Take Your Team With You When You Go on the Road Again
"On the road again... I just tin't look to get on the road again... The life I love is making music with my friends.. and I just tin't wait to get on the road once more." - Willie Nelson
Road games in sports are tough. Even with NBA homecourt advantage not being the massive plus that it is for the other sports, and with the abiding travel, there's still the comfort of being habitation vs. the longevity of being on the road. And with the (insane) make upward of the NBA schedule, it means teams often current of air up on long road trips on the opposite declension, traveling for weeks at a time. To jam these runs in and get them off the route sooner, that often means back-to-backs on long flights with multiple hours of time zone differential.
NBA players get chartered planes with tons of room, accept their bags handled for them (for the well-nigh office), have luxury buses have them to their five-star hotels and get the best in treatment and rest that tin reasonably be afforded. However, merely like anyone, travel is a nightmare. And for athletes, the wear and tear on the body is very real. From a white newspaper published by the Gatorade Sports Science Establish:
"Additionally, during a game, hydration is always a challenge. Inadequate hydration during
competition can be farther compromised by the demand for air travel immediately mail service game (depression humidity environs of the fuselage) for one-half of the regular season games."
And just in practical terms, the time differential is crazy. From Sixers.com:
Games on the West Declension are even more than disorienting. Say the Sixers terminate a game in Portland and commute downwardly to Los Angeles or Phoenix for a game the side by side night. In that case, the plane will be traversing downwardly the Pacific Declension at 4am Philadelphia time. If you look at information technology some other way, 90% of the American public is sleeping while a group of NBA players travels to its next game.
via The Phone call: Sports Science And The Rigors Of Travel | Philadelphia 76ers.
So aye, there's reason to believe that road trips are inherently bad for teams. And for some so far this flavor, they've been downright disastrous. The Hornets' rapid descent from "struggling" to "outright disaster started with a 1-3 West Coast road trip in which they gave the Lakers their commencement win of the flavor. The Nets started out sluggish, and and so went 0-3 on a road trip that they idea might boost them forrard. The Wolves went one-5 on a route trip that included a "home game" in Mexico Metropolis.
Merely of course, the caveat there is that those teams that lost all played teams in the Western Conference, ofttimes against the skillful teams in the Pacific division, and that conference disparity is huge. Because on the other side, The Suns went 4-2 on an Due east Declension trip, and the Clippers, who had been struggling this season, got themselves correct heading to the Least Coast, going 6-1 every bit they romped through the Southeast Sectionalisation.
However, beyond just the competition, there is a value players will talk near in being on the road, peculiarly from a chemistry perspective.
"Nosotros got on the route, we stopped thinking equally much," Chris Paul told CBSSports.com this calendar week. (Expect for more from Paul on Thursday on CBSSports.com.) "We had a chance to come up together. When you're on the road, your teammates are all that you have. I think we got a chance to pull together to find our identity."
Ty Lawson of the Denver Nuggets said that going on the road helped teammates who were new to each other, or who hadn't been effectually as much due to injury similar Danilo Gallinari, settle back in with the squad dynamic. The Nuggets went 2-1 on their trip east, which helped turn around their season.
Then while, aye, playing Eastern Briefing teams is proficient for what ails y'all (Western Briefing teams are at present 68-27 straight up against the East, 57-38 against the spread), there'south something to exist said for what you tin do with a long route trip. It helps teammates bond, and while that doesn't always correspond to the court (the Suns have said they go along not bad off the flooring and are struggling to figure it out on the court), it does create happier players and that understanding one another sparks the kind of team closeness that's difficult to quantify with metrics.
The Spurs for years have gone on hot streaks starting with their long rodeo road trip soon after the new yr, and accept often talked nigh how that's brought them closer together and helped them "make it gear" for the late-season crunch.
Long road trips tin doom seasons, cause teams to unravel and lose confidence. But they can besides bond a team closer. While the number of games on these stretches could be reduced as far as games-per-calendar week are concerned, they tin can also alter teams' fortune. Sometimes a little discomfort can exist skillful for bringing the best out of a team.
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Source: https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/the-good-and-bad-of-nba-road-trips/
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