It's an NBA Power Rankings Tuesday ... for the final time this season
How does more than 4,500 words' worth of musings from The Committee (of One) sound? Enjoy our last piping hot serving of rankings until the fall
This is a first for The Committee (of One).
We've never published an edition of our NBA Power Rankings after the regular season ends … until today. The decision was made to try it this time, rather than publish these last Tuesday, partly to serve as the ultimate transition to the NBA postseason about to begin but also so fans of the 10 teams whose seasons are suddenly over would have one last chance to read about their faves before locking in exclusively on the draft and free agency.
I fully expect some pushback over how high we have Miami. That's fine. Push away. I will stop trusting the Heat when they are eliminated.
As covered in our previous edition of the rankings on Feb. 22 and established during our maiden season on this platform in 2021-22, our new rhythm calls for publishing rankings on a (roughly) monthly basis. These are broader periodic looks at the league as opposed to our old weekly ESPN pulse takes.
Yet the overall mission remains unchanged: Establish an order independent of the standings that measures big-picture potential and expectations alongside short-term results. Injuries and other off-court developments, positive and negative, are factored in as well … with some sprinkles of Committee whim mixed in. We didn't quite achieve our goal of publishing an updated 1-to-30 ladder around the same time each month throughout the regular season, because unforeseen stories/shifting project timelines have a habit of derailing such plans, but it's always enjoyable to turn back the clock and return to the Power Rankings dungeon for a day or two to make sure we never forget how to do this.
You are asked, as always, to register your questions, quibbles or any other pertinent thoughts in the comments section below so we can respond and expound upon our thinking.
PS — Rankings posts, remember, are incredibly long. So click on the headline to get the web or app version instantly if it proves too unwieldy to consume as an email.
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1️⃣ Boston Celtics
The league's No. 1 offense. Its No. 2 defense. A roster so talented at the top that its fifth-best player — Derrick White — recently won Eastern Conference Player of the Week honors. And yet they all know, from Jayson Tatum to Jaylen Brown to Jrue Holiday to Kristaps Porziņģis to Joe Mazzulla to Brad Stevens, that the season only starts now in a lot of ways for the Boston Celtics. They have to win the East, at a minimum, to render this a successful season. The Celts will also be hammered if they lose to anyone they face in the NBA Finals except maybe Denver.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 1
2️⃣ Denver Nuggets
We flirted with dropping the Nuggets down to No. 3 as punishment for losing Friday night in San Antonio to fumble away the West's No. 1 seed but ultimately couldn’t go through with it. Two strong elements of the Nikola Jokić MVP case: The Nuggets nearly secured that No. 1 seed despite Jamal Murray missing 23 games ... and Denver finished eighth overall in defensive rating (with Jokić playing his most effective D seen yet) to complement a top-five offensive rating. The prime concerns for the defending champions, maybe more than the Rocky Mountain fretting you've been hearing about depth since the offseason departures of Bruce Brown and Jeff Green, is the fact that Murray has dealt with hamstring, ankle and knee trouble this season. Rest assured that Jokić will want to lean on his sidekick much more in the playoffs than he did during the regular season. Don't forget how huge the Canadian was in the tournament last spring; Murray averaged 26.1 points, 7.1 assists and 5.7 rebounds per game while shooting nearly 40% from deep.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 5
3️⃣ Oklahoma City Thunder
If you're going to rave constantly about the depth and firepower of the Western Conference, like we do, you have to dish out major props for the team that ultimately won #thiswest. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had an MVP-worthy season, Jalen Williams had a Most Improved Player-worthy season, Mark Daigneault had a Coach of the Year-worthy season ... and Chet Holmgren had the misfortune of having to redshirt as a rookie and then go up against an alien named Victor Wembanyama in this season's ROY race. Holmgren had a wonderful campaign, too, even if he was somehow routinely overshadowed by Wembanyama despite standing 7-foot-1 himself. And yet there's also no denying that teams like the Lakers and Warriors absolutely lust for the opportunity to play the Thunder rather than the Nuggets in Round 1 to try to capitalize on OKC's inexperience. So this young squad still has much to prove now that we shift to the playoff stage.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 4
4️⃣ Minnesota Timberwolves
The Timberwolves, according to a count maintained by the team's radio play-by-play man Alan Horton, led the Western Conference for 106 days this season. That count rested at a mere 10 days, according to Horton's research, across the first 34 seasons of the Wolves' existence. This, then, has the look of the best team in franchise history ... except now 'Sota has to prove it in the playoffs by overcoming A) justified local pessimism from fans who have watched this team win all of two playoff rounds in those first 34 years, B) an unkind first-round matchup with Phoenix after the Suns won the season series 3-0 and C) a messy dispute between longtime owner Glen Taylor and would-be buyers Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore after a three-years-in-the-making sale process that has made it unclear who will own and operate the team going forward. Wolves/Suns figures to be as absorbing as any first-round series out there ... especially after Karl-Anthony Towns made it back from knee surgery in just over a month on the sideline.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 2
5️⃣ Dallas Mavericks
It used to be said that the Mavericks would be a tough out if they could simply build a league-average defense around Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving. Since March 7, when Jason Kidd moved Daniel Gafford and Derrick Jones Jr. into the starting lineup ahead of Dereck Lively II and Josh Green, Dallas has ranked No. 1 in the league in defensive efficiency in that span, resulting in a scorching 16-2 hot streak until Kidd decided to focus on resting his regulars for the final two games on the schedule. Dončić might not be able to beat out his good buddy Nikola Jokić for MVP honors, but his consolation prizes are a first league scoring title, full-on feature status in Esquire and a playoff pathway to the Western Conference finals that doesn't include Jokić. Oh, yeah: And a heady promotion to the top five of these rankings!
