DTB’s Official NBA Power Rankings (Week 2)

This week’s biggest busts: Celtics -6, Magic -6, Pistons -4, Heat -4
This week’s biggest successes: Hawks +5, Suns +4, Knicks +3, Lakers +3, Jazz +3

1. Los Angeles Clippers (9-1, 4-0 this week) (last week: #2 [5-1] +1)
They took it to the Spurs, Pistons, and Blazers in consecutive games, winning each by more than twenty. Those aren’t great teams, but they’re good teams, and the Clippers barely broke a sweat in dispatching them. With a preponderance of blowouts comes a preponderance of meaningless fourth quarters; perfect time to develop the preponderance of young talent on the roster! Actually, the young talent on the Clippers consists solely of Diamond Stone. So it’s time to develop him I guess. First step in developing your young talent: removing them from the inactive list.

2. Cleveland Cavaliers (7-1, 1-1 this week) (last week: #1 [6-0] -1)
They lost a game so that means LeBron can start coasting right? There is no longer any possibility of going 82-0, a fact that I’m sure has been explained to LeBron. Has he already started coasting? Is he coasting right now? Is he so much of a beast that we can’t even tell if he’s started coasting yet? “LeBron Coasting Watch” will definitely be the most important storyline following the Cavs in the coming weeks.

3. Golden State Warriors (7-2, 3-0 this week) (last week: #3 [4-2] +0)
Okay, so their defense is a lot worse than last year. Here’s a list of people we can blame, in order of the percentage of blame they have been apportioned. It’s almost like a power-rankings within a power-rankings! First, Zaza Pachulia, for not being Andrew Bogut. Second, Draymond Green because (genital-related joke goes here don’t forget to come up with one). Third, Steve Kerr, because he’s too sassy with the media. Four, Joe Lacob for not being light-years ahead on defensive schemes. Fifth, Stephen Curry for no reason.

4. Atlanta Hawks (7-2, 3-0 this week) (last week: #9 [4-2] +5)
OFFICIAL DTB RETRACTION: Last week I called Kent Bazemore a failure. That was incorrect. He is playing okay. I expect a little better from him (just a little…not a lot) but he is far from a failure. The real failure on the Hawks roster is Mike Scott for getting caught with drugs in his car even though he stands to make hella cash in the NBA and shouldn’t risk that just so he can transport drugs from one spot to another in his car. Get somebody else to do that for you, bro. Nobody cares if you have drugs in your house, just don’t keep them in your car. [Note: this summary of events might be totally inaccurate but I’m winging it right now if you couldn’t tell – I mean, what would YOU say about the Hawks in a power rankings?]

5. Toronto Raptors (7-2, 3-1 this week) (last week: #4 [4-1] -1)
DeMar DeRozan is still leading the league in scoring. And he’s doing it while not being able to shoot threes even a little bit. A damning indictment of the modern three-happy NBA, or just the result of a scorer given free reign to chuck endlessly because all of his teammates have regressed? If more people are going to read these damn OFFICIAL NBA POWER RANKINGS, it has to be the more controversial one. That poses a new question: which of those two positions is more controversial? why_not_both.gif

6. Charlotte Hornets (6-2, 2-1 this week) (last week: #8 [4-1] +2)
Michael Jordan sits alone in his office, chewing on his pen. A piece of paper is in front of him, blank except for a title written in block letters: “Steps to make it out of the East.” It is his first time pondering the question, as this is the first season his tenure as owner that the Hornets appear poised to make real noise in their conference. Now that it is time to think of such things, his mind is as blank as the page in front of him. For minutes stretching into hours his brain slowly churns. In the window, the sun sets; in his pocket, his phone chimes with unread texts and missed calls. Finally, he uncaps the pen and writes, “I hope LeBron tears all of his cruciate ligaments at once while tying his shoes.”

7. Utah Jazz (7-4, 4-1 this week) (last week: #10 [3-3] +3)
Gordon Hayward’s back and he’s playing like prime LeBron, all the way down to not being able to shoot threes. They still don’t have a win against an elite team unless you count the Spurs (unclear if they should count), but it’s still early enough in the season where if these rankings are wildly inaccurate, I can just say I didn’t have enough data to work with.

