NBA Power Ranking Lists: How Pundits Rank Houston Rockets Week 13

Where National Pundits place Houston Rockets on NBA Power Ranking Lists week 13

Week 13 of the 2015-16 season is in the books and with that the new NBA Power Ranking Lists are out, so lets take a look at where the Houston Rockets were ranked.

In Week 13 the Houston Rockets split their games with losses to the Clippers and Pistons and wins against Bucks and Dallas. Also this week Josh Smith got traded back to the Rockets who welcomed him with opened arms and he seemingly brought a rekindling of last seasons solid chemistry in his suitcase back to Clutch City.

Will the team continue this winning production or will they fall backwards into inconsistency again. Week 14 finds the Rockets playing the Pelicans, Spurs, Thunder and Wizards.

Lets see where the pundits rank the Rockets in week 13:

Pundits Lists:

John Schuhmann of nba.com points out how crazy the Rockets week was between Dwight Howard’s injured ankle, OT loss to Clippers, return of Josh Smith and the Hack-A-Drummond strategy not working. Still he moves them up a spot on the rung this week. Full week 13 list

Matt Moore of CBS points to all the games the Rockets have won though he drops them 3 spots (from what was a very optimistic 8th place and probably a little too aggressive).  Complete list.

Marc Stein ESPN  Stein aggressively moves the Rockets up the ladder THREE spots to eighth place and points out what all of us can’t help but continue talking about which is how funny it will be if at season end the Clippers and Rockets end up squaring off as the 4th and 5th place seeds and oh yeah there’s Smith on the Rockets bench.    Full List.

Jeremy Woo of Sports Illustrated is one of the guys who preseason had huge hopes for the Rockets expecting them to be among the West’s contenders (ranking them 4th). He moves them up for the second straight week from 15th to 13th and I’m sure is silently hoping his preseason pick was accurate. . His full list is here.

USA Today Panels To reiterate with so little content (or valuable information for that matter), I’m not sure why they continue to provide a ranking at all, but they do jump the Rockets up 4 spots this week and make a funny joke along the way. Here’s the full power ranking list

Finally Jeff Sagarin USA Today ranks the Rockets 12th, moving them up another spot since last week. I don’t usually show more than one module of Sagarin’s chart (because it’s so intensive), but it was worth pointing out some interesting data. Based on his charting it shows the Rockets have been the 8th best team in the most recent games.

In addition I’ve outlined the top two modules win percentage versus the top 10 and top 16 teams.  Notably only 3 teams have a record over .500 versus both the top 10 and top 16 teams, the obvious 2 teams are the Spurs and Warriors, however the surprise is the Raptors not OKC or Cleveland who is the other. And for all those Rockets fans who despise the Clippers you’ll be glad to know their current ranking is fools gold given they’ve never beat a top 10 team and they only win 38% of the top 16.

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Notably the Bulls raise their game when facing the leagues best teams but aren’t quite as successful when playing the middling teams. The Pistons, Thunder and Cavaliers do well when playing the middle teams but struggle versus the top ten.

As for the Rockets given their early struggles the numbers they post aren’t too shabby and in both cases they come close to .500 ball. We’ll see if now that the team seems to be turning a corner if they can start posting some quality wins. They’ll get a chance this week versus the Spurs and Thunder (who they’ve already beat once this season).

Here’s his Full List:

That wraps up the National Media NBA Power Ranking Lists for Week 13 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.

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