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 8
6️⃣ New York Knicks
Despite all the time Julius Randle, OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson missed, Jalen Brunson and the Knicks made sure that our recent revival of Leastern Conference usage would have to exclude them, since they just made sure that the injury-riddled Least had more than one 50-win team. Brunson won East Player of the Week four times this season and kudos to Tom Thibodeau, too, with New York ranking as one of just four teams in the whole league (along with Boston, Oklahoma City and Denver) to place in the top 10 in both offensive (seventh) and defensive efficiency (ninth). Having to play Philadelphia or Miami in Round 1 is a wicked reward for that effort.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 11
7️⃣ Phoenix Suns
The Committee wishes it had a dime for every time I wrote or read during the season's second half about how hard the Suns' remaining schedule was. Major props to Phoenix now, though. All the Suns did after a seemingly disastrous loss in San Antonio on March 25 was finish the season on a 7-3 surge — including a victory in Denver and a home and home sweep of Minnesota — playing exclusively against teams with winning records. Meanwhile: Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal wound up playing in exactly half of the season’s 82 games together ... finishing with a record of 26-15 and with Beal finally starting to find a comfort zone in the desert. Don’t think the third-seeded Wolves (or even the second-seeded Nuggets) are terribly thrilled with seeing the Suns in their section of the West playoff bracket.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 9
8️⃣ LA Clippers
Fair question: Did the last iteration of the Clippers to play at the building formerly known as Staples Center peak took soon? It's been a long time since the Clippers looked like the team that went on a 26-5 run at its best earlier in the season ... primarily because they haven't been able to count on Kawhi Leonard since the month of March. This will indeed go down as Leonard's healthiest season since he was still a Spur way back in 2016-17, but the next game he plays in April will be his first this month. Leonard's status for Sunday's Game 1 against the Mavericks remains a mystery; hard to see them beating Dallas for the third time in five years without a full-speed Kawhi given how much stronger these Mavericks are compared to the teams' previous two playoff matchups.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 6
9️⃣ Philadelphia 76ers
The 76ers have absorbed countless playoff disappointments in the Joel Embiid Era. Can things possibly work out better this way? The 76ers are poised to enter the playoffs as a seventh or eighth seed — provided they survive the Play-In round — and will no doubt believe they can upset New York in a 2 vs. 7 matchup after going 30-7 this season when both Embiid and Tyrese Maxey are in uniform. Just having Embiid back has sent the Sixers soaring back into our top 10. Of course, Embiid did tweak his surgically repaired knee Friday, sat out Sunday's regular season finale against Brooklyn as a precaution and yet again enters the playoffs at less than full capacity.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 15
🔟 Miami Heat
The Committee realizes that we have the Heat higher than probably any Power Rankings institution in the country. We do not care about all the evidence in circulation which asserts that Miami, even after the midseason acquisition of Terry Rozier and Tyler Herro's return from injury, is a bottom-10 team offensively. We will continue to fear Playoff Jimmy (Butler) and the Playoff Heat until they are extinguished and we will live with being wrong if they flame out early. I can promise you that the Sixers (and their fans) do not relish the idea of playing host to Butler, Bam Adebayo and the eighth-seeded Heat in a Wednesday night Play-In Game ... not even after hearing Rozier is out with a neck injury.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 12
1️⃣1️⃣ Los Angeles Lakers
LeBron James played in 71 games at age 39 and averaged 25.7 points per game ... topping my fellow Substacker Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 23.4 PPG in 1985-86 for the previous record registered by the league's oldest player. Anthony Davis, meanwhile, played in 76 games and, like LeBron, had an All-NBA-caliber season. You never would have expected the Lakers to finish eighth in the West had you known all that in advance ... nor that they would need a 30-16 surge after starting 17-19 just to get up to No. 8 in the West. But the best-case scenario now for the inaugural In-Season Tournament champions is a first-round matchup against Denver or Oklahoma City … depending on how their Play-In Tournament week goes. #thisleague #thiswest
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 14
1️⃣2️⃣ New Orleans Pelicans
Did you know? Zion Williamson played in a career-high 70 games this season. (His previous single-season high was 61.) But did you also know? Zion still hasn't appeared in an NBA playoff game ... and he would have to wait until his sixth season at the earliest unless the Pelicans win at least one of their two possible games in the Play-In Tournament this week. They fell one win shy in the end from becoming the sixth 50-win team in the mighty West ... yet it remains difficult, even after 82 games, to get a good read on which Pels we'll see when they play host to the Lakers on Tuesday night. A tremendous full preview of the entire Play-In Tournament from voices all over NBA Substack can be found here.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 7
1️⃣3️⃣ Milwaukee Bucks
Most Disappointing Team in the NBA this season? It has to be the Bucks in a runaway after a late September trade for Damian Lillard, followed so swiftly by a contract extension for Giannis Antetokounmpo, failed to even add up to 50 wins. First-year head coach Adrian Griffin was fired after a 30-13 start, ballyhooed replacement Doc Rivers is only 17-19 since taking over and Antetokounmpo (calf) is bringing a scary injury into concern the playoffs for the second straight season. On top of it all, plodding (and aging?) Milwaukee has to deal with speedy Indiana in Round 1 after the Pacers won four of the teams' five regular-season meetings. Placing them at No. 13 might mean that The Committee is still too optimistic about the Bucks salvaging something from this season.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 10
1️⃣4️⃣ Golden State Warriors
What does winning 17 of your last 21 road games get you? Not much in today's NBA and certainly not a lot in the West given that the Warriors are seeded 10th and have to win Tuesday night at Sacramento just to extend their season to a second Play-In Game. The Warriors played at a 54-win pace (27-14) in the season's second half but must overcome the ominous reality that the No. 10 seed (East and West) is 0 for 6 to date in reaching trying to reach the playoffs through the Play-In door. "We're definitely a better team than last year," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said recently. "... I still believe that we can be something special."
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 17
1️⃣5️⃣ Orlando Magic
As stacked as the Coach of the Year field is, Jamahl Mosley should land in the top three after steering the Magic to their best season since Dwight Howard was still in the Magic Kingdom to lead a 52-30 team in 2010-11 that lost in Round 1. While Banchero's rise to All-Star status wasn't terribly surprising, I can't remember anyone back in October saying that Orlando would field a top-three defense. Now to see how Mosley, Banchero and Co. respond to the reality that Cleveland apparently wanted to play them so badly in the first round that the Cavaliers lost their final game of the regular season by squandering a fourth-quarter lead at home to lowly Charlotte.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 18
1️⃣6️⃣ Indiana Pacers
Pacers/Bucks is a delicious first-round matchup after all the animus between the teams earlier this season. Yet it can't be overlooked that A) both of these teams are in different places metaphorically since they last squared off in early January and B) Tyrese Haliburton has clearly not been the same player since returning from the scary-looking hamstring injury that sidelined him for 10 games in January. Since coming back from the injury, Haliburton only averaged 16.3 points across 34 games ... while shooting just 44.6% from the field and 32.4% from 3-point range. With Haliburton's level dropping over the past two-plus months, Indiana went only 23-18 after acquiring Pascal Siakam.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 16
1️⃣7️⃣ Cleveland Cavaliers
If you separate Cleveland's 18-2 surge from mid-December to mid-January from the rest of the season, this was a 30-32 team. Some of that was certainly injury-related — Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley combined to miss almost 90 games — but the Cavaliers slumped from No. 1 to No. 7 in defense and find themselves weathering constant speculation about Donovan Mitchell's future. J.B. Bickerstaff might be facing more immediate pressure than any other playoff coach given the Cavaliers' inevitable favorite status against inexperienced Orlando. Mitchell, meanwhile, has missed 15 of Cleveland's past 21 games and averaged just 14.3 points (on 33.3% shooting) in the six games he did play. (Rest assured that The Committee is holding itself accountable now for having the Cavaliers way too high coming out of the All-Star break.)
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 3
1️⃣8️⃣ Sacramento Kings
No team illustrates how firmly the Western Conference has rebounded from last season's injury-laden aberration than the Kings. They won 48 games last season and finished third in the West. They won 46 this season even after the crucial recent injury losses of Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter and finished ninth. Leave it to my pal Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press to also point out that Sacramento was involved in seven of the league's single-season record 38 games this season in which a 20-point deficit was erased ... three times in wins and four teams by blowing leads of 20 points or more.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 13
1️⃣9️⃣ Houston Rockets
So, so close. One more Rockets win would have given the NBA a single-season record of 19 teams with a winning record. At 41-41, this Houston team will instead go down as a surprising finisher in the league's top 10 defensively (albeit at No. 10) and just the fifth team in league history — just the third, furthermore, in the 16-team playoff era which dates to 1983-84 — to miss the playoffs after assembling a double-digit winning streak (11). The Year 1 impact of Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks and Ime Udoka was undeniably felt.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 19
2️⃣0️⃣ Chicago Bulls
The Committee was working on the Pelicans' pre- and post-game TV studio team on Dec. 2 when Coby White drained eight 3-pointers in Chicago's home win over New Orleans ... so I feel like I've been somewhat along for the ride on White's Most Improved Player campaign ever since that breakout performance. DeMar DeRozan (Clutch Player of the Year) is another Bull in strong contention for some season-ending award hardware, which reminds us again that this is an absolute Jekyll-and-Hyde squad. Zach LaVine, remember, was the first player in the league this season to score 50 points in a game. But LaVine played in only 22 games after his 51-point outburst in an Oct. 28 loss at Detroit, landed in fruitless trade talks as far back as November and is currently recovering from season-ending foot surgery that forced him to miss much of Chicago scuffles to a 34-29 mark after its 5-14 start.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 20
2️⃣1️⃣ Atlanta Hawks
As covered in my most recent This Week In Basketball column, Atlanta is in a race with the Lakers to see if it can become the first team to qualify for the playoffs out of the Play-In Tournament for a record third time. The focus here, however, remains the future and a looming offseason that has the whole NBA curious. Will the Hawks really trade Trae Young in the summer? Will they decide to put Dejounte Murray back on the trading block instead? Is it a lock that at least one of them won't be back next season? Significant roster change appears imminent after a 46-57 record in Quin Snyder's first season (and change) in the 404.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 23
2️⃣2️⃣ Memphis Grizzlies
The Grizzlies used 33 players and 51 different starting lineups this season to lead the league in both categories. They also led the league in man-games lost with 590 according to Sportradar .... more than 200 more than second-place Portland (363). (My pal Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes, by the way, says he's never seen a team lose more than 500 man-games in a single season.) With all that said, however, who isn't curious about next season and seeing Jaren Jackson Jr. and GG Jackson teaming up with a healed Ja Morant, Desmond Bane, Marcus Smart, etc.?
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 22
2️⃣3️⃣ San Antonio Spurs
The supporting cast around Victor Wembanyama had to be astonishingly bad for a rookie this good to bear the brunt of a 22-60 season. Wembanyama somehow exceeded expectations individually by posting the first 20-point, 10-rebound, three-blocks-per-game season as a rookie since Shaquille O'Neal, appearing in 71 games and making voters consider whether the unquestionably elite defense he played in his 29.7 minutes per game deserved to be rewarded with DPOY honors over Minnesota's Rudy Gobert. It's too soon to forecast how much better the Spurs' roster around Wemby will look come October, but it is already quite clear that making sure we were in attendance live for Wemby's very first real NBA game was a wise decision that we will come to appreciate more and more with each passing year. (PS — The Spurs did indeed land higher in these rankings than their on-court performance probably merits because, well, Wemby.)
