A lot of the top-tier teams in the NBA are undefeated at home and fifty-fifty on the road. A quick Google shows teams win 61% at home, make more fast breaks and shots, and commit fewer fouls.
This well-known phenomenon is attributed to referee bias and the psychological impact of a supportive crowd.
But I don’t know. Having the crowd can be a big boost. Basketball can be a game of momentum.
Are there other sports where home advantage is bigger? Seems very large.
I refereed soccer at the provincial level for years. Although a poor comparison, I find it very difficult to believe professional referees are significantly biased. I can’t see that making too much difference. Any stats or proof?
Travelling would seem to be very tiring, and a lot of travel is coast to coast with little time between games. Is this a major factor? What’s being left out?
Home advantage? Sleeping in your own bed when you’re 6’8", being with your family, eating better, being more relaxed. Knowing you don’t have to get on a plane at 2 a.m. and arrive at the next hotel at 5 a.m. is a big plus.
My hypothesis is that it basically comes down to (a) how much the officials can influence the game and (b) how much of the game is effort-based.
NBA and NHL are effort-heavy games, which could build off the crowd and also be hurt by travel fatigue. MLB less so. NFL probably somewhere in the middle. NBA and NFL have by far the biggest reliance on officiating. NHL probably next with MLB at the bottom. And soccer is both highly effort-based and the officials have an enormous impact on the outcome.
ETA: I’d also not that some sports have inherent home-field advantages. Batting last in baseball and crowd noise impacting audibles, snap counts, etc in football.
Familiarity with the physical conditions of the home field.
But I feel this would be more of a factor in baseball and football. It should be pretty minimal with basketball, which is played indoors and where the courts are standardized.
I’ve been interested in this for a while. What’s striking to me is that the other three sports (leaving soccer out) have real differences for the home and away teams:
MLB: Last licks, different sized outfields
NHL: Last substitution, playing surface variation
NFL: Crowd noise on crucial plays, playing surface variation, weather and sun effects
(They all have crowd noise, of course, but the way NFL plays go, the crowd can really get into it when the QB is trying to get the play started. The other sports don’t really have that)
Ice and board reflections really vary from rink to rink. If you’re in the NFL and used to playing in a dome, playing GB in the winter must be no fun. Similarly, a team that plays in a dome may invest more in a kicker, where the lack of weather can make the kicker much more effective.
And yet, the NBA has the largest home field advantage? Weird.
I agree though that with the NBA it’s probably the refs. They have much more leeway in their officiating than the other major leagues, more than even the NFL.
There is some leeway on when to call a foul in basketball, but also in hockey. Everything is on camera, subject to replay, commented on widely. To referee at the national level requires decades of experience, lots of exams and auditing, the league certainly reviewing mistakes. Mistakes made randomly should not benefit one team only. And coaches can ask for a live review. I thought most referees would do a great job, or not last long. Yet referee bias is listed as a major effect.
There are a surprising amount of studies of home team advantage on Google Scholar. One recent one concludes NBA referees are not a factor and there is no evidence of bias. They say the advantage is bigger based on the style of team play, especially home teams are more likely to sink three point shots. This makes sense if these differ from place to place, but you certainly practice these often at home.
This study felt the size of the crowd was not a factor. That reminded me of Gary Gulman’s amusing comedy routine on cheerleaders.
I’ve always said, somewhat jokingly, that the visiting team has their minds on getting out to the nightclubs and meeting women than actually playing while they’re on the road.
I think the referees are influenced by the crowd more in basketball than other sports. When the crowd reacts much louder to any possible foul against the visitor than to the home team, I think the refs are more likely to blow that whistle.
You may have a big part of it here. Team fans are right there by the floor in basketball, they players recognize those fans and I think would respond better to the crowd than they would with the distance other sports require. In a show-off game like basketball that can help a lot.
I doubt the travel is much of a factor in the NBA, the schedule is not tight, teams rarely play 2 days in a row and have several long breaks through the season.
It’s not the case anymore but back in the day the parquet floor at the Boston Garden was known for it’s ‘funny’ spots, floor panels that were a little loose or soft, and the players were well aware of them and knew how to use them in some clever bounce passes.
Here’s my un-cited, evidence-free theory about home-field advantage in the NBA. In a basketball game, no particular basket (before the final minute or so) really matters, so effort makes much more of a difference. A home team being cheered on will work a little harder for each field goal, whereas an away team may slack off from time to time, allowing those extra baskets in.
By the end, the away team may find they are too far behind – one of my problems with basketball is that either the last few minutes don’t matter because the teams are too far apart or the first 50-some minutes didn’t matter. There’s no particular time in the game that seems definitive until the end, if the game happens to be close. Since nothing particularly matters, the team that’s trying a little harder to win throughout may end up more often on top.
None of that is true in the other sports – in hockey, baseball, and football, each goal/run/point makes a big difference, so the players are more likely to work hard throughout.
Most pro athletes and referees have been playing in front of big crowds for years. They can and do tune them out. For what it’s worth, the majority of athletes are workaholic introverts.
Again, one study found crowd size not a factor - I guess bigger crowds make more noise.
Whether it’s easier to take 3 pointers from one place to another? Ask Steve Curry. I dunno.
Gary Gulman: (Football star being interviewed)
So there we were. Down 20 points. And the cheerleaders, God bless ‘em, started shouting D-E-F-E-N-C-E. And I thought, they’re right. We need to start playing some defence. Turned the game around.
I think Nate Silver once had a piece where he found a correlation between travel distances and outcomes in NCAA tournaments. In that case, neither team is actually at home, but one team still has less travel time.
In a interview with a particular BB team they stated they know the wood that their court is made of, which planks give which bounce, in particular dead spots. This was at least a decade ago, perhaps 2 or 2+ and I have no idea of the team, but it could be a factor. Variability in wood and using that court over and over could give a not insignificant advantage.
