Basketball - Home Cooking Feeds the Beast

There is a significant difference in the home court advantage for basketball. Teams can easily kick butt at home and blow chunks on the road. Home/road disparities in basketball are the most pronounced over any sport. So you must understand this.

When teams want to win at home, they will be the team to bet on. Obviously, home teams are generally usually big favorites but when they are motivated, they could easily win by as much as 20 points.

So the important thing to understand and characterize is what and how can a team be motivated? They will generally be very motivated when they NEED a win. The Clippers were in that position. They were coming off 5 consecutive road losses. They were struggling on the road. So coming home was perfect chance for them to make up for their shortcomings on the road.

What did they do?

They blasted the Memphis Grizzlies by 15 points in November. They were up by over 20 points early in this game because they needed desperately to win the game. And the Grizzlies are already a pretty bad team, specifically on the road. There was almost no question that the motivated Clippers would win that game but would they beat the spread. Well, they did so easily.