Is home court advantage really the advantage of the NBA’s wide margin results?

In the current NBA conference finals 6 of the 8 games have been double figure wins and 6 of those 8 games the home team has won. So even at the supposedly top level of basketball the home court maybe the difference in the 6 wide margin of results of double figures.

The Celtics held home court advantage with two double figure wins over LeBron’s Cavaliers with 108-83 an 107-94 wins and Cleveland bombed the Green and White in Cleveland 118-86 and won by 9 in the first game in that series 111-102 that was under a double margin to even the series to 2-2. The Warriors broke thru and took home court advantage away from the Houston Rockets with a 109-86 win at Houston and then the Rockets bounced back at home with a 127-105 win.

Then moving to the Warrior home in Oakland the Warriors broke a 60 year record by shooting down the Rockets by 41 points 126-85.

The Rockets broke thru and beat the Warriors at Oakland by just 3 points 95-92 in the only real close game of the 8 conference championship series games that went down to the final shot of the game.

Boston has not lost at home in the playoffs with 9 straight wins but are only 1-6 on the road for 10-6 overall. Cleveland is 10-5 overall and 7 and 1 at home. Warriors are 10-4 overall and 7-1 at home. Houston is 10-4 overall and 7-1 at home. Combined the 4 teams are 30-2 at home and are 10-16 on the road.

When you have probably the top 4 teams remaining in the conference finals how is it that each one can play so well one night and visiting team has only won twice (Warriors over Houston first game of series and the Rockets over the Warriors in game 4) then the one consistent factor has been playing the games at home.

Are their other reasons for the seemingly home court advantage? Is it the home crowd support that fires up and motivates the home team? Is it not having to travel and being able to sleep in their own beds? Is it the familiarity of the shooting backgrounds? Are the officials intimidated by the home crowds?

Right now it seems that being the higher seeded team with the home court advantage of 4 games to 3 if it goes to seven games, if a team can hold home court advantage throughout the series then they can have a good chance of advancing to the Championship Series. The Celtics are in position to do that while Houston lost that advantage and are going to have to win at least 1 game on the road to move on.

Over the years my basketball experiences have told me the home court is worth 10 points, but all of the losses in the 2 conference championships have been by more than 13 to 41 points in those home court wins except two that was 9 and 3 point differences one in each series.

It is hard to understand that these are the best basketball players in the world and yet they have really played poorly on the road in their big point margin losses. Can understand why the Celtics are 1-6 on the road as they have a young team with some of their best players are in their first experience of playing in the playoffs on the road. The other 4 teams are veteran teams so it is harder to understand why they have not been as successful being 9-10 between them on the road.

My conclusion is that the home teams feed off their home crowds and the visiting teams has no support to play off.