NC Power Rankings: The West Stumbles while the Pistons and Hornets Climb

Jan 9, 2015; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Detroit Pistons guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (5) celebrates after making a three point basket during the fourth quarter against the Atlanta Hawks at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Atlanta won 106-103. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

This week in the Nylon Calculus power rankings was marked by a noticeable decline among the Western Conference elite. Even if their place in the rankings themselves didn’t plummet, the scores of Dallas, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Phoenix, Memphis, and New Orleans all took big hits this week, and even the Clippers — who actually climbed in the rankings — took a small hit in score from the week prior.

In the meantime, the East is looking to take advantage: the Hawks stood steady at 2nd place, not quite able to leapfrog the ridiculous Warriors, but they’re a mile ahead of the 3rd place Clippers. In the meantime though, the Pistons, Hornets, Bucks, and, probably most importantly, the Wizards have all seen meaningful surges this week in the rankings.

As was true last week, the methodology holds steady. Feel free to read about it here.

Let’s check it out:

The Top Five

1. Golden State Warriors: This team is just ludicrous, man. I, personally, really wanted to have the Hawks number 1 here but the numbers didn’t work out that way. I mean, the Warriors’ have beaten their last 5 opponents by, per 100 possessions: 18.8, 15.3, 26.6, 22.1, and 41.7 points. As far as I can tell, this spot is the Dubs’ to lose, because no one’s knocking them off the way they’re playing right now.
2. Atlanta Hawks: They might have been unable to leapfrog the Galactus-esque Warriors, but they’re wayyyy better than anyone else on this list below them. They’re the same distance from the 3rd ranked Clippers as the 5th ranked Mavericks are from the 12th ranked Pistons. The Hawks are playing beautiful basketball right now, and if the path through the East come playoff time remains as easy as it looks right now, they might end up being title favorites by sheer probability.
3. LA Clippers: Their blowout win against the Lakers doesn’t do a ton to help them out, and a really bad loss to the Pacers hurt them a decent amount. Still, the team is moving up in the rankings..largely because all the other teams are plummeting a lot worse than they are, and because of their impressive dismantling of the Mavericks. People keep worrying about the Clippers’ bad offense in the clutch, or Blake shooting too many jumpers, and are missing that this team has an elite point differential and record over the last month or so, and that Chris Paul has been a sleeper MVP candidate.
4. Portland Trailblazers: The Blazers are back in the top 5! While just about every other team in the West has taken a step back, the Blazers haven’t even broken stride, playing the same gorgeous basketball that they have from day one and kicking ass doing it. If the Warriors are the favorites to come out of the West, you have to wonder if the Blazers wouldn’t be the second bet, given their brutal consistency.
5. Dallas Mavericks: The Mavericks fell apart last week, by their standards, and are only still in the top five because everyone else stumbled too. A win over a really bad Brooklyn team, by a small margin, in double overtime is not impressive, and they lost just horribly to the Clippers and Pistons. This is a team that’s hard to get a handle on, but despite their ranking here are hard to feel exceptionally good about.

