Three games remain on the 284th road trip in NBA history spanning at least seven games in length.
Three more wins will enable the Golden State Warriors to be the first of those 284 teams to sweep a trip that long.
These are the sorts of absurdities we toss around with the Warriors, who -- if there were a way to quantify such things -- have opened up the biggest lead at the top of the rankings that we've ever seen before Christmas.
Consider that the previous best start in NBA history was 15-0. These Warriors have overshot that by a touchdown entering Tuesday's showdown with the Indiana Pacers. With stops in Boston and Milwaukee to come before the Warriors finally get to go home, ESPN's trusty Basketball Power Index now projects them to finish 71-11 for the season.
"This is normal now," Warriors sharpshooter Klay Thompson insists. Pardon us, Klay, if those of us on the outside are still adjusting.
We'll get to the rest of the league, as always, in our weekly rankings companion piece on Stein Line Live. But it's the Warriors' world these days, so the prime real estate on this Rankings Monday rightfully belongs to them.
Profuse thanks to Micah Adams and the rest of the NBA wing of ESPN's Stats & Information, as well as the Elias Sports Bureau, for all the data assistance provided to the Committee of One as we assembled this week's ladder on the run while traveling the Dubs. You can comment on our 1-to-30 order below.
| 2015-16 Power Rankings: Week 6 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 | 
|
--
Last Week: 1 | Scary omen alert: Golden State is just the fourth team in history to win its first 10 road games ... and the other three teams (Celtics in 1960-61, Celtics again in 1961-62 and Knicks in 1969-70) went on to win it all. These Warriors can become the first team to start a season 13-0 on the road with a win Tuesday night at Indiana. | |
| 2 | 
|
--
Last Week: 2 | If Paul George is struggling to get attention, thanks to the spotlight-hogging Warriors and Steph Curry, what can we say about poor Kawhi Leonard? The Spurs, meanwhile, have actually held a lead for a greater percentage of their fourth-quarter minutes than the Warriors have. Which is, well, something. | |
| 3 | 
| Last Week: 7 | The highest winning percentage in the Eastern Conference, with 25 percent of the season gone, belongs to ... the Miami Heat? So it says in the standings despite the fact that the Heat were the only team among the 10 in the East with winning records as of Monday morning sporting a negative plus/minus (minus-1) when measuring home losses against road victories. | |
| 4 | 
| Last Week: 8 | An impressive home win over the Spurs to begin the week took Chicago to 3-0 against San Antonio, Cleveland and Oklahoma City. The rest of the NBA is 16-42 against those three teams. The Bulls, though, continue to leave the impression that they're not playing as well as it sounds ... as thisNick Friedell tweet conveys better than we can. | |
| 5 | 
| Last Week: 4 | Russell Westbrook keeps messing around and getting triple-doubles, while Kevin Durant delivers increasingly frequent reminders of his return to peak form. The Thunder, though, can't escape the fact that their fourth-quarter execution has frankly been as spotty as ever and, worse, doesn't seem to be getting any better. | |
| 6 | 
| Last Week: 3 | OK, OK. We're listening now, LeBron. Something is going on with the Cavs beyond mere injuries, so we've suspended all scoffing at the pleas for more hunger and focus. In this current 2-4 funk, King James & Co. are averaging just 94.8 points per 100 possessions and shooting a lowly 40 percent from the floor as a group. | |
| 7 | 
| Last Week: 5 | LeBron James. Kevin Durant. Kawhi Leonard. Carmelo Anthony. And Paul George. In what order would you rank the game's foremost fivesome of small forwards? The fact that George has so spectacularly soared right back into that upper class is a big reason why Tuesday night's Warriors-Pacers date is going to be mega-hyped. | |
| 8 | 
