Official /r/nba Power Rankings (12.04.2023)

[26/30 rankers reporting this week.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17bF–yJIj8G5O32Ii3aQ5QYAsUf45P6q46mKE4JZbKg/edit?usp=sharing) /R/NBA’s Power Rankings are published every two weeks which is a bit different from most rankings. Other than that we rank the teams the same way as our competition. If write ups are left blank the team rep decided not to submit. We encourage any user to fill in the blanks in the comment section.

\# | Team | Δ | Record | Comment |
–: | :– | :– | :-: | :– |
1 | [](/BOS) Celtics | — | 15-4 | |
2 | [](/MIN) TWolves | +2 | 15-4 | Wolves remain top of the West. They own the best defense in the NBA and 4th in net rating while having victories over everyone else in the top 6. Rudy Gobert is the best defensive player on the planet, Towns has found his offensive footing again, and Naz Reid is Naz Reid. The King Ghidorah of big men rotation on the Wolves is loading over their opponents. |
3 | [](/DEN) Nuggets | — | 14-7 | Despite a rash of injuries and a tough stretch of the schedule (5 games in 7 days), the Nuggets have managed to stay afloat thanks to the efforts of Nikola Jokic. The 2-time MVP has played out of his mind since Jamal Murray went down, and is currently leading the league in total points, rebounds, AND assists. However, the biggest win over this stretch was actually the game that Jokic sat, when Reggie Jackson and DeAndre Jordan turned back the clock to knock off their star-studded former team in LA. Something to watch for as the season progresses is the Nuggets’ home/road splits, as the Nuggets are still undefeated at home (9-0) but are currently under .500 on the road (5-7). Much of this could be attributed to the recent road-heavy schedule coinciding with the Murray and Gordon injuries, however it’s something worth keeping an eye on as the season progresses. |
4 | [](/MIL) Bucks | +1 | 14-6 | Last year this team’s biggest weakness was probably its half court offense in crunch time. Now it’s our biggest strength. Thanks Dame, the Heart-Attack-Bucks are a lot of fun to watch. |
5 | [](/OKC) Thunder | +1 | 13-6 | The Thunder continue to be on a tear, keeping up with the playoff favorites while blowing out the bottomfeeders. However, hints of their inexperience creep up from time to time like in the Dallas game where they allowed a 30-0 run after dominating the first 3 quarters. Though as is the story of this pesky Thunder team this season, they managed to close that game out with their 15-3 run. This team will make mistakes, but claw and fight until the bitter end regardless of their chances. And man, its fun to watch. |
6 | [](/ORL) Magic | +5 | 14-6 | Well, you can’t win them all. But tying the franchise record 9-game winning streak and being near the top of the Eastern Conference is huge. Paolo won Player of the Week and with 3 straight 30 point games, Franz is making a strong push to win it this week. The bench play has been incredible, spearheaded by the playmaking of the Slow Cooker himself, Joe Ingles and the scoring duo of Cole and Moe. It’s still very early in the year but Mosley is squarely in the Coach of the Year conversation and Suggs has thrown his name as a potential All-NBA Defense candidate, helping the Magic to one of the best defenses currently. Goga and AB have been great holding their own with WCJ and Fultz out, but there’s still a reason they were 3rd stringers at the start of the reason. The next few months of the schedule are gonna be rough if both are out for a majority of that time. |
7 | [](/PHI) 76ers | -5 | 12-7 | What are the Sixers right now? They are clearly a top tier Eastern Conference team and have shown periods where they can absolutely contend. For as much flak as Embiid received over the offseason, the team still clearly needs him to perform at the highest levels for them to succeed how they want. Maxey has been an incredible development and Batum has filled in perfectly. We can only hope the offense continues to perform at a top 3 level. |
8 | [](/PHX) Suns | +4 | 12-8 | Things are starting to come together in Phoenix! The Suns are 9-2 with a healthy Devin Booker, including a 7-0 run that began on November 15th against Minnesota and came to an end when he rolled his ankle against Toronto this past Wednesday (healthy again now). The secret to this success is Point Book’s playmaking. He is averaging 8.4 assists per game, which is among the Top 10 in the league. Alongside KD, who is averaging 31.0/5.8/6.4 on 51/49/90 splits, the Suns have made the quarterfinals of the IST and risen to 5th place in the West. |
9 | [](/NYK) Knicks | — | 12-7 | Mitchell Robinson is not only the best rebounder in the NBA. He is the owner of 16 dogs. He homes his widower high school coach for free. He listens only to country music. He is the longest tenured Knick. He is my everything. |
