LA Big Leagues

Bayern Munich regains German historical traveler lead in soccer

2021-08-23T23:15:00.002-07:00

Bayern Munich's dominance in the Bundesliga was not evident in its performance across the German traveling soccer championship for a couple of years. But Bayern came back strong in 2020-21 with 16 games of championship.

We can't say Bayern Munich isn't up to a challenge.

For the last two years, Bayern has struggled in the lineal championship across Germany, even as it was winning the Bundesliga. By the end of 2019-20, the Bavarians had been surpassed on the all-time traveler list in Germany by their perpetual second fiddle, Borussia Dortmund.

Bayern had a chance to challenge for the title on Oct. 24, and succeeded with a 5-0 win against Eintracht Frankfurt in Munich. Then, Bayern defended that title nine times, finally surrendering it against Borussia Mönchengladbach in January.

Bayern picked up another title from Werder Bremen in mid-March and held it for five more games before losing at Mainz on April 24.

For the year, that was 16 games of title for Bayern Munich, which now is up to 52 historically. Dortmund finally picked up a couple games of title at the very end and now is in second place with 41.

Bayer Leverkusen remains in third place with 19 games, followed by Leipzig at 17 and Bremen at 15.

Cruz Azul solidifies historical lead in Mexican soccer traveler

2021-08-23T21:25:00.002-07:00

Cruz Azul rang up another nine games of championship in the Mexican soccer lineal race, expanding its total in the six-year tracking to 42. Not for nothing, the cement mixer won its first national title in 24 years in 2021.

Long before Cruz Azul broke a 24-year domestic championship drought by winning the 2021 Clausura, the big blue was leading Mexico historically in the lineal soccer championship, and the 2020-21 season maybe made that a little more firm.

Cruz began the season with four defenses of a title it won late in 2020, then ended the season with a five-game title that was still alive when the season ended. Cruz Azul will begin 2021-22 with the lineal championship.

The cement mixer now is up to 42 games of Mexican traveling title since tracking began in 2015-16.

León won one title in 2020-21 and held it for 11 games to win honors for the season as the leading lineal champ in Mexico. All-time, León is in second place with 30 games of championship.

After failing in four attempts to win the lineal in 2020-21, Club América fell to third place in the all-time standings with 20 games of championship.

United breaks through for English lineal soccer honors in 2020-21

2021-08-23T19:55:00.001-07:00

Manchester United has had little about which to boast since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013. In 2020-21, though, United finished second in the Premiership and won the lineal championship across England for the year.

The years since Alex Ferguson retired at Manchester United, eight of them now, have not much resembled the 26 previous years under his management.

It's been a trophy here and there, but not two or three every year. There was one season, 2016-17, when José Mourinho coached the team and Zlatan Ibrahimović hit 28 goals in 46 appearances. That year, United won the EFL Cup, the Community Shield and the Europa League. And finished sixth in the Premiership (Word of note: Mourinho and Ibrahimović are back together this year at AC Milan, trying to climb through Serie A.).

Since then, four years come and gone, and United hasn't won a trophy, anywhere. They haven't gone so long without a trophy in a very long time. There was a run of seasons, 14 of them, 1968-69 through 1981-82, Matt Busby's retirement and the first dozen years of aftermath, when all United won the whole time was the FA Cup in 1977. Ferguson arrived in 1986 and, starting with 1990, United had more than two decades of true greatness.

United started playing in 1878 and opened its stadium, Old Trafford, in 1910, but it took another 35 years for United became United. Then, for 25 years after World War II, Busby's Manchester United teams won frequently and dramatically. Following that lull through the 1970s, United found even greater heights under Ferguson, in part, because of the European tournament's huge expansion during the 1990s.

Perhaps, United is waiting on its next great coach. It's amusing to remember that United hired Busby and Ferguson, more than 40 years apart, off the Scottish National Team.

Anyway, we have some good news for Manchester United, which dominated the lineal championship across the top level of English professional soccer in 2020-21. United won two championships and held each for a long time – an 11-game title from late November to late January, and a seven-game title from early March to early May.

Before 2020-21, United was two wins, three draws and seven losses in lineal championship games going to the start of tracking with the 2015-16 season. Now, United has 20 games of title, still well behind Liverpool, which has 55 games of the title, 51 of them from 2018 to 2020.

Manchester City had one eight-game championship, improving its second-place historical total to 34 games. United now is third with 20 games of championship, followed by Chelsea and West Ham (17 each) and Tottenham Hotspur (16).

Shortened 2019-20 French pyramid titles PSG, Marseille and Brest

2021-08-22T19:33:00.002-07:00

The French government ended the domestic soccer season without even postponing it first after coronavirus started coursing through the country in March 2020. So, however the standings were, that's how they ended.

In France, the decision was made swiftly to end the 2019-20 pro soccer season once coronavirus began shutting down the country in March.

The French internal pyramid season had progressed pretty far, and the problems here aren't quite as difficult as those in Mexico, where the season ended at the same time. Most teams had played seven or eight of their ten games divisional games, enough to tell us what couldn't change, or probably wouldn't.

In the French Big Six, for example, Paris Saint-German had 18 points and Rennes had 13, and each had played seven games with three remaining. In the baseball vernacular, Paris Saint-Germain was waiting on a magic number of two with a combined six games remaining. Pretty good chance PSG was winning the Big Six. Ligue 1 declared no winners, but we're not Ligue 1, so we're declaring PSG the Big Six winner.

We can also live with demoting Nice and Lyon from the bottom. Lyon had played eight games, as many as any team in the Big Six, and still was in last place. Nice was two points behind fourth-place Saint Etienne after each had played seven games, so it's not like Nice is getting an entirely unfair shake.

In the Middle Six, also, for the number of games that were played, Marseille as champion and Monaco as runner-up is fair enough. Montpellier, in third place, can't complain that it didn't get as many games as Monaco. It can complain that it didn't get as many games Marseille. But if Montpellier had that game and won it, Marseille still would have been ahead.

On the bottom, Amiens and Lille are deserving relegates. Amiens put seven points in the standings with eight games. Lille had only six games, but so did the sixth-place team, Bordeaux, which survived.

Good race in the French Little Six(ish). Would have been good to play it out. The teams being promoted are Brest and Angers. Brest played more games (12) than Angers (10) or the third-place team, Nimes (11).

But if we were to make some kind of adjustment for the interruption to the season, say determine standings by average number of standings points achieved per games played, the order would come up Angers (1.9), Brest (1.67) and Nimes (1.64). So, Brest and Angers would still be going up.

Juventus wins second straight Italian Big Six, big

2021-08-22T18:35:00.001-07:00

Juventus won its second consecutive Italian Big Six in 2019-20, and Atalanta was the runner-up for the second straight time.

For the second straight year, Juventus won the Italian Big Six with some margin over Atalanta in 2019-20.

