LAGO BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Lou Williams’ ears usually ache after a game due to all the noise from fans. This time, Williams’ vocal cords felt some pain because fans were no longer present.
“My voice is a little hoarse because we are all we have,” Williams said after the Los Angeles Clippers’ 99-90 victory over the Orlando Magic in a scrimmage Wednesday at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex. “This is the most vocal thing I’ve been forced to be during a game.”
When Williams said those words, Clippers coach Doc Rivers stepped aside to obey the rules of social estrangement. But Rivers could still listen. Then he chimed in, “Now you know why I talk like that!”
It seemed impossible to draw meaningful conclusions from the first night of NBA scrimmages as part of his preparation for the season to resume on July 30. The New Orleans Pelicans (Zion Williamson) and Clippers (Patrick Beverley, Montrezl Harrell) missed key players because they recently left the NBA campus to attend to family medical emergencies. The teams also looked sloppy and rusty after not playing in an NBA game since March 11, when the league stopped play due to the new coronavirus. However, it seemed easy to notice how the game looked different.
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The most obvious? The teams competed without fans in the stands as part of the NBA’s 113-page health and safety protocols. That led teams to make more adjustments to the game than just substitutions and game calls. With no fans to cheer on, the players felt compelled to become loud cheerleaders on the bench and vocal leaders on the court.
“It forces you as a team to get involved from start to finish, from the coaching staff to the guys on the court and the players on the bench,” Williams said. “It will force everyone to create energy for themselves to be all on the same page and just create momentum for yourselves.”
However, the NBA still wants to make sure that the burden does not fall on teams to change their behavior to account for missing fans. They have a game to play. With all the seats placed six feet apart, they had to follow social distancing rules. So the NBA modified its game operations to camouflage that reality.
To protect the cameras from empty media, the league built large television screens displaying team logos, the game scoreboard, and game statistics. To make up for any lost advantage on the court, the league rewarded the designated home team with player profiles after a basket made and “DE-FENSE” chants when they didn’t have the ball. To make up for lost noise without fans, game operations still featured an announcer and in-game music.
Before the Brooklyn Nets scrimmage against the Pelicans, the game’s operations played a handful of Jay-Z songs. It became the model for how to handle game operations. The Nets’ game featured hip-hop from Brooklyn, including countless songs by Jay-Z and Notorious BIG. The Clippers also thought locally when playing a handful of songs by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
However, the music did not fill the entire silence. That’s impossible when most NBA venues have as many as 19,000 fans. The arena here holds 10,000.
Then Clippers star Kawhi Leonard could be heard surprisingly arguing with a call. Rivers could be heard barking plays from the bench. Pelicans could be heard protecting JJ Reddick growling after a defensive play.
“It’s different, but it gives you a little AAU,” Pelicans forward Brandon Ingram said after the team’s 99-68 victory over the Nets. “For anyone who likes basketball, they want to go out and play. That is what we like to do.”
Not that they have any other choice. This is what the set-up will be through the resumed first game (July 30), the start of the playoffs (August 17) and the end of the NBA Finals (October 13). The league will have a cameraman on the center court and robotic cameras around it. There will be a plexiglass on the scorer’s table and on the announcer’s table to improve social distancing. More expected changes await on opening night, including the likelihood that there will be virtual fans to replace the nonexistent ones.
“The NBA did an amazing job setting it up the way it has,” said Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry. “The other thing that’s amazing is that you can see where the technology has gone. From the point of view, it’s not that we’re just in an empty arena listening to the balls bounce, but there will be a lot of interaction actually with the fans. “
It did not appear to damage the actual product on the court. The players seemed sloppy and out of breath just because they hadn’t played competitive basketball for four months and had limited training options during the quarantine. No one attributed the missed shots to the changed dimensions or the errors in the different settings on the court.
The only slight challenge involved how to manage the benches of the different teams. The NBA had all of its chairs spaced six feet due to concerns about social distancing. While players and coaches are not required to wear skins in the front row of the bench, inactive players and coaches in the second row are. Rivers and Gentry can change the seating arrangement to make it easier to communicate with coaches and players. Still, these factors probably won’t determine who will hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.
“I don’t think anybody is going to be better because we are playing in this environment,” Rivers said. “The great players will continue to be the great players. The role players will be the role players. And the best team will win.”
And to win, teams seem more drawn to create more energy on the bench. That allowed Rivers to save his vocal chords by calling plays and speaking to officials in a gentler tone. Therefore, Rivers’ voice sounded louder than Williams later.
“Maybe I will have a better voice at the end of this,” Rivers said. “Who knows.”
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