Basketball Does Home Court Advantage Help?

[Archangel]

Watching the Celtics pretty much man-handle the Lakers the last 2 games leads me to ask the question......Does home court advantage really make a difference or is it the players themselves?? After all, any teams making the finals do have to win on the road to even get to the playoffs.......right??

 

[kobe080]

I also stopped watching after 1st half because I was frustrated with officiating.
seriously, 15 freethrow attempts by Boston in the 1st half compared to 2 of the Lakers and one was technical free throw. And Lakers were down by 12 at the half. Free throws made a huge difference.

For some odd reason, Celtics were getting fouls on every shooting attempts or "border line" calls but Lakers were not.
That's the biggest difference in the game as they did win by 6.

If refs are calling one thing at home but not on the road, yes, home court advantages matter.

 

[Hands]

Oh yeah home court matters!
Just look at the Celtics and Hawks series from the first round

For some reason, over the last few years the calls tend to favour the home team??!!

I guess another thing to think about is how much of a 6th man effect does a home crowd have by GOING NUTS?

 

[Archangel]

I've only been to like 2 basketball games in my entire life and they were years apart. I remember going to see the Cavs play whomever Walt Frazier was playing for at the time back in the early 70's. and the last one was a Sonics vs Clippers game about 12 years ago. I was in the nosebleed seats for the first game so didn't really see much , but at the Sonics game we had seats behind one of the baskets and I remember there being this long foam stick under every seat. Of course we joined in waving these big foam sticks and yelling whenever the Clippers were running to the basket.......pretty good distraction and cool idea by the Sonics to put those under all the seats. So I can see where you could say that the 6th man thing plays a pretty big part. It's a wonder that the teams don't pay strippers to hang out under the Visitors baskets for every game ........

 

[Hands]

I hope Mark Cuban is around cos he would be the only GM brave/insane enough to do that!