Coming to the end of July, Juventus led the race with 6-1-2 and 19 points, followed by Atalanta with 5-2-2 and 17 points. Atalanta went to Milan on July 31 needing a win to go over, but the game ended in a 1-1 draw.

Thus, Juventus clinched, it's Aug. 1 game with Roma didn't matter, and Roma won it, 3-1. Atalanta, again, finished second. Napoli, the 2017-18 Italian Big Six winner, finished a distant third with 13 points.

In fourth, we have a tie between Roma and Milan, and here we need to break the tie so the loser can be relegated.

Soccer took a leap forward going on 30 years ago, when three standings points for a win replaced two as the international standard. The idea was to make teams lay out for wins instead of settling for draws. Even those of us who consider a draw a satisfying result don't wish to encourage them.

One can see in the difference between Roma and Milan the difference it makes. Roma lost six of its ten games, and Milan lost only four of its ten. But Roma won every game it didn't lose, whereas Milan drew half of its remaining games. More wins is more glory. When we have a tie between two teams after the same number of games, we see if one of them has more wins before checking goal differential. By that reckoning, it's better to be Roma.

So, Roma will remain in the Big Six, while Milan will go down to the Middle Six. Also going down is the last-place team, Torino, which but for one more goal in a draw, would have been tied with Roma.

The top two teams in the Italian Middle Six are unusually strong. In most of the big European leagues with four Champions League berths, it is rare for two of those berths to come from the Middle Six. But that happened here with Lazio and Internazionale. Lazio, the second team in Rome, had a magical season going before covid stopped everything. Internazionale has yo-yoed every year from the Middle Six to the Big Six, back and forth.

No one else in the Middle Six came even close to contending. Cagliari and Sampdoria, the two teams furthest from the prize, will go down in 2020-21 to the Italian Little Six.

Hellas Verona finished at the very bottom of the Little Six(ish) in 2017-18 and was relegated out of Serie A for the following season. But Hellas was back in the Serie A fiercely in 2019-20, storming to the Little Six championship. Across Serie A, Hellas finished ninth, pretty good for a team freshly promoted.

So, Hellas will go to the Middle Six in 2020-21. Also moving up is Parma, which finished second in the Little Six.

Bayern Munich captures third German Big Six in 2019-20

2021-08-22T17:49:00.001-07:00

Bayern Munich never wins the German Big Six easily, but always ends up winning it. In 2019-20, the Bavarians had a new challenger, Eintracht Frankfurt.

Bayern Munich won its third German Big Six title in three tries, ending another thrilling campaign for this German internal pyramid. Like the first two Big Six championships, this 2019-20 version was a narrow escape for the Bavarians.

As we entered this third year of the German Big Six, four teams were in it for the third time – Bayern, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig and 1899 Hoffenheim. But when covid shut down German soccer in March 2020, the Big Six leader was an interloper, Eintracht Frankfurt, standing 4-2-2 with 14 points, while Bayern was 3-3-2 and 12 points.

Each team had two Big Six games left, and one was head-to-head. They played that game May 23, and Bayern crushed Eintracht, 5-2, in Munich. Three days later, Bayern went to Dortmund and dropped Borussia, 1-0. With that, Bayern was done for the year in the Big Six with 5-3-2, 18 points.

On June 12, Leipzig went to Hoffenheim and turned up a 2-0 win, improving its station to 4-4-1, 16 points. One Big Six game remained, three days later, in Leipzig against Dortmund. With a win, Leipzig would win the Big Six championship.

Dortmund scored at the 30-minute mark of the first half, and that was all the scoring until extra time at the very end, when Dortmund scored again, both goals by Erling Braut Haaland. Thus, Bayern Munich won the Big Six, once again. The win for Dortmund also ensured that it would be spared relegation to the Middle Six.

Instead, Hoffenheim is going down, for the first time, along with Hertha, the 2018-19 Middle Six champions and the 2019-20 Big Six cellar dwellers.

Coming up from the Middle Six will be Bayer Leverkusen and VfL Wolfsburg. Leverkusen is our yo-yo team between the Big Six and Middle Six, alternating between them annually. Wolfsburg was our wooden spoon in 2017-18, the last place team in the Little Six. But the Wolves rallied to second place in the Little Six a year later, and now they have earned promotion to the Big Six as the Middle Six runner-up.

On the bottom of the Middle Six, obviously Mainz had a tough time of it. Against the rest of the Bundesliga, Mainz won 11, drew three and lost 10. Now, this is a tough Middle Six. Borussia Mönchengladbach qualified for the Champions League, while Leverkusen and Wolfsburg both qualified for the Europa League. But no wins? We'll note that against the top four Big Six teams – Bayern, Dortmund, Eintracht and Leipzig – Mainz was 3-5.

But the Middle Six assignment isn't about beating Bayern, Dortmund, Eintracht and Leipzig. It's about beating Mönchengladbach, Leverkusen and Wolfsburg, and Mainz couldn't do it. So, Mainz drops down to the Little Six, along with Augsburg.

Union Berlin won the German Little Six and moves up to the middle. Werder Bremen gets the second-place promotion in a goal-differential tiebreaker over FC Köln. The promotion could have gone to Köln, because Bremen finished 16th in the Bundesliga and needed to survive a relegation playoff to remain in the circuit. Bremen handled it well enough, splitting two legs with FC Heidenheim and prevailing on away goals.

Barca wins another Spanish Big Six in 2019-20, but Real closes in

2021-08-21T23:46:00.002-07:00

Of all the new divisions to come from the divisions of top domestic leagues into internal pyramids, the Spanish Big Six is the toughest place to win a game.

We won't weigh in on which domestic league across the world is the best, but we will point out that when we parse some of these into internal pyramids, the Spanish Big Six is as brutal as it comes.

It is really hard to win a game. It's hard to win a game if you're Barcelona. It's hard to win a game if you're Real Madrid. It's hard to win a game, period.

First two years we ran the Spanish Big Six, nobody could win half of its games. In 2019-20, our third year, two teams finally reached that threshold (Barcelona and Real Madrid), just by a little.

Barcelona and Real Madrid both finished 6-3-1. Head-to-head, Real Madrid won 2-0 in Madrid and they drew, 0-0, in Barcelona. However, the tiebreaker here is goal differential, and Barcelona has a nice cushion, plus-15 to plus-10. Thus, Barcelona wins its third straight Spanish Big Six title out of three that have been manifest in these pages.

Atlético Madrid and Sevilla are the other Spanish Big Six survivors. Atlético Madrid is the only team besides Barcelona and Real Madrid to appear in all three editions of the division, and they all will be in the fourth for 2020-21. The top four in the La Liga standings for 2019-20 are the same teams as this Big Six top four, but the order there puts Real ahead of Barça.

The Big Six was a little too fast and thick for Eibar and Real Betis, which both are headed to the Middle Six. Coming up from the Middle Six to the Big Six are ... so now we have to backtrack for a moment.

