NBA Power Rankings: Knicks win a championship, Bulls sink all the way to 30th
Meanwhile, the Spurs announced themselves as contenders by handing OKC its second defeat
By
Brad Botkin
•
1 min read
I don't know if I love the NBA Cup as much as Stan Van Gundy, but I love the NBA Cup. Well, at least the knockout rounds. The qualifier games are still mostly about the weird courts. But these elimination battles are, and have been since the start of this thing, irrefutably awesome. We saw it again with the Knicks' victory over the Spurs for the championship on Tuesday.
The game didn't count on paper. But it counts here. The Knicks are rolling. The Spurs are ready to make real playoff noise right now. Meanwhile, the Bulls are on an all-time pathetic 11-game crash. All this and more in this week's Power Rankings.
- Note: As a general Power Rankings rule, we're going to try to strike a balance between what we've seen in the last week, the season as a whole so far, and what can reasonably be expected to play out over the next few weeks.
- We will not go so far as to rank these teams based on championship expectations, because in that case it would take a lot more to alter, at least in tiers, the generally accepted hierarchy. Winning matters, and it will get you on the move up this board form week to week. But if you're beating bad teams, just as an example, and probably playing a little above your head, it's not necessarily going to be reflected in a completely commensurate climb up the rankings. Or vice versa.
Biggest Movers
4
Timberwolves
7
Celtics
Rk | Teams | Chg | Rcrd | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | Oklahoma City finally lost its second game of the season. The Spurs took them out in the NBA Cup semis with Victor Wembanyama back. I'm still betting on OKC to break the regular-season wins record and one loss like this isn't nearly enough to move them off the top spot. | -- | 24-2 |
| 2 |  | Denver won a heavyweight bout against the Rockets on Monday for their fifth straight victory. Sure, it took a terrible call to get them to overtime, but to win a game like that against a team like that, without Aaron Gordon or Christian Braun no less, is a take-note statement. Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray combined for 74 points, and Jokic put up a ho-hum 30-15-10-2-2 line. | 1 | 19-6 |
| 3 |  | The Clippers don't look like much in the standings but on any given night they do have major talent, and the Rockets caught them on one of those given nights and won in fitting fashion: Amen Thompson's go-ahead tip-in on the FOURTH offensive rebound of a single possession. Then, as detailed above, the Rockets took Denver to the wire and perhaps would've won if not for a phantom call on Thompson when Tim Hardaway Jr. actually tripped over his own feet. | 1 | 16-7 |
| 4 |  | The Knicks won a championship! Their first trophy since 1973! Fine print: It came in the 2025 Emirates Cup by defeating San Antonio in Vegas on Tuesday. The game didn't count in the official standings but we're definitely factoring it in here. The Knicks played fantastic and have now won (not including Tuesday) 10 of their last 11. Over the three elimination Cup games, Mitchell Robinson piled up 18 offensive rebounds, including 10 against San Antonio. | 1 | 18-7 |
| 5 |  | As mentioned above, the Spurs lost to the Knicks in the Emirates Cup championship on Tuesday, but the loss never technically happened on paper. So the Spurs are actually still on a three-game winning streak that includes dealing the Thunder just their second loss of the season in an incredible game that announced the Spurs as a legit force right now. Stephon Castle, De'Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper is a nasty guard trio to have alongside Victor Wembanyama. You do not want to see this team in the playoffs. | 3 | 18-7 |
| 6 |  | Right when Detroit's 13-game winning streak ends with two straight losses and you think things might actually slow down, boom, they win six of their next seven. Detroit is the best defense in the league outside of OKC, which is in its own league. Detroit defeated Atlanta by committee with 10 guys scoring at least nine points. | 1 | 21-5 |
| 7 |  | Make it seven wins in eight games for the Wolves with the latest coming over the healthy Warriors. On paper, that looks like yet another win for Minnesota over a sub-500 team (even though the Warriors were 13-12 before that game tipped), but that's a nice win on the road without Anthony Edwards. | 4 | 17-9 |
