When I sat down in late August to write this essay — about neutral courts and how they’ve made the 2020 NBA Bubble Playoffs the most wide-open, unpredictable tournament the league has ever conducted — turns out I didnot know the half of it. Less than 48 hours later, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back. NBA players competing in the Disney Bubble would soon go out on a 72-hour wildcat strike.
Don’t believe the right-wing naysaying. Without NBA players and their new post-Blake resolve, arenas in NBA cities would not have been made available for voting on Nov. 3, 2020 — in exactly those urban areas where creeping fascism had closed so many polling places. Neither would the league, its owners and players association have pledged to “immediately establish a social justice coalition, with representatives from players, coaches and governors.”
I don’t want to diminish those efforts. Indeed, I would like to see that coalition formally funded. But events the last week in August only confirmed my original premise. We are in fact witnessing the most mercurial, fascinating NBA post season in history — and perhaps the most competitively compelling.
There are two surprisingly concrete explanations for what makes these playoff games so damned watchable. First, the Bubble’s quarantine construct necessarily does away with home court, as all the games are played on either of two fan-less facilities located on Disney’s Orlando, Fla. campus. No NBA playoff tournament had previously been held on neutral courts. Ever.
The effect has been monumental and fascinating Sporting events are interesting because their results cannot be predicted ahead of time. The less predictable the result, the greater the interest. Traditional NBA playoff games are claimed by the home team 65 percent of the time. Winners are not predestined, of course, but this makes NBA playoff games less interesting from a competitive standpoint. Home teams win NHL and MLB playoff games only 54 percent of the time, according to 538.com. This is why we love the NCAA basketball tournament: 63 one-off games played entirely on neutral courts. Any team can win pretty much any one of those games. That’s compelling.
NBA Bubble brought NCAA-style Unpredictability
The impact of neutral courts inside the NBA Playoff Bubble has been striking. Only four times in 73 NBA seasons had a team fallen behind 3 games to 1 and come back to win that playoff series. The Denver Nuggets did it twice this summer, in consecutive series. We saw the top overall seed, the Milwaukee Bucks, eliminated in Round 2. That’s happened only twice in 20 years. The Clippers, a 2 seed in the West (and odds-on co-favorite to win the NBA title, according to Vegas oddsmakers), also lost in Round 2.
Let’s be clear: Home court protects favorites, the higher-seeded teams. And neutral courts weaken that paradigm almost to the point of shredding. They replace it not with random results but less predictable results. And that’s more fun, full-stop.
Dozens of assumptions and conventions normally attached to the playoff crucible also fell away this summer. For example, the recently completed Miami-Boston Eastern Conference Final. When the Heat won the first two games, it conveyed a different brand of superiority — because they had won neither game with the benefit of home court. And yet, when the Celtics fell behind 3-1, it never felt insurmountable — because, if they were to come back, never would the Celts have to win on Miami’s home court. Denver demonstrated that, on neutral courts, a team can find something, make an adjustment and win three in a row. Sadly, for me, the Celtics could not make that happen. But lo and behold, we do have an NBA finalist, fifth-seeded Miami, that no one would have predicted when these playoffs started.