Lakers stomp to 2019-20 West lineal in pro basketball

The Lakers, woebegone for, lo, these many years, finally came out in 2019-20 for all of it and won the World Championship. While so doing, they ended their perennial run as a Fourth Division team in this pyramid.

The Lakers are coming out of the worst tailspin in the history of their franchise. Entering 2019-20, six straight losing seasons of unprecedented futility. Six straight years without going to the playoffs.

In the whole history of the NBA, going back to 1949 in Minneapolis, the Lakers had never gone more than two years without qualifying for the playoffs. They have endured six straight losing seasons before, but it was a much different kind of losing the first time.

During their last five years in Minneapolis and their first year in Los Angeles, the Lakers rang up six straight losing records. But they still went to the playoffs all but once during that stretch because they didn't absolutely stink. They just lost. Four of those teams finished with higher winning percentages than the best of the last six complete LA seasons through 2019. Three of those later six Lakers teams couldn't even win one-third of their games.

All of a sudden in 2019-20, we saw a Lakers team with Lebron James and Anthony Davis, who both appeared as if from nowhere, and the Lakers were a going concern. When the NBA season shut down for the pandemic, the Lakers already had 49 wins in 63 games, their most wins since Phil Jackson's last Lakers club in 2011.

And we saw the Lakers tear through the Western Conference, particularly the lineal championship in the West. The Lakers returned from the pandemic break with 18 games of the western title in the bank. No one else even had a chance to catch them.

The Lakers took hold of the championship early and put it away right about then. Utah, the holdover champion, met the Lakers on Oct. 25 at Staples Center. The Lakers bolted to a 74-55 lead through three quarters on their way to a 95-86 win.

From there, the Lakers made 10 title defense in six cities to set a demanding standard for the rest of the West. As play resumed, the second-best showing with the Western lineal belonged to the Dallas Mavericks, who had seven wins in 11 tries.

Clippers win top, Lakers win bottom in 2019-20 pro hoop pyramid

The storied Lakers became the last of the original Fourth Division teams to escape in 2019-20, easily winning the bottom tier. By an even greater margin, the Clippers won the First Division. In the very end, of course, the Lakers won the NBA championship.

Pro basketball resumed after the pandemic in 2020 with arrangements that worked well enough for the pyramids, under the circumstances.

It turns out that the teams lopped off of the resumption for their weakness in the NBA standings also were, by and large, the weakest teams in the pyramid. They were not  missed.

Thus, in the Fourth Division, we already knew when play resumed in July after the March shutdown that the Lakers had it won, and they became, finally, the last team from the original Fourth Division in 2015-16 to rise from the basement.

The divisions were set for that first year by simply taking the four best records in each conference from the year before and putting them in the First Division, then putting the next four of each conference into the Second Division, etc. Left with only six teams for the Fourth Division, those teams were the Lakers, the Orlando Magic, the New York Knicks, the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Philadelphia 76ers and Sacramento Kings.

None of these teams has taken over the NBA in the last five years. The best in the pyramid is the 76ers, who rose to the Second Division and the Elite Division in 2019-20 after two seasons of improvement. The Timberwolves finally rose to the Third Division and the Elite Division in 2019-20, with disappointing results. The Magic has never made it past the Third Division and is back at the bottom this year, but will be promoted with the Lakers in 2020-21. The Kings have risen to the Third Division and are fighting to stay there. The Knicks have moved up to the Third Division and now they are back on the bottom level.

So, the Lakers finally are getting out, and they're also going to the Elite Division in 2020-21 as this year's Fourth Division champ. And that's all there really is to say about the bottom tier, because there were no games on the resumption schedule, which leaves out the Knicks and Detroit Pistons completely.

There was little more to be decided in the Second and Third divisions, but the First Division was loaded. Though the Clippers won the championship with 4½ games to spare over the Denver Nuggets, a frantic race simultaneously reach the Super League and avoid relegation involved five teams. 

