NBA Power Rankings Week 9: The slide of the Los Angeles Lakers
By Corey Rausch
Another week is in the books and this time the schedule was drastically affected by snowstorms instead of health and safety protocols. Do not get confused, the latter changed things too, with the San Antonio Spurs and Charlotte Hornets seeing their weeks demolished by contact tracing. But the weather hitting the state of Texas caused as much havoc on the schedule of the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks. Our thoughts are with them this week.
On the court, the biggest news of the week came in the announcement of the All-Star starters with very few surprises. The biggest controversy, if you can even call it that, was Luka Doncic being named a starter over Damian Lillard. Both players have been tremendous and both will be named All-Stars so complaining too much about whose name gets announced first seems somewhat foolish.
As week nine of the NBA season comes to a close the Los Angeles Lakers find themselves sliding down the rankings as the losses (and injuries) take a toll.
Injuries and malaise are starting to affect the Los Angeles Lakers, leading to the benefit of the other teams on this list. The MVP race continues to heat up with Joel Embiid, Nikola Jokic, LeBron James and Damian Lillard (to name a few) having highlight nights night after night. The Utah Jazz remain the best team in the league at this moment and somehow no one from their squad gets mentioned in MVP discussions or as an All-Star starter. This has been quite the weird season so far indeed.
Now, let’s start the Week 9 Power Rankings.