NBA Power Rankings: The Houston Rockets are a real threat

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The Washington Wizards are finally starting to take advantage of the rest of the Eastern Conference’s incompetence. After floating around on the cusp of the playoff race they’ve been able to win enough games to vault themselves into the eighth spot as of this post. Great play out of John Wall and Bradley Beal has really been all that this team needed to get back on track. Wall’s case for a spot on the 2017 NBA All-Star Game grows as the Wizards climb higher in the standings. Beal has managed to not suffer a debilitating injury so far and has even gotten off of the minutes restriction that the team placed him on a season ago. Even still, with general manager Ernie Grunfeld on the hot seat, Washington could make a short-sighted move in hopes of Grunfeld retaining his job. Most of the Randy Wittman stain has been cleansed off of this team and Scott Brooks’ point guard-centric offense is really helping Wall excel on the floor this season. As long as Marcin Gortat can give them solid minutes as the defensive anchor, the Wizards should be able to get into the playoffs this season. Anything other than a playoff berth would be a huge failure for this franchise. Since their surprising run a couple years ago in the postseason–that was derailed by an injury to Wall–the Wizards have not yet made it back to build off of the potential we saw from them. The time is now for this team and their play of late makes it seem that they know the clock is ticking.