Bill Simmons: "Houston has a top 3 worst crowd"

Well for "whatever" reason baseball seems to draw more fans from out of the suburbs to come downtown. Also I think getting to the post season in baseball is harder than getting to the playoff in basketball. You also fell like anything can happen in the baseball post season and if your team is hot there is a chance to win it all. There is no chance in basketball. The Rockets weren't going to beat Golden State. The Cavs were going to win the east. The playoff are just a formality in NBA right now.

 

Our crowds suck. It's the lower bowl (specifically club level) that is the issue. The vast majority of those tickets are purchased by companies and given out to clients. Most of these clients aren't huge fans, show up late, leave early, don't get totally into it...

My company has 4 seats in the 7th row. Awesome seats but wasted 90% of the time on clients who just don't really care about the Rockets that much and just go for the experience of seeing a game. Very little cheering and most of the seats around the section have the same issue. The behind the basket areas of the lower bowl and the upper bowl are quite loud and full of real fans.

So our crowds suck due to this...Simmons is right.

 

We have way too many of the club seats earmarked for corporate/business use. Some of those people in club are true diehards but it's a lot of people getting seats from their business that aren't truly bout it. Whenever I am able to go and even when its not a big game the upper bowl is usually representing

 

That's what I have always found so bizarre about the Rockets issues.

The Astros last 4 playoff trips have had insane crowds, maybe the best in baseball. They were also top 10 in attendance regularly before they fell off a cliff. When they put a good product on the floor, this town will get behind them strong. The Texans could field a team of local high schoolers and still sell out.

But the Rockets, who have put forth easily the best product in town over the last 30 years, have a consistently meh environment. For some reason they haven't managed to click with the town at large. None of the location issues fly given where the Astros play, and none of the lower bowl corporate snob excuses fly either, because every team has lower bowl corporate snobs.

We added one of the best players in thew world, play an exciting style, and are really damn good, yet crickets.

 

Does no one remember how good the crowds were in the 2014 first round? What happened?

 

I was at Game 1 vs the Mavs in 2015 and the crowd was insane. And this was Game 1 of the first round. The playoff crowds will get into it provided they're actually there. This game tipped off around 8:45, so everyone was in their seats.

 

When has the crowd ever won a game for someone? Lol I mean I agree our crowd seems bored but his metric is flawed

 

crowd actually does have an effect on the game provided. you probably have to play in an actual organized game when tons of people are going against you to probably get the full feel of it. it isn't much different from any other sports like football, baseball etc where players do get bothered by extreme noise especially with communication.

 

Yeah I don’t buy it with basketball... these guys have played in front of crowds their whole lives it’s not going to effect them. maybe in football when the away team is on offense I see how that can disturb communication but in basketball the crowd would effect both teams the same in regards to communication. Plus it probably hurts the home team more if anything since the crowd gets loud with those “defense” chants and that’s really when you need to be communicating.

 

OKC, GSW, and SAS all have genuinely good environments that are definitely difficult to win in.

 

Crowd might suck....but the dancing?

 

i disagree. alot of free throws are missed mostly bc of the distractions of a crowd. no matter what someone says you can't ignore a crowd and what comes out of it. obviously some players are better than others about ignoring it but its impossible to not factor in crowd noise if it is indeed a home court advantage.

Try going to a game at oracle one day or okc and youll immediately notice the difference in what a extremely loud home crowd can do. and thats just from a fans pov. a player pov is completely different

 

Tilman can fix this

 

Home crowd can also sway the refs.

 

Look at the drastic difference in the Knicks home & away record if you think this.

 

Yeah Oracle is hard to win at because of Curry, Thompson and Durant. OKC was hard to win in because they had two MVPs and SA has the greatest coach of this generation... the crowd has never won anybody any games. The biggest part of Home court advantage is just being able to sleep in your own bed.

 

Look at the games over the past twenty years that some away players have had in the garden where was the crowd then? Hell Harden had like a 50-16-16 game last year and we waxed them.

 

definitely

 

Crowd was pretty crazy in the 2000s playoffs series.

 

or any teams home and away record. the entire league consist of teams having a better home record than away