"On the road again... I just can't wait to get on the road again... The life I love is making music with my friends.. and I just can't wait to get on the road again." - 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 constant travel, there's still the comfort of being home vs. the longevity of being on the road. And with the (insane) make up of the NBA schedule, it means teams often wind up on long road trips on the opposite coast, traveling for weeks at a time. To jam these runs in and get them off the road 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, have their bags handled for them (for the most part), have luxury buses take them to their five-star hotels and get the best in treatment and rest that can reasonably be afforded. Still, just like anyone, travel is a nightmare. And for athletes, the wear and tear on the body is very real. From a white paper published by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute:
"Additionally, during a game, hydration is always a challenge. Inadequate hydration during
competition can be further compromised by the demand for air travel immediately post game (low humidity environment of the fuselage) for half of the regular season games."
And just in practical terms, the time differential is crazy. From Sixers.com:
Games on the West Coast are even more disorienting. Say the Sixers finish a game in Portland and commute down to Los Angeles or Phoenix for a game the next night. In that case, the plane will be traversing down the Pacific Coast at 4am Philadelphia time. If you look at it another way, 90% of the American public is sleeping while a group of NBA players travels to its next game.
via The Call: Sports Science And The Rigors Of Travel | Philadelphia 76ers.
So yeah, there's reason to believe that road trips are inherently bad for teams. And for some so far this season, 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 first win of the season. The Nets started out sluggish, and then went 0-3 on a road trip that they thought might boost them forward. The Wolves went 1-5 on a road trip that included a "home game" in Mexico City.
But of course, the caveat there is that those teams that lost all played teams in the Western Conference, often against the good teams in the Pacific division, and that conference disparity is huge. Because on the other side, The Suns went 4-2 on an East Coast trip, and the Clippers, who had been struggling this season, got themselves right heading to the Least Coast, going 6-1 as they romped through the Southeast Division.
Still, beyond just the competition, there is a value players will talk about in being on the road, particularly from a chemistry perspective.
"We got on the road, we stopped thinking as much," Chris Paul told CBSSports.com this week. (Look for more from Paul on Thursday on CBSSports.com.) "We had a chance to come 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 around as much due to injury like Danilo Gallinari, settle back in with the team dynamic. The Nuggets went 2-1 on their trip east, which helped turn around their season.
So while, yes, playing Eastern Conference teams is good for what ails you (Western Conference teams are now 68-27 straight up against the East, 57-38 against the spread), there's something to be said for what you can do with a long road trip. It helps teammates bond, and while that doesn't always correspond to the court (the Suns have said they get along great off the floor 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 hard to quantify with metrics.
The Spurs for years have gone on hot streaks starting with their long rodeo road trip soon after the new year, and have often talked about how that's brought them closer together and helped them "get in gear" for the late-season crunch.
Long road trips can doom seasons, cause teams to unravel and lose confidence. But they can also bond a team closer. While the number of games on these stretches could be reduced as far as games-per-week are concerned, they can also change teams' fortune. Sometimes a little discomfort can be good for bringing the best out of a team.
