技术贴：知道NBA是怎么死的么？

Kristaps Porzingis looked fresh and rested as he walked into the Quicken Loans Arena for a late-December game in Cleveland. And for the first three quarters, he played that way.But even if the 20-year-old rookie phenom looked good on the outside, on the inside his body was surely a mess. For the past three months, it had been systematically trashed by the NBA's silent killer: its grueling 82-game schedule. New York had just come off a three-games-in-four-nights stretch, which had come on the heels of a three-games-in-four-nights swing through Utah, Sacramento and Portland. Not surprisingly, Carmelo Anthony had rolled his ankle late in a game two nights earlier and was now out.

去年12月底在骑士的速贷球馆，尼克斯的克里斯塔普斯·波尔津吉斯表面上看着一脸轻松。比赛的前三节，他也表现得相当有活力。可这个20岁的年轻人就算表面上看着轻松，实际上身体已经到了极限。过去三个月，他的身体已经被NBA的无声杀手——82场残酷的赛程——造成了系统性的磨损。那场与骑士的赛前，尼克斯刚刚完成四晚三赛，一路从犹他、萨克拉门托和波特兰辗转到了克利夫兰。安东尼在两天前扭伤了脚踝，被迫缺席与骑士的比赛。

Sure enough, by the fourth quarter, the hormonal, mental and physical aftershock of the Knicks' schedule emerged into full view. With a minute left, Porzingis, who had scored 23 points in the first three quarters, had yet to score in the fourth and was visibly dragging. The Knicks trailed by four and needed a stop. And with the entire arena on its feet, LeBron James -- coming off a luxurious, if rare, two days of rest -- made his move. From the left corner, LeBron darted toward Porzingis before rising up for a sky-high one-handed slam. Instead of challenging James at the rim, Porzingis ducked away, like a matador. The Cavs would win by seven, with the Knicks mustering just 12 points in the fourth, tying their then-season low.

所以当尼克斯在第四节比赛变得毫无活力也就不足为奇了。波尔津吉斯在前三节就拿下了23分，但第四节进行到还剩一分钟时，他不仅一分未得，而且明显表现出体能不足的状态。尼克斯当时落后4分，他们急需一次成功的防守。骑士在这场比赛前“奢侈”地得到了两天休息时间，勒布朗·詹姆斯这时发动了进攻。詹姆斯在左侧底角启动，迎着波尔津吉斯高高跃起完成了单手扣篮。波尔津吉斯这个回合不仅没有挑战詹姆斯，反而躲在了一边。尼克斯最终输了7分，他们在整个第四节只拿到了12分，追平赛季单节最低得分。

For the NBA, LeBron's slam was the stuff of dreams: A superstar soaring for a game-clinching dunk is the very thing that sells tickets, spikes ratings and launches Vines. But here's the thing: It almost never happens, and for reasons most people don't realize.

在联盟看来，詹姆斯扣篮无疑是最理想的结果。一个超级巨星用扣篮锁定胜局，无疑是提高票房、收视率和讨论度的最佳方法。可问题是，比赛最后时刻几乎很少出现扣篮，而且原因是大多数人想不到的。

As it turns out, the fourth-quarter dunk is a rare phenomenon. From the 2005-06 season through 2014-15, there were nearly 5,000 fewer dunks in the fourth quarter compared with the first, a decline of 20 percent. In fact, dunks become rarer with each passing quarter: from an average of 1.98 in the first to 1.59 in the fourth. More fascinating: The overall frequency falls 24 percent when teams play on zero days' rest versus one day off, dropping from 5.5 dunks per game to 4.2. The upshot: It took a dog-tired Knicks team on the road against a fresh Cavs squad to produce that James highlight.

数据表明，球员在第四节的扣篮数量确实大幅减少。从2005-06赛季开始到2014-15赛季，第四节的总扣篮数比第一节少了近5000次，这是近20%的降幅。事实上，随着比赛进行，每一节的扣篮数都在减少，从第一节平均1.98次下降到第四节的1.59次。更有意思的是，当球队打背靠背第二场时，他们的场均扣篮次数从5.5下降到了4.2，跌幅为24%。所以说，在累得要死的尼克斯的衬托下，詹姆斯的扣篮变得更好看了。

It's merely one of a hundred signals that NBA players are exhausted and sleep-deprived. In this case it was to the benefit of the highlight makers. But the evidence suggests that, over the course of a season, all players -- and fans -- end up losing.

