0135 Springing Forward: The Influence of Daylight Savings Time on Team Performance in Professional Basketball

Abstract

IntroductionDaylight Savings Time (DST) has been a well-studied occurrence in United States society. Past literature has documented numerous detriments related to cardiovascular and mental health, as well as heightened accident risk (e.g., traffic, construction, healthcare) due to this time shift. Given the scant research in professional sports though, the current study examines the impact of DST among National Basketball Association (NBA) teams.MethodsFollowing the 2011-12 lockout-shortened season, data for all games played during the 2012-13 to 2019-20 NBA seasons were collected from the publicly-available sports database, Basketball-Reference. Data from the 2020-21 season were excluded due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, data from 8,843 games were obtained, with 65 of these games being played the same day as DST. We investigated the influence of DST on points scored, points allowed, and game outcomes for both the home and visiting teams using mixed-effects regressions controlling for season and when applicable, winning percentage. Specifically, we compared team performance for games immediately following DST with season averages.ResultsFor both home and visiting teams, our regression models revealed no meaningful variations in performance between games played following DST and season averages. There were no statistically significant differences across points scored (pHome = .98, R2Marginal = .21, R2Conditional = .29; pVisiting = .36, R2Marginal = .32, R2Conditional = .45), points allowed (pHome = .84, R2Marginal = .34, R2Conditional = .42; pVisiting = .44, R2Marginal = .22, R2Conditional = .33), and game outcomes (pHome = .77, R2Marginal = .11, R2Conditional = .11; pVisiting = .71, R2Marginal = .10, R2Conditional = .18).ConclusionThe present analysis offers preliminary evidence that DST may not produce any observable effects on the selected indicators of team performance. However, our results could be explained by organizational and athlete sensitivity toward potential compromised performance during games played following DST. Furthermore, our study did not consider other variables that could impact teams (e.g., actual sleep schedules and travel), and was limited by a relatively small sample size of games played on DST. We suggest that future studies examine additional metrics implicated in team performance, such as shooting percentages, rebound rates, turnovers, among others.Support (If Any)None