Garden advantage lost with no fans
There are three main elements to home-court advantage. The first is obvious: the fans.
In every fanless sport this year, athletes and coaches have said that the energy of tens of thousands of people cheering them on has been impossible to replace. And no fans means no home cooking from the referees, either.
Then there’s routine, which is mostly about the annoyance and physical toll of traveling. Theoretically, sleeping in your home is better preparation than taking an overnight flight and waking up in a hotel, sometimes crossing time zones.
The third is familiarity with the home arena, which any of us with a backyard hoop can understand.
Statistics prove that the NBA, more so than any other major American league, gives the home team an advantage. According to a 2017 article by FiveThir-tyEight, NBA home teams won 59.9% of their games in the regular season and 64.5% in the playoffs. Only the NFL was comparable.
For the upcoming COVID-19 impacted season, which begins Wednesday for the Knicks at Indiana, the first element of the homecourt advantage is all-but nullified. Only about a handful of the 30 teams will have a limited number of fans in their home arenas.
So what will this mean for the Knicks? According to guard Elfrid Payton, the team’s fans, more so than familiarity with the home court or rims, represent the main advantage at MSG.
“We don’t get to practice much in the Garden or even have shoot-arounds there and shoot on those rims, because there’s always something going on at the Garden and things like that,” Payton said. “So it’s not so much the rims and the familiarity, but it’s just the fans just being in that arena. The crowd is kind of our homecourt advantage.”
Indeed, the Knicks aren’t among the teams that conduct shoot-arounds and practices at their home arena. Their practice facility is located 30 miles from MSG. Yet the Knicks have been much better at home, with 60 more wins at the Garden than on the road since the 200809 season. It’s a significant number.
The lack of fans could negate the Knicks’ advantage at MSG, but it works both ways. They won’t face as much of a disadvantage on the road as usual.
The bubble in Orlando eliminated all three aspects of a home-court advantage, and the “away” team posted a better record in the playoffs.
The Knicks, like the rest of the NBA, can’t predict how home-court advantage will play out with no fans.
“It was interesting just watching the bubble, those games, and it made the games a lot different,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “You start thinking about, particularly the playoffs and a Game 7 at home, that’s such a huge advantage, and that wasn’t the case in bubble.
“And then we saw all those high-scoring games and things like that. So it pretty much, I felt, negated any home-court advantage. But the bubble was a little different in terms of no travel involved. There’s travel involved now even though there is no fans. So it’s different.”