Power Rankings: Cavs on top, Nets no longer last
Week: Team:
Make that two Mondays to go for someone to dislodge the Cleveland Cavaliers from the top spot in ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings.
A rare loss in San Antonio on Friday night -- Cleveland's first defeat with LeBron James in uniform since Feb. 21 -- wasn't enough to cost the Cavaliers their No. 1 ranking. Not with the Orlando Magic (in Atlanta) and Los Angeles Lakers (in Oklahoma City) suffering notable road defeats last week as well.
In other notable moves this week: Utah is up five spots to No. 4 … Phoenix has risen two spots from No. 7 in spite of Robin Lopez's injury thanks to a 16-4 record since the All-Star break and the current lack of a clear-cut No. 5 … Denver (No. 4 to No. 8), Dallas (No. 5 to No. 7) and Milwaukee (No. 6 to No. 12) all have tumbled … and Portland (No. 12 to No. 6) and San Antonio (No. 13 to No. 9) have jumped into the top 10.
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Also, check out John Hollinger's daily Power Rankings.
Tune in Tuesdays to "NBA Fastbreak" on ESPN to see the week's U.S. Army Power Rankings.
| 2009-10 Power Rankings: Week 22 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |  | -- Last Week: 1 | The Cavs actually had 61 wins at this same point last season, but we're still standing by what was said in this cyberspace precisely one Monday ago: This season's Cavs will be proceeding to postseason with more momentum. | |
| 2 |  | -- Last Week: 2 | This was just insanity: Redick takes Carter's place after 95 seconds in a home W over Denver and rings up 23 points, eight assists and seven boards. Vinsanity hasn't hit those totals in the same game all season. | |
| 3 |  | -- Last Week: 3 | Mortal as the Lakers looked in OKC, it's funny how quickly they quashed any talk of squandering the No. 1 seed in the West. You'll recall that folks were throwing that kind of talk around just a couple of Mondays ago. | |
| 4 |  | 5 Last Week: 9 | The best team no one's talking about? Slips in Indy notwithstanding, Utah is on a 30-10 roll, playing through every injury that comes up (AK-47 is the latest) and sporting the best average point margin in the West at plus-5.9. | |
| 5 |  | 2 Last Week: 7 | Figures. As soon as we devote comment real estate to the Robin Lopez Effect and what shifting back to power forward has done for Amare, Phoenix loses Lopez to a back injury that could shelve him until the playoffs. | |
| 6 |  | 6 Last Week: 12 | The worst part about front-office tension spilling out so publicly is that it throws yet another curveball/hurdle/distraction at a team that, thanks to all the injuries, has already dealt with more than any team should face. | |
| 7 |  | 2 Last Week: 5 | If the Mavs want to show how much tougher they are since the trade -- especially after following up their 13-game win streak with a 3-4 funk -- home games against Denver, Orlando and OKC are a fine opportunity. | |
| 8 |  | 4 Last Week: 4 | Obsessing about seeding is unavoidable when Nos. 2-8 are separated by 3½ games, but there isn't a single bracket alignment that can bring Denver any comfort until it knows Karl and K-Mart are going to be OK for the playoffs. | |
| 9 |  | 4 Last Week: 13 | This is way late in the second half to start making one of their surges -- late even by Spurs standards -- but back-to-back wins over Cleveland and Boston without Tony Parker were noticed by the rest of the West. Trust us. | |
| 10 |  | -- Last Week: 10 | We still say Frank Robinson never should have been set free by the Hawks in training camp, but credit the classy lefty for talkin' them up on Twitter: "Call me crazy but I really believe the Hawks [are] goin' to the Finals." | |
| 11 |  | 3 Last Week: 8 | What strikes you as the more realistic OKC playoff preview? Last week's narrow losses at home to the Spurs and Blazers? Or Friday night's pounding of the Lakers? Sorry to say that, for us, it's probably the former. | |
| 12 |  | 6 Last Week: 6 | More (unlikely) props for the Bucks: They just suffered bad back-to-back home losses to Philly and Miami ... and yet people are still talking about how bad it'll be for Boston or Atlanta to face these guys in the first round. | |
| 13 |  | 2 Last Week: 11 | Every time I start believing in the Celts again, they lose by 21 at home to the Spurs or some ESPN researcher points out that they lead the league with 12 losses in games they led by at least five points at halftime. | |
