NBA Team Records When Coming Off A Road Trip Articles | Gambling

By: Richard Bleuze

NBA Team Records When Coming Off A Road Trip

As a general rule of thumb, teams in all major sports just do not play as well in other cities as they do at home.  This is especially true in the NBA than in most other sports.  

Thus, below is a collection of my thoughts regarding road trips in the NBA:

1.  Length of trip – It would seem that long road trips would make teams weary, and that those effects would amplify as the number of plane flights, group meals, and different hotel rooms accumulated.  However, studies have indicated that this is not the case.  In fact, the biggest drop off in performance by many of the NBA teams is actually between their first road game and their second.  That is not to say, however, that some NBA teams do not struggle with long road trips.  However, do not think that just because a NBA team is on a long trip a while that the NBA team is more vulnerable to lose to teams later on the long trip!

2.  Geography – Generally speaking, it is much easier to travel for teams in the east than teams in the west.  The reason being that cities are closer together on the east coast.  While that is true, do not give this factor too much consideration in your handicapping.  The best road teams in the NBA many times can be found on the West coast!  Generally speaking, the teams in the Western Conference actually have a better combined winning percentage than those from the East in addition to having a better overall winning percentage than those in the East.  That means if teams in both leagues were to play 100 road games we would expect teams in the East to win 10 fewer road games than they win at home.  Thus, please keep this tip in mind, if you are treating geography as an overriding factor in how you view teams on the road then you are making a mistake.
 
3.  Back-to-back games – It can be said that most NBA teams do not enjoy playing games on consecutive nights.  Generally, a game takes a lot out of players and that can not easily be built up and restored in just one day.  Thus, it only make sense that the impact of these back-to-back games would be even bigger when on the road.  Generally speaking, the impact of games on the road have more impact on a player.  In addition, most NBA teams play about twice as many back-to-back games on the road as they do at home in a season because of the quirks of scheduling and the desire to minimize the lengths of road trips.  Because of this factor, I suggest that you spend extra time looking at the back half of back-to-back road games in the NBA.

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