Pandemic Basketball begins, with some comforts of home

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Michael Baiamonte was not at Walt Disney World on Wednesday. The public address announcer for the Miami Heat wasn’t in the building for the team’s season-restart scrimmage debut. His voice was. The sound of him bellowing one of his signature phrases — “stand up and make some noise” — bounced through the arena Wednesday night during a third-quarter stoppage in play, a bit of a peculiar thing because there were no fans there to actually coax into rising from their chairs. Welcome to Pandemic Basketball. The NBA rolled out what game operations in a bubble will look like Wednesday, with the first four of 33 scrimmages getting played.