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Following a brief interruption to present to you our annual Tanking Rankings, we return to our regularly scheduled bi-weekly programming: The world’s most accurate NBA power rankings.
But first an update to those Tanking Rankings, which detailed exactly how well the NBA’s 10 lottery teams — now set in stone — have navigated their way to the bottom of the standings:
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10. New Orleans Pelicans (25-51)
9. Chicago Bulls (29-46)
8. Dallas Mavericks (24-51)
7. Memphis Grizzlies (25-50)
6. Milwaukee Bucks (29-45)
5. Sacramento Kings (19-57)
4. Utah Jazz (21-55)
3. Brooklyn Nets (18-57)
2. Washington Wizards (17-58)
1. Indiana Pacers (17-58)
No need to include any of those outfits in our power rankings this time around. They are succeeding in their own right, at losing, as the league’s nine tanking teams (the Pelicans, who owe their first-round draft pick to the Atlanta Hawks, have no incentive to lose) have managed just seven wins against non-lottery teams in their last 100 tries. If you can call them “tries.”
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It can be difficult to tell how well some of the postseason-bound teams are playing, since win streaks have been boosted by the tanking. The Hawks, Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets have all benefited from easy recent schedules. We are here to sort through the noise.
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And it is getting noisy. One loss separates the fourth, fifth and sixth seeds in the Western Conference, where there are two losses between the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder and second-seeded San Antonio Spurs. Three losses separate the 10th-seeded Charlotte Hornets from the East’s final guaranteed playoff seed, all with a little over a handful of games to play.
So, without further ado, our penultimate regular-season power rankings.
(Taylar Sievert/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
“I’ve got to be able to do a better job of preparing them for what they were going to see tonight,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said after a franchise-record, 52-point loss that saw the Raptors go on a 31-0 run (a play-by-play era record). I’m surprised he said it. So was…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/nba-power-rankings-pretenders-or-contenders-how-the-20-postseason-bound-teams-stack-up-151101652.html
Author : Ben Rohrbach
Publish date : 2026-03-31 15:11:00
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