| Last Week: 6 | Teams with real playoff aspirations don't spend time dwelling on moral victories, so we're hesitant to shower too much love on the Raps after they played Golden State as closely as anyone has -- for the second time -- only to come up agonizingly short (again). Playing down to weaker competition, as Toronto tends to do, tends to kill that buzz. | |
| 9 | 
| Last Week: 12 | The Celtics awoke Monday perched at No. 3 overall in defensive efficiency and coming off of pretty impressive offensive showings against the only two teams that rate higher on D (San Antonio and Miami). In its 11 wins, Boston has prevailed by an average of 16.9 points. Those nine losses, though, came by an average of 10.1 points. | |
| 10 | 
|
--
Last Week: 10 | Not the worst Facebook status a team could post:Only team in the league to beat Chicago in Chicago in regulation this season. The Hornets, mind you, had been as sharp at home as any team on the map before hosting Golden State last Wednesday, when Dell Curry Night not-so-surprisingly became another Steph Curry Night. | |
| 11 | 
|
--
Last Week: 11 | You'll need League Pass to do so, but drop in on Hawks at Thunder on Thursday night to catch a true contrast in styles. Atlanta hasn't had a 30-point scorer in more than a year since Paul Millsap got there early last season. OKC, by contrast, has seen 51 30-point games in that same span, (mostly) courtesy of Westbrook and Durant. | |
| 12 | 
| Last Week: 13 | You know how much we love the old school plus/minus stat. The one where you subtract home Ls from road Ws to get a better read on how teams are doing so early in the season. We suspect that the Mavs, at the moment, are as fond of that stat as we are, given that they're No. 3 in the West at plus-4, behind only the top two teams in these rankings. | |
| 13 | 
| Last Week: 19 | It's true: We're fairly predictable with our Pistons mini-commentaries. But it's hard to resist writing over and over about Andre Drummond when he's averaging 18.5 PPG and 17.5 RPG. If he can maintain those standards for the entire season, Drummond would be the NBA's first 18 and 17 guy since Moses Malone way back in 1978-79. | |
| 14 | 
| Last Week: 15 | Things have certainly picked up offensively for the Griz since their torturous 3-6 start, but they're by no means all the way back to elite status. At No. 20 in defensive efficiency, Memphis is barely keeping itself off the list of teams in the bottom 10 of both OE and DE (Wizards, Nets, Nuggets, Bucks and Lakers). | |
| 15 | 
| Last Week: 9 | Count me among the masses who wanted to see the ball in Gordon Hayward's hands for the fateful late possession that sealed Utah's heartbreaking home loss to Golden State last Monday night. The indefinite loss of defensive anchor Rudy Gobert to a knee sprain, of course, drowns out any and all hoop debates in Salt Lake City. | |
| 16 | 
|
--
Last Week: 16 | Not so sure that the East has improved as much as the narrative suggests, since it still lacks a clear-cut No. 2 challenger to Cleveland and with various up-and-down teams in the mighty West sure to pick it up sooner rather than later. But the Magic, at 5-1 since Victor Oladipo's move to the bench, are legit early-season darlings. | |
| 17 | 
| Last Week: 14 | Chris Paul and Derrick Rose, believe it or not, have not squared off in a game in nearly four years, dating all the way back to Dec. 30, 2011. Thursday night's early TNT offering is the latest opportunity for a reunion, but CP3 has been sidelined by a rib issue while D-Rose continues to scuffle with blurred vision and shaky shooting. | |
| 18 | 
| Last Week: 25 | You have to know that the Rockets are going to be active after such a bumpy start, but they're up to 10-2 now then when they score 100-plus points, compared to 0-9 when they fail to crack triple digits. As for James Harden: The Beard was shooting 34.4 percent in fourth quarters for before Friday's late clinching outburst at hated Dallas. | |
| 19 | 
| Last Week: 18 | Following the Warriors around landed your trusty committee its first trip to our beloved Toronto in eight years. But this glorious gig giveth AND taketh away. To stay on schedule, we had to leave Brooklyn for Indianapolis on Monday afternoon, which meant missing out on the glory of the maiden Porzingis-Dirk duel at MSG. | |
