The NBA basketball championship finals begin on the night of Thursday to Friday. The Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat play them and are considered among the most unlikely ever. Denver, despite playing the playoffs for five years in a row, had never made the finals in its history. Miami, on the other hand, had been only the twelfth team of the regular season and had to go through the playoffs to qualify for the playoffs.
These finals are therefore presented above all for their unpredictability, as well as for the two most representative players: the Serbian Nikola Jokic for Denver, elected twice the best player in the league, and Jimmy Butler for Miami, who is supporting his team in these playoffs averaging 28.5 points per game. But there is also another aspect that has been unusually holding court in recent days, and that is the altitude.
In fact, between the cities of Denver and Miami there are over 1,600 meters of altitude difference. The first is the highest city among those that host an NBA team, the second is a few meters above sea level (as well as among those most at risk from rising sea levels). The Pepsi Center in Denver, which is the arena where the Nuggets play, is located at 1,609 meters of elevation, which the team prides itself on: the nickname “Mile-High City” (“city a mile high”) is also used on the jerseys and inside the building the number 5280, which is the altitude of the city measured in feet, can be read almost everywhere.
In professional sport, high ground can in fact be a problem due to the rarefied air. For those who are not used to it, it can cause symptoms of fatigue, breathing difficulties, acceleration of the heartbeat and above certain altitudes also headaches and confusion.
The risks of high ground are especially known in athletics and football. In South America, for example, the defeats suffered in Bolivia, Ecuador or Colombia by major football teams or national teams such as Brazil and Argentina in the early 2000s resulted in the introduction of specific regulations which in some cases made it virtually impossible to play matches matches in the highest areas of the countries mentioned. However, the altitudes there are even higher and can exceed 3,500 metres. The ban was hotly contested since its introduction and for this reason it remained in force for just one year, between 2007 and 2008.
Anthony Davis e Jamal Murray (Harry How/Getty Images)
In South America, the athletic imbalances caused by the altitude still recur regularly: for example, the 6-1 with which modest Bolivia defeated Argentina coached by Diego Armando Maradona in 2009 has remained in history. And precisely in Bolivia it has become almost a custom for fans to show up in their stadiums for international matches ghost clothes“the ghost of the hill”.
Even Denver plays a lot on the characteristics of its city and according to the data it seems to benefit from it. In the NBA, the so-called average field factor, i.e. the advantage that teams would have in games played at home, has been calculated as a 62 percent probability of victory, while Denver holds an average of 66 percent. Second ESPN Stats & Information the Nuggets are also the team in the league with the widest gap between home (65.2 percent) and road (35 percent) win percentages.
These data are closely related to the competitiveness of the team in question, and there are others that can support this thesis. In the last playoffs Denver played eight games at home without losing, while in the regular season they had the second best home record with 34 wins and 7 losses.
The first two games of these NBA Finals will be played in Denver and according to some rumors the Miami players, who are already in the city and will stay there until June 5th, have been fully educated about it. However, their coach, Erik Spoelstra, doesn’t seem to care too much, at least in appearance. In the press conference he said: «Our boys are in great shape and ready to compete. If Denver wants to go play atop Mount Everest, we will. But then they too will have to come to Miami, and maybe we can let them play with the air conditioning off and the humidity at 90 percent».
Compared to other cases, playing indoors and not just one game, but two in the space of nearly a week of being in the city could actually mitigate the effects of the altitude for Miami. However, there have been cases of players who have taken a long time to get used to, as told by Aaron Gordon, who after six seasons spent in Orlando, Florida, now plays in Denver: «It seemed there was never enough oxygen» he said about it . Others are instead recalling that Miami’s last victory at 1,609 meters above the sea in Denver dates back to 2016.
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