Spurs stay hot + Who are true Contenders?
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What are the latest power rankings in the NBA?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily presented by Amazon Prime. I'm Zena Kada. Joining me is Law Murray. Coming up, Jared Weiss is going to join us to discuss how the Spurs were able to outlast Detroit's physicality. We're just going to talk a little bit about some contention around the NBA. Let's get into it. What up, Law? Law, it's been so long.
That's because I'm bouncing between all these neighborhoods in Los Angeles, figuring out which game I'm covering on a given day. Sometimes I cover two of them. So I'm glad we got a free night to talk.
I know, and I love it, and I'm happy that we got you here on a Monday. We got the power rankings that came out, and I think this is one of the most interesting, consistent pieces of news that we get on The Athletic. I do some power rankings, a Sabrina scale, on the women's basketball side during college, and I always ask her about her process of how does she go about taking the top 25.
How does Law Murray create his NBA power rankings?
This doesn't always match up with AP poll, and I know that you're top 30 teams and how you break them out is so interesting the top contenders in a good place the bubble and each week you don't evenly distribute them they switch and they move etc so i want to ask you how do you go about creating your power rankings
I feel like, first of all, shout out to Sabrina, one of my favorite people ever. She was definitely hitting me up about some other stuff earlier. And I read so many other people's power rankings, you know, the power rankings at other sports, at the athletic, everybody who does their power rankings across the NBA. Like, I want to have a feel for the conversation because I actually enjoy putting this together. Describing it is like Dennis Rodman talking about the angle of a rebound. You have to have a feel for this thing. And I think there are so many people who read this and this is going to upset people anytime I put a number next to their team. And I got over that real quick. I mean, we can argue and if y'all want to argue about this, we're going to do that.
And for me, it's like...
What factors influence the Spurs' recent success?
I do look at the standings. I do look at net ratings. But I also look at how are teams playing, who has actually got a reason to feel they can be better with what we're given. And I'm also... I got to find a theme every week. I don't like static power rankings because... Quite honestly, that would make it easier. It would be easy to just get through 25 weeks of the NBA season. Yes, I count the weeks out. That's how diligent I am. I'm like, I'm going to hit this on this week. I'm going to find a way to hit this. It's like a video game for me. And it's like sometimes if you ever played the Mario games in the past and it's like you dealt with a pipe level, you dealt with a water level. It's like, oh, you won't see this again, but it's going to be harder the next time.
And we're at the point, Xena, where it's hard because you know there's not a lot of movement in the standings. You know that teams have... revealed who they're going to be to a certain extent. Some of these teams didn't make any real changes to discuss as far as their personnel. So it's like they're not integrating wholesale changes. They have the same group of dudes that they rolled out in October. So how do you separate certain things? And so...
How did the Spurs outlast the Pistons in their recent game?
The tiers help a little bit. I really just I look at how teams are playing. I look at who's played who. I look at what's coming up and it's like, oh, I'm going to put this team here. But I know that these two teams are going to play each other like the Pistons. It's like, well, I can put them here, but they're literally going to play the number two San Antonio Spurs. They're going to play the number three Oklahoma City Thunder. Am I going to have a week where I learn a lot about this team? Yes. And I feel like broadcast partners do the same thing. They put these teams and it's like there's two weeks where it's like, oh, we ignored this team. But then all of a sudden, oh shoot, we need to feature the Minnesota Timberwolves this week because they about to play some dudes.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What are the latest power rankings in the NBA?
0:07–1:07
2
How does Law Murray create his NBA power rankings?
1:07–2:14
3
What factors influence the Spurs' recent success?
2:14–3:39
4
How did the Spurs outlast the Pistons in their recent game?
3:39–4:33
5
What role did Devin Vassell play in the Spurs' victory?
4:33–5:24
6
What did the Spurs learn from their win against a physical team?
5:24–6:39
7
What are the implications of the Spurs' performance for their championship hopes?
6:39–7:51
8
How do the Spurs compare to other top NBA contenders this season?
7:51–32:33