Power Rankings: Let the games begin
Week: Team:
After a month marked by way too many injuries and then livened up by that thunderbolt of a trade over the weekend, it's almost here.
Opening night!
A full 82-game, lockout-proof season starts for real Tuesday with a tasty TNT doubleheader featuring three of the top four teams in these rankings, headlined by No. 4 Boston's visit to No. 1 Miami, where the Heat will collect their championship rings and open their title defense against Ray Allen's old team.
Depressing as it is to see the likes of Andrew Bynum, Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Love, Amar'e Stoudemire and John Wall all sidelined -- and stunning as it was to see Oklahoma City ship James Harden to Houston late Saturday night -- on-court dealings are about to commandeer the spotlight. Word of warning: Allen's shot has been a touch wayward this month and Rashard Lewis is still adjusting to his new surroundings, but LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh all looked quite good during the preseason. Which only cements the Heat as an overwhelming No. 1 here as we get started.
The rankings are compiled with ever-helpful dishing from ESPN Stats & Info and the Elias Sports Bureau. Click here to rank the teams yourself.
Editor's note: Last Week category reflects teams' positioning in the Training Camp edition of the rankings from Sept. 28.
| 2012-13 Power Rankings: Preseason | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |  | -- Last Week: 1 | The last team from the Leastern Conference to repeat as champs? Michael Jordan's 1996-98 three-peaters. Why dredge up the Leastern Conference stuff so soon? Because there's realistically only one team in the East that can keep Miami out of the Finals: Boston. | |
| 2 |  | 2 Last Week: 4 | Came into the season thinking that the ceiling for the Spurs would likely be holding off the West's chasing pack headed by Denver and Memphis rather than playing at the Thunder/Lakers level. Now? OKC and L.A. look sufficiently vulnerable to get us rethinking. | |
| 3 |  | 1 Last Week: 2 | Even with the injury uncertainty suddenly surrounding Kobe, you'd have to say that we just witnessed the finest 0-8 preseason in NBA history, with Dwight Howard's recovery ahead of schedule and OKC having just broken up the reigning Western Conference champs. | |
| 4 |  | 2 Last Week: 6 | Open to suggestions on who else you think we should tack onto the short list of teams capable of actually beating the Heat and winning the East. For the Celts to even be on that list -- though they got undeniably deeper over the summer -- everything has to go right. | |
| 5 |  | 2 Last Week: 3 | The Thunder certainly got a lot back for Harden, but something they surrendered in Saturday night's blockbuster trade that wasn't mentioned in the press release is a chunk of chemistry/continuity edge they had over L.A. Which is why OKC just dipped two spots. | |
| 6 |  | 1 Last Week: 5 | NBA's deepest team? Too deep for their own good? Does everyone know I bring up the following -- last season's .606 winning percentage eclipsed Buffalo's .598 mark in '74-75 for the franchise record -- only because I'm always looking to sneak in a Braves mention? | |
| 7 |  | 2 Last Week: 9 | Computer simulations from ESPN Stats & Info contend that OKC's chances of winning the Northwest have dipped from 57.1 percent to 47.1 percent sans Harden. Sounds like another way of saying that the en vogue Nuggets just got 10 percent likelier to win the division. | |
| 8 |  | -- Last Week: 8 | The Pacers survived last season's woeful bench production with the considerable durability of their starters. So it has to unsettle our friends in the land of St. Elmo's to hear Danny Granger come out over the weekend admitting that his left knee is "testing me." | |
| 9 |  | 2 Last Week: 11 | Feeling fairly sure that Rudy Gay and Zach Randolph will start more games together this season than the eight they started together last season. Not going to promise much more than that, though. Need to learn more about incoming ownership and their Rudy plans. | |
| 10 |  | 6 Last Week: 16 | Enes Kanter's big preseason presumably makes the eventual trade of Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap for a top guard even more of an eventuality. Safer assumption: October health setbacks suffered by Dirk and K-Love have given Utah's playoff hopes an early boost. | |
| 11 |  | 1 Last Week: 12 | The building cost a cool $1 billion. No one in the starting lineup makes less than Gerald Wallace's $9.7 million. The Nets couldn't be more ready to launch their new, opulent life in Brooklyn against the Amare-less Knicks ... except for the worrisome news about D-Will's ankle. | |
| 12 |  | 3 Last Week: 15 | Respect for Coach Thibs is such that A) it's a virtual consensus that the D-Rose-less Bulls will defend too stoutly to fall far off the playoff pace and B) Chicago still ranks as an elite team with Vegas bookmakers even when they know Rose will miss at least half the season. | |
| 13 |  | 5 Last Week: 18 | Not quite ready to co-sign on the notion that the Hawks are still a top-five team in the East. But still a playoff team? In this conference? Still a top-eight team, yes, while in the midst of stockpiling cap space for next summer. (Unless trades present themselves sooner.) | |
