NBA Power Rankings: Celtics and Suns surging into Decemberon November 30, 2022 at 12:52 pm

There’s no way around it, the Boston Celtics are the hottest team in the NBA.

Four straight wins and nine wins out of their last 10 games have been enough for Boston to claim the best record in the league at 17-4. But while the Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks are in a class of their own record-wise, there are a few under-the-radar contenders in the East that might have the juice to challenge them down the stretch.

The Miami Heat will have another chance to avenge their Eastern Conference Finals loss to Boston in their second and third meetings of the season over the next three days, and Miami will do so with their own momentum having won three straight after a slow start. The Chicago Bulls and Atlanta Hawks haven’t had the consistency to match Boston in the standings, but both teams have proven to be giant slayers so far this season with wins against Boston and Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, the Western Conference has slowly fallen back into order after a chaotic start headlined by the Utah Jazz holding the conference’s best record for a number of weeks, including last week. But a recent five-game losing streak by Utah has allowed some of the expected contenders in the West to get back in the driver’s seat.

The Phoenix Suns are riding the NBA’s longest active win streak with five in a row to claim the top seed in the West, while the Denver Nuggets, New Orleans Pelicans and Memphis Grizzlies round out the top four.

Note: Throughout the regular season, our panel (Kendra Andrews, Tim Bontemps, Jamal Collier, Nick Friedell, Andrew Lopez, Tim MacMahon, Dave McMenamin and Ohm Youngmisuk is ranking all 30 teams from top to bottom, taking stock of which teams are playing the best basketball now and which teams are looking most like title contenders.

Previous rankings: Week 1 Week 4