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LAS VEGAS -- Seconds before Thursday afternoon's opening tip, the T-Mobile Arena public address announcer attempted to hype up the crowd.
"We can't hear you!" he hollered as the Indiana Pacers and Milwaukee Bucks lined up for the beginning of the first semifinal of the NBA's in-season tournament, the league's grand experiment to inject excitement during the part of the sports calendar dominated by football.
There wasn't too much to hear at the moment, not with the thousands of empty seats for the 2:13 p.m. local tip-off. The bright theater lighting on the court, which was painted an eye-popping blue with a red stripe down the middle, took attention away from the awkwardness of such a sparse crowd for a mid-afternoon tip between two small-market Midwest teams based 1,800 miles or so away.