Power Rankings before the season without the benefit of watching even one game played are irrelevant, and meaningless as they change almost immediately at the start of the season. They are always wrong. Don't believe me go back and check.
USA Today Power Rankings Coming in at number eight... 8. Houston The Rockets should be fine without Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik. But our voters were slightly skeptical, dropping them a few spots. Dwight Howard and James Harden could use the motivation. Spoiler 1. San Antonio 2. Oklahoma City 3. Cleveland 4. LA Clippers 5. Chicago 6. Golden State 7. Portland 8. Houston 9. Dallas 10. Memphis 11. Washington 12. Phoenix 13. Miami 14. Toronto 15. New Orleans 16. Charlotte 17. Denver 18. Brooklyn 19. Atlanta 20. New York 21. Indiana 22. Detroit 23. LA Lakers 24. Minnesota 25. Sacramento 26. Boston 27. Utah 28. Orlando 29. Milwaukee 30. Philadelphia
Houston > Chi.Por.GS.OKC (till Durant returns) These people just look at what is on paper and not the chemistry it takes to be a great team. Cleveland has great players, but it will take them time to grow and be elite even in the East. So being ranked that high is crazy right now. I think Houston should be top 4 or 5 at least but we will have to prove it once again.
It is just a rank, no one knows one team will be better than another one at this point, but I think the rockets are ranked fairly in this list.
They're always a media hype team because Curry can hit 3's, but they never amount to much in the end.
If he only misses around 20 games they can easily tread water until he gets back and still end up as one of the best teams. Their schedule to start the season isn't too bad and that team is still very talented. If he misses something along the lines of half the season or more than things change.
Yeah the weird thing is that Warriors seem to have jumped up a couple spots in the power rankings despite (1) not making any offseason moves and (2) being a 6-8 kinda team all year last year.
And what is there to guarantee that when Durant gets back he is going to automatically drop 32ppg and all will be back to normal? I'm gonna make the assumption its going to take a little bit of time before he gets back to himself again.....
Yea that annoys me too. They are still ultimately a jump-shooting team. Iggy and Bogut are a year older and thus more susceptible to injury, and they haven't addressed any of their weaknesses this offseason (Interior scoring and big man depth). The only player on that team that figures to have significant upside for natural improvement is Harrison Barnes who didn't show much at all last year after a decent rookie campaign. Compared to our team which figures to have improvement from D-Mo, TJones, and Beverly at a minimum. They are at the back-end of the second tier with us and Portland just below OKC/SA/LAC. On another note, I don't think Dallas breaks into our tier yet, as Dirk is still a year older and their defense even with Chandler will leave a lot to be desired considering Dirk, Monta, Felton will be logging major minutes for them. The third tier is likely to be Dallas/Phoenix/Memphis with Memphis on the outside looking in due to their inability to score.
