Sleep Deprivation in NBA Players | Hacker News Reader

Sleep Deprivation in NBA Players

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115 pointssna1l120 comments

Every year when I go to re:invent, Amazon's big conference in Las Vegas, I schedule nap time from 3pm to 5pm. When I'm there I meeting with lots of different people, from as early as 7am to as late (early?) as 1am, and sometimes I'm out till 3am or later.

That nap is the only thing that makes it bearable. And I get mocked for it and I don't care. But sleep is no joke.

I also do all the blue shift/night shift stuff on my phones and laptops year round, and that seemed to make a big difference when I started doing it. I went as far as replacing every light I need at night to one that can go as low as 1850K, so I see no blue light for a few hours before bed.

Off topic a bit, but I have a small sony flatscreen tv in the house. The only one, but the kids use it all the time now.

Does anyone know of a way to "night shift" those things? Kids are trying their best to get into university, so I get that late studying is necessary. I even get that some kids prefer to watch some things on the TV. (Youtube/Netflix documentaries etc.) I've replaced lights, etc. But the TV is still blasting out blue light at all hours for them. Might be better if I could cut that down too I'm thinking?

My new LG TV has a "Reduce Eye Strain" setting which does a flux-like red shift, reducing blue light. I haven't found a setting to do this based on time of day, and it's a bit buried in menus, so I just leave it on all the time as it isn't too severe. I tend to watch TV mostly in the evening anyway.

https://www.costco.com/LG-55%22-Class-(54.6%22-Diag.)-4K-Ult...

You may be able to go into the Picture settings and see if there are colour temperature settings, or calibration settings that you could reduce the Blue and Green channels on to taste. However, this will Night Shift the TV screen all the time, even during the day.

In my experience it wouldn't help much even if you could, unless the screen is the only light in the room. The only thing that moved the needle for me was wearing glasses that just "night shift" everything.

I haven't figured out how to do the TV. If I want to watch TV at night, I use my computer which run flu.x. Maybe if you have a spare old computer lying around you can hook it up to the TV and then install something on that to yellow-shift everything and then watch with that?

If your TV doesn't have any specific blue light settings, you can get an external device like driftTV[0]. Even without a specific blue light reduction mode, I recommend turning down the brightness to the lowest comfortable setting.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/driftTV-Remove-Blue-Your-Sleep/dp/B01...

Holy crap $129 is a bit for that. I’ll wait for all the cheap knock offs to copy and improve it (eg, a remote).

There appears to be an HDMI type device on Amazon that works, albiet buggy. Perhaps a better device needs to come along for the rest of us :)

You'd think someone would make a custom-sized film for this purpose.

TV Manufacturers need to start including this feature.

I don't know about others, everyone seems to like naps, but I feel completely wasted after midday sleep.

I've tended to find with experimentation that adjusting your nap duration can stop that wasted effect. I tend to take a 90 minute lunch break, where i nap. It takes me ages to get to sleep, but I'm rarely wasted (even more tired when i wake up ). I suspect i get somewhere between 20 and 60 minutes sleep in total, but 9 times out of 10 I'm refreshed. The other 1/10 its generally my work brain won't stop considering ways to resolve work issues.

Are you sleeping for exactly 1 sleep cycle, which for most people is roughly 1.5 hours, of which only the middle half hour is deep sleep. If you set your alarm for an hour, you will probably be woken in your deep sleep and be "wasted". Similarly, if you extend your nap to 2 hours and fall into the second deep sleep.

90 mins? Most of the afternoon naps I do tend to be short - like 15-25 minutes, and that generally refreshes me enough to feel "restarted" for another few hours. I can get through the rest of the day pretty good on that. "Rest of the day" being doing "thinking work" for another few hours - I'm not trying to get another full day or work (or even socializing) after that.

