Here in Round 2 of the NBA playoffs we're seeing once again that home court advantage matters a lot -- out of eight total games, seven have been won by the home team. Which makes me wonder -- is anyone aware of any good research on what the home court advantage consists of? Why should it be so strong?
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Home Cooking
12 May 2008 09:36 am
Comments (70)
With the amount of noise in those arenas, you'd have to be psychologically invincible not to be affected by it.
I think familiarity with the court and reffing are th two big advantages. People have long talked about the 80s era Celts home court advantage as including knowing where the dead spots on the court were. As to reffing, for some reason, the Jazz averaged about two more fouls per game on the road than at home.
That would be 15 of 16, not seven of eight. (The exception being my Pistons, who might just have the stuff after all . . . .)
Check that -- 14 of 15; I'm looking ahead to tonight's Cleveland victory.
Teams that are down in the final minutes foul more to try to get possession back, so saying teams average more fouls on the road might just be saying that they lose more on the road.
A study of soccer refs in England found that crowd noise biased their decisions in favor of the home team:
http://www.cababstractsplus.org/google/abstract.asp?AcNo=20043166551
I remember seeing an interview with Sam Smith from the Chicago Tribune where he attributed it mainly to increased partying on the road. I'd guess that all the factors Howards mentions play into it also, though.
It doesn't hurt that Duncan was sick as a dog for two road games and healthy for two home games.
Home court advantage reflects mental frailty. Last year, the Spurs were 8-2 at home and 8-2 on the road in the playoffs. They were 8-4 at home and 8-4 on the road in the 2003 playoffs.
I'm inclined to agree that it is (at least in part) refereeing. However, I think analyzing refereeing is so inherently difficult that there's no way to know. I would think, for example, that players to play better get fouled more often - so even if the refereeing is completely consistent, the team that is playing better would have more fouls called in their favor. Accordingly, if it really is the crowd or the routine that causes players to play better at home, you'll still see the home team get the benefit of more calls.
I've seen evidence that home court matters very little, but I think its importance increases with more evenly matched teams, as these are.
There's some research from a few years back (I have no idea of the citation) suggesting that it is not so much as a home court advantage as a travel disadvantage. College ball teams had no advantage over visiting teams that traveled short distances & slept at home, but they did have an advantage over teams that had to travel farther to get to the game.
Performing anything well at a high level requires confidence, an elusive, somewhat mysterious mental state. Playing at home, in familiar surroundings, with the tangible presence of thousands of supporters, must surely enhance one's confidence. With teams relatively evenly matched, the resulting slight edge in confidence, cumulative among the players, seems to be enough to make the home team "better."
With the amount of noise in those arenas, you'd have to be psychologically invincible not to be affected by it.
Here's a paper that seems to back that up. It's on JSTOR, but the abstract's viewable for free:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3033796
Even 40 years ago my high school coach considered home court to be worth 10 points. After playing some college basketball, and coaching myself, it seems to hold fairly true, although there may be different reasons for different levels of basketball. K.D.F.
I don’t think it’s the refs, when teams play worse they foul more. I know there is some level of research about improved performance and positive social reinforcement, but I don’t know if it’s super compelling.
What I’ve been wondering is why it seems like home teams are about twice as likely to win game 3 as game 4. Maybe when you look at the numbers it’s not big a difference as it seems, but it sure seems away just can’t win game 3s, whereas games 4s seem like a coin flip.
The home court advantage in basketball is the most mystifying, because basketball has the most standardized of playing areas. Baseball has perhaps the most disparate, with every stadium being of different playing dimensions. Football has different playing surfaces and climates. Hockey is probably closest to basketball, but there are subtle differences in the caroms off the boards in each arena.
While one would think travel has some part to play in it, this doesn't explain why basketball - as opposed to the other major sports, where travel is equally prominent - has such a Home/Road differential. Also, the travel factor should be essentially negated during the playoffs, when both teams are travelling back and forth between cities at roughly the same time.
So I guess that does point to reffing. But then the question becomes why is reffing more affected in basketball than in other sports?
There's some research from a few years back (I have no idea of the citation) suggesting that it is not so much as a home court advantage as a travel disadvantage. College ball teams had no advantage over visiting teams that traveled short distances & slept at home, but they did have an advantage over teams that had to travel farther to get to the game.
