Do teams really play worse in the second game of back to back games?

by Herb Ilk

I'm sure everyone has seen this stat at some point during the NBA season. Some televised game will show a graphic displaying a team's record in the second game of back to back games on consecutive days. The announcer will invariably comment on how tough it is to win the second game and he will probably even attribute this to fatigue. It's clear from the graphic that the team has a worse record in that second game than their overall record, but are they really losing more often than normal As you are about to see, this is clearly a case of someone not looking at the entire picture before drawing a conclusion on a misleading statistic.