The NBA’s first trip to Mexico City since Dec. 6, 1997, didn’t go exactly as planned. On Wednesday Night, the Minnesota Timberwolves were set to “host” the San Antonio Spurs in a game at Mexico City Arena.
Prior to the game, a malfunction of an arena generator caused a large fire, that flooded the arena with smoke. The teams were warming up about 45 minutes prior to the scheduled tip-off when the incident occurred. Thankfully there were no fans in the building yet, but arena staff and team personnel had to be evacuated due to the danger of smoke inhalation.
“I thought they were practicing fireworks,” Spurs TV analyst Sean Elliot said. “A lot of teams do that before introductions. But then the smoke just kept creeping and it wasn’t white smoke. It was like a brown dark smoke and it started taking over the whole court. It was surprising.”
While staff tried to get the arena into a playable condition, safe conditions for the fans and players were just not possible due to the amount of smoke in the arena. As a result, the NBA released the following statement.
“The National Basketball Association game scheduled for tonight between the San Antonio Spurs and the Minnesota Timberwolves has been postponed due to a generator malfunction which produced smoke inside Mexico City Arena.
“The date for the rescheduled game, which will be played at Target Center in Minneapolis, will be announced at a later time.”
The teams finally boarded buses and left for their hotels about 15 minutes after the scheduled tip-off, or one hour after the incident occurred. Its an embarassing incident as the NBA tries to get traction for its “NBA GLOBAL” series of games.
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