Pitbull – "Hotel Room Service" (2009)

Forget about your boyfriend

And meet me at the hotel room

You can bring your girlfriends

And meet me at the hotel room

When you think about how tiring a road trip is for pro basketball players, it’s not surprising that home teams win more games than visiting teams.  

After all, the members of the home team get to sleep in their own beds, and their body clocks don’t have to adjust to a new time zone.  And the home team doesn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn after a night game to catch a flight to the next city on the schedule.   

Home teams were victorious in 67.9% of all NBA games in the 1987-88 season.  But in the current season, home teams are winning only 57.5% of NBA games.

NBA players hitting the
hotel breakfast buffet

What is responsible for this dramatic decrease in the advantage enjoyed by home teams?

A couple of years ago, the Economist printed a long and tedious exegesis of the various factors that might contribute to the home-court advantage.  (You can click here to read it if you must, but take my word for it – life's too short to spend it reading articles like that one.)

ESPN The Magazine did the Economist one better when it came to figuring out this phenomenon.  An article in a recent issue of that magazine suggests that what's leveled the playing field for visiting players is Tinder and other dating apps, which enable NBA players to hook up with the local lovelies quickly and easily.  

"It's a match!"

There’s no longer any need to order a limo to take you and your posse to the local nightspots after the game, where you stay up until all hours drinking Cristal and hitting on women.  Instead, you go back to your hotel room, open up Tinder, swipe right a few times, and wait for a starstruck babe to show up.  When you’ve taken care of business, she leaves and you go right to sleep – no fuss, no muss.

“It’s absolutely true that you get at least two hours more sleep getting **** on the road today versus 15 years ago,” one former NBA All-Star told the ESPN The Magazine reporter.

NBA star Draymond Green
celebrating after a big win

Some players got no sleep at all after a road game in the old days.  Back then, teams used to fly commercial – usually travelling on the first flight of the morning after a game, which might leave at 600a or 700a.  Instead of heading back to the team hotel after a road game to catch a few unsatisfying hours of shut-eye, some players just stayed at the clubs all night, drinking and getting busy with the ladies.

The bottom line is that NBA players drink less and sleep more when they are traveling these days than they did 20 years ago . . . without sacrificing female companionship . . . thanks to apps like Tinder.

Technology is making the world a better place, boys and girls.  If you don’t believe me, just ask your friends who play in the NBA.  

Here’s Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service,” which references songs by T.I., Jay-Z, the Notorious B.I.G., and the Sugarhill Gang:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: