Monday, Jan. 25
Warriors Spurs clash for top spot
Amid increasingly loud calls to finally drop the Golden State Warriors out of the top spot in ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings, your stubborn Committee of One decided to keep the Warriors ahead of the scorching-hot San Antonio Spurs this time last week. The Warriors then duly responded with what might have been their most impressive week of the season, ensuring that they will have occupied the top spot 15 times of a possible 15 this season entering Monday night's eagerly awaited showdown with the Spurs in Oakland.
San Antonio's own headline-grabbing run has reached 13 consecutive victories, including no less than six by 25 points or more, but Golden State couldn't have done more over the past seven days to state its case to stay at the top, thrashing Cleveland and Chicago on the road by a combined 65 points before outpacing Indiana in coach Steve Kerr's first game all season on the bench after missing the first 43.
In the first 69 seasons of NBA basketball, only three teams (1970-71 Bucks, 1971-72 Lakers and 1995-96 Bulls) managed to outscore its opponents by 12 or more points per game. In season No. 70, both Golden State (plus-12.1) and San Antonio (plus-14.5) are doing it -- just one of the many reasons to look forward to their first clash of the 2015-16 campaign.
More on the Committee's thinking in assembling this week's ladder can be found, as always, via Stein Line Live. Thanks as always, furthermore, to all of our pals within the NBA wing of ESPN Stats & Information, as well as the Elias Sports Bureau, for the priceless data assistance they provide week after week in helping us with all of our calculations. You can comment on the latest 1-to-30 order below.
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 13 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
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Last Week: 1 | You had to know we were going to gloat after the Dubs responded to our controversial decision to keep them No. 1 by trouncing Cleveland and Chicago on the road, handling Indy in head coach Steve Kerr's triumphant return and now basking in the knowledge that Steph Curry has never been giddier after his Panthers clinched a spot in the Super Bowl to be played in the Bay Area. | |
| 2 | 
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Last Week: 2 | What a difference 295 days make. That's how much time has elapsed since the Spurs and Warriors last met in the unforgettable Kawhi Game back on April 5. Leonard scored what was then a career-high 26 points to go with seven game-changing steals in that one. This season? Leonard just became the Spurs' first All-Star starter not named Tim Duncan since David Robinson in 1993. | |
| 3 | 
| 1 Last Week: 4 | Let's help coach Billy Donovan out with some bulletin-board material after a rough night in Brooklyn: Even with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook simultaneously playing some of the best ball of their lives, ESPN's Basketball Power Index says there's a 74 percent chance that the Warriors and Spurs meet in the conference finals ... and a 94 percent chance one of those teams wins the West. | |
| 4 | 
| 1 Last Week: 5 | The latest statistical case to support the notion that Toronto is the biggest threat in the East to LeBron's Cavs comes via Twitter from enterprising rankings fan @lgDoucet, who notes that the Raptors' average point margin from their season series with Golden State is a mere minus-4.0 ... compared to Cleveland's dreadful minus-20.0 and Chicago's minus-21.5. Who's buyin' that rationale? | |
| 5 | 
| 2 Last Week: 3 | Firing David Blatt was supposed to galvanize a team that looked miserable and disconnected. It was also meant to strip Cavs players of the handy Blame It On Blatt excuse any time something went wrong. But that's what made the first game of the Tyronn Lue Era so worrisome. How do you fall behind by 17 at home to Chicago when you're supposed to be flush with that New Coach Bounce? | |
| 6 | 
| 1 Last Week: 7 | Every time you're ready to give up on the Bulls, they wallop another division leader. They're now 7-3 against the six first-place teams (7-1 if you throw out two hammerings by Golden State) in a league where no one else has more than four wins over current division leaders. How happy must Chicago be that it imported Jim Boylen to oversee the defense and keep it at an elite level? | |
| 7 | 
| 1 Last Week: 6 | The Clippers are still waiting for Blake Griffin's return and, of greater concern, still waiting for a signature win that stamps them as the elite team we all expected them to be coming into the season. Blake-less Ls in the past five days in Cleveland and Toronto dropped the Clips to 0-7 against the NBA's top five teams in terms of win percentage. Against everyone else? They're 28-9. | |
| 8 | 
