The top teams

[Fencer reregistered]

Now that the Celts have lost a couple of games, I don't think a case can be made for any of the top teams being vastly superior to the others.

The Celts still have slightly the best record, and have also beaten both Cleveland and Orlando. They're the best to date IMO, but only by a small margin.

Cleveland ranks at #1 by some stats Hollinger comes up with, but hasn't beaten any excellent teams. Unless I'm missing something, there's a loss to Boston, no games yet vs. LAL or ORL, a loss to New Orleans, and so on from there.

The Lakers beat Boston. Orlando beat the Lakers. Both also have outstanding overall records.

Any projection for how the teams fare in the Spring relative to each other should be based much more on how they'll be different then from now rather than on who's better now or was better last Spring, because those differences are small.

Personally, I think the Cs will have a good bench again by the post-season, so if the starters stay healthy they'll be exceptionally hard to beat. I'd also guess that Rondo's jumper will start falling at least intermittently, which will REALLY give teams fits.