Stephen Curry and James Harden remain neck-and-neck for the top two spots of the 2014-15 MVP Power Rankings. Damian Lillard made a charge up to No. 4 last week, but his spot has been taken by a different point guard this time around.
John Wall enters the MVP discussion
The Wizards point guard is putting together his best season and leading Washington up the standings. He’s not on the same level as Stephen Curry or James Harden, but he’s getting close.
Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
1. Stephen Curry (Last week: 1)
Outside of a loss to the Thunder, the Warriors continue to trounce fools with Curry running the show. The point guard is putting up a 24/9/4 line in January while shooting over 53 percent overall and nearly 44 percent from three-point range. For the season, he's shooting nearly 59 percent on two-pointers, which would blow away his previous career-high of 51 percent.
Curry's overall offensive brilliance can be illustrated by the fact that he's scoring 1.094 points per shooting possession, per Synergy Sports Technology. That is third among players who total more than 20 possessions per game. The only two better are Kevin Durant and Anthony Davis.
2. James Harden (Last week: 2)
Harden laid a clunker in a blowout loss to the Warriors, but that was sandwiched between two superb performances. His latest monster effort was a 45-point, seven-assist masterpiece against the Pacers, which topped his previous season-high of 44 points.
Harden has done much of his damage in isolation this season. The shooting guard leads the league in isolation possessions per game at nearly seven, according to Synergy, and he has been effective in those situations. Harden’s 1.062 points per shooting possession in isolation is second-best among players with at least three isolation possessions per game, with Durant the only player ranking higher.
3. Anthony Davis (Last week: 3)
The fact that the Pelicans lost to both the 76ers and Knicks with Davis out of the lineup is enough to cement his top three candidacy alone. (Although, New Orleans somehow beat Toronto without him too. How did that happen?) Davis still leads the league with a PER over 31, but Durant (surprise!) is hot on his heels.
I’ve already mentioned how Davis has one of the league’s best points per possession marks, but what’s scary is that he can still get significantly better. The big man’s scoring efficiency on post-ups is just the 32nd percentile among all players. That also happens to be his second-most frequent play type, per Synergy. If he gets better there, watch out.
4. John Wall (Last week: 6)
Wall has been one of the best passers in the league for several years now, and Grantland’s Zach Lowe did a great job breaking down some of the things that makes the point guard so special:
5. Marc Gasol (Last week: 5)
Gasol's steady play continued over the last week, and he had an excellent all-around game in a thrilling 102-98 victory over the Trail Blazers on Saturday. The big man stuffed the stat sheet with 15 points, eight rebounds, six assists and three blocks in 40 minutes in the narrow victory.
6. Damian Lillard (Last week: 4)
Lillard struggled in a victory over the Kings on Monday, but as he often does, he came up big in the clutch:
7. LeBron James (Last week: 11)
The King is back, and his Cavaliers may be as well. Since James returned after an eight-game absence, Cleveland is 3-1 with two impressive wins over the Clippers and Bulls. In those four games, James averaged nearly 32 points on better than 52 percent shooting.
8. Klay Thompson (Last week: 9)
Thompson has shown no signs of slowing down. He’s putting up nearly 24 points per game in January while shooting 54 percent overall and 52 percent from three. The 24-year-old scored 32 points in the loss to the Thunder, and then he followed that up with 27 points and excellent defense on Harden in the convincing win at Houston.
In news that’s not really news, Thompson has been lethal when spotting up this season. Thompson is putting up nearly 1.4 points per possession on spot-up opportunities, which is seventh in the league and fourth among players with at least two spot-up possessions per game, per Synergy. And no, Curry is not one of the players ahead of Thompson.
9. Jeff Teague (Last week: 10)
While Teague's shooting has slumped over the last two games, he still helped manage to keep the Hawks' 13-game winning streak going. After putting up 13 points and nine assists in an emphatic win over the Raptors on Friday, Teague had 17 points and 11 assists in Chicago the next night. The point guard then added 10 points and seven assists in a hard-fought win over the Pistons on Monday.
10. Russell Westbrook (Last week: 12)
Westbrook's scoring has slowed over the last few games with Durant getting hot, but that hasn't stopped him from making a major impact. In the impressive win over the Warriors, Westbrook notched a triple-double with 17 points, 17 assists and 15 rebounds. The only other players to record a triple-double with those numbers since 1985-86 were Magic Johnson, Jason Kidd and Rajon Rondo, according to Basketball-Reference.com.
And if you somehow didn’t realize this already, Westbrook is really good at dunking:
Next five: Blake Griffin, Kyle Lowry, LaMarcus Aldridge, Al Horford, Kevin Durant.
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