Power Rankings: Knicks, Bucks rise By Marc Stein | ESPN.com

Monday, November 5

Select One Preseason 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Team: Select One Atlanta Boston Brooklyn Charlotte Chicago Cleveland Dallas Denver Detroit Golden State Houston Indiana LA Clippers LA Lakers Memphis Miami Milwaukee Minnesota New Orleans New York Oklahoma City Orlando Philadelphia Phoenix Portland Sacramento San Antonio Toronto Utah Washington Week:Team:

Premiere week in the NBA, as the TV hucksters call it, was a wild one.

How wild?

So wild that the New York Knicks and Milwaukee Bucks -- who have opened the season in undeniably impressive fashion -- vaulted higher in ESPN.com's weekly NBA Power Rankings than they ever could have expected to be this season thanks to all of the presumed title contenders that stumbled out of the gate.

The Knicks, courtesy of two lopsided wins and all the chaos beneath the top two, are up 12 spots to a hard-to-fathom No. 3, with the Bucks stunningly right behind them at No. 4. Week 1 stumbles taken by Oklahoma City, Boston, Denver and, of course, those star-laden Los Angeles Lakers made this particular top 10 as strange to arrange as any in recent memory.

Bearing in mind that the early editions of the rankings do have a tendency to throw up these sorts of surprises, with so few games to work off, your faithful committee (of one) opted for maintaining a semblance of order by keeping Miami in the top spot just ahead of rollin' San Antonio, granting the defending champs a one-loss grace period.

The rankings are compiled with ever-helpful dishing from ESPN Stats & Info and the Elias Sports Bureau. Click here to rank the teams yourself.