The Bubble Begins: What We Saw in the NBA's First Disney Scrimmages
In a strange way, Wednesday's NBA scrimmages in the Disney World bubble were as close to normalcy as can be. This time of year, the league would normally be televising a full day's worth of scrimmages in mostly empty gyms, where the teams' highest-profile stars may or may not be playing. And that was basically what we got here, but instead of the NBA's annual Las Vegas Summer League, it was essentially a second preseason for what will be the oddest three months in the history of the NBA.
Our first live NBA basketball since the league shut down on March 11 because of Rudy Gobert's positive COVID-19 test was predictably hit-or-miss. Guys are still working their way back into shape, and some teams are very short-handed and forced to play bizarre lineups. The kinks of the broadcasts and game presentations are still being worked out. But the NBA is back.
Here's what jumped out from our first look at what it's going to be like to watch NBA basketball for the foreseeable future.
Summer-league atmosphere
Considering the circumstances—the NBA attempting to resume its season with no fans in a Disney-sponsored bubble amid a pandemic—it was shocking how normal the games looked on television. The camera angles were mostly the same as they are on a normal game broadcast, and team personnel and media members were spread out in the seats down by the court to create the illusion of the seats you usually see on TV being filled.
There was a small amount of music played over the PA and a regular-sounding PA announcer. There were ads on the stanchions separating the benches from the court, just as there are below the scorers' table in every arena in the league.
With no fans, the NBA attempted to create home-court advantage by installing a giant videoboard behind the bench that displayed the "home" team's logo, as well as some piped-in "DE-FENSE" chants. But while the NBA allowed teams to ship their own courts to Florida for practices, the games are taking place on a court with an NBA logo at the center (as well as "Black Lives Matter" painted along the sideline, which is awesome).
All of this was strange at first, but it didn't take long to get used to the differences. It helps that the NBA has had several months to study game presentations from various European soccer leagues and Asian baseball leagues that have returned during the pandemic. By the time the playoffs and Finals come around, this isn't going to be weird at all. It turns out, you don't miss the crowd shots as much as you thought.
The Bol Bol era begins
No team has been more short-handed in the bubble than the Denver Nuggets—they've barely had enough players to run five-on-five contract drills. For their Wednesday scrimmage against the Washington Wizards, they trotted out one of the strangest lineups the NBA has seen in years, headlined by Nikola Jokic at point guard and 7'2" Bol Bol making his pro debut at small forward.
Once seen as a lottery-level prospect, Bol fell to No. 44 overall in the 2019 draft after his freshman season at Oregon as teams were scared off by injury concerns. Bol, the son of the late former NBA center Manute Bol, spent his rookie season redshirting in the G League. Wednesday's scrimmage represented his first time stepping on the court with the Nuggets.
It was one scrimmage in insanely bizarre circumstances, but you could see why talent evaluators were this high on him in the first place. He finished with 16 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks in 32 minutes and looked more mobile than expected considering he spent much of the past 18 months rehabbing a foot fracture.
Bol probably won't play much for the Western Conference's No. 3 seed when the regular season restarts, let alone in the playoffs. He's too raw to be counted on in a playoff environment once the Nuggets have their full roster back. Expect him to get the kid-gloves treatment Michael Porter Jr. got this year after he missed all of the 2018-19 season with a back injury.
But even if this is the most we get to see of Bol in the next three months, Nuggets fans have plenty of reason to be excited for the future. Hopefully he can stay healthy.
Game broadcasts, but make it Zoom
While players get reacclimated into the NBA game environment, team broadcasters are forced to adapt to a less-than-ideal set of circumstances. No local announcers are in the bubble, which means every game is being called remotely.
Different teams had different approaches to this in the first day of action. The Clippers simulcast their radio broadcast with mixed results—Noah Eagle is a very good play-by-play man, but radio broadcasters call games differently than TV broadcasters do, so it was a little disconcerting. Nets analysts Ian Eagle and Sarah Kustok sat 10 feet apart on the floor of an empty Barclays Center and did their thing.
No broadcast was weirder than the Nuggets', which featured the faces of their analysts superimposed onto the top of the screen for the entire game, Zoom backgrounds and all.
And if you were worried you wouldn't get the full Zoom call experience we've all grown accustomed to over the past four months, have no fear: At one point, an analyst was brought into the broadcast and forgot to mute his line when he wasn't talking, resulting in some heavy breathing that briefly overwhelmed the call of the game. We've all been on that call before. NBA teams—they're just like us.
Joakim Noah is back
The Clippers signed Joakim Noah to a 10-day contract in March, but the season was suspended before the 2014 Defensive Player of the Year was able to make his season debut. Noah was surprisingly solid last season with the Grizzlies following two disastrous seasons in New York, but he spent much of this year rehabbing an Achilles injury. So it was a bit of a shock to see him in the Clippers' starting lineup for his first NBA action in 16 months.
But Noah looked great. He can still set hard screens, and he's still one of the league's smartest passers at his position. It was obvious right away that he's going to make an impact for the Clippers.
More than that, he got a head start on renewing his war of words with LeBron James that could come back into play if, as most people expect, the Clippers and Lakers meet in the Western Conference Finals. The man who brought us "Hollywood as hell" and "What's so good about Cleveland?" took what appeared to be another shot at LeBron in his postgame virtual media availability on Wednesday, saying, "No prima donnas on the Clippers, that's for sure."
If the two Los Angeles teams do meet in the postseason, it's going to get petty.
Not much talk
With no fans to drown out the on-court sounds, the possibility of viewers finally getting to hear what players say to each other on the court was an exciting one.
No such luck, at least so far. What you mainly hear on the broadcasts are the commentary, the sneakers squeaking and the piped-in chants. Anyone hoping to hear uncensored trash talk was in for a disappointment.
Another broadcast wrinkle I would have liked to see: sound from the huddles during timeouts. WNBA broadcasts on ESPN are fantastic because they show the strategy and play-calling from the huddles. In the NBA, it's usually just the part when the coach is screaming about needing to bring more energy.
If the NBA is experimenting with new ways to make these unusual broadcasts engaging, that's an easy one. Some of the league's best coaches (Doc Rivers, Erik Spoelstra, Michael Malone) were on the sidelines Wednesday. Who wouldn't have wanted to take this unique opportunity to hear how they talk to their teams during games? It would add a layer of intrigue while helping to make fans smarter about the game.
These are all local broadcasts so far. We still won't know until the end of the month what ESPN and TNT have planned for the national broadcasts. There's an opportunity here to take fans courtside since they can't attend games in the bubble. The league's television partners should recognize that.
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