Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

View on HN

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"

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?

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

>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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com