The Bottom Five

1. New York Knicks: I think this is the first time that the Knicks have been last, but their “Rank Score” of -16.9 is the lowest score that we’ve even come close to seeing in these power rankings. Philly hasn’t even approached a score that bad. This team is unfathomably bad. Their evisceration at the hands the Hornets was hilarious genuinely embarrassing. I feel like you could replace every player on this Knicks team with a bucket of sadness and tears and you’d get more or less the same result on the court.
2. Minnesota Timberwolves: The most unfortunate part about this team, I think, is that not only are they terrible but they’re pretty wildly uninteresting. Wiggins is always a fun topic to get up in arms about, but people also tend to divorce him from the context of the Wolves in all of those debates, because thinking about the Wolves tends to make everyone an unfortunate combination of sad and bored. They’re just unremarkably bad.
3. Philadelphia 76ers: For the second time in the history of these rankings, the Sixers are NOT LAST. Hell, this time, they’re not even second to last! Like, Philly’s got a nice little win-streak going! The Sixers have won their last two games, and 3 of their last 4. Time to give the Sixers credit: they have easily the worst roster in terms of talent, but a combination of crafty coaching and a group of players that come out trying to kick ass every night yields them good results from time to time. Good for the Sixers.
4. Orlando Magic: The Magic thumped the Bulls last night, and Nikola Vucevic stole Pau Gasol’s remaining talent in one of the nastiest dunks of the year, but they’ve been down so far on all the teams above them that even a big jolt up can’t leapfrog them out of the bottom five. This team is just kinda sad now. You’d think with where they are in the rebuilding process they’d be better than this by now.
5. Los Angeles Lakers: It’s been a while since the Lakers have joined us in the bottom five, and, in fairness, since Nick Young returned this team hasn’t been a complete and total disaster. Some of their 12 wins are real quality wins, and they tend to make games against really good teams way more competitive than they should be. That said, this team is still losing by way more, on average, than almost everyone else over their last 25 games. They may hide their badness by being better than we expect…but they’re still really, really bad.

Other Teams of Interest

• Houston Rockets: The Rockets have done relative poorly in these rankings for a little while now, and their are still questions to be asked about what the hell Josh Smith is even bringing to the team, but they’ve rattled off four really good, badly needed wins in a row now, and it’s starting to look like they might be re-discovering themselves a little bit. The rest of the West is hoping they don’t keep putting it together.
• Oklahoma City Thunder: The Thunder fell almost as hard as Dallas coming into this week. For all the talk about OKC having the 8th seed on lock, they’re still not there yet and they’re fighting for their playoff lives. Meanwhile, the Spurs and Suns are winning at a high enough rate that it may actually be a serious struggle for the Thunder to get in, and, especially after the Suns picked up Brandan Wright, every game matters deeply for this team. So, they’re brutal losses to the Warriors and the freaking Kings were not what they needed right now, and even their win against Utah was decidedly unimpressive. They’re floundering right now.
• Washington Wizards: The Wizards are still frustratingly inconsistent, and they struggle to put together a whole great stretch of games, but a good win over the Pelicans last week and then over the Bulls this week is nice. This is a good team trying to figure itself out still.
• San Antonio Spurs: Everyone keeps saying that this team will be fine if healthy, which is certainly true, but what if they don’t get healthy in time? There’s a legit risk here that the Spurs end up the odd man out if the Thunder pick it up and the Suns keep looking like they have in the last month. Odds are the Spurs will be fine, but given their situation, there’s surprisingly little concern.
• Detroit Pistons: The Pistons are amazing. They’ve won 9 of their last 10 games since waiving Josh Smith, and their only loss was a really, really close game agains the world-burning Hawks, and their wins were against the likes of the Spurs, Mavericks, and Raptors. There’s a serious possibility that this is the second best team in the East.
• Phoenix Suns: The Suns got Brandan Wright, which is awesome, but they’ve been regressing a bit since their hot streak of the past two weeks. It’s hard to know where exactly this team lands but they don’t want to make it easy for OKC to take their playoff spot.
• Memphis Grizzlies: Even replacing basically non-players with Jeff Green doesn’t help the fact that this team continues it’s trend of mediocrity starting as far back as early December. Getting Z-Bo back will help a lot, but, it’s probably officially time to worry about the Grizzlies.
• Charlotte Hornets: The Al Jefferson, Lance Stephenson-less Hornets have been awesome on the back of Kemba Walker. This team went from looking like a profound disappointment to a serious team that can at least be competitive with the middle of the league. It’s hard to know what this team will look like with everyone back, but for now, it’s nice to see the team looking good.
• Cleveland Cavaliers: They got a bump for getting Mozgov, and another bump for the likely return of LeBron. You might notice that they got bumped, and still are 20th. That’s because, with LeBron hurt, this team has been atrocious. Just really, really, really bad. Questions are arising about Kevin Love at this point, and they should be. This team shouldn’t be this bad with Love leading them.