INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Phoenix Suns coach Terry Porter said all his team and the Denver Nuggets have to do to prepare for the first outdoor game in modern NBA history is to revert to when they first picked up a basketball.
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"You just go back to your childhood days of playing outside, taking in the wind consideration for the jump shots in the corner," the first-year coach joked as his team began a shootaround Friday on a makeshift court at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden. "It's a good thing they don't have any chain nets."
The Suns had their first look Friday at the court set up at the facility, which annually hosts world-class men's and women's tennis tournaments in the spring. The exhibition nature of Saturday's game was evident as the Suns took the court, with team owner Robert Sarver and assistant coach Dan Majerle knocking tennis balls from baseline to baseline while Suns guard Raja Bell used another tennis ball to shoot jump shots.
With the moon hanging over the 16,000-seat tennis facility, the players and coaches had their first experience with the wind that swirled around the court.
The breezes for the game are expected to be stronger on the floor of the desert just outside of Palm Springs, but no one knows for sure how much the wind will impact play. The wind Friday was whipping through concourses throughout the Tennis Garden instead of simply flowing over the top of the grandstands and away from the sunken court.
"I didn't have any idea what to expect as far as this being in a tennis arena," Porter said. "But they got it in here. I was impressed they got the court in."
Suns guard Steve Nash said the wind would be too great of a variable for the NBA to hold a regular season game outdoors, but that the tennis court should work for a nationally televised exhibition game.
"This game is really about putting on a good show for the fans and giving them something they have never seen before," Nash said.