That's the other kind of nap, where you don't actually sleep. That's fine too. The point is that a lot of people will sleep, but set their alarm to wake them up in the middle of their deep sleep and then be surprised that they are so groggy.

thanks. I guess it's usually felt like 'quick sleep' but that's my layman's view from the easy chair. :)

I’ve never yet been able to find the standard deviation data on the research that established that the average sleep cycle lasts 90 minutes. Presumably there’s as much variation across individuals as everything else about individuals

I know the concept of deep sleep and cycles but how the hell could you plan this? Like ok, I'm sleepy due to lack of sleep, now I have a certain stretch of time with no time constraints - how do you know when you will fall asleep, when will enter deep sleep phase and whe will it end? I have no idea about any of those numbers.

There are mobile apps or fitness watches/bands that apparently can tell your sleep state based on your movement etc. I don't know how accurate they are because my phone is cheap with cheap sensors.

You tell these apps what time you want to wake up at the latest, and they will ring the alarm before that time when you are not in deep sleep.

Where do you get good 1850K LED bulbs?

They're not easy to find! Mostly what I have are wifi LED bulbs with adjustable color. I have a Feit LED bulb where the "yellow" setting is pretty close to 1850K. I also have the GE LED bulb that actually goes to 1850. And then I have a bunch of night lights from Costco where they yellowest yellow is around 1850.

Basically anytime I go somewhere that sells bulbs I'll check them out and look for ones that can be adjusted to 1850K.

I've never found just a straight 1850K bulb at a decent price. They don't seem to exist.

Thanks. Do you have any specific recommendations on WiFi LED bulbs that you've liked at that color temperature range?

Consider getting them to wear anti blue light glasses. Just search Blue Light Blocking Glasses on amazon.

Somewhat related, but a few months ago I got some Gunnar eyeglasses [1], and I simply love them. Strongly recommend everyone to use blue light glasses, at least at home.

[1] https://gunnar.com

I’ve always wondered if the home team advantage is mostly caused by sleep deprivation.

I know baseball stadiums have idiosyncrasies (home run distance varies), but I’m not aware if anything similar for basketball.

The home team advantage is also pretty striking for win rates in the NBA: 58% of games are were won by the home team in the 2017-2018 season[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_advantage

That is actually relatively low for the NBA. In 87-88, home teams won 67% of games. Baxter Holmes wrote another piece about two years ago about how Tinder, better sleep, and less drinking has eroded the home court advantage in the NBA. It was a great piece.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinde...

I don't particularly care about the NBA, but I followed your link anyways, and came across this gem:

> A recent study by WHOOP, a biometric device company with NBA clients, found what researchers called a "four-day hangover" in the post-drinking health metrics of 148 student-athletes. Heart rates were 16 percent higher after a night of drinking, and a measurement of heartbeat interval variation was 23 percent lower. According to the researchers, the effects are "a change of similar magnitude to that of aging 12 years."

Searching for "four day hangover" had this link at the top: https://www.whoop.com/the-locker/the-four-day-hangover/

Searching some more, this page has information about lab tests that provide evidence of chronic alcohol consumption: https://arupconsult.com/content/alcohol-abuse

I've observed how it takes some people days to fully recover from their drinking episodes. Thanks for the link.

You can test this out yourself, if you're into an endurance sport and have a heart rate monitor nearby. Even low to moderate drinking the night before a run has a significant effect on my heart rate at rest (around 5%) and during exercise (up to 10% higher).

Where moderate drinking means a glas of wine, or two, not a bottle (or two).

The Blazers have to travel more than any other team by virtue of their isolated PNW home base:

https://twitter.com/EdKupfer/status/1028025414671843328/phot...

From some studies I've seen [citation needed] biggest home advantage is due in general to subconscious bias by referees. In the case of the crazy NBA schedule, traveling surely is an effect.

Actually the refs are getting better (more fair that is) due to sustained effort by the NBA.

Source:

https://atrpodcast.com/episodes/ref-you-suck-s1!c5106

Could one team gain a massive advantage by taking the sleep environment seriously and figuring out how to prevent sleep deprivation in players?

A sort of hidden opportunity along the lines of the statistical metrics that revolutionized baseball.

That is supposedly one of the keys to the Success of Team Sky in cycling, but cycling also has a long, long history of doping and making up bs reasons for the unlikely rates of success. So I don't know how true that idea is.

