Who Will Dominate The NBA Finals?
With the 2021 NBA Finals nearly approaching in the first week of July, each of the thirty ambitious teams have begun planning their way up to the championship.
As they take a closer look at the standings and potential first-round playoff matchups, each team strategizes by letting their most notable players have a break from the first lineups and including them in the later games to secure an advantageous spot in the NBA Finals.
When the Los Angeles Clippers brought about this strategy in their two last games for the regular season last May by excluding lead starters like Paul George and Kawhi Leonard among others, however, the result was rather counterproductive. This particular scheme resulted in the Clippers losing games with multiple teams with a total of 39-104 record, dropping down to 4th in the Western Conference ranking, and eluding a harm-inducing first-round playoff meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers, who won the NBA championship last 2020.
This tactic has been widely employed by multiple teams within the 71 years of NBA history, but the anticlimactic result of the Los Angeles Clippers’ game plan just highlights the detrimental risks this scheme poses against the teams who might attempt to carry out this move in the next seasons. Evidently, it may lead teams to lose games as early as the regular season, which can stain their record and deprive them of the possibility of obtaining the home court advantage, considering that the team granted home-court benefits are the one with the highest ranking and best record.
Of course, it goes without saying that in NBA, home-court advantage is one of the most crucial determinants most bettors and fans look at to predict what will most likely happen in the championship. Believe it or not, the team that possesses the homecourt benefit had bagged the championship in 50 out of the 71 seasons in the totality of the NBA record. This data translates to 71 percent!
As studies show, the explanation behind the dominance of home teams is that aside from the observable assumption that referees unconsciously favor them because of the more highly vocal crowd, home-court advantage also has psychological implications within the members of the home team. For one, it gives a placebo effect that they will do well against their opponents because they are in their home court, which eventually reflects their hype and performance.
Statistically speaking, home teams have triumphed 57% of regular season NBA games within the last 5 years, and last season, home teams won 54% of the regular season games, owing to the fact that there has been a capacity decrease in most arenas because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, these figures are still significantly high.
In final season NBA games, moreover, home teams have succeeded and won games at a total rate of 61%. This rate has escalated in Games 1 and 7.
Through statistics, one can conclude that homecourt advantage is one of the most important and meaningful factors in the Betways NBA final odds. It might also tell us who to bet on this upcoming finals season.
Source: NBA picks site Betway