8. San Antonio Spurs (7-3, 2-1 this week) (last week: #5 [5-2] -3)
Everybody’s freaking out because Tony Parker was extremely ineffective when he came back from injury, averaging like 5/5 or something horrible like that. Here’s what they should really be freaking out about: Kawhi Leonard is currently anchoring the offense AND defense pretty much by himself because LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol are so old. And, also, yeah, you can freak out about Tony Parker being a bottom 1 starting PG league-wide.

9. Oklahoma City Thunder (6-3, 1-2 this week) (last week: #7 [5-1] -2)
You can’t really talk about the Thunder without bringing up Westbrook’s name. But I’m going to try. They traded Ersan Ilyasova for Jerami Grant, replacing vital three-point shooting with vital…dunk dunking? Perhaps this move makes more sense in the context of a nameless point guard who scores thirty points per game, but we can’t talk about that. Um. Enes Kanter. Steven Adams. Um. Kyle Singler. Um.

10. Chicago Bulls (6-4, 2-1 this week) (last week: #12 [3-3] +2)
Paul Zipser has played 22 minutes without scoring a point. That comes out to a 0.0 scoring average per 36 minutes. Not bad for an unheralded rookie out of Germany! Thankfully for Zipser’s ego, Nikola Mirotic will forever be the main target of Bulls fan’s ire until he starts shooting better from the field and stops getting totally bamboozled on defense. It might be a while, and even if he does do those things, how could you hate a guy with last name Zipser? His name sounds like it could be made into a kid’s TV show.

11. Houston Rockets (5-4, 2-1 this week) (last week: #13 [3-3] +2)
The James Harden MVP campaign is holding rallies at NBA arenas all across the country. Among his promises to the voters: free assists for anybody who has even an ounce of scoring ability; scoring from anywhere and everywhere on the court; beards; snaggly teeth obscured by beards; abolition of the two-dollar bill; visible indifference towards playing man defense, team defense, or any other variety of defense.

12. Boston Celtics (5-4, 2-2 this week) (last week: #6 [3-2] -6)
Al Horford bumped his head and then it didn’t get any better. That is the sole reason why the Celtics dropped so much from last week to this week. I could try to spin some other narrative about teamwork or defense or ball movement or some other hot NBA buzzword, but I won’t. It all comes down to Al Horford getting concussioned and still being all loopy and dazed the next day. On a related note, it’s so obvious right now that the NBA is trying not to be the NFL as much as possible.

13. Los Angeles Lakers (6-4, 3-1 this week) (last week: #16 [3-3] +3)
Immediately after the publication of my inaugural OFFICIAL NBA POWER RANKINGS, the Lakers beat the Warriors by twenty. This requires the rewriting of some narratives. The “this young squad is not quite ready to win games” narrative? Now it reads “this young squad will compete hard every night, and they have the talent to win their fair share of games”. The “Timofey Mozgov’s contract is straight stinky garbage” narrative is now “Mozgod is the perfect center to complement the scorers that surround him”. The “Kobe Bryant was a valuable mentor to the young scorers on the Lakers” narrative has been flipped upside-down: “It was unfair to D-Lo and Clarkson to have Kobe taking all the minutes when he was obviously done.”

14. Portland Trail Blazers (6-4, 3-1 this week) (last week: #14 [3-3] +0)
Originally I had the Blazers up higher, but the quality of their wins this week as not high. They barely beat the Grizzlies, they barely beat the Suns, and they barely beat the Kings, three teams which will be lucky to break out of the bottom half of the OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS this season. In between all those “barely” wins, they got demolished by the Clippers in a game where their only double-digit scorer was SHABAZZ NAPIER with eleven. That’s right. The guy who the Heat were forced to draft because LeBron tweeted about him. In other news, the “Festus Ezeli needing to be helped up off the bench” video didn’t affect the Blazers’ ranking, but it’s still really sad.