Team Sky was all about marginal gains compounding, so Sleep was one but not a key one

My thought too. Just don't bother practicing as much, instead sleep more and throw some games strategically.

Teams kind of do this already. The Spurs were especially famous for “DNP - Old” (DNP = Did not play) at the end of the Duncan/Manu/Parker era. They would leave those guys at home for short road trips and/or back to backs. This all hit a tipping point when ABC was scheduled to air the Heat v Spurs and the Spurs left all their stars in San Antonio. IIRC the Spurs won or came close to doing so anyway. The league has then encouraged teams to sit players for rest at home (road fans, especially in the opposite conference only get one chance to see a guy play) and not for nationally televised games, but it is hard to make that a policy. In addition, due to conference imbalance, it is easier to rest stars in the East (see Raps and Kawhi last year) than it is in the West.

In addition since then the NBA schedule has expanded by about a week to reduce/eliminate the number of road games back-to-back-to-back / "4 games in 5 days" scenarios.

> and throw some games strategically

This would be fascinating and hilarious, especially if some of the hard core bettors got wind of the strategy.

Yes, not sure about massive advantage but some advantage, for ex: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/11253654/Meet-the-man...

> To fight back, he says he hopes to grab a few hours of sleep on the plane to Houston. He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee.

From what I have seen, most pro teams stay at some of the nicest hotels in said visiting city. With that said, I'm surprised to see the "He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee." But maybe that's also just coming from my own experience of sleeping extra well in higher end hotel beds than my own bed at home.

I used to work out at the gym attached to San Francisco's Four Seasons. That's where a lot of visiting teams stayed and they'd also come down to the gym.

The strangest thing I ever saw was a bunch of athletes and their trainers come down to the gym late at night, 9/10pm, and do an extremely easy workout. Like, one guy was just walking slowly on a treadmill while the trainer monitored him.

I'm assuming they'd just gotten in to town. I say this was strange just because it seemed like such a small detail for the trainers to be involved in. And it says something about the level of detail and discipline that NBA players are starting to adopt. I'm not even sure what the goal was--maybe just staying loose?

There's nothing strange about an active recovery workout. Elite athletes do stuff like that all the time.

With trainers though? That seems like the kind of thing that an athlete would be assigned to do on their own. They were walking soooo slow too.

The trainer is an insignificant additional expense relative to the cost of employing an NBA player. Left on their own, elite athletes have a tendency to overdo their workouts because they're constantly competing against their own teammates and even their own performance yesterday. So the trainer is sometimes there just to impose limits.

Consider that a king size bed is only 6'8" long, while the average player's height is ~6'7"

The diagonal dimension on such a bed is over 9'. That would accommodate anyone.

And leave room for an average height date on either side

source: packing problem expert

By my calculations, even 7'7 Shaq lying along the diagonal could accommodate a couple 5'10 supermodels on either side. Fortunately a king-size bed is nearly square so one of them will get only a little less headroom than the other (unless she wants to sleep next to his feet).

source: NBA groupie

NBA players almost all have custom made beds due to their size.

Custom beds made for the hotels they sleep in while in other cities?

>maybe that's also just coming from my own experience of sleeping extra well in higher end hotel beds than my own bed at home.

Not trying to argue with you about your experience or anything, but I think it's possible that certain elite athletes have different needs.

Just as a thought exercise, think back to all those high end hotels you've stayed in, and try to remember the comfy beds.

Now, would those beds have been as comfy if you were 7 ft 1 in, (2.1 meters), tall?

i'm pretty sure they've all figured out to sleep on the diagonal (which should give them 8-9ft) by this point in their lives.

those overly-soft beds tend to make me overheat more.

Sleeping diagonally is a good idea?

But let's do the math on sleeping diagonally for a man with a 3 to 3.5 foot frame and a 7 foot wingspan. It really is just different parts of his body hanging off the bed.

Presumably they have all figured out that they don't need to sleep on the diagonal but that they can simply buy custom extra-long beds in every place they live... except hotels.

I personally find the beds in the fanciest hotels the hardest to sleep in because everything is just so... fluffy.

