Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com on partying: “Then, in less than a decade, the home-court
advantage gap was sliced in half. By 1996-97, home teams won only 57.5 percent of the time, by an average margin of only 2.6 points. And now, after hovering around 60 percent for most of the 2000s, home-court advantage is dropping again. This season, it sits at an all-time low of 57.4 percent. What’s causing the drop? Are refs monitored better and therefore less susceptible to the home crowd’s jeers? Are the crowds themselves quieter, populated as they are by iPhone-gripping, corporate-ticket-holding fans?