Power Rankings: Top teams rising in the East
Week: Team:
You haven't heard any Leastern Conference jokes lately, have you?
The latest edition of ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings, with East residents occupying the top four spots, should make it pretty clear why.
It's been 23 days since the Miami Heat last lost a game to a team that hails from somewhere other than downtown Milwaukee. So when the Heat followed up a surprising second straight defeat to the Bucks with three more wins -- including a 20-point cruise in Friday's trip to Philadelphia in spite of the Sixers' penchant for winning big at home -- they retained the top spot in the rankings for the second successive week.
The East's revival, though, stretches down to the No. 4 slot, with Chicago (No. 4 to No. 2), Indiana (No. 5 to No. 3), Philly (No. 7 to No. 4) -- as well as No. 5 San Antonio from the West -- all leapfrogging Oklahoma City (down five spots to No. 7) and Denver (also down five to No. 8). The Boston Celtics, meanwhile, have moved to the brink of the top 10 after a long and uncharacteristic spell in the bottom half of the rankings thanks to their defense-fueled surge that came despite point guard Rajon Rondo missing for eight games with a wrist injury.
Check back every Monday in the regular season for a fresh and fully nonautomated pulse taking of the league's 30 teams, which is compiled with Ricky Rubio-esque dishing from ESPN Stats & Information and the Elias Sports Bureau. Click here to rank the teams yourself, or click here to comment on these rankings.
Also, check out John Hollinger's daily power rankings.
| 2011-12 Power Rankings: Week 6 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |  | -- Last Week: 1 | Applaud the approach: Miami has won 10 of 12, including a high-quality W in Philly, but the Heat haven't been happy with themselves lately, leading to an intense team meeting before Philly. Good to see they realize their focus has been unsteady. Good to hear they don't think they're playing as well as they should be. | |
| 2 |  | 2 Last Week: 4 | Luol Deng is apparently determined to be the Kobe of the East by pretending he's not playing with a mangled wrist. And D-Rose's toe must be holding up OK, too, given that his recent run of three straight games with at least 34 points is something no Bull had done since Michael Jeffrey Jordan in late February of the 1996-97 season. | |
| 3 |  | 2 Last Week: 5 | The city is all theirs again with the Super Bowl circus leaving town. And after the show the committee (of one) was just treated to -- when Indy added the defending champs to a list of road victims that already includes the Bulls, Lakers, Celts and Magic -- our only complaint for now is that they don't call it Conseco anymore. | |
| 4 |  | 3 Last Week: 7 | The bad news for the validation-craving Sixers: They've seen Miami twice and lost twice by a combined 41 ... compared with a combined 24 points in their other five losses. The good news: Everyone bangs on Philly about its easy schedule so far, but it did just wrap wins over the Bulls and Hawks around Heat rout No. 2. | |
| 5 |  | 5 Last Week: 10 | Pretty sure Parker was going to be selected as an All-Star by the West's coaches anyway, but TP's 42-point shredding of West-leading OKC surely clinches it. Of course, with San Antonio's annual rodeo road trip looming, something tells me Tony and Timmy wouldn't mind if the coaches left them alone to rest that weekend. | |
| 6 |  | -- Last Week: 6 | K-Mart choosing them to address the biggest weakness (frontcourt depth) this team had? CP3 and Blake starting for the West for a franchise that hadn't had one All-Star starter since World B. Free repped the San Diego Clips for the opening tip in 1980's ASG? Years after the slogan was unveiled, it's truly Hip To Clip. | |
| 7 |  | 5 Last Week: 2 | Chicago and Indiana have passed the Thunder in the race for most road wins, but OKC has bigger worries. Specifically: Perk has nine techs in 23 games. Which means he's on pace for 26 in this shortened season. Which computes to seven one-game suspensions. Which is far, far worse than getting Mozgoved by Blake. | |
