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.

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.

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.

Golden State best in first year of west traveling title

No one could touch the Golden State Warriors in the first year of the western traveling championship of professional basketball. The Warriors won 22 games in 2015-15, more than twice as many as any other team.

We placed the first Ear of Corn for the NBA Western Conference into the hands of the Golden State Warriors. By the time the Warriors finally lost in the west half of the league, they already had 19 wins.

So, it's an uphill climb for the rest of the Western Conference to catch the Warriors, who totaled 22 wins to outdistance the San Antonio Spurs (nine wins) and the Oklahoma City Thunder (eight wins) in the first turn with this prize.

Nine of the 15 teams in the west won the prize on this first go-around. The Dallas Mavericks, with three championships, won more than any other team. However, the Mavs were only 2-5 in title defenses.

The only Western Conference team that never took a crack at the prize in its first year was the Sacramento 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.