I think there is a good chance of the two #1 seeds meeting in the finals (this year especially), and I even think the Nuggets have their best chance ever to secure the #1 seed.

However, I could also see another team stepping up and knocking off the nuggets and taking their place in that elite 4 (though portland, utah, and san antonio have yet to impress this year).

Last year Cleavland was atop the power rankings every week and the Nuggs barely cracked the top ten. In the end the team that has the best balance of heart and talent will hoist the O’Brien trophey. Power rankings are just like the damn BCS rankings AKA a flawed system. Some idiot sports writer about to lose his job came up with that crap to fill in space on a web page.

Still it’s nice to see Denver get some respect.

Off topic, but is anyone willing to give the Suns any serious consideration as legitimate or is this first month a fluke?

This this seems to be the first season in awhile that a real “underdog” or lower seed could make it to the finals. There are so many top teams, especially in the west, that the seeding is going to be a crapshoot. A week or two of bad play could completely throw of a team in the standings. But I see the Lakers, Nugs, Suns, Mavs, Trailblazers, and maybe the Rockets and Spurs all contending this season. All those teams are going to beat up on each other in the regular season, but it’s going to come down to which teams pull it together in the end. Any of those teams could get hot and roll through the playoffs. That’s why I could see the Nuggets anywhere from 1st to maybe 5th in the standings in the west at the end of the regular season. And yet if we play as we are capable, we could easily roll to the Finals, even without homecourt advantage (of course it will help). I think this is going to be a really fun and interesting season to watch.

Makes sense to me, too. Given that two of the factors in the quant model are ‘scoring margin’ and ‘strength of schedule’, and we just blew out a Laker’s team that benched their starters in the 4th qtr, I would expect our place in Hollinger’s power rankings to be skewed upward with so little data this early in the season.

I remember last season checking power rankings after Denver beat Orlando and Miami back to back in FLA (That’s a good week) and their rank stayed at 6. Even after the Nuggs beat the Lakers in what Phil called a garbage game, there was no change in the rankings. Whereas if LeBron dunked on someone in a loss the Cav’s rank was cemented at #1. The bottom line is that Power Rankings are simply someone else’s opinion of his/her favorite teams, otherwise every power ranking would be identical. Like I said before it’s all meaningless.