Warriors' reign continues
But they weren't, folks.
The Committee of One wasn't about to demote the 62-7 Warriors in the wake of what many around the league would classify as a schedule loss, since they were playing mighty San Antonio on the road on the second half of a back-to-back ... and without the injured Andre Iguodala, Andrew Bogut and Festus Ezeli.
I'm sure there will be a dissenting voice or two out there, but all we can tell is you that it would have taken a San Antonio rout -- something along the lines of Golden State's 120-90 runaway when the teams met Jan. 25 in Oakland -- to persuade us to consider a change at the top here at Stein Line. Don't forget that the Warriors, after all, arrived in San Antonio on a seven-game winning streak of their own that included a 6-0 homestand featuring four wins by double digits.
Don't forget, furthermore, that the loss was the Warriors' first this season in 12 games against the league's five other teams sporting .600-or-better records (Spurs, Cavs, Raptors, Thunder and Clippers). San Antonio is enjoying its own undoubtedly historic season, but I suspect even Gregg Popovich would agree that one close game on a Saturday night in March doesn't change much ... especially not when Golden State remains one game ahead of Chicago's 69-game pace from the Bulls' historic 72-10 season in 1995-96.
You can share your views on our latest 1-to-30 order below in the comments section. Deep thanks to our pals from within the NBA wing of ESPN Stats & Information, as well as the Elias Sports Bureau, for the ever-clutch data assistance they provide week after week after week to help us make all of our calculations.
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 21 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
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Last Week: 1 | The Warriors' 87-79 loss in San Antonio was their first loss on the road this season in the second game of a back-to-back set in which the opponent did not play the previous night. Golden State was 10-0 in that situation coming in, compared to the leaguewide winning percentage of .359 for teams facing that situation. ESPN's Basketball Power Index has nonetheless downgraded Golden State's chances of winning 73 games from 59 percent likely to 48 percent, noting that the Warriors now need an 11-2 finish, with two more games left against San Antonio and a tricky trip to Utah on March 30 to deal with as well. | |
| 2 | 
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Last Week: 2 | For all the reasons we've listed above and in the Warriors' comment explaining why there isn't in a new No. 1 in these rankings, we also have to admit that the Spurs had us up all night in the Committee of One's hotel room that served as this week's makeshift rankings dungeon, asking ourselves whether this was the right decision. That's how impressive the Spurs were (a) in sweeping that five-game homestand we were marveling at in this cyberspace last Monday because all five visitors showed up at the AT&T Center and (b) because San Antonio controlled the pace of Saturday night's showdown with the Dubs so thoroughly that it ranks as the slowest-paced game Golden State has played all season. | |
| 3 | 
| 1 Last Week: 4 | Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan have scored at least 25 points in the same game eight times this season, which ties a single-season franchise record established by Chris Bosh and Mike James in 2005-06, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Toronto stat line of the week, of course, belonged to big man Bismack Biyombo, who amassed 16 points and 25 rebounds in an overtime win at Indiana last week to help the only franchise currently on the NBA map that has never won 50 games inch closer to that milestone. | |
| 4 | 
| 1 Last Week: 3 | The Cavs formally clinched a playoff spot last week, but they continue to be highly inconsistent under Tyronn Lue, as detailed extensively here by Friend of the Committee Brian Windhorst. Among the prime areas of concern for the rookie coach: LeBron & Co. are up to just 3-5 in games decided by three points or fewer after last week's narrow escape at home over Dallas, which puts the Cavs ahead of only six teams in that category (Sixers, Lakers, Blazers, Mavs, Celtics and Magic). | |
| 5 | 
| 1 Last Week: 6 | Only six teams in the NBA can claim to possess a winning record against .500-or-better teams this season. And the Hawks are one of those six alongside Golden State, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Cleveland and Toronto. So perhaps it's no accident that Atlanta awoke on this Rankings Monday having quietly risen to No. 3 in the East. Yet here's something the Hawks will have to wait until next season to try to correct: San Antonio's 18 consecutive home victories over them (dating to Jan. 21, 1998) is the league's second-longest such streak behind the Spurs' 33 regular-season wins in a row at home against Golden State. | |
