Changing Time Zones Could Be Key To Winning The NBA Title!
We can blame jet lag on the Raptor’s crappy season!
Who’s going to win the NBA championship? The answer may have more to do with jet lag than the stars on the court!
Although basketball fans typically look at injury history, team performance, and other statistics before placing a bet on the NBA playoffs, one crucial factor that is often overlooked is time zone changes.
Scientists have found that playing a game in a different time zone can disrupt an athlete’s biological clock, leading to increased fatigue and potentially affecting their chances of winning. Moreover, the impact appears to give teams in the Western Conference an advantage in the NBA Finals.
One of the most important results of this research for the home games of the NBA teams is that while travelling to the west increases the performance, travelling to the east decreases the performance…I’m guessing because it’s colder on the east coast…
The findings, published in Chronobiology International, also give a more scientific explanation for why travelling across certain time zones makes a difference when it comes to winning and losing. Teams tend to win more home games when their circadian rhythm — the biological clock that regulates sleep-wake cycles — is ahead of local times.
For example, let’s look at what happens if the Los Angeles Lakers played an away game at Miami, sitting three hours ahead in the Eastern time zone, and then returned to Los Angeles for a home game. Researchers found that the player’s circadian rhythm would be ahead of the local time zone, making the Lakers sharper and more alert during their next home game.
Conversely, basketball teams often played worse when their circadian rhythms were behind the local time of their home arena. With all this in mind, study authors say the results could help basketball coaches prepare for the effects of time zone travel as they prepare for road games.
