Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.
[Last week: Under the rise of Evan Mobley, the Cavaliers are contenders again]
Fact or Fiction: Home-court advantage is dead
The NBA's home team won 60% of its regular-season games from 2000 to 2013, clear evidence of home-court advantage. That number dipped to 58% for the first time this century in 2014, as teams for the first time averaged more than 20 3-point attempts per game, and it held steady around that figure until the end of last decade, when the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered a new understanding of home-court advantage.
The number understandably fell to a new low (54%) during the 2020-21 season, when for the most part arenas were empty. With the exception of the 2022-23 campaign, when it spiked to 58% again, the figure has held firm at 54% ever since, including this season, as teams' 3-point attempts have risen on average above 35 per game. Which leads us to wonder: Is home-court advantage pretty much dead?
Whichever team made more 3s in a given game has been a far better indicator of who actually won. The team that makes more 3s wins about 67% of the time, and that number has largely held true for the last decade. (At the turn of the century, the number was closer to 60%, same as home-court advantage.)
This season, it has not mattered where teams are playing. Home teams are 39-19 when they make more 3s; road teams are 36-20 when they make more 3s. You are not necessarily more likely to make more 3s if you are playing at home. That is not true for past seasons, however. Over the previous five years, home teams won 71% of the games in which they made more 3s; road teams won 62% of them. So home-court advantage still exists, and we should expect the numbers this season to find those levels again as the sample size increases.
What is interesting: Those numbers held true during the pandemic. So maybe it is not the crowds that matter; maybe it is physically being home — in a familiar arena, sleeping in your own bed — that matters.
Determination: Fiction. Home-court advantage still exists, just not in the way you thought it did.
Bonus Fact or Fiction: There is a gambling aspect to exploit here
That aforementioned 71% is what my colleague Tom Haberstroh might call a Big Number.
In theory, the seven teams that are averaging 15 or more made 3s per game (Celtics, Hornets, Warriors, Timberwolves, Bulls, Cavaliers and Suns) should be beating up on the 10 teams that average 12 or fewer made 3s per game (Grizzlies, Pacers, 76ers, Pistons, Pelicans, Magic, Trail Blazers, Kings, Lakers, Raptors). Indeed, those seven top-shooting teams are 18-4 against the 10 others, including an 11-0 record at home.
But the top-shooting teams are more successful because they are better, you might think. (Whether or not they are better because they make more 3s is a question we will tackle in the future.) How, then, 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 3-point attempts per game (40.1), ninth in makes (14.4) and are off to a surprising 4-4 start. They were considerable underdogs to Memphis in a pair of recent games — one home, one road. And they won both outright, making more 3s each time.
Now, if you are a gambler, your eyebrows may be raising at this point. If you are more likely to win when making more 3s, more likely to shoot a greater percentage at home and more likely to win at home, then maybe there is something to picking — against the spread — a home team more likely to make more 3s.
Unfortunately, sportsbooks have gotten 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 are in the gambling business, but a sample size of 11 home games is too small to trust. Something worth monitoring, though.
Determination: Fiction? At least until tonight, when we put this to the test for Pacers-Hornets. Indiana, which ranks 27th in 3-point attempts and 22nd in makes, is a seven-point favorite on the road opposite Charlotte, which ranks second in both 3-point attempts and makes. Gamble responsibly, my friends.