| 6 | 
| 2 Last Week: 8 | We had some harsh words in this cyberspace last week for Russell Westbrook thanks to his recent fourth-quarter struggles, as well as a fairly steep three-spot drop down for his Thunder, but you still have to acknowledge that Angry Russ is a one-of-a-kind force of nature even when his late-game touch has been lacking. Triple-double No. 14 of the season, in Saturday night's win in Indiana, marked Westbrook's 11th triple-double in the past 30 games alone. According to Elias, Michael Jordan is the only other player with that many triple-doubles in a 30-game span since the NBA/ABA merger in 1976-77. | |
| 7 | 
| 4 Last Week: 11 | Chris Bosh turns 32 this week with his basketball-playing future still very up in the air. The Heat, however, refuse to give in, playing faster and scoring freely since the Feb. 28 debut of Joe Johnson. Miami has averaged 113.6 points per 100 possessions in Johnson's 11 games, going 8-3 and posting six double-digit wins. As for the man himself: JJ is the only perimeter player in the league in that span averaging at least 15 points per game (15.7) while shooting better than 55 percent from the floor. | |
| 8 | 
| 3 Last Week: 5 | It's totally true that, without even realizing what your trusty Committee of One was saying, I announced last week on The Jump with Rachel Nichols and Stephen Jackson that I'd have to give the Clippers "a puncher's chance" to come out of the West if they can get Blake Griffin worked back in the lineup. It's also totally true that the Clips enter Wednesday's road reunion with Golden State coming off a slew of worrisome performances sans Blake: heavy losses to the Cavs and Spurs and unsightly losses to the severely banged-up Grizzlies and Pelicans. | |
| 9 | 
| 2 Last Week: 7 | Even after deflating losses at home last week to Dallas and Denver, Charlotte sports the league's third-best record in the league over the past 20 (or so) games, going 15-4 in that span to rank behind only the Spurs (17-2) and Warriors (17-3). Now for the bad news: San Antonio arrives Monday night at The Hive with a 10-game winning streak over the Hornets that dates all the way back to Jan. 15, 2010, when they were still the Bobcats. Charlotte's leading scorer in that win? The Spurs' Boris Diaw. | |
| 10 | 
| 1 Last Week: 9 | I'd say we can safely declare that the Celts miss Jae Crowder already. Including the recent home loss to Houston in which Crowder was injured, Boston has dropped its past four games to teams with winning records. Crowder has been getting very little love in this season's Most Improved Player race thanks to all the spotlight hogging from Portland's C.J. McCollum and the starry Golden State duo of Steph Curry and Draymond Green trying to rewrite the rules for this award category, but Crowder's 6.7 PPG increase from last season is second leaguewide only to McCollum's 14.1 PPG increase. | |
| 11 | 
| 1 Last Week: 12 | Poor Paul George. He rumbles for 45 points Saturday night against visiting Oklahoma City ... and is scarcely noticed because of the havoc wreaked by Russell Westbrook (with his fifth triple-double in eight games) and Kevin Durant (with a mere 33 points, 13 rebounds and 8 assists in support). The Pacers, meanwhile, are now 14-14 in their league-leading 28 games decided by five points or fewer; Minnesota (10-17) and Denver (14-11) are next in line with 27 and 25, respectively. | |
| 12 | 
| 2 Last Week: 14 | We're going to need more time to get to the bottom of the bizarre Dwight Howard "Stickum" story. In the interim, since it's NCAA tournament time, we pass along this bit of relevant trivia knowing that Rockets fans, weary of this season's many dramas, are looking for inspiration anywhere they can find it: Houston teammates Jason Terry and Corey Brewer rank as two of the seven active NBA players to win a championship in both college and the pros alongside San Antonio's Danny Green, Golden State's Brandon Rush and Marreese Speights, Oklahoma City's Nazr Mohammed and the recently felled Mario Chalmers. | |
| 13 | 
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Last Week: 13 | Three times in Detroit's past six games, Andre Drummond has fallen short of a double-double, after missing that benchmark just 10 times in his first 64 games this season. Duty compels us, furthermore, to point out that Drummond -- though he joins New Orleans' Anthony Davis on the short list of players this season to lead his team in rebounds, steals and blocked shots -- has missed 339 free throws in 2015-16 ... which is a higher total than nine NBA teams this season (New Orleans, Boston, Brooklyn, Orlando, Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, New York and San Antonio). | |
| 14 | 
