Updated: February 26, 2013, 1:41 PM ET

Power Rankings: Here comes Indy

Week:
 
Team:
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
Monday, Feb. 25

It remains to be seen whether the Indiana Pacers can replicate their regular-season success against the increasingly scorching Miami Heat come playoff time.

Give the Pacers this much, though: They're finally and officially one of the NBA's top five teams by ESPN.com standards.

Four straight wins by a composite 108 points -- with those four victims all held under 34 percent shooting -- have combined with the steady progress made since a 4-7 start and two impressive wins over the Heat to vault Indiana into the top five of ESPN's weekly NBA Power Rankings for the first time all season at No. 4.

San Antonio, Miami, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers round out the upper crust of the rankings, with Golden State (No. 9) and Utah (No. 10) taking advantage of the struggles endured by a number of teams we've grown accustomed to seeing in the top tier -- starting with New York and Chicago -- to make unexpected jumps into the top 10.

The rankings, as always, were compiled with peerless assistance from ESPN Stats & Information and the Elias Sports Bureau. Click here to rank the teams yourself.

Also, check out John Hollinger's daily Power Rankings.

2012-13 Power Rankings: Week 17
RANKTEAM / RECORD TRENDINGCOMMENTS
1
--

Last Week: 1		Teams have to worry about something, but peaking too soon is all the committee (of one) can come up with. What else can you fret about when not a single injury or lineup shuffle has derailed them? Another 7-2 Rodeo Road Trip clinched a record 16th straight season with a winning road mark.
2
Miami
40-14
--

Last Week: 2		If you suspect that no one in the East dared to make a big deadline-day deal because trying to unseat the Heat is a futile exercise, you're not alone. And if you're not the sort who pays much mind to PER ... even you've got to be impressed when you hear that LeBron's PER is 37.1 in February.
3
--

Last Week: 3		After letting James Harden become only the third player in the past 30 years to crack the 45-point plateau against the team he played for in the previous season, it was a handy reminder that the Thunder -- no matter how much rollin' they've been doing -- won't be judged until the playoffs.
4
Indiana
35-21
3
Last Week: 7		The Pacers just became the first team in NBA history to win its first two games after the All-Star break by 30 points or more. Which certainly didn't do anything to hurt Indy's claim that, with or without Danny Granger, it deserves to be known as the East's most legit threat to the Heat.
5
1
Last Week: 4		Something tells me that the Clips, facing the prospect of having to beat the Spurs and OKC without home-court advantage to get to the NBA Finals, won't mind if we dig into our trusty Braves reservoir and re-state that CP3 is the franchise's first All-Star MVP since my man Randy Smith in 1978.
6
Memphis
37-18
--

Last Week: 6		The opposition hasn't been the toughest, true, but seven straight W's get your attention after so many folks came away from the Rudy Gay trade convinced that the Griz chucked in the season. They're 7-0 since Lionel Hollins came out and said it was time for all of them to suck it up and move on.
7
Denver
35-22
2
Last Week: 5		One of those rare research nuggets that only the Elias Sports Bureau crew could come up with: Ty Lawson's six-game haul of 157 points and 50 assists makes him the first former UNC Tar Heel to register those sorts of numbers across such a span since a certain Michael Jordan early in 1989-90.
8
Houston
31-27
--

Last Week: 8		Elias says James Harden (26.4 PPG) will soon become the most prolific scorer ever among players who appeared in the NBA Finals and then switched teams, topping fellow lefty Gail Goodrich's 23.8 PPG for Phoenix in 1968-69. P.S. -- Jeremy Lin happens to be playing his best ball of the season, too.
9
4
Last Week: 13		Raise your hands: Who thought that a six-game skid, combined with word that Andrew Bogut (back) is ailing anew, put the Dubs at risk for getting dragged into the Lakers' sights in the race for No. 8 out West? That's why Golden State's first victory over the Spurs since 2008 was so big.
10
Utah
31-25
1
Last Week: 11		Make the playoffs now and deal with the overcrowded frontcourt later. That's clearly the approach here after the Jazz declined to trade either Al Jefferson or Paul Millsap. Yet entering Saturday's play, Utah had the fifth-hardest remaining schedule ... with the Lakers at 21 and Rockets at 27.
11
4
Last Week: 15		Entering Saturday's game, Kobe & Co. had the league's fourth-easiest remaining schedule in terms of opponent winning percentage. Rather reassuring to hear that after the committee blurted into every available microphone that the Lakers would be making the playoffs no matter what.
12
3
Last Week: 9		Amar'e is starting to make his presence felt, but Melo's PER has dipped into the 23s, which isn't much higher than his career-best PER of 22.2 after he spent much of the season well above 25. Call it yet another example of how far removed the Knicks seem from those glorious first six weeks.
13
Boston
29-27
3
Last Week: 10		Ugh: Only Charlotte, Phoenix and Philly have fewer road wins since Dec. 1 than Boston's five. But the recent Jeff Green revival, coupled with Jordan Crawford's arrival, suggest that the Celts could still climb a spot or two even minus Rajon Rondo. Which presumably wouldn't bother Miami.
14
2
Last Week: 12		The celebration of Joe Johnson's big buckets at the end of the fourth quarter and OT in Brooklyn's win over Milwaukee coming out of the break feels like an ancient memory now with JJ plagued by an increasingly worrisome case of plantar fasciitis on top of all the concern about D-Will's ankles.
15
Chicago
32-24
1
Last Week: 14		Something tells me that the banged-up, overworked Bulls are eager to see the calendar flip to March. They're 4-7 in February, still dealing with the Reggie Rose hubbub and just shot the ball worse than any other team in any other game this season at 25-for-86 (.291) in Sunday's loss at OKC.
16
Atlanta
31-23
1
Last Week: 17		With so much focus on Josh Smith lately and whether Atlanta could find a trade partner to take on J-Smoove, we're all guilty of paying insufficient attention to Al Horford. The Hawks are 15-2 when Horford -- limited to only 11 games last season because of a muscle tear -- scores 20 or more.
17
Toronto
23-33
1
Last Week: 16		The Raps might have lost Wednesday's Rudy Gay Bowl at home against Memphis, but that's their only loss in a seven-game span that includes a win at Indy, two wins over the Knicks and growing evidence that GM Bryan Colangelo has given Team Canada fresh hope with the core he has assembled.
18
Dallas
25-30
--

