Extreme Makeover: Home Addition
Taking a look at the most extreme home/road splits over the last 40 seasons.
A few weeks ago, Tom Haberstroh (aka Mr. Statistician Face Man) wrote an interesting article on Michael Jordan’s home/road splits in his 1987-88 Defensive Player of the Year campaign. I would encourage you to read the piece for yourself, but the TL;DR is this: Jordan was the beneficiary of some questionable home cookin’ that season.
Motivated by Tom’s research, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the most extreme home/road splits over the last 40 seasons. I’m going to focus on five statistics the home scorekeeper can have quite a bit of influence on: rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and turnovers.
I calculated a home/road differential for each player-season as follows:
Home Total - Home Minutes x (Away Total / Away Minutes)I did the above rather than use the straight difference between home and road totals to account for possible disparities in playing time at home versus on the road.
Here’s a sample calculation. In his 1987-88 season, Jordan recorded 84 blocks in 1,629 home minutes and 47 blocks in 1,682 road minutes. His differential is:
84 - 1629 * (47 / 1682) = 38.5Let’s take a look at the five most extreme seasons for each statistic using this measure.
Rebounds
The five most extreme home/road splits for rebounds:
Jayson Williams (1995-96 NJN), +195.1
Williams (1997-98 NJN), +170.7
Shaquille O’Neal (1999-00 LAL), +118.2
Ben Wallace (2005-06 DET), +115.4
Karl Malone (1991-92 UTA), +113.4
As you can see, Jayson Williams holds the top two spots on this list, and no one is even close to him. The home scorekeeper has more latitude with offensive rebounds than defensive rebounds, and this is clear when looking at Williams’ splits.
For example, in 1995-96 Williams averaged 9.6 offensive rebounds per 36 minutes in home games versus a rate of 3.9 in away games. If you look at Williams’ top 18 single-game totals for offensive rebounds that season, 16 of them occurred at home. On the other hand, 16 of his 18 lowest single-game figures came in road contests.
Assists
The five most extreme home/road splits for assists:
Maurice Cheeks (1987-88 PHI), +167.7
Cheeks (1985-86 PHI), +140.6
Kevin Johnson (1989-90 PHX), +139.4
Cheeks (1988-89 PHI), +129.6
Bogues (1994-95 CHA), +129.0
Maurice Cheeks owns three of the four most extreme seasons for assists, including the top two. He averaged 10.1 assists per 36 minutes at home in 1987-88, more than four assists higher than his road rate of 5.9. Cheeks recorded 25 games with at least 10 assists that season, all but three of them coming at home.
By the way, John Stockton — who is often cited as being a player who benefitted from an overly generous home scorekeeper — only has one season that falls in the top 65 by this measure. His 1990-91 season (+102.0) ranks 18th on the list.
Steals
The five most extreme home/road splits for steals:
Michael Jordan (1987-88 CHI), +74.0
Alvin Robertson (1985-86 SAS), +49.1
Matt Geiger (1997-98 CHA), +47.2
Doc Rivers (1986-87 ATL), +47.1
Kendall Gill (1997-98 NJN), +43.9
Here we see the season that inspired Haberstroh’s article, one that sticks out like a sore thumb even when compared to other extreme performances. Jordan’s steal differential in 1987-88 is more than 50% higher than that of the next-closest player, Alvin Robertson.
Jordan was credited with five or more steals in 14 games in 1987-88, 12 of them at home. On the flip side, he recorded one or fewer steals 13 times, with only two of those occurrences coming in home contests.
In 1997-98, Matt Geiger recorded just 10 steals in 883 road minutes, or one every 88.3 minutes. At home, his corresponding rate was one steal every 16.5 minutes (58 steals in 956 minutes). That amounts to a whopping difference of almost 50 steals per 1,000 minutes.
Blocks
The five most extreme home/road splits for blocks:
Hakeem Olajuwon (1989-90 HOU), +82.3
Dikembe Mutombo (1993-94 DEN), +75.4
Raef LaFrentz (1999-00 DEN), +69.3
Mark Eaton (1988-89 UTA), +67.6
Vlade Divac (1994-95 LAL), +63.4
Olajuwon blocked a career-high 376 shots in 1989-90, 34 more than his second-highest total. Those 376 blocks rank fourth on the NBA’s all-time single-season list (the statistic has been tracked since the 1973-74 season).
What’s interesting is if you flip this around and look for cases in which the player benefitted from being on the road, Olajuwon also ranks first. In 1984-85 he blocked 128 shots in 1,462 road minutes and 92 shots in 1,452 home minutes, a differential of 35.1 blocks. Olajuwon’s 1994-95 season ranks second in this regard (+33.5 on the road).
Turnovers
The five most extreme home/road splits for turnovers:
Mike Bibby (2000-01 VAN), –55.6
Amar’e Stoudemire (2007-08 PHX), –53.4
Khris Middleton (2021-22 MIL), –50.9
Mitch Richmond (1991-92 SAC), –48.4
James Harden (2016-17 HOU), –47.7
Keep in mind turnovers are a negative statistic, so negative differentials mean a kinder scorekeeper. Unlike the other top-five lists above, this one includes multiple seasons from the 2000s.
Harden set the NBA single-season record for turnovers in 2016-17 (a statistic that has been tracked since 1977-78), although Houston’s scorekeepers did their best to help him avoid that ignominious feat. Harden was charged with 6.3 errors per 36 minutes in road games versus a corresponding rate of 5.1 at home.
Points
What the heck, let’s do one more list just for fun. The five most extreme home/road splits for points:
Dominique Wilkins (1986-87 ATL), +243.7
Larry Bird (1986-87 BOS), +224.6
Monta Ellis (2010-11 GSW), +223.3
Adrian Dantley (1985-86 UTA), +214.9
Xavier McDaniel (1989-90 SEA), + 212.3
In 1986-87, Wilkins’ scoring rates per 36 minutes were 30.9 at home and 24.9 on the road. He and Donovan Mitchell (2023-24) are the only players over this 40-season period with per-36-minute figures of 30 or more points at home and less than 25 points on the road (minimum 100 minutes home and road).