With only about a week left in the regular season SB Nation's Tom Ziller has rolled out another helping of NBA power rankings with the Chicago Bulls getting the top spot for the second week in a row, although it's a close call. And as the regular season is drawing to a close, all NBA teams will be fighting for something; either for playoff positioning or how many ping pong balls they will have in the lottery draft.
The Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers remained in their spots at two and three respectively, while the Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs swapped as Boston moved up into fourth, and the Spurs rounding out the top five. I think Ziller was spot on with these rankings, and is setting up the dogfight that will be the Eastern Conference playoffs this year, while the Lakers are cruising into the postseason with a 17-2 streak since the All-Star break. The teams that made the biggest moves were the Atlanta Hawks who jumped from 16th to 14th with some key wins over the Magics and Celtics, and the Indiana Pacers who moved from 20th to 18th. Indiana is 35-43 for the season, and currently sit in the 8th and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, wow.
As for the Bay Area teams, the Golden State Warriors used a gutsy win over the Mavericks to move up a spot into 20th, which unfortunately still places the W's in the lottery instead of the playoffs, and the Sacramento Kings remain in the 25th spot even with the recent return of Tyreke Evans from injury.
The next batch of power rankings will finish off the regular season, should be interesting to see where all the teams fit in to finish the year.