The Spanish Middle Six standings reveal that the winner is Leganés, which lost only once in ten games and racked up three wins and two draws in five road games. The Cucumber Growers finished more than a win better than second-place Real Sociedad. Clearly, Leganés deserves promotion to the Spanish Big Six.

But ... say, what? You mean that across La Liga, Leganés stunk up the joint so badly that it's being kicked down to the Segunda Division? You mean, the team that couldn't be handled by anyone else in the Middle Six managed only two wins and nine draws against 17 losses against the other clubs in the domestic league?

Yeah, it turns out that on the La Liga ladder, Leganés is 18th out of 20. Eight wins, 12 draws, 18 losses. Outta here!

So, what do we do with the pyramid? First, Leganés will be demoted here, not promoted. Next, we were going to demote the Big Six last-place team, Real Betis, and promote the Middle Six second-place team, Real Sociedad, and there's no reason not to, so we will. Now, we choose our poison: promote a third-place team, or fail to demote a seventh-place team? Do we promote Athletic Bilbao or do we reprieve Eibar?

In these cases, we like it decided on the field (always good to remember that anything happening during the season can always turn up in a tiebreaker). When Bilbao and Eibar played at Eibar, 2-2 draw. At Bilbao, 0-0 draw. It goes to Bilbao, on away goals. Bilbao gets promoted to the Big Six with Sociedad, while Eibar gets demoted to the Middle Six with Betis.

It's unusual to demote a team from the top of some division. Does it mean we no longer demote two teams from the bottom? We have to make that decision the same way in the transition between the Middle Six and the Little Six(ish).

The bottom two teams in the Middle Six were Villarreal and Espanyol. Somehow, Villarreal finished fifth in La Liga and fifth in the Spanish Middle Six. The pyramids are nuts, sometimes. We're demoting Leganés, which then will be washed out of this pyramid when the domestic divisions change over. We know Espanyol, clearly the last-place team in the Middle Six, also will be demoted and washed away (Espanyol finished at the bottom of the La Liga table). We also know that the top two Little Six(ish) teams, Granada and Getafe, will be promoted.

Now, the same kind of question arises: Do we reprieve Villarreal in the Middle Six, or do we promote the third-place team from the Little Six(ish), Levant? Head-to-head, each team won at home, 2-1. That means each team had one away goal. At this point, we shall rule that no compelling reason has emerged through two tiebreakers to demote a third team from the Middle Six or promote a third team from the Little Six(ish), so Villarreal and Levant shall stay put.

Villarreal, by the way, was not a dud team by any stretch, qualifying for the Europa League at the group stage. And Villarreal would actually have been demoted to the Little Six(ish) if Leganés, somewhere in La Liga, had been able to knock in one goal to turn a draw into a win and edge out of the league-wide relegation zone.

Interesting. But it's a very strange league. And a great one.

Santos runs title straight in Mexican soccer internal pyramid

2021-08-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

Santos has come as if from nowhere in the last three years to win the Mexican Big Six in a covid-shortened 2019-20 campaign.

We offer three cheers for Santos Laguna, which has turned up a neat feat in the first three years of our internal pyramid for the top level of Mexican professional soccer.

Santos has won, consecutively, the Little Six, the Middle Six and now, in 2019-20, the Big Six. Admittedly, the latest season was shortened because of covid, which cut it off in March. We decided here to just live with the results that were in.

Each team plays 10 games in its division, ideally, and here we had everybody playing seven or eight. It was enough for the standings to take on some kind of shape. If everybody had played four or five games, that would only tell us half of the story or less. But here we have only two games left for most teams, and the teams that are ahead are pretty likely to stay ahead in that short margin. It's going to deserve an asterisk historically, but acts of God are like that.

It did end close in the First Division. Santos had 14 points, with UANL and América only three behind. One game that was not played was América at Santos, but Santos won the game in Mexico City, 2-1.

Two years ago, 2017-18, Monterrey was an impenetrable force, racking up seven wins and three draws in 10 Big Six games and allowing only five goals in the process. In 2019-20, short season aside, Monterrey lost five of its eight games and will be relegated, along with Big Six cellar-dwelling Toluca, which showed few signs of life.

The halted season certainly worked well for Tijuana and Pachuca, which both are headed back to the Big Six after finishing in the Middle Six top two when the music stopped.

A little heartburn here. Tijuana and Pachuca each got nine of their games in, landing on 16 and 15 standings points, respectively. The third-place team, Morelia, finished at 13 points, but played only seven games. And one of the games that was not played was Pachuca at Morelia. This actually tells us less than an American sports fan is given to expect, because it turns out that road wins and draws are both about as likely as home wins in the MX. In fact, Morelia won the game at Pachuca, 2-1.

Anyway, tough break for Morelia. They're staying in the Middle Six, along with another surprising team, Cruz Azul. The big, blue cement mixer was on a down cycle when we began this pyramid, so the first season was Little Six, but Azul got itself promoted immediately Now, though, Cruz Azul has failed in two attempts to move into the Big Six, finishing fourth in the middle section for two consecutive years.

Pumas UNAM and Puebla are the clear teams to demote here. UNAM has yo-yoed annually between the Middle Six and the Little Six, now going back to the Little Six. In 2017-18, the first year we ran this, Puebla was our Wooden Spoon team, the last-place team in the Little Six. The next season, Puebla won the Little Six. But after seven games and one win in the Middle Six, La Franja is headed back to the basement.

We do get some clarity in the Little Six, where there is no question about the best teams through eight games. Champion Guadalajara rang up six wins and a draw, with it's average result being a 2-1 win. Second-place Necaxa wasn't just a game better than third-place Atlético San Luis, but also eight notches better in goal differential.

Liverpool flies past City to capture 2019-20 English Big Six

2021-08-21T22:23:00.003-07:00

Liverpool blitzed through the English Big Six just as it dominated the Premiership in 2019-20, taking this elite division by a whopping six points over two-time defending champion Manchester City.

Manchester City entered the 2019-20 soccer season defending the first two championships of the English Big Six, amassing a record of 17-0-3. City was riding high.

Along with all of that, City entered the season defending all four English domestic championships, an unprecedented achievement.

But the end of all this was signaled on Nov. 10, when the Citizens ventured to Liverpool and faced a rival on a collision course with the Premiership title. With it's 3-1 win, Liverpool was off. The Reds didn't lose at all in the Premiership until Feb. 29, by which time they had 26 wins and a draw.

When play resumed in June after the covid pause, Liverpool no longer was such a dominant force – four wins, a draw and two losses. One of those losses came at Manchester City. The Citizens already had a strong hold on second place. But it wasn't as good as the hold Liverpool had on first.

At the bottom of the Big Six, Everton and West Ham are going down. Everton finished 12th in the Premiership and West Ham 16th.

The teams coming up will be Arsenal and Southampton, which took second place with a total goals tiebreaker over Crystal Palace. Arsenal turned in a peculiar performance even for a Middle Six winner, winning only four of its 10 games. But the Gunners didn't lose any, and that does come to matter. As these standings show, Southampton and Crystal Palace each lost two games that Arsenal didn't.

