SALT LAKE CITY — Last week, while active for his first game in an NBA arena, Damian Jones noticed something odd: the squeak of basketball shoes, play calls and directives from the bench could all easily be heard.
“It’s different,” Jones said of that game at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, where his Santa Cruz Warriors fell to the Long Island Nets in front of a generally assessed crowd of 249. “It sounded like a practice out there.”
It might as well have been. In the wake of five months rehabbing from pectoral surgery, Jones spent five games getting back to playing shape with Golden State’s NBA Development League affiliate.