As anybody who has stayed up night after night through the NBA postseason knows, the human body wasn’t built for the late hours of playoff basketball.
Our circadian rhythm typically optimizes for peak performance in the late afternoon and early evening, and it’s not just mental acuity that varies by time of day.
“It’s mainly physical—for example, your muscle strength has a very strong circadian rhythm,” said Steven Lockley, a consultant to athletes and teams around the world as well as the co-founder and chief scientist for Timeshifter, an app that helps people mitigate jet lag.
That lends Western Conference teams an edge, including in the NBA Finals.
During the season, West Coast players are more often playing at 4 p.m. biological clock time (East Coast away games) or 7 p.m. (home), rather than the 7 p.m. (home) and 10 p.m. (away) tips East Coast players are managing.
In other sports, circadian rhythms have been credited with helping swimmers break more records in afternoon plunges and giving Pacific time NFL teams a leg up in Monday Night Football contests.
The wider the time-zone differential, the larger the impact. Since the 1999-00 season, Eastern time zone NBA teams have won 39% of their road games in other time zones when starting before 8:30 ET. That drops to 36% for tipoffs between 8:30-10:29 p.m. ET … and falls further from there.
To maximize TV audience, the Finals maintain a consistent 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 p.m. ET start time (games started after 9 p.m. ET as recently as 2022).
“The West Coast teams definitely have an advantage on average over the East Coast,” Lockley said.
With only a one-hour difference between San Antonio and New York, the Knicks won’t face as big a disadvantage as past Eastern champions. The typical body can handle a one-hour shift within a day of landing. Still, the Spurs could find a small edge. If they remain rooted on San Antonio time, Game 3 and 4 in New York will feel like 7:30 p.m. tipoffs rather than 8:30 starts.
The Knicks, then, might be wise to try living on Texas time. However, maintaining an artificial schedule for the home portion of a series, with players surrounded by families and other obligations, is trickier than when stars are largely sequestered in a team hotel, as the Spurs will be in NYC.
A 2022 study of 11,481 NBA games from Australia’s Monash University found that the eastward jet-lag effect impaired returning home teams more than visiting away teams, amplifying the league’s geographic imbalance.
Thanks to dynastic Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors runs, 13 of the last 25 Eastern Conference champions have had to handle cross-country flights in the Finals (not counting the COVID Bubble Finals). Pacific time teams are 9-4 in those matchups.
Of course, having Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry probably factors in, too. The aforementioned time-based winning percentage numbers do not take into account team quality. Over the last 25 years, the Lakers and Warriors have generally presented stiffer tests than the New Orleans Pelicans and Memphis Grizzlies, regardless of what time the games are played. Utah and Denver have unique altitude edges as well.
That said, some western teams have pressed their advantage by keeping their body clocks on hometown time when traveling east, i.e.,staying up late on the road, this time on coach’s orders, before adjusting slowly.
In college hoops, Cal reportedly did exactly that after hearing from a former NASA consultant, as it figured out how to handle playing in the ACC against many teams located on the East Coast.
There are two potential benefits: keeping games in earlier biological clock time windows and—with proper adjustments to light exposure and meal planning—limiting the effect of jet lag. For those forced to shift their clocks, travel-related sleep disruption has been found to impair everything from shooting percentage to defensive rating.
The result of all these temporal challenges? Since 1999-00, seven of the 10 teams with the smallest home court advantages—measured in terms of average point differential at home versus away—play in the Eastern time zone, and none of those 10 are on Pacific or Mountain time. New York is 26th in home court advantage over that span.
Following a growing acceptance of sleep science, NBA teams have adjusted their flight and practice times to navigate player clocks, Lockley said, leaving plenty of time for rest. Certain stars have also mastered the art of the pregame nap.
Victor Wembanyama, in particular, has put an emphasis on ZZZ’s. Entering the draft, he already aimed for 10 hours of sleep per night, with afternoon time set aside for additional snoozes. He’s been known to put his phone on airplane mode after 9 p.m. ET, while staffers are told not to contact him after 9:30.
“That’s when he reads for an hour,” Spurs director of basketball communications Jordan Howenstine told The Athletic in 2024. “Then he goes to sleep.”
After games, Spurs vet De’Aaron Fox recently shared, Wemby has returned to the locker room wearing blue light-blocking glasses, counting down the time until he can rest.
While travel is disruptive for everyone, preparation for the unique challenges of NBA play in June—from later-than-normal starts to there-and-back-again time zone hops—could prove decisive.
Getting nine hours a night throughout the playoffs? Whether you’re on the court or just watching from home, there’s nothing more alien than that.
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