It does seem odd, finding Manchester United lingering in the Middle Six, especially when they came up third in the Premiership standings. Against this Middle Six, though, United won only two home games and one road game. The two United beat at home, Bournemouth and Watford, also are the two teams being demoted to the Third Division. United lost to both of them on the road.

Watford and Bournemouth had both just been promoted to the middle, and now they're headed back to the bottom.

Leicester City, which had just been demoted to the bottom, will return the middle after a dominant Little Six(ish) performance in which it lost only two of 14 games.

The other promotion goes to Sheffield United, which had just rejoined the Premiership as the second-place team in the 2018-19 Championship and produced a fine Little Six(ish) runner-up performance. Norwich City, which won the 2018-19 Championship, flopped in the Premiership, finishing on the bottom of the league ladder and the Little Six(ish) standings.

Efes sneaks up on Euro Big Six title, falls barely short to Red Army

2021-08-18T21:02:00.006-07:00

A scalding race in the 2020-21 Euro Big Six ended in a tie between Anadolu Efes and CSKA. But the Muscovites prevailed on a tiebreaker, thanks to a 35-point win over the Turkish squad in December.

The championship race in the top division of the European basketball pyramid looks quite closer than it actually was. It certainly looks close. CSKA and Anadolu Efes finished tied for first at 7-3.

What actually happened ...

Anadolu Efes went to Moscow last Dec. 15 in a two-loss funk to face a CSKA squad that had won eight straight games in the Euroleague. The Red Army five was in no mood for lenience against their reeling rivals and rang up a 100-65 win.

With that, Efes fell to 1-2 in the Euro Big Six, while CSKA stood 4-1 and Barcelona, the only team to beat CSKA, was 3-0. A week later, though, Macabbi beat Barça 68-67, in Spain. A week after that, Efes beat Barcelona in Istanbul, and, perhaps, was getting in the hunt. But the Efes fell the following week, against Real Madrid.

At the turn, then, CSKA was 4-1, Barcelona was 3-2 and Anadolu Efes was 2-3.

On Jan. 15, Barcelona beat CSKA for the second time, this one in Moscow, making CSKA 5-2 and Barcelona 4-2. That was the race. Then, Efes beat Barcelona in Spain, bringing Efes to 3-3 and Barcelona to 4-3.

When the Efes prepared for their return match with CSKA in Istanbul on March 4, the Euro Big Six race had nothing to do with them. CSKA was 6-2, Barcelona was 5-3 and Anadolu was down there at 3-3. And even if the Efes could somehow end up in a tie with CSKA, how were they going to beat that 35-point differential from Moscow?

The Efes gave it a good crack, ever mindful that the Russian team had spanked them pretty good. The home team led, 55-28, at halftime and had the margin up to 30 at the end of three quarters. A three-pointer by Shane Larkin made it 97-64 for Anadolu with 1:41 left. With one more three-pointer, they would have broken the tiebreaker.

Didn't happen. Anadolu Efes won, 100-70, but they still were five points down in that tiebreaker, and that was starting to look like it might matter, because now CSKA was 6-3, Barcelona 5-3 and Anadolu 4-3.

As the weeks went by, Efes kept winning. When March 30 arrived, CSKA was done in the Big Six at 7-3, while Efes and Barcelona each was 6-3. On that day, though, Efes ran Real Madrid off the court in the Spanish capital city, while Barcelona suffered a wrenching overtime loss, 99-94, to Macabbi in Tel Aviv.

So, the numbers were in with Efes and CSKA tied on top at 7-3, but CSKA winning the head-to-head tiebreaker by five points. If Barcelona had beaten Macabbi, we would have had a three-way tie at the top with Barcelona also at 7-3. The tiebreaker would have been complicated because Barcelona beat CSKA twice and Efes beat Barcelona twice. It would have gone to total point differential between the three teams, in which case, the winner would have been Barcelona at plus-14, followed by Efes at plus-four and CSKA minus-18.

We note, also, that while the top of the Euro Big Six standings show CSKA, Efes and Barça, in that order, the Euroleague standings have the very same top three, though leading with Barcelona and following with CSKA and Efes. Not only were the same three teams on top of both standings, but they, along with our lineal champ, Olimpia of Milan, were the Euroleague Final Four.

In the semis, Efes won the rubber game against CSKA, advancing to the Finals. Barcelona beat Olimpia. And, in the championship game, Efes defeated Barcelona for the third time in the season to win it all.

The pyramid is a regular season affair that doesn't include playoffs, so there's no reason to use playoffs to break pyramid ties. Regardless, Efes built a nice case for themselves in the postseason.

The other Big Six survivor was Macabbi, which survived by winning the division finale against Barcelona. The team right beneath, Real Madrid, cost itself relegation by losing its division finale against Anadolu. Real is going down, along with Žalgiris, 1-9 with its only win coming against Efes.

On top of the Euro Middle Six, we find Alba of Berlin, which, in two years of Euroleague licensing has won two pyramid divisions after capturing the Little Six last year. Alba finished 8-2 in the Middle Six, which is a pretty good trick, considering it was only 12-22 across the Euroleague. Fenerbahçe, which was just demoted to the Middle Six, is going right back to the Big Six as the runner-up to Alba.

The bottom three teams in the Middle Six were Panathinaikos, Red Star and Khimki, and the bottom of the overall Euroleague standings were the same three teams in the same order. So, we're pretty weak at the bottom of the Middle Six, but that's why we have demotion. Red Star and Khimki are going down, while Panathinaikos survives.

Khimki actually is a little more than going down. They've lost their Euroleague status for a couple of reasons. Mostly, they didn't regain their berth from the VTB League, the top Russian basketball league. Second, a VTB team, UNICS from Kazan, won one of the EuroCup berths, so they will enter the Euro Little Six in Khimki's place.

The Euro Little Six winner was Olympiakos, on a remote tiebreaker, over Olimpio. Head to head, Olympio won its home game, 90-79, while Olympiakos won its home game, 86-75. So, they're even on point differential. Awful as it is, we have to go to road points here, and that's Olympiakos with 79.

Olimpio also was a Euroleague semifinalist and the winner of the European lineal, so they're both legit promotions. The rest of the Little Six, though, was about as good and nothing was decided here until very late, as the whole division bunched within two games.

The other team being promoted, Olympiakos, tied Olimipa at 6-4 in the Little Six. There are no demotions straight out of the Little Six, of course, but Valencia Basket, which had been in the Euroleague as a EuroCup finalist, will leave the Euroleague and be replaced in the Little Six by Monaco, which entered the most recent EuroCup Finals against UNICS.

Monaco won that best-of-three championship in two games, 89-87 and 86-83.

