◆ About ◆

The Belt

What if our sports leagues worked a bit more like boxing or wrestling? One belt to rule them all. To become the champion, you have to beat the champion.

The Concept

The lineal championship (a.k.a. Regular-Season Championship Belt) applies the logic of king of the hill to our favorite sports leagues. The result? Hilarity, of course. The Belt adds a little sizzle to meaningless regular season games, where any old Tuesday could be a title bout and bottom-feeding teams have their opportunity to shine.

How It Works

1

Season Start

The previous year's Finals champion begins the season holding the belt.

2

Title Defenses

Every regular season game the belt holder plays is a title defense. Win, and you keep the belt. But…

3

Belt Changes

Lose a game, lose the belt. The winner becomes the new lineal champion and must defend it.

4

Season Reset

At the start of each new season, the belt resets to the actual Finals champion, from the year before.

Questions

Why only regular season games?▾
The playoffs already determine a champion—that's their job. The belt tracker asks, and answers, a different question entirely.
What happens if the belt holder misses the playoffs?▾
It doesn't matter for the belt! The lineal championship only tracks regular season games. A team could hold the belt at season's end, miss the playoffs entirely, and we'd still reset to the actual Finals champion next season. The belt and the "real" championship are separate things.
How far back does the data go?▾
We track the belt from the WNBA's inaugural 1997 season to present day. The Houston Comets, as the first champions, started 1998 with the belt. Before that, for 1997, we gave the belt to the winner of the league's very first game (the New York Liberty).
Where does your data come from?▾

Game Data: NBA scores and schedules come from the official NBA Stats website. WNBA data comes from Basketball-Reference.com.

Team Logos: Current team logos are from the official NBA and WNBA websites. Historical team logos (like the Seattle SuperSonics and Vancouver Grizzlies) are from Wikimedia Commons, Loodibee.com, and SportsLogos.net.

All team logos are trademarks of their respective organizations. Data and logos are used under fair use for non-commercial, educational purposes. Huge thanks to all these sources for making their data available!

Why the WNBA? Will you bring this to other leagues?▾

Why not? The WNBA deserves the same obsessive treatment as every other league and it's a close cousin to the NBA.

If the people demand it, we could bring The Belt to other leagues too but the WNBA felt like a natural place to start.

Where did this idea come from?▾

The lineal championship concept was conceived in a Reddit thread and popularized by Grantland, the late, great sports and pop culture website founded by Bill Simmons.

When Grantland shut down in 2015, the belt tracker went with it. Occasionally someone pops up and calculates who owns the belt across various leagues but no one has done it consistently...until now.