NC Power Rankings: Spurs are Back, Warriors and Hawks Hold Steady

Jan 20, 2015; Denver, CO, USA; San Antonio Spurs guard Danny Green (14) celebrates with forward Kawhi Leonard (2) during the second half against the Denver Nuggets at Pepsi Center. The Spurs won 109-99. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

It’s been interesting to note over the last few weeks how the league appears to be regressing to the mean, overall: team’s Rankscores (and, yeah, their actual Net Ratings) have been falling closer to the middle as a league. The top 5 now consists of teams largely with Net Ratings of 6 and change, not 10, 11, and 12.

At least, that’s true for most of the league. But while almost everyone is regressing to the mean, the Hawks and Warriors just keep steady, still obliterating almost everyone they play with abandon. It is a little weird — and incredibly telling — how much better they are than everyone else right now, but more importantly, how they’re staying that way over a prolonged period of time.

A few other teams have surged, too: The Spurs look like their old selves, and the Hornets continued their quiet but meteoric rise up the ranks. The Pistons continue to surge as well, and if I reduced their sample from ~25 games to just the number of games they’ve played sans Josh Smith, they’d actually be third in the rankings, ahead of the Clippers.

Anyway, let’s see the Rankings!

The Top Five

1. Golden State Warriors: You know how there’s always that one boss in a video game who you go up to thinking, “I’m definitely strong enough, I can totally do this,” and then he like looks at you can just steps on you and you die because you were weak and nothing before his mighty strength? The Warriors are that boss right now. If you couldn’t tell, I’m running out of good things to say. They’re amazing.
2. Atlanta Hawks: It’s a bummer for the Hawks that they seem relatively destined to sit at the number 2 spot here behind the Warriors, just because they’re so much better than anyone that’s not them or the Warriors that it’s hard to feel like they’re being properly rewarded with second place. Still, the Hawks play in the East, which, if they’re really this good, gives them far and away the easiest path to the Finals. The Hawks may have the last laugh, in the end.
3. Los Angeles Clippers: This is a weird, frustrating team. They keep doing poorly in big, national televised games, and they’ve even been mediocre overall in completely random, unpredictable games. When they’re not randomly collapsing though, they’re really, really, really good, and it’s probably time we stop ignoring them.
4. Oklahoma City Thunder: The Thunder are going to need to be their absolute best — definitely top 5 week after week — if they want to catch up to the Suns, who are starting to pick up a lot of steam themselves. Luckily for OKC, on the heels of an awesome, awesome win over Golden State and then a righteous beatdown on Orlando, they’ve done that. They’re on pace to make the playoffs right now but it might still be a struggle at this pace.
5. Portland Trailblazers: Robin Lopez’s absence is starting to hurt this team; their rating has been falling steadily for weeks now. As it turns out though, every Western team is starting to regress, and the Blazers have done an admirable job staying elite in the meantime, even if they’re giving up games or points in places where they shouldn’t. This team is serious.

The Bottom Five

1. Philadelphia 76ers: Good news Sixers fans, your team is back to gunning for that number 1 pick! That the Sixers got steamrolled by both the Pistons and Wizards in succession hurts particularly badly after having had actually a pretty solid week of basketball last week; when the rate at which they’re falling from that good week stabilizes, I imagine they’ll still be ahead of the Knicks. But this is a team that’s bad at basektball on a deep, deep level, and Carmelo Anthony is coming back for New York…so maybe not.
2. New York Knicks: I have recently been informed that there is a large mass of people who actually watch the Knicks play “basketball,” and to those people I want to extend my deepest sympathies. You don’t deserve this. At least the 76ers are manic and do fun stuff. The Knicks are just sad.
3. Minnesota Timberwolves: Wiggins looks great! Rubio is close to coming back! Pekovic may be coming back sometime too! That’s all awesome and cause for optimism, but this team is still abominable.
4. Denver Nuggets: The Nuggets fell farther here than any one team has ever fallen before, which Nuggets fans might take offense to after their “impressive?” win over a Mavericks team by 6 without Dirk, Tyson Chandler, or Rajon Rondo. It turns out, though, that losing to Minnesota by almost 10 points per 100 possessions and then losing to Golden State by 45 points per 100 will really hurt you in the rankings, certainly enough to drop the Nuggets from 24 (where they would have been without their rate of change) to 27. The Nuggets likely won’t stay here long, but they embarrassed themselves enough this week to earn a spot in the bottom five.
5. Los Angeles Lakers: The Lakers keep flirting with being better than their current joke status on the back of a solid offense borne by Kobe Bryant and Nick Young. The Lakers have not actually succeeded in becoming better than a joke, though, probably because they’re relying on 36 year old post-injury Kobe Bryant and Nick Young to do everything.

