Entering the final week of the NBA regular season, the top of the FOX Sports NBA power rankings belonged to the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets, two teams who have spent the most time there over the last five months and remain the prohibitive favorites to finish the postseason there as well.
Conversely, the thin air at the top once again proved to be too much for the Oklahoma City Thunder. (The absence of their top two scorers, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams, didn’t help.) Entering last week at No. 1, the Thunder promptly suffered their longest losing streak of the season, falling to the Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers before eking out a win over the Charlotte Hornets. While the slide bolstered Gilgeous-Alexander’s bid for this season’s Most Valuable Player award — SGA missed all four games with a quad injury — it slid OKC to sixth in the rankings and raised questions about their playoff readiness.
Surging past them were the Celtics, Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers. Both the Mavs and Clippers, after up-and-down seasons, appear to be finding their stride at just the right time. The Mavs have won 14 of their last 16 games and the Clippers have won six of their last seven.
The other top team stumbling to the finish is the Milwaukee Bucks, who entered last week seventh in the power rankings but fell out of the top 10 by losing four straight. They now face the possibility of starting the postseason on the road with the Orlando Magic, New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers all within 1 1/2 games of overtaking them. It doesn’t help that Milwaukee has a daunting final stretch, facing the Celtics, Thunder and Magic (twice).
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