Power Rankings: Warriors are No. 1
Week: Team:
It took only four editions of ESPN.com's NBA Power Rankings for Steve Kerr, in his fledgling coaching career, to make it to the rankings summit.
The rookie coach and his Golden State Warriors, leading the league in defensive efficiency, are this week's new No. 1, capitalizing on heavy falls by the likes of San Antonio, Dallas and Cleveland to leapfrog into the top spot.
The Warriors outlasted Houston and Memphis as the league's last unbeaten team until Sunday's loss at Phoenix, and essentially clinched their promotion to No. 1 by taking advantage of the absence of Dwight Howard and Patrick Beverley to win Saturday night in Houston after routing the Los Angeles Clippers earlier in the week. The Rockets, meanwhile, join the Warriors, Grizzlies, Toronto and Miami in a virtually all-new top five, which reflects the unpredictable nature of the early season when sample sizes for all teams are so small.
A more detailed look at this week's order can be found on Stein Line Live. And you can comment below on this week's 1-to-30 ladder, which, as always, was assembled with the usual supportive dishing we get from ESPN Stats & Info and the Elias Sports Bureau.
| 2014-15 Power Rankings: Week 2 | ||||
| RANK | TEAM / RECORD | TRENDING | COMMENTS | |
| 1 |  | 1 Last Week: 2 | They've got to get the turnovers down from a league-high 22.5 per game, but otherwise? Draymond Green has stepped in ably for the injured David Lee, Klay Thompson's sprained hand is not believed to be serious ... and Steph Curry is merely averaging 27.2 points, 7.2 assists, 6.3 boards and 3.5 steals. | |
| 2 |  | 7 Last Week: 9 | Much has been made of Houston's soft schedule and James Harden's .395 shooting. The view here: Can't be so quick to dismiss a 6-0 record, with both Dwight Howard and Harden in the lineup, when the average margin of victory in those games is a robust 13.0 PPG. That's impressive against anyone. | |
| 3 |  | 3 Last Week: 6 | Milwaukee is not where the Grizz expected their perfect record to perish, even on the wrong end of a back-to-back, but they still sport the NBA's highest winning percentage since Jan. 1 at .729 (43-16). Next in line: Clippers (.727, 40-15), Rockets (.709, 39-16), Spurs (.709, 39-16) and Bulls (.695, 41-18). | |
| 4 |  | 6 Last Week: 10 | Pretty productive week, eh? Kyle Lowry moved into the franchise lead in triple-doubles with four, weekend routs of the Wizards and Sixers hiked the Raps to 4-0 with Amir Johnson in the lineup ... and the demolition of Washington made for a loud statement. Even with Bradley Beal absent. | |
| 5 |  | 2 Last Week: 7 | How long do we have to wait before we can safely proclaim Toronto Chris Bosh to be all the way back? It's early, we know, but you can't ignore that Bosh is averaging better than 24 points and 10 rebounds with a tidy PER of 27.2, all benchmarks he hasn't hit since his final season as a Raptor in 2009-10. | |
| 6 |  | 1 Last Week: 5 | Getting extra rest for Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah makes sense during the cushy stretch of schedule Chicago saw last week and -- Thursday's trip to Toronto aside -- gets this week. A seven-game circus road trip, after all, is looming, starting with a Nov. 16 flight and five uninviting games out West. | |
| 7 |  | 6 Last Week: 1 | Gregg Popovich surely hasn't even pondered the fact that the Spurs are just the fifth defending champ since the NBA/ABA merger with a sub-.500 record after five games. Rest assured that getting Kawhi Leonard's vision right is Pop's only pressing objective. No matter how strange the standings look. | |
| 8 |  | -- Last Week: 8 | Team-wide shooting woes have sapped some of the Clippers' early spirit, but you figure that'll pick up. Not so clear is what Doc Rivers does about Matt Barnes' struggles and the corresponding lack of driving lanes when the Clips are playing 4-on-5 offensively. Overall team depth is an issue, too. | |
| 9 |  | 4 Last Week: 13 | Is it a tad too soon to be referencing average point margin in two of our first nine comments? Probably. The Blazers nonetheless catch the eye with a reading of plus-7.9, which trails only Toronto, Houston and Golden State. They'll obviously breathe easier, though, when they hear Nic Batum's knee is OK. | |
| 10 |  | 6 Last Week: 16 | DeMarcus Cousins is playing the ball of his life. Our guy Omri Casspi has emerged as one of Boogie's favorite teammates. And these Kings, despite losing Sunday's trap game at short-handed OKC before visits to Dallas and Memphis, are in the thick of the Team of the Month race. | |
| 11 |  | -- Last Week: 11 | They've already banked notable entries in the Quality Win Club by beating the Warriors and Spurs, but now for a cautionary note: Amid all the hoopla generated by Isaiah Thomas' strong start, you can't ignore that neither Goran Dragic nor Eric Bledsoe is firing yet like we saw last season. | |
| 12 |  | -- Last Week: 12 | NBA old-schoolers put a lot of stock in the league's original plus-minus stat, which is derived by adding up home losses with road wins. So for Wiz fans looking for ways to cheer themselves up after their guys got blasted in Toronto, here it is: Your team awoke Monday leading the East at plus-3. | |
| 13 |  | 10 Last Week: 3 | Dirk Nowitzki needs just 17 points to pass Hakeem Olajuwon for ninth place on the NBA's all-time scoring list, but you can't find a soul in the Mavs' locker room talking that up after heavy losses to the Blazers and Heat, another rash of third-quarter woes and Chandler Parsons' rough week. | |