Olimpio squeezes through tight race for 2020-21 Euro hoop lineal

2021-08-18T20:39:00.004-07:00

The traveling championship through the top European basketball league in 2020-21 had many homes, spending barely more time with the Milanese club Olimpio than with anyone else.

Real Madrid and (Milan) Olimpia staged a strong race for the lineal championship across European pro basketball in 2020-21, and the title got around a bit, with 10 of the Euroleague's 18 teams holding it at least once.

In the end, Olimpia prevailed, because Olimpia had an extra opportunity and Real Madrid did not.

Real Madrid claimed the title at the start of December and held it for the entire month, six games, before succumbing to Olimpia at the start of January. Olimpia then held the title for all of January, six games, before succumbing to ASVEL at the start of February.

So, Real and Olimpia each held six games of the championship and it kicked around the rest of the league without anyone really claiming it. However, the Lithuanian club, Žalgiris, ended ASVEL's three-game title with a victory in Kaunas at the start of March, just in time for Olimpia to visit.

By defeating Žalgiris, then defending the new championship in Moscow against CSKA, Olimpia brought itself up to eight games of championship.

When Barcelona snagged the title from Olimpia later in March, only four rounds of games remained in the season. Typically, a different team won the title in each of those rounds, enabling Olimpia to claim the lineal championship for the season.

Mavs wait out Clippers, Nuggets, for 2020-21 Super League title

2021-08-16T23:40:00.003-07:00

The final day of the pro basketball season arrived with a three-way tie on top of the Super League. The tie was broken on the final day in quite a surprising way.

The Super League race across pro basketball in 2020-21 proved to be the most exciting in history, which is saying nothing because this is only the second time we're run it. Terrific race, though, by any standard.

When May began, the Boston Celtics held the upper hand at 12-4, but their lead was tenuous, just one-half game ahead of the Clippers (14-7) and the Denver Nuggets (13-6) and one game ahead of the Dallas Mavericks (14-8).

When the season ended barely more than two weeks later, the entire top four had been turned upside-down, and that's because when it was time to win the championship, three of the top four couldn't hang with three of the bottom four.

First, the Celtics collapsed. Losing to the Portland Trail Blazers, 129-119, at home on May 2 was a set-back, but losing a back-to-back at home against the Miami Heat on May 9 and 11 was a back-breaker. Like that, the Celtics went from the top to all the way out of it at 12-7 and their Super League season was done.

The Mavericks had only one game left and handled it, thrashing the Heat 127-113 in Miami on May 4. The Mavs were in the clubhouse at 15-8.

The Nuggets momentarily moved into a first-play with the Celtics by beating the Clippers, 110-104, at Staples Center on May 1, but fell right back with a 93-89 loss to the Lakers two nights later in the same venue. Three nights after that, the Clippers bounced back with a 118-94 win against the Lakers at Staples Center.

When we came to May 16, the final day of the season, we had a three-way tie for first place between the Mavs (15-8), Denver (14-7) and the Clippers (15-8). But the Nuggets and Clippers each had a chance to win it on the final day of the season. Oklahoma City, a miserable 3-17 in the Super League, was to visit the Clippers on Pico Boulevard. The Nuggets were visiting Portland, another second-division team in the Super League.

If the Clippers and Nuggets both won, they would finish tied on top in the games column (though Denver would barely prevail by percentage). The tiebreaker belonged to Denver, winning two-of-three during the year from the Clippers, so Denver would have won the title. However, if Denver lost and the Clippers won, then the Clippers would have won the title.

As the standings reveal, neither of those things happened. The Nuggets got drenched, 132-116 in Portland (In the NBA standings, the Blazers desperately needed the win for a playoff berth). The Clippers, already secure in the playoffs, fell to the Thunder, 117-112. Overall, it was only OKC's second win since March 31; they were 2-23 after that.

So, the Mavericks prevailed, clinching a berth in the 2021-22 Super League, though they also have qualified on a couple of other ways. And the moral of the story is that we see winners and losers when we look at standings, but in this league, don't you believe it. We're two years down in the basketball Super League and it has proved interesting.

The next Super League will have the Clippers, Nuggets, Mavericks and Milwaukee Bucks from the top half of this year's First Division. The top three teams from the Second Division going in will be the Philadelphia 76ers, the Utah Jazz and the Miami Heat. Entering from the Third Division will be the Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. The Fourth Division champion New York Knicks also qualified, as did the Memphis Grizzlies for winning the intercontinental lineal championship.

One thing we can't say about the basketball Super League is that it's static. When we open the new season for 2021-22 with the third running of the Super League, the only teams participating for the third year will be Denver and Milwaukee.

Three other teams (Boston, Oklahoma City and Portland) participated in the first two Super Leagues and will miss the third. Ten other teams have been in one of the two Super Leagues, and four other teams will participate for the first time next season. Another 11 teams will be fighting through the pyramid for their first Super League berths next year.

Nuggets nudge Clippers for 2020-21 First Division pro hoop title

2021-08-16T23:27:00.001-07:00

Former Clippers guard Austin Rivers played an interesting role in the game that clinched the First Division pro basketball championship for the Denver Nuggets. Down the pyramid, the Lakers won the Third Division, their second straight pyramid title.

The First Division championship in pro basketball for 2020-21 was to be decided when the Denver Nuggets went to the Staples Center on May 1. Supplying the local opposition were the Clippers, who fiercely debated the evening's visitors for the top division title.

The Nuggets entered the game 13-5, while the Clippers were 12-5. The Clippers had two games left in the First Division after this, and a win here would put the tiebreaker situation in their favor, while a Denver win would clinch it for the Nuggets. The Clippers and Nuggets had split their first two games, and this one would decide it. If the Nuggets won, then the Clippers could win their last two to force a tie at 14-6, but the Nuggets would hold the tiebreaker.

In a bit of a cruel twist for the Clippers, the man of the night, in a puzzling sense, was their old shooting guard, now wearing the clothes of a beggar, Austin Rivers.

Rivers, it's well known, is the son of Doc Rivers, and he was the kid everyone had to have coming out of high school in Winter Park, FL, in 2011, just 10 years ago. He selected Duke, where he hit a big three-pointer to beat North Carolina. A year later, he entered the NBA draft, taken by the New Orleans Pelicans with the No. 10 overall selection (The top pick that year, Anthony Davis of Kentucky, also went to New Orleans.).

Little injuries have followed Rivers around since then. A career shooting percentage of .418 that doesn't hang with NBA shooting guards has made him mostly a second-string player. Three years after drafting Rivers, the Pelicans packed him off to the Boston Celtics in a three-team deal. Three days later, Rivers went to the Clippers in another three-team deal.

Now playing for his father, Rivers began to receive serious playing time, getting up over 33 minutes per game in 2017-18. But his weak shooting continued, and so did the persistent injuries. He averaged 15.1 points per game to go with averages of four assists and 2.4 rebounds.

Not terrific numbers, but, at this point, the Clippers had a 25-year-old player who might be figuring it out and he was, after all, the son of the head coach. So, they traded him, straight up, to Washington for Marcin Gortat, who was 10 years older and proved to have so little value that the Clippers released him before the end of the next season.