| 8 |  | 5 Last Week: 3 | You can live with the sort of losses Denver absorbed last week before and after its road rout of the Clips. Last week's schedule certainly didn't make it easy on 'em. What has to worry the Nuggets (unless it's temporary) is that Nene and especially Arron Afflalo haven't responded well to their big contract scores in free agency. | |
| 9 |  | 2 Last Week: 11 | Despite that s-t-e-e-p dropoff from Kobe-Bynum-Pau to the rest of the roster, they're still the Lakers. So this week's road slate (Philly, followed by Boston, followed by New York) has an undeniable big-deal feel ... even if no one on earth can tell you who suddenly combustible Mike Brown's fourth-best player is. | |
| 10 |  | 4 Last Week: 14 | It's not just road games troubling the Blazers. Since a tight home win over Philly on opening night, Portland has lost seven straight games decided by five or fewer points, including visits to Utah and Sac-Town last week. Repetitive crunch-time failures can be random, true, but also can seriously dent a team's confidence. | |
| 11 |  | 5 Last Week: 16 | The Celts are on a 7-1 surge, having held the opposition to 81 points per game in that run and would have swept all eight had they finished off the Cavs at home. Paul Pierce, meanwhile, is about to pass Larry Legend as the second-leading scorer in team history. So why the glum faces, Bostonians? | |
| 12 |  | 3 Last Week: 15 | You have to rewind to 2006-07, which happens to be KG's last season in 'Sota, for the last time the Wolves sported a .500 record this deep into the season. Doesn't hurt that these Wolves, though bracing for a K-Love suspension after his Scola run-in, lead the league in wins when trailing at halftime with eight. | |
| 13 |  | 5 Last Week: 8 | Sandwiched between the bookend highs of an OT triumph over San Antonio and a long-awaited weekend return to normalcy for Dirk is the sobering reality that Roddy B, after a few promising games filling in for ailing J-Kidd, regressed back to his undependable self in the Mavs' sudden three-game skid. | |
| 14 |  | 5 Last Week: 9 | Sorry, Hawks. Can't give you two All-Stars when you have four wins in 12 tries against .500-or-better teams. The consolation: Atlanta is a tidy 12-0 against teams with losing records to rank as the only unbeaten team in that category even after losing Horford. And it's 10-1 when Joe Johnson scores 20-plus. | |
| 15 |  | 2 Last Week: 17 | Point-margin devotees would tell you Utah's meager reading of +0.5, lowest among the 11 .500-or-better teams in the West, is cause for concern amid all the cautious optimism in the SLC. Ditto for the fact that the Jazz, with a third of the season gone, have played fewer road games (seven) than anyone else out West. | |
| 16 |  | 4 Last Week: 20 | The crazy talk about "big changes" has died down some now that the Magic's roller-coaster season is back on the upswing after a nice W in Indy stretched their modest win streak to three, but let's be clear here: Orlando can't fire Stan Van Gundy -- no matter what -- because he's their star asset if/when Dwight bolts. | |
| 17 |  | 1 Last Week: 18 | Egregious mistake by yours truly to not at least include Varejao among East snubs in my latest Weekend Dime. Unavoidably overshadowed by Kyrie Fever, which spreads faster every week, Varejao is the NBA's top offensive board man (4.7 per game) and has played his way to near-untouchable status. | |
| 18 |  | 5 Last Week: 13 | Trying to hang in there in the midst of a tough schedule stretch while waiting for Z-Bo to heal, Memphis just dropped two in a row even with Rudy Gay scoring in the 20s. That benchmark had been something of a safety net for the Griz, who went 7-0 in Gay's first seven 20-point games but have since dropped three of four. | |
| 19 |  | -- Last Week: 19 | The Bucks have beaten Miami (in Miami) with Bogut, and they've beaten the Heat (at home) without him. But they didn't get to celebrate the latter very long thanks to a deflating loss in Detroit right after going to 2-0 against the East champs. Only one more Heat date remains if you're keeping track: Feb. 13 in Milwaukee. | |
