Pandemic version offers few comforts of home
League previews game day, minus fan fervor
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — Michael Baiamonte was not at Walt Disney World on Wednesday. The public address announcer for the Miami Heat wasn’t in the building for the team’s season-restart scrimmage debut.
His voice was.
The sound of him bellowing one of his signature phrases — “stand up and make some noise” — bounced through the arena Wednesday night during a third-quarter stoppage in play, a bit of a peculiar thing because there were no fans there to actually coax into rising from their chairs.
Welcome to Pandemic Basketball. The NBA rolled out what game operations in a bubble will look like, with the first four of 33 scrimmages being played. The scrimmages — exhibitions, some call them — will continue through Tuesday, two days before the restart of the regular season in the form of seeding games that will determine who has what seed for the playoffs.
“The games are the games,” Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “Once you get in between the lines, you can make a case, that’s probably as comfortable as the players will ever be or as normal as everything will ever be. Because once they get between the lines, it’s a basketball game.”
Rivers and the Clippers were the NBA’S first winners of a game played during a pandemic, after downing Orlando 99-90 in an arena that held about 200 people — players, team staffs and NBA employees included.
Denver beat Washington 89-82, New Orleans eased past Brooklyn 99-68 and in the finale Miami topped Sacramento 104-98.
“I told Doc, I thought it was much more comfortable than I thought it would be,” Magic coach Steve Clifford said. “I think that the teams that can adapt to playing in an unique, kind of different environment without all the fans, whoever can get the right mindset and concentrate on just playing will have a big advantage.”
There were some new twists. Ballboys were setting up chairs for teams during timeouts because ones in the bench area must not be moved, and every player had an orange Gatorade cart just for him marked at his assigned seat. And while some players participated in handshakes, some people on the court declined — when Magic guard Michael Carter-williams offered a fist-bump greeting to referee Jacyn Goble, no reciprocal offer came.
“For me, it’s just basketball,” New Orleans guard E’twaun Moore said. “It’s kind of easy to play that. It’s like playing your whole life, playing outside, playing in gyms with nobody there, open gym. So it was just fun to go out there and just hoop and have fun.”
Zion update
Zion Williamson could still make the NBA’S reopening night.
The Pelicans said Wednesday that Williamson, who left the NBA bubble last week for a family matter, is being tested daily for the coronavirus and continues showing negative results. If that continues, Williamson may have to quarantine for only four days when he returns to the team.
And if that return comes in the next few days, that means he could still have a shot of playing when
New Orleans faces Utah on July 30 in the first of the 88 seeding games at Disney.
“While there is no current timetable for his return to campus, he fully intends to rejoin the team,” the Pelicans said in a statement. “Per NBA protocol, his quarantine period will be determined upon his return.”
The minimum quarantine Williamson would have to serve for leaving, even though he was officially excused, is the four-day option.
Westbrook practices
Houston guard Russell Westbrook, whose arrival in Florida was delayed after he tested positive for the coronavirus, arrived on Monday and got on the practice floor with his team for the first time Wednesday.
It’s unclear if he will play in Houston’s first scrimmage at Disney on Friday. But he had a message to fans about how seriously they should take the coronavirus.
“I’m not a doctor nor a specialist, but I do know that it’s definitely something to take very seriously,” Westbrook said. “Wearing a mask can be between life or death, honestly. … People are dying from this virus each and every day, and it’s something that we all need to take very, very seriously.”