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As anybody who has stayed up night after night through the NBA postseason knows, the human body wasn’t built for the late hours of playoff basketball.
Our circadian rhythm typically optimizes for peak performance in the late afternoon and early evening, and it’s not just mental acuity that varies by time of day.
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“It’s mainly physical—for example, your muscle strength has a very strong circadian rhythm,” said Steven Lockley, a consultant to athletes and teams around the world as well as the co-founder and chief scientist for Timeshifter, an app that helps people mitigate jet lag.
That lends Western Conference teams an edge, including in the NBA Finals.
During the season, West Coast players are more often playing at 4 p.m. biological clock time (East Coast away games) or 7 p.m. (home), rather than the 7 p.m. (home) and 10 p.m. (away) tips East Coast players are managing.
In other sports, circadian rhythms have been credited with helping swimmers break more records in afternoon plunges and giving Pacific time NFL teams a leg up in Monday Night Football contests.
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The wider the time-zone differential, the larger the impact. Since the 1999-00 season, Eastern time zone NBA teams have won 39% of their road games in other time zones when starting before 8:30 ET. That drops to 36% for tipoffs between 8:30-10:29 p.m. ET … and falls further from there.
To maximize TV audience, the Finals maintain a consistent 5:30 p.m. PT/8:30 p.m. ET start time (games started after 9 p.m. ET as recently as 2022).
“The West Coast teams definitely have an advantage on average over the East Coast,” Lockley said.
With only a one-hour difference between San Antonio and New York, the Knicks won’t face as big a disadvantage as past Eastern champions. The typical body can handle a one-hour shift within a day of landing. Still, the Spurs could find a small edge. If they remain rooted on San Antonio time, Game 3 and 4 in New York will feel like 7:30 p.m. tipoffs rather than 8:30 starts.
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The Knicks, then, might be wise to try living on Texas time. However, maintaining an…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/one-nba-finals-foe-knicks-180207144.html
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Publish date : 2026-06-02 18:02:00
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