Week 16 Power Rankings
Week 16 Power Rankings
Tier 1
1- Win’s Up Doc (13-3) [-]
2- DTC Porkchop Express (12-4) [-]
3- The Pullies (10-6) [-]
4- Sporty Strauss (11-5) [-3]
Tier 2
5- Wait ‘ Til Next Year (9-7) [-1]
6- Minnesota Moose Knuckles (9-7) [-2]
7- Ornery Otters (9-7) [-1]
8- Las Cabras (8-8) [-]
Tier 3
9- Shepherd Goods Choppers (3-12) [+1]
10- The BamO’s (4-11) [-1]
11- Cooper Troopers (4-11) [-]
12- $traight Cash Homie (3-11) [-]
Week 16 Matchups
Win’s Up Doc (1) vs $traight Cash Homie (12)
DTC Porkchop Express (2) vs The Pullies (3)
MN Moose Knuckles (4) vs Sporty Strauss (5)
Ornery Otters (6) vs Las Cabras (8)
Wait ’Til Next Year (7) vs The BamOs (9)
Shepherd Goods Choppers (10) vs Cooper Troopers (11)
(Tier 1) One month left in the season. 4 teams are ELIMINATED from the playoffs. 3 teams have essentially punched their post-season ticket (with another very close to doing so). Then 4 teams are battling it out for the last two playoff spots in a brutal fight to the death. The three Tiers perfectly respect these 3 types of teams in the League of Leagues.
Up top, Win’s Up Doc (1) continues to be the favorite, beating good teams almost every week. Oat has CLINCHED a playoff berth and will be heading to the postseason, but there’s a team inching behind his shoulder for the BYE. DTC Porkchop Express (2) is ready to seize control of that coveted 1-seed with any slip-ups from Doc, as he has all season. There is about a 250-point difference between these top-2 teams, which is easy enough for Craig to bridge. If DTC Porkchop Express can maintain pace with Doc and beat him in Week 18, odds are high that he will take that top-seed and BYE away from the most dominant team in the League of Leagues.
The Pullies (3) have also CLINCHED a playoff berth. With a 6-game lead on anyone else in their division, The Pullies can contact the league office to receive their Shepherd Goods gift card. For now, they have the BYE. After a loaded matchup against DTC Porkchop Express this week, The Pullies have the easiest schedule to end the season of any team with its divisional opponents. So their 2-seed is likely to stick.
But the MN Moose Knuckles (4) have it pretty easy too. This week, he draws Sporty Strauss’ ailing team in a matchup that might define the last three weeks of the season. Then he has Wait ‘Til Next Year in the first week of divisional play. Winning both of those games would clinch his division. He already has the first tiebreaker over Wait ‘Til Next Year, so he’s in good shape regardless of what happens. He’s 4th in points right now with another gap of 250 points over Sporty Strauss and a difference of 700 over the Ornery Otters, who split with Hall this season. As long as MN Moose Knuckles go .500 the rest of the way, they are likely in the playoffs.
But they probably need to go 4-0 to get a BYE given how easy The Pullies’ schedule is, and even that might not be enough.
(Tier 2) Sporty Strauss (5) never should have been ranked as high as they were. They had a nice stretch of games with wins against lots of teams in the bottom-4, but this team could be in trouble. Now, they have the toughest schedule left in the league with little margin for error. With losses to MN Moose Knuckles and Wait ‘Til Next Year, they are putting themselves at a huge risk of putting those losing tiebreakers to use. Week 18’s matchup with the Ornery Otters looms large.
Right now, temporary injuries are dooming his squad. 5 of his top-7 players are injured: Brandon Ingram, Deandre Ayton, Draymond Green, Gordon Hayward, and Dillon Brooks. Strauss’ squad should be temporarily renamed the #SprainedAnkleBoyz. These injuries aren’t season-ending, and players should continue to come back over the next month of the season – some might be back tonight! – but it’s clear Sporty Strauss needs a little bit of help as the walls close in during 4 INSANELY tough matchups to end the season.
The Ornery Otters (6) are one of those matchups, and they (currently) hold the last spot of the playoffs! They’ve made a mad comeback, and are finally in control of their destiny. They draw a banged-up Cabras team this week who’ve lost SGA for the foreseeable future. This is a win Korey absolutely NEEDS to have, because they’re staring at the Nolo’s Division gauntlet to end the season. If he can win next week and just ONE more week against Nolo’s, he can at least give himself a chance to make the playoffs. He might still lose out on tiebreakers, but 11 wins is the goal for all of these teams. That’s likely what the last teams in will have.
If the Ornery Otters are in, someone has to be out. For the first time in awhile, Wait ‘Til Next Year (7) is on the outside of the playoffs looking in. How the mighty have fallen! For the first month-or-so of the season, his team looked every bit as dominant as Win’s Up Doc, but injuries and a lack of depth have doomed him to mediocrity. But he still would have beaten most teams last week. He got a bad draw, and his team is still competent. And more than that – his schedule is completely winnable. His last non-divisional game is against The BamO’s this week, and then it’s time to take on Fhima’s underwhelming division.
Also in Fhima’s Division is Las Cabras (8). While they snuck away with a win against the league’s worst team, they still have a long road to climb. They lost one of their only two dominant players to injury (SGA), so now they need even more from Nikola Jokic to go 4-0 down the stretch and sneak into the playoffs. The good thing for Las Cabras, however, is that with a BamO’s loss, they have essentially locked into a Consolation BYE. It’ll be hard for any of the bottom-4 teams to catch their 7 wins and force Las Cabras into a playoff game in round 1. They’ll get time to rest their boys up in that first round.
