As the whole basketball world focuses on trades and player movement around the NBA trade deadline, there have been actual games going on as well. It’s not as glamorous or sexy at the moment, but some teams have ignored the noise and just gone about their business.
The Nuggets are one of those teams; all the outside noise has been about their disastrous deadline as they chased almost every role player on the market and came up empty-handed. It’s all that the fans and media have been talking about and even GM Calvin Booth addressed the deadline at length in a press conference.
But for all that outside noise and disappointment around the team’s inactivity due to past mistakes, the team was focused on the games. And the games have been going quite well. Despite missing multiple key players, the Nuggets have quietly ripped off six straight wins and moved up to third place in the Western Conference, just a game and a half out of second.
Nuggets climb all the way to #4 in NBA power rankings
John Schuhmann of NBA.com ranks every team in the NBA from 1-30 each week and in the latest edition, he has bumped the Nuggets up to 4th place. The team had been as low as the mid-teens at one point and was 7th last week.
After another undefeated week, Denver climbed three spots in the rankings, leapfrogging the Rockets, Grizzlies, and Knicks. Now they trail just the Thunder, Celtics, and Cavaliers (in that order). Those teams seem pretty locked into the top three spots, but it’s certainly notable that Denver is now the second-place team from the West, behind just the Thunder.
Even with the quiet trade deadline, they’ve been steadily moving up the standings and the power rankings. They’ve reached a point where it’s hard to say they’re not squarely in contention to win the West - at least as much as any team after Oklahoma City.
That would have seemed borderline miraculous just a few weeks ago, but they’ve rallied around a career year from Nikola Jokic and guys like Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., and Aaron Gordon have picked up the slack lately.
The Nuggets still have a lot of climbing to do if they hope to reach the top, but this ranking speaks more to their status as contenders. The West has leveled off a lot and the teams near the top are unproven up-and-comers.
Now that the Nuggets are swimming in that pool, they’re suddenly the proven commodity. Denver has won a championship and they’ve got their top four guys from that team, including the best player in the world. As long as that’s the case, they’ve at least got a shot.