10 | [](/SAC) Kings | -2 | 11-7 | The In SZN tournament is upon us.. coming off a huge win against the defending champions the Kings are looking to take revenge on the team that has given them the most issues in the pelicans.. one of the 4 matchups that completely wreck the Kings is going up against a team that completely out bodied them.. The only way Kings will be able to win this game is if they play down hill and make their free throws.. otherwise it’s gonna be a long way down from Mount Zion |
11 | [](/DAL) Mavericks | -4 | 11-8 | Two Mavs welcomed newborns since the last writeup, with Dante Exum and Luka Doncic becoming fathers in the same week. The mavs lost Friday night to Memphis without Luka, who took time to be with his girlfriend and newborn, and then lost a rally against OKC with Luka’s best game of the season. With the in-season tournament, the mavs benefit a bit more by missing qualification for the knockout round with matchups against two teams ranked in the 20s in Utah and Portland, which could help negate this last weekend’s performance. |
12 | [](/IND) Pacers | +1 | 10-8 | The Pacers are continuing their NG+ playthrough as a glass cannon build. Rick Carlisle’s offense is literally putting up the most points per game in NBA history; without Tyrese Haliburton on Saturday, Indiana still put up a whopping 144 points. On the flipside, the defense is still very much a work in progress- at best. Without much size, Indiana has been particularly susceptible to lengthy wings, and routinely hand out career nights to whomever happens to be playing the 3 on any given night. Regardless, Indiana still is very much in good standing in the East, and now turns their focus to the In-Season Tournament Quarterfinals, where they host Boston on Monday night. |
13 | [](/MIA) Heat | -3 | 11-9 | Things are not going too good for the Miami Heat. The injuries are starting to add up as Bam Adebayo joins the list. Dru Smith is also out for the season while Tyler Herro is still working his way back from an ankle injury. However, players are stepping up with the absences and filling in the voids. Rookie Jaime Jaquez Jr has been doing excellent with the minutes he’s been receiving and hopefully will continue to take advantage of the increase in minutes. It’s beginning to look like a season where we will need to temper expectations, but hopefully as players start to return from injuries we can get back on track. |
14 | [](/LAL) Lakers | +1 | 12-9 | Lakers have been alternating wins and losses in their 7 games, with a record of 4-3. While they continue to remain close to the top seed in the West(currently 7th), an early season trend has been that they take care of business against teams they supposed to beat, but don’t seem to match with the other top contenders, suffering heavy losses to the Sixers and Thunder on the road. Over the last couple of weeks, the standout performers have been D’Lo shooting over 48% on threes on 5 attempts while Max Christie stepping into the starting lineup for the injured Reddish has shown great flashes as another serviceable 3&D wing. The injury bugs have slowly receded as Rui, Vando and Reddish have returned to action with just Gabe remaining on the IR. The team needs to string a few wins togehter while also sorting out the rotations as they move into the next quarter of the season and a strong way to put a stop to the narrative on not competing with top-end teams would be with a victory over the Suns at home in the upcoming In-Season tourney quarter-final. |
15 | [](/NOP) Pelicans | +3 | 11-10 | The Pelicans have gone 5-3 in the last two weeks as they slowly get healthy. Zion just played in his first back-to-back in over a year. CJ McCollum and Trey Murphy are back and getting their legs under them, two players they desperately need to contribute with their three-point shot. Herb Jones continues his strong campaign for First Team All-Defense. Jordan Hawkins continues his campaign for All-Rookie First Team, and remains on pace to set the rookie three-point record a quarter of the way into the season. Today’s In-Season Tournament Quarterfinal looks to be a good measuring stick. Health remains the most important factor in this young team’s success, with consistency a gaining second. |
16 | [](/CLE) Cavaliers | -2 | 11-9 | A 4-3 stretch since the last power rankings has been absolutely marred by a terrible looking loss to the Trailblazers has shaken the team and fans, with calls to move on from JB Bickerstaff, who had nothing to say to reporters after that loss. The Cavs gave up a 37-13 run to the trailblazers, turning a 70-58 lead into a 95-83 deficit, and that was that. It just seems like no one has a “reset” button when things aren’t going well for this offense, and it swallows itself up. Mobley and Allen shot a combined 15-23 in the game, but only took 4 FGA combined from the moment we obtained a 70-58 lead with 4 left in the 3rd. Any time your bigs are dominating the interior, feed them. Set up something for them, we’d rather try what’s been working and fail compared to changing course for whatever reason. We had a close call against Detroit on Saturday and it felt like if we lost, it could’ve been the end of JB’s time here, so we need to see some consistency if he’s going to get off the hot seat |
