By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Walk the concourse at Thomas & Mack Center or look at the fans who filled the venue’s bottom bowl and you will see that the people attending the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas are a diverse lot.
That diversity in the demos inside the arena also includes fans who continue to wear a mask to guard against the coronavirus, which is still sticking around in different variants. Wearing a mask is strictly voluntary.
Fans are free to watch summer league games at Thomas & Mack and inside the much smaller Cox Pavilion without masks.
But LVSportsBiz.com, in a very unscientific visual survey of the fans Saturday, estimated that about one out of every 15 fans donned a mask. It was a low percentage.
Media was required to submit COVID-19 shot history to be credentialed.
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Saturday’s crowds approached a sellout with attendance announced at 17,022 for Day 3 of the July 7-17 event after attendance was 14,139 Friday. Event organizer Albert Hall said early Saturday of returning to pre-pandemic attendance numbers, “We’re hopeful to get back to 2019 but not there yet.”
One-day general admission tickets go for $40 a pop and are not sold as lower bowl or upper bowl. There were fans in the upper bowl Saturday.
Capacity for the NBA Summer League is 17,500 — split between 2,500 in cozy Cox Pavilion and 15,000 in Thomas & Mack. There have been four sellouts in NBA Summer League history in Las Vegas.
It might be a furnace outside in Las Vegas this weekend, but it’s cool inside the summer league venues, which are connected through an open walk area that includes concessions and vendor tables.
The summer league games are exhibitions designed to allow teams to evaluate their young players, but one game Saturday will likely go down in summer league lore as one of the most thrilling and crazy games in history in Las Vegas.
The Orlando Magic and its number one overall draft pick, Paolo Banchero, squeezed out a wild 94-92 double OT/sudden death win over the Sacramento Kings after the Kings scored two three-pointers in the final five seconds to force the overtime. The game went into the extra session after the Magic squandered an 18-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.
It was Saturday’s first game at Thomas & Mack and the crowd went crazy when Sacramento forced the OT thanks to a last-second steal and three-pointer.
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It’s common to see retired NBA stars and even current luminaries courtside at NBA Summer League games. Big-name stars included LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Trae Young.
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