Dallas fans unleash roars against Clippers and basketball sounds like a game again
It’s been more than a year since COVID-19 brought the NBA world to a sneaker-screeching halt and as playoff games heat up, crowds are finally to beginning to fill arenas again.
Many of the teams — such as the Knicks, Bucks and Hawks — have played in front of five-figure crowds during the first round, and the Mavericks joined them Friday night in Game 3 of their playoff series against the Los Angeles Clippers.
From the start, the crowd of 16,000 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas delivered bone-rattling noise as Luka Doncic drained one 3-pointer after another to give the Mavericks an early lead.
The moment was not lost on those in attendance; basketball felt right again — even with masks.
Victory Boulevard, one of the streets in front of the arena, was a sea of blue, white, and blinding headlights from vehicles waiting to park as fans moved like schools of fish at the flick of a crossing guard’s wrist.
Inside, music bounced off the hardwood as fans made their way to their seats, some already hyped up as they clustered in the halls, where social distancing was not in play.
“This is wild,” Ruben Espinoza, a die-hard Mavs fan, who came to the game with his fiancee Amy Griffin. “I honestly wasn’t sure we’d have playoff games with crowds at the beginning of the season.”
While extremely pumped for the game, COVID-19 was still on their minds, but mainly for those who have not been vaccinated.
“We have some concerns, but not for ourselves really,” Espinoza said. “Us and everyone in our family are vaccinated and we feel pretty safe. It’s those who are here who aren’t vaccinated that I feel weird about.”
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had first considered a max crowd of about 9,000 fans for Game 3, but that was before Dallas took the first two games of the best-of-seven series in Los Angeles. The axis pivoted on Tuesday night when the Luka Doncic-led Mavs dominated over the home team 127-121 , a game that was played at the Staples Center in front of only 6,885 fans , who were just as quiet as the sea of cardboard faces among them.
“Personally, I just think it’s going to be a lot of energy in there,” Dorian Finney-Smith said to Mavs.com. “I know the city is excited, we’re excited.
“I would say I don’t even know how excited it was going to be until my daughter, her coming up to me after (Game 2) and (saying), ‘I can’t wait until this game is in Dallas. I’ve never been to a real playoff game.’ So just putting myself into her shoes, I was like, ‘Oh, snap.’ This is big, because last year it was in the bubble.”
The bubble, a makeshift NBA safe haven in Orlando during the pandemic, was where last year’s NBA playoffs were played, and where the Clippers ousted the Mavericks in the first round.
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But now Dallas is at home, where the number of COVID cases and deaths continue to drop and sports have pretty much returned to normal.
And while cut-throat competition will be showcased on the court donning the shadow of Dirk Nowitzki’s one-legged fadeaway, the crowd of masked and unmasked faces in the AAC will also be on display.
As most know, the Texas Rangers started the 2021 Major League Baseball season by being the only team to open their ballpark at full capacity, drawing criticism from health officials — and even President Joe Biden — who feared a spike in coronavirus cases in Dallas-Fort Worth.
But that hasn’t happened, at least not yet.
Then earlier this month came the highly anticipated boxing match between Canelo Alvarez and Billy Joe Saunders at neighboring AT&T Stadium, where 73,126 showed up to watch. It was the largest crowd in the U.S. since the pandemic emerged in March 2020, the Star-Telegram reported.
Another huge crowd is expected at AT&T Stadium on Saturday, where Mexico’s national soccer team — El Tri — will play Iceland.
And the NFL, which restricted crowd sizes last year — Dallas led the way with more than 28,000 per game — plans to return to full capacity this season, according to NBC Sports.
COVID, it seems, no longer owns the sports world — especially in DFW.
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That was evident again at the Mavericks game.
Thousands filled the seats, and it showed in the deafening boos that blasted the arena as the Clippers jogged onto the court prior to tip-off. The only thing more bombastic than the boos? The overwhelming screams that shot out when the Mavericks filed onto the court.
“This is my first Mavs playoff game so it’s a really different experience for me so far,” said fan Erica Simmons, who came with her boyfriend Blake Combs.
“There seems just be a real buzz in the arena,” Combs said. “People are still filing in, but there’s definitely an electricity in the air that I haven’t felt since I was at the Mother’s Day Massacre against the Lakers in 2011 (when the Mavericks dismantled the Los Angeles Lakers 122-86 on May 8, 2011).”
While the first playoff cheers for the Mavs were overwhelming, nothing compared to the greeting Doncic received when his face burst onto the big screen before the starting lineup introductions — and even that seemed almost dull compared to when he scored the game’s first 8 points.
It’s almost like the last year never happened.
This story was originally published May 28, 2021 at 10:09 PM.