The Rockets appear to have turned the corner recently, with a solid mark over their last 10 and more consistent play out of both the bench and Kyle Lowry. Have the Power Rankings aficionados adjusted to this?
We track four main Power Rankings: The Hollinger rankings, the Pro Basketball Talk rankings, the ESPN.com rankings, and SB Nation’s rankings. Here’s how the Rockets did in these compared to last week:
Pro Basketball Talk: 18 (LW: 20)Rockets (9-14). The Rockets are 6-4 in their last 10, but how do they adjust when Aaron Brooks and Yao Ming return?
ESPN: 19 (17)
It’s obviously not going to get you noticed in a league with those aforementioned four teams having won at least eight in a row. The Rockets, though, are creeping back toward normalcy at 9-9 since their 0-5 start.
Hollinger: 11 (14)
The average of those three, which last week was at 17, is now at…16. It looks like the human voters are lingering a bit on giving the Rockets a real bump. Meanwhile, the Hollinger formula, which has always liked them better than the human rankings, continues to be ahead of the other two with how far it will push the Rockets up.
SB Nation’s own poll separates the teams into Eastern and Western Conferences for…some reason. I don’t quite understand it myself. Either way, last week the Rockets were 12th in the West, and this week they’ve jumped all the way to 10th.
So overall, the Rockets appear to be getting a bit more respect this week, but nobody is buying them as a legitimate playoff threat yet asides from the Hollinger system. The Rockets certainly did a lot to bolster their case for a playoff spot last week, as Portland, Phoenix, and Memphis have all tapered off to around the Rockets level.