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Has the NBA introduced any advantage for the home teams playing in the bubble playoffs?

Sports Asked on February 11, 2021

The 2019-20 NBA season was restarted in a bubble in Orlando in July after it was shutdown due to COVID-19 in March. After the teams invited back played a few games, the playoffs started with the usual best-of-7 series. However, since all games are played at the bubble, there’s no traveling and so no home court advantage for the higher seed teams either. But teams are still marked as the home and away teams.

Aside from higher seed teams playing teams with worse records, are there any advantage for the higher seeds playing in neutral site in the bubble? In regular situations, the home team is guaranteed to play at least as many games or 1 more game at home as the lower seed. With the fans rallying for the home teams, and players being more familiar with their surroundings at home court, the home teams do better as they average slightly less turnovers, more points, less fouls, and sometimes even get more favorable calls from the referees.

The NHL is also having bubble playoffs happening in Toronto and Edmonton at the same time as the NBA. These hockey games are too played with no fans on neutral ice. However, hockey has built in advantage for the home team where they get the last change. That is during stoppages when both teams can substitute players, the home team gets to substitute after the visiting team. So the home team has an advantage as they get to change players based on the away team’s personnel on ice. Hence these neutral ice NHL games preserve some advantage for the higher seeds.

So has the NBA introduced any added advantage for the home teams in the bubble playoffs? Or does NBA basketball already have built in advantage for the home team like we see in hockey?

P.S. Personally I think an extra 8th timeout for the home teams would’ve been a touch of interesting marginal advantage.

One Answer

As far as I can tell, not really. They are making some attempt to replicate bits of the home court experience as far as audio/visual cues go; see this article for example:

The "home" team also gets its own signage, pregame hype videos, warm-up music and in-game sound effects, to simulate the feel of its own arena. The public address announcer even skews his enthusiasm toward the designated home team.

But, that doesn't seem to make much of a difference:

"There's no difference between a home and a road game," Rockets star James Harden says of the bubble. "The atmosphere is what it is."

There is technically one road team advantage that may have persisted: the right to choose which direction the team shoots first. It's unclear if that offers any advantage, of course.

Answered by Joe on February 11, 2021

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