June 19, 2016, will always go down as one of the most pivotal days in NBA history. It was the date of game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Cleveland Cavaliers, who had overcome a 3–1 series deficit to reach this do-or-die contest, and the Golden State Warriors, who were coming off the best regular-season record in league history at 73–9.
All sports fans know how the game played out with a LeBron James block and a Kyrie Irving 3-pointer propelling the Cavs to their first championship in franchise history and ending the 52-year curse of Cleveland sports teams not winning a title.
But that game also marked a turning point in NBA history, specifically with regard to game 7s, as the league readies for a pair of win-or-go-home contests on Sunday. The Cavaliers were the road team in that matchup, and away teams previously had simply horrendous success in prior game 7s. There were 125 game 7s before that memorable Cavaliers versus Warriors NBA Finals Game 7, and the road team had just a 19.2 percent win rate in those contests.
However, since then, and including that Cavs improbable victory, the road team has a 54.2 percent win rate in the 24 NBA game 7s that have been played. Overall, across the 149 game 7s in NBA history, the road team has won just 24.8 percent of the time, but expect coaches on the Indiana Pacers and Minnesota Timberwolves—the two road teams for Sunday’s contests—to highlight that 54.2 percent win percentage over the last eight years.
Sunday’s first game will see the Pacers traveling to Madison Square Garden to face the New York Knicks in a series in which home-court advantage has decided every game. The home team is 6–0 in this series, and that’s not the only glaring trend in this Eastern Conference semifinals matchup. The first three games of the series were all single-digit affairs decided by a total of 18 points. Meanwhile, the last three games have been double-digit blowouts that were decided by an average of 25 points.
Indiana is 3–6 all-time in Game 7s since joining the NBA in 1976, including 2–6 on the road. It has faced New York in a game 7 twice before with both coming at MSG, and the Pacers split those matchups—losing in the 1994 Conference finals and then winning the next year in the Conference semifinals.
Meanwhile, New York is 7–8 all-time in a game 7, including 5–2 at home. It’s been a while since New Yorkers saw a Knicks’ game 7 in person as that 1995 defeat to the Pacers was the last time the Knicks hosted a game 7.
Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton is a student of the game and knows that these win-or-go-home contests where every possession is played like it is the last usually aren’t aesthetically pleasing to the fan.
“Don’t get too high. Don’t get too low. It’s going to be a game of runs,” Haliburton said of what to expect come Sunday. “And, I mean, historically, me as a basketball watcher, game 7s are always so ugly. So I expect an ugly game and I expect whoever plays harder to win. And I’m excited to be a part of that.”
The second game 7 on Sunday features the Timberwolves heading to the Mile High City to face the defending champion Denver Nuggets. Unlike Knicks versus Pacers, this series hasn’t followed the script of home team domination. The road team won each of the first four games of the series to knot it at 2–2, before the home team then rebounded to win games 5 and 6.
“This series has been weird for the both of us,” said Timberwolves forward Karl-Anthony Towns. “We take two on their court, they take two on ours, they hold on their court in a big win, we win big on ours. Someone has to break the trend in game 7.”
The Timberwolves are the only NBA team that can say they have a perfect Game 7 record, albeit they’ve only played in one previously. Twenty years to the day that Minnesota defeated the Sacramento Kings at home in Game 7 of the 2004 Western Conference Semifinals, the Timberwolves will play their second-ever game 7.
As for Denver, it sports a 4–3 record in these pivotal game 7s, which only includes its time in the NBA and not any ABA matchups. The Nuggets are 3–1 in “home” game 7s, but one of those victories came in the 2020 NBA Bubble in Orlando during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the Nuggets are 2–1 in game 7s contested in Denver.
This series is the third postseason matchup between the two franchises ever, as they met just last year as well as in 2004. They split those two with Denver winning a year ago and Minnesota winning 20 years ago, with each team victorious in five games.
