This week’s biggest busts: Hawks -11, Bulls -5, Timberwolves -3
This week’s biggest successes: Bucks +5, Thunder +5, Rockets +4, Heat +4
1. Golden State Warriors (17-3, 2-1 this week) (last week: #1 [3-0] +0)
Everybody gets buttmad about Draymond Green kicking people and the refs doing nothing about it, but the thing that really grinds my gears is how he never stops talking/yelling/screaming. I like quiet. I don’t care who kicks who in whatever body part as long as they do it without making a fuss. If I made the rules, there would be a rule that anybody who talks in anything louder than a normal speaking voice gets five flagrant fouls called against them and then immediately thereafter gets banned from the NBA like O.J. Mayo. Talent levels league-wide would take a substantial hit but at least it would be quiet the way I like it, and the anti-Draymond Green folks would be happy too.
2. San Antonio Spurs (16-4, 2-1 this week) (last week: #4 [4-0] +2)
It was a bad week for teams at the top. The Spurs won two of three games this week, but they lost to the Magic, and the teams they beat were the Mavs (seven-point win) and Wizards (two-point win). If you only beat the Mavs by seven that shouldn’t even count as a win. If the NBA instituted a handicap system like in you grandpa’s golf league then we wouldn’t have this unfortunate situation where teams don’t beat bad teams by enough points. A handicap system would also make great progress towards the NBA’s implicit goal, which is to have every team win exactly 41 games in the regular season.
3. Los Angeles Clippers (16-5, 2-2 this week) (last week: #2 [3-1] -1)
Three losses in a row to significantly worse teams (Pistons, Pacers, Nets): fluke, or indication of systemic flaws in the makeup of the team? Scoring 70 against a mediocre defensive team like the Pacers is so anomalous that it almost can’t be a fluke. It was getting close to panic time for the Clippers until they beat the Cavaliers and restored order to the universe, but that didn’t stop me from wasting my time writing a mock obituary for this part of the power ranking. Now I can’t even use it. Damn it.
4. Cleveland Cavaliers (13-5, 1-3 this week) (last week: #3 [2-0] -1)
Like the Clippers, the Cavaliers suffered three straight losses, although only one of them was against a team they should definitely beat (the Bucks). Suddenly, the gap between the Cavs and the rest of the (l)eastern conference is looking less like an abyss and more like a…smaller abyss? LEBRON JAMES COASTING WATCH: LeBron could be coasting right now. He scored just sixteen points against the Clippers, a total that would indicate that he wasn’t trying as hard as he is capable of. His turnovers also went through the roof during the losing streak, meaning he’s throwing lazy passes just because it’s the regular season and it doesn’t matter anyway.
5. Toronto Raptors (14-6, 4-0 this week) (last week: #8 [2-2] +3)
Raptors fans get really testy when they feel like they aren’t getting respected by other fans or the national media. If you don’t rank them high enough in your OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS they’ll let you know about it because they desperately crave validation from us powerful, strong Americans. It’s something about inferiority being ingrained Canadian psyche (I say from my armchair where I do psychology). So, to make sure that all the Canadians reading this are happy, I put the Raptors in the top five this week. I also put them there because I want to recognize how well they’ve been playing. But mostly it’s about appeasing my friends north of the border.
6. Houston Rockets (13-7, 3-1 this week) (last week: #10 [2-1] +4)
The Moreyball concept of shooting ludicrous amounts of three-pointers has been practiced in Houston for some time now. In past years, this obsession with shooting from deep has been accompanied by a lack of accuracy from the same range. This year, the Rockets are first in three-point attempts (if that surprised you, you’re a dummy), but are also seventh in three-point percentage. That second tidbit is not too surprising considering the personnel we’re talking about (Harden, Anderson, Gordon, Ariza, among others) but it just means that the Rockets offense has been unlocked in a way it wasn’t previously. Also James Harden.
7. Utah Jazz (12-9, 3-1 this week) (last week: #9 [2-1] +2)
A one-point loss to the Heat was just a minor setback; the Jazz had won four straight before that, all by comfortable margins (also all with George Hill available and uninjured – there’s a trend in there somewhere). Gordon Hayward in particular had a good week, averaging 29/5 with no turnovers at all. Remind me why isn’t there more hype for that guy again? With the numbers he’s currently putting up he should be an All-Star lock. Is it because he’s too attractive? That must be the reason. His handsome face is intimidating the voters.
8. Boston Celtics (12-8, 3-1 this week) (last week: #6 [2-1] -2)
The Celtics are the worst defensive rebounding team in the league. See, I’m making an effort to include some cool stats in my OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS. Think about your reaction to that first sentence: you were a little bit intrigued, weren’t you? You immediately started thinking about the reasons why the Celtics would be so bad in that category despite having some legit bigs like Olynyk, Horford, and Amir Johnson. I bet you were waiting for my expert analysis on the subject. Well, I don’t have any. The drawing of conclusions will be left as an exercise for the reader.
