The NBA's Baseball Series Chronicles (cont')

Dallas visiting Sacramento for two consecutive games this week that carry massive playoff seeding implications naturally had me eager to update where we are with the NBA's baseball series concept

The Phoenix Suns didn't just lose the easiest game left on their schedule Monday night.

They squandered a chance to make history.

A Suns win over the Victor Wembanyama-less San Antonio Spurs would have clinched a losing record for home teams in "baseball series" games this season. (Shoutout to Spurs broadcaster Dan Weiss for making sure I didn’t miss Phoenix's opportunity.) San Antonio's surprise 104-102 triumph nudged home teams' record to 36-40 in the two-game sets this season in which one team plays host to the same opponent twice.

There are two such baseball series, as many of us call them, still to be played on the 2023-24 schedule. The first has massive playoff ramifications: Sacramento, seeded No. 6 in the West, plays host to No. 7 Dallas both on Tuesday night in a TNT showcase game and again Friday night. (Yes: It's a baseball series with two off nights between games, bizarrely, and with both the Kings and Mavericks playing on the second night of a back-to-back in Tuesday's opener.)

Miami also plays host to Toronto on April 12 and April 14 to close out the regular season for both teams. Just one win in those four games for the Mavericks or Raptors will ensure a winning record for road teams for the first time in the three-season run for this experiment.

Regular readers have heard me taking issue with this concept since we first started seeing two-game sets during the 2021-22 season as a measure implemented by the league office to make some broader travel reductions. My belief has long been that any travel benefits are overshadowed by the unquantifiable-but-unfair degree that any baseball series lessens the home team's homecourt advantage, since it must host two games in a row against an extremely settled-in opponent … in an era when homecourt advantage is not quite what it used to be (presumably due, at least in part, to 3-point variance).

Entering Tuesday's play, home teams were only winning 55 percent of the time overall in the NBA this season: .549 compared to last season's .580. In baseball series conditions, home teams sat at a lowly .474.

Here's a thorough update on the baseball series data that I compiled earlier this season with the help of Mavericks play-by-play voice Mark Followill and our colleagues at Sportradar, as well as the usual handy input from my fellow Substacker Justin Kubatko.

2023-24

Home team sweeps: 10

Away team sweeps: 12

Splits: 16

Home team record: 36-40 (.474)

2022-23

Home team sweeps: 21

Away team sweeps: 14

Splits: 20

Home team record: 62-48 (.564)

2021-22

Home team sweeps: 7

Away team sweeps: 6

Splits: 10

Home team record: 24-22 (.522)

This is the NBA's 20th season with 30 teams. Across the previous 19 full seasons, home teams have boasted an average winning percentage of .586. That includes the 2019-20 season (.551) that had to be completed at a neutral-site bubble in Orlando which took teams out of their arenas completely and the 2020-21 season (.544) which featured numerous games in mostly empty arenas.

The following chart, utilizing Sportradar data, breaks down home winning percentages in the 30-team era heading into this season.

Home teams were 589-483 (.549) overall this season as of Tuesday morning with 158 games to go before the NBA’s Play-In Tournament begins. Eager to see what some of my more data-minded colleagues in the NBA Substack sphere like Kubatko,

Tom Haberstroh

and

Neil Paine

might be able to compute once they see that the NBA is poised to record its third season in the past four with a cumulative winning percentage for home teams in the .540s.

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Numbers Game

🏀 19

Houston's unexpected surge to 36-35 has kept alive the possibility that the NBA will have a record 19 teams by season's end with winning records. After I led off with the Chicago Bulls in this space last week, they responded with three consecutive defeats (including a home loss to 14-58 Washington) as soon as I pointed out that the Bulls had clawed to 34-35 and thus had a chance to creep over .500.

🏀 18

In three previous NBA seasons, remember, there have been 18 teams with winning records: 2004-05, 2017-18 and 2021-22 (per Justin Kubatko research).

🏀 9

The league's longest active winning streak now belongs to the Rockets at nine wins in a row … seven of them since Alperen Şengün sustained a potentially season-ending ankle injury.

🏀 30

The Celtics obviously weren't feeling great Tuesday on the morning after blowing a 30-point lead in Atlanta to miss out on stretching their most recent win streak to 10 games. The consolation for Boston: Its lead over second-seeded Milwaukee was still a ridiculous 10 1/2 games entering Tuesday's play.

🏀 25

Domantas Sabonis recorded his 25th triple-double of the season Monday night in a home win over Philadelphia. Sabonis thus became just the fifth player in league history to register at least 25 triple-doubles in a single season. The other four: Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Russell Westbrook and Nikola Jokić. 

🏀 15-10

In a surprise, though, Sacramento was only 15-10 this season in Sabonis' triple-double games before playing host to Dallas.

🏀 17-5

Denver, by contrast, is 17-5 this season when Jokić records a triple-double.

🏀 8

The Kings have secured a second straight winning season under Mike Brown
In 37 other seasons in Sacramento, this franchise has only posted eight other .500-or-better records ... all by Rick Adelman.

🏀 4

The Kings, however, are one of only four teams this season to lose to all three of the East's stragglers (Charlotte, Washington and Detroit). The other three teams are 19-53 Portland, 23-49 Toronto and 27-45 Brooklyn.

🏀 5

My pals at Basketball Reference are offering a five-day free trial for an unlimited amount of Stathead all-access searches from 9 AM ET on March 28 to 9 AM ET on April 2.

🏀 20

Victor Wembanyama has 20 five-rejection games in his rookie season in San Antonio. That's the most for any player in league history before his 21st birthday, according to Basketball Reference, with Shaquille O'Neal (19) and Anthony Davis (14) next in line.

🏀 4

The G League Ignite, which is ceasing operations after this season, has featured four NBA lottery picks (Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Dyson Daniels and Scoot Henderson) in its four seasons of existence. That number could rise if one or both of its lottery contenders on this season's roster — Matas Buzelis or Ron Holland — gets drafted in June between Nos. 1-through-14.

🏀 97.1

One last reminder before we go: I'm on the radio Saturdays from noon to 1 PM CT on 97.1 (FM) The Freak in Dallas with an hour of live NBA talk presented by Panini Trading Cards and Collectibles. Join us online by clicking the link embedded in this sentence or via the iHeart radio app to listen to The Saturday Stein Line on this or any Saturday ... or catch the podcasted version of the show once it drops via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or #whereveryougetyourpodcasts. And we repeat: Click the microphone icon on the 97.1 (FM) The Freak feed on the iHeart Radio app to leave a 30-second message or a question for me to answer on an upcoming show.