NEW YORK -- The first half of the Golden State Warriors’ 112-105 victory against the New York Knicks on Sunday felt much different than a normal NBA game. From warmups until halftime, Madison Square Garden had no in-game entertainment whatsoever. No music played during player introductions, the game or even timeouts.
There were no promotional videos on the video board. Instead, it displayed a message letting everybody know what was going on and telling fans to “experience the game in its purest form” and “enjoy the sounds of the game.”
Some found it refreshing. Others, like Warriors forward Draymond Green, did not appreciate the change.
“It was ridiculous,” Green said. “It changed the flow of the game. It changed everything. You get so used to playing the game a certain way. To completely change that, to me I think it was disrespectful to everyone from Michael Levine to Rick Welts and all these people who’ve done these things to change the game from an entertainment perspective and give the game a great vibe. That’s complete disrespect because you advance things in the world to make it better; you don’t go back to what was bad. And so it’s like computers can do anything for us -- it’s like going back to paper. Why would you do that?”
Green said he found out about it right before the game started. He said it had a direct impact on the quality of play. The teams combined to shoot 15 for 44 (34.1 percent) in the first quarter and 35 for 88 (40 percent) in the first half.
“Did you see that first half?” Green said. “It was just bad. Sloppy, all over the place. It was no rhythm to the game. All that stuff makes a difference in the game, believe it or not. You get rhythm -- [when] five guys, seven guys go in work out at night, you turn on music. It just helps you get into a certain area, takes you to a certain place. And so I don’t think they were doing it to like throw us off, but it definitely threw the entire game off. And they need to trash that because that’s exactly what it was.”
Other Warriors acknowledged that it was strange, with Stephen Curry comparing it to “a middle school warmup game.” Curry joked that the players were “trying to make our own beat” in the layup line, trying to “see if anybody wanted to freestyle rap or something while we were shooting.” Golden State coach Steve Kerr agreed with Green that the second half was better, but did not go half as far in terms of criticizing the decision.
“It was really weird,” Kerr said. “You sort of take it for granted because every NBA game, you got all this stuff going on, music in the background, you don’t even think about it until it’s not there. So it felt like church, but quiet. It is Sunday after all, so maybe that’s why they chose it. So it was strange, and I kind of liked it better in the second half. It felt more normal with the music.”