Why does home court advantage matter

In the first round of the NHL playoffs there was actually a home ice disadvantage—home teams won 21 games, road teams won 28 games. Only one NHL series had more home team victories than road team victories. Four series had more road wins, 3 series were splits. In the first round of the NBA playoffs there were a total of 44 games played. The home team won 30 of these games, the road team Time will tell how business travel with change after the pandemic.

Don't miss: Here are the 5 best personal loans of December Skip Navigation. Jennifer Liu. In fact, the following numbers show that is it harder to win on the road in the postseason than it is to win on the road in the regular season. From , home teams in the regular season won 7, games while losing 4, games for a winning percentage of During this same period of time, home teams in the postseason won games while losing only The winning percentage in the playoffs for home teams was However, some of this disparity can be explained away by the nature of playoff seeding.

The teams finishing with better regular season records are the ones given home-court advantage in the postseason.

Therefore, it is difficult to determine how much of a team's home-court success can be attributed to the fans and the arena as opposed to the fact that they are simply the better team in a particular matchup.

To try to answer some of the differences between playing on the road and playing at home, let's analyze the statistics :. Historically, home teams have won their playoff games by an average of four to five points per game—but this postseason, that average is down to 0. From the expansion of the postseason bracket to 16 teams in through the season, home teams won 61 percent of their games in the regular season and 65 percent of their games in the playoffs.

That pattern holds even accounting for the fact that better teams play more home games in the playoffs. But this postseason has been different. Since the introduction of the shot clock, 88 best-of-seven series before this season had started with the home teams winning four games in a row.

For comparison, only six had started with the road teams winning four games in a row, meaning a home sweep of games 1 through 4 was 15 times more likely than a road sweep. Yet this year, no series started with four home wins in a row, while Clippers-Mavericks saw four consecutive road wins.

The sudden diminishment of home-court advantage could wreak unexpected effects on this postseason. The Lakers could win the title without hosting Game 1 in any round.