This study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9381060) based on NBA games comes to a slightly different conclusion. It finds the key factor isn't travel per se, but rather time zone changes interfering with Circardian rhythms.
That matches anecdotal evidence of the effects of MLB Japan trips, dreadful NFL games played in London, etc.
There's some research from a few years back (I have no idea of the citation) suggesting that it is not so much as a home court advantage as a travel disadvantage. College ball teams had no advantage over visiting teams that traveled short distances & slept at home, but they did have an advantage over teams that had to travel farther to get to the game.
This study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9381060) based on NBA games comes to a slightly different conclusion. It finds the key factor isn't travel per se, but rather time zone changes interfering with Circadian rhythms.
That matches anecdotal evidence of the effects of MLB Japan trips, dreadful NFL games played in London, etc.
Re: different sports
I should also point out that there are also rules favouring the home team in hockey - they get last line change, and get to put their stick down last on the faceoff.
I think you'd have to consider that the psychological effects of the widespread belief in a home-court advantage will reinforce whatever actual advantage exists.
Players will undoubtedly look at a Best of 7 series on paper and understand that they need to hold serve at home (and, in some cases, steal just one on the road). Their level of effort and concentration will wax and wane over the course of a series, but since they view the home games as must-wins that will affect their mindset.
McKingford has it partly right in that, since basketball has the most standardized playing area/conditions, one would expect the home court advantage to be less significant than in baseball or football.
But the key difference is that basketball games are not won or lost, generally speaking, on one or two plays. Rather, most basketball games are defined by sustained runs over 3-4 minutes. The basketball home court advantage is most significant when the home team goes on a 10-2 run (or something like that) in each half, effectively putting the game away. If the road team can prevent such runs, they are usually in good shape. But when the home team goes on a run, the crowd gets energized, calls from refs start going the home team's way, and that's the ball game.
Home court advantage is more pronounced in basketball for a variety of reasons, many mentioned here. First, familiarity with the court/arena cannot be underestimated. Every floor is different. Some are incredibly bouncy while others are totally dead. Some have ice below them, others don't. Some arenas are more intimate while others are cavernous (there's a reason the Final Four games are often poorly played in the early going. They're playing in a football stadium which has things like draft they're not accustomed to). The perspective of the basket is also quite different from one venue to the next. What's behind the basket affects shooting like nothing else. And many tweak their home court to their teams advantage (see Boston raising the temperature in the arena and opponents locker room back in the 80s). While it's not likely the case in the NBA, I know that in some high school gyms the basket isn't even regulation height.
Basketball, as a game of streaks, is also more heavily dependent on momentum and the proximity of the crowd helps feed that. Crowd noise and excitement can rattle even the best players and influence referees, who have a more demonstrable impact on a game's outcome than in any other sport. The scorer's table is also managed by the home team's people, so a little helpful clock management comes into play on occasion.
And like one commenter said during the regular season the travel component is a major issue. But in the playoffs that isn't much of a factor given the teams have plenty of time off between games and don't bounce from one city to the next.
I don’t think it’s the refs, when teams play worse they foul more. I know there is some level of research about improved performance and positive social reinforcement, but I don’t know if it’s super compelling.
I'm sure those studies aren't airtight, but I'll take them any day over someone just asserting otherwise.
And I think that "when teams play worse they foul more" is a really shaky generalization, at least until you control for coaching styles.
When the Spurs played Hack-a-Shaq against Phoenix the last round, they may have been following a questionable strategy, but those fouls weren't an indicator of bad play. To take another example, if a Mike D'Antoni team played a Jeff Van Gundy team, there'd likely be a huge disparity in team fouls, but that wouldn't necessarily tell you anything about the outcome.
Just mousing around Google Scholar a bit, there's really an amazing amount of research on the subject, to the point where there are even metastudies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10565549. According to that paper:
A number of studies provide strong evidence that home advantage increases with crowd size, until the crowd reaches a certain size or consistency (a more balanced number of home and away supporters), after which a peak in home advantage is observed. Two possible mechanisms were proposed to explain these observations: either (i) the crowd is able to raise the performance of the home competitors relative to the away competitors; or (ii) the crowd is able to influence the officials to subconsciously favour the home team. The literature supports the latter to be the most important and dominant explanation.
Short Matt: Statistics can so define the ineffable!
Of course, that could be a lot of the basketball posts.
