NC Power Rankings: The Texas Triangle is Tearing up the League

Jan 23, 2015; Phoenix, AZ, USA; Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) celebrates after hitting the game winning shot at the buzzer against the Phoenix Suns at US Airways Center. The Rockets defeated the Suns 113-111. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Nothing crazy has happened this week in the power rankings: a few teams (the Blazers, Pistons, Hornets) have dropped a bit due to injury, and a few of the possible contending teams are trying to fill the empty spots. The Texas Triangle of the Spurs, Mavericks, and Rockets, for example, are all top-seven now, and being an absolute terror for the rest of the league.

The Cavaliers, meanwhile, are starting to climb again after their long slide down the power rankings due to LeBron’s injury. The Thunder, on the other hand, have found themselves falling while the rest of top of the league climbs behind a couple less-than-ideal weeks for a team trying to climb into the playoffs.

Lets check the rankings.

The Top Five

1. Golden State Warriors: The Hawks have started to close the gap on the Warriors this week for the first time since the rankings started, but the Warriors will be the best team in the league until something really drastic happens to affect them otherwise. They’re incredible.
2. Atlanta Hawks: The gap between the top two and everyone else below is insane, and the difference gets even bigger below the top three. Atlanta’s working with the best defense in the East by a wide margin and a top-five offense overall. There’s speculation that they might even have four All-Stars in the All-Star game, and it would make perfect sense. They’re the best team in the East by such a wide margin it’s silly.
3. Los Angeles Clippers: People are finally starting to catch on to how good the Clippers are. The Clippers have held steady on that third spot week after week and there’s a huge difference between them and the fourth place Spurs, has been for a while. This is a really good team, behind a quietly MVP-caliber season from Chris Paul.
4. San Antonio Spurs: SPURS BACK. With the return of Kawhi Leonard, the Spurs have surged back to looking like what they did last year, and it’s held up for longer than a week now. A lot of pieces still need to fall into place, but the Spurs look awesome.
5. Portland Trailblazers: LaMarcus Aldridge got hurt, and even if he’s still playing he’s not at full strength. Batum is down, and Robin Lopez still isn’t back. This team is battered and sliding, but they’re still winning somehow, especially behind Damian Lillard. They’ll probably fall out of the top 5 soon, but they’re still sticking around through sheer force of will right now.

The Bottom Five

1. Philadelphia 76ers: They’re really bad. The 76ers went on a winning streak a couple weeks ago, but since they’ve been as bad as ever, if not worse. On the bright side, Mudiay will look excellent playing next to Joel Embiid, I’m sure.
2. Minnesota Timberwolves: Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad WIGGINS bad bad bad RUBIO BACK SOON bad bad bad bad bad bad
3. New York Knicks: The Knicks game was canceled Monday night in response to the massive blizzard, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say to the league office, “thank you so much.”
4. Orlando Magic: The Magic have been sad this season, missing the big leap forward that everyone was hoping for from them. They’ve been getting worse, but showing encouraging things lately: Vucevic looks awesome, and Elfrid Payton seems to already be emerging as a crucial cog for them. Maybe, for all the badness, there’s hope here, somewhere.
5. Los Angeles Lakers: It’s hard to know what exactly this Lakers team is going to look like without Kobe, who’s now getting a season-ending surgery, but at least they can stop pretending they’re not taking. Karl Towns, ahoy!

Other Teams of Note:

• Houston Rockets: The Rockets have been climbing over the last two weeks after a few weeks in a row sitting in the middle of the pack. They’ve put themselves together after a few mediocre weeks surrounding Dwight Howard’s (first) injury. Howard himself has been less than himself since returning — sad, since he was so good at the beginning of the season — but the team as a whole seems to have figured out how to score the ball at least a little bit lately. It’s hard to know how to peg this team, especially if Dwight is out for an extended period again, but for right now, they’re really good.
• Detroit Pistons: The Brandon Jennings injury hurts them a lot, and they’ll surely take a dip in the coming weeks, but the knock down in the rankings isn’t as drastic as the increase they got, again, by being really good and beating the competition. If Jennings hadn’t have gotten hurt, I’d be confident in calling the post-Smoove Pistons the second best team in the East. We’ll just have to see how they adjust.
• Oklahoma City Thunder: The Thunder really desperately need to start stringing together some consistently solid win streaks if they want to catch that 8th playoff seed, but they just can’t seem to do that. They’ve gotten some good ones, their last second win over Washington was nice, but they don’t look as good as you would hope. They should have blown a lot of teams out now, and they’re just not doing that. This team is having growing pains and can’t reliably space the floor. Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant can’t do everything. They’re great, but are they good enough to close the gap at the rate Phoenix is winning?
• Milwaukee Bucks: The Young Bucks aren’t doing anything spectacular, they’re not going on crazy winning streaks or anything, but they also don’t go on losing streaks just about ever, they’re an even .500 against a tough schedule, their point differential is a lot better than their record; they’re a feisty team that’s in every game they play with the 4th best defense in the league behind everyone’s crazy long arms. They’re unremarkable, but they’re not slumping right now like everyone else, and they’re consistently good enough to be better than a lot of the East right now, while a lot of the better teams struggle with the midseason slog.
• Cleveland Cavaliers: The Cavaliers appear to have gotten themselves together after LeBron James returned looking a lot like the LeBron James we remember. They still need to prove that they’re really this good, so they haven’t climbed back into the top 10 quite yet, but they’re looking in pretty aggressively.
• Toronto Raptors: After a few weeks where they looked exhausted and incapable of guarding anyone, the Raptors are shaking off the rust —  at least somewhat — and look a little better. Their defense seems to be settling somewhere between “meh” and “bad,” and that could really cap their potential lower than Raptors fans want to admit, but this is a good team. Just maybe not a great one.
• Charlotte Hornets: Right when the Hornets were eyeing a climb into the top 10 behind some massively improved play, their best player this season Kemba Walker goes down for 6 weeks. That hurts them a ton, especially if it means Lance Stephenson tries to do even more than he already is trying to do. The basketball gods can be cruel.
• Phoenix Suns: I have no idea what to make of the Suns. Genuinely. One week they’re top 10, the next they’re bottom 15, and this exchange has already happened twice. They’re probably somewhere between that: a better than average, but inconsistent, team that can either be a massive pain on any given night or totally roll over. It’s a bummer that we don’t have the same total-war Suns from last season that were so fun, but this is still a good team. Expect them to kick up the intensity soon as they begin fighting OKC tooth and nail for their playoff lives.
• New Orleans Pelicans: The Pelicans have put together a win streak recently, admittedly against really bad teams, but they got a great win against the Mavericks, and that’s still a great sign for a team that literally couldn’t win consecutive games at all. Anthony Davis has been incredible, and it’s nice to see his supporting cast start to put together a real functioning team around him.