| 8 |  | The Lakers' defense is in the gutter of late. Some of that is opponents' shooting luck, some of it is them being really slow. But this team is built to beat you with its offense. Defeating the Suns without Austin Reaves is no small feat. The Lakers are now 9-0 in clutch games. You can either look at that as evidence of their late-game magic with three incredible shot creators, or as an unsustainable run of fortune in close games that could very well, at some point, start swinging the other way. | 2 | 18-7 |
| 9 |  | The Celtics fell back to earth with two straight losses. First the Bucks (without Giannis) got them, and then Boston went cold down the stretch against Detroit. The Celtics face Miami and Toronto on a tough back-to-back this weekend, but after that they hit a soft stretch that should allow them to start piling up some wins again. | 7 | 15-11 |
| 10 |  | The Magic have split their last six, and already down Franz Wagner they're now going to be without Jalen Suggs for a while (hip contusion). That leaves a lot on the plate of Paolo Banchero, who is making just 26% of his 3s (2 for 24 off the dribble) and still has to prove he can be an efficient scorer. | 1 | 15-11 |
| 11 |  | The Suns are in the middle of a murderous schedule stretch. They've lost five of their last seven, but Devin Booker missed three of those (including the 49-point beating they took at the hands of the Thunder) and their heads are still above water at 14-12. | 1 | 14-12 |
| 12 |  | Philly has won four of its last six but the four came against the Wizards, Warriors (without Stephen Curry or Jimmy Butler), Bucks (without Giannis) and the six-win Pacers, so make of that what you will. The more important development is Joel Embiid scoring 39 points (his most since May of 2024) against Indiana and then turning around and putting up 22 and 14 against the Hawks playing on one day's rest for the first time this season. | 2 | 14-11 |
| 13 |  | The Hawks have lost four of six and took a 27-point shellacking from the Pistons on Friday. The bounced back to beat the Sixers and they remain in the thick of the East as one of seven teams with either 11 or 12 losses. Trae Young is coming back. Kristaps Porziņģis is out with another illness so it's not a full-strength look, but we need to see what Young can do in terms of fitting back in to what the Hawks have become without him without torpedoing the defense. | 2 | 15-12 |
| 14 |  | Toronto had lost four straight and six of seven before the Miami Heat, who've now lost five straight themselves, showed up on the schedule and stopped the bleeding. Since the end of their stretch of 13 wins in 14 games, the Raptors are being outshot from the 3-point line and their defense has slipped by six points per 100 possessions. | 1 | 16-11 |
| 15 |  | We're all going to hold out hope for the Cavs because their numbers are so great when the core four play together. But they've hardly done that this season. Darius Garland has only played 11 games. Jarrett Allen 16. Now Evan Mobley is out for maybe a month with a calf strain. Meanwhile the Cavs have lost to the 10-16 Blazers, the Warriors without their three best players, and the Hornets, while needing a 17-point rally just to get past the Wizards, over the past two weeks. Now go look at their post-Christmas schedule. It's murder. | 2 | 15-12 |
| 16 |  | The Heat have lost five straight. The only three teams they've beaten in the last three weeks are the Mavericks, Bucks and Clippers. Over that stretch they've registered the league's fifth-worst offense. Last Saturday they lost to the Kings by 16. | -- | 14-12 |
| 17 |  | So much for all that Pat Spencer momentum. Stephen Curry has been back for two games and the Warriors lost them both -- first to the Wolves without Anthony Edwards and then to the 10-16 Blazers ... for the third time this season. | 5 | 13-14 |
| 18 |  | Cooper Flagg went for a career-high 42 on Monday, but the Mavericks still lost to Utah in overtime with Anthony Davis ... what do you know ... back in street clothes. Davis had been playing very well and the Mavericks have won five of their last seven -- just enough to make them think they might want to stay competitive this season rather than start selling off assets for a tank, which is what they should so ahead of what will likely be their last chance at a high lottery pick until 2031, the next time they own their own first-round pick outright after this summer. You want to get Flagg a young co-star on the same timeline? This is probably your last chance. | 1 | 10-17 |
