With most of the NBA’s regular season in the rearview, you’d think we’d have a good idea of where teams stand. And yet, the playoff picture - especially in the Western Conference - is still completely murky. The Thunder are locked into the West’s number one seed and have been for a while, but beyond that, it’s truly a wild, wild West.
The final seedings will be crucial as they’ll determine homecourt advantage and the matchups and paths for each team which will be as vital as ever. But regardless of how the seeds end up, we know who these teams are and have a good idea of how they should stack up.
The NBA.com power rankings, curated weekly by John Schuhmann, have been tracking every team 1-30 for every week of the season. These disregard the standings and look at how teams are playing and tracking in regards to the rest of the league. It’s largely a better indicator of actual contenders than simply looking at the standings.
The Nuggets have fluctuated in these power rankings all season due to their inconsistent play. At their best, they’ve ranked within the top 5, reaching as high as number four a few weeks ago. However, during their lowest moments, the team dropped to the mid-teens, lingering in the middle of the pack as they played .500 basketball at the start of the season.
Nuggets stick at #6 in NBA power rankings
The top 3 in Schuhmann’s power rankings have been stable for much of the year. The three squads have flipped places, but the Thunder, Cavaliers, and Celtics have held steady in those spots for months.
But after that, the rest of the top 10 has been pure chaos. Surprisingly, the Nuggets have been one of the more consistently ranked teams recently, settling into the 5-8ish range for the past few weeks. Last week, the team was ranked 6th, and this week they stayed in that exact spot.
Denver survived a 2-3 stretch without Nikola Jokic in the lineup and then bounced back with two straight wins with the MVP back in the lineup. That was good enough for them to hang onto their spot in 6th. The Lakers were above the Nuggets last week but fell from 5th to 7th, while the surging Rockets climbed from 8th to 4th.
Last week’s number 4 team, the Warriors fell to 5th, the Timberwolves fell from 7th to 8th, and the Clippers and Knicks held steady to round out the top 10. It’s notable that 7 of the top 9 are teams from the Western Conference and while the East has two of the top three, the West has the next six squads in the ranks.
It just goes to show what a tight race this is and how much is still up for grabs. It’s hard to properly gauge how these teams stack up and with margins this thin, it highlights how important the next couple of weeks will be and how much is still up for grabs as the matchups will make all the difference in the playoffs.