NBA Finals Preview: How important is home court advantage? Very

The NBA Finals are almost upon us, and if they're anything like the season so far, good luck figuring out who will be on the court, if who is on the court has any relation to the final score, why some games everything drops and some games nothing does and what constitutes a flagrant foul.

But one thing is almost certain according to the NBA lines site Betway, which went back and looked at all 71 NBA Finals: Now that fans are back, home court advantage has meaning again. And in the Finals, it's a fair amount of meaning – a 61-39 favorability meaning, which is pretty good in both elections and championship series.

But it's actually worse than that for the visitors: The home team in the Finals wins Game 1 75 percent of the time and wins Game 7 (if it gets to a game 7), 79 percent of the time – and a road team has won Game 7 only once in the past 45 years. (Note to self: Remember this if the series reaches a seventh game.)

The graphic below is from the NBA lines site Betway.