9. Oklahoma City Thunder (12-8, 2-0 this week) (last week: #14 [2-3] +5)
Two more trippy-dubbies for Westbrook this week, but unlike last week, this week’s trippy-dubbies actually led to wins for his team. Now Westbrook is averaging a trippy-dubby for the season, 31/10/11 at the time of this writing. Say what you will about the departure of Kevin Durant or the long-ago trade of James Harden, but Westbrook never would get to average such insane numbers if he had to share the court with another star. In that sense, teammates like Andre Roberson and Steven Adams are exactly the kinds of teammates he needs around him to be successful.
10. Chicago Bulls (11-8, 1-2 this week) (last week: #5 [2-1] -5)
When talking about possible ways to get rid of Rajon Rondo, most basketball thinkers limit themselves to a false trichotomy: bench him (so he can ruin team chemistry), trade him (no takers) or waive him (all that money…). It’s like those are the only three options for getting rid of a player. DTB to the rescue! There is a heretofore undiscussed fourth option for removing Rondo from the Bulls: “accidentally” lock him in a refrigerated meat locker after you take him there pretending that’s a community outreach event. As long as you give him enough food and water, he’ll survive, and then you can let him out after the season is over like it was just a mistake. There are no flaws with this plan.
11. Memphis Grizzlies (13-8, 2-2 this week) (last week: #12 [3-1] +1)
Troy Daniels scored 31 points on Saturday night after scoring nineteen in each of the previous two contests. This is a dude who was getting DNP’s for most of the season, and when he did get in the game, he would throw potatoes up at the rim (is that the correct use of the slang term ‘potato’? This new internet lingo really confuses me). I’m sure the Grizzlies aren’t going to argue with this newfound production from the team’s fifteenth man. The question now becomes: whose fault is it that Troy Daniels wasn’t doing this from the start? Troy himself for being stinky sewer juice or coach Fiz for not believing in him/not seeing the undeniable shooting talent sitting right in front of him?
12. Detroit Pistons (11-10, 3-0 this week) (last week: #13 [2-2] +1)
Andre Drummond was once again the last one at the gym. Practice had ended three hours ago. The last trainer had just walked out the door, leaving Andre with nothing but a ball, a hoop, and a line fifteen feet away from said hoop. At this line he stood as he so often did, preparing to again practice his eternal nemesis: the free throw. This time, however, he ignored all the advice that his coaches and teammates had given him. Instead, he entreated a higher power to guide him: “Jennette McCurdy, if your spirit is still there, help me shoot this free throw,” he said out loud. Then, he shot the ball in his typical inconsistent style. Just as it seemed to be ready to miss by several inches to the left, the ball suddenly veered back on course and through the net. As the ball bounced dully on the floor and Andre stared in amazement, he thought he could hear a whispered voice in the silent gym: “I still like you enough that we could go on another date.”
13. Charlotte Hornets (11-9, 2-2 this week) (last week: #11 [1-3] -2)
Jeremy Lamb parlayed his eighteen-point, seventeen-rebound performance from the end of last week into some consistent playing time. It started off well enough (21 points, SiCK SHOOTING!), but he cooled off significantly after that, frustrating a coach Clifford who just wants somebody other than Kemba Walker to be counted on to score points. Here’s a hint, Cliffy: you can never count on guys who look like they’re half-asleep when they’re playing. You simply can’t trust ’em. Who knows if Lamb is trying out there or not? He has a perpetually drowsy look on his face. He could score 100 but when they made him hold up the sign that said “100” on it his eyes would be closed in the photo.
14. Milwaukee Bucks (10-8, 4-0 this week) (last week: #19 [1-1] +5)
Giannis hype levels are reaching the critical point that if he has even two bad games in a row, there will be a swift and violent backlash. There’s a subset of people who want hype to be misplaced and will jump at the chance to prove the hypers wrong (don’t look at me like that). Einstein or Newton or some other genius probably posited at one point: for every hype, there is an equal and opposite unhype. Giannis is due for some unhype very soon, but until that point comes, we can just continue to bask in the warming radiance of his Greek Freakiness.
15. Portland Trail Blazers (11-10, 2-1 this week) (last week: #18 [2-2] +3)
We’re far enough into the season where we can definitely say “the Trail Blazers are the worst defensive team in the league”. See? I just definitely said it. The reason seems pretty clear: they’re getting nothing at all defensively from their high-scoring frontcourt. Lillard’s been a known non-defense player since he got to the league and McCollum’s just too undersized to bother many shooting guards. But there are other players on the team who would seem to be at least competent on defense (Aminu, Harkless, Crabbe, Davis), so maybe the REAL reason is that Terry Stotts actually tells his team before every game that they’ll get benched if they try to stop the other team from scoring.
