(10-28-2021, 09:32 AM)mavsluvr Wrote: The arena was not empty. It was a few hundred seats from being full.
Were you there? Or are you simply citing "attendance" numbers and taking them as gospel?
Announced "attendance" numbers, and butts in seats, are not necessarily the same thing. And sometimes the difference is massive. NBA policy has been that the team can use "tickets distributed" (and define that whatever way they wish) as the number, so that's what they do.
In a later post, you said "The official attendance was listed at 19,337. That is the number of people who enter the arena, not tickets sold" and that is 100% erroneous. Followill saying in pregame the house is "packed" is a nicely vague word that can be used about any number of "lots of people" if needed, and I suspect was a case of a good employee promoting the company line (as there would be no way to tell whether the place was "packed" when the game hasn't even started and fans aren't in seats to observe). But I was not there, so I defer to the eye test of whoever might have been.
Added - here are a few articles that talk about some of the ways the "attendance" numbers are manipulated, and why
https://www.latimes.com/la-sp-attendance...story.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sportsmoney...90854d2b2a
https://www.ajc.com/sports/basketball/co...ZlGj4sJjO/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the...ular-team/
https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nba...44179.html