I’ve always believed that some of my football analysis is foundational enough that it easily converts to other sports. With that in mind, one of the studies I conduct every year for both NFL and college football is called TRUE HOME AND ROAD FIELD PERFORMANCE. I not only look at which teams have the best performance records in each situation but I also employ a formula that qualifies the effective amount by which teams outplay or are outplayed by their opponents. I call this rating their TRUE home and road field performance level. I then use the results in applying team-specific home and road field ratings to my Power Ratings, Effective Strength indicators and Bettors Ratings that are shared with VSiN readers on a daily basis. Naturally, the same logic can be applied in the NBA as well to judge TRUE HOME AND ROAD COURT PERFORMANCE.
As a bettor, I have always found that one of the most important factors in analyzing teams’ strengths in basketball is determining how much each team should be assigned in their games based on being at home or on the road. There are really only two ways to do this: a standard designation or a team-specific assignment. Obviously, I prefer the latter, as it is my belief that there are specific performance trends that warrant treating each team individually, both from a theoretical and actual numbers standpoint. After all, there are clearly environments that are tougher than others across the league landscape.
For those of you who like to keep things simple, you should know that in his latest ratings, Jeff Sagarin proclaims that the average home-court advantage in the NBA is 2.94 points. In studying the numbers over the past 1 1/2 seasons, I have found it to be quite lower, specifically 1.87 points. My own home and road court ratings reflect that number and they are built into the Strength Ratings that you see on VSiN.com in the matchup pages. If you’re wondering why I chose the last year and a half for the duration of the study, recall that the 2020-21 season was heavily affected by arenas closed to spectators, and average attendance was less than 1,000 per game. For 2021-22 and the current season, conditions have returned to pre-COVID-19 standards.
The way I see it, we almost have to do the team-specific method as bettors because there are many reasons why certain teams have more definitive home-court advantage than others. Among these are crowd capacity/enthusiasm, the quality of the team playing there, the style with which a team plays and even the possible distractions for visiting teams. That last one seems to be a bigger issue in the pros than in college. I’m sure you can think of other factors, but in my experienced opinion, one thing is certain, there is no way that every team’s advantage is the same.