| 14 |  | 7 Last Week: 7 | The fact we've scarcely seen a dribble out of the ailing Bynum, after all the September hoopla about his arrival in this cyberspace, pretty much assures that the 11-year-old committee (of one) will be subjected to Power Rankings jinx taunts for the 11th straight season. | |
| 15 |  | 2 Last Week: 13 | The question is asked on a near-daily basis: Who's the best basketball team in New York? The Knicks' problem, even if they ultimately win that debate, is that trumping the Nets might well be the highest honor that the league's oldest team can achieve this season. | |
| 16 |  | 6 Last Week: 10 | The Mavs are the Sixers of the West. As in: Dallas, like Philly, takes a serious rankings tumble before a single game that counts thanks largely to a knee problem (Dirk Nowitzki's) that has some locals wondering if a run of 12 straight playoff trips is already in peril. | |
| 17 |  | 3 Last Week: 14 | Surely everyone in Sota understands now why the committee has sworn off knuckle push-ups (or push-ups of any kind). Hopefully the playoffs aren't out of reach for the should-be-very-watchable Wolves if Love and Rubio are both back in the lineup by New Year's. | |
| 18 |  | 1 Last Week: 19 | Ninth in the conference for two successive seasons, Milwaukee finds itself almost universally regarded as a bubble team in the East again. It's the sort of unwanted consistency that makes this a make-or-break season for not only Skiles but B-Jennings and Monta, too. | |
| 19 |  | 2 Last Week: 17 | Our friends at Bovada.lv list the over/under on games played this season at 60.5 for Steph Curry and 52.5 for Andrew Bogut. The Dubs obviously have to see the over in both cases -- well over -- if they hope to see the playoffs for just the second time in 19 seasons. | |
| 20 |  | 1 Last Week: 21 | The league boasts only three new coaches: Charlotte's Mike Dunlap, Orlando's Jacque Vaughn and Terry Stotts here. You can safely assume Stotts, armed with an All-Star forward (Aldridge) and a dynamic rookie (Lillard), enjoys the closest thing to a decent Year 1. | |
| 21 |  | 5 Last Week: 26 | Harden's arrival takes pressure off of Jeremy Lin in the midst of Lin's camp/knee woes. Lin's presence should eventually absorb some of the brighter spotlight all over Harden now. The Rockets still need a lot more, but those two -- with Asik -- form a core to start with. At last. | |
| 22 |  | 1 Last Week: 23 | Everyone obviously wants to start well, but it's particularly critical for Toronto if it has any hope of living up to all the talk about how a run at No. 8 in the East is within reach. Let's see first how the young Raps cope with playing 15 of their first 22 games on the road. | |
| 23 | New Orleans 0-0 | 3 Last Week: 20 | As good as Damian Lillard has looked during the preseason, Anthony Davis still starts the real thing as the ROY favorite ... here and in most precincts. The Hornets, though, really are too young for folks to keep whispering about an outside shot at No. 8. Not feasible. | |
| 24 |  | -- Last Week: 24 | Formerly the league's great entertainers when a certain S. Nash was at the controls, these Suns will have to be scrappy to be competitive. Maybe they can draw motivation from the fact so few folks on the outside think they can rise, post-Nash, out of the 20s. | |
| 25 |  | -- Last Week: 25 | Bold prediction: Detroit will not start 4-20 again. Whether the Greg Monroe-led Pistons can win more than 30 games for the first time since 2008-09 remains to be seen, but there's some cautious optimism bubbling in Motown after Andre Drummond's promising preseason. | |
| 26 |  | 3 Last Week: 29 | Brace yourselves for countless jokes about the newly named (but sadly outdated) Sleep Train Arena. As well as the usual ups and downs from a (really) young team still unclear where the franchise will be long-term, while sporting a roster of ill-fitting, unpolished parts. | |
| 27 |  | 5 Last Week: 22 | The early wave of support for the Wiz as a playoff dark horse took a hit with the news that John Wall (knee) is out until the end of November. Nene (foot) and Kevin Seraphin (calf) will be back sooner, but it's obviously Wall next to rook Bradley Beal that we want to see. | |
| 28 |  | -- Last Week: 28 | Those 10 Cavs with two seasons or less of NBA experience are in for a testing start, to say the least. After a shaky preseason for rookie Dion Waiters, and Kyrie Irving's trip to the dentist to remove four wisdom teeth, Cleveland soon leaves town for a six-game trip. | |
| 29 |  | 2 Last Week: 27 | Did you see Professor Hollinger's tweet late Saturday night about how the Thunder arguably got more for Harden than the Magic got for Dwight? The season you're about to watch will confirm that Professor Hollinger was being very charitable with that arguably. | |
| 30 | Charlotte 0-0 | -- Last Week: 30 | Going to show some (rare) maturity and not take it out on the Bobcats that my beloved Phillips Seafood was inexplicably out of cream of crab soup when the committee connected through the Charlotte airport last week. Winning will be hard enough as is. | |
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