That is a possible reason.......

..........but I think it has more to do with the fact that there is almost exclusively O&D traffic in the NYC domestic markets(JFK intl conx excepted). The company can fill an airplane out of NYC at 0600 to lots of locations due to sheer numbers of people that live in the NYC area. On the late inbounds, even though there still isn't that connecting pax (lots of O&D), they can fill an airplane later in the evening and have it terminate in NYC at 11pm, and people will buy the tickets.

It therefore makes sense(from a route/yield planning perspective) to use those planes as late into the night as profitably feasible, and to have lots of airplanes "overnight" in NYC. If you don't want to pay for 2 crews to layover in NYC (the late arrival can't fly the early departure out the next day) then the only logical solution is to build the trips to begin and end NYC rotations. It sucks for us, but profits trump convenient pilot schedules.

ATL, DTW and MSP do not have the O&D traffic to justify a "full bank" ending the night in the hub, and then to start a "full bank" outbound the next morning, so they do not "overnight" very many planes in the hubs that need to get a start in the morning. In the ATL, MSP, DTW "network", most airframes start the day headed into the hubs to connect passengers and then do hub turns pretty much the rest of the day, it is infinitely easier to just build rotations that start and end during the middle of the day during one of those hub turns.

It blows for the NYC crews (and for the LA based also I would imagine), but it is a reality of operating a profitable airline with a hub in NYC.