Teams Win Best Of Seven 63.3% Of The Time

SportsBettingExperts.com used data from the three North American professional sports that play a ‘best of seven’ playoff series format. These are MLB baseball, NHL hockey and NBA basketball. First, we looked at the aggregate performance of teams in a 3-0 series across all sports. We found that the team leading 3-0 was a very strong play to win Game Four. To put a more specific number to it, the team leading a series 3-0 wins Game Four to complete the sweep 63.3% of the time. It doesn’t really matter whether it happens at home or on the road—they’re a plus sixty percent winner in either venue. At home, the 3-0 team wins Game Four 61.6% of the time. Away from home, they win Game Four 68.8% of the time. And when a 3-0 situation happens in the playoff finals it’s an even stronger chance that the team leading 3-0 will win Game Four and complete the sweep—it happens 77.8% of the time.

Specifically, in the NBA, it’s interesting to learn that from a statistical standpoint a team down 3-0 has a better chance of winning Game Four than any other sport. The team up 3-0 wins Game Four and completes the sweep 59.3% of the time. If they’re playing at home, they only complete the sweep 57% of the time but a team up 3-0 on the road does it 72.2% of the time! Maybe it’s a case where the ‘no team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in the NBA’ lore is so great that a team returning home down 2-0 knows they have to win Game 3 or their season is over. If they don’t, they essentially ‘throw in the towel’ only winning Game Four 27.8% of the time.

SportsBettingExperts.com looked at the percentages series by series. In the first round, the team up 3-0 wins Game Four 63.6% of the time. They do it 62.5% at home and there’s only been one series where a team up 3-0 plays Game Four on the road—and they won Game 4 for a 100% tally. In the quarterfinals, the Game Four winning percentage for the leading team drops to 56.8% with a 54.1% record at home and a 71.4% record on the road. In the semifinals, it’s even more competitive—the team up 3-0 wins Game Four 55.2% of the time with a 52.4% record at home and a 62.5% record on the road. In the NBA Finals, the team up 3-0 wins Game Four 66.7% of the time, winning at home 60% of the time and on the road 100% of the time—though there have only been two relevant situations.

Source: SportsBettingExperts.com