Homecourt advantage has mattered less than ever in recent years, as evidenced by home teams going 9-12 in Game 7s since 2021 after going 106-29 up until 2020. It has hit the Celtics especially hard, who used to enjoy one of the premier edges in the league, playing in the comforts of TD Garden.
But in recent years, that hasn’t been the case at all, with the team struggling at home in the playoffs and losing their last two Game 7s at home, in 2023 to the Heat and a few weeks ago to the 76ers. There are plenty of theories and contributing factors, but one thing that seems undeniable is that the three-point boom in the past few years has added a level of variance that the home arena can’t account for.
So, it makes sense that Boston has struggled, as Joe Mazzulla has brought a pace-and-space system to the Celtics that has seen them launch threes at a historic rate. When it works, it looks nearly unstoppable, and it’s one of the reasons that the Cs have been a dominant road team since he took over.
At the same time, that variance allows for the possibility of them playing down to their opponents, letting teams stick around, and giving lesser teams a chance to compete with them, even in front of a raucous Boston crowd.
A nervous crowd makes for nervous shooting
Beyond that, when the shots aren’t falling, things feel even worse when the crowd starts with the nervous energy. Suddenly, the weight of the world rests on every shot, and the threes seem like they hang in the air forever. When they clang off the rim, the air completely comes out of the building, and we see an ugly snowball effect.
This hasn’t been the exact story with every home playoff loss over the years, but it’s a fairly constant theme. The fact that it’s happening all over the league as well, and that it has extended to the regular season, is just further proof that the three-point ball has largely nuked something that used to be a huge difference-maker.
Perhaps Brad Stevens knows this, and it’s a part of the reason why he emphasized the unacceptable home losses recently, as well as the need for rim pressure in his end-of-the-year press conference. Hopefully, Brad and company can figure this out and stay ahead of the curve because the Boston Garden has been one of the defining buildings in professional sports, and the great Celtics fans deserve to relish that legendary advantage once more.
Add us as a preferred source on Google