| 4 Last Week: 10 | The Blazers play eight of their final 11 games at home, starting with Wednesday night's date against the same Dallas Mavericks who twice now have beaten Portland in overtime when it looked like the Mavs were poised to lose in regulation. One small measure of consolation entering the stretch run: Portland's plus-3 reading in the game's most traditional plus/minus category -- subtracting home losses from road wins -- is better than the other three teams jostling for the West's Nos. 6, 7 and 8 seeds; Houston is plus-1, Dallas is minus-2 and Utah is minus-1 as of Monday morning. | |
| 15 | 
| 1 Last Week: 16 | Gordon Hayward turns 26 this week, and the Jazz will have their fingers crossed that the case of plantar fasciitis that forced him to sit out two games last week is manageable from here. "It is going to be sore for the rest of the season," Hayward conceded after Saturday night's win in Milwaukee, which marked Utah's fifth win in its past six games and brought its record on the current five-game road trip to 1-1, with stops still looming in Houston, Oklahoma City and Minnesota. | |
| 16 | 
| 4 Last Week: 20 | Despite Jimmy Butler's return and Doug McDermott's bonus production since the All-Star break, Chicago begins the week sporting just a 44 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to ESPN's Basketball Power Index. Yet something tells us that the Raptors will be on the jittery side if the Bulls wind up seventh in the East and force a first-round series after they went into Toronto a week ago and notched their (yikes) ninth consecutive victory over the Raps. | |
| 17 | 
| 2 Last Week: 19 | We can assure you this has zero to do with being snubbed from the Western Conference All-Stars, à la Damian Lillard, because Dirk Nowitzki is 37 years old and relished the unexpected full week off he got in February to recharge his batteries. But what he's been doing since the All-Star break is no less impressive than Lillard's revenge on West coaches; Nowitzki is at 22.7 PPG on 51 percent shooting since the break and uncorked a vintage 40-point masterpiece Sunday afternoon to topple Dame's Blazers to nudge Dallas to a wild 8-4 in overtime games and keep his teetering Mavs in the West's top eight. | |
| 18 | 
| 3 Last Week: 15 | The injury-ravaged Grizzlies suffered a 49-point loss in Houston to get last week started, after absorbing that 50-point hammering from Golden State back in November ... yet Memphis' nightly average point margin for the season is amazingly only minus-1.4. According to STATS research, Memphis leads the league with 239 man-games lost to injury this season, ahead of New Orleans (235), Philadelphia (223), Denver (210) and Washington (206). | |
| 19 | 
| 2 Last Week: 21 | The Wizards will undoubtedly get some mythical team of the week votes after using a home rout of the Pistons as the springboard for four straight wins that have unexpectedly launched John Wall & Co. back into the hunt for one of the East's final two playoff spots. Turnovers have been stacking up anew on Wall, but he also just became only the second player in franchise history (alongside Darrell Walker in January 1991) to record a triple-double in back-to-back games, as well as merely the fourth player in the league to pull off that feat this season, joining Draymond Green, Rajon Rondo and Russell Westbrook. | |
| 20 | 
| 3 Last Week: 17 | The Bucks have gradually hauled themselves out of the Most Disappointing Team of the Season conversation and moved to prime League Pass Curiosity status thanks to the ongoing statistical zaniness coming from fledgling point guard Giannis Antetokounmpo. After not recording 10 or more assists in a game in Milwaukee's first 54 contests, The Greek Freak -- who makes you forget he's still just 21 years old with that ridiculously long 6-foot-11 frame -- has gotten there seven times in his past 14 outings. | |
| 21 | 
| 3 Last Week: 18 | We can only go so far with the praise when Emmanuel Mudiay's player efficiency rating for the season remains a rather modest (to put it charitably) 9.61. Yet there's also no denying that the Nuggets' rookie point guard is averaging 17.8 PPG, 5.4 APG and 3.7 RPG for the month of March, while shooting a promising 40.5 percent on 3-pointers and committing a closer-to-passable 2.6 turnovers per outing. An interesting showdown looms Friday in Lakerland when Mudiay and the only point guard drafted before him last June (D'Angelo Russell) square off for the final time this season. | |
| 22 | 
| 2 Last Week: 24 | The tone for the "most frustrating season" of Alvin Gentry's NBA career was actually set rather early, which you realize once you hark back to New Orleans' season opener at Golden State and remember that he was forced to start Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson that night thanks to the Pels' sizable injury list. But now it's official: Anthony Davis has been shut down for the rest of the season (and possibly this summer's Olympics in Rio) courtesy of shoulder and knee woes that mean that The Brow has averaged 65 games played in his four NBA seasons ... and that you're going to have to live with that H&R Block commercial if you want him to see during the final 20-odd days of the regular season. | |
