quote:
People under sell Home Court Advantage on veteran teams, but that was a huge part of our title last year. Obviously health is more important, but we go as out three ball goes and we shoot it better at home. This confidence factor is especially true for players like Mills and Diaw that have had up and down years.
I wouldn't change Pops strategy on resting players and managing minutes, but I wouldn't shut this team down early either if you can gain a spot or two in the standings. The Knicks, Mavs and Cavs game really hurt us. We should be closing on the 2 seed right now.
It is important, but we won at least 1 game on the road in every series last year:
Dallas: went 1-2. Lost one of the games on a spinning, fade-away buzzer-beater 3 by VInce Carter (he misses that damn shot 19x out of 20) and lost the other by 2 points.
Portland: went 1-1. The W was a blowout and you got the feeling that we could have won game 4 if we'd cared, but we were happy to go win game 5 back in SA.
OKC: went 1-2. The only series where homecourt actually seemed to make a difference (Westbrook seems to get 20+ FTAs/game at home). We lost the 2 games by 9 and 13.
Miami: went 2-0 and outscored Miami by an average margin of 274.
I mean I'd rather have homecourt than not, but this is a damn tough team that can win on the road.