(Tier 3) In the final Tier, these four teams have all been OFFICIALLY eliminated from the playoffs, but a big shout-out to the Shepherd Goods Choppers who have become competitive as the season is winding down. The ‘constellation boys’, as he calls them, are ready to win some season-long points against 3 other floundering teams, hopefully making it to the Consolation Championship. That puts Jordan Dye right back in position to place season-long if he has a good baseball team.
Week 15 High Score
The Pullies (Peter and Eric)
1505 points
Notes: The Pullies did this without Kevin Durant and LeBron James. They have some players like Anthony Edwards, Ja Morant, OG Anunoby, and Darius Garland on unbelievable hot streaks supplemented by some excellent late finds like Monte Morris, Amir Coffey and Luke Kennard. This is a team that would really like to give itself a BYE to give KD a little bit more of a chance to get healthy and go on a short two-week win streak to end the season.
Week 15 Low Score (AKA the JordJack Award)
$traight Cash Homie (Jack)
1005 points
Notes: Props to $traight Cash Homie for still setting his lineup, but this is a sad state of affairs for this roster. With Myles Turner waiting for a trade, Donovan Mitchell banged up and Zion still waiting to make his season debut, $traight Cash Homie was Joel Embiid and nothing else this week. Hopefully it gets better, but Jack is well on his way to being the loser of the League of Leagues
Week 15 MVP
Chris Paul
DTC Porkchop Express (Craig)
195 points
Notes: There was a moment yesterday when DTC Porkchop Express looked like it might drop his game to Wait ‘Til Next Year and muddy the playoff waters even further, but then Chris Paul stepped on the court last night and scored almost 60 points in a single game. That’s what the weekly MVP is all about.
Week 15 LVP
Serge Ibaka
Sporty Strauss (Strauss)
-2 points
Notes: It’s probably not fair to pick a player who only played 4 minutes all week in this category, but this is representative of where Strauss’ roster is right now. He’s throwing guys in like this are just tanking his well-built squad, because injuries are haunting him. Even still, someone scoring -2 on a week is absurd. If Strauss had one player who he could have started over Ibaka and two other games to fill his weekly plays to 50, he would have stood a chance of winning.
Current Playoff Seeding
Playoffs
Win’s Up Doc – BYE
The Pullies – BYE
MN Moose Knuckles
DTC Porkchop Express
Sporty Strauss
Ornery Otters
Consolation
Wait ’Til Next Year – BYE
Las Cabras – BYE
The BamOs
Cooper Troopers
Shepherd Goods Choppers
$traight Cash Homie
Week 15 MATCHUP of the WEEK
Sporty Strauss [10-5] (5th) vs MN Moose Knuckles [9-6] (4th)
Another MN Moose Knuckles matchup of the week? We might as well name this “whoever plays Hall.” And that might continue. The MN Moose Knuckles are the lynchpin team in the league. They could go anywhere from the 2-seed with a BYE to the 7th seed missing the playoffs. Each outcome is equally likely.
This matchup largely revolves around the health of Sporty Strauss though, and he needs some plays from the #SprainedAnkleBoyz. The MN Moose Knuckles are a consistent team, and they’ll score their points with a well-rounded roster (that is only getting better). Each team really needs this game. Strauss puts himself in excellent position with his 11th win of the season. The odds that he’d miss the playoffs would be small. The MN Moose Knuckles maintain a 2-game lead over Wait ‘Til Next Year in his division with a win. With an easy last two weeks, the Moose Knuckles would feel excellent about their playoff odds.
Right now, ESPN gives Sporty Strauss a 93% chance of making the playoffs, which is way too high. It gives the MN Moose Knuckles an 85% chance, which feels much more correct. Whoever loses probably drops into the 60’s or 70’s.
PG1 – Mike Conley vs Devin Booker
PG2 – Reggie Jackson vs Terry Rozier
SG1 – Derrick White vs Bradley Beal
SG2 – Chris Duarte vs Devin Vassell
SF3 – Franz Wagner vs RJ Barrett
SF4 – Brandon Ingram (???) vs Cameron Johnson
PF1 – Kevin Love vs Julius Randle
PF2 – Chuma Okeke vs Bobby Portis
C1 – Giannis Antetekounmpo vs Rudy Gobert
C1 – Pascal Siakam vs Wendell Carter, Jr.
FLEX1 – Eric Bledsoe vs Richaun Holmes
FLEX2 – Isaiah Jackson vs Jarred Vanderbilt
FLEX3 – Nicolas Batum (???) vs Jalen Suggs
Sporty Strauss: Advantage at 3/13 positions
MN Moose Knuckles: Advantage at 10/13 positions
INJURIES:
Sporty Strauss: Deandre Ayton (Q - Ankle), Brandon Ingram (Q - Ankle), Gordon Hayward (Q, COVID/Foot), Khem Birch, (Q - Face), Nic Batum (Q - Back), Dillon Brooks (O - Ankle), Draymond Green (O - Back), Ben Simmons (O - Butthurt)
MN Moose Knuckles: Rudy Gobert (Q - Calf), Otto Porter Jr. (Q - Foot)