I used to play professional baseball, briefly in the big leagues, a lot in the minors. I think it's the whole experience of travel - food, strange beds, goofy routines, maybe fan reaction (more in basketball than baseball), etc. I don't go for the ref angle. I never knew a serious athlete who felt, in the long run, that officiating mattered. They blow calls both ways - it's just something that has to be dealt with in the short run, inconsequential overall.
"So I guess that does point to reffing. But then the question becomes why is reffing more affected in basketball than in other sports?"
Basketball refs are closer to the fans than any other, and there is also no wall between them and the fans. I don't think any ref believes that the fans will pour onto the court and attack him, but there could be some primal fear at work.
What's ineffable about the outcome of a game? You're not awarded a win based on Beauty and Truth; you're awarded a win when you score more points than your opponent. It's pretty freaking tangible.
I don't think statistical analysis is the be-all end-all of understanding sports, but just yelling "Nerd!" rather than actually trying to counter the argument is super lame.
I agree that officiating is the major variable, but this was funny, from this weekend's Boston Globe Basketball Notes:
Double dribbling
Word is, Boston entertainment prince Patrick Lyons might have played a role in the Celtics' blowout Game 7 win over the Hawks a week ago that vaulted them to the second round. The Hawks stayed at the Liberty Hotel May 3 in Cambridge before playing the Celtics. A league source said Lyons, who operates the Alibi Lounge in the hotel, instructed his bar staff to give anyone affiliated with the Hawks a double shot in any alcoholic beverage they ordered
Statistics could capture a lot about home-court advantage, such as the fact that it exists, how much it's worth on average, whether it really affects young teams more than veteran teams. But it seems to me like the effect of crowd noise on your jump shot is really one of those "intangibles" we hear so much about.
I don't know. I guess my comment was more the product of built-up frustration with Matt's worship at the altar of Basketball Statistics than anything else. I withdraw it.
Light-colored uniforms.
There's no way to deny that the effect on the refs is a significant part of it. The refs simply impact the game more in basketball than in any other sport. The Heat-Mavs final made this crystal clear, as did the "star" rule that consistently let Jordan push off and Ewing travel.
It is expected that dozens of fouls will be called every single game. The only other sport where this is the case is soccer, where there is also huge home advantage.
Antid,
That's cool. And fwiw, I do take this stuff with a big grain of salt, since there are so many simplifying assumptions you have to make to shoehorn the game into statistical models. Not to mention that, when I see my posts vs. Falstaff's, I'm reminded a bit of that old SNL George Will baseball skit...
The home court advantage in basketball is the most mystifying, because basketball has the most standardized of playing areas.
In some ways I think it is least mystifying in hoops.
1) In general the quality of officiating is worst in the NBA of all the major pro sports leagues, and the refs are definitely impacted by the high decibel circus atmosphere generated by home crowds. Advantage: home team.
2) Defense wins championships -- this we all know. Well, playing good defense is physically exhausting. An extra adrenaline boost can't hurt. The thunderous cheering of the home crowd boosts adrenaline levels, I would guess. Advantage: home team.
I don't think NBA officiating is that bad, though there are certainly calls and refs that drive me crazy like everybody else. More than anything, it's just a really tough game to call.
There's always some degree of contact on and away from the ball, and it's not always clear what rises to the level of a foul, never mind which player should be called for it.
Add to that the speed of the game, the ability of insanely skilled players to conceal their actions, and an epidemic of flopping (someone needs to tell Latin American players that the 'writhing in agony as you wait for the stretcher' shtick only works in soccer), and you end up with a very difficult job to do well.
I'll tell you what doesn't account for home-court advantage: fan support. There are college teams that draw 200 fans per game, and they still perform much better at home than on the road.
Familiarity with sightlines/background are a big reason for the superior performance of home teams in basketball.
Basketball refs are closer to the fans than any other, and there is also no wall between them and the fans. I don't think any ref believes that the fans will pour onto the court and attack him, but there could be some primal fear at work.
If World Cup qualifying matches, the home team has a big edge. And if you're playing in South America, you better believe that the refs fear for their lives. Thrown bottles and threats are fairly common. If you can pull out a tie it's a win, even if you're the better team .
I'll tell you what doesn't account for home-court advantage: fan support. There are college teams that draw 200 fans per game, and they still perform much better at home than on the road.
