’Tis five hours before tipoff of the NBA Finals, and all through the hotel, not a hooper will be stirring—not even Bam Adebayo. Their rooms will be dark, their thermostats set low, in hopes a good snooze will make their games flow. Guards and bigs alike will be snug in their beds, while visions of the Larry O’Brien trophy dance in their heads.
And yes, “do not disturb” cards will be hung on doorknobs with care, a stern warning to all: Disrupt my nap? Don’t you dare!
We’ve nearly reached Finals eve. Soon enough, the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat will be trading jumpshots and elbows in a battle for ultimate glory. But the championship could come down to the little things, including: Who got the best game-day rest?
There is no more cherished NBA tradition than the game-day nap. It’s been practiced for decades, by players and coaches alike. And though neither the league nor the NBA Players Association has ever conducted a survey, it’s almost universal—non-nappers are rare. (Though one of them is Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, who once told The Athletic, “I’m sleeping plenty at night.”) It’s become a skill worth refining, like the corner three, or the close-out. Veterans preach the benefits to rookies. Franchises hire sleep doctors to guide them. At least one team built a “nap room” in its practice facility. And those who swear by naps say the Z’s most definitely lead to W’s.
“I’ve never once missed it,” Atlanta Hawks star Dejounte Murray says. “That explains my professionalism, my attention to detail. I gotta have it. Every game day, gotta be the same. Whether at home or on the road.”
Says Toronto Raptors veteran Chris Boucher: “It’s just to make sure that I’m in the right state of mind. It makes you feel good. I never miss sleep.”
The thing is, NBA players almost have to be good at day-sleeping, because their schedules are profoundly abnormal. It’s easy to forget that they work nights, with most games starting at 7:30 and finishing around 10 p.m. They might not get home, or to the hotel, until midnight—or possibly 2 or 3 a.m., if the team flew immediately after the game. And of course there are, uh, lifestyle factors in play, too. Pro athletes are known to enjoy the nightlife—yet even for those that don’t, it can be a challenge to wind down after spending two to three hours hopped up on adrenaline. And because most teams hold a morning shootaround—sometime between 9-11 a.m.—they can’t just sleep in on game days.
By now, just about everyone in and around the NBA is familiar with the science of the nap—the benefits (feeling refreshed!), best practices (keep it short) and potential pitfalls (sluggishness if you oversleep). But what about the art of the nap? What about the room, the lighting, the pre-nap routine? What makes for the best nap? Do you need the right PJs? A white-noise app? What happens if the nap goes awry? And, uh, how do you get to sleep in the first place? With its benefits evident, and the highest-stakes naps of the season about to be taken, it felt like time to answer these questions. We polled two dozen players and coaches over the course of the season, who were more than happy to share their secrets.
Most NBA nappers begin a similar routine following their team’s morning shootaround: shower, eat, wind down.
And a good nap starts with darkness.
“I’m a vampire—I like it dark, completely dark,” says Charlotte Hornets veteran Kelly Oubre Jr., who calls his napping routine “serious. I need my nap, for sure.”
“Pitch black,” affirms Wendell Carter Jr. of the Orlando Magic, who, after realizing the sun directly hit his bedroom during the midday period when he normally snoozes, invested in blackout curtains for his home. He also takes advantage of the nap rooms at the Magic’s practice facility, which feature comfy couches and appropriate darkness.
Nailing the routine can be a bigger challenge on the road, with each hotel introducing unique variables—especially when it comes to curtains, which don’t always close all the way. “If they don’t meet, I force it so they meet,” Carter says.
Sacramento Kings star Domantas Sabonis—a self-described “big-time napper”—might use the clips from closet hangers to hold the curtains together. Failing that, he’ll pin them closed with chairs, luggage, or “whatever you can find in the room.” The goal, he says, is simple: “You don’t want any light seeping through.”
Counterpoint: If you’re tired enough, or simply dedicated enough, a little light won’t hurt.
“I can pass out anywhere,” says Milwaukee Bucks star Brook Lopez. “I do close the blinds, but I can have the lights on. I’ll leave the TV on.”
Perhaps it’s genetic, because twin brother Robin Lopez says he doesn’t need total darkness either, insisting, “I can sleep in just about any condition imaginable. It’s my superpower, I would say.”
Toronto Raptors center Chris Boucher says he’s often so tired that nothing else in his surroundings matters. “When I fall asleep, I don’t even know what’s going on—firefighters could come in my house, and I won’t hear it.” Closed eyelids provide enough, he says. “When I sleep, it’s dark anyway. I don’t dream about much.” For the most refined nappers, room temperature is also key.
Most prefer it cold—Kings veteran Malik Monk says he needs the room at a frigid 64 degrees, Carter sets his at 68, and Sabonis also prefers the more moderate setting, noting, “I used to do colder, but then I started getting older and I started getting sore throats”—though some like it hot. “Eighty degrees,” says Robin Lopez, who reasons, “Once you’re in the covers, what’s it matter?”
The nap maestros also diverge on the need for background noise. Boucher might cue up some Bob Marley, or rain sounds on a white-noise app. (He also enjoys “fire pit,” for the crackle of burning wood.) Oubre is partial to crashing waves, which he also uses at night. Celtics vet Grant Williams says he used to do the same, until realizing “that it kept my mind going,” so now he opts for total silence—putting him in a category with Murray and Robin Lopez, among others. “I just need the bare necessities,” Lopez says. “No candles. Nobody whispering sweet nothings in my ear.”
Brook Lopez likewise eschews the apps, but he sometimes likes a little 1990s sitcom in the background—“something random, like Frazier, Seinfeld, Simpsons, something I’ve seen a million times, so I don’t really pay attention to it too much.” Oubre is partial to Cowboy Bebop, an anime series, and says he winds down while wearing Normatec compression boots.
Damian Lillard, the Portland Trail Blazers star, says preparing for the nap is almost as important as the nap itself. Following shootaround, Lillard will get treatment for his sore body, spending time in a cold tub and following that up with a shower. Then he heads home for lunch, followed by some quality shut-eye. “When I wake up, you feel really calm,” he says. And when he doesn’t nap? “I can’t relax the same” when the ball goes up. “It’s the deep nap that allows you to just kind of be in that relaxed state.”
Robin Lopez considers it a point of pride that he was the one who convinced Lillard to adopt a napping routine, when they were teammates in 2013-14. Sure enough, early that season Lillard got on a hot streak and reasoned, “Lately I've been taking naps. That might be the difference.”
The nappers say it’s important to clear their heads before they can doze off. Monk practices breathing exercises. Blazers veteran Jerami Grant meditates. So does Boucher, who says he starts his pre-nap routine a full hour before trying to sleep. “It’s kind of a me time,” he says. But he can’t relax until he’s called his mom, his brother and his sister first—just to “make sure my family is good.”
Carter lists one other napping essential: an electric aromatherapy diffuser, pumping out a “lavender-eucalyptus mix.” He even brings it on the road. No one else would admit to any elaborate accessories—no special pillows or weighted blankets, no incense, no footy pajamas—though Brook Lopez does insist on a post-shootaround massage from the team masseuse. “I’m ready to go to sleep after that,” he says.
Williams sometimes makes himself drowsy by watching YouTube videos of fans drafting NBA2K teams—which seemed logical until someone said the real-world Celtics should let Williams walk away rather than “overpay” him. Which, you know, probably wasn’t great for relaxing before a nap. “Not at all,” Williams says with a smile. “It was funny, though.”
Once their heads hit the pillows, players know the deal: You either take a fairly short nap (20-30 minutes), or a serious, two-hour siesta. Anything in between, or longer, risks an evening of grogginess.
“Twenty minutes, you fall into a slumber, you get one cycle,” says Grant Williams. “But if you do anything after 20 minutes, like 35-45, you wake up in the middle of (a cycle) and you’ll wake up irritable. Twenty-minute naps, you wake up pretty much energized and ready to go.”
Speaking of irritability: Nearly every player has a story, or multiple, of having their slumber interrupted by the knock-knock-knocking of an aggressive hotel housekeeper. “You figure out how to sleep through it eventually,” says Grant.
Family and friends know the drill, too: Don’t knock, don’t call at certain times of day. As Heat star Jimmy Butler once tweeted, “If I’m woken up somebody is getting smacked upside the head!” Or, as DeMar DeRozan once declared, early in his career: “I wanna cuss somebody out if they call me.”
A bad nap, or a missed nap, can wreak havoc. Boucher recalls skipping his afternoon sleep on a trip to New York, back in November 2021, so he could go to the Puma store. “Stayed up the whole time,” he says. “I played like shit.” The box score tells the tale: he played 10 minutes, missed three of his four shots and had as many rebounds as turnovers (one each). “Not as crisp as I wanted it to be,” he says. “I missed a lot of gimmes, like shots that I usually make. I felt a little slow.”
The ultimate nap mishap? Oversleeping and missing the team bus. That offense will draw a minor fine (think in the hundreds) from most teams. “I had a couple of those,” Oubre says with a smile. “It’s the biggest gut drop, the most anxiety.”
Twenty years ago, players often relied on wake-up calls from the front desk, which brings to mind this comical tale: In November 2000, the notoriously flaky Isaiah Rider missed the Lakers’ team bus in San Antonio after waking up late from his nap. His explanation to coach Phil Jackson? The hotel operator failed to make the wake-up call. Rider even produced a note from the hotel manager to prove it. (Jackson let him off without a fine.) Today, players mostly use their smartphones as a (nearly) foolproof alarm.
NBA coaches generally endorse napping, and many do so themselves. “It’s a must,” says former Hawks coach Nate McMillan, who began the habit during his playing career. Hornets coach Steve Clifford adds one necessary caveat to this whole discussion: “The most infuriating is the nap during the film session,” he says with a chuckle. He calls this the “maybe I shouldn’t have stayed until last call” nap.
So will the best-rested team ultimately win it all? Does the lineup with the smartest napping routines have an inside track to the Larry O’Brien trophy? We can’t definitively prove that’s the case. But we wouldn’t sleep on the theory.
