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The Denver Nuggets are in the upper half of the major power rankings across the span of basketball punditry, with a recent winning streak providing a shot in the arm for their reputation.
SB Nation NBA contributor Seth Rosenthal places Denver (8-7) 12th in the league thus far, good for a seven-spot jump in the rankings. He writes:
... and they're back! One remedy for poor free throw shooting is simply getting to the line more and taking the edge in that department by brute force. Denver's free-throw rate was improved over the last three games -- all wins -- and, to be fair, they shot well from the foul line in two of those three. Ty Lawson played this last week like someone wound him back up, too, which is helpful. This season's trend dictate that the Nuggets have another slide coming, but we shall see.
Matt Moore of CBS Sports slots the Nuggets 14th in his rankings, which is a leap of six spots from last week's order. Over at NBC's ProBasketballTalk, Kurt Helin awards Denver 12th, an improvement of seven rungs. ESPN's Marc Stein has the Nugs 11th, as they climb five spots for him.
ESPN's John Hollinger may be the outlier; his latest rankings have the Nuggets as the eighth-best team in the league, but that's a drop of one spot from his most recent order.