| 20 | 
|
--
Last Week: 20 | Amid the ongoing gaudy numbers from Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, as well as the unheralded contributions coming from the likes of Allen Crabbe and Ed Davis, we would be delinquent in our duties if we didn't point out that Major League Soccer's Portland Timbers just won the city's first championship since the '77 Blazers. | |
| 21 | 
| Last Week: 17 | If you've been tracking Eric Bledsoe, Brandon Knight & Co., with Tyson Chandler still sidelined and Markieff Morris perhaps headed elsewhere via trade, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that the slumping Suns are getting nearly 25 points per game more from their backcourt than their bigs. Only Portland has a bigger drop-off. | |
| 22 | 
|
--
Last Week: 22 | In each of the last seven full NBA seasons, it took 45 wins to snag a playoff berth in the West. The Pels are thus hoping two things right now: (1) That Friday's stirring OT win over LeBron James' Cavs will be the spark that gets their season going; (2) That these iffy times in the West mean the 2015-16 playoff bar will be lower. | |
| 23 | 
| Last Week: 20 | Had to be reassuring for Wolves fans to see Karl-Anthony Towns bust out for 27 points and 12 boards in the otherwise demoralizing fall-from-ahead loss to Portland on Saturday. Priorities for 'Sota going forward: Doing a better job of holding leads and getting Towns and Andrew Wiggins to more consistently flourish on the same night. | |
| 24 | 
| Last Week: 21 | Worrisome times in Washington. Marcin Gortat is back home in Poland tending to a family matter. John Wall just suffered a knee bruise after his roaring start to December. And the schedule is suddenly serving up a flurry of quality teams for the rest of this month at a time team confidence is low. Crucial stretch for these guys. | |
| 25 | 
| Last Week: 27 | Are we perhaps overlooking Milwaukee -- in the seventh game of a seven-city trip over 13 days that will cover 7,388 miles by the time it's over -- as the destination that could finally trip the Warriors up? You can understand why if so, with the Bucks still parked in the bottom five indefensive efficiency after placing No. 2 in DE last season. | |
| 26 | 
| Last Week: 24 | Didn't necessarily expect it to be Rajon Rondo-getting-ejecting bad, but we had a feeling the trip abroad might not be so favorable for the Kings, given Mexico City's high altitude and Boston's superior depth to cope with it better. Also didn't expect a funk so royal for DeMarcus Cousins that he'd be ripping himself like we heard Sunday night. | |
| 27 | 
| Last Week: 28 | The Nuggets, based on the available evidence, absolutely have to score 100 points to have any shot at winning. Otherwise? They're 0-10 when they don't make it to triple digits and, worse yet, have somehow been held under 90 six times already this season. It's only happened to one team more often: Philadelphia (you guessed it) 11 times. | |
| 28 | 
| Last Week: 26 | It was on the surreal side for the Committee, in its first visit to Barclays Center for something other than All-Star Weekend, to see Mikhail Prokhorov in the building, too. Yet it only served to remind us that it can't be a good thing for the Nets that the boss' appearances still make headline news when he shows because they're so rare. | |
| 29 | 
|
--
Last Week: 29 | Even we, as hopelessly unapologetic basketball romantics, can't ignore the fact that Kobe Bryant's field goal percentage for the season has sunk to an unfathomably poor .296. Nor can we dispute that the loss in Philly might have been the most embarrassing L in team history, given that the Lakers had NEVER lost to a team worse than 0-5. | |
| 30 | 
|
--
Last Week: 30 | In the 251 days that elapsed between victories for the Sixers, Golden State went 44-7 (including the playoffs) in winning its first NBA championship in 40 years ... and an entire Major League Baseball season was played. For more on this 1-20 outfit, read Zach Lowe's sitdown with beleaguered coach Brett Brown. | |
No comments:
Post a Comment