The four road teams have answered the opening bell in a combined 5-0 start to the second round of the NBA playoffs. A small handful of factors help explain the surprising development.
Is there something going on that can explain this strange phenomenon?
The second round of the 2025 NBA playoffs has tipped off in atypical fashion with the higher-seed road teams all winning. In fact, the Indiana Pacers have done it twice for a 2-0 series lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Add in the New York Knicks’ rally past the Boston Celtics in the other Eastern Conference semifinal, and the Denver Nuggets beating the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors topping the Minnesota Timberwolves to open the Western Conference semifinals, and the lower-seeded teams are a combined 5-0.
Is this yet another data point that proves the NBA regular season isn’t a true indicator of a team’s strength? Or is something else going on here?
Yes, there are reasons.
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First off, the regular season, and the seeds it produces for the NBA playoffs, matters.
According to our prediction model, all four higher seeds were favored to win their respective second-round series, and three of them had at least a 75% chance of advancing to the conference finals (the Timberwolves were only a slight favorite over the Warriors).
Some other trends at play here – some sustainable, others not – have led to the upsets.
Arguably, the biggest one is 3-point shooting. No matter coaching ability or roster depth, it means almost nothing if a team can’t knock down shots.
It’s a make-or-miss league, after all.
Through the five second-round games, the road teams are shooting much better on 3-pointers than their opponents: 44.6% to the home teams’ 26.3%. The Nuggets are the only road team that didn’t outshoot its opposition on 3s, and we’ll have more to say about them in just a bit.
More Rest Equals More Rust
The NBA playoffs are grueling. Every year, we see teams lose games and series because their star players break down (for example, the Knicks lost players to injuries while dropping the 2024 Eastern Conference semifinals to the Pacers).
The games are intense and the amount of time between them can be sparse. That’s why ending a series quickly can be very beneficial because a team can rest players as it waits for the next opponent.
That hasn’t been the case this time.
This doesn’t apply as much for the Pacers’ Game 2 win over the Cavaliers, but otherwise, the four home teams had more rest than their opponent following first-round series.
Basically, rest turned into rust for the higher-seeded teams, which may have contributed to the poor shooting displays in Game 1.
The most apparent example was on display Tuesday night: The Timberwolves had five full days off after eliminating the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, while the Warriors had only one day off following an epic seven-game series win over the Houston Rockets.
The Warriors shot 42.9% while making 18 3s, while the Timberwolves only sank five on an abysmal 17.2%.
Rebounding Still Matters
About a decade ago, there was a major push with analytics to de-emphasize the value of rebounding. What did it matter if Andre Drummond led the league in total rebounds for five straight seasons if his team was often worse with him on the floor?
What many people missed, though, was the revolution was not intended to eradicate the consideration of rebounds in basketball analysis. Rather, it was meant to focus more on team rebounding, not individual rebounding.
So, yes, rebounding plays off a team needing to hit shots. The more chances it can get for shots (or limit the other team’s shots), the better.
During the regular season, six of the top eight teams in rebounds per game were also in the top 10 in TRACR, which uses advanced metrics and other factors on both sides of the ball to calculate how many points per 100 possessions (offensive, defensive and overall) better or worse teams are compared to the league-average club.
The Nuggets and Warriors made sure to maximize rebounding in their Game 1 wins, outrebounding the Thunder and Timberwolves by 20 and 10, respectively.
This was especially useful with the Nuggets, who struggled to shoot the ball against a Thunder squad that posted a league-best defensive TRACR and 68 wins in the regular season. The Nuggets committed 18 turnovers – twice as many as the Thunder – but still managed the same number of combined field-goal and free-throw attempts as OKC.
Will the Upsets Continue?
Three-point shooting is a volatile statistic that can vary greatly from one game to the next.
It’s highly unlikely the higher-seeded teams will keep shooting almost 20% better behind the arc than their lower-seeded counterparts. This stands to hurt the Knicks the most out of the four lower seeds (they barely escaped from Boston with an overtime victory despite shooting 20.9% better on 3s).
The rest-creating-rust scenario of the NBA playoffs also will stabilize as each of the series progresses and both teams have the same amount of time between games.
Then there’s the rebounding piece of it all. The great thing about it is that rebounding is heavily tied to desire and effort: With enough hard work and will power, any team has the chance to win the battle of the boards.
Size and strength also play huge roles. The Nikola Jokic-led Nuggets should continue to have the advantage over the Thunder, but the Warriors will have a harder time emulating their Game 1 output against the taller, more-physical Timberwolves.
None of this intends to take away the grit and resilience of the underdogs in their early second-round wins. If the games have taught us anything, it’s that all four underdogs can hold their own against favored opponents, and it’s already making for a fascinating second round of the NBA playoffs.
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