The winners in that scrum were the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Portland Trail Blazers, who finished third and fourth, respectively, in the First Division and qualified for the Super League. The Houston Rockets and San Antonio Supers finished in intermediate positions, fifth and sixth in the First Division, respectively, meaning they get to remain in the First Division for 2020-21, but will not go to the Super League. The losers were the Toronto Raptors, who finished seventh and are being relegated, along with the Golden State Warriors.

Only two games remained in the Second Division when the season resumed in the bubble, and the Dallas Mavericks won both, defeating the Milwaukee Bucks and the Utah Jazz. With that, the Mavs rallied to a second-place finish in the Second Division, one-half game behind the Bucks, thus securing a First Division promotion and a Super League berth. 

The Jazz fell to fourth and out of the money. The Boston Celtics finished third, which is good enough to join the Super League, but not the First Division. The obvious relegants from the Second Division were the Atlanta Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers, neither of which received even an invitation to the bubble.

In the Third Division, the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat went to the bubble all but certain as the two teams that would be promoted and sent to the Super League, but slight question remained about who would win the division. It turned out to be the Pacers, by 2½ games.

On the bottom of the Third Division, and headed to the Fourth Division for 2020-21, were the Washington Wizards and Chicago Bulls.

Nuggets edge Lakers in shortened 2019-20 pro hoop lineal

The traveling championship across American pro basketball in 2019-20 ended in August just like it stood when play halted in March: with the Denver Nuggets one game ahead of the Lakers.

The coronavirus catastrophe that befell the world by March 2020 cut short the lineal championship season in pro basketball to 70 games. One never knows how the ball will bounce through the NBA schedule, but a full season will end up to playing 75 to 85 games for the traveling title.

The lineal was shaping up as a torrid, two-team race between the Lakers and the Denver Nuggets. The Denver squad quietly piled up 10 games of championship with three solid titles and they looked to buttress their league lead when the Lakers visited the Rockies on Feb. 12. In one of their best games of the season, the Lakers prevailed, 120-116, in overtime as Lebron James triple-doubled (32-12-14) and Anthony Davis scored 33, including seven in overtime.

The Lakers made four successful defenses and got themselves up to nine for the year. But with a chance to tie with Denver, the Lakers lost, 105-88, at Memphis on Feb. 29. 

The lights went out on the season less than two weeks later. When the lights came back on July 31, the Lakers and Denver, between them, never got another shot at the championship. But they both were far enough ahead that no one was going to challenge them. The season ended with Denver on top at 10 and the Lakers in second at nine.

Portland won three games of the championship in the summer bubble, coming up to six for the season. The Trail Blazers ended the year with a spectacular win, 134-133 over Brooklyn, and took the championship into the 2020-21 season.

Clippers, Nuggets, sharing control of pro basketball First Division

The top level of professional basketball is shaping up as a race between the Clippers and the Denver Nuggets, who have shot to the top of the First Division.

Clippers coach Doc Rivers has his squad solidly in the hunt for the First Division championship (shaka/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Italy license).

The race to the top of the First Division in pro basketball is shaping up as a two-team affair. The Denver Nuggets have the best record in the division at 9-2, but the 11-5 Clippers are almost right there.

That kind of finish calls for a split championship, but even if they don't split it, they are the only serious contenders right now for the First Division championship. The more interesting mix is down the standings. We're pretty sure the Golden State Warriors are going nowhere except for the relegation zone, but every other team is fighting simultaneously to win the championship and stave off relegation, and the top four in this tier will snag berths in the Elite Division for 2020-21.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, the third-place team in the First Division, is really on the fence, at once 2½ games off the championship and 2½ games off relegation. Everyone beneath the Thunder is closer to the gutter than to glory, including the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and Portland Trail Blazers. No one is safe.

That's good news for the Toronto Raptors, who are positioned at the moment for relegation with their 3-6 record. As the only Eastern team in the First Division, the Raptors have an unprecedentedly slim schedule here that will total 14 games. Adjusted winning percentage will tell in these decisions, so the few games Toronto plays weigh heavily. The Raptors have five left – two against Golden State, two against Denver and one against Houston. And it is a matter of more than passing interest, maybe, that we should note troubles against this smattering of top Western clubs for the Raptors, who are the defending NBA champions and the team with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference.