| 20 |  | 8 Last Week: 12 | Lowry is starting to dig out of his shooting slump and still sports impressive averages of 14.0 ppg, 8.1 apg and 6.1 rpg. Kevin Martin, meanwhile, has the best PER (18.62) of any 2-guard in the West not named Kobe or Harden. The reality, though, is that they're both All-Star long shots. Tough, deep conference. | |
| 21 |  | 2 Last Week: 23 | Kinda like the new nickname for the bench: The Dub-stitutes. The Dubs' famously loyal fans, though, are tired of settling for cute and won't care that Monta, Curry and Lee were the season's first trio to each score at least 23 points in the same game (in a rout of Utah) because they followed up with an OT loss in Sacramento. | |
| 22 |  | 4 Last Week: 26 | Was it the Utah air ball? Or the return of Marcus Thornton? We're hoping that it's the latter and that we didn't jinx him because last Monday's rare braggadocio in this space about how Jimmer went on a little 3-ball tear after his maiden Weekend Dime interview was soon followed by the first two DNP-CDs of his career. | |
| 23 |  | 2 Last Week: 21 | The Raptors lead the league ... in road games. They've played 16, tying them with Chicago, but will play seven in a row at home after Monday night's visit to the nation's capital. They're also still hanging in there at a decent No. 16 in defensive efficiency (allowing 100.1 points per 100 possessions) to keep Coach Casey sane. | |
| 24 |  | -- Last Week: 24 | Thinkin' about going exclusively to #Nashfacts here to divert our attention from the ongoing disintegration of what used to be the world's most entertaining team. Here's one: Nash recently became the oldest player ever (37 years, 359 days) to post a 30-point, 10-assist game, besting John Havlicek (36 years, 295 days old). | |
| 25 |  | 2 Last Week: 27 | Really don't think the Knicks can/will fire D'Antoni when he has no vet PGs and no reliable shooters. So it says here that Jeremy Lin's 25-point eruption against the Nets, though painted as the coach's salvation, did more for Lin than anyone else, given that his contract isn't guaranteed unless he's on the roster past 6 p.m. Tuesday. | |
| 26 | New Jersey 8-17 | 4 Last Week: 22 | Going to take some pity on the Nets after a weekend of lost opportunities against the Wolves and Knicks and spotlight Anthony Morrow's entree Friday to an exclusive club with Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, LeBron James and Tony Parker. They're the only five players this season who know how it feels to score 40. | |
| 27 |  | 1 Last Week: 28 | This week's entry from the only-our-friends-at-Elias-could-know-something-like-this files: When L-Frank's Pistons lost at his old stomping grounds in New Jersey, they became the first Detroit team to crater to 20 losses faster than anyone else in the NBA since the 1965-66 Pistons started 9-20 and finished a league-worst 22-58. | |
| 28 | New Orleans 4-20 | 3 Last Week: 25 | Rest assured that they'll deal Kaman if the right offer presents itself between now and the March 15 trade deadline. In the short term, though, having an extra frontcourt option can't hurt after the Hornets, one day after deciding to bring Kaman back to the team, lost Landry for three to four weeks with a knee sprain. | |
| 29 |  | -- Last Week: 29 | The most disappointing aspect of John Wall's rough sophomore season is the summer buildup he got, when folks who saw him in Vegas during the lockout insisted his stroke was improving. The averages look OK on paper (15.4 ppg, 7.1 apg and 5.3 rpg), but Wall is shooting 39.3 percent and has made one 3 in 24 games. | |
| 30 | Charlotte 3-21 | -- Last Week: 30 | Three more L's for talent-shy (but also injury-hit) Bobs will set a team record, exceeding a 13-game skid in early 2006. The only consolation in this 66-game season for poor Paul Silas is that their 8-58 pace wouldn't set a futility record because this isn't a full schedule. It's a 10-72 pace using 82-game math. | |
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