I read some anecdotes about pro cycling teams during the Tour de France who would take doors off the hinges and put them under mattresses to firm them up. Privacy wasn't that big a concern since they were likely taking a floor or wing of a hotel for the night.

tbf, on the TdF by nature you're often staying in small and medium-sized towns with a huge mixed bag of accommodation choices. Air conditioning was often not even a given.

Huh thats pretty interesting. Might as well pile up sheets on the floor and sleep there if it comes down to that.

Especially the monster pillows. yuck. first that gets tossed on the floor.

It's never a guarantee

and either way it's all different beds when you are traveling a lot and thats always going to eventually present a problem

having a bunch of different high-end mattresses means a lot of different comfort styles.

Some teams in pro cycling bring their own mattresses to ensure that bad hotel beds don't ruin results. Guess nba teams need to step up their logistics.

As coping mechanism, the Portland Trailblazers from the NW who travel the most miles of NBA teams, have tuned pre-game coffee routine : https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25667397/the-game-day-ca...

This article is about how "tinderization" has reduced the need for players to go out and stay out late at night clubs when on the road, and attempts to map that to a measurable decrease in home field advantage

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinde...

I have often wondered if professional sports in an effort to increase profits, increase the number of games in a season (MLB 162 games, NBA 82, NFL 16) plus pre-season, training camp etc. I think they may actually be decreasing their profitability because the quality of play suffers from the grueling schedules, not only sleep depravation but injuries and etc. Also, there could be a factor of over saturation; the games seem less special if they are on every day.

It would be interesting if one of the major sports leagues would experiment with a reduced schedule to test that theory ? Never happen I know.

As a really close follower of the NBA, I can say they have been starting to show real concern with not wearing out their players, and they have incentive to take it even further. They haven't decreased the overall number of games, but they have been working really hard to minimize the number of back-to-back games, I think every team has had a decrease in back-to-backs each of the last 4 consecutive years. They also lengthened the calendar to more easily avoid scheduling games on consecutive nights.

A recent trend is "load management" where superstar players like Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, and the Warriors, will sit out a large portion of regular-season games. The thinking is that if their teams are good enough to get to the playoffs without them playing all 82 games, so why risk an injury to your $200 million dollar player for a meaningless game instead of saving their energy for the playoffs?

This makes fans really mad because they pay for tickets to see the star players. Players I'm sure appreciate that it reduces mileage on their bodies and lets them stay fresh and avoid injuries.

Right, and now more and more we see teams that to be competitive have to have 3 superstars in order to keep from wearing out 1 or 2 stars.

11 out of 30 NBA teams had 100% home game attendance last season. 18 teams were above 95%. There's not that much margin for improvement there.

http://www.espn.com/nba/attendance/_/year/2019/sort/homePct

Edit: I can't find the numbers for courtside attendance, but it's possible that ticket income for the teams at the bottom of that list is either lower or higher than the overall % suggests, depending on how in-demand the highest priced tickets are.

Maybe but there's also a lot of ink about the drop in attendance in MLB games since the stopped looking the other way on steroids, maybe there are too many games to be able to be entertaining without drugs. Maybe NBA is on there way there, a third of the teams home games sold out seems like lots of room for improvement to me, I guess it's perspective.

Edit: Agree it's probably TV driving it. But just my perspective as Basketball fan, I would rather see 50 or 60 really great competitive games played by rested healthy and happy players than 80 games by tired players.

Oh yes, absolutely. My answer seems dismissive because I mostly follow the NBA, but in fact the relationship between the number of games, ticket prices, and factors affecting attendance is a fascinating topic.

Oh cool, I am also an NBA fan, I also think they are one of the better player leagues. If any league can work on this it is the NBA.

Does quality of play in any way matter to their income? If all the teams got say 20% better, would more people watch the sport? It's hard to say with any certainty that they would. I feel like the over-saturation argument has a lot lot more merit though.

I remember some ghosts on Scooby Doo trying to get the Harlem Globetrotters sleepy to win the game the next day.

