Do you think Tab Baldwin, Pero Cameron and Paul Henare are ever up at 1.30am doing the team laundry?
Otago Nuggets coach Alf Arlidge wondered that to himself during the wee hours one morning when he was making sure his team had clean gear for the next game.
But that is the measure of the coach and the man. In nine years of reporting for the Otago Daily Times, I have never met a coach who does so much for so little.
He did not get paid for his first season, in 2010, and has drawn a very modest income during the past three seasons.
That is the way he wants it. Arlidge has a day job at St Margaret's College, where he is the building supervisor.
He would not jeopardise his job to coach the Nuggets for ''four or five months of the year''. He is not motivated by glory, either.
The Nuggets were a punchline for a long time. It has only been in the past few years the franchise has been able to recapture some of the success it enjoyed in the early and mid-1990s.
It is passion and seemingly endless enthusiasm that keeps this 45-year father of three away from the family home so often during the season.
Arlidge, who has twin 13-year-old sons, Zac and Oscar, from a previous marriage and a 4-year-old son, Archie, with wife Rachel, said it was never really his goal to coach the Nuggets.
He was initially approached in 2008 but had too much going on his life. But he took on the role of keeping the local players motivated when the Nuggets were out of the league in 2009, and led the franchise in its comeback season in 2010.
The Nuggets lost all 18 games and it was not until midway through 2011 the Arlidge-led Nuggets registered their first win, a 74-67 victory against the Manawatu Jets in Dunedin on May 21.
It snapped a three-year, 33-game losing-streak. Arlidge had inherited nine of those losses from the previous campaign in 2008.
It was a dreadfully moribund time to be involved. But a cloud lifted when big Lance Allred led the Nuggets to victory that night.
Arlidge was photographed dancing a jig in celebration and why not? The Nuggets gradually built from there and have made the playoffs this season for the first time since 1997.
Arlidge is not often short of words. He is an ebullient and gregarious character but not prone to sentimentality.
But he pauses and even swallows a little when asked what it means to him that the Nuggets have a shot at winning the NBL title when they contest the finals in Napier this weekend.
''It feels great,'' he said.
''I don't really have a lot of words to describe it. When I look back now, the first year was super depressing and we really tried so hard. We just didn't have the athletes to do it.
''The next year we were lucky enough to get Craig [Bradshaw] and I still think about that first win we had against the Jets. I felt we could have pushed on but we didn't for whatever reason.
''But there are only three names in Dunedin who can go out to the community and that is [Mark] Dickel, [Leonard] King and [Glen] Denham. You mention those names and people know who they are. That is what we needed and getting him [Dickel last year] was the key.
''He has introduced me to players and I was able to go to Tall Black camps and talk to players. He just kicks the door open.''
Arlidge's connection with the Dickel family stretches back to his Logan Park High School days. Mark's father, former Nuggets coach Carl Dickel, taught at the school and inspired a young Anthony Arlidge.
''I remember it like it was only yesterday. We went in the gym one morning and here is this silly old bugger, or so we thought, dressed in these adidas blue tracksuit pants, a white tee-shirt and white cricket woollen vest.
''He was running up and down and sweating and sweating. He yells out, `Hey, you. Come over here'.
''And that is how it started. He did shooting drills for about 20 minutes and I passed the ball back to him.''
Arlidge trialled for the Nuggets in the early 1990s and captained Otago age-group teams. In 1990, he helped establish the Magic club with former Nuggets player Garth Freeman.
The 1990s were a great time to be involved in the sport. Otago had just entered the league, the sport was televised and the Nuggets, after a poor debut season, enjoyed some sustained success, reaching the playoffs five times from 1991 to 1997.
''We were all fans then and all of our mates were playing. It was great to be part of. Andrew Sheath, who I've known since I was 7, was playing for the Nuggets and those early '90s were really great times.''
Twenty-three years later, Arlidge has an opportunity to do what neither his mentor, Carl Dickel, nor any other coach could achieve - lead the Nuggets to national glory.
''The success this year has been great. I feel really good for guys like Riki [Buckrell], James [Ross], Matt [Trueman] and Hayden Miller who have been there since that first game against North Harbour when we were down by about 20 after about 15 minutes. They are the guys that this weekend is really all about.''
