Power Rankings: Tight competition for top spot
Updated: November 26, 2007, 4:32 PM ET
By
Marc Stein | ESPN.com
Week: Team:
 | |
Tough crowd.
At the top of ESPN.com's NBA Power Rankings, human division, it's a very tough crowd.
Phoenix, San Antonio, Orlando and Boston … you could construct a case to support any of those teams ranking as the best in the game entering the final week of November. The committee (of one) went with the Suns at No. 1 for the second consecutive week, after they extended their unbeaten streak to a league-leading eight games, but the margin is minuscule.
Your comments on the logjam up there -- as well as Milwaukee's surprising rise from No. 15 to No. 7 -- are invited here or at the bottom.
| 2007-08 Power Rankings: Week 4 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |  | -- Last Week: 1 | The Suns' formulas have been simple. They're 8-0 since Stoudemire returned from a three-game rest for his knees -- resulting in the league's longest active winning streak -- and 10-0 when scoring 100 points. | |
| 2 |  | -- Last Week: 2 | Who says there's nothing to play for in November? After starting 10-3 in no fewer than seven different seasons, San Antonio finally recorded its first 11-2 start in franchise history. That sound you hear is Pop exhaling. | |
| 3 |  | 1 Last Week: 4 | They've beaten the Celtics. They've lost only to Detroit, Phoenix and San Antonio so far. So they've simply got to move up another notch, taking a pretty magical 7-1 road record into a five-game West Coast trip. | |
| 4 |  | 1 Last Week: 5 | Six wins already by 20 points or more. Three wins already by three points or fewer. And everyone who's been to a home game says that the Celts might have the league's loudest building, too. Happy Thanksgiving, indeed. | |
| 5 |  | 3 Last Week: 8 | There was no Sheed waiting for Boozer in Detroit and no complaints from the Jazz, either. Not with Detroit serving as merely the first stop in a brutal stretch that will keep Utah on the road for 13 of 18 games. | |
| 6 |  | 4 Last Week: 2 | The Mavs are one of only four teams still unbeaten at home thanks to a comeback from 24 points down to Toronto. But resurrections against the Raps and Rockets can't mask the fact that they played poorly all week. | |
| 7 |  | 8 Last Week: 15 | Biggest surprise in the East this side of Orlando? Can't argue when the Bucks are 6-0 at home, just swept the Cavs, Lakers and Mavs in a 3-0 week and have lost only to teams with a combined record of 37-19. | |
| 8 | New Orleans 10-5 | 2 Last Week: 6 | The Hornets are predictably struggling to draw crowds of 12,000 in their return to New Orleans, but that's Concern 1B after minor (inevitable?) injuries to Paul (ankle) and Chandler (knee) derailed a 9-2 start. | |
| 9 |  | 3 Last Week: 12 | Big weekend for the Cavs. How big? They were actually 0-2 in LeBron's triple-double games this season before he hit Toronto and Indy with a ridiculous 67 points, 23 rebounds and 22 assists Saturday and Sunday. | |
| 10 |  | -- Last Week: 10 | Minor injuries for Billups, Dice and Sheed. Offensive struggles for Rip. Factor in a defense that just allowed 100-plus points in five straight games for the first time in more than six years and you have some sputtering Pistons. | |
| 11 |  | 4 Last Week: 7 | Surprise, surprise: Kobe's Lakers go to Indy and make a trade right before tip-off . . . but J. O'Neal isn't involved. Then they put up 134 points to rout Indy . . . followed by the season's first alarm-sounding losing streak. | |
| 12 |  | 1 Last Week: 11 | The Rockets had the misfortune of facing San Antonio and Phoenix in the two games McGrady missed. Fine. But they also absorbed ugly L's in Memphis and Miami with T-Mac in that unexpected six-game skid. | |
| 13 |  | 4 Last Week: 9 | The Nuggets expected setbacks in K-Mart's comeback from double microfracture surgery. But then there's Nene, Atkins and Steven Hunter, too. Even by Denver standards, that's a lot of setbacks this soon. | |
| 14 |  | 1 Last Week: 13 | The latest hits: It sounds as though the Raps won't have the services of their glue guy Garbajosa any time soon . . . and T.J. Ford is ailing, too. The consolation: Chris Bosh is starting to look like Chris Bosh again. | |
