NBA Game 3 - Winning the Must-Win Game

On the radio the other day, I heard former Pacers star Reggie Miller say that a team that loses the first two games of a playoff series on the road always wins Game 3 at home. This comment made be curious about how often that team, commonly said to be in a "must-win" situation, actually does win that game, or more importantly for our purposes, how often that team covers the spread. Well, after looking at an admittedly small sample size, it appears that while that team doesn't always win, it does cover with significant frequency.

Over the past five years (2003 through 2007), this situation, where a team is returning home for Game 3 down 0-2 in a first-round playoff series, has appeared 25 times. The home team has covered the spread 18 times out of those 25, a win percentage of 72%. The winning percentage becomes 75% if you remove the Cavs/Wiz series last year, which was skewed by the injuries of the Wizards two best players prior to the series. If you wanted an even bigger number, you could try and come up with some reason to disqualify the Grizzlies, as they are responsible for 2 of the 7 losses, but there's no real justification for that - they're just incompetent. So far in 2008, the home team in this situation is 2-0 SU and ATS after the Raptors and Wizards won easily last night (Rockets were in the opposite situation, down 0-2 and playing Game 3 on the road, but still won and covered).

I was initially surprised by the results. I had expected that the public would over-value the team in the "must-win" situation, leading to over-inflated lines on the Game 3 home team and, as a result, a significant number of covers by the road team in that game. However, it appears that the opposite phenomenon is taking place, i.e. after the higher seeds take care of business at home, the linesmakers are forced to over-rate those higher seeds in Game 3 in order to get close to equal money on each side. Presumably, the average bettor, who believes the higher seed to be the superior team anyway (and, generally, that's probably true), believes even more strongly in the higher seed's superiority after watching them win the first two games. Or, at least, the recreational bettor is not allowing more than a few points for the home-court advantage gained by the lower seed in Game 3.

Between the advantage of home court and the extra effort produced by a combination of the desire to win and the desire to avoid the embarrassment of three straight losses (and for 6 of the 7 must-win Game 3 losers, an eventual series sweep), these teams have consistently outplayed the public perception. In this year's playoffs, there are still four teams left facing must-win Game 3 situations in the first-round (Mavs, Suns, Hawks, Nuggets). Do your homework, but don't be surprised if at least three of these teams cover this weekend.