NBA Power Ranking Lists: How Pundits Rank Houston Rockets Week 3

With the third week of the 2015-16 season complete the new NBA Power Ranking Lists are out with obvious shifts up and down the ladder. The Houston Rockets no doubt were affected the most adversely as they’ve been the yo-yo team of the season. Losing all three of their opening week games, winning all 4 of their second week games and currently on a 4 game losing streak.

Clutch City are anxious over what exactly is wrong with the team given they have more healthy pieces available to start this season than they had available most of last year. Sure Dwight Howard isn’t playing every game and Donatas Motiejunas is still out along with a recent rash of injured players joining him on the sidelines. Suffice to say something is definitely amiss in Houston .

As mentioned this past week the Rockets were winless first losing to the lowly Nets, then suffered a second consecutive loss to Ty Lawson’s old team the Nuggets in Denver and followed that up with a loss to a team they nearly swept last season in the playoffs the Dallas Mavericks. This final loss highlights how preseason predictions are so easy to get wrong given the Mavericks were projected to be bottom feeders and the Rockets were almost unanimously considered a top 3 Western Conference Team.

Let’s hope the players only meeting held right after the Boston game will result in a turn around for the team. In the interim here’s the updated NBA Power Ranking Lists of how the pundits rank the Houston Rockets:

John Schuhmann of nba.com ranks the Rockets 26th, dropping them 16 spots over their previous week. Full week 3 list. Schuhmann points out how horribly the Rockets have played defense and calls Ty Lawson a bust at this point in the season.

Matt Moore of CBS also vaulted the Rockets down his ladder 19 spots from 7th to 26th. His weekly video explains how November is proving to be a crazy month given how projected top teams should be performing and aren’t versus mediocre projections exceeding expectations. Complete list.

Marc Stein ESPN like his counterparts drops the Rockets down his list, but not quite as many spots since he seems to believe they’ll turn it around. Let’s hope he’s right. Full List. No list again for John Hollinger with the website saying it will be up in November, I suspect he’ll wait until the end of the month to have enough stats to compare.

Jeff Sagarin USA Today has a complex ranking system that was one of the few who ranked Houston in their top 10 (9) last week, but this week they fall down to 19.

USA Today who hadn’t posted their list until this week finally provided their first entry into the Power Ranking Weekly List listing the Houston Rockets in the 20th spot. Here’s the complete list.

Next up we take a look at Jeremy Woo’s Sports Illustrated list for the week. He also extends the Rockets some leniency ranking them fairly high at the 15 spot noting it isn’t fair to expect James Harden to score 40 a night for the team to win.

More from Space City Scoop

Yahoo’s Dan Devine who writes for Ball Don’t Lie and produces the Most Interesting list hasn’t submitted one for the week. Nor does it seem Marc J. Spears is submitting a list this season.

That wraps up the National Media NBA Power Ranking Lists for Week 3 of the season. My list will be up later this week. What are your thoughts on how the pundits ranked the Rockets? Let us know in the comments section below.

If you haven’t entered FanSided’s Fan of the Year contest yet, why not? You only have a few days left and with the Rockets bad start to the season there’s no better time than now to showcase how big a fan you are! If you win you’ll be featured in Sports Illustrated. Come on Clutch City let’s win this competition and give our fans bragging rights.

Next: Rockets Hold Emergency Player Only Meeting

Make sure you catch up on our entire Team Preview Series, our Houston Rockets Player Profile Series as well as our SCS Round Table Sessions to help you get through the early season. Start your morning with SCS Rocket Science Daily and visit us throughout the day to keep abreast of all your Houston Rockets news and updates.

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