Northwest Division

Denver Nuggets Power Rankings - 2012-13

Power Ranking
WEEKRECORDRANKCOMMENT
Week 2455-253Make it 22 in a row at home. And 21-3 in their past 24 games anywhere. And 20-7 against the West's seven other playoff teams. Yet there's only dread in Denver now that Kenneth Faried (ankle) may be playing hurt in the playoffs just like Ty Lawson (heel). With Danilo Gallinari (knee) already gone.
Week 2353-244Total bummer. I don't know how much damage this starless but ultra-deep team could really do in the playoffs, but I sure wanted to find out. Now? Can't fathom, even if they hang on to the No. 3 seed, how the Nuggets win even one series sans Danilo Gallinari ... and with Ty Lawson hobbling.
Week 2250-243The question was starting to make the rounds with some regularity: Is this Denver team better than the group that went to the Western Conference finals in 2009? Yet it might be impossible to answer now if Ty Lawson doesn't heal with abnormal Lawson-like speed.
Week 2149-222So glad, when someone asked me the other day how I felt about the Nuggets' chances of getting to No. 3, that I essentially scoffed on live radio. Well done, Ace. Denver is 9-4 against the rest of the West's top five, tops in the conference, and clearly in a better groove than the Clips or Griz.
Week 2045-224How hot are the Nuggets now? They're unbeaten in March, like Miami (8-0), and are threatening to not just pass the Clippers in the standings but steal their Lob City title. Entering Monday's play, Denver has completed 121 alley-oops, just four oops behind the league-leading Clips.
Week 1942-224Eager to see how venomous Carmelo Anthony's reception is Wednesday night in his two-years-in-the-making return to the Mile High. Also eagerly tracking how long Ty Lawson, who's averaging 23.1 PPG since the All-Star break after 15.8 PPG before it, can keep up this Melo-esque scoring.
Week 1838-226As good as the Nuggets have been at home over the years, they haven't started this well in the altitude -- tops in the West at 25-3 -- since the first two seasons ('76-77 and '77-78) after the NBA/ABA merger. They're also one of just two teams, alongside the Clips, with three W's over the Lakers.
Week 1735-227One of those rare research nuggets that only the Elias Sports Bureau crew could come up with: Ty Lawson's six-game haul of 157 points and 50 assists makes him the first former UNC Tar Heel to register those sorts of numbers across such a span since a certain Michael Jordan early in 1989-90.
Week 1633-215After dropping only three games in January, Denver limped into the break on a three-game skid, with all three L's on the road. That served to underline its status as the league's most split-personality team, but only 12 road games remain. (Kalen Deremo, Roundball Mining Company)
Week 1533-194Before its triple-overtime heartbreak in Boston, Denver won nine straight games and reached the 100-point plateau in all of them to rise to No. 4 in the West at last. You have to rewind all the way to the 1987-88 season for the last time that the Nuggets pulled that off.
Week 1430-184No team has ever won it all in a season it didn't have at least one All-Star. But shouldn't we at least hat-tip Denver for being the best team on this season's list ahead of the Bobcats, Bucks, Hawks, Hornets, Jazz, Kings, Magic, Mavericks, Nets, Pistons, Raptors, Suns, Wolves and Wiz?
Week 1327-185No matter what sort of passionate arguments are mounted on the behalf of various Nuggets, none of them could really be classified as an All-Star snubee. The consolation: Denver is a top-six team for the fourth straight week thanks to a 10-3 January and various slumps within the top 10.
Week 1225-185The Nuggets were in for an almighty scolding on this Monday -- harsher than a vintage blasting from George Karl's Furious George days -- after the home loss to the Wiz. Had to reconsider when the Nuggets found a way to avenge their heavy loss at OKC with Sunday's OT win over KD & Co.
Week 1123-164If the Nuggets make it to 100 points in that dreaded Mile High altitude only they love, you can pretty much pack up the gear and forget about it. We looked it up and counted up a tidy 23-0 record in Denver's past 23 games at the Pepsi Center when it cracked triple digits.
Week 1020-166The committee (of one) has long assumed that the Lakers would eventually rise to at least to No. 5 in the West. With all of the home games they've got coming up now, combined with how good they've looked against the L.A. teams lately, Denver seems to be saying: What about us?
Week 917-159We repeat: 15 of the Nuggets' first 18 games in 2013 are at home. Happy New Year, indeed. They'll live with No. 7 out West for now after a ridiculously road-heavy schedule and the fact that new deals for Ty Lawson and JaVale McGee (plus newly acquired Andre Iguodala) haven't quite panned out.
Week 815-137Andre Iguodala's December woes are offset, at least slightly, by JaVale McGee's hints of progress this month: 12.0 ppg, .701 shooting and 2.7 bpg in just 19.4 mpg. Christmas, though, doesn't really arrive for the Nuggets until January, with 15 of their first 18 games in 2013 at home. At last.
Week 713-129Despite Andre Iguodala's nightmarish December and the Nuggets' status as just the second team in history (along with the '85-86 Bulls) to play 17 of its first 23 games on the road, check it out: They're No. 3 in the West in +/- with six more road wins than home defeats.
Week 610-1112It doesn't happen too often, but when it does we're man enough to admit that Professor Hollinger's unique way of looking at things has forced us into a rethink. That's where we are with the up-and-down Nuggets, who've simply faced a schedule so far too brutal to drop 'em out of the top 15.
Week 58-914We're about to test whether everything really happens in no less than threes for the Nuggets. They started 0-3, won the next four, dropped three more in a row, answered again with four straight Ws and now lug a three-game skid into a Toronto home date followed by a four-game East swing.
Week 48-611What next for the streakiest team in basketball? The Nuggets just followed up a three-game skid with four straight W's -- conquering Memphis in Memphis for starters and watching Kenneth Faried move up to eight double-doubles after just 12 last season -- but eight of the next nine are roadies.
Week 34-616Did we get it right? Indy over Denver as the league's most disappointing team as we inch toward Thanksgiving? The Nuggets have their own strong case with Danilo Gallinari shooting 21.4 percent from 3-point range, Ty Lawson's so-so start and JaVale McGee's inability to crack the starting lineup.
Week 24-38When you pile the sky-high expectations facing this team onto the reality that only five of the Nuggets' first 17 games will be played at home in the Mile High air, it's little surprise that no one in Denver is apologizing for the soft opposition seen during this 4-0 rebound from an 0-3 start.
Week 10-322Although the schedule-makers could have been kinder, Denver didn't help itself with subpar showings on the effort scale in Philly and Orlando. And then when the highly touted Nuggets finally uncorked their expected speed game in Miami, Chris Bosh and Ray Allen were still too good.
Preseason0-07Computer simulations from ESPN Stats & Info contend that OKC's chances of winning the Northwest have dipped from 57.1 percent to 47.1 percent sans Harden. Sounds like another way of saying that the en vogue Nuggets just got 10 percent likelier to win the division.
Training Camp38-289The Nuggets, with Iguodala, are right there with Memphis and Dallas in the West's steel-cage battle for the bottom four playoff seeds. Yet you can't shake the suspicion that, even if Iggy and JaVale McGee have big years, they'll find out first-hand what sort of monster they helped L.A. assemble.

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