"But I've got to be able to function the next day at the top level." This is how Tobias Harris rolls: On off-days, he'll make sure he's done with everything by 6 p.m. ![]() "Some guys joke, 'Oh, you have a bedtime,'" Harris says, dodging the shade. And as Harris expounds on his favorite topic, Pistons guard Reggie Jackson, dressing in the next stall, shakes his head and groans. Harris is with the Detroit Pistons, who've just fallen to the Los Angeles Lakers. "I think in a couple years," he says, " will be an issue that's talked about, like the NFL with concussions." "You ask anybody in the room," Harris says. He points at each of his teammates, even the team staffers, one by one, from left to right. "It's the dirty little secret that everybody knows about."įROM HIS STALL in the visitors lockers in Staples Center, Tobias Harris looks around the room. ET, creating more rest days - sleep deprivation remains what one high-ranking league source intimately involved with player health calls "our biggest issue without a solution." Still, despite the league's best efforts - lengthening its schedule in recent years, reducing back-to-backs for five straight seasons (down to an average of 12.4 per team in the coming season), eliminating four-in-five stretches, reducing the nationally televised games that tip off at 10:30 p.m. Sleep is an area we look at closely as part of this effort." When asked to address the issue, the NBA provided a statement that declared that "player health and wellness continues to be a major focus for the NBA" and noted its "significant game schedule changes, an investment in a new airline charter program, a focus on mental health and wellness, and the advancement of wearable technology. We all want better solutions to this." Says a third, "It is a real problem for the entire league." One NBA GM calls it a "very big issue." Another GM adds, "We have a large population of vampires as it is - add in the travel and it's more so. And that data suggests that sleep deprivation is the NBA's silent scourge - a pox on the bodies and minds of NBA athletes, with impacts both wide and deep. Some of those specialists have begun compiling data. Some in the league, from players and coaches to training personnel, have begun to suspect that the toll extracted by the NBA grind - the combination of the sport's physical demands, the circadian disruptions, the six to eight months of travel across time zones - is not fully appreciated. Over the 2018-19 season, the average NBA team played every 2.07 days, had 13.3 back-to-back sets and flew the equivalent of 250 miles a day for 25 straight weeks. It's impossible."įatigue has long been a reality of life in the NBA, a league with teams that play 82 games in under six months and fly up to 50,000 miles per season - roughly 20,000 more miles each season than NFL teams and far enough to circle the globe twice. But even with that, is it possible within the current NBA schedule to obtain consistent, quality sleep? He hopes the melatonin he often takes will help him snooze, though that isn't easy after games. He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee. To fight back, he says he hopes to grab a few hours of sleep on the plane to Houston. ![]() As Whiteside says: "It's just so hard to get the sleep that you need." For something so important, it's remarkably elusive. It "could be the difference between you having a career game or playing terrible." But therein lies the conundrum of NBA life. ![]() Sleep matters, Whiteside says - it matters a lot. "And that's just what we've got tomorrow," he says. But now he's rattling off what time the Warriors game will end (10 p.m.), when they'll board their flight (11:30 or later), when they'll land in Houston (2 a.m.) and arrive at the hotel - he figures it'll be 3 - before playing the Rockets later that day. Tomorrow night, his Heat will host the Golden State Warriors, then fly to Houston to face the Rockets on Feb. 26, during a three-games-in-four-nights stretch, and Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is on a roll. NBA exec: 'It's the dirty little secret that everybody knows about' You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser
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