Following the new policy for the baseball pyramid and Elite Division, we weight these percentages. Because the NBA season is a smidge more than half as long as the MLB season, we weight the NBA a smidge more than half as much, with 38 games of .500, which means we add 19-19 to each team's record before calculating percentage. The discrepancies in basketball schedules amount to almost nothing compared with the discrepancies in baseball schedule, and yet it does make a difference. For example, it gives a team with a light schedule, like Toronto, a much better chance of escaping relegation.

And it makes a real difference in the Second Division. Coming out of the All-Star break, the Milwaukee Bucks led the Second Division, but they only were 1½ games ahead of the fifth-place team, the Philadelphia 76ers. In between, the scrum includes the Utah Jazz, the Dallas Mavericks and the Boston Celtics. The top two in this group are promoted to the First Division in 2020-21, while the top three will enter the Elite Division.

If we just went by straight percentages, Utah would be the second-place team here and Boston would be fourth. But adding 38 games of .500 brings the percentage column into alignment with the games column, which raised Boston to second and drops Utah to fourth. 

At the bottom of the Second Division, three teams are trying to not be the two that will be assigned next year to the Third Division. The inside track for escaping relegation belongs to the New Orleans Pelicans, who are 3-9. The Pelicans still are two games better than the Cleveland Cavaliers (2-12) and the Atlanta Hawks (1-11).

The two best teams in the Third Division clearly are the Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat. Both are going up to the Second Division and the Elite Division next year, barring disaster.

The rest of this group is just trying to grunt out this schedule and outrun the relegation carriage. The third-place team, the 9-9 Charlotte Hornets, is only one game ahead of the seventh-place Sacramento Kings, who are positioned for relegation at 5-7. In between them are the Brooklyn Nets and the Minnesota Timberwolves. One of these teams will be relegated, along with the Chicago Bulls, who have made a substantial down payment on next year's Fourth Division rent with a 5-12 record.

This is the fifth year for the pyramid across pro basketball. The Lakers began this history in the Fourth Division in 2015-16 and they've not only never gotten out, but they've been a poor Fourth Division club, 23-36 in four years of Fourth Division games entering 2019-20.

Hard to believe, but we have been living through the absolute lowest point in the history of the Lakers going all the way back to Minneapolis, 1948. From the end of 2012-13 through the 2018-19 season, the Lakers went six consecutive years without going to the playoffs. Among those six seasons were four of the five worst winning percentages in team history. 

In the entire previous 65 years of the franchise's history, the Lakers had missed the playoffs a total of five times. Only once had they gone more than one year without entering the playoffs.

There is a cure for this in the NBA, and the Lakers usually have access to it. Just sign the best player in the league. So, LeBron James finally decided to play for his hometown team and signed with the Lakers.  Now, they've added Anthony Davis and they've got Dwight Howard and Rajon Rondo, older players who used to be stars most of the time and still get there some of the time.

The Lakers are 42-12 overall, best record in the NBA's Western Conference. Only four teams in Lakers history have played better than this team's .778 clip, and all of them won the NBA Finals. 

The Lakers also are making easy work of the Fourth Division for once, 9-1. They almost can't fail to win the Fourth Division and the Elite Division berth that goes with it. The second-place team, the Memphis Grizzlies, are 6-4. The Lakers have three games left, so their magic number is one. The Lakers would be last of the original Fourth Division teams from 2015-16 to climb from the cellar.

Memphis and Orlando are close together for the second promotion out of the Fourth Division. No other team has a shot.

Denver leads wide-open race for traveling title

It's still anybody's race for the season title in the pro basketball traveling championship. The Denver Nuggets lead at the moment, but we're just coming out of the NBA All-Star break.

Nikola Jokić (shooting) is a seven-foot presence for the Denver Nuggets as they've taken the 2019-20 lead for the pro basketball linear championship (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license). 

