Basketball travel data and methodology

Downloads and use

JSON and CSV files include the league, season, units, source update time, and current-season measurements. The schedule board shows the same data on the site. JSON and CSV use the same fields.

NBA: JSON · CSV · Toughest NBA schedule board

WNBA: JSON · CSV · Toughest WNBA schedule board

You can reuse this data with attribution to Hoops Menu and a link to hoopsmenu.com. You do not need an API key. The endpoints have no rate limit and permit cross-origin requests. The data uses the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Each response includes a schemaVersion. Changes in the current major version are additive. Existing names, shapes, and rounding stay stable. A breaking change will increase the major version.

What the mileage represents

Mileage is the great-circle distance between the venues of consecutive scheduled games, using arena latitude and longitude. This is a schedule model, not a flight tracker. It does not include a team's actual airport, routing, practice stops, or charter path.

The first game has no travel leg. A return home counts when the next game is at home. The model does not add a trip after the final game. Neutral-site games use their scheduled venue when it can be resolved.

Time zones and rest

Time-zone change is the UTC-offset difference between consecutive game venues at the later game's tipoff. The league board sums the absolute value of those changes so eastbound and westbound travel do not cancel each other out.

Rest days are the full local calendar days between games. Games on consecutive local dates form a back-to-back. Dense periods are three games in four days, four in six, or five in seven. Overlapping windows in one dense period count once.

Performance under schedule context

Team and travel-detail pages pair these schedule measurements with completed regular-season results. The comparison includes Cup games that count in league standings and excludes standalone Cup finals, preseason, All-Star, exhibition, play-in, and playoff games.

The seven published contexts are back-to-backs; back-to-backs against an opponent with at least one rest day; inbound legs of 1,500 or more great-circle miles; body-clock displacement of at least two hours from the team's home time; the final game of a three-in-four, four-in-six, or five-in-seven window; three or more full rest days; and games where the opponent is on zero rest days and the team is not. A game can qualify for more than one context.

Each context is reported against the same team's full-season average scoring margin, so a team with a heavy travel schedule is not charged twice for it. League rank is computed on that difference — how well a team held its own level, not how good the team is — and teams with fewer than five games in a context are excluded from the ranking rather than ranked last, which is why a context's rank denominator can be smaller than the number of teams in the league.

Records and average scoring margin do not show cause. You can get the sample size from the win-loss record. These splits do not adjust for opponent strength, home court, injuries, or roster availability.

Every league-wide split is published as a board: NBA rest and travel splits · WNBA rest and travel splits.

Road trips and scope

A road trip is a consecutive run of road games between home-game segments. The full-season board includes regular-season games and league cup group or knockout games that live inside the main season calendar. Preseason, All-Star, exhibition, and playoff games are not part of the regular-season travel rankings.

“Played to date” and “still to come” use the current time. A dense period or road trip moves to the played group after its final local date.

Sources and corrections

Schedules and team identity originate from the NBA's public stats feeds. Arena coordinates, time zones, and shared-building home bases are maintained by Hoops Menu. The derived tables are rebuilt when schedule data changes; each board and JSON response exposes the most recent source update time.

Questions or corrections can be sent to hello@hoopsmenu.com.