NBA
NBA Power Rankings: Usual Suspects
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated15 Oct 2021
It’s official: 23 weeks are in the books and Basketball Insiders is delivering to you the penultimate Weekly Power Rankings.
As the Golden State Warriors and Atlanta Hawks finish up their seasons after leading their respective conferences for the greater part of the past few months, battles have erupted for the final two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference and the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, while seeding between the second and sixth seeds out West remains up in the air.
With the Los Angeles Clippers, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs and Portland Trail Blazers all within two games of one another, there are plenty of ways the standings could finish. In theory, we could see the blazing hot Spurs finish as high as second or as low as sixth. All we know for sure out West is that the Warriors are the first seed, the Mavericks are seventh and the Blazers will be seeded no lower than fourth.
Well, we also know that nobody should want to play the Spurs, who just so happen to be the league’s hottest team with nine wins in a row (with each victory being by a dozen or more points, the longest such streak in NBA history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau).
Out East, the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Miami HEAT and Indiana Pacers are duking it out for the final two playoff spots, and we can only hope that the final few games of the season are as exciting as Wednesday night’s battle in Brooklyn where the Hawks outlasted the Nets for their 59th win of the season.
With one more week to go in the regular season and so much yet to be determined, we can only hope that the playoffs are as exciting as the weeks leading up to them.