16. New York Knicks (10-9, 2-1 this week) (last week: #16 [3-1] +0)
In the sickly green waters of the fountain there is no enlightenment to be found. Instead, my eyes are greeted with visions of clanked iso-jumpers and turnovers caused by unwillingness to pass out of double teams. Coughing and spluttering, I remove my head from the fountain and look again at Carmelo, struggling for words. “This fountain represents how detrimental I am to the Knicks organization,” he says, his voice still tinged with a computerized quality. “Until I modify my style of play to enable Kristaps to become the true leader, we will never know true success.” He starts to fade out as if he is a poorly-received signal on an ancient television set.
17. Los Angeles Lakers (10-12, 2-3 this week) (last week: #15 [1-3] -2)
BRANDON INGRAM GOOD GAME ALERT! ALERT ALERT ALERT! The scoring-challenged second overall pick scored seventeen points while the Raptors blew his team out. All of Ingram’s teammates disappeared so hard during that game that the police put up missing children signs outside the Staples center. Most of the Lakers players were found soon after the game but Timofey Mozgov was never located and it’s presumed that he escaped back to Russia so nobody would make fun of him for getting paid too much money.
18. Atlanta Hawks (10-11, 0-5 this week) (last week: #7 [1-3] -11)
I keep telling myself not to overreact. I remind myself that it is my duty to write something calm and measured for the Hawks’ entry in my OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS; I would be doing my readership an injustice if I propagated hysteria. But even as one side of brain commands itself to do these things, the other side is issuing contradictory commands. Before I can stop myself, the words come flying out of my fingers, onto the keyboard: THE HAWKS SEASON IS OVER, I proclaim in capital letters. DENNIS SCHRODER GETS STATS AT THE EXPENSE OF TEAM SUCCESS, I breathlessly proclaim. THEY WERE LOSING EVEN WHEN THEY HAD PAUL MILLSAP AVAILABLE, I type even as my mind tries futilely to halt the outpouring of sensationalist sentences.
19. Indiana Pacers (9-10, 1-1 this week) (last week: #21 [2-2] +2)
Paul George called a players-only meeting this week because the Pacers’ play was so uninspired. That’s a good thing to do if you want to make it seem like you’re the mature veteran leader person in the locker room, so I fully support George on this one. I’m just wondering what it’s like to be in one of those meetings. Do players start accusing each other of being team cancers like it’s a group therapy session? Do punches ever get thrown? Do people break down and cry while their teammates comfort them? Or is it just a fun way to talk crap about the coaching staff? If I were a player at one of these meetings I would sit quietly until the meeting was over then afterwards wonder why I didn’t tell Al Jefferson to just retire already.
20. New Orleans Pelicans (7-13, 1-2 this week) (last week: #17 [2-1] -3)
OFFICIAL RETURN OF JRUE HOLIDAY HONEYMOON PERIOD STATUS: over. The honeymoon is over and signing Anthony Brown off the top of the free agency corpse-pile didn’t bring it back. Luckily, the Pelicans are still in decent shape because Anthony Davis keeps having beast games and will be solidly in the MVP conversation come April (assuming that his constant barrage of minor injuries doesn’t catch up to him). Also, Tyreke Evans gets closer and closer to his return to the court, creating the possibility of another honeymoon period that will net some wins.
21. Miami Heat (7-13, 2-2 this week) (last week: #25 [1-3] +4)
The big three is long gone from Miami but Pat Riley and co. have done a satisfactory job in remaking the big three out of budget parts. See how perfectly it works out: Dwyane Wade = Tyler Johnson; both are dunking shooting guards with some ability to orchestrate the offense. LeBron James = James Johnson; both are versatile do-it-all forwards with tattoos. Chris Bosh = …Willie Reed. Yeah. I bet Willie’s hit some jumpers even if they were just in practice. Actually, let’s go with Chris Bosh = Chris Bosh because Chris Bosh is still technically on the roster.
22. Denver Nuggets (7-13, 1-3 this week) (last week: #22 [2-2] +0)
It looks like the Nuggets are headed for another lottery appearance. There are some redundant parts on their roster that would be ripe for trade so don’t be surprised if some trades go down soon. Actually I have sources inside the Nuggets organization, like three sources, and those sources are telling me that the Nuggets are working the phones hard on Kenneth Faried, trying to sell him as an improved defender with an indomitable compulsion to hustle. They’re also fielding a lot of interest on Nikola Jokic but he’s off the table for now. These are real rumors and I’m not making them up.
