Sleeping through a party turned LeBron James into an unstoppable force

On Wednesday we discussed what a legend LeBron James was for sleeping through a holiday party — because sleep is inherently awesome. Then, on Wednesday night after getting 11 hrs of sleep LeBron was awesome.

If you’re about to drop some comment about correlation not equaling causality then you can keep it — because this stat line supports my belief that “sleep > holiday parties” and that means I’m going all in on this one.

What if 11 hours of sleep is all that star athletes are missing before becoming superstars? After all, Barry Sanders was an infamous lover of naps and that got him all the way to Canton.

“I finally told them, ‘Just let him sleep if he wants to,’” Cowboys head coach Pat Jones said. “I mean, the guy’s running for a gazillion yards.”

So when LeBron decided to Rip Van Winkle his way through the holiday party he was becoming stronger than he could even imagine. The best part of all this: There’s pseudo-science to support it all. I mean, we all know that we’re better after a good night’s sleep, but in November Sports Illustrated pointed out that NBA players who go to bed earlier were inherently better than their compatriots.

“Stony Brook’s evaluation determined players score 1.14 fewer points and play two fewer minutes in games following late-night tweeting, as opposed to games not following late-night tweeting.”

The study evaluated the causality between players staying up late (using social media as a metric) and extrapolating that into on-court performance. LeBron’s mammoth game on Wednesday night just proved it all right.

We need to test this further, so here’s my idea: LeBron goes into hibernation the day after the season ends. He sleeps for about seven months or so, and then emerges during the opening week of the NBA season. Now, follow along with me here.

I want to see that.