The 34-point hammering absorbed by the Cleveland Cavaliers in Toronto on Thursday night occurred in the 615th game of 1,230 dates on the 2017-18 N.B.A. schedule.
The exact midpoint, in other words, of the regular season.
So as the up-and-down Cavaliers prepare to host their old friends from Golden State on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it’s an ideal time to revive an old tradition of mine and reconvene the trusty Committee (of one) for a team-by-team progress report in the form of N.B.A. Power Rankings.
The Committee, as it has for more than 15 years, determines the 1-to-30 order by weighing what’s happening in the present alongside each team’s big-picture outlook — with sprinkles of subjectivity and whimsy thrown in.