What happened to the HomeCourt advantage in the NBA?

The Oklahoma City Thunder won the first game of the Western Conference Final over the visit of Minnesota.

This apparently unobtrusive sentence is remarkable, as this meant that the home team had actually won seven games in the unpredictable NBA playoffs in a row.

This spring? It is a statistical nugget that reads legitimate as a revelation … like a surprising turn in the modern NBA. Especially when the Indiana Pacers are routinely corresponding comebacks that have so far been considered impossible for the standards of mathematics and history in #thesegue.

The Pacers did it again on Wednesday evening and somehow deleted a 14-point deficit in Madison Square Garden with less than three minutes to remind us again to remember that the advantage of HomeCourt is simply not the advantage that it was previously in this era of the deficit erason, Bombs-Away shooting from the 3-point line.

Investigation of my friends at Basketball Reference will help me illustrate this here.

When NBA fan, who got really older in the 1980s, I am with the view that the home team was pretty much ordained to win at least 60% of the time. In the 80s alone, indeed, in fact, There were five seasons in which the percentage of the composite profit of the league for home teams was not lower than 0.654.

However, this had really passed compared to the 2020s. This season was the fourth time in the last five seasons That the percentage of the composite profit for home teams in the .540s was broad.

To .544 exactly: to be precise:

It is a specific trend that I have been following for some time, and that's why I was not like many when the second round of these playoffs started and the home teams suddenly couldn't win a game.

The road teams actually started with an exhilarating 12: 6 in round 2, until we witness the rank as a real surprise: The home teams gathered 6-0 to end the round.

If we only rewind a little in the 2019-20 seasonRoad teams who enjoy this success of playoffs would have been easy to explain. Of course that was the Walt Disney World Bubble season. All games were fought in the Disney village that the NBA invented to play its season in view of the Covid-19. Home teams and road teams were purely conceptual when all games were competitive in one place and the traditional NBA flight railway trip took a break.

In this post-season, in contrast, the street teams sent home routinely in the first two rounds and went home unhappily until the recent recovery of the home teams started a robust restoration of the order. As the closed statead table showsWith this 30-30 start, these playoffs looked like they could be the roughest in home teams since 1980-81. Road teams went a wild 27-26 in these playoffs. This also contained the 40-42 Houston Rockets – led by Moses Malone and Del Harris trained – Become one of only three teams in the history of the league to reach the NBA final with a record of 0.500.

Do you ask yourself specifically about game 7 Series? The thunder in the throttled Denver Nuggets in the only game 7 that we saw in round 2. But from 2020 to 21 in this post, the home teams are only 6-9 in game 7..

Those who are intoxicated by pursuing such nerdy trends as I watch are watching something else in these playoffs.

The lower seed has won four of the 12 separate series Already competitive this spring. Six teams did this without a HomeCourt advantage in the playoffs last season … After seven lower seeds won best-of-seeven matchups in 2023.

The latter is the record of individual oisons since the NBA has completed a playoff format from 16 teams, starting with the 1983-84 campaign. But when my buddy John Hollinger from The athlete recently notedSince 1994-95 we had not progressed more than five lower seeds in front of the last two post-seasons. The rockets mentioned above were largely responsible for this spring When she did four times on the way to a second championship in a row as No. 6 of the West.

PS – PS – The Cavaliers went home 34-7 to create a 64-18 record That brought them the seed no. 1 of the east … and then went to Indiana in the second round at home. Researcher extraordinary Last week I pointed out that five of Cleveland's ten defeats at home this seasonIf you lock the playoffs, Indiana have been added. Only Oklahoma City had a better home record than Donovan Mitchell and Co.

PPS – Stat Keeks issued an essential specific problem that the home teams had in the second round of the playoffs this season: to take pictures of Deep. In round 2, the home teams only shot 33.2% to 3-point teams … What the lowest success rate from Deep, which we have seen since the Playoffs 2012-13 (also 33.2%) of Heimteams.

PPPS – fans of losing themselves by losing statistical rabbit holes have Check out This enormous page from the basketball reference teamWhich only contains every single NBA and ABA playoff series in one place.