| 14 |  | -- Last Week: 14 | Saw D-Wade doing an interview on NBA TV in his bathrobe Sunday night. He didn't look all that stressed about being a (virtual) one-man team for eight more games and as far as he can carry the Heat in the playoffs. | |
| 15 | Charlotte 38-34 | 1 Last Week: 16 | Instead of the Bobs' usual nightmare schedule in April, this is reasonable: Six of their final 10 games are at home and the four road dates (Chicago, New Orleans, Houston and New Jersey) aren't exactly unwinnable. | |
| 16 |  | 2 Last Week: 18 | Comeback Coach of the Year? The award still doesn't exist, but Del Negro's Bulls are in the midst of another resurrection -- four wins out of five after a 10-game losing skid -- that has No. 8 seed Toronto totally freaked out. | |
| 17 |  | -- Last Week: 17 | At 6½ games out of the final playoff spot in the West with nine to play, all the Griz can do now is try to secure a winning season by scraping out four more W's from a schedule offering just two more sub-.500 opponents. | |
| 18 | New Orleans 34-40 | 2 Last Week: 20 | We get that no one in the organization wanted to tell the ultracompetitive CP3 that it's better for the franchise (and his own good) to just sit out the rest of the regular season. Doesn't stop us from fearing the worst, though. | |
| 19 |  | 4 Last Week: 15 | Nope. We were obviously reaching last week when we dared to suggest that the Rockets still had some playoff life. They're 1-5 since the four-game win streak that sucked us in, which shifts all of our focus back onto Scola. | |
| 20 |  | 2 Last Week: 18 | Astonishing how fragile this team is. Losing its way when Bosh went down right after the All-Star Game was understandable, but he's been back for 12 games. The Raps' decline has reached 3-9 and might not be over. | |
| 21 |  | 2 Last Week: 23 | Just keepin' it real: Indy's five-game win streak that ended in Atlanta and seven consecutive wins at home don't change the fact that you still think docs (Reggie Miller or Larry/Magic) when you think Pacers these days. | |
| 22 |  | -- Last Week: 22 | Best-case scenario at this stage? Probably finishing with the league's 10th-worst record -- about as high as the Knicks can go at this point -- and hope nothing crazy happens in the lottery so the pick sent to Utah is 10th overall. | |
| 23 |  | 2 Last Week: 21 | Not to say that the Clips' win in Houston was unexpected, but they had dropped their previous 11 road games and Craig Smith -- who rumbled for 25 points and 10 boards -- had topped 20 points only once all season. | |
| 24 |  | 3 Last Week: 27 | Heard from every Sixers fan we knew after our comment suggesting Philly had only one winnable game left on the schedule. The Sixers must have read it, too, because they just dug in and dumped the Bucks and Hawks. | |
| 25 |  | 1 Last Week: 26 | The sale of the team won't get hot until the firm that's heading the sale collects all the Dubs' financial data, so the focus is all on Curry (in the ROY race) and Nellie (suddenly just three W's from the wins record) for now. | |
| 26 |  | 2 Last Week: 24 | Udrih is averaging 18.2 ppg and 11.8 apg in the five games Tyreke Evans has missed since suffering a concussion. Not sure how much more of the Reke-less Kings we can take, though. (Especially with Casspi's PT down.) | |
| 27 |  | 2 Last Week: 25 | I'd like to think that becoming just the seventh team to lose to the Nets, thereby ensuring that New Jersey can only share Worst Team of All Time status with the '72-73 Sixers, is rock bottom for the Pistons. I'd like to. | |
| 28 |  | -- Last Week: 28 | Not even the Bullets at their worst ever lost 15 games in a row like the Wizards' shell of a team. This losing streak, lowlighted by the Blatche mutiny, tops 13-gamers in 1994-95 and 1996-97 for a new franchise low. | |
| 29 | New Jersey 9-64 | 1 Last Week: 30 | The Nets still need one more W in their final nine games for a full exhale, but they have made sure that they won't become the fourth team in history to go through an entire season without winning two straight games. | |
| 30 |  | 1 Last Week: 29 | We warned the Wolves what would happen if the Nets ever managed two wins in the same week. The fact that Sota is the first team since the '97-98 Nuggets with two 15-game skids in the same season left us no choice. | |
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