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). A team traveling west might arrive late at night and then have to play the 12:30PT/3:30ET game. Their bodies feel like it’s 3:30pm. There is plenty of time for them to rest after flying in. Conversely, if the Lakers travel to the Eastern time zone and play the 12:30ET game, they are playing at 9:30 am 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.
via Forum Blue And Gold.
I guess I came to that conclusion because I HATE going West with a violent passion. Finding out it’s actually 8AM when it feels like ten is weird, and it being 9PM when it feels like 11 is hell. But many people have argued this point, so I’ll concede. They also point out the Clipper element in this scenario, which doesn’t make much sense to me, because shouldn’t both teams get a fair distribution of days? I’d love to see numbers for other teams besides the obvious Utah Mormon-Sundays thing to see if there are any other distinct patterns.
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The Lakers get the best days at the Staples because the clips have a dirt cheap lease. Basically, Sterling pays next to nothing in exchange for not getting any good dates.
If you hate going West so much, then you should move to Hawaii. You’ll never have to go West again.
The Raptors always seem to have early Sunday games
Matt, this hilarious post about Laker fans using “facts” and “actual knowledge” balanced out the first one. Cheers. And you’re right, we do get tired of the favoritism and bandwagon fan accusations. It’s as if people believe that no Laker fan exists outside of the lower bowl of Staples.
This is true that “facts” and “actual knowledge” is what you get at FB&G.
I should also say that the biggest scheduling advantages favor Utah and Denver, and that’s just because of their high altitude locations. If your team doesn’t have a game the day before, then that advantage is lessened, as everyone has an extra day to acclimatize. Denver, being higher above sea level, is tougher than SLC. If your team had a game the night before in the Pacific Time Zone, then a game in Denver the next night means that you have to overcome these obstacles on top of the customary obstacles to winning the second game of a back to back: (a) you lose one hour going from Pacific to Mountain time, so you have one less hour to acclimatize, and (b) the airport is located nearly one hour from downtown, so road teams playing the night before generally arrive at their hotel between 4 and 5 AM Mountain Time.
Popovich purposely rested his three healthy Spurs stars last season at Denver the next night after a game at Golden State. He knew that it was a guaranteed loss, and wanted his players rested for their upcoming Eastern trip. It worked, because after the Denver loss, the Spurs won in Boston.
OTOH, Phil didn’t rest anyone last season the next night after the Lakers beat the Suns in Staples, and the team only scored 79 points in its worst offensive performance of the championship season. Because of that, the team was more tired when they played the Suns in Phoenix about 36 hours later on a Sunday afternoon, and got routed there too. Phil did the same this season after another blowout over Phoenix in Staples, and the team broke its franchise record for fewest points in a half (23) when they hit the wall in the second half at Denver.