When it was announced yesterday that LeBron James was set to play at the CrawsOver Pro-Am League, it generated a lot of buzz among basketball fans. It was a rare opportunity to watch the King play outside of an NBA court, and fans were queuing up long before the game started. Unfortunately for everyone involved, though, the game had to be called off midway through the second quarter.
The reason for it was an issue with condensation on the court, as reported by Kevin Pelton from ESPN, and with player safety in mind, they had to stop it.
Game called midway through the second quarter due to condensation on the court.
— Kevin Pelton (@kpelton) August 21, 2022
It would appear that humidity was a problem, and it led to players sweating a lot, which meant the court was no longer safe to play on, as LeBron himself seems to have pointed out during the game.
You could tell LeBron knew it wasn’t safe to be out on that floor. Could see him whispering to Rich Paul at one point. Then MarJon Beauchamp tried a dunk & couldn’t get any traction. Jamal Crawford called the game after that and Bron looked at Rich like, “I called it.”
— Dugar, Michael-Shawn (@MikeDugar) August 21, 2022
The play in question was Bucks rookie MarJon Beauchamp failing to get up for a dunk on a fastbreak as we see here, and that was it for Jamal Crawford, by the looks of it, as Chet Holmgren had also suffered an injury earlier on.
The play that stopped Crawsover: Beauchamp slips while going up for the wide open fastbreak dunk pic.twitter.com/y0TMxYbkUY
— hoops bot (@hoops_bot) August 21, 2022
It is a shame that it had to be ended abruptly as all eyes were on this game, and we had gotten off to a great start with LeBron and Jayson Tatum putting on a show, but player safety is paramount, and the decision to call it off had to be made. It remains to be seen if these stars get back on the court at some point later on when it is safe to play.