2019 and 2020 had a much, much, much lower amount of games that were won by the home-teams, which signifies that yes some home-court advantage was lost. However, it would be naive to just chalk it up to that. With the NBA in the past few years, the formation of super teams, being the norm can certainly factor into this loss of wins at home. Also, it could be a matter of road teams simply playing and being better than the home side. Nonetheless, this stark difference in the amount of wins at home is indicative of the fact, that maybe, just maybe, home sides are more dependent on their fans than one might think- and maybe even vulnerable without them.
There is really no significant difference in free throw percentages for Covid years, despite the absence of an audience. Therefore, to put it bluntly, audiences have little to no impact on the outcomes of free throws! Sorry to disappoint you, but your wasting your energy, save it for the 4th quarter. However, this raises the question of why don’t crowds impact free throw shooters? The answer to this lies in the ability of NBA players being accustomed to crowd noise, and being able to tune that noise out. So, yes fans, your noise isn’t distracting for free-throw shooters. Also, this renders gimmicks such as balloons, towel waving, kazoos, pretty much insignificant. So fans if I were you, I’d save my energy for the fourth quarter.