Staples On Sunday

As a slight correction - your article lists the wrong number of Sunday home games (16 out of 41, instead of 12), but does give the right %.

Aside from that, I disagree with your premise for several reasons:

1) You seem to fixate on the 12:30 starts, but those are pretty rare for the Lakers' Sunday homes games. In fact, 9 of their 12 Sunday home games this season are 6:30 PST starts. They only play 3 home Sunday games that start at 12:30 PST, and all are against Western Conference teams (Denver, SA, and Portland). So I fail to see any prejudice to East Coast teams.

2) Besides, as others have pointed out, it's actually far more difficult to travel East than it is to travel West, at least for NBA players. Going back to those dreaded but few 12:30 starts, I would posit that it's far easier for an NBA player from the Eastern time zone to play a 12:30 PST start (which is 3:30 PM for their internal body clock) than it is for an NBA player from the Western time zone to play a 12:30 EST start (which is 9:30 AM on their internal body clock). Because of their lifestyle and the fact that they often are playing until 10 PM and rarely get to bed before 1-2 AM, most NBA players are night owls and few are actually by 9:30, much less ready to play. I haven't bothered to check, but anecdotally I can state that historically the Lakers have been terrible in early afternoon EST starts. They always seem to play horribly against NY, Philly, Toronto or some other lesser team when they tip off that early. Thankfully they don't seem to have any of those this season (their earliest start is a 2:30 EST at Orlando).

3) And any scheduling discussion that doesn't acknowledge the significant advantage that Eastern Conference teams have from a travel standpoint is automatically invalid for obvious bias. Western Conference teams - especially those on the coast - are at a significant disadvantage from a travel standpoint as they have to far more miles to play conference games than do the Eastern Conference teams. The West is a far larger geographic area with considerably more far-flung destinations, including two (Denver and Utah) that come with significant altitude changes.

Maybe this is true, but it probably doesn't matter in the end.

The Lakers have the most back2backs on the road at 18 (traditionally the hardest games to win) while only catching opponents on a back2back 9 times -- 5 less than the next lowest team and significantly less than the league average of 20.

http://www.nbastuffer.com/2009-2010_NBA_Schedule_Rest_Days_Analysis.html

I suppose the two extra home games are adequate compensation.

I don't doubt that it's a little suspicious that the Lakers play 29% of their games on Sunday. However, since they share Staples Center with The Kings and The Clippers, the team schedules tend to be similar every week. For instance, the Lakers usually play at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays and only have two home games on Wednesday and two on Monday. Is that suspicious as well? It's not if you consider the Clippers tend to play on Monday and Wednesday. The Clippers only play 2 Tuesday games and 1 Thursday game this year. I think the scheduling overload on Sunday is caused as much by the wish to get the Lakers on ABC sunday games as it is to fit three teams into the same building.

If the Lakers hardly ever play at home on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday, that only leaves four days to handle 90% of the games. It is not unthinkable then that a big market team with marquee players would be scheduled a little more often on Sunday than their other days, but it's not exactly lopsided. Splitting their games evenly among the four days would be 25%. Compare that to the 29% calculated by the ESPN stats department and it's not too far off.

I'd have to agree with The Dude Abides that traveling west is not more difficult for the NBA teams. You gain hours traveling west, which means more hours to sleep before shootaround or the game (early sunday games). Conversely, if the Lakers travel to the Eastern time zone and play the 12:30ET game, they are playing at 9:30PT according to their bodies. Have you ever tried to play at 9:30 in the morning? Not an easy task, especially after traveling and sleeping in a hotel.

As far as the concern that Sunday follows Saturday, I'm not sure how we could figure out if that is a big factor or not. For one, the Lakers are also available on Saturday night to go out and do whatever it is that young multimillionaires do. Secondly, wouldn't most teams be having that problem during the week as well? It's not like parties can't be had on a Monday night in LA. Perhaps the only part of that argument that I buy is that the other teams may take part in the revelry more than the Lakers because the Lakers are used to the scene already.

The Lakers very rarely play at 12:30PM Pacific for the ABC games. It's almost always 3:30 Pacific. ABC has a lot of tripleheaders once the football season is over, with the last game being in the Pacific time zone. If it's not an ABC game, then it's a 6:30PM game. Also, it's way harder for a team in the west to travel east...just the opposite of what you wrote. NBA players have a late-night body clock. That favors eastern teams traveling west. Did you miss all the stories last season about Portland's "sleep doctor" helping the team out on eastern road trips?

The very real scheduling advantage the Lakers have is getting to play two road games in their home arena. Still, last season they had the toughest RELATIVE schedule regarding back-to-back games and four games in five night situations than any other team in the NBA, and still had a 65-17 record.

OK, OK I'll bite, but only because I rooted for the Lakers ferociously, even after Shaq left (maybe BECAUSE Shaq left), and I know they lost their fair share of Sunday games from 2000-2008, most notably the ones that would start at noon. I'll take a look back at the data later when I have the time, to corroborate my perception of those games.