ESPN showing some love to the two most underrated teams in the league... Enjoy! It's that time again: Time to alert the masses to a finding that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. No longer is the controversy at the top of my Power Rankings, which look fairly straightforward these days: Streaking Boston and Miami teams own the top two spots, a 24-3 San Antonio teams sits third, and the Lakers, Mavs, Bulls and Jazz are right behind. Rather, the mystery lies a bit further down, at the eighth and ninth spots. One can't help noticing that both squads there have losing records and are seen by many as likely lottery fodder. Houston is eighth in the Power Rankings despite standing only 10th in its conference, with a record of just 13-15 putting the Rockets 1.5 games behind Portland for the West's final playoff spot. On a national level, the club's lone newsworthy moment this season came with the recent announcement that All-Star center Yao Ming would miss the rest of the season. Then there's the No. 9 team, Philadelphia. They Sixers are 11-16, and beyond that is the fact that, well, they're the Sixers. Most people went into the season with the assumption that the Sixers would be a horrible team, so when they confirmed those suspicions by playing horribly to start the year, the masses filed the club under "lottery" and moved on. Considering the team's record, most have seen little reason to review that choice. Here's the thing: Philly isn't horrible. Far from it. And neither are the Rockets for that matter. What's happening is that the Power Rankings are telling us something that we can't see in their records -- in part because they've turned their seasons around after slow starts and in part because they're been unfortunate in close games. For starters, both teams are better than their records. Despite a combined mark of 24-31, both the Rocket and 76ers have outscored their opponents over the course of the season. As long-time readers can recite verbatim by now, point differential is a better predictor of true success than win-loss record, which means we should remain optimistic about the final 50-odd games for both teams. Additionally, both have played their best basketball of late. Each has a plus-7 per-game scoring margin in its past 10 games, and both have moved into range of the No. 8 seed in their conference despite very rocky starts -- Philly limped out of the gate 3-13, while Houston began the season 3-10. In both cases, personnel shifts were key. Philadelphia's recent revival is a story of Doug Collins figuring out how to use his roster 16 games into the season. He began the year starting Jason Kapono at small forward and then flailed around with various other combinations -- including an ill-fated attempt to start struggling rookie Evan Turner -- before settling on playing second-year pro Jodie Meeks at shooting guard. Meeks has provided a huge benefit with his long-range shooting, at 41.6 percent from downtown, answering the team's multiyear search for somebody who can make an outside shot consistently while still competently executing other phases of the game. Meeks, amazingly, was a DNP the first six games, but the club is 1-7 when he doesn't play and 10-9 when he does. They've won six of their past eight with him as a starter, with one of the defeats at the buzzer against Boston and the other after holding a fourth-quarter lead against the Lakers. The reason is that with his addition, suddenly, the entire rotation works. Jrue Holiday and Andre Iguodala have seams to attack the basket; the Sixers can bring two potent scorers of the bench in Lou Williams and Thaddeus Young; they don't need to play Andres Nocioni or Kapono unless absolutely necessary; and Turner isn't being force-fed touches before his time. All of this seems incredibly obvious now, but it wasn't at the start of the season. (Well, except the part about playing Young instead of Nocioni or Kapono. That was a little weird.) And as my colleague Kevin Pelton pointed out Monday, it's had as strong a benefit on the defensive end as on offense. Meeks is a good shooter but is also no slouch defensively; because the other Sixers are average-to-good defenders and Collins is a strong defensive coach, Philly has soared into the league's top 10 in Defensive Efficiency. The reverse-field explanation for this is that Meeks has given Collins the luxury to play his better defenders, like Holiday, more minutes, and leave less capable ones like Williams and Marreese Speights in more limited roles. As this outfit was just 23rd in defense a year ago, this impressive shift explains a lot of how they Sixers are challenging for a playoff spot. That's not the only change, of course: Elton Brand has recovered enough that his contract no longer seems that ridiculous, Holiday has emerged as a quality point guard in his second pro season, and Young has quietly been among the league's best sixth men. If they keep this up, it might quell all those Iguodala trade rumors and instead focus attention on the amazing fact that the Sixers may improve by 15 wins with nearly entirely the same team, despite the one high-profile newcomer (Turner) being brutally awful. (Yes, 15 wins. Philly won 27 a year ago. Today's Playoff Odds peg the Sixers for 42.) As for the Rockets, their reemergence as a playoff factor is less surprising in light of the fact that they won 42 games a year ago. And while losing Yao for the season certainly removes some of the team's upside, Houston's real issue in the first few weeks was its wobbly point guard play. With Aaron Brooks sidelined and Kyle Lowry out of shape, the Rockets struggled to generate offense aside from Luis Scola's post-up game. That's all changed in recent weeks, as Lowry has put together several dominant games (including two savage dismantlings of the man he formerly backed up in Memphis, Mike Conley). For the month of December, he's averaging 14.7 points, 8.4 assists and 2.7 steals and, most shockingly, he's made more than half his 3-pointers. As an added plus, Brooks' return over the weekend finally gives the Rockets the one-two punch they'd used so effectively a year ago at point guard. The main beneficiary has been shooting guard Kevin Martin, who has taken his usually high-efficiency output to another level. Recently he has put up a 20-point first quarter twice in the same week and has averaged a jaw-dropping 33.4 points per 40 minutes in his past 10 games. The fact this hasn't gained more prominent mention has to do with to his bizarrely light usage in that time span, as he's played only 29 minutes per game on the month and averages just 32 for the season. Martin's full-season numbers are fairly ridiculous too. At full strength after two injury-riddled seasons, he's hitting a torrid 44.0 percent of his 3s, nearing a career high in scoring average despite the low minutes and posting a career-best PER. Among shooting guards, only Kobe Bryant averages more points per minute, and Martin is again doing it with shocking efficiency. His 63.5 True Shooting Percentage ranks third among shooting guards, and among all players with a Usage Rate over 20 (basically anyone who shoots reasonably often), his TS percentage is the league's best. Sum it all up, and chances are good that we'll see both Houston and Philadelphia among the eight teams left standing in each conference when the regular season ends. We won't see them for long, perhaps -- each projects as No. 7 or No. 8 seed, which doesn't bode well for their playoff longevity. But the fact that they've recovered so strongly from such shabby beginnings to their respective seasons deserves more attention than it's been getting. - John Hollinger