| 19 |  | Ja Morant shot 11 for 32 over his first two games back from a 10-game calf-sprain absence. Then he promptly left Memphis' win over the Clippers with a sprained ankle. Zach Edey being out through at least the first week of January stinks; Memphis was blasting opponents in his minutes. If the play-in tourney were to start today, Memphis would be in. Hooray. | 1 | 12-14 |
| 20 |  | The Jazz have won four of six. Keyonte George has scored 76 points over the last two, both wins. If the postseason started today, Utah would be in the play-in and is just one loss back of the No. 8 seed. Utah does have a tough stretch of schedule coming up. That's good news for the rest of the league that needs the Jazz's 2026 first-round pick to stay inside the top eight, lest it get shipped to Oklahoma City, which is already getting the Clippers' first-round pick. | 2 | 10-15 |
| 21 |  | Portland ended a three-game skid (that included a loss to the Pelicans) with a win over the Warriors, who were back to full strength. But they've still lost six of their last eight. If Portland wants to take advantage of an upcoming stretch in which is plays 20 of 29 games at home, two things need to happen: Shaedon Sharpe needs to continue his efficient scoring (24 PPG on 49/48/82 shooting splits over his last six games), and Jrue Holiday needs to get back, which will put some life back into what was, in the early going, a top-five defense that has plummeted to 22nd. | -- | 10-16 |
| 22 |  | The Hornets take all the right shots on paper -- top 10 in both rim and 3-point frequency, per CTG, giving them a top-five expected field-goal percentage. Problem is, outside of rookie sniper Kon Kneuppel, they don't actually make many of those shots (22nd in actual eFG%). They did manage to beat the Cavs on Sunday, but right now a good rec league team might beat the Cavs. | 2 | 8-18 |
| 23 |  | Milwaukee might've gotten a little bump in the rankings after its win over Boston had they not turned around, after a two-day rest, and taken a 45-point whacking by the Nets. Giannis clearly doesn't want anything to do with officially asking out. If he refrains from taking that last step and the Bucks are desperate enough (which we know they are after they signed Myles Turner) to see that as hope, Jon Horst is known for pulling off trades nobody saw coming. | -- | 11-16 |
| 24 |  | Brooklyn has taken advantage of a cushy recent schedule with wins over the Bucks, Pelicans, Bulls and Hornets over their last six games. That's about to end. Over their next nine the Nets face Miami, Toronto, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Golden State, Houston, Denver and Orlando. | 4 | 7-18 |
| 25 |  | The Clippers put up a fight against Minnesota and Houston but lost both by a combined five points. Don't start looking for silver linings, however. They followed that up with an 18-point loss to the Grizzlies, their ninth defeat in 10 games. It remains unbelievable how bad this team is. It has to be one of the worst roster-relative starts to a season in at least recent history. | 2 | 6-20 |
| 26 |  | The Pelicans, who've won two straight to end a seven-game skid, need to trade Trey Murphy III, Herb Jones and Zion Williamson, if there's even a taker for the latter. This team belongs to Derik Queen and Jeremiah Fears. It's just a shame New Orleans doesn't own its 2026 first-round pick, at least with some protections. | 3 | 5-22 |
| 27 |  | Be honest: Did you even know that Marvin Bagley III played for the Wizards? He does. And he's put up 38 points and 27 rebounds over the last two games, one of which the Wizards actually won against the Pacers. | 3 | 4-20 |
| 28 |  | Two more losses since last week's Power Rankings for the Pacers. It's a gap year. Who really cares. They'll get a lottery pick, perhaps No. 1 overall, to pair with Tyrese Haliburton when he returns next season. | 4 | 6-20 |
| 29 |  | The Kings were the unofficial sponsor of the NBA Cup championship game on Monday night when former Sacramento point guard De'Aaron Fox faced off against former Kings coach Mike Brown. The Kings aren't very good at making themselves better, but they sure are good at helping other teams. They've also lost seven of their last eight. | 4 | 6-20 |
| 30 |  | The fact that the Bulls have lost eight of their last nine games sounds bad enough. But it gets worse when you look at the opponents. Only one of those losses came against a team with a winning record (Orlando). The other seven came against the Pelicans (twice), Pacers (twice), Nets, Warriors and Hornets. The combined record of those teams is 39-82. The Bulls are not the worst team in the league, but after that kind of stretch they deserve at least one week in the cellar to consider their behavior. | 4 | 10-15 |
