Home Court Advantage

Home court advantage in basketball refers to the perks of being the home team in a game or playoff series. There are several pieces that make home court advantage so useful in basketball.

One advantage to playing on your home court is being used to the stadium. Players play more in their own court than in any other team’s court. This means they’re used to the playing-surface and likely feel comfortable on their own court.

Playing on your home court means playing in front of your own fans. Hearing beloved fans encourage you when you make a shot goes a long way for a team. It adds to the comfort level and affects the opposing players too. The fans can get in the heads of the away team and rattle the players, throwing them off their game. It’s hard to make a clutch free throw when the whole stadium is yelling at you.

The home court advantage is real. In the NBA, home teams win about 60% of their games. In the playoffs, home teams win approximately 65% of their games.

In the NCAA, it is believed that home court advantage is much more important for some teams than others. Overall, home court advantage appears to be even more prevalent than in the NBA. In the NCAA, home teams won approximately 68% of their basketball games.

Home field advantage clearly does give teams an advantage, since home teams win the majority of games. However, it’s not a guaranteed win.

In basketball, the phrase “home-court advantage” typically refers to the physical and psychological benefits that a player experiences when competing in their own arena. However, in the context of the NBA Playoffs, the team that will play at least half of the series’ games in its own arena is said to have the home-court advantage.

Each NBA playoff series is composed of 4 to 7 games that are played in a 2-2-1-1-1 format. This means that the team with the home-court advantage hosts games 1, 2, 5, and 7 while its opponent hosts games 3, 4, and 6, with games 5-7 only being played if necessary.

As mentioned above. teams prefer to host playoff games because factors like playing in a familiar environment, being surrounded by loyal fans, not having to travel, eating home-cooked meals, sleeping in your own bed, etc. have been proven to enhance player performance. Furthermore, “the psychological impact of playing at home is a self-sustaining placebo effect: Home-court advantage gives the home team an edge simply because players believe that it does” (Bleacher Report).

In any given series, the home-court advantage is granted to the team with a better win-loss record, so NBA teams work to improve their regular season records in hopes that, if they make it to the playoffs, they will be ranked high enough to earn a home-court advantage.