Other Teams of Interest

• San Antonio Spurs: Kawhi Leonard’s back, and the robotic “kill all humans” Spurs who played the most beautiful basketball I’ve ever seen last season appear to be back with him. We only have a two game sample, but the Spurs’ total destruction of a very good Portland team was telling. The Spurs aren’t going to go promising anything to anyone, but watch out: the West may not be as open as we think it is anymore.
• Phoenix Suns: The Suns keep climbing, and it seems like they’re really starting to figure themselves out. They struggle beating really good teams — not a shocker for just a “good” team — but they’re finally beating up on the bad teams, something that they weren’t doing earlier in the season. Brandan Wright has fit well, too, even if he’s not the world eater he was in Dallas. They’re looking to make it really hard for OKC to climb back into the playoffs.
• Detroit Pistons: In just two weeks, the Pistons have climbed from the bottom 10 all the way to 9th place. It’s been a ludicrous surge, made more insane by the fact that they would be 3rd in the league with just their post-Josh Smith numbers, and that even without that 3rd place mark they appear to be the second best team in the East right now, and it’s actually not that close. This is a weirdly awesome, compelling team, and an incredible story.
• Houston Rockets: I imagine if Stan Van Gundy even remotely cared about things like Power Rankings, he would find some vindication in the Rockets now being one spot below the Pistons. That said, I’m still not sure what to make of this Rockets team. They’re still not as good as a lot of people seem to want to think, they can’t score very well, and a lot of their big minutes players have played poorly basically all season (Trevor Ariza, Josh Smith, Jason Terry). Still, they have an elite defense and MVP candidate James Harden who’s playing out of his mind. They’re clearly good, but how good? It’s hard to tell.
• Charlotte Hornets: The Hornets have been rising at a pace commiserate with the Pistons, but have somehow been talked about a lot less. This is a team that was on the bottom five list only two weeks ago, only to be trying to sneak into the top 10 this week. They’ve absolutely exploded since Lance Stephenson got hurt, on the back of the cold-blooded killer that is Kemba Walker. There was obviously some concern about how the team would play with Stephenson and Jefferson back in the lineup, but in their first game back the Hornets won by over 20. Charlotte seems to have learned to play defense with their stars out, something they were great at last year but seemed to have forgotten for a while. This is sneakily a very solid squad.
• Chicago Bulls: It seems odd that the Bulls are the first high profile team from the East on the rankings, clocking in at 13th, and 5th in the East. Still, they’ve been bad lately, losing four of their last five games and six of their last eight. The Bulls have fallen out of the top 10 in defense — strange for a Thibodeau team — and, as per usual, can’t figure out how to score. Joakim Noah looks like a hurt disaster, but for some reason Thibs won’t sit him, Rose won’t stop shooting 3’s that he can’t make even vaguely passably, and Pau Gasol is the source of most of the team’s offense but can’t even start to defend. On the surface they look good, but this team is becoming a train wreck rather quickly.
• Toronto Raptors: The Raptors have been going the way of the Bulls for a while now. Toronto has dropped into the bottom 10 defensively, and they’ve only won 3 of their last 10 games. The Raps look exhausted, which is weird for a team full of so many veterans who should know how to handle a schedule. They’re playing a lot of road games, but they started the season playing just about everything at home, so that’s certainly no excuse either. It’s possible that their favorable early schedule and a blazing hot start hid that this is just a mediocre team.
• Washington Wizards: Washington’s massive fall is hard to explain beyond “over the last 25 games they just haven’t been all that good, and 14 teams have been better.” They’ve fluctuated now around the 10-13 mark for a while, but this is the first time they’ve dropped to truly league average. This is a super inconsistent team that goes on long draughts punctuated by periods of insane scoring that maybe make the team seem better than they are. It’s hard to know whether Washington is really better than this or not.
• Memphis Grizzlies: Putting Memphis in the bottom half seems unreasonable, but they’ve had a barely positive point differential since Zach Randolph got hurt. Now that he’s back, this team is likely to start moving its way back up the rankings rather quickly, so Memphis fans have to hope that this is the nadir for this struggling team.
• Cleveland Cavaliers: LeBron is back and he looks like his old self, especially behind their impressive win over the Clippers. The Cavs got a bump but they still have to prove themselves. They haven’t really been a genuinely good team at any point this season, and they’re not going to start moving up the rankings until they start playing more consistently like a team that deserves it.