Seems like MLB (baseball) players have it even worse. 162 games in 6 months and that’s just the regular season. Games average longer and if extra innings can go 5+ hours and well past midnight.

The difference is that baseball will often have "stints" in a city, you may play back to back days but you won't be traveling. Whereas in the NBA you might be in Houston one night, LA the next, then to Boston, and Chicago, in the space of a week or less.

Baseball is also a lot less "active" than basketball - they are certainly world class athletes, but for many positions the game is slow, punctuated by quick pushes, whereas if you're on the court in basketball you're working at 100%, 100% of the time.

In baseball, you can just wear sunglasses and take naps in the middle of the game. Especially if you're in the bullpen.

Or the dugout. Ask Darryl Strawberry.

It's also nowhere as physically demanding of a sport as basketball, where you're in constant movement 30+ minutes a game and during practice.

The implication in the article is that the travel schedule/lack of sleep is the central issue, not the intensity of the workout.

Yeah but try hitting a 100 mph fastball when you're feeling groggy

I'd honestly probably do better than I would normally since I wouldn't have the energy to overthink it lol.

Disagree [0]

> One study found that MLB players' strike-zone judgment was worse in September than in April in 24 of 30 teams. When averaged across all teams, strike-zone judgment was significantly worse in September compared with April. The statistical model demonstrated strong predictive value through the season.

[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130531105506.h...

You typically stay in the same city for more than a single night in baseball, though. 2-4 game series v. 1 game then out.

Baseball players play series in various cities. They aren't there just for one game. Also, the sport is the least physically demanding of all major US sports. Players spend half their time sitting in dugouts, and about 80% of the rest just standing around waiting for the ball to be near them.

> "Based on ... about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number ... is zero."

This statement made me think about reports of successful people wherein one supposed factor to their success was ability to "function" on less sleep (Marissa Mayer 4 hours, Jon Gruden 4 hours, Tom Ford 3 hours)

Until they can't. https://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/06/23/how-marissa-mayer-fell-...

Agree. Not sustainable long term. Often wondered if such reports were exaggerated as well.

Some of those successful people are just faking it, or fooling themselves. But there are at least two "short sleep" genes which allow people to be rested in about 6 hours instead of 8.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2019/08/415261/after-10-year-searc...

If this NBA player thing is important, which is the life of about 400 players who travel for work seldom much over 100 days per year, how many road warrior consultants and salesmen are in the same trap with the same or worse consequences?

> Studies show five hours of sleep per night over the course of a week lowers testosterone levels by an equivalent of 11 years of aging.

Do their testosterone levels recover after going back to a normal sleep schedule?

I think the answer is mostly there in the fact they start the season at 88%. However, I'm sure there are cumulative effects on athletes who play for multiple seasons

No, after a sleepless month, you might as well turn in your balls.

LOL, of course levels recover with some longitudinally decaying residual.

Related to this, one of the most interesting podcast episodes I had listened to was Howard Beck talking to the NBA schedule makers and all the factors they have to account for when making the schedule. Part of the podcast talks about rest and how rest is accounted for when scheduling. Well worth a listen.

https://player.fm/series/the-full-48/nba-scheduling-czars-to...

Interesting will check it out.

Also remember listening to JJ Redick's podcast episode which featured Chris Paul, and they spoke about players not getting enough sleep. Paul mentioned an example such as a national game on tv being over at 9 or 10 but they might have another road game the next night, they go to airport get on a plane and land at 2am. Might not even get any sleep until 4 or 5am due to all the traveling, the adrenaline, the emotions, the caffeine etc. Now imagine this over 82 games.

I’ve said this on HN before, but I got the eight sleep pod and im loving it. The companion app legitimately helps me manage sleep deprivation and I’ve had much higher quality sleep.

As someone who also ankifies everything, I’ve noticed my recall has improved ever since I started sleeping more each night consistently (coincided with when I got the Pod).

I’m sure NBA players could benefit from something like this

Was really thinking a pod would be something 3D, not another mattress. Not knocking the technology, but was envisioning a soundproof mini-room.

