Four short titles take Dallas to 2021-22 west lineal hoop championship

The Dallas Mavericks won eight games of the Western lineal basketball championship in 2020-21, twice as many as any other team. The Mavs moved up to fourth in the all-time standings.

The Western lineal championship in pro basketball played out for only 38 games in 2020-21, with the Dallas Mavericks emerging as the top team with eight games of championship.

Outside of the Mavericks, this lineal was a balanced affair. The Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz all tied for second place with four wins each, while the Lakers and Clippers each had three.

Throughout the season, this championship got around and no one could defend it more than three times. The Mavericks, Nuggets and Rockets all were on four wins before the Mavs won at Denver, 116-103, taking the title and the lead with five wins. 

In the next couple of weeks, the Mavs played for the championship six times and won only three of them. Included were back-to-backs against the Clippers and Portland in which Dallas lost the first game and won the second, taking the title to the next stop. The wins the Mavericks did get were enough to give them the season championship in West.

The Warriors still lead all-time in the Western lineal with 50 games of the championship since tracking began at the start of the 2015-16 season. With their 18 games of Western lineal in 2019-20, the Lakers have made a huge move in the last three years and now are tied for second all-time with the San Antonio Spurs at 29. The Oklahoma City Thunder is third with 26, followed by the Mavericks (24), the Utah Jazz (21) and the Clippers (20).

Nuggets hold off Bucks in 2019-20 Elite Division debut

The first running of the Elite Division in pro basketball produced a race on top between the Denver Nuggets and Milwaukee Bucks that went deep into the bubble. Three other teams went to the bubble with a chance.

The first year of the Elite Division in pro basketball, 2019-20, was everything the promoters promised, including a squeaky tight race between the top two teams and five of the 11 teams in the group still mathematically contending as the NBA resumed play in the Orlando bubble during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Denver Nuggets held a one-half game lead on the Milwaukee Bucks entering the bubble and wound up finishing ahead of the Bucks by one game. The Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder and Philadelphia 76ers all went into the bubble with at least a slight chance of catching the Nuggets.

The Elite Division contains the top four teams from the previous season's First Division, the top three from the Second Division, the top two from the Third Division, and the Fourth Division champion, along with the team that won the league-wide lineal title, if it didn't qualify some other way.

The last two teams entered in the 2019-20 Elite Division were the Minnesota Timberwolves, who won the Fourth Division last year, and the Golden State Warriors, who won the lineal championship. Combined, they were 10-36 this year against the elite competition. And they were kept out of the bubble.

Huge Warrior cushion should hold all-time basketball lead

It would appear that the Golden State Warriors NBA dynasty has come to an end. Right through the teeth of that dynasty, though, the Warriors built a huge four-year lead in the men's American professional basketball traveling championship.

Here is Stephen Curry, left, during lofty days for the Golden State Warriors, launching against Marcin Gortat, then with the Washington Wizards (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

The all-time traveling championship standings across American professional basketball invite us to remember that it's not where you start, but where you finish.

Where these standings will finish, of course, no one knows. But we do know how they started. The Golden State Warriors, as the NBA champions for 2014-15, were given the traveling championship provisionally when we began tracking this title in 2015-16. The Warriors promptly made their title considerably more than provisional, winning their first 24 games of the season and making a cushion in the traveling championship that they maintain to this day.

Entering 2019-20, the Warriors hold 54 games of championship, 30 more than any other team. Even if we subtracted all 24 games of that first provisional defense, the Warriors still would lead these standings by a comfortable margin.

The next team on the list, the Miami Heat, has 24 wins. Then, the standings thicken up a bit. With 22 games of title, the Toronto Raptors are third, followed by the Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers, each with 20 wins. The San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets each have 18 victories in the four-year history of this championship through the 2018-19 season.

Following are the complete standings across the top level of American (and Canadian) pro basketball from the start of the 2015-16 season, when we began tracking, to the end of the 2018-19 season:

Only one NBA team hadn't yet won the league-wide traveling championship through its first four years. The Phoenix Suns failed in all 10 of their challenges. The Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves each had one game of championship.

Of 30 teams in the NBA, only nine carried winning records for the traveling championship. Those would be the seven teams already mentioned, plus the next two on the all-time standings. The Boston Celtics are in eighth place with 16 wins, followed by the New Orleans Pelicans with 14.

In four years of running this championship, it went on the line 321 times through 2018-19, with the title changing hands 132 times. The average title lasted 2.43 games.

Starting the 2019-20 season, the Lakers took the early lead with four straight wins in November, but they now have been caught by the Rockets, who won it from the Clippers on November 11 and posted three defenses through Nov. 18.

Warriors barely over Lakers for west traveling title

Golden State won its third Western traveling pro basketball season title in 2018-19, but the race this time was closer than ever.

