On Monday, September 28, 2015 at 9:52:28 AM UTC-4, wrote:
If we are going to talk code, lets speak the language so nobody gets
misinformation. ;-)

Point taken and agreed. To summarize and rephrase: house is located in New York, the subject is a lighting circuit(s) on which there will be 4 groups of luminaires (one group in each "room" of the basement, and each group having 4-6 luminaires, and each luminaire being rated at 75watts by its manufacturer), and each group is activated via separate switches; and NO receptacles will be installed on this/these dedicated circuits.

And even though the NEC does not prohibit me from wiring this via 12awg and one 20amp breaker, the concensus is that I should split this into two 15amp lighting circuits for two reasons: easier to work with 14awg, and better design such that a tripped breaker wont plunge the entire basement into darkness.

Did I get all that right?
All comments appreciated.

I believe GFRE who's the authority on code issues, said that you can
put it all on one 14 amp circuit if you want to. I agree with two circuits
being marginally better though, from the blackout standpoint. But I
can't recall a breaker here ever tripping on a circuit that is dedicated
to lighting. I can recall plenty of cases where the utility has gone
down, plunging everything into darkness. Since that's survivable and
in my world actually occurs with some frequency, the additional benefit
of having two lighting circuits is a nit, IMO.