Pandemic Basketball begins, with some comforts of home

FILE – In this Feb. 22, 2020, file photo, Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo dunks during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Philadelphia 76ers in Milwaukee.  (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Florida — 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 July 28, 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.”

Part of the setup here calls for the designated home teams, like the Heat were Wednesday, to get comforts of home.

So they wore white uniforms, had their Heat logo on the video boards, listened to “Seven Nation Army” coming through the speakers as they would at home, and even got to hear Baiamonte.

At the end, “The Heat Is On” — another after-win treat at home — played as they walked off, too.

“The production felt like a big event,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I thought it was terrific. I really did.”

PLAY ANALYSIS

Shooting on Day 1 wasn’t as rusty as some might expect.

The four games Wednesday saw teams shoot 43% from the field, 32% from 3-point range and 81% from the foul line.

For the regular season, the NBA was collectively at 46% from the floor, 36% from 3-point range and 77% from the line.