Post by jrmzt on Jan 11, 2010 14:57:39 GMT -5
NBA's 'power five' atop charts finally
PER Diem: Jan. 11, 2010
Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive
Well, it took half a season, but the five teams we expected to rule the NBA this season have finally asserted themselves. Take a look at today's Power Rankings, and you'll notice something for the first time all season: The top five spots belong to the "power five" of the Lakers, Magic, Cavs, Celtics and Spurs.
This is a further sign, unfortunately, that 2009-10 may go down as one of the duller regular seasons in recent memory. Although the quality of play is as high as it has been in ages, we've had little in the way of surprises.
Yet the door remains open for plenty of intrigue in the second half of the season. Are the five usual suspects playing a bit better than the other playoff contenders? Absolutely. Are they running away from the pack and turning the NBA into a league of haves and have-nots? Absolutely not.
With the exception of top-ranked Cleveland, standing No. 1 with a bullet beside a stellar 108.6 Power Ranking (implying it has beaten an average NBA team by 8.6 points on a neutral court), what stands out about today's Power Rankings is just how compressed the top half of the league looks.
Although the usual favorites occupy the top five spots, there is little difference between No. 3 San Antonio (105.3) and No. 12 Portland (102.3); the Spurs are closer to 12th than to first. Similarly, the swarm of contenders just outside the top five remains a jumbled mess: Only three points separate No. 6 Atlanta from No. 17 Charlotte.
Similarly, the projected standings reflect much more parity than expected. According to Monday's Playoff Odds, Cleveland is the only team that will win more than 57 games, with 61; last season the top four teams won 66, 65, 62 and 59, respectively. This time around, the world-champion Lakers project to win a very mortal 56, Orlando just 53 and San Antonio a mere 50.
But look further down the list, and you'll see a whopping 14 teams -- nearly half the league! -- projected to win between 41 and 51 games. For instance, San Antonio projects to finish ahead of the likely No. 9 team in the West, Utah, by a mere three wins.
The Playoff Odds say out loud only what everyone has seen: The league's upper crust hasn't asserted itself the way it did last season. Even the most bulletproof of the five in the first half of this season, Cleveland, has been somewhere south of amazing. The Cavs have been more consistent than anyone else, but their Power Ranking would have put them third or fourth at this point last season. Similarly, Boston's league-leading point differential would have placed it fourth last season.
For four of the top five teams, the warts are clear. Take San Antonio, for instance: The Spurs are No. 3 in the Power Rankings, even though they're 3-11 against teams with winning records. Their schedule will turn on them in a big way during the second half of the season, as only 12 of their final 35 games are at home, and they still have 26 contests left against winning teams.
But somebody has to be third. Right now San Antonio's warts are less bad than those of the pretenders around them ... such as the Lakers. Although everyone expects L.A. to be playing championship-caliber basketball by May, few will deny that the Lakers are nowhere close at the moment.
A heavy slate of early home games propped up their record so far, but that's about to change in a big way because 10 of their next 12 games are on the road. With Pau Gasol still out of the lineup and Kobe Bryant clearly struggling with his shot as a result of a broken bone in his right index finger, the offense -- a pedestrian 12th in offensive efficiency -- is a mess.
After Sunday night's 4-for-21 brickfest, Bryant is 37-of-111 (33.3 percent) in his past four games. A courtside spy at the Blazers-Lakers game on Friday told me Bryant's index finger bothered him so much that he was taking it off the ball when he shot and just trying to flick the ball up with his middle and ring finger. Try this at home sometime. You'll be amazed he managed to make 14 of his 37 shots on Friday. At this point he might be better off shooting left-handed, something he's done with increasing accuracy in the past couple of seasons.
L.A. isn't the only contender looking unusually mortal these days. The Celtics burst out of the gate like gangbusters but have been colossally disappointed with the play of their second unit. Rasheed Wallace is out of shape and Marquis Daniels can't stay healthy, so Boston has to ride its starters much harder than expected. The two oldest, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, are playing just as many minutes as last season, a development that could have important implications come May and June.
And after a 20-4 start, the Celtics are just 6-5 in their past 11 games. Included in the slump was a home loss to Philadelphia and a three-game skid out West. Although the schedule throws them a breather during the next couple of weeks, Boston closes the month with a Magic-Hawks-Lakers stretch that includes only one day off.
Finally, we have the confounding case of the Orlando Magic. The defending Eastern Conference champs have looked anything but in laboring to a 25-12 start. Individually, a compendium of the Magic's disappointment would start with Vince Carter and Jameer Nelson, traverse through Mickael Pietrus to free-agent signees Brandon Bass and Marcin Gortat and potentially take in the likes of mainstays Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard. The fact that so many players are underperforming leads one to wonder whether on-the-court chemistry issues are to blame. Although this group is tight-knit off the court, the on-the-court sum is adding up to less than the sum of the individual parts.
Sum it all up, and we have a very different league than the one we expected. Although the top five teams are the same five that most anticipated, the gap between the haves and have-nots is not the wide chasm we expected when the season began. It's more like a microscopic fissure -- one that a trade, slump or injury easily could bridge in the coming months.
