Dime Mag published an article last October ranking the best Home-Court Advantage in the NBA and the top 8 (roughly the top 25 percent) were:
1. Golden State Warriors
2. Oklahoma City Thunder
3. Portland Trailblazers
4. Chicago Bulls
5. Denver Nuggets
6. New York Knicks
7. San Antonio Spurs
8. Boston Celtics
However, the article doesn't base their rankings on anything quantitative, simply intuition. As a Warriors fan, Oracle arena is cited as having the best home court advantage in the league, the loudest fans, etc. etc. While I'll definitely agree that Warrior fans are the best fans in the NBA, I wanted to see the numerical basis behind home court advantage. I took the home/road records from the 2004-2005 NBA season up until the 2012-2013 and looked at a given team's data over that span. The average difference in home wins and road wins in that time period for all thirty teams was 8.06 with a standard deviation of 1.47. In order to quantify the data more effectively I looked how many standard deviations away a given team's home win/road win difference was from the aforementioned average.
The data certainly isn't perfect - the home win/road win difference for the Oklahoma City Thunder/Seattle Supersonics was considered to be one team. The data regarding that franchise should be taken with a grain of salt. The Orlando Magic also switched arenas in that timespan (they moved to the Amway Center in 2010), however the different arena likely did not make a large difference in homecourt advantage.
1. Golden State Warriors
2. Oklahoma City Thunder
3. Portland Trailblazers
4. Chicago Bulls
5. Denver Nuggets
6. New York Knicks
7. San Antonio Spurs
8. Boston Celtics
However, the article doesn't base their rankings on anything quantitative, simply intuition. As a Warriors fan, Oracle arena is cited as having the best home court advantage in the league, the loudest fans, etc. etc. While I'll definitely agree that Warrior fans are the best fans in the NBA, I wanted to see the numerical basis behind home court advantage. I took the home/road records from the 2004-2005 NBA season up until the 2012-2013 and looked at a given team's data over that span. The average difference in home wins and road wins in that time period for all thirty teams was 8.06 with a standard deviation of 1.47. In order to quantify the data more effectively I looked how many standard deviations away a given team's home win/road win difference was from the aforementioned average.
The data certainly isn't perfect - the home win/road win difference for the Oklahoma City Thunder/Seattle Supersonics was considered to be one team. The data regarding that franchise should be taken with a grain of salt. The Orlando Magic also switched arenas in that timespan (they moved to the Amway Center in 2010), however the different arena likely did not make a large difference in homecourt advantage.
The above graphs highlight the difference in wins for the 30 franchises and the error bars reflect the standard deviation for the teams. Obviously, with a sample size of 9 years one would expect a large standard deviation and that is reflected. In the future it may be worthwhile to look at the same type of data over a longer timespan, but that presents the problem of mixing generations of fans, & the make up of a fan base is certainly key in determining home court advantage.
Obviously, teams play better at home and tend to win more games at home, but the difference between how good these teams are at home versus on the road does not seem to be large for the thirty franchises. However, in order to really understand exactly how much this difference we need look how each teams home/road difference differs from the norm.
Obviously, teams play better at home and tend to win more games at home, but the difference between how good these teams are at home versus on the road does not seem to be large for the thirty franchises. However, in order to really understand exactly how much this difference we need look how each teams home/road difference differs from the norm.
This graphs gives us a much better idea of exactly which teams are better on the home versus the road. For the sake of this study we'll only consider teams that are more than 1 standard deviation away to be significant difference.
Recall the Dime Mag article listed the following teams as having the best home court advantage: Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trailblazers, Chicago Bulls, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks ,San Antonio Spurs & Boston Celtics.
