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It's almost as if the clock is ticking in Jarron Collins' head as the Jazz center walks off the court after the team's pre-game shootaround and emerges from the locker room three minutes later in sweats and flip-flops for the walk to his car.
Even if he does opt for sneakers in the middle of winter, Collins certainly won't stop to put on a pair of socks. That would slow him down too much. He wants to be in bed no later than 1 p.m. for his NBA nap, and as Collins puts it, "I don't want to be rushing."
"It's a ritual I think every professional basketball player has had since probably going back to their high school days," Collins said. "The nap is essential. Especially on game days, it's so ritualized everything we do."
Indeed, the NBA nap might be the closest thing to a common denominator among the league's 400-plus players. No matter what their background or how much they play, on any given afternoon, you'll find your typical NBA player in bed asleep.
Mehmet Okur takes a two-hour nap every day, whether the Jazz have a game or not. Andrei Kirilenko might as well be narcoleptic for how much he says he sleeps on the road. Kyle Korver will stay up an extra hour at night just to ensure a good nap the next day.
"When I was younger, I hated naps," Korver said. "My parents, if they found out about this, they'd be going crazy because they had the hardest time getting me to take a nap when I was little. But now, naps are a beautiful thing."
Jason Hart admits to having been desperate enough to nap in peace that he once plucked the "Do Not Disturb" sign off another hotel door when he couldn't find one for his room.
"It's psychological," Hart said, "because anything that doesn't go right for you [in the game], if you don't take a nap, that's what you blame it on."
Even Jazz coach Jerry Sloan is a napper, with a routine that has changed little in five decades of NBA life. Order a cup of soup, turn up the thermostat, and Sloan soon will be "watching his eyelids."
"It's kept me alive, I guess [it is] about the only thing," Sloan said.
What happens when he doesn't get in a nap? "I feel like I'm lost," Sloan admitted.
'It just don't seem right, man'
That's almost a universal feeling shared around the league. Atlanta's Joe Johnson said he might play well even if he doesn't nap, but noted, "It just don't seem right, man."
Golden State's Al Harrington said he has to get his two-hour nap on game days.
"It's mental for me," Harrington said, "because I always think I don't have the same amount of energy that night."
Washington's Caron Butler has his routine scripted almost to the minute. His chef has lunch ready at 11:05 a.m. when Butler returns from shootaround. He blocks out the rest of the afternoon (except for maybe watching an episode of "Duck Tales") for his nap, before getting up at 3:45 p.m. to leave for the arena.
"When I don't get my nap, I play horrible," Butler said. "Seriously. Just superstitious, I guess."
Toronto's Chris Bosh said the day doesn't feel as long if he takes a nap. He won't panic if he doesn't get a full two hours, but he does have a message for those who are awake. "I just tell them, 'Don't bother me, don't call me, don't talk to me, I'm going to sleep,' " Bosh said.
As ritualized as the nap is, most NBA players never have considered the most fundamental questions about it. For example: Is it more important for the rest or the routine?
"I don't take naps. I go to sleep,'' Johnson said. "I think my body, at a point after shootaround, it just kind of shuts down, it's ready to go back to rest."
"I think it's more about the routine,'' Butler said. "When you get accustomed to doing something, you've just got to stick with it."
'Lie down and be counted'
William Anthony is a psychiatry professor at Boston University as well as the author of two books on napping. He's fond of saying things like, "It's time for nappers to lie down and be counted," and describes people not as sleep-deprived but "nap-ready."
Anthony said he wrote the books, including The Art of Napping, in part to try to reduce the prejudice against napping in the working world. The NBA might embrace the afternoon nap, but as Anthony said, "It's still a tough sell for a lot of employers."
Although napping has been proved to have a positive impact on performance, Anthony said most of the research has been done in office settings and measured things such as concentration and memory.
For the average person, napping will improve your performance, mood and health, Anthony said. Studies have shown regular nappers have a reduced rate of heart attacks and are less likely to suffer from obesity.
"Most every president has been a napper," Anthony said, "some more brazenly and outspoken about it than others"
A basketball fan, Anthony was still trying to figure out just how the Jazz snapped the Celtics' 10-game winning streak on March 14. He neglected the obvious answer: They must have napped great as a team.
When it comes to athletic performance, Sara Mednick, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, said there are several benefits to napping.
Mednick said a correlation exists between motor memory and the Stage 2 sleep in a 20-minute power nap. That involves the coordinated muscle movements required for everything from playing piano to running a two-on-one fast break. A longer nap would take a person through a full 90-minute sleep cycle, including rapid-eye movement sleep with increased brain activity. That has a correlation with alertness as well as several deeper memory processes, Mednick said, like visual recognition and the ability to follow directions.
"My guess is those naps are helping integrate a lot of information into solidified memory," said Mednick, who wrote the book Take a Nap! Change your Life and has a Web site, http://www.takeanap.info.
Jazz forward Matt Harpring, meanwhile, views naps as a necessity in a league where sleep isn't always easy to come by.
Most game nights, Harpring falls asleep between 2 and 3 a.m. He has to be up five hours later for practice or shootaround. On the road, the Jazz regularly change time zones and arrive in cities in the middle of the night.
"You're not going to make it long in this league getting five hours a night," Harpring said, "so you've got to make up your sleep somehow."
'What do you want?'
Back when he was in high school, C.J. Miles' pre-game routine consisted of a trip to Wendy's. After his first year with the Jazz, Miles became a conditioned napper, who sleeps for 60 to 90 minutes on game days.
Miles told a story from the Jazz's four-game trip earlier this month. While he was taking his pre-game nap in Boston, a hotel bellman delivered a gift basket somebody had sent Miles for his upcoming birthday.
"I was screaming like, 'What? What do you want?' " Miles said. "He comes in and I don't even realize what he gives me. It's like this basket with cookies and balloons and stuff and I just throw it down and get back into bed."
As deeply as he was sleeping, Miles was in for a surprise when he woke up. "I'm like, 'What is that sitting there?' " he said. "It almost scared me because I woke up and saw the balloons. It freaked me out a little bit."
The only player on the Jazz who says he's not a regular napper is Ronnie Brewer. He never did in high school and never did in college, either. Most game days, Brewer's up playing video games or watching movies.
"I didn't know it was that big of a deal," Brewer said, "till I found out everybody takes naps."
What's good enough for Brewer also is good enough for Kobe Bryant, who said he naps only when he's tired. If he does, it's most likely he'll fall asleep watching cartoons with his two young daughters.
"My daughters, they can tell time,'' Bryant said. "I'll say, 'Wake me up at 4,' or something like that, they'll jump on me and they'll wake me up."
Butler told the horror story of having a hotel room on the same floor as a restless Gilbert Arenas during the playoffs one year, when he was subjected to the sound of Arenas bouncing a ball at all hours.
"He was just dribbling a ball in a room, 'til like 3 in the morning, then was dribbling like all afternoon while I was trying to take my nap," Butler said. "So I had to actually switch rooms with the rookie. It was crazy."
There are often crying children to contend with at home and missed wake-up calls on the road. One regularly cited danger is oversleeping and feeling sluggish for the game.
For his part, Harpring acknowledged it was another part of NBA life the public might not be able to appreciate.
"I don't see many people in the real world taking naps during the day,'' he said.