17 | [](/BKN) Nets | +3 | 10-9 | Mikal Bridges is starting to heat up after a slow start to the season. He’s averaging 28 ppg in his last 6 games on extremely high efficiency. Continuing his scoring will be key for this team as Cam Thomas has returned and adds his own scoring punch every night. While many thought defense would be the identity of this group, the Nets have come out with a scorching offense focused on shooting threes and creating open looks for role players. Ben Simmons has stayed out and may very well be a figment of our imagination at this point – let’s see what happens with him as his theoretical fit with this roster is close to ideal. |
18 | [](/LAC) Clippers | +3 | 9-10 | [Apply to be the Clippers Ranker here](https://old.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/17e5erb/looking_for_a_hawks_hornets_clippers_lakers/) |
19 | [](/ATL) Hawks | -2 | 9-10 | Get better soon, Jalen 🙁 |
20 | [](/GSW) Warriors | -1 | 9-11 | Two brutal single possession losses where the Warriors had the game in the driver seat is the team in a nutshell this year. Klay has shot better, CP3 is finding his groove and Wiggins had a huge game before his latest injury. Kerr tends to ride with his guys instead of the riding the hot hand which may have cost the Warriors the game against Sac. There’s some good to take away but no doubt it’s been a disappointing start to the season. |
21 | [](/HOU) Rockets | -5 | 8-9 | After a good run of games, the Rockets are performing closer to what people expected pre-season. Although not much should be expected of Amen when he returns, he may just provide enough minutes to give the others some rest and increase focus. |
22 | [](/TOR) Raptors | — | 9-11 | I have had faith in the team making it above .500 at some point during the season. Did it happen during these 2 weeks? No. However, the wins against some great opponents have been there all along. Even way back during game 1 of the season against Minnesota. Beating Dallas, Milwaukee, Phoenix is impressive. Being 5 and 9 against teams below .500 is not. It’s still too early to forsee where the team ends up in April. The good is that the tough schedule is lessening but the team needs to stop falling behind early. The tendency to play down to their opponents probably isn’t going away because this is ultimately a .500 team. |
23 | [](/CHI) Bulls | — | 7-14 | We have won 2 in a row for the first time all season, and watching this team has been kind of fun again. With Zach Lavine out, Coby White has been able to show out and lead the Bulls to victories over the Bucks and Pelicans. We still aren’t a good team by any means, but at least young guys are getting a chance to step up. |
24 | [](/UTA) Jazz | — | 7-13 | Utah are 6-2 against NOLA, POR and MEM but have lost 10 straight against the rest of the league. Ranking 23rd for ORTG and 25th for ORTG things don’t seem to be clicking as well as last season. It seemed that turnover issues were addressed during Keyonte’s early starts but the issue has resurfaced with the team recording 18.6 TO per game this past fortnight. The last team to average over 18.6 TO per game for a season was the Bulls in 1999-00 for reference. Rookies Brice Sensabaugh (17/6/4) and Taylor Hendricks (17/7 with 1.2 stl, 1.9 blks) who have been hooping in the G-League should expect a call up and more minutes at this pace as the Jazz focus on youth. |
25 | [](/MEM) Grizzlies | — | 5-14 | In one of the most unfun seasons in recent Grizzlies history, we finally saw the team in their last few games show some heart and effort. Vince Williams Jr has looked like prime Dennis Rodman (not really, but compard to the rest of the team he’s been the best rebounder) and newly signed 10 day Haylen Nowell has provided a much needed spark off the bench. The story remains the same though, we have two guys who are starting NBA caliber players, and the rest of the roster is made up of G-League players. Only 7 more games until Ja comes back, is the damage already done? Find out next time! |
26 | [](/CHA) Hornets | — | 6-12 | Well, it happened. LaMelo Ball, off to a scintillating start (32-7-9 on 49-43-87 during the last 10 games), did his ankle again, severely spraining it (wear braces, please). And with that, any hopes I had for this season evaporated. Time will tell how long he’s out but I’m not expecting anything until January. Luckily Kupchak filled the cupboard with Ish Smith and Frank Ntilikina (also injured) at backup PG. The team defense is awful. Clifford is an awful coach. They don’t shoot the 3 well or defend the 3 well, using an outdated system. We brought back #0, a very good player, but a very bad human being. This team disgusts me, most of the time, and without Ball, they are borderline unwatchable. Watch for a Rozier or Hayward trade as we get closer to the deadline. Positives – Miller was the right pick over Scoot, and NSJ the other rookie looks good too. I am already moving on to the NBA Draft scouting… but hey, we’ll always have that Boston win. |
