I was curious and decided to do a little research and look at the history of the 4/5 matchup, just to get a feel for how it's played out in the past. As it turns out, since changing to the 7 game first round format in 2003, the team with home court in the 4/5 match up has only won 58% the time (that's 7 out of 12 for the percentage challenged). That's far less impressive than the 76% you hear when the media lumps all the first round match ups together (imagine how much 1v8 and 2v7 skew that number). Now, while I was certainly happy with that result, I figured that the sample size between 2003 and 2008 is so small that I needed to dig a little further. So I ended up going back 20 years, all the way to 1989. That's where the numbers got a little shocking to me. I found that out of the 40 first round match ups between the 4 and the 5 seed, it was the team WITHOUT home court advantage that had won 57.5% of the time. What does this mean? It's hard to say. Although the data is less than overwhelming, there does seem to be a marked advantage for the home court team in the current 7 game format as opposed to the old 5 game format. Still, it's not as daunting as the media makes it out to be. Regardless, these numbers put me at ease a little bit and I figured they were worth sharing. Maybe it can restore a little optimism to the board heading into tomorrow. That is all
Would you take Houston to win tomorrow night, straight up? I'm not doing Houston +4, b/c what if we lose by less than 4, I win money, but we lose, so I'm still pissed.
I don't think that matters, unless you're superstitious. Every Rockets team from 2003 to last year was vastly different from the current team.
Good work digging up the stats. Like you, I'm surprised that the team without home court won a majority of the time based on the longer sample. So we have hope. I'm pretty confident, especially if Lowry gets the majority of the minutes at the one.
I don't think it matters I was just saying we lost being the 4th seed. It doesn't matter though. I don't think any past events matters when talking about this upcoming series.
I think it is because the 4/5 matchup is a tossup so the higher seed doesn't really have that much of an advantage of the lower seed.
Well, I think we were the 5th seed one of the past 2 years but had homecourt because of a better record, or something like that... Regardless, we have been knocked out all 4 times in the 1st round in our current jerseys, Lakers 2004, Mavs 2005, Jazz 2007 (HCA), and Jazz 2008 (HCA).
True. I'm really not sure it means a whole lot either, but seeing these numbers is a lot more comforting than hearing the generic "teams with homecourt with 76% of the time" statement. That I know for sure.
I know in the past we were a better road team than home team. Most of that was because T-mac was a better road player than he was at home and he lead us on the court. It will be important for us to steal some Game 1 or 2 in this series.
I agree that it's more of a tossup, but home court can't be overlooked as a really big advantage. We are in a good position regarding the Blazers because we're a veteran team with playoff experience, except possibly at the position where Portland may be at their weakest, the point. It can't be over-emphasized that Lowry should get the majority of the minutes there. Brooks really looked overwhelmed against Dallas, mentally, more than anything.
Good idea for a thread. I was wondering about this same subject earlier. Without even looking at the stats I knew that the 1/8 and 2/7 matchup must be well over 90% in favor of the team with home court so I knew that 78% stat the media keeps tossing out was heavily influenced by those two matchups. Leave it up to clutchfans to do the research the professionals either will not or do not think of doing.
Quite interesting data, 4th and 5th seeds are so close, it should be depend on the match-up. Portland are the young team with the first playoff appearance, the rockets have a few senior players, and should beat them with or without HCA.
Avearage age of the Portland starting lineup please? I'm honestly not sure, I'd love for someone to figure that out for me, I don't do math.
Exactly 25 years. Rockets are just a shade under 28, depending on whether you count Scola as 28 or 29. His birthday is in 2 weeks.