And long before the Clippers released Gortat, the Wizards traded Rivers to the Phoenix Suns, who immediately waived him.

Rivers caught on with the Houston Rockets, where he also caught on to the local penchant for three-point shooting and reached a new career-high scoring average of 17.3 in 2019-20. Now that Rivers had a little value again, he was again traded, this time along with three other guys to the New York Knickerbockers for Issuf Sanon, a Ukrainian guard who was drafted in 2018 by the Washington Wizards and has since then been traded twice for a total of three draft picks and four players without ever signing an NBA contract. This was last November, a month before the 2020-21 season began.

Before the end of March, the Knicks packed up Rivers in the third three-team deal of what has become a journeyman career. This one involved seven players and four draft picks, moving Rivers to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Three days later, the Thunder waived him.

Three weeks later, on April 20, Rivers signed a 10-day contract with the Nuggets. On March 30, he signed a contract for the rest of the season. Two days later, on May 1, the Nuggets were in Staples Center to play the Clippers with the First Division championship on the line.

The box score for that night shows that Rivers played for 26 minutes. He took seven shots, three of them from three-point range, and he made one of them, a three-pointer. Otherwise, two defensive rebounds, four assists, a steal, a personal foul, three points.

He made two appearances, the first being the most important. Rivers entered the game with 6:12 remaining in the first quarter and the Clippers leading, 18-7. When Rivers returned to the bench with 5:39 left in the second quarter, the Nuggets were ahead, 44-36. That's a 37-19 run for the Nuggets in 11:51. The points were scored by Michael Porter, Jr. (10), JaMychal Green (nine) and Paul Millsaps (eight).

Rivers during that 11:51 kicked in two missed shots (one was a three), two defensive rebounds, two assists, a steal and a shooting foul. No points. But at the end of the night, his plus-minus was plus-22, by far the best of any player in the game. This seems to tell us absolutely nothing. But it also makes us wonder what Rivers must have done to be plus-22 with so little in his box score line.

Surely, he wasn't an innocent bystander. He played another 14 minutes, these without any change in the score margin. Strange things can happen during that period in the NBA game when the subs come in, but when a sub comes in for 12 minutes and your team swings the game 19 points in its favor, he must have something to do with it.

Anyway, the Nuggets won, 110-104, capturing the First Division. The Clippers dropped their final two games at the end of the season and formally finished two games back.

These were the First Division standings after games of March 3:

W L GB Ppct.

Milwaukee 5 2 – .533

San Antonio 6 3 – .532

Denver 7 4 – .531

CLIPPERS 4 3 1 .5111

Dallas 5 4 1 .5106

Houston 4 6 2 .479

Portland 3 6 3 .468

Oklahoma City 4 10 4½ .434

Obviously, quite a lot changed during the second half of the season. The Nuggets won seven of their next eight games to clinch on May 1. The Clippers were always a step behind the Nuggets and stayed there, but they did move ahead of Milwaukee, which couldn't break even in the second half, and San Antonio, which lost nine of its last 11 First Division games.

Of course, the Bucks won the NBA championship, so it's not like their season was a total loss. And the Mavericks, who finished in the top half of the First Division, won the Super League. But neither was much in the hunt for the First Division title by the middle of April.

The Rockets didn't collapse quite as badly as San Antonio, at least not in the First Division. Overall, the Rockets lost 45 of their last 51 games, so losing only seven of ten in the top tier isn't so bad. But it still landed them in last place at the end, as they didn't start their skid in a first-place tie like the Spurs.

The two teams on the bottom of the March 3 standings, the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Portland Trail Blazers, each finished gloriously to avoid relegation. The Thunder won four of their last six, starting with a March 4 win against San Antonio that secured the tiebreaker against the Spurs, and ending with a win against the Clippers on the last day of the season to force that tie and beat the Spurs in a relegation decision.

The Trail Blazers, apparently doomed on May 7, had one foot in the Second Division with a 6-11 record at the top level. But the Blazers beat the Spurs on May 8, securing all the tiebreakers with the Spurs and Thunder. On May 10, they defeated the Rockets, clinching at least that tie and condemning the Rockets to relegation. They didn't even need to beat the new champions, the Nuggets, on the final day of the season to avoid relegation, but they did, anyway, and it did make a huge difference in the Super League.

So, the Spurs and Rockets are going down to the Second Division. There was never much doubt which two teams would be coming up from the Second Division to play in the top level next season. The Philadelphia 76ers had the best regular season record across the NBA in the Eastern Conference, and the Utah Jazz were that team in the Western Conference. They finished, in that order, on top of the Second Division.

The remainder of the division was a wild scramble simultaneously to snag the one remaining Super League berth in the Second Division and to avoid relegation to the Third Division.

Going to May 1, the division separated to a clear top half and a bottom half. On top, there was Philadelphia (11-3), Utah (10-5), New Orleans (8-5) and Boston (8-7). On the bottom half were Miami (6-8), Golden State (4-7), Indiana (6-10) and Toronto (4-12). The Raptors already were guaranteed relegation and the other three were in danger.

Miami rallied with wins in its remaining three games, including a back-to-back with the Celtics, to finish 9-8 and snag third place to land in next year's Super League. Indiana also won its last two. However because Golden State won three of its remaining four, the Pacers were stuck in the relegation zone.

The Pacers and Heat were the two teams promoted this year to the Second Division, and the difference for each between a Super League bid and relegation back to the Third Division was razor thin. The Pacers won two out of three against the Heat, so it's a bit to ask for them to sweep three, but that would have spared them relegation and put them in the Super League.

The Pacers would have been 9-9, tied with New Orleans, and they held that tiebreaker, barely (two-game split, one-point differential for Indiana). The Heat would have been 8-9, with Golden State at 7-8. Miami would have beaten out Golden State, .49090 to .49056. We round to the ten-thousandths of a percentage point and if it comes up the same, we consider it a tie. Here, it goes to the Heat, .4909 to .4906, and Golden State would have been relegated.

The Third Division wasn't nearly so interesting or complicated. The Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets finished on top, in that order, the same order by which they had been promoted from the Fourth Division. Both will go to the Second Division and the Elite League in 2021-22. The Lakers finished a game ahead of the Nets, who finished two games in front of the Atlanta Hawks and the Charlotte Hornets, who finished tied for third.

The bottom of the Third Division finds the Minnesota Timberwolves lonely and in last place. The Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers finished tied for sixth, which is a harmless place to be, but that means they also tied for seventh, which is the relegation zone. The head-to-head tiebreaker is clear: Orlando won all three meetings, leading by 19, 21 and 22 points entering the fourth quarters of those games. Cleveland is going down.

The two teams moving up from the Fourth Division are the champion New York Knicks (10-3) and the runner-up Phoenix Suns (8-3), who actually won their two meetings with the Knicks. The Suns' poison pill was an 0-3 start in the division with losses to Detroit, Washington and Memphis.

