I watch a fair amount of basketball and I have noticed over the years that, more than any other sport I watch, seemingly more than any other major, popular sport, early leads in games tend to evaporate. Even supposedly substantial leads of nearly 20 points. There is no sport where what seems like a substantial early lead will more reliably be erased. I feel like 80% or more of basketball games I watch, early leads of up to around 20 points, maybe even 25, are eventually completely erased later in the game. I am not sure what an equivalent lead in other sports would be- 2-0 in hockey? 4-0 in baseball? 10-0 in football? I feel like those leads in those sports are roughly equivalent to a 15-25-point lead in the first two quarters of basketball, and I feel like they are much less consistently erased than such a lead is in basketball.
I could be wrong, would love to see it studied. Just my own feeling.
I have thought a lot about this. It seems equally often that basketball game scores are within a 10-12-point difference in the last 5 minutes of the fourth quarter.
This all suggests to me that basketball is, way more than other sports, a game of chance. The competitors are much more often of fairly equal skill and who wins the game more often comes down to little more than who was lucky enough to get the shots to fall.
And yet, the same two teams have reached the NBA Finals in each of the previous 3 seasons. Sooo... is my theory disproven? Or is it that only a small handful of teams are ever destined to rise to a tier above the rest?
I don't know, but I remain convinced that basketball is way more susceptible to erasure of big leads than other major sports. I'd like to see this investigated.
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