Golden State won the western traveling championship in pro basketball for the third year out of four in 2018-19, but the race was tighter than ever.

The Warriors and the Lakers both finished with eight wins, tied at the top. Golden State prevails for being 8-2 in its western traveler games, compared with 8-4 for the Lakers.

But the season was a big step up for the Lakers, who were 0-4 in western traveler games through 2017-18, then they lost the season opener at Portland. But the Lakers took the championship from Portland with a 114-110 road win on Nov. 3 and defended it seven times.

Houston, Portland and San Antonio all were right in this thick race, finishing with seven, six and five wins, respectively.

Golden State still leads these standings all-time with 46 wins after starting these proceedings with 22 wins as the provisional champion in 2015-16. San Antonio occupies a far distant second place with 19 wins all-time, followed by Oklahoma City with 16.

With Elite Division coming, pro basketball pyramid heats up

The oncoming Elite Division jacked up the stakes around the pro basketball ordinals in 2018-19, but even without it, the Toronto Raptors and Oklahoma City Thunder produced a percentage-points finish for the First Division championship.

The establishment of an Elite League for 2019-20, something along the lines of the main continental soccer championships, made the ordinal pyramid in professional basketball quite more thick in 2018-19, especially in the top division.

The elite league will be stocked in the same way that the similar leagues are stocked in North American baseball and hockey. The top four teams in the First Division from the previous year will be entered, as will the top three teams from the Second Division, the top two teams from the Third Division and the top team from the Fourth Division. Traveling champions also will qualify, if they haven't qualified in the pyramid.

In 2018-19, that led to a meaningful race for fourth place in the First Division. The race at the top finished tight, but really wasn't so much at the end.

Toronto and Oklahoma City were the best teams, tied in the games column. Toronto prevailed on percentage points, finishing 11-5 (.688) to 14-8 (.636) for the Thunder. The Raptors clinched it with a 123-114 overtime win at Oklahoma City on March 20, putting their record at 11-4 and OKC at 12-8. That guaranteed that Toronto would finish with the best percentage and no worse for tied on top in the games column. Turned out that OKC went to Toronto and won two days later, then finished with a win against Houston.

Down the standings a way, we had a logjam. As of March 15, Houston held third place at 10-10, followed by San Antonio and Golden State at 8-9 and the Clippers at 9-11. Two of those teams would go to the Elite League.

At 9-11, Utah still had a chance, but the Jazz was the seventh-place team and had the additional concern to avoid relegation. And they only had one First Division game left, anyway, against the Clippers on the final day of the season.

Down the backstretch, Houston went 3-0 to finish comfortably in third place. The Spurs and Warriors both were 3-1 in the last three weeks of the season. However, the Golden State loss and one of the San Antonio wins proved decisive, as the Spurs beat Golden State, 111-105, in San Antonio on March 18. The Clippers couldn't keep up, going 2-2 down the stretch.

When the smoke cleared, the Spurs and Warriors were tied for fourth place at 11-10 in the First Division. But the tiebreaker went to the Spurs for going 2-1 head-to-head against Golden State, crucially because of their March 18 victory.

The Clippers didn't make it into the Elite Division, but they survived for another year in the First Division with a 143-137 win against Utah on the final day of the season. Utah spent only one year in the First Division before being relegated back to the Second Division for 2019-20. Cleveland, a middle-of-the-pack First Division team even when it had LeBron James, fell to 2-14 and is headed to the Second Division in 2019-20.

The Second Division produced a tight race for promotion. Denver won it at 14-5, followed by Portland at 13-6. Boston finished one-half game behind promotional status, but will enter the Elite Division in 2019-20, as will Denver and Portland. At the bottom, Washington and Chicago are going down to the Third Division, but Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans barely survived.

There was no contest in the Third Division. Philadelphia and Milwaukee clearly were the best two teams, so they will be promoted in 2019-20 to the Second Division and the Elite Division. At the bottom of this group, New York was notably terrible at 2-22. Detroit will join the Knicks in the Fourth Division in 2019-20.

Minnesota won the Fourth Division in 2018-19, allowing the Timberwolves to climb out of this bottom rung for the first time since we began tracking the pyramid in 2015-16. Moving up with the Timberwolves to the Third Division are the Brooklyn Nets.

Warriors sneak in for 2017-18 top tier title

The Golden State Warriors received the help they needed to win the pro basketball First Division in 2017-18, their second such championship in three years of the competition.

Less than two weeks remained of the NBA season on April 1, 2018, and four games in those final days would tell the tale in the First Division.

On that morning, the Houston Rockets led the top division at 14-4, followed by the Oklahoma City Thunder at 13-5 and the Golden State Warriors at 14-6.

