“Then you have lots of dead space to fill. “Before, we would program for the three minutes it’s supposed to be, and it ends up being four,” Nicola explained from one end of the arena. New this season in the N.B.A., it counts down the length of each timeout so that coaches, officials, television producers and game operators like Yamaguchi know just when play will resume, with far more precision than before.
Yamaguchi watched a small clock above the basketball hoop, just below the shot clock. Drummers banged, fans stood and bracelets pulsed. At a timeout, at Yamaguchi’s cue, Hurwitz introduced a drum line called Aftershock. There was a glitch at halftime –- one of three microphones mysteriously did not work, forcing the three members of Bell Biv DeVoe to share two working ones - but fans were in a good mood, buoyed by a 13-point Warriors lead.īut the lead shrank in the third quarter and the mood ebbed. The basketball game moved in spurts, but Yamaguchi and his crew never took a timeout. Within minutes, Lee was on the video board, receiving a standing ovation. She soon spotted the former Warriors player David Lee in a set and called into her headset.
“Brett just keeps it hot, trying to keep the energy high,” Smith said from the mouth of the tunnel. Rubber bracelets that had been handed to fans when they entered twinkled in red, white and blue, and the fans shared a collective ooh. Fans fell to a hush as the national anthem began. They take on the roles of traffic cops, shouting at performers to get on the floor and directing the roving M.C.s, Ruby Lopez and Franco Finn. He has two channels on his headset - one for the production crew upstairs, the other to direct the action on the floor through Smith and Nicola, stationed on opposite ends of the court. (Sometimes the glare on the floor from the video boards is so noticeable that Yamaguchi is relayed a message to turn down the brightness.)įor nearly three hours, until the end of the game, the soft-spoken Yamaguchi talks constantly. Yamaguchi then headed up the arena stairs through the sea of about 19,000 yellow giveaway T-shirts draped neatly over the back of the arena seats.įifteen minutes before game time, Yamaguchi settled into his seat between the public-address announcer Matthew Hurwitz and a league official responsible for coordinating the timeouts with the network production truck outside the arena. On Monday, four hours before tipoff, Yamaguchi and his assistants watched Bell Biv DeVoe rehearse for a halftime show with the Warriors Dance Team. (The best on-the-job training for fan engagement? Meaningless, midwinter, weeknight games against the Bucks, the Grizzlies and the Wizards.) Now, during the playoffs, he wears a large championship ring on his finger. Yamaguchi, 42, has worked for the Warriors for 19 years, including several seasons during which the team won fewer than 20 of 82 games. They are the people who take over the show when the basketball players step away. But on game nights, Yamaguchi employs more than 100 others, from anthem singers to halftime acts, dancers to D.J.s, pyrotechnicians to scoreboard controllers, roving M.C.s to camera operators, T-shirt throwers to confetti droppers. He has a full-time staff of three: the assistants Alicia Smith and Marco Nicola, and the dance team director Sabrina Ellison. The last parachute was caught, the fans still standing, just before the ball was inbounded to start the fourth quarter. A small digital clock on each basket, below the shot clock, counted down the seconds to the end of the timeout. Most of the fans stood, looking and reaching skyward for the gifts as they slowly descended. played the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” Someone else triggered the nearly 20,000 light-up bracelets that had been given to fans to blink red and yellow. Nearby, a man at a control board set the 66 moving spotlights in the ceiling in motion. In a dark booth at suite level, someone clicked a computer to change the graphics on the video scoreboards to reflect the sponsor.
Hidden in the rafters of Oracle Arena, 12 workers on the catwalks began releasing 100 small parachutes, each holding a McDonald’s gift card. “O.K.,” he said into the microphone attached to his headset. Between them, seated at midcourt behind the scorer’s table, a man named Brett Yamaguchi had a game plan of his own. The third quarter ended, and the Warriors and the Thunder huddled to plot strategy for the fourth.