IT’S THE AFTERNOON of Feb. 26, during a 3-games-in-4-nights stretch, and Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is on a roll. Tomorrow night, his Heat will host the Golden State Warriors, then fly to Houston to face the Rockets on Feb. 28. But now he’s rattling off what time the Warriors game will end (10 p.m.), when they’ll board their flight (after 11:30), when they’ll land in Houston (2 a.m.) and arrive at the hotel (3 a.m.) before playing the Rockets later that day. Sleep matters, Whiteside says — it matters a lot. It “could be the difference between you having a career game or playing terrible.” Is it possible within the current NBA schedule to obtain consistent, quality sleep? “Nah,” Whiteside says. “It’s impossible. It’s impossible.” Fatigue has long been a reality of life in the NBA, a league with teams that play 82 games in under 6 months and fly up to 50,000 miles per season — enough to circle the globe twice, reports ESPN.com (Oct. 14, 2019) (Links to an external site.). 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. Despite the league’s best efforts — lengthening its schedule in recent years, reducing back-to-backs for 5 straight seasons (down to an average of 12.4 per team in the coming season), eliminating 4-in-5 stretches, reducing the nationally televised games that tip off at 10:30 p.m., creating more rest days — sleep deprivation remains “our biggest issue without a solution. It’s the dirty little secret that everybody knows about,” says an NBA exec. “I think in a couple years,” Tobias Harris says, “sleep deprivation will be an issue that’s talked about, like the NFL with concussions.” During the season, its estimated that players get 5 hours sleep per night. Chronic sleep loss has been associated with higher risk for cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, heart attacks, Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression, stroke, psychosis and suicide. Discussion questions: How is this an Operations Management issue? What can be done to alleviate the problem What dangers are possible if it is not addressed?
IT’S THE AFTERNOON of Feb. 26, during a 3-games-in-4-nights stretch, and Miami Heat center Hassan Whiteside is on a roll. Tomorrow night, his Heat will host the Golden State Warriors, then fly to Houston to face the Rockets on Feb. 28. But now he’s rattling off what time the Warriors game will end (10 p.m.), when they’ll board their flight (after 11:30), when they’ll land in Houston (2 a.m.) and arrive at the hotel (3 a.m.) before playing the Rockets later that day.
Sleep matters, Whiteside says — it matters a lot. It “could be the difference between you having a career game or playing terrible.” Is it possible within the current NBA
Fatigue has long been a reality of life in the NBA, a league with teams that play 82 games in under 6 months and fly up to 50,000 miles per season — enough to circle the globe twice, reports ESPN.com (Oct. 14, 2019) (Links to an external site.). 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.
Despite the league’s best efforts — lengthening its schedule in recent years, reducing back-to-backs for 5 straight seasons (down to an average of 12.4 per team in the coming season), eliminating 4-in-5 stretches, reducing the nationally televised games that tip off at 10:30 p.m., creating more rest days — sleep deprivation remains “our biggest issue without a solution. It’s the dirty little secret that everybody knows about,” says an NBA exec.
“I think in a couple years,” Tobias Harris says, “sleep deprivation will be an issue that’s talked about, like the NFL with concussions.” During the season, its estimated that players get 5 hours sleep per night. Chronic sleep loss has been associated with higher risk for cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, heart attacks, Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression, stroke, psychosis and suicide.
Discussion questions:
- How is this an Operations Management issue?
- What can be done to alleviate the problem
- What dangers are possible if it is not addressed?
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