The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum shares some research that explains how home court might be an even greater advantage in basketball than other sports. [Clusterflock]

Alan Nevill of the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool’s John Moores University found:

A number of studies provide strong evidence that home advantage increases with crowd size, until the crowd reaches a certain size or consistency (a more balanced number of home and away supporters), after which a peak in home advantage is observed. Two possible mechanisms were proposed to explain these observations: either (i) the crowd is able to raise the performance of the home competitors relative to the away competitors; or (ii) the crowd is able to influence the officials to subconsciously favour the home team. The literature supports the latter to be the most important and dominant explanation.