| 15 |  | 5 Last Week: 20 | A 4-1 swing through the East is flat-out historic for the Warriors. Their last winning record on a trip that long came in December 1980, starring two of the committee's all-time favorites: Bernard King and World B. Free. | |
| 16 | New Jersey 7-7 | 5 Last Week: 21 | In the five games Vince missed, New Jersey scored 82, 69, 70, 87 and 75 points and lost them all. With Carter back, New Jersey became the first team to win in Portland this season and are up to 7-2 when VC plays. | |
| 17 |  | 1 Last Week: 16 | The Wiz are just the third team ever to win five straight games after an 0-5 start. But the loss of Arenas -- and a 13-30 record without Gil coming into the season, including that Cleveland playoff sweep -- overshadows all. | |
| 18 |  | 1 Last Week: 19 | Lost in the hubbub of LeBron becoming the first player since MJ in 1989 to post back-to-back 30/10/10 games on consecutive days: Indy's narrow loss to Cleveland was its first in four games without Jermaine. | |
| 19 |  | 1 Last Week: 18 | Just when the Clips were starting to convince folks (a few, anyway) that they might just hang in there without Brand, Maggette tweaks a hammy. Not a pretty sight without Elton and their primary Elton replacement. | |
| 20 | Charlotte 6-7 | 6 Last Week: 14 | The Bobcats are a sub-.500 team again after Ray Allen's late triple Saturday night. The pressure is already on, too, because slipping further now will surely be fatal later, with 26 of their final 41 games on the road. | |
| 21 |  | 3 Last Week: 24 | At this time last week, Atlanta hadn't won a road game since Valentine's Day. But after capitalizing on Miami's ongoing funk and erasing a 21-point deficit in Minnesota, the Hawks can suddenly claim a road winning streak. | |
| 22 |  | -- Last Week: 22 | The 0-7 road record looks bad, yes. But the Blazers also stayed unbeaten at home longer than anyone else in the Western Conference aside from San Antonio and Dallas. Which is definitely worth a mention. | |
| 23 |  | 6 Last Week: 17 | It's with good reason Riley says "we're starting to feel the pressure." Only one of the 33 teams in history to open a season 0-5 at home -- like Riley's Heat just did -- finished above .500: Washington at 42-40 in 1997-98. | |
| 24 |  | 3 Last Week: 27 | No. 1 scorer? Leading rebounder? Most in-sync Spaniard? In one of the season's underrated surprises, Pau is none of the above with the Grizz, trailing Rudy Gay, Darko Milicic and Juan Carlos Navarro in those races. | |
| 25 |  | 2 Last Week: 23 | How far have the mighty fallen? When the season began, Sacramento was actually third overall in winning percentage this century at .622 (including the 2000-01 season), behind only San Antonio (.720) and Dallas (.709). | |
| 26 |  | 3 Last Week: 29 | Dolan must be the most patient New Yorker ever. The Knicks are 88-142 since Isiah Thomas became team president in December 2003, 36-58 with Isiah as head coach and 7-24 since Isiah's contract extension in March. | |
| 27 |  | 2 Last Week: 25 | Chicago did rally from an 0-9 start in 2004-05 to finish 47-35 and a 3-9 start last season to go 49-33. But those starts almost seem encouraging compared to how bad the Bulls looked on the 1-5 trip they just finished. | |
| 28 |  | 2 Last Week: 26 | I think we can probably call it the second most memorable quote about practice ever uttered by a Sixer. Says Andre Iguodala of the struggling squad that Allen Iverson left behind: "We suck in practice, too." | |
| 29 | Seattle 2-12 | 1 Last Week: 28 | The uncertainty is such in Seattle these days that no one knows when young Durant will discover how it feels to simply win a game in Seattle. The Sonics are the league's only winless team left at home at 0-6. | |
| 30 |  | -- Last Week: 30 | Did Riles give up on Toine too soon? You'll have to ask if this keeps up: Walker is quietly shooting 42.1 percent from the 3-point line for the woeful Wolves, compared to 32.5 percent lifetime and 27.5 percent last season. | |
Charlotte | ||||
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