Familiarity with sightlines/background are a big reason for the superior performance of home teams in basketball.
I subscribe somewhat to Bill Simmons' theory (oh spare me, haters) that, although all refs are in some way affected by the home crowd, bad referees are disproportionately affected. This has a certain truthiness to it, you must admit. Couple this with the fact that, although there are some good refs in the NBA, there are quite a few well-known duds (hint: they're usually being praised by the announcers for being polished veterans) and you've got nice recipe for home-court super-advantage.
Now, I also agree with those on this thread who think that the general level of officiating is fairly comparable with the other major sports. But there's also a lot fewer officials on the court than there are in other sports, and so when there are bad ones, they can really affect the outcome.
And, oh yeah, at least one of them took money to affect games. Let's not forget that.
Check out Kevin Drum: The Political Animal has taken a stab at trying to answer this for you.
More than anything, it's just a really tough game to call.
Gawd, yes. Which reminds me: I've come to really hate Hubie Brown. Shame, because I used to be a big fan. But his unwillingness to publicly second-guess an official, or even allow for the possibility of reasonable second-guessing, drives me nuts. We need to clone JVG.
Brian,
What are you basing that on? I don't know if you read the previous comments, but the stuff I linked to--and everything I've read elsewhere--specifically argues against all of those points.
And setting aside statistics, just from playing and watching the game, I don't find those court factors credible. When you think about the differences in matchups night to night, any differences in courts are going to be trivial in comparison. I mean, if someone can go from facing Ben Wallace one night to Shaq the next, they can deal with a slightly springier floor.
If that stuff mattered, it'd be noticeable in the timing of passes and so on, but when the away teams get beat, they're getting beat by players, not the arena. On the rare occasion when anything like that matters--like with the new ball last season--you can see it affecting plays in the obvious ways you'd expect.
There's a reason the NBA allows fans to wave those stupid free-throw 'distractor' things--it's because they know they don't really do anything. Or, to take another case, I've heard gamblers obsess over court characteristics, but I've never heard it from a coach or a player.
When you think about the differences in matchups night to night, any differences in courts are going to be trivial in comparison. I mean, if someone can go from facing Ben Wallace one night to Shaq the next, they can deal with a slightly springier floor.
Anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. There were many, many reports of dead spots in the old Garden, and (IIRC) Jordan initially played poorly at the United Center in part because the fireworks display at the start left a residue that made his shoes slippery, and that slipperiness disproportionately affected his play.
I've come to really hate Hubie Brown.
Oh god, me too. He's become the Andy Rooney of basketball, except that he loves everything instead of complaining about it.
One thing you would think could be statistically analyzed is free-throw percentage. How much does all the fan distraction on the road impact a player's ability to make the shot?
...familiarity with the court/arena cannot be underestimated.
This is a testable hypothesis. I also think it is the hypothesis that is most likely to be true. I think field goal percentage is affected by the visual cues around the basket. The familiar visual cues of the home court produce higher field goal percentages. If this is correct, then the visiting team should do better the later you go into a seven-game playoff series. So, it can be easily tested.
SCMT,
I think both of those examples are fair, but I'm still sceptical they're the rule rather than the exception these days. The quirkier, older arenas are pretty much all gone now, and I don't think the fireworks experiment's getting repeated any time soon.
I'm gonna call b.s. on the continuing meme that basketball "is a tough game to call." There's really no reason why it should be. There's ten people on the floor, generally guarding one another 1 on 1. That's 5 pairs to keep your eyes on if you want to see absolutely everything. And you don't need to see absolutely everything at one time. You generally need only look at the pair on the ball, the pair under the basket (if different) and the cutter (if one comes). That's 3. There's 3 officials. And what are they looking for? Basically, three kinds of fouls on or around the ball -- shooting foul, moving screen, and illegal hand-checking (okay, with a smattering of blocking/charging fouls, generally on breakaways). And these three things are incredibly unlikely to be going on at the same time. You don't have to look for moving screens at the same time you're looking for a shooting foul. Situationally, therefore, you're generally looking for one thing at a time. Off the ball, you're basically looking for illegal screens set to free cutters, and any hanky-panky with bigs jostling for position. Two things. Just two. And you've got plenty of personnel to be able to do that.
