COMMENTARY : Why NBA playoff teams can’t win on road
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Winning on the road is not easy in basketball.
Not in college, not in high school, not on someone else’s playground.
But winning on the road in the NBA playoffs has become like beating the IRS in an audit.
So why is it so difficult when the court dimensions are the same and the baskets are still 10 feet off the floor ?
We all know the obvious reasons: the familiarity and the comfort level that comes with playing at home. The home-crowd factor is also as obvious as a pregame light show. The crowd noise. The energy. They not only pump up the home team, but become something visiting teams must compete against, one of the reasons young teams seldom win big games on the road.
The Atlanta Hawks were a classic example. They could have played the Celtics in Boston until the end of time and not beaten them.
But the other factor ?
The NBA’s dirty little secret.
The officiating is different.
Why it is different is an interesting question. It gets into NBA history and the entertainment factor that’s always been at the league’s core. But it is different in ways that it’s not in other sports. Or consider this: When the Boston Red Sox go into Yankee Stadium in New York and Manny Ramirez comes to the plate and the first pitch is up around his throat, it is not called a strike. Roughing the passer is the same in New England as it is in New York.
The point is that in other sports the rules are the same.
Not in the NBA, though, where all too few even know what the rules are anymore, never mind how they should be interpreted. But the rules at all levels of basketball have been blurred in the past couple of decades. Traveling. Palming. Low-post play. All are open to interpretation in ways they never were before. That’s in high school and college, too, never mind the NBA.
So why has it always been different in the NBA ?
I suspect the roots go back to the early days of the league, when the NBA had all the glamour of a tractor pull and an unofficial rule seemed to be that if the home team won, the fans might actually come back. That set the tone, and in many ways that legacy has continued. Keep the customer satisfied and send everyone home happy.
It was a show, and that’s continued, too.
What was the old joke about the NBA ? All you had to do was watch the last two minutes ?
The underlying premise was that somehow, some way, the game was going to have more twists and turns than a bad soap opera, leads gained, leads blown and everything in between, but going into the last two minutes it would all be even, time to watch.
Overstated, certainly, but not necessarily untrue, either. The NBA’s game wasn’t like high school and college basketball. The rules were different. The games were called differently. No harm, no foul, right ? Everything was different, complete with heroes and villains, like some old Saturday afternoon serials.
It was the ultimate show, and the referees were part of it, too, many with their own distinct personalities.
So maybe it’s not surprising there’s always been two sets of standards — one for the stars and one for everyone else. Or, as someone once said: “There are two-step players and there are three-step players.” Consider this story from former NBA great Lenny Wilkens’ book, Unguarded. One night in his rookie year Wilkens stole the ball from Bob Cousy, but the referee blew the whistle.
“How can you call a foul on a play like that ?” Wilkens said.
“Because it was a foul,” the referee said.
“Come on, you know better than that,” Wilkens said.
The referee stared at him and said with a straight face: “You can’t take the ball away from Bob.” Rest assured, that star system still exists in today’s NBA. We all know that the better player you are, the more calls you get. Remember the Jordan Rules ?
It makes sense, if you think about it. The NBA has always sold its stars. Larry Bird against Magic Johnson. Michael Jordan against the world. Stars sell tickets and make people watch. Stars are what people talk about. Stars make the league.
Wasn’t that the big thing after Jordan retired, to find the next great megastar, the new face that was going to sell tickets, sell products, sell the league ? Hasn’t that long been the way the league has marketed itself, really no different than Hollywood markets itself ?
So is it any wonder that stars get the calls ?
The surprising thing would be if they didn’t.
That’s the way it’s always been, and everyone in the league knows it. If Paul Pierce needs three steps to get to the basket he will get three steps. If LeBron James needs to knock someone down to get to the basket, he will be allowed to do so. If Shaquille O’Neal shuffles his feet every time he makes a move, hey, he’s Shaq, right ? And don’t get too physical with Kobe Bryant.
This is the NBA, and not to realize it borders on being basketball delusional.
That’s not the only reason teams lose on the road, of course, for the obvious reason that all of the shots that go in at home don’t on the road.
But it’s a big part of it, the league’s dirty little secret, still alive after all these years and as timeless as the 24-second clock.
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