It recently came to my attention that some people may not understand what "power rankings" are nor how they work, so I figured I should write a blog to explain it.
- Power rankings are a way to determine strength and overall value. They are most commonly used in sports as a way to convey which teams are performing best at a given time, and are typically published on a weekly basis.
- Power rankings are largely a mixture of opinion and logic. It's not an exact science.
- Power rankings are best when incorporating both logic and momentum.
- The logical approach:
- For the past five years or so, the Golden State Warriors have been the most talented team in the NBA. As such, they are seldom found outside of the top five in a given basketball power ranking.
- The New York Knicks are dreadful. You're not going to see any power rankings where they sniff the top 25, unless they have a really good week and beat several top teams by 30 points each.
- The momentum or "fair weather" approach:
- If the Knicks were somehow able to beat the Warriors, Rockets and Celtics by blowout margins in the same week, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to temporarily jump up five spots. They had a great week, but that doesn't mean they're the best team in the league.
- Despite being the most talented team in the NBA, if the Warriors went 1-3 in a given week, you might see them drop a couple spots - maybe down to #3 or #4. This certainly doesn't indicate that they're not a good team; they just don't have the momentum to maintain their standing that particular week.
- In some "less official" power rankings (read: where the voters aren't being paid for their professional analysis), you might see some more outrageous decisions. For instance, in my "Avengers: Endgame" power rankings, somebody ranked Captain Marvel as the "least powerful" Avenger. Clearly, this is untrue and I'm not sure they voted the way they did, but that's their opinion, apparently, and they're entitled to it. At least it made things interesting.
- Power rankings are a way of tracking standings over time.
- In sports, polls will typically show movement of a team from week to week, as an indication of whether the team is progressing or declining, in comparison with the rest of the league. Generally, power rankings will include a column or section that shows whether the team has moved up, down or maintained their standing from the past week.
Here are some excerpts from an NBC Sports NBA power ranking from the home stretch of the 2018-19 season:
The best statistical team:
At the time this post was published, the Milwaukee Bucks had the best record in the NBA, but we see that they moved down one spot from the previous week - from first place to second - being surpassed by the best team in the Western Conference, the Golden State Warriors. The paragraph plays into flaws and potential future weaknesses that the Bucks had that may potentially affect their ability to perform later in the season.
A good team on a hot streak:
During this week, the Utah Jazz were the hottest team in the league. However, that impressive stretch of games was counteracted in the author's mind by the fact that the Jazz were beating up on subpar competition. We see here that the Jazz's momentum moved the team from eighth place in the previous week to seventh place for that current week. Evidently, there were six other teams that the author believed were better than the Jazz at that point in time.
A bad team with a good player:
Ah, the Phoenix Suns - perennial basement dwellers of NBA power rankings for a majority of the past one or two decades. With a record of 18-60 at the time of this post, Suns fans didn't have much to be happy about. The author attempted to focus on a few positives, but the truth remained - this just wasn't a good team, no matter how many points Devin Booker was scoring. As the author points out, all of those games resulted in Phoenix losses.
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Hopefully this helps shed some light on how power rankings are typically used in the real world. For a look at how I have used similar surveys through the lens of pop culture, check out some of my previous power ranking blogs:
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