RealGM

During a recent Suns-Jazz game back in January, Suns color announcer Eddie Johnson mentioned that Utah is one of the toughest places to play on the road. While this is merely one isolated example, it represents a common perception throughout the League and there is loads of anecdotes that mirror EJ’s comment. The notion of Utah as an elite home team is a perception that is worth investigating to determine whether it is actually true both historically and currently and also to examine the reasons for home court advantage in general. It is also relevant because Utah happens to be one of the two hottest teams in the League right now and is poised to make some noise in the playoffs.

Home court advantage is not exclusive to the NBA nor to basketball in general. It occurs in varying degrees in virtually all team sports that have an established arena as a team’s home base (basketball, baseball, football, hockey all come to mind). According to a study by a graduate students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the NBA has the largest home court advantage out of the four major American sports leagues. In the NBA, the home team won 61 percent of the time, compared to 53 percent for the MLB, 55 percent for the NHL and 58 percent for the NFL.

Focusing in on the NBA, the Denver Nuggets actually owned the previous decade’s best home court advantage. During that period, the Nuggets had a home winning percentage of .643 and a road winning percentage of .352, which is a differential of .291 and can be considered fairly significant. It is also about three percent higher than the league average home winning percentage. So the Nuggets can be considered to have a strong home court advantage. But what are the causes of home court advantage in general?