. Barea enjoyed milestones -- though Dirk's was slightly more historic -- and one of our mentors wrote his final newspaper column after an unparalleled career spanning five decades. Thanks for all you taught us, Mister Randy! | |
| 12 | 
| 3 Last Week: 15 | We finally saw what this team is capable of in home wins over the Clippers and Spurs within the span of a week. Then we saw regression to the lackadaisical nature that put the Rockets in such a hole in Saturday night's loss at New Orleans. For more, we refer you to these tweets for the latest James Harden and Dwight Howard trends. | |
| 13 | 
| 2 Last Week: 11 | Too much Bulls stuff to fit in this little box. With all of us on alert for cracks in the wake of Jimmy Butler's comments and amid Joakim Noah/Taj Gibson trade rumblings, Chicago went full Jekyll-and-Hyde on us, completing a season sweep of OKC on Christmas, then unraveling down the stretch in Big D. | |
| 14 | 
| 2 Last Week: 12 | Shaquille O'Neal's career free throw percentage came in at a troublesome .527. Andre Drummond is presently nowhere near Shaq standards at a hard-to-fathom .380. The question we're struggling with more every day: How much do you downgrade Drummond's otherwise Moses Malone-esque season when he's such a liability at the line? | |
| 15 | 
| 2 Last Week: 17 | The Committee is pretty unpopular these days with residents of the Magic Kingdom, some of whom have been lashing out on Twitter because we've refused to hike Orlando higher than No. 15 despite its 10-5 record since Thanksgiving. Rest assured that Scott Skiles will feature as part of our upcoming Coach of the First Trimester discussion. | |
| 16 | 
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Last Week: 16 | Yet another example of how out of sorts the West is: Only six of its 15 teams have a positive reading in the old school plus/minus standings that we calculate by adding home losses and road wins. And the Griz -- who this prominent Memphian fears might have a negative point differential all season -- barely qualify to be among those six teams at plus-1. | |
| 17 | 
| 4 Last Week: 13 | Couldn't have been a much Scrooge-ier Christmas week for the Clips. They endured a slew of errant calls in crunch time in a loss to OKC that dropped L.A. to 2-8 against teams currently in West playoff spots, then had to deal with this unflattering read from our pal Howard Beck on their league-wide reputation ... and then lost Blake Griffin to injury. | |
| 18 | 
| 2 Last Week: 20 | John Wall has at least 12 assists in eight of his last 10 games. Garrett Temple recently rumbled for 20-plus points in three straight games after cracking the 20-point plateau zero times in his first 251 career games. And the Wiz, just like that, have lifted themselves from 4-7 at home to .500 at home, impressing Wiz spokesman Jared Dudley. | |
| 19 | 
| 1 Last Week: 18 | The best thing you can say about the Knicks' Christmas Week, with four games against teams above them in the East, is that X-rays on Kristaps Porzingis' right index finger were negative Sunday night. Three of those four were roadies, only one (surprisingly in Cleveland) was close ... and they have six more in a row against .500-or-better clubs. | |
| 20 | 
| 4 Last Week: 24 | Who would have ever predicted that residing in the West could actually help the Pels? Thanks to a 2-1 week that so easily could have been 3-0 if Christmas Day turned out a little differently, New Orleans awoke Monday just 3 1/2 games out of the No. 8 spot. The Pels, as late as April 1 of last season, were still 2 1/2 games back of No. 8. | |
| 21 | 
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Last Week: 21 | The Bucks, rather surprisingly, are only three wins worse than where they were last season, sitting then at 15-16 en route to a surprising 41-41 finish. Yet you struggle to see them surging toward .500 again, with 11 of their next 15 games on the road and with string-pulling coach Jason Kidd likely out until at least February after hip surgery. | |
| 22 | 
| 3 Last Week: 19 | In the East, three .500-or-better teams are still on the outside looking in when it comes to a playoff spot. In the West, Utah has somehow clung to the No. 8 seed throughout what is now a 12-game run without Rudy Gobert. Yet it's hard to see the Jazz staying there much longer after the Alec Burks gut punch. Hurry back, French Rejection! | |
| 23 | 
| 4 Last Week: 27 | Christmas games have historically been very, very good to Portland -- as a 14-3 record that ranks as tops in league history would suggest -- but you won't hear any complaints from the Blazers after they inflicted a 29-point hammering on weary Cleveland that featured Allen Crabbe (Allen Crabbe!) scoring a career-high 26 to outduel LeBron on Dec. 26. | |
| 24 | 
| 1 Last Week: 23 | Are the Kings responsible for spurring Draymond Green to new heights? Fair question on the morning of a Steph versus Seth Curry reunion in Oakland. Since Green rumbled for his season's first triple-double in a Nov. 28 win over Sacramento, Green ranks as the only player in the NBA averaging at least 17 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. | |
| 25 | 
| 1 Last Week: 26 | When can you put the Nuggets in the same sentence with the Spurs? And we mean besides when pointing out that Manu Ginobili has already been rested against Denver three times this season. Here's when: Denver and San Antonio are two of just four teams (along with Minnesota and Philly) to field fewer than two players averaging 30 MPG. | |
| 26 | 
| 4 Last Week: 22 | Let's see. Let's see if a bench shuffle -- firing two assistants instead of Jeff Hornacek -- gives the coach new life. The question, though, has to be asked: When does the Suns' front office start coming under scrutiny, given their ill-meshing roster and the fact one of the ousted assistants (Mike Longabardi) was hand-picked by Suns general manager Ryan McDonough. | |
| 27 | 
| 2 Last Week: 25 | The Wolves' 8-8 start is a memory. They've firmly shifted into Youth Development Mode, which means (A) less Kevin Garnett than your KG-loving Committee prefers and (B) where Kevin Martin lands via trade is as pressing in this space as tracking the exploits of Rookie of the Year favorite Karl-Anthony Towns and reigning ROY Andrew Wiggins. | |
| 28 | 
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Last Week: 28 | Remember last week when we said we planned to track Joe Johnson's shooting? As noted by our own Mike Mazzeo, Johnson is at .324 from the field and is a minus-54 in 303 minutes over his last nine games ... with the Nets now heading into a stretch in which their next eight opponents are .500-or-better teams until a Jan. 13 meeting with the Knicks. | |
| 29 | 
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Last Week: 29 | You can scoff at the notion that Kobe Bryant's popularity makes this season challenging in the extreme for the Lakers to manage, but we'll never underestimate it. Not here. Not after catching the first returns of All-Star balloting and seeing Kobe more than 200,000 votes ahead of even Steph Curry: one of the surprise stats of the season. | |
| 30 | 
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Last Week: 30 | Trivia time: Ish Smith made his Sixers debut in Saturday night's momentous road win in Phoenix ... and happened to be Philly's starting PG in their previous road win way back on March 25. At 2-30, though, Philly remains tied for the worst 32-game start ever with the '97-98 Nuggets, two Dallas teams in '92-93 and '93-94 and the '70-71 Cavs. | |
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