As mentioned earlier we won't be looking at the Oklahoma City Thunder in this study. The standard deviation difference for the other 7 teams is
Golden State Warriors: 1.55
Portland Trailblazers: 1.32
Chicago Bulls: 0.34
Denver Nugget: 0.26
New York Knicks: -0.72
San Antonio Spurs: 0.04
Boston Celtics: -0.79
So out of the 7 teams that were considered to be in the top quarter of NBA franchises for homecourt advantage only 2 were significantly better at home than on the road. 3 of those teams were basically on par with the rest of franchises in the NBA. The New York Knicks & Boston Celtics were acutally statistically worse at home compared to other teams.
The article didn't even mention the Utah Jazz or the Washington Wizards. The Utah Jazz are generally considered a strong home team, but the data suggests that they significantly better at home than every other NBA team (+2.61 standard deviation difference). I was personally surprised that Washington Wizards scored so highly given the media rarely portrays them as a strong home team. Again, stressing the importance of attempting to look at the NBA quantitatively not qualitatively.
In summary, though the Warriors probably most definitely have the best fan base in the NBA, they unfortunately don't have the best home court advantage. The top 3 in best and worst home court advantage were:
Recall the Dime Mag article listed the following teams as having the best home court advantage: Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trailblazers, Chicago Bulls, Denver Nuggets, New York Knicks ,San Antonio Spurs & Boston Celtics.
As mentioned earlier we won't be looking at the Oklahoma City Thunder in this study. The standard deviation difference for the other 7 teams is
Golden State Warriors: 1.55
Portland Trailblazers: 1.32
Chicago Bulls: 0.34
Denver Nugget: 0.26
New York Knicks: -0.72
San Antonio Spurs: 0.04
Boston Celtics: -0.79
So out of the 7 teams that were considered to be in the top quarter of NBA franchises for homecourt advantage only 2 were significantly better at home than on the road. 3 of those teams were basically on par with the rest of franchises in the NBA. The New York Knicks & Boston Celtics were acutally statistically worse at home compared to other teams.
The article didn't even mention the Utah Jazz or the Washington Wizards. The Utah Jazz are generally considered a strong home team, but the data suggests that they significantly better at home than every other NBA team (+2.61 standard deviation difference). I was personally surprised that Washington Wizards scored so highly given the media rarely portrays them as a strong home team. Again, stressing the importance of attempting to look at the NBA quantitatively not qualitatively.
In summary, though the Warriors probably most definitely have the best fan base in the NBA, they unfortunately don't have the best home court advantage. The top 3 in best and worst home court advantage were:
Top 3 Best: 1. Utah Jazz 2. Washington Wizards 3. Golden State Warriors | Top 3 Worst: 1. Houston Rockets 2. Minnesota Timberwolves 3. Phoenix Suns |
I hope you enjoyed this post, and it gave you a little bit more insight onto what exactly homecourt advantage means in the NBA.
References:
1. "Dime Magazine (dimemag.com) : Daily NBA News, NBA Trades, NBA Rumors, Basketball Videos, Sneakers » Blog Archive The 10 Best Homecourt Advantages In The NBA." Dime Magazine dimemagcom Daily NBA News NBA Trades NBA Rumors Basketball Videos Sneakers. http://dimemag.com/2013/10/10-best-homecourt-advantages-nba/ (accessed March 16, 2014).
2. "NBA & ABA Basketball Statistics & History | Basketball-Reference.com." Basketball-Reference.com. http://www.basketball-reference.com/ (accessed March 13, 2014).
1. "Dime Magazine (dimemag.com) : Daily NBA News, NBA Trades, NBA Rumors, Basketball Videos, Sneakers » Blog Archive The 10 Best Homecourt Advantages In The NBA." Dime Magazine dimemagcom Daily NBA News NBA Trades NBA Rumors Basketball Videos Sneakers. http://dimemag.com/2013/10/10-best-homecourt-advantages-nba/ (accessed March 16, 2014).
2. "NBA & ABA Basketball Statistics & History | Basketball-Reference.com." Basketball-Reference.com. http://www.basketball-reference.com/ (accessed March 13, 2014).