| 14 |  | 10 Last Week: 4 | A 2-2 road trip is pretty passable considering how shaky and disjointed the Cavs looked in Portland and Utah. The biggest disappointment: Cleveland is only 1-3-1 in the nightly rebounding game after LeBron told us going 82-0 on the boards would not be unrealistic for this group. | |
| 15 |  | 3 Last Week: 18 | Starting last season and into this season, Anthony Davis has five games with at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and 5 blocks. The rest of the league, in that span, has combined for six such games. Now let's see if a one-point win in San Antonio is really the breakthrough this young team has longed for. | |
| 16 |  | 5 Last Week: 21 | You can predict what we're going to say here. Deron Williams essentially forced our hand with how good he looked in the Gotham derby. It's as big an if as there is in this league, but the Nets' outlook -- he said for the zillionth time -- brightens considerably if they can keep that D-Will around. | |
| 17 |  | -- Last Week: 17 | Lance Stephenson was 0-for-7 from long range for the season before banking in that crazy game winner to stun the Hawks. But who else thought that double-OT win, combined with a long-awaited victory over Miami, would have set them up for anything but a beatdown by the lowly Lakers? | |
| 18 |  | 4 Last Week: 14 | Kyle Korver is shooting 61.3 percent from deep and Dennis Schroder is starting to play (and dunk) more. For those reasons, I enjoyed watching the Hawks even while they were enduring the misery of a narrow L at San Antonio, followed by the double-OT defeat in Charlotte in far more crushing fashion. | |
| 19 |  | 5 Last Week: 24 | A rout of the Suns. A buzzer-beater from Gordon Hayward with a high degree of difficulty to slay LeBron's Cavs. And a one-point escape in Detroit to start a five-game trip out East when Brandon Jennings couldn't convert at the buzzer. Give Utah this: Every win so far has been memorable. | |
| 20 |  | 1 Last Week: 19 | It's the smallest of consolations for OKC as it scrounges for wins without KD and Russ, but can't help but wonder: Might we see those two, down the road, in tall-ball lineups with Serge Ibaka, Nick Collison and Steven Adams? Desperation breeds innovation and those three are expanding their games. | |
| 21 |  | 5 Last Week: 26 | You know how it works by now. With the ball in his hands and, ultimately, his career-high 18 points, GIANNIS! whipped Twitter into a Saturday night frenzy far more than the sight of the young Bucks -- after blowing their first couple of one-possession games -- handing Memphis its first loss. | |
| 22 |  | 3 Last Week: 25 | Rajon Rondo's spirited start, Marcus Smart's escape from a long-term injury after that nasty fall and another eye-popping win you didn't expect -- this time Saturday night in Chicago -- have all combined to drown out our outrage about those ghastly new alternate unis. For now. | |
| 23 |  | 8 Last Week: 15 | The committee (of one), like a lot of New Yorkers, might've gotten carried away with what the Knicks did in Cleveland. Since then: Melo's shot has gone uncharacteristically AWOL and we've heard a Knick or two publicly question the team's effort and energy. Awfully early for that sort of talk. | |
| 24 |  | 4 Last Week: 28 | What made the Tobias Harris buzzer-beater to beat Philly doubly special? Combined with Gordon Hayward's fallaway dagger that sank LeBron's Cavs, it sealed the NBA's first double dose of game winners at the horn on the same night since Andrew Bogut (Bucks) and Derek Fisher (Lakers) on Dec. 8, 2010. | |
| 25 |  | 3 Last Week: 22 | Ricky Rubio had never looked more in command of his game and his team before that unfortunate ankle injury. The fact that Flip Saunders has made Zach LaVine his new starting PG over Mo Williams, meanwhile, suggests the coach/GM isn't as hung up on winning now as we've been led to believe. | |
| 26 |  | 1 Last Week: 27 | I suspect the failure to hold a double-digit lead over Utah, despite another big dose of Greg Monroe, is going to stick with Stan Van Gundy for days. If the Pistons finished that one off at home as they should have, they'd be taking a three-game winning streak into their daunting four-game road trip. | |
| 27 |  | 4 Last Week: 23 | Such is the state of the injury-riddled Pacers that I literally hadn't heard a word about Indy's trip to Miami this week until a Monday morning email ... and we actually spent Sunday night in the Heat's company. Then again: Is it really Pacers at Heat with no Paul George, no Lance and no LeBron? | |
| 28 |  | 8 Last Week: 20 | Used to be Denver was the last place you wanted to be on the last stop of a long, rough trip. Used to be. These Nuggets look raggedy and disconnected, Brian Shaw's rotation is all over the place and the Cavs couldn't have been happier to see them before hosting nine of their next 11 games. | |
| 29 |  | -- Last Week: 29 | Five days to prepare for the Hornets proved vital to snare that first win our friends at numberFire feared might not come until nearly Thanksgiving. Lots of buzz around the office last week about how the Lakers, entering Sunday, wouldn't be favored in a game until a Nov. 23 home date with Denver. | |
| 30 |  | -- Last Week: 30 | Our season-simulating numberFire pals say the Sixers (yikes) will be favored in a mere six of their remaining 75 games. What looms this week, with stops in every corner of the Texas Triangle, is too scary to ponder in print. Snapping up Tony Wroten for your fantasy team nonetheless seems wise. | |
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