Team Motivation in Basketball

[Art Vandeleigh]

If a team has a must win situation, this isn't going to improve the players hand-to-eye coordination. The basket is not going to appear larger and teams aren't going to shoot better because they have to win. Probably the opposite. How many players are up to the challenge of sinking both free throws to tie the game with 1.4 seconds left with an NCAA berth on the line?

The things that may improve in players performances in must win games are the "hustle" type plays. Working harder for the rebounds, diving for a ball that's headed out of bounds, running offensive plays harder.....but if individual players aren't doing this anyway coach'll bench 'em regardless of the importance of the game.

People here are way overbetting "motivation" in supposedly must win or need badly to win games.

Just because you have to win isn't going to make you any more talented offensively, and if you're not hustling you'll be sitting on the bench anyway.

[Flamers]

tell the odds makers this then, ok!

[Art Vandeleigh]

No I think people here need to know the linesmakers are just setting 50/50 line, like how many people here lost on Boston Celtics when they were up against the franchise record for losses (was it 13?) and people are betting on them on the 14th game because suddenly they're going to become more talented because they are more motivated???? No, people here are overvaluing motivation, Art has given you the heads up.

[Dark Horse]

With all due respect, but you are very wrong. Motivation is huge in basketball, especially during the regular NBA season. If you believe it isn't, that merely means you haven't learned to identify motivational situations correctly.

Not saying that there aren't successful approaches to basketball that use other angles than motivation.

[durito]

It depends on how you look at it. I know in the NFL, teams that need to win the last week to get into the playoffs are bad bets. If they could win whenever they needed a win, they'd probably allready be in the playoffs.

NBA teams, rarely have must win situations, but lots of times have motivation to win a specific game. Whether it's a revenge game or they are simply playing with more confidence coming off a big win.

[BuddyBear]

Motivation is one of several variables to take into consideration when capping. Every capper will place more or less emphasis on motivation depending on the situtaition. Unless you are some sort of automated robot the situation will dictate what level of motivation teams place on a game.

Even so, other non tangible variables may require more weight such as talent, coaching, home court, strength of schedule that may off-set higher levels of motivation. It's striclty up to you how much priority you want to place on motivation but I do feel there are certain situations where it should be a more salient consideration in your capping.

[Dark Horse]

You have to qualify situations. Revenge means nothing if a team isn't strong enough to execute it. But if a strong team overlooked a weaker team in the previous meeting and suffered an upset loss, the next meeting between these teams is a revenge situation.

Weak teams coming off an upset win are likely to celebrate that night, then come up short in their next game.

You have to keep an eye on what players and coaches are saying. Teams lose focus and refocus many times throughout the season.

[babaoriley]

I believe USC vs. Stanford would qualify as a Dark Horse "revenge" game, correct? In their first meeting (at Stanford) USC shot 28%, scored a season low 50 points, and looked downright anemic. While Stanford is not a bad team, they are the weaker team.

[The HG]

Revenge is a fascinating topic in basketball 'capping. To further some of the points already made, there are many kinds of "revenge" situations that matter more or less depending on other factors involved. I agree that revenge in and of itself is not a significant factor, but when combined with other factors and measurements, it can be huge.

Fot instance, one of the classic and debunked revenge "myths" is the one that states that in NCAA basketball, it is "hard to beat a team three times in a season", meaning that if 2 teams from the same conference meet for a third time in the playoffs, and one team won both of the regular season games, the other team is a good bet, either straight-up or ATS, in the third game. This is in fact not at all the case, and any kind of similarly broad usage of revenge as a stand-alone factor is ill-advised.

There are, however, other kinds of situations where revenge is very significant and valuable, and they involve, as people have already hinted at in this thread, not poor or mediocre teams suddenly playing above their normal level, but rather quality teams RETURNING to their natural level after having fallen off for some reason.

A healthy sense of revenge WILL increase concentration and determination, which naturally ebbs and flows over the course of a basketball season, as everyone readily acknowledges. A focused mediocre team may not play much better than an unfocused mediocre team, but a focused quality team will often explode past their standard level of play, sort of a "Law of Extremes" type of deal.

Identifying situations likely to result in increased and meaningful focus is very important in basketball 'capping, and revenge can be a key component in producing those kinds of situations (which is also reflected in the ATS results).