27 | [](/POR) Trail Blazers | — | 6-13 | |
28 | [](/WAS) Wizards | +1 | 3-16 | The Washington Wizards continue to be the butt of the joke in the NBA, despite being the second worst team in the NBA from a record perspective. Normally, I try to balance the line of “somewhat analytical” and “somewhat comedic,” but the reality is that if I don’t say ‘Jordan Poole is the reason for AIDS and World Hunger’, this snippet won’t be read. Transparently, it is a little weird to watch the amount of hate that is directed towards Poole. He is on a team that no one watches, doesn’t talk much in the media and hasn’t been a “toxic teammate” — despite poorly clipped arm-chair analysis going viral on Twitter and there being no signs or reports of internal frustration. Did he just steal everyone’s girl and that’s why people are upset? Seriously, it is reaching the point where it is just excessive, to where I actually want to defend Jordan Poole. Anyway, the team isn’t good and frankly there isn’t much to watch. Kyle Kuzma continues to have good performances but doesn’t do enough to warrant “franchise player potential” praise. Bilal Coulibaly is currently in market correction territory, with the restraints appropriately being put back on as he continues to develop on the offensive end. The Wizards are not good, they’re not fun, go back to not discussing us. |
29 | [](/SAS) Spurs | -1 | 3-16 | Whelp, still in the doldroms in Spurs land. Wemby’s play has turned promisingly more consistent of late, he seems to be forcing things less and making more deliberate moves on the floor, but that’s been about the lone bright spot on this long losing streak. Sochan balled out against Atlanta as well, and he’s generally been looking more and more steady at PG as the season has unfolded. The team is still losing, mostly on the back of absolutely atrocious third quarter play, but they’ve also been competitive at least. At some stage you have to hope we’ll learn how to hold these leads we’ve been getting, but for now we’re still firmly in Process mode. The Spurs play @MIN, CHI, @HOU, LAL, LAL, NOP over the next two weeks. |
30 | [](/DET) Pistons | — | 2-18 | The Lions have more wins (11) than the Pistons do (9) in calendar 2023. No Win November turned out pretty well – perfect, in fact. 17 consecutive losses and counting! Our only obvious ‘winnable’ games in December would be vs the Grizzlies on Wednesday or the Jazz (the latter of which would stop our loss streak at 24) but we may not win again in 2023. At our current pace we are on track to have the worst 82 game season in NBA history. We are neck and neck with the Carhlotte Bobcats in the lockout shortened year for worst win % in a single season. I’m sure we will find somebody great with the 5th pick in the draft to be our next messiah though… There is no leadership for this team. We had a player’s only meeting called by team leader Isaiah Stewart (not Cade) which lead to a blowout loss by 19 to the Wizards. Troy Weaver’s biggest moves of the offseason were getting broken down Monte Morris (who hasn’t played a game this year from… a hamstring strain?) and Joe Harris who has fallen off a cliff for anybody, but especially anyone earning $19.9 million this year. Monty Williams, with his mega deal coaching contract, stated after loss 15 that “we need to do a better job at spacing” in his post game presser, as if he has no control over it. BUT WAIT A SECOND… novel idea here… a coach can adjust lineups to do so. Despite this, he continues to let former 5th overall pick who actually WANTED TO BE IN DETROIT, Jaden Iven, ride the pine more often than not. I’m sure he’s learning to refine his game from the sidelines. Monty plays James Wiseman and Stanley Umude in clutch spots and has shocked Pikachu face when we let the other team go on a 10-0 run (or similar). I guess I’d milk it too if I was guaranteed as much money as Monty if I sucked at my job though… We also have a beat writer, James Edwards III, who decides to be a lap dog and not call out any of the problems with out team instead content to play lapdog to our FO. James, go suck an egg… Lastly there’s Cade. Raw numbers continue to look ok, but he can never find a game where his TS% and turnover numbers both look good. Is it that he can’t play with these dudes? Is he just a bad to mediocre player getting lots of minutes? I lean toward the opinion right now that he is going to fit better off ball, as he has looked great in these moments, with secondary ball handling duties. A bit of a downer for a #1 overall pick who also doesn’t seem to be showing as many leadership qualities as we’d hope for either (again, refer back to Stew calling the team meeting, not Cade). Will he still be good? Yeah I still think he’ll be a future all-star, but not the superstar our fanbase was hoping for… Only 1/4 of the season done… life is pain. |