The Air In There

The Brooklyn Space Program was a thing of genius. You’re unfamiliar? Don’t remember that launch? Some strange borough offshoot of NASA? Well, not exactly. You may be more familiar with the story this way.

10 years ago, a gentleman from New York named Luke Geissbuhler Wanted to do something cool for his very curious sons. Luke had some serious know-how, spent a lot of time and research, and surprisingly little money on a very unique mission. Their goal? To send a helium-filled weather balloon tethered to a well-insulated iPhone to the edge of our atmosphere… all with its camera rolling. You know, just to get a view of outer space on your phone. As someone who had had a few astronaut aspirations in his childhood, it was deeply amazing to watch a dad teach such amazing lessons to his boys, and inspire them to something more.

Plus… I mean… iPhones in space. Right?

One of the neatest tricks in Geissbuhler’s plan is the planned obsolescence of his altitude adjuster, better known as the weather balloon. Knowing that a set amount of gas inside a controlled environment can only expand so far before the bubble itself bursts.

Or, as any Coloradoan well knows… the air is a little thinner up there.

Similarly, a couple of Denver denizens who are very accustomed to taking advantage of that rule find themselves in a little more controlled an environment for their playoffs than originally planned. As baseball, hockey, and basketball all tried to get their seasons restarted, there were some decided issues to contend with. How do we keep people safe? How do we keep our product compelling and interesting without a fan base attending? How do we keep the idea of a home-court/field advantage?

That last one was a particularly interesting conundrum for baseball, as home-field in baseball is about as unique a proposition as they come. Hitters parks, pitchers parks, weather and even altitude play major factors in each stadiums’ unique outcomes, and MLB decided they needed to keep those irregularities in the mix to keep a 60-game season as normal as possible. The league is paying for this decision dearly in cover cases, but would have been hard-pressed to have come up with a single park from which each team would still be playing to their strengths. A tough call, indeed.

Whereas the NHL and NBA have the distinct advantage in this case of playing on a rink or court that is measured and laid out to the same specification every time. No weird dimensions, no outdoor considerations, nothing. All is the same, always. Except…

There’s still that altitude difference to contend with. As most Colorado sports fans know, that rarified air doesn’t just impact things like weather balloons and boiling points, it’s also pretty impactful to lungs and blood oxygen levels as well. Watch any opponent come to the Mile High City and try to play they way they did at sea level. You can come out of the gates hot and fool your body for a while, but by that fourth quarter/third period/ninth inning, you’re done. Muscles won’t fire right, you feel a little foggy, and there’s just not enough air in your air. A 2017 study on randomness in sport found that teams at altitude enjoyed a distinct advantage over their counterparts over time. One of the examples in the study showed that the NBA teams playing at high altitude (Denver and Utah) typically means something to the tune of an extra 2.5 wins per season for those squads. Given the seeding both teams have faced in the ever-competitive Western Conference, those two or three wins can mean the difference between home court advantage and possibly not even getting into the postseason. The Avs, Rockies, and Broncos have all also enjoyed the advantages that this thin air brings.

None of this is to say that the Avs or Nuggets find themselves at a disadvantage in their current situations. The bubbles that the NHL and NBA have instituted suit that larger needs of the situation far more than the concerns of Mile-High air. To prove it’s not problematic, the Avs are a game away from sweeping their round robin play-in, and the Nuggets are a steady 2-2 out of the gates while missing three of their five starters. Both teams have worked hard to prove they are not simply a fluke of their environment.

But even if the move to a lower-altitude clime isn’t an overt disadvantage for either squad, it comes with the decided removal of an advantage that could win a squad the one more game. As we approach the playoffs for both sports, that one win can be the difference between a very happy and very frustrating end. What say you, DNVR Nation? Has the bubble burst the hopes of either Denver team? Or are either playing in rarified enough air at this point to not care?