The size of the playing area also helps the officials. They don't have to run too far or too quickly, particularly if the Pistons are playing (rim shot!) they can position one of their number under the basket, one to the side, and one at the half-court and have a pretty clear view of damn near everything. They have tremendous advantages over their football brethren.
Also, most of the calls they have to make are not timing-type calls, such as those made by baseball officials (did the tag come in time?). By far the most common call is the shooting foul, which they are -- or should be -- perfectly positioned to make (or not make) correctly. The fact that they screw it up constantly should be cause for great concern. The only timing call they make is whether the defender got his feet set before being bowled over -- i.e., whether or not it's a charge. And, in reality, that's not supposed to be the determining factor! It is quite clear that, if the offensive player initiates contact, it doesn't matter if the defender's feet are moving -- yet this has become the determining factor in many (if not most) blocking calls that could have been charges. In other words, the refs have culturally made this foul harder to call than the rules require.
And yes, the athletes are big and fast -- they're professional athletes for the love of God! That's not really a compelling excuse to settle for substandard officiating.
The issue isn't the number of officials or their ability to see the play, it's that what counts as incidental contact is not well-defined. Pretty much any contested shot in the paint involves contact.
God, Hubie was terrible yesterday. He kept saying that Turiaf's foul looked like a clean, hard foul, not a dirty play, and Price only got hurt because he happened to crack his head on the floor. And yet, he refused to criticize the officials for calling a flagrant-2. What was that about?
It is really hard to figure out which factors are the most important and how much each contributes but I would speculate:
1) Travel. Visting players will typically have less sleep and be more out of sync with their natural biorhythms. I put this as the primary factor in part due to an anecdotal story -- I saw Tim Duncan, Michael Finley and Jacques Vaughn playing poker in Harrah's Casino New Orleans around midnight the night before they got routed in New Orleans during the regular season. Now I doubt that this was the cause of the rout, but it becomes clear how being on the road will make it more likely that a visiting team will have an off night.
2) Crowd noise. Besides occassionally interfering with communication when a visiting team is on offense, a crowd can help athletes summon up the extra energy to push their bodies to their limit. Of course, in a playoff game, both teams will already be pushing themselves quite hard, but it is not physically possible to push yourself to the limit and sustain it for 2+ hours. So a crowd can help you sustain those pushes for a bit longer and to get them going in the first place.
3) Familiarity with the arena. Players generally gear their shots to their home arena. They will struggle if the physics of an arena is slightly different. (I hypothesize this is one reason that Utah and Denver had two of the biggest home court disparities -- presumably the altitude does have some small, but nonzero, effect on shooting which statistics would likely bear out.) Also, a player can more easily identify where he is on the court in his home arena. Keep in mind that players generally find their "spot" on the court where they want to shoot without looking down to find a visual clue, so something as trivial as knowing that in one corner you should line yourself up with a certain object that has a permanent location in the backdrop can be valuable enough to add a few expected points to a team's offense.
The one reason mentioned that I do not agree with is the refereeing. I see refs blow calls in a pretty haphazard fashion. The closest I can see to refs being a factor in home court advantage is tied in with crowd noise -- they might be somewhat more likely to miss a hacking foul committed by the home team if the crowd noise is loud enough to silence the slapping sound somewhat.
Mike,
As I said above, one factor out of the three that you list changes over the course of a series: familiarity with the arena. It would be interesting to see if the percentage of road wins increases as a series goes on and the visiting teams become more familiar with the opponents' arena.
There is a confounding issue, however, in that a short lopsided series will have the dominant team very likely to win on the road. So, it would be best to look only at series that have gone the full 7 games, and see if, on average, the percentage of wins by visiting team goes up as you go deeper into the series.
One indicator that refereeing is a big issue-- the home-ice advantage in hockey playoffs has been quite mild or nonexistent over the years.
Hockey crowds are just as loud, but hockey referees make fewer calls.
C.S.,
As someone who reffed ~15 years of high school varsity basketball, let me assure you that reffing is not at all as easy as you make it out to be. This is particularly true at the college and NBA levels where you have incredibly talented and athletic players.