The Suns appeared headed to another dismal Fourth Division output, but they won their remaining eight games, including their final two against the Knicks, and took second place ahead of Memphis, which bolted to a 4-1 start. Entering April 26, the Suns and Grizzlies were tied for second at 6-3, but the Suns went on to beat the Knicks twice, while Memphis lost to the Knicks and Detroit.

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

2021-08-08T21:16:00.002-07:00

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).

Heat hustles to tie Hawks in 2020-21 Eastern hoop traveler

2021-08-08T21:00:00.001-07:00

A late rally enabled the Miami Heat to take the all-time lead in the Eastern pro basketball traveling championship while denying the Atlanta Hawks a berth in the next Super League.

The Miami Heat produced two four-game championships in the Eastern pro basketball lineal chase for 2020-21, taking over the all-time lead in the standings for the East.

The Heat finished the season tied with the Atlanta Hawks on the top rung of the Eastern ladder with eight wins each. The Hawks produced a seven-game title that lasted for all of March and into April, then added one game of title in April, bringing their total to eight.

The Heat entered May with four games of championship, but the procured the title from Charlotte with a May 2 win on the road, then defended the championship three times, tying Atlanta at eight. The Heat went to Milwaukee on May 15 for a 122-108 loss, ending its reign. The season ended the next day with the Chicago Bulls defeating Milwaukee, so the Bulls take the Eastern lineal into 2021-22.

All-time, Miami's eight wins brought it up to 37, the most for the Eastern lineal since tracking began in 2015-16. The Toronto Raptors are in second place with 35 games, followed by the Bucks with 33 and the Indiana Pacers with 32.

The Hawks brought their all-time win total in the East to 21, still well down the standings. The Hawks would have qualified for the Super League if the Heat hadn't matched their win total. Undisputed lineal champs in basketball go to the Super League, but not teams that finish in ties.

Late Grizzlies gait takes them to 2020-21 pro hoop traveler title

2021-08-08T20:39:00.001-07:00

The Memphis Grizzlies weren't one of the premier NBA teams in 2020-21, but when the intercontinental lineal championship came around, they knew what to do with it. The Grizzlies finished with 12 games of the traveler, closing out a lineal championship season with a dramatic winning streak.

The NBA cut its 2020-21 campaign by 10 games, down to 72, with hopes of squeezing some kind of a schedule into travel restrictions and other considerations pertaining to coronavirus.

If the season had gone 10 more games, though, there's still a decent chance that the Memphis Grizzlies would have won the lineal championship. They finished the year with 12 games of title, best across American pro basketball. Close behind were the Brooklyn Nets, the Dallas Mavericks, and the Utah Jazz, each with nine games of championship.

The Mavericks took the championship from the Miami Heat on May 4 and buzzed up a four-game title run that brought themselves to nine. With less than a week left in the regular season, the Mavs, Grizzlies, Nets and Jazz were tied at the top with nine games.

However, the schedule took the Mavericks to Memphis on May 11, with the winner to take the lead and a chance to keep building it. The Grizzlies led only 60-57 at halftime. However, it was a down night for the Dallas go-to guy, Luca Doncic, who shot four-for-12 overall, zero-for-four from three and ended it with 12 points. In the first 14 minutes after halftime, the Grizzlies outscored Dallas, 44-25. A route was on and Memphis kept adding on, ending with a 133-104 win.

Thus, the Griz took the lead at 10 and tacked it up to 12 with two defenses in The Pyramid against the Sacramento Kings in a travel-saving back-to-back arrangement. The Grizzlies went out to San Francisco for their final game of the season, where they lost the championship to, of all teams, the Golden State Warriors.

With that win, the Warriors are up to 57 since we began tracking at the start of the 2015-16 season, by far the best total of any team. The Clippers, Miami Heat and Portland Trail Blazers all are tied for second place at 27 each.

As we began tracking this lineal, the Warriors had just been to their first of five straight NBA Finals, winning their first of three league championships. The 2015-16 team was given the title provisionally as the defending league champion, then won 24 straight games to start the season. So, that's where much of the difference lies between the Warriors and the rest of the NBA in the historical lineal standings.

But it is only much of the difference. If we subtract those 24 games from the Warriors for some arbitrary reason, they still would have 30 games of championship, and that's still more than any other team in the league. During those years, the Warriors really were that far ahead of the league.

But that seems to have crumbled now, and it's a question of how soon someone else can catch the Warriors. Could be that many teams will approach all at once. In a few years.

Real Madrid wins European First hoop division in short 2019-20 season

2021-08-08T20:19:00.003-07:00

The Euroleague declared no champions and no promotions after ending the 2019-20 season early because of coronavirus. However, enough games were completed to make reasonable promotions and demotions in our pyramid-within-the-pyramid.

The Euroleague season in 2019-20 ended abruptly because of the coronavirus, lopping off the final six rounds of games and leaving the schedule finished at 28 games.

The league decided to declare no champions and to promote and relegate no one from the 2019-20 results. But we decided here that we will promote and relegate because the results, incomplete as they are, still determine champions, promotees and relegates with little controversy.

In the First Division, for example, it turns out that Real Madrid was the only club in the Euroleague that played all 10 of its pyramid games, winning eight. Every other club in the First Division, playing fewer games, already had lost three or more. So Real Madrid is the First Division champ.

Similarly, at the bottom of the First Division, Baskonia already had clinched relegation and Fenerbahçe had all but clinched it when the lights went out. They both could have won every remaining game and Fenerbahçe would have tied somebody for fourth place only if Macabbi, CSKA or Zalgiris lost all three of its remaining games. Possible, but not likely enough wait on it under the circumstances.

In the Middle Six, we see a clear top two with Barcelona (7-1) and Anadolu Efes (6-2) in line for promotion. If the schedule had played out, there was only one chance for a different outcome. Panathinaikos, the Athenian squad coached by Rick Pitino, was third place at 4-4 with games remaining against Efes and Khimki, the Muscovite rival of CSKA. Efes also had two remaining, being against at home against Panithainakos and at Khimki. With two Panathinaikos wins and two Efes loss, they would have tied for second at 6-4 and the Athenians would win the tiebreaker for beating Efes twice during the season.

So, we're looking at four games, and they all have to go the right way for Panithainakos to get into a tie. It requires Efes, which ended the year with the best league record at 24-4, to lose its remaining two games in the pyramid. Not likely. And Panithinaikos, 14-14 across the league, would have to win two. Possible. Panithainakos could have earned it on the floor, but there was no floor on which to earn it. So, we're going with what we have, promoting Barcelona and Efes.

On the bottom of the Middle Six, Bayern Munich is clearly to be relegated, and Olympiakos might have avoided it by winning the two it didn't play, but it would have depended on other teams collapsing. So, Olympiakos goes down with Bayern.