Last Week: 18		It felt undeniably like a playoff game Sunday when Dirk Nowitzki's Mavericks and Kobe Bryant's Lakers traded haymakers in Dallas. But the resultant fear after yet another narrow L, naturally, is that the Mavs won't get any closer to the actual playoffs with so much ground still to make up.
19
1
Last Week: 20		If the Blazers hadn't beaten Boston on Sunday night, they'd be mired in their first eight-game skid since April 2006. The willingness to trade J.J. Hickson at the deadline, mind you, made it clear that securing another lottery pick is their unspoken preference anyway, even after that Cinderella first half.
20
1
Last Week: 19		The Bucks, desperate to make the playoffs and mired in a 2-9 skid, might well be hard to guard when J.J. Redick slots in next to Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis and Ersan Ilyasova. Just not quite sure who'll they'll be stopping. Larry Sanders will earn every DPOY vote he gets covering for that quartet.
21
--

Last Week: 21		New York, Milwaukee, Memphis, Toronto, Chicago, Indiana and mighty Miami are among the teams that still must visit the nation's capital before season's end. Which is a relevant schedule detail because the Wiz are 10-2 in their past 12 home games after coming from 17 down to stun Houston.
22
3
Last Week: 25		With Marreese Speights filling in admirably for Anderson Varejao, Cleveland has quietly won seven of its past nine games against Eastern Conference opposition. The Cavs, though, also have led by as many as eight points in the fourth quarter in Miami twice this season ... and lost both times.
23
New Orleans
20-37
1
Last Week: 24		After a four-game stretch in which he averaged a mere 4.8 points and 5.5 boards, Anthony Davis has since averaged 15.6 PPG and 8.8 RPG in New Orleans' past five outings. Not quite Damian Lillard levels, but Davis can't worry about the long-gone ROY race. He just needs to finish his first season strongly.
24
Detroit
22-36
1
Last Week: 23		The Pistons were the only team to beat San Antonio in February until the Warriors did so Friday night. That's the good news. The bad news: Throwing away Tuesday's good start against Memphis stretched Detroit's league lead to 13 when it comes to losses after leading by more than 10 points.
25
3
Last Week: 22		The Bucks are trying to keep the suspense alive in the "race" for No. 8 in the East. But the Sixers, even with Thaddeus Young's return, simply don't have enough to mount a charge ... barring Andrew Bynum making the sort of monster comeback pretty much no one expects any more.
26
--

Last Week: 26		Ricky Rubio is diming freely again while Nikola Pekovic keeps building his free-agent case for the summer by averaging 15.8 PPG and 9.6 RPG in February. Yet Minnesota also is second only to San Antonio in first-quarter point differential, which only adds to all of its injury-related frustration.
27
Phoenix
18-39
--

Last Week: 27		The Suns are obviously prioritizing minutes for their youngsters over everything, but reuniting Marcus Morris with twin brother Markieff can't camouflage the fact that they now have as many home losses by 25 points or more this season (three) as they had in the previous 11 seasons combined.
28
--

Last Week: 28		If the Maloofs were intent on finding a way to alienate the locals even more than they have, drafting Thomas Robinson ahead of Damian Lillard and Andre Drummond last June and then trading him away in February -- all in the name of banking a few million bucks -- certainly met that objective.
29
1
Last Week: 30		With the Bobcats bumped up to No. 29, no one can dare say that we didn't get No. 23 anything on the occasion of his 50th birthday. Side note: Byron Mullens recently posted three 20-and-10 outings in a span of five games ... after only two 20-and-10s in the first 120 games of his NBA career.
30
Orlando
15-41
1
Last Week: 29		Sixteen losses in the past 17 games since they shocked Indy on Jan. 16. A double-digit defeat last Tuesday at home to Charlotte in the most winnable game left on their schedule. The Magic, when you add all that up, have to sink into our cellar no matter how good Nikola Vucevic has looked.
  • Biggest Jump:
  • 4
  • Biggest Drop:
  • 3

ESPN Conversations

comments
+ Add your comment

Find Tickets:

Season tickets or single game tickets, all the best seats are here.

See all tickets