As an example, let's take a common play, a screen on the wing for a 3 point shot. The ref on that side will need to watch the screener and the screened player for fouls. Then, he will immediately need to snap back to the ball in case it is tipped out of bounds or stolen. If a shot goes up he then needs to be immediately aware if it is a 2 or 3 point shot, whether there is a foul, and whether there might be basket interference on a rebound. He also has to be aware of the fake shot-dribble drive, with a sideline out of bounds possible, as well as another possible pass. The other two refs are watching the post as well as possible block/charge and passes off a drive (the "lead" or under the basket ref) and the backside cutting and rebounding action (the "trail" or other wing official, who also has to help on basket interference and breakaways off steals or rebounds).
The hardest part of reffing is setting a consistent line for what is or is not a foul. At the NBA level, there could quite literally be a foul called every possession. The best officials find a balance between keeping the flow of the game and keeping control of the players. Sure they miss calls on occasion, but often what is viewed by fans as a "missed" call is actually a call consistent with prior calls; not all contact on a drive to the hoop is a foul!
Getting back to the original issue, I do think that home crowds affect refs to some degree. NBA coaches fairly consistently regard certain refs as better for home or away games; in fact, many teams (Mark Cuban's Mavs leap to mind) keep stats on refs to determine if they make different kinds of calls for home teams. Likewise, many online gambling sites will track stats for various metrics for inidividual refs. This is one major reason the NBA keeps ref assignments as secret as possible prior to gametime.
I think some of the other responses also play into the homecourt advantage: familiarity with the arena, sleeping at home, no travel fatigue, "energy" or momentum from home fans. Just don't discount the refs as contributing to the phenomenon.
Jim,
I'm not sure how much playing 3 additional games in a particular arena will really translate into improved shooting. The familiarity argument is based on the fact that the home team not only plays 40+ games a year in that arena, but also practices there. It is during practice that you can select where on the court you want to shoot from and take a large number of shots to develop your "stroke" and "shooting touch" from that location. In a game situation, it is pretty rare to take more than three shots from the same spot on the court, so I don't really see how a team is going to be that much more adjusted to the arena in a Game 7 than they are in a Game 1. Also, something like the oxygen level difference in Utah vs L.A. is not going to be any different in a Game 7 than in a Game 1, and I am not convinced that there is necessarily anything Utah or L.A. can do to adjust to it that will lead to improved performance as the series goes on.
In theory, the other two factors can be mitigated somewhat as well as the series go on. The travel routine might become more familiar and the rhythm of the crowd noise more predictable, but again I think these effects are likely to be negligible. I would be very surprised if there is any statistically significant decrease in home court advantage in Game 7s, though this is at least a hypothesis that can be tested.
If I recall correctly though, home teams in Game 7s have a very strong record, which shouldn't be too surprising since as the better seed they are typically the better team and they also have the benefit of the home-court advantage.
To Grange95:
Although you claim to be disagreeing with me, your comment supports my point quite nicely. I thank you.
CS,
Is there an alternate universe version of Grange95's comment that the rest of us can't see? Because the one I read certainly doesn't support your position. Unless you somehow think acknowledging that (1) refs are fallible and (2) some of them are better than others -- which would make them like every other profession that's ever existed -- constitutes a concession.
Just because you can classify fouls into a couple categories doesn't mean you can easily and consistently determine when they're happening.
Ric Bucher did a series a while back where he went to ref school in hopes of calling an exhibition game, and he basically gave up when he realized how difficult it would be. Or alternatively, talk to any ref who works at a reasonably high level -- I have an acquaintance who calls Div 2 college games -- and they'll talk your ear off about this stuff, because they get tired of this sort of clueless second guessing.
bh -- Grange95's comment supports mine because:
(1) Out of all the universe of possibilities, he chose an example where the referee needs to be aware of things which happen in sequence. Contrast this with officials in other sports (i.e., football) where they have to be aware of things that happen simultaneously. I don't care how quickly things happen in sequence, if you're a trained pro you should be able to do it, and the NBA officials are supposed to be superior. If Grange95 had a more enticing example, he would doubless have used it.
(2) Grange95 explicitly says that seeing the fouls is not the hard part of reffing. Rather, he says, "the hardest part of reffing is setting a consistent line for what is or is not a foul." Part of my point was that NBA refs -- as opposed to those in other sports -- have unique advantages which allow them to see more than their brethren. If the hardest part of their job is setting a consistent bar, I think that supports my point quite nicely.
And, yes, I realize that refs will talk your ear off about how tough their job is. Boy do I. I also realize that a pretty fair number of folks in any profession will do exactly the same. It's not really determinative, though.
