NBA Power Rankings Week 2: Scorching hot Miami Heat and what scares me

The NBA season hits its first major holiday, Halloween, with every team having played between five and seven games. That’s still a very small sample size, but it’s enough to start seeing which teams are substantially different than they were a season ago.

Presumed contenders have stumbled out of the gate, and all three of the Milwaukee Bucks, Brooklyn Nets and Los Angeles Lakers — the three preseason title favorites — sit at just .500 through Saturday’s games. The last undefeated team, the Utah Jazz, also lost on Saturday, unusually early for that to happen. It’s still early, but this season could be one of increased parity all across the league, including at the top level.

Our Halloween Edition of the NBA Power Rankings hits the risers, fallers and the scariest thing on every team.

As I do every week, let’s walk through all 30 teams in the league and check in on how they are doing. In honor of Halloween, we’ll also include something that “Scares Me” for every team. The rankings will take their play this season into account more than last week, but a team’s preseason expectations will still weigh heavily. In the next couple of weeks we will transition to primarily just weighing this year’s production, but for now we will anchor to those preseason expectations. Teams like Washington and Phoenix don’t rise or fall as much as they would unmoored from preseason projections.

For most of last week we had a new team at No. 30, but then those Pistons won a game and both tightened the standings and left room for a new representative. Similarly, our No. 1 team has tumbled after a mediocre week. Early in the season a single win or loss can swing things a lot more than later on.

With that note, we can start with No. 30, back to its rightful owner in Orlando, FL. Note that this week I am using Cleaning the Glass’s adjusted point differential when referencing such a stat.