| the mystery of the home teams |
[May. 14th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
the NBA this season has teams where the home team wins 9 times out of 10. There are a lot of theories about why this is so. The one I hear the most is that all the teams are very close in terms of talent, due to salary caps and free agency, and because they are so close, there is this roar of the crowd the home team roar that fires up the home team and gets the player's blood boiling gets the players off the bench going, and that is why the home teams win so much.
I don't think that's it. I think there is this limit. Like you see in those japanese video action games, you reach your "limit" and you are done. This limit is defined somewhat vaguely, because really it is somewhat vague. If you are going through a bad divorce and playing sports, your game will suffer because you lack mental focus. If you are fighting with the head coach, you will be spending mental energy against him instead of playing the game. In fact, when you fire the neurons in your muscles, this requires a neurological force, it's not just the muscles, the brain itself has to activate those neurons, a neuromuscular force has to happen. And it seems that there is a real scientific basis to believe that mental energies spent, on anything, emotional problems, even having to work out financial details the day of a game, anything like this, theoretically could decrease the efficiency of the muscles.
So there is this combination of things, endurance which can be leached, mental focus, neuromuscular efficiencies, and any time you are fighting other problems in your life, your game will suffer.
So what I think is that when a team is at home, they get home cooking, they sleep in their own beds, and they have sex with their wives. On the road, these NBA stars will have unfamiliar food in restaurants, they will be chasing exotic tail, and sleep in an unfamiliar bed. I don't think you even have to stay up late to have this sort of effect.
If my theory is right there is a way to almost completely eliminate the home team advantage. First of all, all year, feed the NBA stars for free, on the team's dime. Hire whatever cooks you need, this is not a benefit, this is to help the team. Make sure the stars love this cooking whatever it is. And bring this team of cooks with the team on every away game. Instead of having the team stay in hotels, buy some of the best, most elite home trailers you can find. Make sure that the team will like them enough that they will enjoy staying there. Then on every away game you can possible do it with, use those trailers in the regular season, so much that it seems like home. And encourage the players to bring their wives on the road.
Basically make every away game a sort of home away from home, comfortable, familiar, low stress, ordinary. So the team can use all their mental and physical energies on the game itself.
One reason this home team crowd idea never made any sense to me is because, sure being the home team is nice. It's nice to hear them roar when you make a shot. It's nice when they root for you. It's ok. But there is nothing on earth as great as to be in a place like the Boston Garden and hear the gas go out of the crowd, to hear the roar diminish until you can hear a pin drop. However much it motivates the home team to play better, the away team gets even more satisfaction to hear the despair and wailing from the men women and children in their own house. If the players didn't enjoy stepping on the throats of their opponents and hearing them whimper in defeat, they wouldn't be professionals in the first place.
Of course if you are an announcer, you can hear the crowd, you can feel it roar, so it seems like an easy explanation, that's why you always hear that the crowd is the reason. It seems self evident. If you're an announcer, you don't see the unfamiliar food, the uneasy rest in a strange bed, and the booty chasing the night before, so they never talk about it. |
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