Keeler: LeBron’s worried about home-court advantage in 2020 NBA Playoffs. That’s good news for the Nuggets.

At least they can hear you. Kind of. Thanks to web cams and the sharp knives in the NBA marketing drawer who made virtual fandom cool, they can even see a 2-D feed of you. Or your dog.

But they can’t feel you.

They can’t feel you in the final five minutes, when the Nuggets are down four at “home” and need a stop to get mojo flowing the other way.

They can’t feel you calling for MPJ to get the rock.

They can’t feel you rising, as one, after Bol Bol does the same.

No dog pulls the sled, late, the way a Pepsi Center crowd does in crunch time. The Nuggets are 14-8 in postseason home games since 2010, winning at a clip of 63.6% inside The Can.

But what happens within the 2020 NBA Playoffs bracket — played out at Walt Disney World, 1,843 miles from Chopper Circle — when you take away that crowd? That sixth man? That altitude? How does that change the equation?

“If there is a season that somebody like a Denver could win it, surprise people, sure, I guess (it’s this one),” ESPN NBA analyst Jalen Rose said recently. “But if the Clippers and the Lakers are healthy … if a team upsets them, it’s just because they didn’t perform well.”

Either that or they missed something.

Or somebody.

Or several somebodies.

Few home courts, traditionally, tilt the scales as much as an NBA playoff home court does. For the underdog, it’s the great equalizer, the friendly confines that can set the world right. For the favorite, it’s the path earned as a reward for months of regular-season dominance, the equivalent of the last at-bat in baseball, the final word of the argument.

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Since 1950, a road team has won a Game 7 on another squad’s floor just 28 times. That’s by design.

This set-up, by contrast, feels like something designed by M.C. Escher at the intersection of topsy and turvy. Orlando’s bubble could play out more like an NCAA Tournament setting, a neutral floor where talent, matchups, defense and size ultimately claw to the top.

Or a mid-major — looking at you, Portland — can come from out of nowhere, shoot the lights out, and send a sure thing home.

“Clinching the one seed, is there an advantage here?” Lakers star LeBron James pondered earlier this month. “There’s not much of a home-court advantage here.”

James’ Lakers, the top seed in the West, are 3-5 in the bubble so far. The Blazers, the West’s No. 8 seed, are 6-2.

“Nobody is safe in this environment, period,” a Western Conference executive recently told Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “Everyone can be beaten.”

The Nuggets and Jazz, who’ve been paired off in a first-round series that starts Monday, both posted 3-5 records, too.

Utah’s postseason home winning percentage over the previous 10 seasons — 42.1% — is the lowest among the eight playoffs teams in the West. The Clippers (46.9) and Mavericks (62.5), who’ll draw the winner of Nuggets-Jazz, rank seventh and fifth, respectively.

Pepsi Center: 5,190 feet above sea level.

Disney World: 125 feet.

They can’t feel you climbing up the ref’s back after the blind so-and-so slaps Skinny Joker with a bogus foul down the stretch.

They can’t feel your relief when the Blue Arrow drains a floater in the lane a tick before the shot clock expires.

“It’s like, ‘Home-court advantage?’ There’s no home-court advantage,” Rockets sharpshooter James Harden told scribes in July. “It’s you versus us and we’ll just have to figure it out.”

If the Nuggets are going to climb to heights unseen since 2009, they’re going to have to figure out a way to do it without you. And that’s just going to feel weird.



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