NC Power Rankings: Westbrook-led Thunder Climb, Mavs Collapsing

Mar 5, 2015; Chicago, IL, USA; Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook (0) during the second half against the Chicago Bulls at the United Center. Chicago won 108-105. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

This week’s power rankings got weird, as there was a lot of upheaval in what used to be a pretty rigid one through four order thanks to Westbrook playing basketball like he’s Ares and the court is a battlefield and the Spurs finally looking right again behind Tony Parker’s recovery.

There seems to be just as much upheaval in the middle ranks, though, as suddenly the Jazz, Hornets, and Pacers look like legit frightening teams as we approach a significant sample of games after the All-Star Break, the Bulls and Raps are starting to put something that looks like cohesion together, even if it’s tenuous, and the Mavericks — who have never fallen out of the top 10 before last week — are completely falling apart.

Also, as a quick reminder since it’s been a while: the rankings are based on the team’s Net Rating over the last 25 games — the most recent large sample size, to get a picture of where the team is now — with a minor adjustment for the direction in which the team is trending (the Rate of Change of their regression line over their last 7 games), strength of schedule, injuries, and record. The rankings are meant to be a bit silly and arbitrary and not actually predictive, like normal power rankings! This is all just for fun.

That said, lets check out the rankings:

The Top Ten

1. Cleveland Cavaliers: The Cavs and the Warriors have more or less held pat this week, neither showing substantial improvement or degradation, and the Cavs have just been the marginally better team over their last stretch statistically, simple as that. LeBron is a maniac, and if you get a chance to watch the best player in the world play live you have to do it.
2. Golden State Warriors: The Warriors are creeping up on the Cavs ever so slowly, they really want their top spot back. They’re an incredible team, and the drop off from them to the “lighting the world on fire Thunder” is huge. Stephen Curry is my personal MVP vote, as I think he’s so good, and does so many unique things, that we just don’t have the vocabulary or brainpower to really comprehend what he’s doing, and that (I’m speculating here) makes it hard for a lot of people to want to give him the vote, but he’s insane.
3. Oklahoma City Thunder: Russell Westbrook plays basketball like the Hulk and Thor got fused in an experiment gone horribly wrong. It’s a testament to how well the NBA has reinforced the baskets since the days of Shaq breaking them that Russ hasn’t ripped one off the stanchion and produced a crater in the ground. If when he jumped the floor ripped asunder and he just flew through the ceiling sheathed in a gold aura I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
4. San Antonio Spurs: The Spurs look to, finally, be back…again…maybe, on the back of Tony Parker looking suddenly alive and like a serious threat. They’re starting to climb the West’s rankings again behind both a resurgent team and a rather easy final schedule relative to the rest of the West.
5. Atlanta Hawks: It feels like a horrible shame to have the Hawks this low, but it’s both what the formula says, and the reality of a team that’s not necessarily struggling but going slowly relative to their standards. The loss to Philly hurts, and it’s just too hard to put them over the other resurgent West teams.
6. Los Angeles Clippers: The Clippers have lost a decent amount lately, but every loss has been really close relative to the expectations for the matchup, and all signs indicate that they’re still somehow underrated.
7. Memphis Grizzlies: The Grizzlies are calming down after an outrageous hot streak headed into and right out of the All-Star Break, but they’re still probably a title contender, and one of the absolute best teams out of the West. They’re desperately hoping that San Antonio climbs out of the 7th seed and they hold onto the second.
8. Utah Jazz: The Jazz are not only still in the top ten, but they’ve climbed! The Jazz are legit, as is Rudy Gobert, and even if we expect them to slow down by the end of the year they’re a threatening team now behind a stifling defense, and they’re gonna be a sneak threat to the Western playoffs next season with another draft pick in their belt.
9. Charlotte Hornets: The…Hornets? If you’re reacting like that, you were probably also surprised that Mo Williams was the Eastern Conference Player of last week, but they’re on a hell of win streak including some nice looking blowouts. Having a legit shooter playing huge minutes for them cannot be understated as far the impact goes (as is the impact of reducing Lance Stephenson’s minutes), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist is playing like the DPOY lately, and Al Jefferson looks a lot better in good space. This team is finally looking like we hoped they would in the beginning of the season.
10. Indiana Pacers: The Pacers have only lost 2 games over their last 10, and they’ve had one the top 5 point differentials in the league since the All-Star break. Their defense looks like it did last year even without Paul George and they’re — somehow, unbelievably, miraculously — scoring. They’re really good all of a sudden.

Other Teams of Note

• Portland Trail Blazers: Having the Blazers (and the Rockets, who are more or less in the same situation so I’m just lumping them here) outside the top 10 seems mean and/or like they’ve done something wrong, but it’s not and they haven’t. The Blazers have been very good, but the teams who leapfrogged them have just been better, blitzing people more or less out of nowhere. Don’t sleep on the Blazers though, despite their location, they’re one of the best teams in the league.
• Milwaukee Bucks: The Bucks — who were so fun and so good for so long — are really slumping lately, and it’s pretty hard not to heap most of the blame on swapping Brandon Knight for Michael Carter-Williams. Knight was probably overrated on impact in some ways, though he was very good, but Carter-Williams might be the worst offensive player in the league which has really hurt the youngster team. On the bright side, less point guard usage has been great for the rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
• Chicago Bulls: The Bulls are injured into oblivion and have had a sub-.500 record lately as they try and get Jimmy Butler and Taj Gibson healthy, but actually somehow have kept close to a lot of teams and improving lately as they start to figure out their new dynamics with the hurt team. They still can’t put together a consistent performance, but at least now they don’t look worse than they should. They’re a real threat, and Nikola Mirotic might actually be better than Taj Gibson.
• Miami Heat: The Heat are — shocker — a lot better with Goran Dragic. It’s hard to know, until they start to level out somewhere, how good they really are, especially with Whiteside doing insanely stupid things like tackle Kelly Olynyk. They’re rising, and we might be getting to a point soon where we can start calling the Heat a legit “good” team.
• Boston Celtics: The Celts have looked a lot better with Isaiah Thomas on board, and it looks like they’re staying competitive with really good teams, but the stats have yet to really bare it out yet, and they still grade out as slightly-worse-than-mediocre.
• Dallas Mavericks: The Mavericks have sneakily been the worst team in the league over their last 6 games, and they have a negative point differential by a healthy margin over their last large sample size. Their problems are not only clear but they’re now prolonged, performing like a truly bad team for a long team. Part of this has to be injuries — Tyson Chandler and Chandler Parsons have been out against the toughest part of their schedule — but some of Dallas fans’ panic is completely rational.
• Washington Wizards: If Dallas fans should be panicking, Wizards fans should be crying into their pillows at night. The Wiz have barely played better than the absolute bottom of the league since even before the All-Star Break, and they just aren’t figuring it out. Hopefully their brutal drumming of the Bulls last night starts a large-scale overhaul for this team.
• Philadelphia 76ers: THE SIXERS ARE OUT OF THE BOTTOM FIVE: REPEAT, THE SIXERS ARE OUT OF THE BOTTOM FIVE. The Sixers, obviously, are not playing extraordinarily poorly lately, with a win against the freaking HAWKS and lots of very close losses by their standards. The subtle improvement of Nerlens Noel, the unspoken degree to which Canaan is better than MCW, and the return of Jason Richardson have all had a big effect.
• Brooklyn Nets: The Nets are a playoff team that’s somehow in the bottom five. I don’t even know man. This team is so boring that I almost refuse to watch them, so I have a limited degree to which I can say what’s up. Probably the East is just bad, and they’re a high variance team with fluke games. But good lord.