Notes from the return of basketball

The return of the NBA this afternoon was something I did not let myself get excited for. Every piece of information about the circumstances in the bubble felt like a leak, like a Twitter source in chief. It was all bad. People smarter than myself found their accounts breeding grounds of pessimism.

When the NBA announced on June 3 that they would return to play on July 31, the world was very different. Minneapolis was on its 8th consecutive night of public demonstrations in response to the malicious and unsolicited murder of George Floyd. This had spread to hundreds of other cities, towns, and villages across the United States and the world. We hadn’t looked away in a week. We couldn’t. COVID-19 figures continued to get worse and worse, and areas around the country had either opened up or stayed shuttered for Memorial Day. Either decision was considered wrong. No one at the league offices could have known what the world would be like 58 days from then. But they had faith in a bubble plan. A plan that could have changed comprehensively since June 3 for all we know, but that was implemented in full July 7.

It’s working right now.

There isn’t much more to it than four words. At least right now, at least after 80 glorious minutes of regulation basketball.

They’re being called scrimmages, but they’re preseason games. These aren’t glorified joint practices, they’re codified, by-the-book NBA exhibition. And for every one of Adam Silver’s intents and purposes, they were flawless.

The games started with a tip-off. In the middle, players took shots that either went in or missed. (Except for with 4:37 left in the first quarter of Denver-Washington, when Bol Bol chucked up a three that got stuck in between the rim and the backboard). At the end of the fourth quarter, one team had more points than the other. Where I’m from, that team gets the win. The bubble rules agreed.

This was NBA basketball, and it felt like it. The players were rusty. The misses and takes and wayward-sailing passes felt like Summer League, but we knew all the guys on the court. Everything outside of the four perpendicular lines was not Summer League Basketball, it was just basketball.

The crowd noise was artificial. The ball clanging off the rim at the same volume was not artificial. Neither were the coaches clapping in the direction of, but not directly at the refs because they know better. Or the incredulous “me?”s with a self-pointing finger post-whistle. The whooping from one bench and “ooh!” from the other after an iso floater. Bol Bol’s 16 and 10 with 6 blocks. Hearing commentators’ familiar, loamy voices over jerseys you’ve seen 100 times. The Clippers defeating the Magic, 99-90. And the Nuggets beating the Wizards, 89-82, was not artificial.

Really quick on that crowd noise: that is probably the chief reason it didn’t feel like Summer League. The instrumentals of songs playing for 9 seconds up the court and through the first pass of a possession were there. As were the chants that are started by the PA guy, the “TwoOoo minutes!”, and the musical timeout intros, outros, and resets. The volume and execution could’ve been rounded into form; these guys are used to 20,000 seat cathedrals, not knockoffs of the Thomas & Mack Center. Circuitous point short: dribbling and squeaking shoes were far from the only noise. The absence of fans did not control the atmosphere. That was dominated by the centerpiece, the art of the sport. Competitive basketball always demands center stage. This did not feel like training camp look-ins, or every summer wherever we see Carmelo shooting uncontested threes.

Troy Daniels played incredible defense and scored 22 points, drilling everything. I was on my couch and thinking, “This guy is a menace. And the no-guard-having Lakers just let him go.” It has been four and a half months since anyone of us has experienced that passing flutter of a thought, and we’ve watched a lot of re-run basketball. That semi-conscious thought is a basic, integral part of consuming live NBA action. Midseason it is mundane. Today it was childlike and novel. There were multiple points in the game where I took back ever so slightly, just enough to acknowledge “this is really real” or “man, I love this.” It has been too long.

I’m writing this while elated, fresh off the end of these two games, and that may sway me. But I’m a career realist, followed by a pessimist. I’ve told every friend who asks me about basketball that I don’t expect the three-plus-month bubble to work perfectly or even get the job done. Still, today is an overwhelming and indisputable success that the NBA sorely needed. So that’s a win.