Small gyms can host NBA until fans can return
Wandering aimlessly around the United Center late Wednesday while searching for an exit near the end of the Chicago Bulls’ season-opening loss to the Atlanta Hawks, I experienced one of those “Home Alone” moments.
With the gates locked and no one around, I pictured myself locked inside the cavernous stadium for Christmas, waiting on Bulls coach Billy Donovan to arrive Saturday morning to let me out before their next game against the Indiana Pacers.
It would be just me and a bronze version of Michael Jordan dunking.
It had been 25 years to the day — Dec. 23, 1995 — since I’d last covered a Bulls game at the United Center. While trying to find a way out, I found myself inside the atrium that housed the Jordan statue and momentarily flashed back to that memorable night — a 100-86 victory over Karl Malone and the Utah Jazz. Jordan scored 30 points and Scottie Pippen added 28, leading the Bulls to their 13th straight win in a record-setting 72-10 season.
The packed house at the United Center went crazy, of course, in stark contrast to the surreal atmosphere surrounding Wednesday’s opener, the first regular-season Bulls game without fans allowed inside. The Hawks scored 83 points in the first half to quickly put the game out of reach.
Though the Hawks operated like they had an E-ZPass to the hoop, the United Center’s sound-effects employee continued to play an annoying sound bite of Bulls fans chanting “Deee-fense, deee-fense” in the second half. Meanwhile, the digital advertising boards around the facades of the second and third levels flashed the message “Bring the Energy” to no one in particular in an energy-free building.
Fortunately for the players, no one was there to boo them off the court after the first half, and the only ones fleeing for the exits early were media members who had seen enough.
The biggest takeaway from the first game of the new season was the ridiculousness of playing games inside a giant arena like the United Center without fans.
Obviously you can’t replicate the Orlando bubble for an entire NBA season, but you can try to create the illusion of intimacy. One of the things that made games at the Disney World Sports Complex so watchable was it seemed like they were playing in an old-school gym.
The NBA teamed up with Microsoft to surround the court with 10 sections of virtual “seating” as a backdrop to the action. The 17-foot videoboards behind the teams’ benches showed real fans cheering on the teams in “virtual seats,” including celebrities like former President Barack Obama at the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat.
It took some getting used to, but it was much better than seeing big, black tarps with advertising covering up the empty seats, as is the case at the United Center.
Upon first glance last summer, I thought it might become a distraction for the players. But Los Angeles Clippers center Ivica Zubac said: “You don’t really notice the fans around you on the screens. It’s much more quiet.”
Perhaps the logistics of creating virtual seating areas at large NBA arenas aren’t worth the time or money for owners eager to get a limited number of fans back into games this season.
In that case, why not just temporarily move the games to a high school venue and return the sport to its roots?Hearing sneakers squeaking and rims clanging in a tiny high school gym is much preferable to the alternative — cheesy sound effects and fake crowd noise in an empty, 20,000-seat arena.
Like it or not, the NBA is just a TV show for the time being, and viewers are only one click away from checking out what’s on Netflix. If the league wants to retain the attention span of fans in a 72-game season during a pandemic, becoming more innovative seems like a no-brainer.