NBA power rankings round up: Sixers treading water in championship pursuit

After the initial heat that the James Harden-Joel Embiid pairing brought, the Sixers have cooled down, including some hair-pulling losses to the Nets, Nuggets and Raptors. While I'm less bullish on the Sixers' championship odds than I may have been in the immediate aftermath of the Harden trade, they still remain a team that could have the two best players on the floor on any given night. That formula will always give a team at least a puncher's chance come the postseason. 

I'm going to take a look around the web and see how the basketball media stacks up the Sixers compared to the rest of the teams in the NBA. Here's a look at their latest rankings:

ESPN's Tim Bontemps has the Sixers holding steady, coming in at sixth in the site's power rankings again. His talk about Philly sums up the modern NBA entirely, something I take a cynical approach for in terms of how the game has changed: make your threes and win or miss them and lose. 

It was an up-and-down week for Philly, with wins over Dallas and Cleveland sandwiched between losses to Denver and Toronto. It is a make-or-miss league sometimes, but when Philly is making 3s, they look like world-beaters. When they don't? Their offense grinds to a halt. [ESPN.com]

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On NBA.com, John Schuhmann keeps the Sixers in the seventh spot he had them in last week. He writes what Sixers fans have learned the hard way: the Sixers' Big 2 of Embiid and Harden are dominant when sharing the floor together, but the team's bench continues to be the squad's Achilles heel. 

The Sixers have outscored their opponents by 16.9 points per 100 possessions in 295 total minutes with James Harden and Joel Embiid on the floor together. The star tandem was even a plus-19 in 54 total minutes against the Nuggets and Raptors last week, and Doc Rivers has made sure to have one of the two on the floor at all times. But in those two games (which the Sixers lost by a total of nine points), they were outscored by 28 points (34.9 per 100 possessions) in 42 total minutes with one of the two stars on the bench. The bigger issue was on offense, where they scored just 74 points on 87 possessions (0.85 per).

With Harden on board, the Sixers rank 14th offensively and 11th defensively since the All-Star break, having ranked … 14th offensively and 11th defensively before the break. (This is numbers nirvana. We should just stop the season right now.) They’ve had a relatively tough post-break schedule, with nine of their 12 games against teams with winning records. And things will be easier going forward, with six of their 12 remaining games against teams currently over .500. [NBA.com]

You'll find a familiar theme in Michael Shapiro's rankings on Sports Illustrated. He has them eighth, same as last week, and worries about how Harden's scoring has tapered off as of late in Philly:

Will James Harden get his burst back? Much of the focus often lies on The Beard’s patented step-back, but the true culprit in his scoring dip lies in his struggles to get to and finish at the rim. Harden looks a step (or two) slower than he did prehamstring injury, and it has in turn made him into a pass-first facilitator who is struggling to generate separation beyond the arc and near the rim. This version of Harden remains an effective player by sheer virtue of his basketball brilliance. But he’ll need to turn back the clock and reach another gear for Philadelphia to be considered anywhere near the title favorite. [Sports Illustrated]

theScore has the Sixers ranked the highest of anyone I've seen, as their staff keeps them in the fourth spot once more. That's what happens when Joel Embiid is living at the free throw line more than anyone in memory:

Philadelphia ranks third in the association in free-throw attempts (23.7) per game, with Joel Embiid accounting for about half of that amount. That number should continue to grow with James Harden now in the fold. [theScore.com]

For The Athletic, Zach Harper is the lone writer in this round up who dropped the Sixers in his rankings, lowering them from fifth to seventh.

Why are they ranked here? Tough losses to Denver and Toronto, but impressive wins over Cleveland and Dallas. The Sixers keep showing reasons to have a little bit of caution, and their depth worries me. But Joel Embiid is mostly playing out of his mind. [The Athletic]

To finish things off, let me giving you my own personal power rankings. Recency bias after Tyrese Maxey's flamethrower performance against Miami? Maybe! I'm still riding with my takes:

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