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After some discussion in my series conference, I was curious to see if the great managers in the USA could help.

What is home court advantage? How much of a gain in match ratings can one expect at home? Conversely, how much of a drop in ratings can be anticipated on the road?

This is the best I can fathom as far as the home court advantage. The following are ratings for my team in two games during the same week (therefore no player skills had increased/decreased), with the same lineups, and the same offensive and defensive tactics:

Home
Team ratings for
I'll Replace You With Machines

Offensive Strategy: Look Inside
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: inept (low)
Inside Scoring: mediocre (medium)
Perimeter Defense: inept (low)
Inside Defense: mediocre (medium)
Rebounding: inept (low)
Offensive Flow: awful (high)

Away
Team ratings for
I'll Replace You With Machines

Offensive Strategy: Look Inside
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (high)
Inside Scoring: mediocre (low)
Perimeter Defense: awful (medium)
Inside Defense: inept (high)
Rebounding: awful (high)
Offensive Flow: awful (high)

The differences between home and away (assuming low+medium+high= 1 full level):

Outside Scoring: 1/3 level
Inside Scoring: 1/3 level
Perimeter Defense: 2/3 level
Inside Defense: 2/3 level
Rebounding: 1/3 level
Offensive Flow: No Change

So an average change of 46.6% of one full level between home and away games (omitting offensive flow, as this appears not to be effected by in whose arena the game is being played).

I expect lower ratings on the road, and better ratings at home. But as my data set only includes one week worth of games, the amount of difference between home & away ratings is rather unreliable. For all I know, the difference in ratings may also have something to do with how many minutes each player spends on the court.

Anyone else have any data to support/debunk this?

After posting this, I had the amazing thought that the best place to test this would be looking at ratings for bot teams. Since bot teams always play the same offensive and defensive orders, and assuming that they always play the same line-up, have the same enthusiasm level and do not train, they should be perfect candidates for this discussion. So I checked a couple:

My round 2 cup opponent, Home/Away/Away:
Home
Team ratings for
Joseph City Falcons

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (high)
Inside Scoring: awful (high)
Perimeter Defense: awful (low)
Inside Defense: awful (low)
Rebounding: pitiful (high)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (high)

Away
Team ratings for
Joseph City Falcons

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (medium)
Inside Scoring: awful (high)
Perimeter Defense: pitiful (high)
Inside Defense: pitiful (high)
Rebounding: pitiful (medium)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (medium)

Away
Team ratings for
Joseph City Falcons

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (medium)
Inside Scoring: awful (medium)
Perimeter Defense: pitiful (high)
Inside Defense: awful (low)
Rebounding: pitiful (high)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (high)

Outside Scoring: 1/3 level lost both away games
Inside Scoring: 1/3 level lost 2nd away game, N/C 1st
Perimeter Defense: 1/3 level lost both away games
Inside Defense: 1/3 level lost 1st away game, N/C 2nd
Rebounding: 1/3 level lost 1st away game, N/C 2nd
Offensive Flow: 1/3 level lost 1st away game, N/C 2nd


A div V team that was in my series in season 2 Home/Away/Home:
Home
Team ratings for
tt

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (low)
Inside Scoring: awful (medium)
Perimeter Defense: awful (medium)
Inside Defense: awful (medium)
Rebounding: awful (medium)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (medium)

Away
Team ratings for
tt

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (low)
Inside Scoring: awful (medium)
Perimeter Defense: awful (medium)
Inside Defense: awful (low)
Rebounding: awful (low)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (medium)

Home
Team ratings for
tt

Offensive Strategy: Base Offense
Defensive Strategy: Man to Man

Outside Scoring: awful (low)
Inside Scoring: awful (low)
Perimeter Defense: awful (high)
Inside Defense: awful (medium)
Rebounding: awful (high)
Offensive Flow: pitiful (medium)

Outside Scoring: No Change
Inside Scoring: 1/3 level lost 2nd home game
Perimeter Defense: 1/3 level gained 2nd home game
Inside Defense: 1/3 level lost away
Rebounding: 1/3 level lost away, 1/3 level gained 2nd home game
Offensive Flow: No Change


These 2 examples make me think that the ratings are an average based on minutes played. I feel I know less about Home Court Advantage than I did when I started this thread.

Anyone else have any thoughts?


Last edited by darykjozef at 2/12/2008 2:08:50 PM

I just think there's so many factors...foul trouble, minutes played for each player, even stuff like timeouts...that affect each game's ratings, it's impossible to nail down 2 or 3 "exact same" games for a team.

I'm inclined to agree here. I'm even curious as to whether ratings are also connected to the individual performances of the players on the court (i.e. star ratings). This is something that would be really really difficult to test, however.

What if there were two teams that each just lined up 5 players with perfect levels of stamina, great levels of defense, and crap offense*? If they played each other twice in a week (so no form changes) and in the same arena both games (maybe one is a league game, one a friendly), do you (or we) think that they'd post the same team ratings? That the players would post the same player ratings?


* These last two conditions so that fouls wouldn't be a problem - they could both play slow offense and defense to limit possessions and limit fouls that way too.

What if there were two teams that each just lined up 5 players with perfect levels of stamina, great levels of defense, and crap offense*? If they played each other twice in a week (so no form changes) and in the same arena both games (maybe one is a league game, one a friendly), do you (or we) think that they'd post the same team ratings? That the players would post the same player ratings?


* These last two conditions so that fouls wouldn't be a problem - they could both play slow offense and defense to limit possessions and limit fouls that way too.

I doubt our luck finding two teams in the same league willing to do this. Perhaos a couple #5 teams would be willing to do this during the playoffs...?

appreciating you rquest for knowledge, i cant see beyond the fact that you have showed (and if we were all to have an estimate) that at the current match ratings we all obtain the deviance between home and away is approx 1/3 of a full rating point for certain stats (RB / ID being the most visible)

It would be interesting to know how the difference widens (if at all) as we all progress up the rankings...

i cannot see how further investigation at these levels is going to show up anything new....

i think these numbers wil become more interesting in a few seasons then multiply a TIE / CT into the equation and then we may have some more interesting data...

also at these levels the random factor has much more do to with the results...