The Numbers Behind the Intuit Dome’s Biggest Advantage — The Wall

The Los Angeles Clippers have one of the best homecourt advantages in the NBA. Despite not having an altitude, weather, or hostile crowd advantage, the Clippers do have one thing carrying their homecourt, The Wall.

The Clippers concluded last season with a 23-18 home record despite starting 3-8 at home. The season prior, the Clippers concluded the season 30-11 at home despite starting that season 0-4 at home. The Clippers have an all-time regular season record at the Intuit Dome of 53-29 which is a 65% win percentage. If you were to include their outlier poor starts to the two seasons, it would be a record of 50-17, or a 75% win percentage.

According to Fox News’ writer Mark Harris,, for the 2024-2025 season, the first full season at the Dome, teams shot 73.4% facing the wall and 76.1% facing against the wall. The overall average of teams’ free throw shooting at the Dome was 74.8% for that season while the league average free throwing shooting is roughly 78%. This means that teams were shooting roughly 4.5% percent less when shooting directly at The Wall.

According to ESPN’s Anthony Gharib, the 73.4% free throw percentage when facing The Wall would rank dead last in the NBA if it were a team’s season free throw percentage.

It is also interesting how opponents shot 73.4% facing the wall and 76.1% when facing against the wall. As little as it may seem, a 2.7% free throw percentage difference is significant and especially in the same arena shows the impact The Wall has on deterring opponent free throws.

There isn’t any statistic out there that examines the field goal and three-point percentages of NBA teams and the difference in this when shooting against The Wall. The one piece of information I found is from December 30th of that season which is roughly one-third of the NBA season. According to Justin Russo, teams were shooting 33.3% from deep when facing the wall at that point of the season, which would have ranked 27th overall in the league.

NBA teams are also well-aware of the impact that The Wall has on their shooting. If you did not already know, visiting NBA teams get to decide which way they want to face during each half. During the 2024-2025 NBA season, teams faced The Wall in the second half of games only 14 out of 41 times. Remember, this was only the first NBA season at the Intuit Dome which proved that opponent teams very quickly took notice.

So what makes The Wall that impactful? Is it just the loudness from the crowd in that particular area? Well, partially. This is actually by design as this was Steve Ballmer’s intention during the creation of the arena. The Wall consists of 51 uninterrupted rows heading straight up into the nosebleeds filled strictly with Clippers fans echoing over you.

The Clippers don’t even have a favored schedule. There is a constant theme of having amongst the most back-to-back games in the entire NBA every year as well as early afternoon games. According to StatMuse, the Clippers have played 146 back-to-backs over that span. Only Sacramento with 150 and Washington with 147 have more. Cleveland and Atlanta are also at 146, meaning the Clippers are tied for 3rd-most in that dataset.

So it isn’t a scheduling reasoning either. Despite the Clippers not having any real homecourt advantage from any inconvenient travel, weather, or scheduling, the Intuit Dome’s architecture combined with the loud fans in The Wall have created a homecourt advantage like none other.