Power Rankings Watch -- Clippers inching up

My gut (backed up by some reasonable statistical evidence) tells me that based on their body of work on the season, the Clippers are about the fifth best team in the NBA to this point. Two teams in the East (the Pacers and the Heat) and two teams in the West (the Thunder and the Spurs) have distinguished themselves as the top four; the Clippers are probably next.

Certainly the Heat have had their issues, but they're the two time defending champs and they've shown that they can turn it on even after seeming disinterested for a time, so you can reasonably ignore some red flags in the data with them. On the other hand, while the Blazers have been ahead of the Clippers in the standings all season, the gap there is closing, while the statistics are beginning to clearly favor the Clippers. The Clippers now even have a better point differential than the Blazers.

And as it happens, this week in Power Rankings, the Clippers are inching toward that rightful five spot. That they've improved their position among the pundits even while Chris Paul has been out is quite remarkable. Bear in mind -- I think the Clippers have shown that they're the fifth best team in the league so far -- but they're also going to be better after the All Star break than they have so far. Well they improve enough to get into the mix with the big four? We'll see.

Interestingly, despite a 3-1 week on the road, the Clippers failed to make huge gains in the various and sundry empirical measures. So for instance the offensive numbers were great, but the defensive numbers were bad enough that the team's net rating is exactly the same, 6.0 points. Even so, because Portland is slipping down, the Clippers are now ranked fifth or better in all of these empirical measures save for the fickle winning percentage.

The average ranking for the week (after tossing out the highest ranking and the lowest ranking) is 5.3..

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