They have been playing very solid defense in that stretch though. I believe they are allowing under 90 a game to those teams (check me on that one, not sure of the exact number, but they had some sort of graphic on ESPN News that I caught a brief glance at), some of which are really good offensively. NJ, Milwaukee, Clippers, Warriors, Seattle, Memphis, Lakers and Miami are all very good on the offensive end, and if they have been holding teams under 90 with consistency, thats pretty damn good. One stat I do know for a fact is that they havent allowed more that 100 points in this stretch, more than 90 only 5 times, so they have definitely been playing GREAT defense. I agree that they arent front runners, but you gotta at least look at them. Playing great defense and with all the offensive power they have. I believe they beat Miami by 36 last night. Hard to do vs ANYONE, let alone a team with as much fire power as Miami. Also you need to look at the scores of all these games. In this stretch, they have had at 8 blowouts (by 10+ points), so they have been beating up one basically everyone with the exception of Chicago, Portland and Memphis.