PER Diem: Jan. 11, 2010
Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Archive
Well, it took half a season, but the five teams we expected to rule the NBA this season have finally asserted themselves. Take a look at today's Power Rankings, and you'll notice something for the first time all season: The top five spots belong to the "power five" of the Lakers, Magic, Cavs, Celtics and Spurs.
This is a further sign, unfortunately, that 2009-10 may go down as one of the duller regular seasons in recent memory. Although the quality of play is as high as it has been in ages, we've had little in the way of surprises.
Yet the door remains open for plenty of intrigue in the second half of the season. Are the five usual suspects playing a bit better than the other playoff contenders? Absolutely. Are they running away from the pack and turning the NBA into a league of haves and have-nots? Absolutely not.
With the exception of top-ranked Cleveland, standing No. 1 with a bullet beside a stellar 108.6 Power Ranking (implying it has beaten an average NBA team by 8.6 points on a neutral court), what stands out about today's Power Rankings is just how compressed the top half of the league looks.
Although the usual favorites occupy the top five spots, there is little difference between No. 3 San Antonio (105.3) and No. 12 Portland (102.3); the Spurs are closer to 12th than to first. Similarly, the swarm of contenders just outside the top five remains a jumbled mess: Only three points separate No. 6 Atlanta from No. 17 Charlotte.
Similarly, the projected standings reflect much more parity than expected. According to Monday's Playoff Odds, Cleveland is the only team that will win more than 57 games, with 61; last season the top four teams won 66, 65, 62 and 59, respectively. This time around, the world-champion Lakers project to win a very mortal 56, Orlando just 53 and San Antonio a mere 50.
But look further down the list, and you'll see a whopping 14 teams -- nearly half the league! -- projected to win between 41 and 51 games. For instance, San Antonio projects to finish ahead of the likely No. 9 team in the West, Utah, by a mere three wins.
The Playoff Odds say out loud only what everyone has seen: The league's upper crust hasn't asserted itself the way it did last season. Even the most bulletproof of the five in the first half of this season, Cleveland, has been somewhere south of amazing. The Cavs have been more consistent than anyone else, but their Power Ranking would have put them third or fourth at this point last season. Similarly, Boston's league-leading point differential would have placed it fourth last season.
For four of the top five teams, the warts are clear. Take San Antonio, for instance: The Spurs are No. 3 in the Power Rankings, even though they're 3-11 against teams with winning records. Their schedule will turn on them in a big way during the second half of the season, as only 12 of their final 35 games are at home, and they still have 26 contests left against winning teams.
But somebody has to be third. Right now San Antonio's warts are less bad than those of the pretenders around them ... such as the Lakers. Although everyone expects L.A. to be playing championship-caliber basketball by May, few will deny that the Lakers are nowhere close at the moment.
A heavy slate of early home games propped up their record so far, but that's about to change in a big way because 10 of their next 12 games are on the road. With Pau Gasol still out of the lineup and Kobe Bryant clearly struggling with his shot as a result of a broken bone in his right index finger, the offense -- a pedestrian 12th in offensive efficiency -- is a mess.
After Sunday night's 4-for-21 brickfest, Bryant is 37-of-111 (33.3 percent) in his past four games. A courtside spy at the Blazers-Lakers game on Friday told me Bryant's index finger bothered him so much that he was taking it off the ball when he shot and just trying to flick the ball up with his middle and ring finger. Try this at home sometime. You'll be amazed he managed to make 14 of his 37 shots on Friday. At this point he might be better off shooting left-handed, something he's done with increasing accuracy in the past couple of seasons.
L.A. isn't the only contender looking unusually mortal these days. The Celtics burst out of the gate like gangbusters but have been colossally disappointed with the play of their second unit. Rasheed Wallace is out of shape and Marquis Daniels can't stay healthy, so Boston has to ride its starters much harder than expected. The two oldest, Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, are playing just as many minutes as last season, a development that could have important implications come May and June.
And after a 20-4 start, the Celtics are just 6-5 in their past 11 games. Included in the slump was a home loss to Philadelphia and a three-game skid out West. Although the schedule throws them a breather during the next couple of weeks, Boston closes the month with a Magic-Hawks-Lakers stretch that includes only one day off.
Finally, we have the confounding case of the Orlando Magic. The defending Eastern Conference champs have looked anything but in laboring to a 25-12 start. Individually, a compendium of the Magic's disappointment would start with Vince Carter and Jameer Nelson, traverse through Mickael Pietrus to free-agent signees Brandon Bass and Marcin Gortat and potentially take in the likes of mainstays Rashard Lewis and Dwight Howard. The fact that so many players are underperforming leads one to wonder whether on-the-court chemistry issues are to blame. Although this group is tight-knit off the court, the on-the-court sum is adding up to less than the sum of the individual parts.
Sum it all up, and we have a very different league than the one we expected. Although the top five teams are the same five that most anticipated, the gap between the haves and have-nots is not the wide chasm we expected when the season began. It's more like a microscopic fissure -- one that a trade, slump or injury easily could bridge in the coming months.