Obviously, the Little Six was wide open going to the Euroleague's final weeks in 2019-20. Only Zenit had no chance of earning promotion. Alba was the leader, but fifth-place Valencia was only a game away. One thing about the Little Six, though, is that we're not holding up the works over it, so although this division produced no outline of a resolution, we'll hold our nose and promote two.

Alba, the leader, is one. In second, we had a three-way tie between Red Star, Olimpia and ASVEL. Red Star (2-1) and ASVEL (2-1) survived the three-way head-to-head tiebreaker with Olimpia (0-2). Red Star and ASVEL split their two games during the season, with Red Star gaining the total points tiebreaker, 155-154. So, the second promotion here goes to Red Star, but we're so deep into tiebreakers that it's all but arbitrary.

One thing we don't have to worry about in 2020-21 is new teams being introduced to the Euroleague. Because of the coronavirus, domestic leagues were halted and those qualifiers couldn't be decided, anyway.

Anadolu Efes dominates 2019-20 Euro traveler, so long as it lasts

2021-08-08T20:10:00.003-07:00

They only played 28 of 34 rounds of Euroleague games in 2019-20 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Of those 28 rounds, Istanbul power Anadolu Efes held the Euro basketball lineal for 13 of them.

They stopped playing basketball in the Euroleague after the games of March 6, 2020, due to the coronavirus. The season ended at 28 games, a little short of the 34 that were in the plans.

They didn't run playoffs, either. They didn't declare a champion. They just ended it.

One team that might be relieved is Fenerbahçe, the Istanbul club that went to the Euroleague Final Four five years running before play ended in March 2020. At that point, Fenerbahçe was having quite a fight of defending its Euroleague championship, sitting eighth and barely in the playoffs. There's a good chance Fenerbahçe would have missed the playoffs completely.

Another Istanbul team with something to cheer for 2019-20 was Anadolu Efes, which held a two-point lead in the Euroleague over Real Madrid and Barcelona when play halted for 2019-20. They can always say they finished first, though the league won't.

Efes also dominated the lineal championship going through Europe, holding it for 13 of the 28 rounds of games. Anadolu held a five-game championship in November and December, then an eight-game title that began in January and ended in Tel Aviv on March 4, a 77-75 loss to Maccabi.

The Tel Aviv five immediately lost the traveler in its next outing at Belgrade, where homestanding Red Star produced a 92-76 victory and its first lineal title of the season. That happened on the night of March 6. After that, there were no more games.

Thus, Red Star held the European basketball lineal entering the 2020-21 season.

Las Vegas aces women's basketball pyramid

2021-08-02T00:30:00.002-07:00

What happens in Vegas stays there. But the Las Vegas Aces won the First Division in the women's pro basketball pyramid entirely in Bradenton, FL, where the WNBA was bubbled in 2020.

The Las Vegas Aces won the First Division in women's pro basketball for 2020, becoming the fifth team in five years of this history to win the distinction.

The Aces, relocated from San Antonio two years ago, won eight of ten games on this abbreviated slate, winning the top tier by two games over the Sparks and the Phoenix Mercury.

The relegates from the First Division are rather surprising, given their recent success. The Connecticut Sun won the First Division just a moment ago, in 2019, but here they finished 2-8, last place and they must go down. Joining the Sun in relegation to the Second Division are the Washington Mystics, who won the traveling championships in 2018 and 2019, and won the WNBA championship in 2019.

In the Second Division, the Seattle Storm turned in a strong year, winning nine of their 10 games and beating out the second-place Chicago Sky by three games. The Storm also won the lineal championship across women's pro basketball in 2020.

The Storm won the First Division in 2018, when they also surged through the playoffs for the WNBA championship.

Seattle storms to 2020 lineal title in women's pro basketball

2021-08-02T00:23:00.008-07:00

The Seattle Storm needed one good run of games in a shortened 2020 WNBA season to secure the lineal championship for the season. The Storm actually had two good runs and won all the way to the league championship.

The Washington Mystics went thud across women's pro basketball in 2020, dropping to the bottom of the WNBA while snapping their streak of two straight years as the top team in their lineal championship.

The WNBA season in 2020, like every other season, was delayed and, like some other sports, bubbled. They ended up playing the whole season at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL.

It turned out to be rather a banner year for the Seattle Storm, which won the WNBA championship and, for no small good measure, also won the pro women's basketball lineal and the Second Division on these pages.

In the lineal, the Storm won on its second try, beating the Phoenix Mercury, 74-68, on Aug. 8. The Storm made five successful defenses before losing the championship to the Indiana Fever, 90-84, on Aug. 20.

By then, the Storm held the championship for six games, Washington had three and the season was half over. Phoenix made a run with a three-game championship in September, bringing the Mercury up to four games. The Connecticut Sun put an end to that with an 85-70 win on Sept. 7, but the Mercury came right back and beat the Sun, 100-95, in overtime, to win the title back on Sept. 9.

Wouldn't you know, we came to the final game of the regular season, Phoenix held the title and five games of credit, and its final opponent was Seattle, which entered the game leading the league with six games of title. A Phoenix win would have much changed these standings, but, instead, the Storm stomped the Mercury, 83-60, taking the championship into the playoffs.

Again, we count each round of the WNBA playoffs as one game, as the playoffs are short and the team that wins the last one survives however we count it. It was two playoff series, each of them a three-game sweep for Seattle, first against the Minnesota Lynx, then against the Las Vegas Aces.

Thus, Seattle ended 2020 with nine games of lineal championship, followed by Phoenix with five, then Washington and Chicago, each with three.

East pro bucket lineal bounces out of bubble, so Bucks win easily

2021-07-31T22:34:00.003-07:00

When coronavirus halted pro basketball in March 2020, the Charlotte Hornets held the Eastern lineal championship. When play resumed, the Hornets were retired, and so was the traveling prize, with the Milwaukee Bucks easily on top for the year.

We say the NBA resumed play in late July, but that's not absolutely true. For 20 percent of the league, it's false.

Six teams who demonstrated no chance of going to the playoffs stayed home in the interest of managing a virus and a bubble.

One of those teams, the Charlotte Hornets, held the Eastern pro basketball lineal championship when play halted in March. When play resumed in July, the Hornets did not.

Thus, the Eastern pro basketball lineal didn't go into the bubble, either.

The Hornets had lost in all four of their attempts at the Eastern lineal in 2019-20 before finally defeating the Miami Heat, 109-98, in Miami on March 11. With that, the NBA season ended.

There was no suspense at the top of the standings, anyway. The Milwaukee Bucks held 13 games of championship when play halted. The next team in line, the Toronto Raptors, had six.

Lakers stomp to 2019-20 West lineal in pro basketball

2021-07-31T22:28:00.003-07:00

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.

Nuggets hold off Bucks in 2019-20 Elite Division debut

2021-07-31T22:18:00.001-07:00

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

2021-07-31T22:12:00.002-07:00

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

2021-07-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

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.