扣篮减少不过是球员疲劳的众多信号之一。尽管詹姆斯上演了扣篮，可实际上，最终受到损失的，不仅是联赛和球员，也包括球迷。"It makes no sense to me," says Dr. Charles Czeisler, director of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. "These guys are so extraordinarily talented, and it's a shame that they're being impaired. It'd be like the NBA saying, 'OK, let's see how they do if we starve the players. OK, let's see how they do if we make them all drunk before they play, so everybody has to do six shots before they do the game.' Would anyone in their right minds consider that?"

“我觉得这完全没有道理。”哈佛医学院睡眠医学主任查尔斯·泽斯勒说，“这些人太有天赋，他们的身体受到损害真的是一件很遗憾的事情。NBA好像在说：‘好吧，不让球员吃饭会发生什么情况；让我们看看他们在比赛前喝醉会有什么反应，让每个人赛前都喝上六杯酒。’思维正常的人会这么做吗？”

STEVE MAGNESS IS one of the world's top running coaches -- his middle- distance and marathon runners are prepping for the Olympics now -- and a leading authority on athlete exhaustion. There are disagreements among experts in his world about how hard to push athletes, but nobody recommends anything like what the NBA prescribes: four contests in five nights, say -- or 82 in 169 days.

史蒂夫·马格尼斯是世界顶尖的跑步教练，他训练的中长距离和马拉松选手正在备战里约奥运会。马格尼斯还是运动疲劳领域的权威，尽管在他的专业范围内对于督促运动员的强度有着不同认知，但没人推荐NBA的做法：五天四场比赛，或者说169天82场比赛。

"It's almost ludicrous how often they play," says Magness, who has a master's in exercise science and wrote the book The Science of Running. With so few days off, the restorative faculties of the human body start to shut down. And it's a problem the NBA knows it has. Commissioner Adam Silver recently told reporters in London that "we're becoming more sophisticated about the impact of fatigue on our players and the direct correlation between fatigue and injuries."

“他们的比赛频率高到几乎可笑的程度。”马格尼斯拥有运动科学硕士学位，还写过《跑步科学》。因为休息时间太少，人体的恢复功能也会停工。问题在于，NBA对这种情况心知肚明。总裁亚当·萧华最近在伦敦对记者表示“我们越来越了解疲劳对球员的影响，知道疲劳与伤病的直接关系”。

But even with a new push by the league to reduce back-to-backs and four-in-fives to all-time lows, there are still 533 back-to-backs in the NBA schedule, far too many in the eyes of Magness, who advises his top Olympic athletes to race no more than once a week.

尽管联盟开始努力减少背靠背和五天四战这类比赛的数量，但本赛季联盟仍会有533次背靠背，在马格尼斯看来，这个数量还是太高了。马格尼斯给顶级奥运选手的建议是，一周比赛不要超过一次。

The problem is mounting. Research from ESPN's Kevin Pelton indicates that stars are more injury-prone than ever. Incumbent All-Stars from 2013-14 missed 19 games on average last season, or about a quarter of the season. Compare that with 2009-10, when incumbent All-Stars missed just 10.8 percent of their games -- or one of every 10 games. The plague of the injured star was evident in the 2015 Finals, when James shot 38 percent sans Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love. And Jimmy Butler, the NBA leader in minutes per game, just suffered a knee injury on the second night of a back-to-back that will keep him out for three to four weeks.

但NBA积压的问题越来越多。据ESPN的凯文·佩尔顿统计，现在的明星球员比过去更容易受伤。2013-14赛季入选全明星的球员在上个赛季平均缺战19场比赛，或者说是四分之一个赛季。对比2009-10赛季，那时的全明星球员只缺席10.8%的比赛，即每10场休战1场。2015年总决赛最集中地表现出了伤病对球星的影响，由于欧文和乐福缺阵，詹姆斯的命中率掉到了38%。本赛季在上场时间方面领先全联盟的吉米·巴特勒，也因为在背靠背第二场比赛中伤到了膝盖而休息了近一个月时间。

If you survey doctors and sports scientists around the world, the NBA's problem stems in large part from chronic lack of sleep, the body's natural performance-enhancing drug. How important is it? A recent Stanford University study found that shooting accuracy improved by 9 percent and 3-point percentage by 9.2 percent after basketball players spent at least 10 hours in bed for nocturnal sleep during a five-to-seven-week period. "We get this nice big surge of testosterone and human growth hormone when we get into deep sleep," Magness says. "The longer the deep sleep phase gets, the more HGH and testosterone you produce."