We're coming out of the All-Star break in the NBA and the national traveling basketball championship for the 2019-20 season remains within just about anyone's grasp.

The top team now, the Denver Nuggets, have won three titles for a total of 10 games as champions. But a half-dozen other teams remain within one strong title of catching the Nuggets. The Lakers and Boston Celtics each have five games of championship, the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets each have four and the Indiana Pacers, Portland Trail Blazers and Utah Jazz each have three.

After the Golden State Warriors roared out of the gate when we first began tracking this traveler in 2015-16, it will be years before anyone catches them. The Warriors have added a game of title this season, bringing their all-time total up to 55. 

For the time being, the fight really is for second place. The Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors are tied for that distinction with 24 wins, followed by the Portland Trail Blazers with 23, the Rockets with 23 and the Celtics with 21.

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.

Jazz capture west hoop traveling title

The Utah Jazz didn't come close to maximizing their opportunities, but they won plenty enough to claim the western traveling pro basketball crown in 2017-18.

The Golden State Warriors are slowing down a bit in the western pro basketball traveling championship, but they're going to have to be real slow for a real long time before anyone catches them.

Though the Warriors won only five western title games on the 2017-18 slate, they remain the runaway leader in this competition historically. The Warriors now have 38 wins through three full years of the chase, well ahead of the second-place Oklahoma City Thunder with 21. In third place are the San Antonio Spurs (20), followed by the Utah Jazz (16) and the Clippers (14).

The Lakers are the only team yet to win the western traveler after three full years. They have only run into that chance four times, dropping all four games.

The Jazz were Team of the Year in 2017-18 with 12 wins, most in the West, and they didn't nearly maximize their opportunities, losing four title challenges. They book ended their season by carrying the title from 2016-17 and defending it once at the beginning, then producing a three-game title run in April. 

In between, their best moment came right before the All-Star break. The Jazz won the title from the Clippers with a 125-113 decision at home on Jan. 20, then held on for seven more games until the midseason pause. On returning from the break, the Jazz lost the title, 100-81, at home against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Spurs win top tier, Clippers going up

The San Antonio Spurs won the First Division across pro basketball, while last year's champs, the Golden State Warriors, fell to third. The Clippers, who were relegated last year, have fought their way back to the top level by winning the Second Division.

Kawhi Leonard (2) was instrumental in taking the San Antonio Spurs to the First Division championship (Jose Garcia/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).

By the end of March, the San Antonio Spurs were in the clubhouse with a 13-4 record in the First Division, good enough to clinch the championship and their second consecutive division title.

In 2015-16, the Spurs blitzed through the Second Division with an 18-1 mark to earn promotion. In 2016-17, the Spurs were just about as lightly challenged in the top tier, despite the presence of the Golden State Warriors, who won it a year earlier with the same 18-1 record. This season, the Warriors finished third in the First Division at 11-6, two games from the top.

The Boston Celtics, who were promoted to the First Division with the Spurs this year, are going back to the Second Division after finishing at the bottom of the First Division. They will be joined by the Toronto Raptors.

The Clippers, who were relegated to the Second Division this year, are headed back to the top division in 2017-18 after taking the Second Division championship. Going to the stretch, the Clippers held a 1/2-game lead on the Washington Wizards for the Second Division title. But the Clippers won their last two games, while the Wizards lost their final two, falling out of consideration for promotion. The Oklahoma City Thunder took the second promotion to the top tier with a 12-10 record.

The Portland Trail Blazers, who began as a First Division team in 2015-16, are being demoted for the second straight year. The Blazers finished at the bottom of the Second Division this season and will go down to the Third Division next season. Also being demoted are the Memphis Grizzlies.

A tight race in the Third Division ended with the New Orleans Pelicans and the Indiana Pacers being co-champions, barely beating out the New York Knickerbockers. 

The race to avoid relegation to the Fourth Division was equally tight. The three teams fighting for survival were the Detroit Pistons, the Orlando Magic and the Brooklyn Nets. In the end, Brooklyn finished last in the Third Division. Detroit and Orlando finished tied for the next worst record. However, the Magic won the tiebreaker with a 3-1 head-to-head record against Detroit, which will be a Fourth Division team next season.

