Bradley Beal jogged out of the tunnel, jokingly mimicking the noise that would typically follow. With no actual fans, the Wizards star was left to his own devices to fire himself up for the first basketball game at Capital One Arena in 282 days.
Crowd noise, however, wasn’t the only thing missing from the Wizards’ 97-86 loss Thursday to the Detroit Pistons. In their second game of the preseason, the Wizards were still working out kinks in an ugly performance with the regular season less than a week away.
Preseason results, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt.