CHICAGO — Jim Boylen’s United Center entrance usually begins with a fist bump. Or a “pound,” as he calls it, his knuckles to a security guard’s, on his way into work. On Tuesday, however, it didn’t.
On Tuesday, the first day of basketball in a COVID-19-fearing NBA, it instead began with a “half-elbow.” The changes continued, around two hours before tip, halfway around the arena rather than outside the Chicago Bulls’ locker room, the NBA’s new media restrictions altering his routine. Boylen sat in the dimly lit Concert Club, a dining area that had been turned into an auxiliary news conference room.