Las Vegas — Air-conditioned, 5 minute walk and key card.
Washington Wizards players will be able to move from their hotel rooms to a regulation-sized basketball court and take shots at any time of the day or night during this year's NBA Summer League.
The Wizards rented a 14,000-square-foot ballroom at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center and converted it into a temporary practice facility with weight training equipment, large TVs for watching movies and tables for athletic trainers and physical therapists to work on players. For eight days, the facility will serve as the Wizards' second home.
“This is more than a blessing,” forward Eugene Omoruyi said.
To call the Wizards' facilities lavish would be an understatement. This bustling city has many amenities, but not many basketball courts, especially when all 30 NBA teams are in the city at once. During summer league, NBA teams can practice on one of UNLV's four courts, but only during limited, closely supervised hours. Local high schools also offer an option, albeit an inconvenient one.
But the Wizards have solved that problem for developed countries.
Team officials transported the hardwood court used for home games of the 2023 season tournament at Capital One Arena to Nevada, where it was reassembled inside the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Once the summer league is over, the court will be disassembled and stored in an air-conditioned facility in Las Vegas, with plans to use it again next summer.
In addition to the ballroom, the team also rents basketball and weight room equipment.
Team officials declined to say how much they plan to pay for the overall project this year, but Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger said the cost is “significant but not exorbitant,” adding that it will be “well worth it.”
“Whether it's summer league, training camp or in-season, we as an organization try to reduce, if not eliminate, the friction between everyday life and training for our players,” Winger said. “… The normal rhythm of summer league creates a lot of friction just by being away from home, staying in a hotel, having limited weight room availability, limited gym hours available. There's a lot of friction.”
The Wizards have shipped a 2023 NBA in-season tournament court to Las Vegas for use during the summer league. (Josh Robbins/ Athletic)
Winger added: “With these gyms, I would say we can get players double the amount of practice in the summer league than they would be able to get without the semi-private gyms.”
The Wizards' operations and logistics team appears to have everything the players and staff need. The weight room and training facilities include three squat racks, three stationary bikes, three exercise tables, kettlebells, dumbbells and medicine balls. There's also a refrigerator stocked with sports drinks and bottled water.
The Wizards are renting weight training equipment for their temporary training facility in Las Vegas. (Josh Robbins / Athletic)
The precursor to all of this is the practice space the NBA set up inside the Walt Disney World bubble in 2020. But the Toronto Raptors are also innovators. During the 2020-21 season, the Raptors played their home games in Tampa, Florida, because of Canada's COVID-19 restrictions. At the time, the Raptors created a makeshift practice space in a ballroom at the JW Marriott hotel next to Amalie Arena. Last summer and again this summer, Raptors officials created a similar practice space in a ballroom at the Summer League hotel in Las Vegas.
Winger praised the Raptors for implementing the temporary practice facility model into the NBA Summer League and said he hopes more teams follow the Raptors and Wizards' example in future summers.
Washington's summer league roster features 15 players, including rookie first-round draft picks Alex Sarr, Babb Carrington and Kai'Shawn George and returnees Patrick Baldwin Jr., Jules Bernard, Jared Butler, Justin Champagnier, Tristan Vukcevic and Omoruyi.
On a recent morning, after the summer-league teams finished practicing, veterans Marvin Bagley III, Malcolm Brogdon, Richaun Holmes, Corey Kispert, Kyle Kuzma and Jordan Poole gathered in the ballroom for individual shooting drills and weightlifting.
“For us as athletes, it's always a challenge to find a place to train while we're in Las Vegas,” Kispert said. “The convenience of being able to walk there five minutes and have the opportunity to train whenever I feel like it, day or night, is great. It's just a great convenience for me to be able to get in and out of training with the people I want to meet and connect with in Las Vegas and get work done when I need to.”
While Kispert swung a medicine ball, Poole lifted dumbbells and Brogdon and Kuzma worked on individual shooting practice on the court. Sarr sat courtside with Wizards coach Brian Keefe, reviewing video of the team's summer-league opener.
“It's the veterans and the young guys,” Winger said. “They shoot shots together. They do walk-throughs together. It's all player-led. You can't create that kind of camaraderie in the offseason unless you create that environment. This is the purpose.”
(Top photo: Steven R. Silvani/USA Today)
