There’s not much in this world more terrifying than the thought of waking up in the middle of the night to see Mark Cuban standing at the foot of your bed, staring at you and spouting bits of business advice, like “Everyone has got the will to win; it’s only those with the will to prepare that do win.”
That’s not exactly what Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks will be doing. But they are looking for new ways to prepare to win by asking their players to wear sleep monitors, according to NBA.com. These wristwatch-type devices, called Readibands and developed by the company Fatigue Science, will gather data on how long and how deeply they’re sleeping. The Mavericks are the first NBA team to try it, though others have expressed interest.
The hope is that the information will be useful in devising training and travel schedules to accommodate better rest:
“What it allows the team to do is to say, look, how long does it take players to get to sleep after games? How do naps affect their performance? Take all of that, look at the holistic view of the whole team and then they can make smarter decisions to create sleep opportunities,” [Fatigue Science founder] Byrne said. “Teams can say, ‘we finished this road trip, let’s just fly home.’ But you can look at the sleep patterns and say, you know what, that’s not the smartest thing to do because you’ve got a game two days from now and you’re not going to recover. This allows them to make smarter decisions.”
(H/T Unfair Park)