23. Minnesota Timberwolves (6-14, 1-3 this week) (last week: #20 [1-3] -3)
Coach Thibs hasn’t yet turned this team into a defensive stalwart, or even coached them into anything approaching an acceptable level of defense at all, but that’s fine by me. The fun of this team is that their young stars will go off for huge amounts of points (exhibit B: KAT scoring 47) and remind you once again that the Wolves are one of the up-and-coming teams in the league even if all their parts don’t quite work together yet. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, any semblance defense from this group of players would just dampen my excitement.
24. Sacramento Kings (7-12, 1-2 this week) (last week: #23 [2-1] -1)
Garrett Temple: the free agent signing who aligns most with the expectations placed upon them by their fanbase? Let’s take a look at the facts: in two games this week, Temple scored a total of three point on eight shot attempts in fifty-four minutes. This is predictable because Temple’s never been a scorer in any sense of the word, and it’s doubtful that any Kings fan ever thought he would provide any scoring impact whatsoever, even if they were unwise enough to watch the multitude of videos on my channel depicting Temple scoring twenty points. What the Kings are getting out of Temple must be exactly what they expected when they signed him. The next question is: why did the Kings sign a player knowing that he wouldn’t do anything when he was on the court?
25. Phoenix Suns (6-14, 1-2 this week) (last week: #26 [1-2] +1)
The Suns are first in the league in pace, which is a considerate thing of them to do for their fans, because even bad teams can become fun to watch as long as everybody’s running everywhere and a lot of shots get hoisted up at the rim. It’s even better when you have some young players who can go for thirty points while playing under this system, like the Suns have. Using advanced mathematics, we can estimate that the amount of hype surrounding Devin Booker attributable to this high-octane offense is exactly 40% of Booker’s total hype.
26. Washington Wizards (6-12, 1-2 this week) (last week: #24 [2-1] -2)
Another disappointing week saw Bradley Beal play well but the chances of even a low-seeded playoff appearance grow ever more remote. The Wizards’ bench continues to not pull their weight. Or, they are not asked to pull any weight because they are incapable of it. Either way, there is not much scoring coming from the unfortunately-assembled collection of scrubs who populate that end of the Wizards’ bench. Marcus Thornton, Kelly Oubre, Tomas Satoransky, Trey Burke, Jason Smith, and Andrew Nicholson have had a total of two or three good games between them. That’s bad.
27. Orlando Magic (8-12, 2-2 this week) (last week: #29 [0-3] +2)
“Why isn’t Aaron Gordon more like Paul George?” Frank Vogel shouted, leaping up from his seat. The rest of the coaches assembled in the coaching staff meeting sat in uncomfortable silence. This tirade had been heard before. “He needs a jumper! Paul has a jumper, why not him? Never mind the defensive potential, who cares about that right now, I just want him to score some god damn points!” One of the coaches weakly interjected with a suggestion to play Gordon at power forward instead, but was quickly shot down. “Shut up! Who’s the coach here? Me! I set the rotations! I’m turning Aaron into this team’s Paul George and none of you clowns will impede my genius plans.” Exhausted from the outburst, Frank sat down and mopped his forehead with his tie. “And when are we going to find a trade partner for that bust Mario…” he muttered.
28. Dallas Mavericks (4-15, 2-2 this week) (last week: #30 [0-3] +2)
More cool stats coming your way from basketball-reference.com (whose existence makes these OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS possible…can I get paid to shill them): the Mavericks are dead last in their percentage of field goal attempts that are layups (just 18%). If you thought you knew why the Mavs have only three wins, but that wasn’t the reason you would give, here’s a news flash: you were wrong. Layups are the easiest shot in basketball and if you don’t take any of them you’re going to lose. Coaching and player personnel don’t matter. Other stats don’t matter. Layup percentage is the only thing that matters. Period, end of story.
29. Brooklyn Nets (5-14, 1-3 this week) (last week: #27 [0-3] -2)
Last week I made a rule that was supposed to help me streamline the ranking process of my OFFICIAL POWER RANKINGS. The rule was that any team that beats the Clippers automatically gains two OFFICIAL RANKINGS no matter what else they did during the week. Well, guess what, the Nets managed to beat the Clippers in two overtimes thanks to Sean Kilpatrick becoming Kobe for exactly 48 minutes, and I had to throw my new rule out the window because I can’t apply it in good conscience. So much for streamlining the ranking process. Do you know how stressful this is?
30. Philadelphia 76ers (4-16, 0-4 this week) (last week: #28 [1-3] -2)
Popular opinion is turning against Jahlil Okafor. Not only are his on-off numbers very damning, but the eye test is very damning as well, and his raw scoring (the one reason why people thought he was good in the first place) is down. He just doesn’t look as good now that he’s being compared to Joel Embiid, even if his on-court impact isn’t any worse than it was last year. Since having to be compared to the future GOAT of all time isn’t really Okafor’s fault, I’m going to send him a card with my well-wishes in it. On the front is a cute picture of a kitty and a puppy sleeping a basket. I hope that makes him feel better.