Heat will rise above it
SAN ANTONIO, Texas The Miami Heat are about to take their game to new heights.
Denver? Mere foothills. City? Rich, luxurious air.
When the Heat play the Brooklyn Nets in Mexico City on Saturday, they will be playing at 7,382 feet.
By comparison, the altitude in Denver is 5,280, and in Salt Lake City it’s 4,226. As for Miami, you’re talking 6 feet. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, as he is wont to do, downplayed any potential obstacle, emphasizing that the Heat will have the advantages of practices scheduled in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday.
“It’s one of the rare times that you actually will be able to get used to it,” he said before his team faced the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night at the AT&T Center. “We’re going to be there three days. Normally, when you go to Denver, at most you’d have a night and sometimes you have a backto-back.
“I think our guys will get adjusted to it pretty quick, even by the second day.”
While Spoelstra has incorporated sports science into the Heat’s approach, including addressing sleep patterns during road trips, he downplayed the need to address Saturday’s Salt Lake unique elevation.
“Both teams will be dealing with it and we’ll see how it goes in practice,” he said. “But, like I said, we’ll have three days there to adjust our bodies and both teams will be playing at the same elevation.”
The difference is the Nets arrived Tuesday, with a Thursday game scheduled in Mexico City against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Heat will be coming off two days in San Antonio, at all of 650 feet.
Center Kelly Olynyk, who played a regular-season game in Mexico City with the Boston Celtics in 2015, said the adjustment is relatively swift.
“You get used to it,” he said. “Kind of like once you get your first wind out of the way, you’re kind of settled in. Like Denver, you’re a little shortwinded to start.
“You feel it a little, but I don’t think it’s that huge of a difference.”
If there is an advantage to the Nets’ acclimation, Olynyk said it will be limited.
“Maybe a little bit of an advantage,” he said. “They might have an advantage for the first six minutes. But other than that, you’re into the game, into the flow. You don’t think about it after that.”
Nets forward Quincy Acy told his team’s website that there is a profound difference with the thin air in Mexico City.
“It was a lot different than Denver,” he said. “It’s like you’re breathing out of a straw sometimes.”
Olynyk also played in Mexico City in an international tournament with the Canadian national team.
“I think it’s more, if you really want to acclimate, you have to go like a month early or something and train there,” he said. “If you go like one day early and do an hour practice, I don’t think, ‘I’m perfect now. I can really go at 7,000 feet.’”
out
of
the