The Denver Nuggets, who had been demoted to the Fourth Division this season, fought their way back to the Third Division by barely winning the bottom rung ahead of the Sacramento Kings. The Minnesota Timberwolves had good shot at promotion, but they lost their final two bottom level games against the Kings and the Lakers, opening the second promotion for the Kings.

Warriors dominate pro basketball top tier in 2015-16

The Golden State Warriors were impressive enough in 2015-16 for securing the best regular season record of all time. But when we look at them against our First Division that season, they appear even better.

The 2015-16 Golden State Warriors regular season is in the books as the best ever for an NBA team. The Warriors finished 73-9, despite sputtering down the stretch with two home losses in April, finishing ahead of the 72-10 mark set by the Chicago Bulls in 1995-96.

Another way of viewing the Warriors is their performance against the cream of the NBA. Our scheme for promotion and relegation of pro basketball teams happens to originate with the 2015-16 season, putting the Warriors in the First Division.

We had to start somewhere, but it was easy. To decide which teams to place in which division entering 2015-2016, we simply consulted the NBA standings from the previous year. Top top four playoff seeded teams from each conference were placed in the First Division, the second four went into the Second Division, the next four went into the Third Division and the remaining three teams from each conference were placed in the dreaded Fourth Division.

Playing it out in 2015-2016, here is how it came in for the First Division.

Considering only their games against these teams, the top four seeded teams from each conference a year earlier, the Warriors were a dominant 18-1. They always showed up when the game actually stood to be a test of basketball. Probably about half of their losses during the regular season came in raw tests of endurance that the NBA and NHL impose upon their teams.

Relative to other team sports, travel in the NBA and NHL is dizzying. Even with all the soothing perks they receive, we simply cannot expect peak athletic performance night after night from athletes who get on and off of planes and into and out of airports as much as these NBA and NHL players.

Big league baseball teams play twice as many games, 162, but they'll spend three or four days in a road city, so 81 road games is only 27 destinations. But the winter leagues play them one at a time, so they are in and out. A baseball team might not fly 40 times in a season, but a winter team will fly 60 times. A winter team will often get on and off of planes three days in a row. Even a traveling baseball team will spend those three days in one town.

When the Warriors lost, it sometimes smacked of raw burnout. Like the first time they lost, after opening the season with 24 straight wins. It was December 12, 2015, in Milwaukee, the last game of a seven-game road trip that lasted 13 days. The Warriors were in the second game of a road back-to-back, coming off a double-overtime win the night before in Boston.

The Bucks won easily, 108-95. The Warriors had no legs, making nine of 36 shots from outside the lane and only six of 27 from the three-point zone. The Bucks were a middling team hungry for a marquee win at home and the Warriors couldn't put up a fight.

But when the Warriors went up against a real contender like the Clippers, the Cleveland Cavaliers or the Atlanta Hawks, the Warriors were bright-eyed and bushy tailed. An 18-1 slate against this group of First Division teams is impressive, because it was pretty representative of the league's best. Seven of the eight teams here went to the NBA playoffs, five survived to the quarterfinals, three to the semifinals and two to the finals.

To the extent that our groupings are wrong, promotion and relegation is a pretty satisfying way to fix them. For example, it's absurd that the San Antonio Spurs wouldn't appear in any grouping of the league's best eight teams. Turns out, the Spurs had a down regular season, for their high standards, seeding only fifth in the Western Conference for the 2015 playoffs. So, the Spurs began 2015-16 season in our Second Division.

You knew that couldn't last, and it didn't. The Spurs crushed the Second Division with a championship 18-1 record, easily securing their promotion to the First Division in 2016-17. Joining the Spurs in promotion are the Boston Celtics (12-8), a distant second-place team that barely beat out the Dallas Mavericks (11-9) and the Washington Wizzards (10-9).

