The Effects of the NBA COVID Bubble on the NBA Playoffs: A Case Study for Home-Court Advantage

Abstract

The 2020 NBA playoffs were played inside of a bubble at Disney World because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that there were no fans in attendance, games were played on neutral courts and no traveling for teams. In theory, these conditions should remove home-court advantage from the games. This setting generated discussion and concern, as analysts and fans debated the possible effects it may have on the outcome of games. Home-court advantage has historically played an influential role in NBA playoff series outcomes. The 2020 playoffs provided a unique opportunity to study the effects of the bubble and home-court advantage by comparing the 2020 season with the seasons in the past. While many factors contribute to the outcome of games, points scored is the deciding factor of who wins. Thus, scoring is the primary focus of this study. The specific measures of interest are team scoring totals and team shooting percentage on two-pointers, three-pointers, and free throws. Comparing these measures for home teams and away teams in 2020 vs. 2017-2019 shows that the 2020 playoffs favored away teams more than usual, particularly with two-point shooting and total scoring. KEYWORDS: NBA; NBA Covid; NBA Bubble; Homecourt Advantage

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball

“…Previous research established that home teams (63.8%) tend to win more on average, than away teams (50.8%) (Higgs and Stavness, 2021). This was explained by the regional peculiarities of basketball leagues (Gomez and Pollard, 2011), the size of the supporting crowd (Wunderlich et al, 2021), the psychological effect of expectations, and the tactical behavior of the team (Pollard and Gomez, 2013;Price and Yan, 2021). Analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on HA in different European professional basketball leagues showed that lowlevel teams benefited more from playing at their home court (Alonso et al, 2022).…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic posed a particular threat to human health and life, and the spread of its causative agent coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was extremely aggressive (Harrison et al, 2020). To protect players from COVID-19, the National Basketball Association (NBA) resumed the competition nearly 5 months later, with the top 22 teams isolated together in a so-called "bubble" (McHill and Chinoy, 2020;Price and Yan, 2021). Other competitions, such as the Euroleague Basketball (EB), decided the competition by six regular championship matches, the playoffs, and the final four competition.…”

Extraordinary circumstances: Covid-19 – Italian Serie A scenario

“…Thus, the number of matches for the remaining teams was significantly reduced. 19 However, this approach had some disadvantages. Some teams played more matches than others, while some of the remaining teams played more matches with the excluded teams than the others, so the schedule of the remaining matches was unfair towards some of the teams.…”