NBA celebrates in-season tournament final four in Las Vegas،
LAS VEGAS — Seconds before Thursday afternoon's kickoff, the T-Mobile Arena public address announcer tried to get the crowd excited.
“We can’t hear you!” he shouted as the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks lined up for the start of the NBA's first tournament semifinal of the season, the league's grand experiment in injecting enthusiasm during the part of the sporting calendar dominated by football.
There wasn't much to hear at the moment, not with the thousands of empty seats at the 2:13 p.m. local alert. The bright lighting of the field theater, which was painted a vibrant blue with a red stripe down the middle, distracted from the awkwardness of such a sparse crowd for a mid-afternoon tip-off between two teams from a small Midwestern market based about 1,800 miles away.
The atmosphere resembled a No. 4 vs. No. 13 March Madness matchup between two far-flung schools. Fortunately, that changed as the crowd filled the vast majority of seats. The announced attendance for the Pacers' 128-119 victory was 16,837 – the second game of the evening between the Los Angeles Lakers and the New Orleans Pelicans was a sellout of 18,017 – and there were many satisfied fans.
“It’s awesome,” DeJuan Smith told ESPN at halftime. A Milwaukee native who moved to Vegas 17 years ago, Smith was excited to take his sister, Kelis Henderson, to her first NBA game and watch their favorite team together. They both wore Giannis Antetokounmpo jerseys.
“It might have been better to have it a little later, but it’s a good atmosphere,” Smith added.
Smith and Henderson planned to attend both semifinals – tickets were sold separately, with the arena emptied between games – but tickets for the Western Conference game sold for twice as much as the Eastern one on the secondary market.
That's because the second semifinal felt like a relocated Lakers home game. This was largely expected, as Vegas is essentially Lakers territory, as evidenced by the large crowds their games usually attract during the Las Vegas Summer League. The Pelicans were booed during starting lineup introductions, and the packed crowd roared after every Lakers bucket in the team's 133-89 victory.
There was even an “MVP!” scattered. chant for LeBron James when he went to the free throw line early in the first quarter. James' pull-up 3 after going past the trophy logo at midcourt early in the second quarter sent the crowd into a frenzy.
“It's funny, my coach said to me, 'You know, one thing you haven't done in your 21-year career is be in the Final Four,' before the start of the game today,” James said of the tournament atmosphere. “I laughed a little.
“I went to [high school] state championship every year, all my four years. … It's definitely heightened, given being NBA players and what's at stake.”
It's less than a four-hour drive from Los Angeles, but Vegas residents made up the majority of the crowd. This was evident during the two national anthems. Loud shouts of “KNIGHTS!” drowned the word “night” in the song's lyrics, a tribute to the NHL's Vegas Golden Knights, one of the arena's main tenants along with the WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces, who had several players attend at the Pelicans-Lakers game.
The NBA invited several of its former stars as VIP guests, a list headlined by Hall of Famer Julius Erving.
Brian McDowell, a Denver resident who grew up in Indianapolis, booked a trip and bought tickets for himself and his 14-year-old son, Ty, as soon as the Pacers closed out their upset quarterfinal victory over the Boston Celtics . McDowell raised his son as an Indiana sports fan, and they embraced the opportunity to visit the sights of Vegas and see their favorite NBA team make history.
“This is the first time I’ve shown some competitiveness in my sports fandom,” Ty McDowell told ESPN. He wore a yellow Myles Turner jersey, while his father wore a blue Tyrese Haliburton jersey.
But there could have been as many Lakers jerseys in the stands as there were Pacers and Bucks combined. A wide variety of other teams were also represented, including many throwbacks of retired legends, a list dominated by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal.
“NBA fans, man,” Turner, who scored 26 points for the Pacers, told ESPN with a big smile. “I think it's been great for the league, because the whole point of it was [the] The NFL currently attracts all the audience.
“We have this buzz, this excitement.”
The Pacers, in particular, are in the spotlight during their run to the first tournament final of the season. Indiana is a small-market franchise that is thriving after years of falling off the radar of casual NBA fans. The Pacers were only scheduled to play one nationally televised game this season, but they earned the privilege of that audience by advancing to all three of the tournament's playoff games, a chance to show the basketball world the The Haliburton-led offense is lighting up the league with unprecedented efficiency.
“Honestly, it was amazing, bro, because in a town with a small market, we don't get that much exposure,” Turner told ESPN. “So having the chance to come here and have that enthusiasm for our team, hearing people cheering for our team and so on, I mean, it was a different type of vibe than being simply in the cradle.
“There are teams like the Lakers and Boston that have traveling fans, but we don't have that many. To get all the love here like that at a neutral site was amazing.”
It's likely that Las Vegas will soon have its own NBA franchise, as the league is expected to welcome two expansion teams after upcoming national television deals are finalized. Pacers coach Rick Carlisle called it “the worst kept secret in the world” that Vegas gets one of these teams, and he sees Thursday's atmosphere as further proof that the market is ready to seize the opportunity to support an NBA franchise.
“I think the turnout today shows that there is definitely interest in the NBA game,” Carlisle said. “I've been in this business for a long time. I believe the NBA can do just about anything. Tournament of the Season [has had skeptics] for many years, and right now it's all the buzz.”