| 2 Last Week: 10 | As much as the Clippers clearly wanted to exile Josh Smith, you have to wonder if they'll regret helping the Rockets. Houston is the one place J-Smoove seems to fit (and maybe the only team willing to take him), but it's not hard to picture the Rockets rising to No. 5 in the West by season's end and forcing a first-round showdown with none other than Doc Rivers' Clips. | |
| 9 | 
| 1 Last Week: 8 | The alibi is there if they want it because the Hawks' most likely All-Star, Paul Millsap, missed the game for personal reasons, but losing in Phoenix to a Suns team that had dropped 14 of its previous 15 games (and with a slew of its own injuries) is going to leave a mark. It'll take a win Monday night in the Rocky Mountain altitude of Denver for Atlanta to salvage a .500 trip. | |
| 10 | 
| 1 Last Week: 9 | Just when it seemed fortune was smiling on the Griz, thanks to wins over the Pels (home) and Nuggets (road) by a combined three points, they lost in Minnesota to a team plainly prioritizing youth development over winning these days. Not a great tone-setter so early in this favorable stretch in which Memphis must face only two teams currently over .500 over a span of 21 games. | |
| 11 | 
| 4 Last Week: 15 | The Patriots' demise and the fact that pitchers and catchers don't report for another 23 days means the city suddenly belongs to Tommy Heinsohn's beloved Celts. What Bostonians will see here is an up-and-down squad that might have an All-Star come Thursday (if Isaiah Thomas snags a reserve spot) but hasn't convinced us they're as good as ESPN's BPI would have you believe (seventh). | |
| 12 | 
| 1 Last Week: 11 | We are just days away now from finding out if Andre Drummond -- or Reggie Jackson, for that matter -- has broken through to become the Pistons' first All-Star since (gasp!) Allen Iverson way back in 2009. Despite the Pistons' up-and-down nature and Drummond's horrors at the free throw line, which hit a new low point with those 23 clanks in a hard-to-watch win at Houston, his case appears stronger than Jackson's. | |
| 13 | 
| 1 Last Week: 14 | Chandler Parsons is increasingly looking like a player who has found top gear after a bumpy first few months recovering from offseason knee surgery. Trouble is, Dallas' defensive deficiencies are starting to be exposed routinely, dragging Rick Carlisle's club back to something closer to the level we all expected before the Mavs' coach coaxed an unforeseen 19-13 start out of this group. | |
| 14 | 
| 6 Last Week: 20 | Said so last week and can only say it louder on this Rankings Monday: DeMarcus Cousins' January is leaving West coaches with nothing to think about when it comes to Boogie's All-Star spot. He's averaging 32.5 PPG and 13.7 RPG on 50 percent shooting and 47.2 percent shooting on 3s. He's getting to the line for 10.6 FTAs per game. And his Kings, best of all, are 8-3 this month. | |
| 15 | 
| 2 Last Week: 13 | In a tightly bunched Eastern Conference in which No. 12 Orlando trailed No. 5 Boston by a mere 2.5 games as of Monday morning, every L tends to be magnified. And no one knows it better, at the moment, than the Pacers, who are 5-9 in games decided by four points or fewer and, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, have played more such games than any team in the league. | |
| 16 | 
| 4 Last Week: 12 | Hassan Whiteside has enjoyed a productive January; Miami's defense is allowing a healthy 10 fewer points per 100 possessions this month with Whiteside on the floor after the November/December numbers in that category weren't nearly so complimentary. The road-weary and fading Heat, though, have been racking up so many injuries lately that they're 2-8 since a 3-0 start to 2016. | |
| 17 | 
| 1 Last Week: 16 | A home win over a Wizards team playing on the second night of a back-to-back will give Toronto its first nine-game win streak since a club-best nine in a row back in 2001-02, when the likes of Hakeem Olajuwon and Dell Curry were coming off the bench for the Raps. It's also a Kyle Lowry versus John Wall showdown; Lowry and LeBron are the East's only 20/5/5 guys at the minute. | |
| 18 | 
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Last Week: 18 | Probably not a surprise that the Knicks' longest home win streak since a 10-gamer to close the 2012-13 was brought to a halt by the Clippers. L.A. has prevailed in last seven meetings between the teams. Carmelo Anthony, meanwhile, has just matched George Gervin and Dominique Wilkins for the most All-Star Game selections -- nine -- without also making an NBA Finals appearance. | |
| 19 | 
| 2 Last Week: 17 | The prevailing wisdom in today's West is that you better finish fifth (or, at worst, sixth) if you want to harbor any semblance of playoff hope, since No. 7 or No. 8 means playing Golden State or San Antonio in Round 1. Yet you can rest assured Utah would happily settle for that eighth seed and is smarting that a couple OT losses are what finally bumped them down to No. 9 for the first time in a month. | |
