NBA Playoff Teams with Swagger

A team with swagger is one that has developed an aura of superiority born from a current streak of dominating the opposition. Such a team demands to win and is not satisfied with simply being good; but rather it is on a crusade to become great. The swagger manifests itself on the hardwood resulting in superior play combined with a super blend of confidence, intimidation, aggression and arrogance to achieve the killer instinct, aka the formula of champions.

Handicappers are always in search of recognizing teams that exhibit this winning edge because many times these formidable clubs blowout the opposition leading to comfortable pointspread victories. Speaking as a handicapper, I can absolutely attest to the fact that there is nothing like the satisfaction of being on the right side of a thoroughly dominating performance.

I use three criteria to determine whether an NBA team has achieved the swagger mode. Decisive home court advantage, winning momentum and an opponent's winning or flat momentum. Matchup Handicapping provides the statistical analysis to qualify the three noted criteria.

First is decisive home court advantage is defined as one team being significantly better than its opponent based on the venue. For example, a team with a recent history of impressive play at home hosting a team with recent struggles on the road would qualify the home squad with decisive home court advantage. Since Matchup Handicapping uses team power ratings, a rule of thumb is the home team’s power rating over its most recent home games is at least ten points better than the opposing road dog’s power rating over its most recent road contests. Nothing intimidates an opponent more than finding itself in a hostile environment facing a superior club.

Winning momentum is readily defined by a team that has won three or four of its last four games outright including its last game. Flat momentum is two SU wins and two SU defeats in the last four games. Losing momentum is three or four SU losses in the last four games.

So the second and third factors pit a winning momentum club versus an opponent with winning or flat momentum (exclude losing momentum).

Playoff home teams with decisive home court advantage and winning momentum are accustom to beating its opposition and carry the winning attitude and expectation into its next contest. This translates to winning pointsprtead performance when the road opposition has winning or flat momentum to the tune of 50 covers versus 33 losses ATS since 2004-05 season. HOWEVER, it produced a poor 4 win 7 loss ATS in 2012-13 so this trend needs to be monitored closely in upcoming seasons.