For the Spurs and Celtics going up, there must be two teams coming down to the Second Division from the First Division. The two teams relegated were the Clippers and the Portland Trail Blazers. The Clippers, with their injuries, couldn't swing with the heavyweights and finished only 7-13 against against the First Division. The Trail Blazers were a vulnerable First Division entrant, the best team in a weak division, and their 6-14 performance against this top tier proved that they do not belong.

On the bottom of the Second Division we find the Brooklyn Nets, who were, predictably, in over their heads at 2-16 in this tier. The Nets will go to the Third Division in 2016-17. Also going down are the 7-13 New Orleans Pelicans. The Milwaukee Bucks appeared doomed to relegation for much of the season, losing nine of their first 12 Second Division games. However, the Bucks rallied with five wins in their last six games and finished 8-11, safely ahead of the Pelicans.

The Third Division produced another easy winner in the Oklahoma City Thunder, which finished well ahead of the Utah Jazz and the Miami Heat. At 16-3, the Thunder is well qualified for Second Division promotion. The Jazz and Heat both finished 12-8, and they split their two games head-to-head. The Jazz gets the prize, though, for points difference in those games. The Heat won, 92-91 on Dec. 9 in Miami, and the Jazz won much bigger, 98-83, on Jan. 9 in Utah.

Phoenix finished 3-16, way in over its head, and is now headed to the Fourth Division, along with the Denver Nuggets.

Now we come to the Fourth Division, the dregs of the league. We have teams here like the Lakers (4-10) and the Philadelphia 76ers (3-10) who can't even hold up against this competition. Both should be relegated out of the Fourth Division, but there's no place lower for them to go.

Perhaps there isn't much to be shown for Phil Jackson's executive leadership of the New York Knickerbockers, so far, but we can say the climbed out of the Fourth Division. The Knicks tied for the division title with the Orlando Magic at 9-4. Both are promoted to the Third Division in 2016-2017.

Lakers vs. Clippers: Not a rivalry

Since the Clippers moved to Los Angeles 28 years ago, they have been the worst franchise in the NBA, while the Lakers have been the best. So, how can we even begin to consider them rivals?

By PINE SISKIN
The Big Leagues in LA

The Lakers and Clippers will play for the second time this season Wednesday night. In its advance story, the Los Angeles Times cautiously raised the possibility of a rivalry, mixing in enough doubt for protection, just in case the question is ridiculous. 

But the question is not ridiculous, even if the answer to the question, "Is Lakers vs. Clippers a rivalry?" can't be anything but, "Of course not!" What's ridiculous is that answer isn't a resounding "Yes!"

Two teams are rivals if they frequently play against each other with something big on the line, directly on the line such that the winner will win it and the loser will thereby lose it. It could be first place for the moment, but it's more likely to be division championships, playoff meetings or bragging rights within a shared community.

So, the conditions are in place for a rivalry between the Lakers and the Clippers, who live in the same division and the same town, but the Clippers have not been up to it. The Lakers got here first (1960) and already owned the town when the Clippers moved up from San Diego in 1984. Since the Clippers arrived, the Lakers have won eight NBA championships and appeared in the NBA Finals three other times. During that same period, the Clippers have two winning seasons. For two generations, LA has been home to the best NBA franchise, and the worst. No rivalry.

As it happens, the Clippers are on the move this year. The floor is leveled, at least for now, with the emergence of Blake Griffin as a star last year, the Clippers' acquisition of Chris Paul this year, and the Lakers' transition away from Phil Jackson's triangle offense. By some measures, this year's Clippers team is their best since they came to Los Angeles. It could even be that the Clippers are the best team in town.

It's still very early. The Clippers are 9-5 and the Lakers are 10-8, losing three straight. Both teams have enormous holes.

But they both are contenders, and that stokes the hint of a rivalry. The Clippers won the previous meeting this year between the two teams, 102-94 on Jan. 14 at Staples Center. The Clippers were the home team. Wednesday night, the Lakers are the home team. Not that it matters. Both teams are at home. And, for once, both are in the thick of it.