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 26
2️⃣4️⃣ Utah Jazz
The Committee is pleased to report that, after watching the Jazz lose by a combined 82 points in our first two live viewings of this team this season, Utah made things a bit more respectable in dose No. 3 with a mere 16-point loss in Dallas on March 21. Make no mistake, though, about #thisJazz: They shifted into overt tanking mode far earlier than we saw in Will Hardy's first season on the bench, taking a 26-26 record into the Feb. 8 trade deadline and then going an unsightly 5-26 from there after shipping out Kelly Olynyk, Simone Fontecchio and Ochai Agbaji.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 21
2️⃣5️⃣ Brooklyn Nets
Do you remember the Nets' 13-10 start? Neither does The Committee. But this part has stuck with us: Brooklyn was 15-15 on Dec. 27 when it rested starters Nic Claxton, Spencer Dinwiddie and Cam Johnson, as well as top reserve Dorian Finney-Smith, while limiting Mikal Bridges to one quarter of play to keep alive his consecutive-games-played streak. A heavy loss to Milwaukee that night was the start of a 17-35 slide that has left Nets management with lots to fix beyond just hiring Jordi Fernandez as the fifth head coach in GM Sean Marks' eight-plus years in charge (fifth if you include Kevin Ollie's 11-17 interim stint). "I think just towards the end, being so beat up mentally and lacking confidence, I think that hurt me as well," Bridges said Monday when asked to explain his struggles to replicate his initial form in Brooklyn last season after he arrived as the centerpiece of the Nets' Kevin Durant trade to Phoenix.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 25
2️⃣6️⃣ Toronto Raptors
With just six wins in its final 27 games, Toronto posted the league's second-worst record after the All-Star break (only 6-22 Portland was worse) to secure the league's sixth-worst record. Of course, in this era of flattened lottery odds, even doing so only gives the Raptors a 45.8% chance of retaining their top-six protected pick in the June draft rather than sending it to San Antonio to complete last season's reacquisition of Jakob Poeltl. Except for a 27-45 aberration in 2020-21 when they were displaced in Tampa, Fla., and turned that misery into the draft selection of Scottie Barnes, you have to rewind to the 2011-12 season — Masai Ujiri's second-to-last season in Denver — for the last time the Raptors were so ensconced in a rebuild and/or distanced from Eastern Conference contention.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 24
2️⃣7️⃣ Portland Trail Blazers
Trail Blazers general manager Joe Cronin not only announced Monday that Chauncey Billups will continue as Portland's head coach next season after a deflating 21-61 campaign but put the onus on himself. "We're not good enough yet," Cronin told local reporters. "We don't have enough talent. We need to continuing adding to our talent base." It was the sort of candor you wanted to hear (but don't always get) after a season in which Scoot Henderson openly struggled in his maiden run as heir to Damian Lillard's franchise throne and the Blazers — when they weren't making headlines for occasionally starting five rookies — absorbed two 60-point losses. As my Substacking pal
notes, Portland's five most important players (Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, Anfernee Simons, Jerami Grant and Deandre Ayton) appeared in only four games together due to various injuries.Last ranking (Feb. 22): 28
2️⃣8️⃣ Charlotte Hornets
I covered this topic twice in previous Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganzas and now we can put a bow on it: Charlotte wound up with the league's only average scoring margin of -10.0 points per game or greater. When I first wrote about the matter in January, there were four such teams on that pace (San Antonio, Washington and Detroit) after no previous season in league history featured more than one such team. The Hornets are the 20th team in league history (full list enclosed here) to be outscored by at least 10 points per game for an entire season ... which presumably contributed to the defense-loving Steve Clifford's decision to step down from coaching after Sunday's stunning victory in Cleveland.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 27
2️⃣9️⃣ Washington Wizards
Although the Wizards followed up a stunning victory over visiting Milwaukee on April 2 with six consecutive losses to close the season, they did manage to finish one game ahead of Detroit in the race to avoid the league's worst record. Maybe my favorite part of Washington's season: Hearing my old friend Bill Simmons insist on his most recent podcast that Deni Avdija deserves to be a Most Improved Player candidate despite how unwatchable this team often proved. Avdija legit expanded his game.
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 29
3️⃣0️⃣ Detroit Pistons
You look at the Pistons' final win total of 14 — five more than the infamous 9-73 Philly 76ers of 1972-73 — and wonder how the league record of 28 consecutive defeats this group must now live with was even possible ... especially in this frenzied 3-point era. We also wonder: Who are the keepers on this roster beyond Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson? It appears those calls will be made by a new lead executive after Pistons owner Tom Gores announced that the search has begun for a head of basketball operations. "I am committed to doing whatever it takes to build a winning team," said Gores, whose 13-season ownership tenure features two first-round playoff exits. "Nothing is off the table."
Last ranking (Feb. 22): 30
Marc, This Mavs team has so many similarities to the 2011 Championship team. I’m not saying that there going to Win it all. But this Mavs team is special, Height, Athleticism Defense Rebounding. If they stay healthy Let’s GO Mavs! Marc Ty as always you Nailed It