Each week during the 2024-2025 NBA season, we’ll dive deeper into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an effort to determine whether trends are based more on fact or fiction.
[Last week: Under the rise of Evan Mobley, the Cavaliers are contenders again]
Fact or fiction: home field advantage is dead
The NBA’s home team won 60% of regular season games between 2000 and 2013, which is clear evidence of home field advantage. That number fell to 58% for the first time this century in 2014, as teams averaged more than 20 three-point attempts per game for the first time, and remained stable around that figure until late last decade, when the COVID-19 crisis emerged. The 19 pandemic brought to light a new understanding of home field advantage.
The numbers understandably dropped to a new low (54%) during the 2020-2021 season, when arenas were mostly empty. With the exception of the 2022-2023 season, when it again rose to 58%, the figure has held steady at 54% since then, including this season, as teams’ 3-point attempts have averaged above 35 per game. That makes us wonder: is home field advantage as good as dead?
Which team made more threes in any given game is a much better indication of who actually won. The team that makes the most 3s wins about 67% of the time, and that number has largely remained the same over the past decade. (At the turn of the century, this number was closer to 60%, the same as home field advantage.)
This season it doesn’t matter where teams play. Home teams are 39-19 when they make more 3s; road teams are 36-20 when they make more 3s. You’re not necessarily more likely to make more threes when you play at home. However, this does not apply to the past seasons. Over the past five years, home teams won 71% of games in which they made more threes; road teams won 62% of them. So the home advantage still exists, and we can expect the numbers to get back to that level this season as the sample size increases.
What’s interesting: These numbers held true throughout the pandemic. So maybe it’s not the crowds that matter; maybe it’s being physically at home – in a familiar environment, sleeping in your own bed – that matters.
Provision: Fiction. Home field advantage still exists, just not in the way you thought it existed.
Bonus Fact or Fiction: There is a gambling aspect here
That aforementioned 71% is what my colleague Tom Haberstroh might call a large number.
In theory, the seven teams that averaged 15 or more 3s per game (Celtics, Hornets, Warriors, Timberwolves, Bulls, Cavaliers and Suns) should beat the 10 teams that averaged 12 or fewer 3s per game (Grizzlies). , Pacers, 76ers, Pistons, Pelicans, Magic, Trail Blazers, Kings, Lakers, Raptors). Indeed, these seven top-ranked teams are 18-4 against the ten others, including an 11-0 record at home.
But the top shooting teams are more successful because they are betteryou would think. (Whether they are better or not because they make more 3s is a question we’ll tackle in the future.) Then how does that explain Charlotte and Chicago, two sub-.500 teams, who are 4-1 against those 10 other teams?
Take the Brooklyn Nets, for example, who are terrible but rank sixth in three-point attempts per game (40.1), ninth in series (14.4) and are off to a surprising 4-4 start. They have been a significant underdog to Memphis in a few recent games: one home, one away. And they won both outright, earning more threes each time.
If you are a gambler, your eyebrows may be raising at this point. If you’re more likely to win when you make more threes, you’re more likely to hit a higher percentage at home And There is a greater chance that the home team will win, then there may be something to choose from – against the spread – that a home team is likely to make more threes.
Unfortunately, sportsbooks have become hip to this trend. That 18-4 record we mentioned earlier is 12-10 against the spread (6-5 at home). Winning 55% of the time is pretty good if you’re in the betting industry, but a sample size of 11 home games is too small to trust. Still something worth monitoring.
Provision: Fiction? At least until tonight when we put this to the test for Pacers-Hornets. Indiana, which ranks 27th in three-point attempts and 22nd in attempts, is a seven-point road favorite against Charlotte, which ranks second in both three-point attempts and attempts. Gamble responsibly, my friends.
