The NCAA announced that we will be seeing fanless March Madness games this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At least we are still getting games at the time of writing. Since the NCAA made the call for fanless March Madness games, the NBA suspended its season and the entire sports landscape is a mess.
If games are played, you might want to put some money on a few and perhaps even bet on the national champion in addition to filling out your 100s of brackets. This would be fine in most years, but this ain’t most years.
Fanless March Madness games change everything including betting. There is no history to tell us how players are going to react in empty stadiums, especially those like Duke who almost always have packed crowds. Potential Cinderella stories could also be impacted as neutral crowds throwing their support behind David slaying Goliath will be missing.
Don’t think fans missing will change things? We don’t have any data either way to support or dispel the idea fanless March Madness games alter performances. But there is one example of how changes in outside forces can impact basketball outcomes.
Fanless March Madness games; what we learn from Michael Jordan in the SkyDome
There wasn’t a lot that could stop Michael Jordan during his second three-peat with the Bulls. But for whatever reason, the lowly Toronto Raptors gave Chicago fits during their first two years in the league. Part of that was due to a unique home court advantage throwing Jordan and his teammates off their game.
The Raptors played at the SkyDome – now Rodgers Centre – during their first few seasons in the NBA. The venue, which is best known as the home to MLB’s Toronto Blue Jays, was not suitable for basketball. With a ton of temporary seating and nothing blocking out views that expanded well off into the distance of the cavernous stadium, players were thrown off kilter as they were use to smaller stadiums.
During the 1995-96 NBA season, Jordan didn’t play terrible in Toronto, but the Bulls had trouble putting away an expansion team with a mish-mash of players. In the first meeting, a three-point Bulls’ win, Chicago shot 43 percent from the field and less than 50 percent from the free throw line.
It got worse later in the season as the Bulls chased a historic 70-win season. They lost to the helpless Raptors in one of the most shocking NBA regular season upsets of all time. Playing in the unfamiliar configuration of the SkyDome put them off their game.
The following season was similar, but with Jordan recording some awful performances. The first meeting in the 1996-97 season saw the Raptors use the SkyDome advantage to upset the then 17-2 Bulls. Jordan bricked his way to a 5/17 shooting night and the Bulls shot only 42 percent as a team. The return trip saw the Bulls win, but Jordan shot 5/17 from the field again as the curse of the SkyDome continued.
What does all this mean?
The unexpected performances by the Bulls when playing at the SkyDome highlight how unpredictable results can be when you change things up. The odd configuration of the SkyDome impacted Chicago in ways people would not have necessarily foreseen ahead of time.
Fanless March Madness games will likely be different from what we normally see and can’t be sussed out with analytics. And this is why you probably shouldn’t bet on them.
