How Hotels Stays Have Impacted Basketball Operations in Years Past

Take a look at some of the ways that hotel accommodations have had an impact on professional basketball players over the years — some good, some not so good.

Players in the National Basketball Association are the best to have ever played the game, but something as simple as overnight travel and lodging can impact their performance as they move around the country for months at a time each year. Players are creatures of habit, and anything that throws off their preparation might impact their performance.

Haunted hotels

There’s a longtime legend that players think an Oklahoma City hotel is haunted. At more than 100 years old, road players over the years have found themselves spooked by certain sounds at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel. They blame a mythical figure named Effie the Housekeeper, and the story goes that a previous  hotelier drove her to suicide and infanticide back in 1930. There is some debate in the city about whether she ever existed, but Jared Jeffries first blame hotel creakings for a loss all the way back in January 2010.

Bedbugs

Kyrie Irving ended up with bedbugs while staying at Skirvin Hilton Hotel in 2016. At some point during the night in Oklahoma City, he saw five bedbugs that startled him so bad that he could not get the rest he needed before the next road game. He played just nine minutes in a 115-92 team win over the Thunder, and the company later apologized for the inconvenience. Originally, the team called his ailment flu-like symptoms before more details came forth.

Bubble circumstances

Many players said that they performed particularly well as the NBA headed to an unprecedented bubble during the pandemic because they did not have to deal with the usual distractions that come with travel and other immediate issues. That bubble includes teams staying in a series of hotels in Orlando, having to deal with COVID-19 protocols each day. Damian Lillard is among several who said the unprecedented situation allowed players to wholly focus on the craft on which they spent thousands of hours of their lives. Jamal Murray and T.J. Warren are among the other players that played exceptionally well in the controlled environment.

Branding concerns

In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, some NBA teams refused to stay at Trump-branded hotels in a reaction to the results of the election and the way the nation’s then-leader carried himself on the campaign trail. That phenomenon took place across the four major American sports leagues. Travel and logistics personnel must have had a bit of an extra headache trying to figure out the details given the size of players and the amount of rooms a team needs.