By the way . . . if Grange95 is not actually a male, I apologize for referring her as "he" in the comment above.
That simultaneous / sequence distinction is utterly meaningless in anything resembling a real NBA game. How do you think this works? The refs carry around playbooks and look for how many fingers the coach is holding up?
But hey... you've got a theory, a TV, and an ego. What more could you need? Because when something high-profile and lucrative isn't being done the way you like, there's no way it's difficult. It's just that no one involved has the deep understanding that you do.
Been touched on upthread, shooting background, point of references and stuff like that. I think this is a big part of why you tend to see the role players more affected by home court than the key guys, as the key guys are basically on the court early and long enough to get used to the new geography, whereas coming in cold for limited times, surroundings will be just different enough to throw you off a little, so that your shot is a little off, your defensive positioning/angles are slightly off, mis-judge rebounds, etc.
Wow, bh, that's . . . um . . . an interesting reading of the argument, to say the least. But, hey, if someone disagrees with you, it must be because of their ego, right?
Just for the record, there's plenty of high-profile and lucrative things that are being done in a way I don't like, which I will readily acknowledge are quite difficult. For instance: refereeing in football, the editing of Top Chef, and being General Manager of the Knicks.
Actually, as a die-hard Knick-hater, I guess I should say that, contra my statement above, I absolutely approve of the way that the various Knick GM's have been going about their business over the last, oh, eight years or so.
I agree that home crowd advantage is all about players' confidence. This especially affects basketball more than football or baseball because basketball is more of a free-lance game where players are constantly reacting to one another. Baseball is more of an individual sport, and the plays are more scripted in football. Thus, the energy and familiarity of a home crowd has its greatest affect in basketball, where the mystical concept of "team" play is most critical to success. When I played basketball in high school I remember the feeling of walking into a strange gym and feeling a lot less energized and the "team" less unified. When one guy plays with less energy, that carries over into your play as well. And vice versa.
I agree that home crowd advantage is all about players' confidence. Not reffing, not "dead spots".
Why does it affect basketball the most? Because basketball is more of a free-lance game where players are constantly reacting to one another. Baseball is more of an individual sport, and the plays are more scripted in football. Thus, the energy and familiarity of a home crowd has its greatest affect in basketball, where the mystical concept of "team" play is most critical to success. When I played basketball in high school I remember the feeling of walking into a strange gym and feeling a lot less energized and the "team" less unified. When one guy plays with less energy, that carries over into your play as well. And vice versa. This phenomenon occurs in all sports, but the peculiar attributes of basketball amplify its effect (the same is probably true of soccer as well).
I agree that home crowd advantage is all about players' confidence. Not reffing, not "dead spots".
Why does it affect basketball the most? Because basketball is more of a free-lance game where players are constantly reacting to one another. Baseball is more of an individual sport, and the plays are more scripted in football. Thus, the energy and familiarity of a home crowd has its greatest affect in basketball, where the mystical concept of "team" play is most critical to success. When I played basketball in high school I remember the feeling of walking into a strange gym and feeling a lot less energized and the "team" less unified. When one guy plays with less energy, that carries over into your play as well. And vice versa. This phenomenon occurs in all sports, but the peculiar attributes of basketball amplify its effect (the same is probably true of soccer as well).
Alright, back off everyone--I have an undergraduate degree in cognitive science. Don't worry, this doesn't mean I'll actually support my answer with empirical evidence--but it does mean my bullshit should be taken moderately more seriously.
It's confidence. People cheering you on and re-enforcing your success makes you more successful. There was some study done where it was shown that visualizing making free throws before you attempt them actually increases the likelihood that you'll sink them. The cheering--even if it's 200 people in some high school gym somewhere--has a similar impact. It gets players into that elusive "zone", where everything is flowing and plays are executing.
The placebo effect is a powerful and poorly understood force. It can cure pain, it can help you beat cancer. The cheering of the crowd works a similar magic, I think.
I'll also hazard something else: I bet you that the effects of homecourt advantage are more significant in sports in which the quality of an individual's play is more causally dependent on the quality of play of other individuals on the team.
For instance, think of the difference between baseball and basketball. In baseball, a player who strikes out a lot harms the team because of the opportunity costs (the wasted out prevents other batters from getting a chance at the plate) and also because the offensive impact of subsequent batters is likely to be reduced (e.g., there may be less runners on base so a homerun brings in less runs). But the individual's actual performance is not significantly hampered by the crappiness of the previous batter--generally speaking, the previous batter's striking out doesn't make the current batter's pitches any harder to hit. Atbats are, in other words, fairly causally isolated (even if their overall offensive impact is not). Not only this, but each game comes with a guaranteed minimum of 27 attempts to create runs, with all attempts occurring at a standardized distance from the mound with no interference by defenders.
In basketball, on the other hand, a player's poor play is not causally isolated at all. A turnover or missed shot robs all teammates of a chance to produce offensively, and breaks their rhythm. Poor ball movement or lackadaisical involvement on the offensive end by a rattled or distracted player will result in low-percentage opportunities for everyone else. And so if one or two players lose their confidence and become shaky out there, a vicious cycle begins where their play worsens the play of their teammates, which in turn diminishes their confidence, and so on and so forth. Moreover, the fact that most coaches' offensive systems assume that everyone is playing solid basketball means that the offense tends to fail ungracefully when one or more of those players starts screwing up--they can send the whole offense into disarray (whereupon the coach angrily calls for a timeout to get everyone back in sync).
So it's not that confidence doesn't play a role in baseball--it does--but it's just in a more team-oriented sport like basketball, where individual performances are more causally intermingled, confidence has more of a cumulative or "force-multiplier" effect. And crowds affect confidence. One great play or exciting dunk that gets the crowd on its feet can restore the confidence of all the players on the team, and stop the downward spiral of low-confidence-breeding-poor-play-breeding-low-confidence. Conversely, the same crowd will do nothing for the confidence of the opponents, and maybe even encourage the spiral further with sufficiently loud boos and taunts.
This theory predicts that teams with a more offensive and team-oriented style will have bigger collapses on the road and bigger runs at home, because varying levels of confidence will be more amplified by the force-multiplying effect of team play.
The effects (such as they are) of home court advantage are multiplied in the playoffs by the extreme emotions and extreme fatigue experienced by the players. It's not that home court is all that great of an advantage, it's that the margins by which such influences overlap and affect the games are so very very thin. We're talking about a lot of strung out ballers here.
As for the Celtics: Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins also became first time fathers this season. (Scalabrine too, but he's not playing much now...) Don't underestimate the emotional roller-coaster they've been on this year... Speaking as a father myself, it's a HUGE letdown to leave your child for even a couple of days and HUGE shot in the arm to come home and see him/her. Pile on the emotions of playoffs... Lets see you try to play with consistency...
Ill echo what David Morris said in his comment above, and add that unlike baseball and football, basketball is a much more free flowing game. Every play in football and baseball is followed by an interruption to allow player to collect themselves and to mentally prepare for the next event. In basketball, usually there is little or no break in the action to collect ones thoughts. At those times, when you have a series of consecutive plays that go badly, players are not only dealing with the negative/positive feedback on the court, but they are getting a healthy dose of negative reinforcement from the crowd.
Coaches try to cope with this by calling timeouts, but the timeouts and free throw pauses aren't nearly the same as the constant built into breaks in football and baseball.
CS - just curious, do you play basketball? I would be surprised. People who play a lot are well aware of how hard the game is to ref. To me, the most common "big calls" in basketball (shooting foul, block, charge) are analogous to pass interference in football. Say, for example, a deep pass with man coverage. In your opinion, this call should be the easiest in football because the ref needs to only focus on two players and anything that happens will happen in sequence. So why is it so hard and so often called in a way that creates dispute? Hell, they use instant replay just to see what the "sequence" of events was - when did the ball touch his hands, where was his foot at that time, did his top hand come onto the ball and create "control" before his foot touched the chalk, was he in control of the ball and would he have landed in bounds but for the cornerback pushing on him, etc. Hell, I've played in a lot of pickup basketball games where a guy will disagree that he was fouled when the guy defending him is the one who called the foul. Seriously, play some hoops - pay special attention to the "sequence" of events as a PG breaks your ankles with a crossover.
Comments closed May 26, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
i was just discussing this yesterday: my guess is the single most tangible home court benefit is reffing.
related benefits include maintenance of routing (nba players are very routine-oriented) and the not-to-be-dismissed value of people cheering you on.
Posted by howard | May 12, 2008 9:40 AM