ESPN has released its first edition of NBA power rankings following the wave of offseason transactions, and they give the Nuggets plenty of praise, slotting them all the way up at number three. However, the high ranking still feels a bit disrespectful, as it places them behind the Houston Rockets.
Don’t get me wrong, the Rockets had a great summer, and they deserve to be high up on this list as well. They added Kevin Durant, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Clint Capela to a team that finished second in the Western Conference last year while maintaining their young core of players, who should all be even better this season.
The Rockets have no business being ahead of the Nuggets
My problem with the list is that this Houston team is still largely hypothetical, whereas the Nuggets have done it. Denver, of course, won the title in 2023 and pushed the eventual champions, the Thunder, to seven games just a couple of months ago.
They did all that with an extremely banged-up team that lacked depth and was still in the wake of firing their head coach of a decade in Michael Malone, and GM Calvin Booth. Since that time, they haven’t added a star like Kevin Durant, but they hit home runs all over the margins, adding Cam Johnson, Jonas Valanciunas, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Bruce Brown while only sacrificing Michael Porter Jr. from their rotation.
This team, which has already been a title contender for years, improved upon its fifth starter and assembled one of the best benches in the NBA. They were already close, and these moves should absolutely make them the stiffest competition that the rightfully favored Thunder will face next season.
The Rockets, on the other hand, have just one playoff series under their belt with this core, and it was a loss to the seventh-seeded Warriors. They were a very good regular-season team, but their issues were quickly exposed in the playoffs, especially on the offensive end.
Sure, Durant should help solve a lot of those issues, but it’s a big ask for a newly added player in his late 30s to come in and immediately become the focal point on offense, surrounded by a bunch of guys he has never played with before.
Ultimately, it seems reasonable to have the Thunder, Rockets, and Nuggets as the top three teams, but putting the Rockets above the Nuggets is a bit ambitious and premature for my liking.