阅读相关医学报告你会发现，NBA球员身体的问题，很大程度上源自持续缺乏睡眠，而睡眠又是最天然的恢复剂。睡眠到底有多重要？斯坦福大学最近一项研究表明，在五到七周时间里，如果球员晚上睡眠时间至少超过10小时，他们的投篮命中率会提高9%，三分命中率能提高9.2%。“深度睡眠时，我们的睾酮与人体生长激素都会迅速增加。”马格尼斯说，“深度睡眠的时间越长，身体就能生成更多的生长激素和睾酮。”In early January, the NBA's ironman, Clippers center DeAndre Jordan, missed his first game since 2011. The DNP was due to a bout with, of all things, pneumonia, to which Magness quips, "Yeah, exactly."

1月初，联盟新“铁人”代表德安德烈·乔丹缺席了比赛，这是他2011年以来第一次缺席比赛。缺席比赛的原因是他患上了肺炎，马格尼斯听到这个说法后一笑，说“就是这么回事”。

There's a reason, after all, teams play three points per 100 possessions worse on the second day of back-to-backs. And even worse when they play four games in five days. "Basically, it makes the body a mess," Magness says. "What happens when you play 82 games in a 160-day stretch is you don't give your body time to repair itself and get ready for the next go-round. It just kicks into this stage where it can't keep up with the demands."

正是因为上述原因，在背靠背第二场比赛里，球队每百回合的平均得分会减少3分。五天四战时情况只会更糟糕。“基本上那就是折腾自己的身体。”马格尼斯说，“160多天里打82场比赛，事实上你没有给自己身体自我修复的机会，无法让身体为下一轮竞技做好准备。实际上你的身体进入了无法满足现实需求的状态。”

Thirty-three years ago, Joyner was in medical school at Arizona -- where he'd run track as an undergrad -- when a sweet-shooting guard named Steve Kerr stepped onto the Tucson campus. It was there -- watching coach Lute Olson turn around the program with Kerr -- that he became obsessed not only with hoops but also with the madness of the NBA schedule. "There's a reason why airline pilots have sleep rules," Joyner says.

30年前，乔尔纳是亚利桑那大学医学院的学生，本科时他还是田径运动员。和他同时期在亚利桑那大学的，有一个名叫史蒂夫·科尔的得分后卫。亲眼见证鲁特·奥尔森教练和科尔带领亚利桑那大学走向辉煌后，乔尔纳不仅迷上了篮球，他也对NBA赛程产生了浓厚兴趣。“航空公司的飞行员有睡眠规定，这是有道理的。”乔尔纳说。

No sport spends more time at 30,000 feet than the NBA. Consider that the Warriors will travel an NBA-high 54,000 miles this season, per an NBAsavant.com analysis, twice as many as the NFL's top travel team (the 49ers, who jetted 28,000 miles in 2015, according to Pro Football Reference). Baseball obviously has it worse with its 162-game schedule, right? Wrong: The average NBA team logged 44,214 miles last season; in MLB it was 29,374, according to BaseballSavant.com. Even NHL teams travel less than NBA teams do, averaging about 40,000 miles of flight per season.

NBA球员在飞机上度过的时间比任何职业球员都要多。按照NBAsavant.com的统计，本赛季旅行总里程最长的是勇士，为54000英里(86900公里)，这几乎是NFL旅行距离最长球队的两倍(2015年的49人为45060公里)。上赛季，NBA球队的平均旅行距离为44214英里(71155公里)，而职棒大联盟球队的平均旅行距离仅有29374英里(47272公里)。甚至连NHL球队的旅行距离都比NBA球队少，尽管有不少球队集中在加拿大，但NHL球队的平均旅行距离也只有40000英里(64373公里)。

ALL OF THIS leaves players at risk, particularly the ones who log big minutes. Research shows that risk increases exponentially as minutes rise. NBA empirical data is notoriously scant, but a 1999 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found there were significantly more injuries in English Premier League soccer in the 15-minute periods at the end of each half, when fatigue was at its highest.

