Latest Power Rankings Illustrate a Recent Trend for Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets have been a very inconsistent team in 2025-26. To put it politely.

They've lost 11 games against teams with losing records, and they'd have the top record in the NBA, if they had won each of those games.

The power rankings seem to reflect much of the same. They've been all over the place. We've seen the Rockets rated as high as fourth, earlier in the month of February. Lately, they've ranked near the bottom of the top ten, at various sites.

The Athletic ranked the Rockets as the league's eighth-best team this week. Yahoo Sports and Bleacher Report ranked them ninth this week.

Which begs the question of whether Houston is really a viable contender.

Marc Stein, one of the league's most famed insiders, took a stab at concocting his own power rankings, and stuck with the theme of putting the Rockets as a low-end top-ten team. According to Stein, the Rockets are currently the league's ninth-best NBA team.

"How big a deal is the whole KD Files thing?" Stein wrote. "The answer to that question can really only come from Alperen Şengün, Jabari Smith Jr. and the other key stakeholders in the Rockets' organization. If it is a big deal to them, then the story is a significant hurdle for Houston to contend with now on top of how much it has missed Fred VanVleet all season (and more recently Steven Adams).

"The Rockets actually enter Thursday night's return to work in Charlotte with the league's fifth-ranked defense and sixth-ranked offense ... but you really wouldn't know that based on the way this team gets talked about."

Last week Stein had Houston as the league's seventh-best team. Again, there's a trend here, and a difficult one to refute, I should add.

However, I wouldn't base Houston's prognosis on the situation surrounding Kevin Durant, in the short or long term.

Alot of it boils down to coaching decisions and/or adjustments. Rockets coach Ime Udoka likes to hang his hat on size, hence the jumbo lineups that we've seen for roughly two seasons now.

Without Steven Adams, Udoka has trotted out more wing-heavy lineups -- a wise decision, considering Houston's roster construction. It's essentially one of their strengths.

If Houston can cut down on the turnovers and continue their defensive tenacity, they'll likely see a rise in their placement on the power rankings for the rest of the way.

Otherwise, the trend will continue, of placing them as a low-end top-10 team.