15. Detroit Pistons (5-5, 1-3 this week) (last week: #11 [4-2] -4)
When the Pistons were sitting at 4-2 it seemed like everything would be alright even without Reggie Jackson. Then three straight losses happened, with the Pistons looking offensively inept in two of them. Let’s blame it on SVG’s obsession with force-feeding Drummond the ball in the post. And Drummond’s inability to make free throws thus his unsuitability for playing in fourth quarters. WAIT HE’S SHOOTING OVER 50% FROM THE LINE THIS YEAR!!!! IGNORE EVERYTHING I JUST SAID

16. Milwaukee Bucks (5-4, 1-2 this week) (last week: #15 [4-2] -1)
Granting the Mavericks their first win and then granting the Pelicans their first win was pretty bad. But the Bucks weren’t even supposed to be good without Khris Middleton so it’s fine right? Just put Giannis out there for forty minutes a game and watch him do Eurosteps in transition that probably could be called as travels but everybody’s so in awe of his long strides they just kind of guiltily let it happen. Yeah I said it. Try to refute me without using the word “gather step”. Hint: you can’t.

17. Minnesota Timberwolves (2-6, 1-2 this week) (last week: #17 [1-4] +0)
The “big three” of LaVine, Towns, and Wiggins are all averaging over twenty points per game (or were; now LaVine is averaging 19.8). And they did it without the assistance of Ricky Rubio. Is this a good omen? It might not be: the 2013-14 Kings achieved something similar with their “big three” of Cousins, Thomas, and Gay, but they went 28-54. Perhaps even more worrying is that a “big three” can theoretically be fashioned from any possible roster simply by finding the three players with the highest PPG.

18. Phoenix Suns (3-7, 1-3 this week) (last week: #23 [2-4] +4)
There is an awesome MIP race going on right now in the hot desert sands of Arizona: Devin “Booker Report” Booker versus T.J. “Warren Peace” Warren. It’s even more awesome because you could totally do a book report on Tolstoy’s War and Peace in real life. Now I feel like I should say something about tsarist Russia and maybe tie it back in to the Suns’ struggles but I’m coming up totally empty. It would probably involve Alex Len.

19. Denver Nuggets (3-6, 1-3 this week) (last week: #20 [2-3] +2)
The most exciting thing to happen to the Nuggets was rookie Juan Hernangomez getting in the face of Kevin Durant and then smugly walking away like he had just totally owned him or something. After the exchange took place, Durant was more confused than anything. He didn’t crane his neck to try to read the name off the back of Hernangomez’ jersey, but you could totally tell from his body language that he really wanted to. Meanwhile, I’m guessing that Hernangomez definitely knew who Durant was. Just a guess.

20. Brooklyn Nets (4-5, 2-1 this week) (last week: #21 [2-4] +1)
Today’s discussion question: is Justin Hamilton better than Andrea Bargnani? Jham actually hits his threes and isn’t obsessed with popping from midrange every chance he gets, but he might be just as useless at protecting the rim. He also has a spaced-out look from his eyes sitting too low on his head, or something, and his haircut looks like an N’Sync video except the tips aren’t frosted. Those things are immaterial to his “better than Andrea Bargnani” status but it felt right to bring them up.

21. Indiana Pacers (4-6, 1-3 this week) (last week: #18 [3-3] -3)
A team with Paul George on it has one of the worst defensive ratings in the league, proving that a coherent team defense is more important than sticking elite individual defenders on the court to lock down a specific player. Reread that last sentence. It totally sounds like I know what I’m talking about. Is this how it feels to work at ESPN? We also gotta throw in a reference to their loss against the Sixers so here it is.

22. Memphis Grizzlies (4-5, 1-2 this week) (last week: #24 [3-3] +2)
Chandler Parsons finally suited up for the Grizzlies but averaged seven points on 33% shooting in the three games he played. We can surmise one of two things: injuries have taken their toll and he will never be the player he was in his too-short prime; or he’s too busy banging 10-out-of-10 supermodels all day and night (or engaging in activities peripherally related to the banging, such as wooing, snapchatting, and hanging out at clubs) to focus on basketball, eating, or anything else. Bonus third option: three games is too small a sample size to draw meaningful conclusions from. NO. THAT’S LAME AND I HATE IT

23. Miami Heat (2-6, 0-3 this week) (last week: #19 [2-3] -4)
CHEF DTB’S RECIPE FOR A REALLY BAD OFFENSE: Mix one part Goran Dragic and one part Hassan Whiteside in a bowl. Sprinkle in a little Tyler Johnson. Combine with the utterly inefficient scoring efforts of Justise Winslow and Dion Waiters. Add a dash of Luke Babbitt, but no more than a dash because he’s too slow to do anything but shoot set-shots from behind the three-point line. Bake for 48 minutes. If you followed this recipe you should have a team which is lucky to crack 100 points in any given game! Congrats! That sucks!

