In NBA, Nobody Can Mess with Texas
They say everything is bigger in Texas, and apparently the statement applies to the level of success experienced by teams that call the Lone Star State home.
Given the current geographical divides in the NBA landscape, only two states can claim that at least three of the Association's 30 teams play home games within their borders: California and Texas.
The former gets to boast the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, though over the past few years, only the Clippers and Warriors are actually worth bragging about. Meanwhile, Texas owns the San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets, all of whom are strong playoff contenders during the 2014-15 season.
In the past, the singular presence of the Lake Show has pushed California to the top of the heap. But not anymore.
Over the last five years, messing with Texas is a bad idea.
The past certainly matters in the NBA. Even the gold remembrances of past championships on the neckline of 2014-15 jerseys are testament to that, as they celebrate as little as a single title that was earned decades ago. History is vital to the thriving nature of professional basketball, but it can only have so much of an impact here.
When determining the recent success of the California- and Texas-based teams, we'll only be looking at the past five seasons—the maximum length of a contract under basketball's collective bargaining agreement. That means the 2009-10 campaign will be the earliest go-round that has an impact here, and anything that happened earlier is utterly irrelevant.
Five years may not seem like a long time, but 2008-09 may as well be ancient history. Derrick Rose was named Rookie of the Year that season, while players like Devin Harris, Allen Iverson, Rashard Lewis, Jameer Nelson, Mo Williams, Chauncey Billups and Brandon Roy were on the All-Star rosters.
So, over the last five seasons, which state has experienced more success?
There are plenty of ways to measure this, but perhaps the most important one has to do with those all-consuming playoffs. Let's take a gander at how many times each team has advanced to the postseason, how many series each has won once there and, finally, how many championships each can claim:
That's just not a fair comparison, even with California getting the advantage of an extra team. Then again, the Kings might as well not count here, as they haven't so much as sniffed the postseason in the last five years.
Texas has 11 total appearances to California's nine, and the Spurs are the only squad that has advanced past the regular season during every campaign in question.
But the disparity grows even larger when we look at how deep the teams have advanced into the playoffs. By themselves, the Spurs have more series victories (10) than all of California (nine). Adding in the Mavericks' four successful results just makes this a blowout.
Plus, the Lakers' one title is trumped by the two Larry O'Brien Trophies that have made their way back to the Lone Star State, courtesy of the Mavericks in 2011 and the Spurs this past year.
Of course, playoff success isn't all that matters. But just as it dominated that aspect of this head-to-head comparison, Texas also takes the cake during the regular season:
California already looks worse when only victories are taken into account.
The Spurs are top dogs in this category, with 281 regular-season wins over the past five seasons. But the Mavericks, who are obviously also from Texas, hold down the No. 2 spot. The worst team in the state, the Rockets, only trailed the Purple and Gold by a meager five wins.
If you sum the victories for each state heading into the 2014-15 campaign, California comes out on top, 750 to 740. However, that 10-win advantage comes with a whole extra team working into the final total. Texas' average of 246.7 wins per team makes California's 187.5 pale in comparison.
And the seeds show an even greater disparity.
Not only does Texas have three of the top four average seeds, but only once in the past five years has a team in the state failed to earn a single-digit finish in the Western Conference—the Mavs finished with the No. 10 seed and a 41-41 record during the 2012-13 campaign.
California, however, has had 11 of the possible 20 seasons from its teams finish with a double-digit seed. The Kings haven't managed to break into single digits even once, and each of the four eligible squads has fallen out of the top nine at least in the West at least one time in the last five seasons.
As a whole, California's average seed is a meager 9.1, not even strong enough to qualify for the playoffs. Texas, on the other hand, would nearly earn home-court advantage in the West with a 5.4 average.
So at this point, it's pretty obvious that Texas has experienced more success during each part of an NBA campaign, but there's one last facet to analyze. How have they fared in head-to-head battles?
Below you can see how each of the seven squads in question performed against teams from the other state in the past five years, including any playoff series:
The Spurs must love when there's a California team on the schedule, but the Kings certainly can't say the reverse is true.
Part of this brutal disparity—well, brutal for the more western 50th of the United States—is the ease of travel in one state versus the other. Both of the Los Angeles teams play in the Staples Center, and according to Google Maps, it's only a one-hour, 10-minute flight from Oracle Arena, where the Warriors suit up during their home contests.
Though teams do take chartered flights, we're going to be showing the driving times from each arena within the respective states to one another:
| CALIFORNIA | Oracle Arena | Sleep Train Arena | Staples Center |
| Oracle Arena | N/A | 1:23 | 5:06 |
| Sleep Train Arena | 1:23 | N/A | 5:26 |
| Staples Center | 5:06 | 5:26 | N/A |
| TEXAS | AT&T Center | Toyota Center | American Airlines Center |
| AT&T Center | N/A | 2:45 | 3:58 |
| Toyota Center | 2:45 | N/A | 3:26 |
| American Airlines Center | 3:58 | 3:26 | N/A |
Is it any wonder the brutal road trip through the Lone Star State is known as the Texas Triangle?
While Golden State and Sacramento are close together and the two L.A. teams operate out of the same infamous arena, there's no short trip from one Texas city to another.
They're all spaced out fairly evenly, and that's one of the reasons it's such a tough—but common—road trip, as D Hyrum Vaughn wrote for Project Spurs this offseason:
"Insert practically any sports cliche and it applies to the Western Conference of the NBA. But Texas has historically been a tough place to come to claim a victory for NBA teams and this year seems to be no exception to that.
As a matter of fact, Texas could be the place where Western Conference playoff hopes come to die. Many teams come to Texas on long road trips and hit all three NBA cities (San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston) just out of convenience. Texas is somewhat out of the way for the teams from California or Oregon as well as the teams on the East Coast, so to conserve time, energy, and funding, the league tends to schedule road trips to make a triangle among the three teams.
"
This same fall, ESPN.com's Marc Stein called the trip, "the most dreaded three-stop road trip that the schedule can serve up." But it's not as though the sentiments are anything new.
"The only statement is we're done with Texas," Doc Rivers, then the head coach of the Boston Celtics, told ESPN.com's Marc J. Spears back in 2008 after his team worked its way through the Texas Triangle. "We don't want to see Texas any more. It's a [heck] of a state, no taxes and I don't want to see any of those three teams any more [in the regular season]. They're just too tough. I'd rather move on."
Six years later, it's only becoming increasingly true.
Though the Kings are starting to turn things around, they're still a lottery team throughout the foreseeable future. The Warriors and Clippers are two of the best squads in the West, but is either at the level of the Spurs quite yet? Or the Mavericks and Rockets this year?
Each Texas team is a strong playoff contender, with the Spurs a mainstay deep in the playoffs and the other two squads seemingly trending up. Until the Lakers can get off the schneid, this just isn't much of a competition any longer.
In California, two out of four just isn't going to cut it. Not if the state wants to tread on Texas anytime soon.
