The Boston Celtics may have a significant disadvantage in 2022 NBA Finals home games due to jet lag, according to a groundbreaking study by Australian academics.
Dr. Elise Facer-Childs, a senior author, and her team at Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health in Melbourne investigated the effects of travel-related jet lag on performance. The research was published in the Frontiers in Physiology journal.
The authors say that the consequences of jet lag are significant, and that the NBA – and other sports leagues – should consider this when scheduling games that require teams to travel large distances across many time zones in a short amount of time.
“NBA teams are often exposed to jet lag due to frequent travel across multiple time zones,” says Dr. Facer-Childs, adding, “with some teams being disproportionately affected based on their geographical location Travelling eastward could be of particular concern to teams located on the east coast who have to travel back to play home games without adequate recovery time. “
“Eastward travel—where the destination time is later than the origin time—requires the athlete to shorten their day (known as a phase advance). During phase advance, athletes often struggle to fall asleep at an earlier bedtime, leading to sleep loss and, consequently, potential impaired physiological performance and motivation the next day .”
“Schedulers could mitigate these effects by compensating eastward travel with increased recovery time to allow athletes to resynchronize to the new time zone.”
The researchers looked at information from 11,481 NBA games in 10 regular seasons, from 2011-2012 to 2020-2021. They discovered that eastward (but not westward) jet lag was linked to poor performance in both home and away teams. In particular, when compared to home teams who did not suffer from jet lag, home teams who traveled eastward and suffered from jet lag had a:
- 6.03 percent lower chance of winning
- reduced points differential by 1.29 points
- reduced rebounding differential by 1.29 rebounds
- reduced effective goal percentage by 1.2 per cent
The host team’s point difference declined 0.72 points when playing with 1 hour eastward jet lag (e.g., travel from San Francisco to Boston (3 time zones) with only 2 recovery days). The host team’s point difference dropped 4.53 points after playing with a two-hour eastward jet lag.
According to the research findings, when eastward travel was followed by a sufficient recovery time, home teams performed similarly to when they did not travel at all.
“Allowing time for the circadian system to realign naturally to the destination’s light-dark cycle could, therefore, mitigate the observed eastward travel disadvantage.”
However, if schedules cannot be adjusted to ensure a level playing field between teams that may have jet lag and those that do not, the research paper suggests that team doctors and sleep specialists implement evidence-based interventions to manage eastward jet lag, such as timed light exposure and avoidance and/or melatonin supplementation.
Since the 1980s, when the league was dominated by two teams on opposite sides of the country: the west coast Los Angeles Lakers and the east coast Boston Celtics, the NBA has been cognizant of the influence of travel fatigue on performance in the NBA Finals.
To reduce cross-country commercial travel, the NBA changed the Finals schedule to a 2-3-2 format in 1985. Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 were played in the higher seed’s city, while games 3, 4, and 5 were played in the lower seed’s city.
In 2014, the NBA reverted to a 2-2-1-1-1 system for the Finals, as all NBA teams now fly privately, decreasing the impact of travel fatigue.
“However, while private jets can make cross-country flights less cumbersome for players, they do not protect against circadian disruption caused by crossing multiple time zones (i.e., jet lag), especially when teams are not given sufficient time to adapt to the new destination’s 24-hour environment (approximately 1 hour per day),” adds first author Josh Leota.
The findings could have an impact on the NBA Finals, which are now taking place in the United States between the Golden State Warriors and the Boston Celtics.
“Our data show that, during the regular season, home (but not away) teams playing with eastward jet lag are particularly disadvantaged. We speculate that away teams aren’t as impacted due to the controlled environment of travelling NBA teams. Team management can mitigate jet lag effects by maintaining a structured schedule (e.g., transportation, meal timings, athlete treatment sessions, and trainings) while on the road compared to when athletes travel to their individual homes and attend to familial and social obligations.
“According to the 2022 NBA Finals schedule, the Boston Celtics will be playing home games 3 and 6 with the possibility of 1 hr eastward jet lag. In this particular case, the Boston Celtics might benefit from chronobiology-informed strategies designed to mitigate eastward jet lag symptomatology and maximise competitive success. We note that we did not analyse playoff games in our study. It is plausible that the increased stakes of the post season likely have already led teams that are returning home to forgo social commitments in favour of game preparation and circadian resynchronization.”
Dr. Facer-Childs and her colleagues concluded that their findings have broad applicability for elite sports teams that must travel across time zones to attend games, citing the Australian Football League as an example: “the AFL may need to travel from Melbourne to Perth and back again within a few days in finals season.”
Image Credit: Getty
You were reading: A Simple Strategy Could Increase Boston Celtics Winning by 6.03% – Experts