| 23 | 
| 2 Last Week: 25 | How long has it been since the drama-drenched Kings tasted the postseason? We were reminded of the depths of their drought Monday, when a research note made its way to the Committee via the one and only Micah Adams about how Monday marks the 10th anniversary of Twitter's introduction. On that day in 2006, Adams informs, Ron Artest (as he was known then) also happened to score 34 points to lead the playoff-bound Kings to a win over Seattle. | |
| 24 | 
| 1 Last Week: 23 | Victor Oladipo's career-high 45 points last week in a loss to Cleveland not only eclipsed his previous single-game best of 38 against Phoenix in March 2015 but also gave him the gaudiest box score line for anyone in Orlando since a 45-point game for Dwight Howard against Golden State in January 2012. As a bonus, Oladipo became the first player to outscore LeBron James by at least 27 points since early in LeBron's second season a pro, when Tracy McGrady inflicted a 34-to-3 schooling on The King on the day before James' 20th birthday. | |
| 25 | 
| 3 Last Week: 22 | Taking Carmelo Anthony's temperature regarding his willingness to stay in Gotham has become a daily exercise for the New York tabloids, which isn't terribly surprising given that the Knicks suddenly have so little to play for as well as the reality that Kristaps Porzingis is far more than a Curry-esque tunnel shot away from closing the rookie of the year gap on Karl-Anthony Towns. Yet our feeling here remains that Phil Jackson, counterintuitive it sounds, is the one who's going to wind up leaving the Knicks before Melo does. Just remember where you heard it first if things play out that way. | |
| 26 | 
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Last Week: 26 | The Wolves entertain Golden State on Monday night ... and you know what that means. Besides the inevitable frequent references to the 2009 NBA draft, when the immortal David Kahn drafted both Ricky Rubio and Jonny Flynn ahead of Steph Curry, there's this sobering stat: Curry has made 337 3-pointers in 65 games played this season, which is just 24 fewer than the Timberwolves' team total through their 69 games to date. We looked it up for you: Minnesota is indeed the league's worst 3-point-shooting team. | |
| 27 | 
| 1 Last Week: 28 | The Suns are one of just four teams that have already been mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, but young Devin Booker keeps trying to distract the locals from that depressing reality with his scoring, which this month includes the first consecutive 30-point games from a Suns rookie since the legendary Walter Davis back in 1977, prompting our own Zach Lowe to commission one of his patented deep dives into Booker's progress. Click away. | |
| 28 | 
| 1 Last Week: 29 | In the spirit of the NCAA tournament, visiting Philly fans hit the Nets with a robust "We've got draft picks" chant when the teams met in Brooklyn on Wednesday night. The experience, though, still had to be classified as pleasant for the Nets compared to the teams' previous two meetings, which were both won by the Sixers and rank as Philly's only two wins since January. Bojan Bogdanovic's 44 points matched the franchise single-game scoring record for a Net born outside the United States, matching late, great fellow Croat Drazen Petrovic's 44 points against Houston on Jan. 24, 1993. | |
| 29 | 
| 2 Last Week: 27 | How excited are you for the last Kobe Bryant versus Tony Allen duel you're likely to see? It happens Tuesday night on TNT ... provided that Bryant's shoulder holds up and that Allen -- deemed by Bryant to be the toughest defender he's faced -- can avoid falling prey to the injury curse that has seemingly claimed every other notable Memphian lately. The game also figures to be the second for the newest member of the Grizzlies: Lakers ex Jordan Farmar. | |
| 30 | 
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Last Week: 30 | Back on Jan. 30, as 17-point underdogs, Philly trailed visiting Golden State by 24 points in the second quarter before rallying into a 105-105 tie and forcing the Warriors to rely on a Harrison Barnes corner triple to escape with the win. Yet you have to wonder whether the Vegas line for Sunday's looming rematch in Oakland will be even more unkind to the Sixers, who are a woeful 2-20 since that encounter. The biggest line for a Warriors game so far this season: Milwaukee was a 19-point underdog when it visited Oracle Arena on Dec. 18. | |
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