球员因此面临着极大的风险，特别是那些上场时间很多的球员。研究显示，随着比赛时间增加，球员面临的风险呈指数型增长趋势。NBA缺乏这方面的研究，但1999年英国《体育医学》期刊上的一篇文章表明，英超比赛上下半场最后15分钟，随着球员疲劳度达到顶峰，受伤的情况也出现明显增加。

And a 2012 Basketball Prospectus study by Pelton found that the period of playing time when players are most likely to tear their ACLs arrives between minutes 33 and 39. Even the injuries that seem driven by bad luck -- say, turning an ankle by landing on an opponent's foot -- might be avoidable with more rest, as spatial awareness improves with sleep and muscle strength is hardened by rest.

凯文·佩尔顿2012年发表的一份研究显示，球员前十字韧带撕裂风险最高的时段，集中在上场时间33到39分钟这段时间。即便是那些可能纯属运气不好的伤病，比如落地时踩在其他人脚上扭伤脚踝，如果休息时间充足，肌肉力量得到加强，避免受伤的可能性也会提高。

In fairness, the NBA has shuffled the schedule to reduce the number of back-to-backs.  In 2014-15, the Blazers traveled an absurd 64,576 miles. The league shaved 12,000 miles off that this season, thanks to a fancy algorithm implemented by the NBA's analytics guru, Jason Rosenfeld.

当然，NBA也在尽全力调整赛程，减少背靠背比赛的数量。2014-15赛季，开拓者的总旅行历程达到了惊人的64576英里(103924公里)。在联盟分析大师杰森·罗森菲尔德应用新算法后，本赛季开拓者的旅行总里程减少了12000英里(19312公里)。

ON FEB. 12, Silver will host a gathering of owners and power brokers at his All-Star Tech Summit in Toronto. At the main panel, the literature boasts, health and analytics will be the focus.  Coaches are adapting too: The number of players averaging 35 or more minutes per game stands at 21 this season, down from 58 a decade ago. But DNPs and scheduling algorithms can only do so much -- at a certain point, more rest means fewer games, which means fewer events to sell tickets to and broadcast.

2月12日多伦多全明星周末期间，萧华召开了由球队老板和权威经纪人组成的讨论会，其中一个主要议题，就是球员健康与分析。教练们也在逐渐改变态度。本赛季上场时间在35分钟及以上的球员占总数的21%，而十年前，这个数字为58%。但休战和用算法重新安排赛程的作用仍然存在局限，毕竟，更多的休息意味着更少的比赛，而更少的比赛等于球票和直播权收入的减少。

Indeed, the Spurs have been ahead of the curve on injury prevention and are leading the way on body monitoring and controlling minutes. Research by Jeff Stotts of Rotowire.com found the Spurs have lost 995 games due to injury since 2005-06, the lowest number in the NBA. What ruins the body is also what sells, but as Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard says, "We're not trying to put on a Globetrotter show."

在控制球员出场时间、减少伤病方面，马刺无疑是联盟的佼佼者。有研究表明，从2005-06赛季开始，马刺球员因伤缺席的比赛总数为995场，是全联盟最低。相应，马刺的球风总体上相当低调，就像科怀·伦纳德说的那样：“我们没想上演哈林花式篮球队那样的表演。”

Flash back to 2012, when then- commissioner David Stern fined San Antonio $250,000 for holding Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Green out of a nationally broadcast game in Miami, the finale of a six-game, nine-day road trip. Coach Gregg Popovich defended his move before the game, calling it "pretty logical." According to Stern, Pop's decision to send the players home early ran "contrary to the best interests of the NBA."

2012年，马刺9天6连客的最后一场对阵的是热火，这是一场全美直播的比赛。由于在这场比赛里让蒂姆·邓肯、马努·吉诺比利、托尼·帕克和丹尼·格林轮休，马刺被那时的总裁大卫·斯特恩罚了25万美元。波波维奇赛前辩称自己的做法“合乎逻辑”，而斯特恩表示，马刺的行为“违背NBA的最大利益”。

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