In week 14 of the power rankings, the OKC Thunder struggled as did some of their counterparts while the rich just got richer.
Generally, clear delineations appear by the quarter pole but with so many perennial favorites struggling to start the season, it threw everything into flux. With the teams reaching the halfway mark greater clarity is available although the majority of the West is still anyone’s guess.
The East has three distinct tiers of the top five, bottom four and six squads in the middle. That middle section is where the majority of movement will occur from now until season end.
As for the Western Conference, it does seem the top four or five squads have separated themselves although it’s not as definitive as the East. And with the Grizzlies struggling they appear to have joined the Suns in lottery oblivion.
Heading into week 15 there are still weekly shifts occurring with interesting dips and dives in various aspects of each team’s game. Some squads are finally playing more back to back sets and traveling and the resulting effect is slippage in the ranking.
Last week there was no Thunderous Intentions power ranking due to illness and I’ll admit I’m still not 100 percent, but the flu did afford me additional time to catch some Tivo’d games. Since the week 13 rankings were missing in some cases the commentary reflects the last two weeks.
With that here are the power rankings for week 14 along with the National pundits ranking for the OKC Thunder on the last slide.
Let’s do it!