If the grueling travel schedule is what really wears them out, I wonder what my daily 3 hour commute is doing to me.

Are you commuting between time zones and going to work until midnight sometimes?

Also exercising for 2 hours then hopping on a jet to get to the next city.

Summary (from 4277 words): From a study of 18 players, testosterone levels fell from 88th percentile among males their age to 32nd percentile by midseason. Their grueling travel schedule, and not the exertion of on-court play, was to blame as non-player personnel also experienced similar declines. Studies show five hours of sleep per night over the course of a week lowers testosterone levels by an equivalent of 11 years of aging.

Verbosity is an existential threat.

"Verbosity" also encourages empathy. The piece does a good job relaying the lengths several players go through to achieve the sleep they want. It also gives a good overview of what their travel schedule actually is. Let's not pretend that a three sentence summary contains the same amount of information as a long-form article.

(And to counter the inevitable follow-up: yes, I know many people think there is too much human-interest, irrelevant personal information in such reporting. But there's still lots more relevant information.)

Verbosity risks people never reading it at all.

Summaries are fine. Just let's not pretend there's no loss of information.

Yes I actually agree with verbosity, 10 second soundbytes have massively polluted the information ecology. I was just arguing against myself :|

Their loss.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we need to oversimplify and dumb down content, that has massively polluted the information ecology. I am just pointing out that most people wont take the time to read anything longer than a couple paragraphs in this particular context.

I think we're basically in agreement that it's a great shame when important information is not reaching the audience it deserves because of how it's presented. It's a neat parallel to the other thread in this topic about how the overall product might be improved by reducing the number of games played in a season.

It seems wild to me when people basically shoot themselves in the foot by going "tl;dr", but also if you're the author, it's up to you to present your message in a easily comprehensible form - nobody owes you their time and attention, it has to be earned.

(FWIW, this site doesn't allow downvoting direct replies to one's posts, so it wasn't me who downvoted (nor flagged) your sibling comment.)

If you awaken to the collapse of duality into unity, you see that its your loss too, its everyone's loss.

This summary omits context for what the “grueling travel schedule” is, similar results for REM sleep and cognitive function, player reactions and countermeasures, and interpretations by sleep science experts (Czeisler and Walker).

I’m not sure how a few sentences about testosterone is an adequate recap.

> Verbosity is an existential threat.

Any thoughts on some sort of sliding-scale interface for text density/verbosity like in this concept design? Would that help or hurt the situation?

http://futureofinformation.com/

(See “Abstraction slider”, about halfway down)

The complaint here is just that these articles are written with an anecdotal lead style, rather than inverted pyramid style.

The solution is writers changing their writing style, and probably not a browser/tool that can display 4 different versions of a text.

How is this even news worthy? There's so many things I could think of more important than the sleep routine of an luxury- accommodated group of athletes, who by greed decide to play 82 games per season.

I believe it has been suggested to shorten the season but they neglect to do it because it means less money.

In the interest of obtaining top performance, this does seem news-worthy. You may wish to examine your biases towards professional athletes that is coloring your comments.

Oh yes. I'm biased sorry. The most important thing in society is how to accommodate entertainers more for you know, top performance.

Anyways, who the heck is the one pushing this media agenda? I just stumbled upon the same garbage on reddit [1]. I assume they can bigger and better beds with the money they will save up from China.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/dhqy00/holmes_tobias_h...

What's newsworthy is that apparently sleep deprivation and jet lag is what excuses their poor performance at the standard "criticize the government" play during their exhibition games in China

I am a firm believer in the importance of 8+ hours of sleep but I have trouble feeling sorry for these guys as they are earning obscene 8 figure salaries in some cases and around a million at a MINIMUM for a player with 1 year of experience.

I get your point, but to be fair, none of these guys have, "1 year of experience". They've focused on playing ball most of their lives and did it very well for several years before anyone decided to pay them. Many athletes work extremely hard at their craft.

So do a lot of computer scientists. Are they making a milly one year out of school?

Supply and demand. Look it up.

Yup. We software engineers may be in demand, but it's nothing compared to China's demand for obedient propagandists who can dribble.

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