0-150

[Phantom255x]

On the bright side, my supervisor said he'll donate some of his PTO hours to me if the Celtics managed to make it to the finals. Despite the current situation and what will likely unfold, kept pulling my homerism on him to boast hehe.

He's a Lakers fan 

Ask him to donate 40 hours to signify the final series result of Nuggets-Lakers 

[celticsclay]

How many of the teams down 3-0 had two of the last 3 at home. Just curious.

[celts55]

I don’t know that this team is mentally tough enough to come back, but I believe if they could play like they can, they are a better team than the Heat.
Eventually, some team is going to do it. Be nice if it was the Celtics

[CelticsWhat35]

I see the Celts winning tomorrow night, getting everyone’s hopes up…and then losing game 6

[SparzWizard]

I see the Celts winning tomorrow night, getting everyone’s hopes up…and then losing game 6

Sounds like the most probable scenario. But ofc a lot of teams also tend to lose Game 5 coming up from 3-0 to try make it 3-2

[Ed Monix]

Celtics are just the 4th team all-time to force a Game 7 after trailing a series 3-0:

1951 Knicks
1994 Nuggets
2003 Trail Blazers
2023 Celtics

[celticinorlando]

Miami losing tomorrow would dispel so much of this heat culture BS that they live on

[Ed Monix]

Miami losing tomorrow would dispel so much of this heat culture BS that they live on

I saw recently that even Draymond Green is pulling for the Celtics.

He’s hoping if Boston wins after being down 0 - 3, then he won’t cop as much flack for losing the Finals after being up 3 - 1.

[Phantom255x]

I do want to add, for a Saturday night Game 6 with major implications, that was a sad Miami crowd yesterday. Stands were practically half empty during the first half, and even in big moments it sounded like a general applause that you'd hear in other stadiums in the regular season (Philly, Golden State, LA, etc.). D-Wade and Lebron aren't there anymore. That's such a bandwagon franchise. Some of them probably believe Lebron still plays for them 

[hwangjini_1]

Celtics are just the 4th team all-time to force a Game 7 after trailing a series 3-0. And the first team to ever come back and win their series:

1951 Knicks
1994 Nuggets
2003 Trail Blazers
2023 Celtics

Just helping you to be optimistic. 

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Celtics are just the 4th team all-time to force a Game 7 after trailing a series 3-0:

1951 Knicks
1994 Nuggets
2003 Trail Blazers
2023 Celtics

And they're the first of those 4 teams to play Game 7 at home.

[KG Living Legend]

 Whats the first rule about fight club?

[keevsnick]

C's will either be the first team to come back down 0-3, or the first team to come back down from 0-3 only to lose game 7 at home.

Either way, history will be made.

[Kernewek]

How many of the teams down 3-0 had two of the last 3 at home. Just curious.

Probably not as low as you might think. I don't have time to go and evaluate each 3-0 series to adjust for how HCA and seeding rules have changed over the years, but if we figure that of the 150 series where a team has been down 3-0 so far all follow the 2-2-1-1-1 HCA structure (except for the Finals, which changed to 2-3-2), then we can safely say that:

• 92 have finished in 4 games (4-0) - lower seed had two of the last 3 games at home
• 44 have finished in 5 games (4-1)- lower higher seed had two of the last 3 games at home
• 11 have finished in 6 games (4-2) - lower seed had two of the last 3 games at home
• 3 have finished in 7 games (4-3) - higher seed had two of the last 3 games at home

https://www.landofbasketball.com/statistics/playoff_series_3_0.htm


So there's our how we can qualify the data, assuming I'm counting correctly (never a given, and I'm in a bit of a Covid cloud at the moment unfortunately).

We just need to know the seed of the winning team for each 3-0 series, because thus far the series winner has always been up 3-0.

I tried looking up the biggest portion of the data (the sweeps) on a summary on sites like NBA sweep, because I'm not going to do this by hand, and according to them the higher seed swept the first round 79 times, the Semifinals 43 times, the Conference Finals 18 times, and the NBA Finals 7 times:
http://nbasweep.com/nba-statistics/

Sweep data is kind of wonky for this question, though, since it goes all the way back to 1947 - and the playoff format has changed significantly since then. For example, we don't know how many of those 79 first round sweeps are not a best of 7, but considering there have been 147 higher-seed sweeps in NBA history so far - and 184 sweeps in total - we have to assume the answer is "more than a few", especially since this isn't looking at 4-1 or 4-2 series finishes, which are also part of this 3-0 series start.

So this is kind of a fun rabbit hole, but it's annoying enough that I'll leave it to one of the professional content farmers or someone with more free time to figure out - you could use BBallRef/Stathead data to solve for it with Python pretty easily, though (but I can't do that from my phone )



edit: this might be the brain fog talking but I got that wrong the first time - essentially the only time your scenario doesn't apply is when a higher seed team either loses in 6 or gets swept - because they will have played Home, Home, Away, Away for the sweep or Away-Home-Away in games 4, 5, and 6.

If you're a lower seeded team, you nearly always play two of your last three games at home unless you win the series in seven, because it's A-A-H-H-A-H-A.