The defending champs, the San Antonio Spurs were only 10-10 as April 1 dawned, but they were to have a huge impact on this race. They had just knocked the Thunder off Houston's heels with a 103-99 homecourt win on March 29. Later on April 1, the Rockets played in San Antonio, and the Spurs gave them the same treatment, a 100-83 beating that cut Houston's lead over the Thunder back down to one-half game.

By knocking down the Thunder and Rockets, the Spurs did quite a favor to the Warriors, who suddenly went to Oklahoma City on April 3 with a chance to take the division lead. They were 14-6, barely behind the Rockets (14-5) and the Thunder (13-5).

On a night when Kevin Durant shot pitifully for the Warriors, only nine-for-25 (including two-for-nine from three-point range), he still scored 34 because he was 14-for-14 at the free-throw line. The Warriors won, 111-107, and now led the division at 15-6.

One game remained: April 7, Oklahoma City at Houston. A win for the Rockets on their own court would end their First Division season with the championship. Otherwise, the Warriors would sneak in for their second top-tier title in three years of this exercise.

For most of its 10 years in Oklahoma City, the Thunder has worked at around 50 regular season victories and a round or two of playoffs. But the Thunder happened to have a down year in 2014-15 and missed the playoffs. Thus, Oklahoma City began this competition of ordinal divisions in the Third Division when these alignments were begun with the 2015-16 season.

But the Thunder rumbled quickly to the top tier. Blitzing through the Third Division with a championship 16-3 showing, it advanced to the Second Division for 2016-17. Once there, the Oklahomans fought off challenges from the Dallas Mavericks and Washington Wizards, finishing second to the Clippers and advancing this year to the top level.

So, they made it almost to the wire in 2017-18. Falling ever so short, the Thunder relished its role as spoiler on April 7 and hung a 108-102 victory over the Rockets, finishing in a second-place tie with its vanquished hosts at 14-6.

The bottom of the First Division was uncharacteristically weak. The Atlanta Hawks, all the way down to 2-15, finished last. The Hawks gave the Spurs their toughest challenge in 2016-17, finishing 1 1/2 games out of first place. Then they lost Paul Millsap and Tim Hardaway to free agency and traded Dwight Howard. Look out below.

Right with them, though are the Chicago Bulls, who finished 3-14 and will join the Hawks next season in the Second Division.

One promotional spot was up for grabs as of April 1 in the Second Division. The Utah Jazz already were comfortably in the clubhouse at 12-5, clinching the championship and the first promotion. The New Orleans Pelicans were uncomfortably in the clubhouse in third place at 10-8 and needed help.

In between, the Toronto Raptors were 11-8 with games coming up against the Boston Celtics and the Indiana Pacers. The Raptors only needed to win one for promotion, and they won both, leaving New Orleans to wait another year.

At the bottom of this group, the Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks were clearly the demotees. The standings make it appear that the Celtics and and Dallas Mavericks flirted with disaster, but it only looks like that because the Celtics lost their last two games and the Mavs lost their last three.

The Denver Nuggets and the Portland Trail Blazers stormed through the Third Division in 2017-18, earning promotion to the Second Division the next season. The Nuggets won the championship with an 88-82 homecourt win against Portland on April 3, holding the Blazers to 13 points in the fourth quarter.

At the bottom, the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies worked their way down. Orlando beat the New York Knickerbockers in April, but that just closed the gap.

The Philadelphia 76ers easily won the Fourth Division championship with an 11-3 record that was three games better than anyone else in this bottom group.

The Detroit Pistons squeezed to just enough better than even to beat the Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves for the second promotion.

The Lakers were in the driver's seat through March 25, second place at 7-5 with their next game coming against the only team seriously chasing them, the 6-5 Pistons. On March 26, the Lakers went to Detroit to play that game, and lost, 112-106.

The Pistons, now in promotion position, increased their cushion with a 108-96 win at Brooklyn on April 1. But the Pistons, on their own court, were no match for the Sixers on April 4, losing 115-108.

Now, the Pistons were 8-6 and the Lakers were 7-6. Only one game remained, with the Lakers scheduled at home against the Timberwolves on April 6. A Lakers win would make them 8-6, tied with the Pistons. But the Lakers held the tie-breaker, despite their loss in Detroit. They split their two games, with the Lakers beating Detroit, 113-93, at Staples Center on Halloween. Thus, the Lakers won the next tiebreaker, going plus-14 in head-to-head point differential.

It mattered not one bit, as the Wolves stomped the Lakers, 113-93, blow torching through a second half that went 62-38 in their favor. So, the Lakers, a cellar-dwelling team for all three years of this arrangement, will try again to move up in 2018-19. It was widely speculated that free agent LeBron James was being recruited for the effort.