In a battle of top-three teams in the Western Conference standings, the Houston Rockets (47-26) dropped a game to the rival Denver Nuggets (46-28) on Sunday night.
But that's the only game that Houston has lost in its last 11 outings. Moreover, their advantage in the loss column was restored to two games when the Nuggets lost to Chicago a night later.
Thus, Houston held its recently obtained perch at No. 4 in ESPN's weekly NBA power rankings. Each week, these rankings are based are based on where members of the network's in-house panel (Michael Wright, Tim Bontemps, Jamal Collier, Tim MacMahon, Dave McMenamin, Ohm Youngmisuk, and Chris Herring) think each team belongs at this juncture of the 2024-25 season.