24. New York Knicks (3-6, 1-3 this week) (last week: #27 [2-3] +3)
My gaze is fixed upon the crying baby lying naked in the void. I try to turn my head and redirect my eyes, but in this place I have no head and no eyes, for I am a bodyless apparition. As I watch, the baby’s torso splits open, revealing hundreds of human eyeballs swiveling this way and that, searching, searching, but for what? They spill out from the wound and fall endlessly, but are replenished from some unknown source. My sanity is as an unanchored boat caught in a furious sea-storm.

25. Sacramento Kings (4-7, 2-2 this week) (last week: #25 [2-5] +0)
“This is your last chance, man,” Ty Lawson angrily reminds himself as he stands in front of his mirror. The haggard reflection he sees makes him feel sick. “The Kings trusted you with the starting spot. Don’t screw it up. You can do this.” But even as he says these words that resonate with strength, the weakness returns again, and he reaches for a nearby bottle of liquor. The harsh liquid stings his throat, but he barely feels it. He doesn’t remember the last time he was sober; his teammates suspect, they probably even know, that Ty has been playing games drunk for the entire season. For some reason, his season averages of 5/5 on 30% shooting pop into his mind. There are no more tears in response to those pathetic numbers contributed by a pathetic man; instead, he takes another swig.

26. Washington Wizards (2-7, 1-3 this week) (last week: #26 [1-4] +0)
Somehow the Wizards totally crushed the Celtics to get their second win. The boxscore of this game (complete with Otto Porter dropping 34/14/4/3/3) gets filed into the “odd occurrences” file next to my cache of pictures showing aliens landing in my backyard to transplant Steve Nash’s brain into Ish Smith’s cranium. I could really burn the Wizards hard by saying that every win of theirs should go in that file, but I won’t. I’m a nice guy.

27. Dallas Mavericks (2-6, 2-1 this week) (last week: #28 [0-5] +1)
Oh no. Oh no. Wesley Matthews is thirty years old, you guys. He’s not going to get better. His prime is already behind him. That sub-30% shooting thing he’s got going on, it might improve a little bit, but the change will only be cosmetic. He’s done. He’s so done and it’s sad. Injuries robbed him from us just like they robbed Ash from us in the Pokemon movie, but in this version Matthews isn’t going to come back to life like Ash did. And there’s not going to be any Pikachus crying and zapping Matthews trying to get him to wake up. Why is liquid dripping from my eyes?

28. Orlando Magic (3-6, 0-3 this week) (last week: #22 [3-3] -6)
The Magic are like a plate of nachos you order at a fancy restaurant because you don’t recognize anything else on the menu. Then when it arrives at the table there’s a bunch of weird ingredients on top of the chips. This metaphor isn’t making as much sense as I had hoped but I’m too far in to give up now. Basically the Magic have a lot of parts that look good by themselves but when you put them all together it just doesn’t make for a tasty plate of nachos. There. That made sense, right?

29. New Orleans Pelicans (1-9, 1-3 this week) (last week: #30 [0-6] +1)
Friggin’ E’TWAUN MOORE is their second-leading scorer. What the fricking frick? It has suddenly become clear why they only have one win. Too clear. Clearer than a frozen forest-pond silently brooding among the gleaming crystal snow. Clearer even than that. Anthony Davis could put be putting up prime Wilt numbers but it wouldn’t matter as long as Moore was the second fiddle. No offense to Moore, he’s a cool role player. He should soak it all in before Holiday and Evans get back to steal his minutes.

30. Philadelphia 76ers (1-8, 1-3 this week) (last week: #29 [0-5] -1)
After many heartbreaks, the 76ers finally beat the Pacers on Friday, thus affording them their first chance to enjoy a victory cheesesteak. A sandwich comprising bits of beef, cheesy sauce, and bread is certainly the most delicious way to celebrate a win, but the Sixers hadn’t had a chance to chow down on monster meat sandwiches until that win actually happened. IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE: I just checked the official NBA rules, and there’s nothing in there that says you can’t eat cheesesteaks after your team loses. So I honestly don’t know what they were waiting for. Hopefully the breaking of Joel Embiid’s cheesesteak virginity was a positive experience for all involved.