He 'power ranks' (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=stein_marc&page=PowerRankings0208&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1) all 30 nba teams over the last 6 seasons...

Pistons come in at #3 behind San Antonio & Dallas.


Hard to imagine that anyone would claim that Detroit hasn't fully deserved its regular spot in our top five. Frustrated as Pistons fans might be to come away from six consecutive trips to the East finals with only one championship, there's been only one source of positive consistency emanating from the Leastern Conference since Michael Jordan's retirement … and this team is it.

Now Stein is a Mavs slappy (former beat-writer, lives in Dallas, worships Dirk), but seeing as how they haven't won a Title and they had the worst postseason collapse in NBA history, they definitely aren't the team that comes to mind when I think of who's #2.

Anyway, this article is the type of necromancy that comes from the Church of John Hollinger. I consider Stein to be one of the better NBA minds over at ESPN, let's hope this isn't the beginning of his downfall...



Downfall to becoming a cunt.

I think he just took an average of where they were in all Power Rankings from the last 6 years.

Yeah it had nothing to do with who the best team is. It was an average. It does show his bias by ranking the Mavs ahead of the Pistons all season long. It's not even a close gap, the Mavs are way ahead of the Pistons in that one.

If you were talking about who has been the best team in the past 6 years and not basing it on some obscure statistics, then the Pistons would be right behind the Spurs in the #2 spot.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/marc_stein_treated_for_ocd?utm_source=onion_rss_da ily


BRISTOL, CT—Sportswriter Marc Stein was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and prescribed a low dose of Risperdal Tuesday after using his weekly ESPN.com power rankings to rate the "filthiness" of each NBA team. "Basketball under their fingernails; I wouldn't go near these guys in a million years, okay?" read Stein's entry for the 11th-ranked Pacers, a typical blurb in a list that described the No. 1 Suns as "pretty clean or less diseased than normal" and the No. 30 Mavericks as "DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY." An agitated Stein told reporters that he believes teams need to be ranked in many different ways. "Scoring them from best to worst, or by their 'power,' is one way, but what about organizing them by how dirty they are, their franchise age, or the way they sound or taste? People deserve to know that, although the Lakers are the best team in the league, they are only 23rd in terms of how well-liked they are among their own families. The Detroit Pistons are ranked eighth alphabetically. That's important." Stein was prescribed an additional dose of D-cycloserin after explaining his plans to wash the entire Northwest Division.