| 20 | 
| 2 Last Week: 22 | We ask you, BlazerManiacs: Would you secretly rather finish no higher than ninth in the West so Portland doesn't have to surrender its first-round pick to Denver to complete the Arron Afflalo trade? Or do you want to see Damian Lillard react with trademark Dame-esque fury and lead a second-half redemption run to the postseason if he's indeed snubbed for an All-Star spot by West coaches? | |
| 21 | 
| 3 Last Week: 24 | The Pels have won five out of six and Anthony Davis, picking up his play all over the floor lately, just improved his career record against Team USA frontcourt mate/Detroit darling Andre Drummond to a slick 4-0. The Pels' problem is that, even as they sit just four games out of the No. 8 slot in the West, they've still got four teams to mow through to get back to where they finished last season. | |
| 22 | 
| 3 Last Week: 25 | The Hornets responded to the low point of their season -- slipping all the way to No. 25 in this cyberspace -- by unleashing the most lethal Kemba Walker we've ever seen, announcing some surprising Michael Kidd-Gilchrist news and scoring OT wins over Utah and Orlando and another over New York. We chose recap mode 'cause we assume everyone in Charlotte is otherwise engaged. | |
| 23 | 
| 2 Last Week: 21 | The fact Luke Walton doesn't get to keep any of the Ws from the greatest stint of all time for an interim coach -- 39-4! -- continues to be a popular topic. But where's the outrage on behalf of Joe Prunty? The Bucks were a very respectable 8-7 under Prunty until a rough weekend back-to-back in Houston and New Orleans. Jason Kidd returns with his team in better shape than he left it. | |
| 24 | 
| 5 Last Week: 19 | On top of all their issues with the Wizards and the 4-0 season sweep they absorbed, now the Magic are sure to dread this season's two remaining meetings with Charlotte, both of which are roadies. Two of Kemba Walker's three career 40-point games have come against Orlando, which also blew an 18-point lead in the fourth quarter of Friday's OT loss to the Hornets. | |
| 25 | 
| 2 Last Week: 23 | The Jan. 13 triumph at home over the Draymond Green-less Warriors launched a stretch of eight straight games against .500-or-better teams. It becomes an 11-game stretch if the Wiz can win their next two games before the teams meet Thursday night in DC. Yet it must be said that the Danilo Gallinari-led Nuggets are hanging in so far, sitting at 3-3 six games in despite new Kenneth Faried fears. | |
| 26 | 
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Last Week: 26 | Apologies, Nets fans. Can't see Sunday's events having any real impact on Kevin Durant's summer plans. But Brooklyn's thumping of OKC, fueled by a big Brook Lopez night, was impressive nonetheless. According to Elias, it was the first time a team more than 20 games below .500 led wire-to-wire against the Thunder since Indiana (23-46 at the time) pulled off that feat in March 2010. | |
| 27 | 
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Last Week: 27 | Andrew Wiggins has yet to taste victory in his career against the team that drafted him, but he's done enough damage in his three previous encounter to have the Cavs' rapt attention when Minnesota visits Cleveland on Monday night. Wiggins' 31.7 PPG scoring average against the Cavs, in fact, is his highest against any opponent; next in line is a 27.2 PPG reading against Sacramento. | |
| 28 | 
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Last Week: 28 | The Sixers, thanks to a surprising win at slumping Orlando last week, lug a 5-9 record in the Ish Smith Era into Tuesday's home date with Phoenix, which will naturally conjure up memories of Philly's win at Phoenix on Dec. 26 in Smith's debut. Ish & Co. would be wise, though, to temper their enthusiasm about reuniting with the Suns. Mighty Golden State will be in the house just three nights later. | |
| 29 | 
| 1 Last Week: 30 | You have to believe that all the losing -- and all the chaos in the desert this season -- has tormented a competitor like Tyson Chandler. But give it up for the veteran center ... as well as that famed Phoenix training staff that's clearly kept him feeling spry. The 33-year-old just became the first Sun in team history to eclipse the 20-rebound mark in back-to-back games. | |
| 30 | 
| 1 Last Week: 29 | We were wrong. Folks were eager to be more ultra-nostalgic about the 10-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant's 81-point game against Toronto on Jan. 22, 2006, than we ever anticipated. (Mostly) fun week that also included Kobe becoming the fourth player in league history to earn an All-Star start at age 37 (or older), joining Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Havlicek. | |
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