2012 NBA power rankings: Nuggets hoping home cooking will get them going

The Denver Nuggets are still squarely in the middle of the pack across the NBA power rankings landscape on the web, owing in part to a difficult travel schedule early in the campaign.

In his weekly power rankings, SB Nation NBA contributor Seth Rosenthal drops the Nuggets two spots to 18th in the league for their 10-11 performance to this point. He does point out that they've had a tough docket to face so far:

The crazy thing about the Nuggets' massively lopsided early schedule is that it won't really even out until 2013. After playing 15 of their first 21 games on the road, Denver will play another seven of 11 games away before the end of the calendar year. One hopes they can linger around .500 until January comes and they can finally set up shop at the Pepsi Center. One also hopes that habits like floundering in fourth quarters and shooting terribly for hours at a time are more products of a tough schedule than they are genuine Nugget identifiers. In other news, Denver's now all about alternating individual wins and losses after a first month filled with three- and four-game streaks.

CBS Sports/Eye on Basketball blogger Matt Moore also awards the Nuggets 18th place, a slide of five spots from last week's rankings. NBC/ProBasketballTalk writer Kurt Helin promotes Denver one spot from 18th to 17th in his weekly rankings roundup. ESPN's Marc Stein is considerably higher on the Nuggets, putting them 12th in the league. As usual, though, Stein's colleague John Hollinger is the biggest booster of Denver, with his algorithm ranking the Nuggets eighth in the NBA.