And Nuggets have one of the most important home court advantages in professional sports due to altitude. It was an incredibly stupid thing to not take that game seriously.
It seems to matter more in the regular season.
Probably not as much when there's 2, 3, sometimes 4 days off between games, and opposing teams have more time to get acclimated.
They lost a game 7 against Portland at home in 2019. They lost a series where they had home court against Golden State in 2013.
When they played the Spurs in 2005 and 2007, they won game 1 on the road, and lost the series in 5, losing both home games. Both years.
They lost a series against Utah in 2010 where they had homecourt, in the first round.
And I've said a few times that teams with one All-Star rarely repeat or go deep in the playoffs. If they had 2 or 3 All-Stars, then they would be more formidable.
If we cheat a little and say Gobert is Minnesota's 2nd All-Star (he probably got enough coaches' votes to be close to making it), they seem better equipped for a deeper run, to me.
Lastly, there's 82 games in a season. Denver should not have played below what they think they could, earlier.
I don't know how much I trust this data. I'm surprised Golden State has played more home games than Chicago. But if it's true, and we eliminate the defunct teams:
Sort by win %.
Los Angeles Lakers
Golden State Warriors
Boston Celtics
Chicago Bulls
Oklahoma City Thunder (have they really played 169 home games since 2008-2009? I don't think it includes Seattle)
Cleveland
Detroit
New York Knicks
Philadelphia
Portland
Houston
Phoenix
Atlanta
Milwaukee
Washington Wizards
Sacramento Kings
Los Angeles Clippers
More are not viewable for free.
So they are not a top 17 current NBA franchise home playoffs team.
Ok, I'm going to manually count the number of Clippers home playoffs games, and see if it matches 72.
I count 62 Braves/Clippers home playoffs games. So that StatMuse data is off.
I will now manually count Denver's home playoffs record, but use that Stat Muse data as an approximation as to where to place them.
I am counting the NBA only, not ABA.
Ok, Champs Or Chumps seems to be an easier to use site:
Ok, I manually counted 66 - 46. That is .589.
If the rest of that StatMuse data is approximately correct, it would put then between Milwaukee and Washington for the 15th best home playoffs record.